Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now on Colorado's Morning News.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
The Denver Fringe Festival one of three hundred plus fringe
festivals around the world with a mission to support independent
artists in a variety of performance arts, and it begins today.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Denver magician Gerald Robinson one of those talented artists that
will be there. He joined Gina Gondek and Keenan Dixon
on Colorado's Morning News to bring some magic to the studio.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
Well, I brought some magic for you guys today. It
was challenging to find it though, because magic is such
a visual medium. Doing it on the radio is kind
of tough. But I thought I would We would try
some things. Does that sound cool?
Speaker 5 (00:34):
Absolutely? Are we going to dive right into it?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Or do you want? Yeah? All right, why don't we
do Why don't we do one? Just to start? Ga?
Speaker 5 (00:42):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
All right, we haven't said anything up. We've never met before.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Okay, I didn't bring the crystal ball today because it's
like three hundred pounds. But I want you to think
of someone personal to you and write their name on
this little notebook for me.
Speaker 5 (00:56):
Okay, first pace, Yeah, just want.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
The first pace on that line, just right, Just write
down someone connected to you, maybe someone.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
It's a little bit hard to google if it doesn't.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Did you already search me?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
I didn't. I didn't search you, all right?
Speaker 5 (01:07):
All right?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
You done that? All right?
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Could you rip out that piece of paper and fold
it in half and then in half again? And I
can look away just okay, he is looking away. I
can confirm, thank you, yes again. Magic is a visual art.
Speaker 5 (01:20):
Folded.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
I hang on to the paper, and then one more time, folded,
one more time, and I'll and I'll take it, but
I'm not going to look at it, all right, folded?
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Great? Okay. So and you didn't see what she wrote?
I did not know.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
The reason we write things down is so we can
remember them later. So we're actually going to destroy this
piece of paper so that no one can see what's
inside of it.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
And I'm just going to ask you some easy questions,
yes or no, and we're going to try and read
your mind. Okay, So is this person, this person is
related to you?
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Just yes or no? This person you're thinking of it's
a truck question.
Speaker 5 (01:48):
Yeah, let's say yes.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Let's say yes.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
If it's your like partner, they're probably related to you
like by law, I think yeah, okay, all right?
Speaker 1 (01:57):
So is this person are you from Colorado? Originally? Is
this person from Colorado originally?
Speaker 4 (02:01):
Now? Okay, so neither of you guys are from uh.
Is this person older than you?
Speaker 5 (02:06):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Okay you you had to think so same age a
little bit. All right, I'm gonna write down I think
of getting an idea. I'm gonna write down. I'm gonna
write down a name. I'm gonna give it to you.
I don't want you to show it. Yeah, don't look
at don't look at it yet?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
All right?
Speaker 4 (02:22):
Actually, why don't you look at it? In a big
loud voice or not a big loud voice. I say
that when I perform because into the microphone. Yes, I've
written something down. I want you to say what name
you're thinking of? I was thinking of Kyle.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
And what did I write down?
Speaker 4 (02:36):
That's incredible, it says.
Speaker 5 (02:41):
How well do you? Okay? So let's start with that,
all right?
Speaker 6 (02:45):
So Gerald, do you tell do you ever reveal anybody
anything of how you how you do this?
Speaker 3 (02:50):
So?
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yes? And no, So you can't the idea of a magician.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
You're not supposed to reveal your tricks to the people
you're performing for that being said, magicians I've met are
some of the most generous people with their secrets, magician
to magician, and you know, if you meet another magician,
a lot of times they're really excited to teach you
something or show you something of theirs, or you show
them they're like, oh, that's this, we should talk about that.
(03:15):
And it's The magic community is pretty amazing in the
idea of sharing secrets. There are some magicians who have
gone to their grave with their secrets, but that's more rare.
Speaker 7 (03:24):
Now, how did you even get started in doing this?
I mean, I couldn't even imagine trying to figure out
what to do to figure out who she wrote on
that piece of paper that you didn't even see and
tore up.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
It's well, it's interesting because this is considered mentalism. So
there's magic and there's mentalism. Mentalism his mind reading, telepathy,
that sort of thing magic is magic. And so recently
I actually hurt my hand, so I had to kind
of go away from sleight of hand and these things
that I was really interested and kind of focus on
mind reading injured.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
I was injured.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Yeah, it just happens in sports rapids, Yeah, And so
it was it was an overuse injury, which happens in
sports all the time, because I just did so much magic.
But it's basically like you know, visual cues learning, And
it's funny a lot of people will think of this
similar people like I don't know if I don't know
if you have any brothers or anything or like, but oftentimes,
like men around your age will think of like their
(04:15):
brother rather than any and like oftentimes, like women around
your age will think of like their mother. It's just
sometimes that's a thing. But then getting the names and
stuff is just another level.
Speaker 6 (04:24):
Well, it's interesting because I hesitated on a couple of
them because obviously the relation. You're like, well, okay, how
do you do with this? And then birthdays were three
days apart, so I was like, yeah, by a little bit.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
And it's that whole like reading the room and reading
the audience, like seeing someone thinking of, Okay, I can
see what you're I can see your brain working, and
then playing off of that and performing in that way.
Speaker 7 (04:44):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (04:44):
Gerald, you talked about the just magic community in Denver,
and I love talking about people when they talk about
the music industry in Denver and just it seems like
it's more of like camaraderie and everybody's there to help
each other, No one's trying to battle each other out.
How does it feel as being like a magician in
the Denver area community? Is it welcoming and do people
help each other out? Is it challenging? Does it have
(05:07):
its competition at times?
Speaker 1 (05:09):
I would say it has its ups and downs.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
We have a pretty solid community of magicians here that
are pretty die hard and they get together once a month,
and I found a pretty amazing resource of younger magicians.
That was something that it was when I moved to
Denver a couple of years ago from Boulder, it was
kind of hard to find magicians my age. And I've
slowly found that because just there's magicians who are like
in their twenties, and there's magicians like in their forties
(05:33):
and fifties. There's not really any in between. But through that,
I've been able to meet a lot of good friends.
And I actually have some friends who are performing in
the Fringe Festival. So I'm really excited to see their
shows and see how they perform.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
So how can people see you perform? Well, A couple
of ways.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
You can hire me nice, but also I do public
shows and this weekend, my friend and I are doing
this thing called the Romeo or Romeo Cabaret, which will
be magic and mind reading and songs. So she's a
trained opera singer and musical theater singer, so she's going
(06:10):
to be doing some of those things, and then in
between we're going to do some magic and at the
end we're going to do some magic together, which will
be very cool.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
That's really cool. She've never heard of a pair up
like that before. That's that's that's very cool.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
She she's very eager to learn magic. And we cut
her in half of the first cabaret and she was like,
I will never do that.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Just casually, and she did not like it. I would
like that either.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
Yeah, we put her back together. She got put back together.
It's fine.
Speaker 6 (06:39):
Are there some magicians that you look up to more
than others? Are there something that you're like, that's a fraud,
and then others you're like, okay, wait, I really respect
your artwork.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
I really appreciate genuineness in magic, which is a weird
thing to say because it seems like deceiving and lying
the whole time. But my philosophy and some of my
mentors philosophies is the idea of like lie or tell
the truth as much as you can until you have
to lie. Like when I used to street perform growing up,
(07:07):
and I wouldn't use any of like the fake coins
or the fake cards because they would blow away or break.
So I learned how to be very genuine with props.
And so when I see magicians or performers that I
enjoy be really authentic but also deceive you. It's kind
of a it's that you know gives me the goosebumps.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
You know, how many tricks do you know? Like is
there a number? It's like a playbook in football.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Like I was talking to a friend of mine about this,
because I have a terrible memory, except for with magic,
I have decent matricks in my brain. Of like cards
and coins, there's different categories, right, so like in the
mentalism area, I might only know like twenty routines, but
that's still and then a deck of cards, I might
know like hundreds of tricks because there's just so many
(07:53):
that's incredible.
Speaker 6 (07:54):
We're speaking with Gerald Robinson. He is a local magician
who will be participating in the Denver Fringe Festival, which
is taking place this weekend. You can find more information
at Denverfringe dot org and if you've never checked it out,
highly recommend, because I mean it's everything.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
We're talking theater, we're talking.
Speaker 6 (08:09):
Comedy, improv, dance, obviously a magic and all of that.
Give us the latest of where people can see you
this weekend. And obviously when you do hirings, are you
doing like private events?
Speaker 5 (08:21):
So people hiring you for special events and things like that.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Yeah, So for this weekend we will be performing Romeo
Cabaret or the Romeo Cabaret at the Pearl in Denver.
The Pearl is what the Mercury Cafe has turned into,
so they still have the swing dancing. They still have
like it's a fun tiki bar kind of now. So
that's on Pearl. It's the Pearl on California Street in
downtown Denver. And then for hiring me, yeah, I perform
(08:45):
for nonprofits, for weddings, for corporate events. This weekend I
went up and performed for a library. It was a blast,
and it's yeah. I often say I don't want to
perform for like kids' birthday parties, but then the second
I perform for like a bunch of kids, I'm like
this is really fun because they like they love it.
I I And it's funny that a lot of magicians
(09:07):
for a long time would say that like mind reading
and mentalism doesn't really work for kids. They don't get it.
They one hundred percent get it. If you read someone's mind,
they get it.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
I Gerald dot com, that's your website.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Anyway, that's my website, very similar to I Carly. I
was into that when I love that.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
I love that. Yes, Jerald, do you have another magic
trick for us?
Speaker 1 (09:27):
I do? Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
I brought in something kind of so I made a
prediction that I wrote koa on which I'm going to
put you know, I'll give it to you. And then
I have another deck of cards. But this is a
unique deck of cards because it has a bunch of
letters on it. So it has like the letter E dB,
It's an alphabet deck. This is like something you would
give to a like a kidd oh to help learn
(09:50):
words and stuff. I'm going to give you like half okay,
shuffle them up, all right.
Speaker 5 (09:55):
I'm a really bad shuffler, so I'm just going to
kind of just do the little.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Cut the deck.
Speaker 5 (09:59):
Yeah right, I can't really do the fun little.
Speaker 6 (10:02):
That kind of thing that yeah, yeah, right, I feel
like you have to know how to do that to
beat me.
Speaker 5 (10:07):
And let me see if I can do one of
those real quick.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
I can see it, hey, okay, and then just give
them one more like, so.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
I have the full deck, you want me to show
it again, I'll just.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
Keep him square and then give it a cut. Okay,
cut sounds good. I'm gonna deal down a couple of
cards to say stop. You want me to keep going,
Let's just let's just let's do sure, take these cards.
Speaker 5 (10:30):
I was like, I want to see how I guess well,
I just didn't want.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
To be as too complicated. I want you're gonna make.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
A word out of those?
Speaker 4 (10:37):
Out of those if we can, hopefully it's like word
actually if if? Yeah, five five letters would be almost perfect.
Can you.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I know I'm putting you on the spot. Is it
is there?
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Is there like a four or five letter word you
can make out of those?
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Sure you got one? Yeah? Okay? Could you? All right?
Speaker 3 (10:58):
So?
Speaker 1 (10:58):
And can you still have that prediction? Prediction?
Speaker 3 (11:00):
All right?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
I haven't opened it.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
Don't open it yet. I wrote I wrote something, so
you have I have a word? Is it a long word?
Speaker 5 (11:05):
Or is it no? No, no no?
Speaker 4 (11:07):
Could you spell out the word for us, just like
deal down a card and say the letter.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Que que you you?
Speaker 5 (11:15):
I I see.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
See Okay quick? Awesome?
Speaker 4 (11:19):
Nice kean that you've been holding that prediction? You ever
looked at it? It's just an envelope. Don't open it
up and read what I've written on that card in
that envelope? Hell, how did you do that? And it
should say the word quick. That's incredible, amazing, Wow.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
That's really cool.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
That's awesome.
Speaker 6 (11:34):
I love this so much fun. Wow, Fringe Festival, check
them out. It's gonna be awesome. Everything at the Fringe
Festival is a ton of fun too. That is taking
place Saturday and Sunday, June seventh, June eighth, six thirty show,
five o'clock show the Pearl Jungle Room at California Street
in Denver, and uh. You can find more at Ie
Jerald just like I Carlyigerald dot com