So Many Faces... So Much Entertainment!

THE READING REWARD SCHOOL ASSEMBLY: SAW THE LIBRARIAN IN HALF!

Loch David Crane has been a college and high school professor for over 30 years. Now he offers a 45 minute elementary and secondary school assembly which promotes reading by students. His magic spell is “IF YOU READ, YOU CAN SUCCEED” and it enables students to witness and participate in several miracles of magic and historical presentations leading up to Sawing a Person in Half. I can use principals, vice principals, librarians, police officers, retiring professional adults, and large birthday children–and will return them to duty unharmed.

Each time the person is apparently hypnotized and the saw visually goes in one side and out the other of a horseshoe shaped apparatus. No one has ever been harmed and the person receives one or two great rounds of applause after the effect. I usually use a person of honor and respect who deserves the applause he or she gets.
In his reading reward assembly, Professor Crane and the school administration will choose how much the students are required to read by show time in order to earn participation as an audience member for this amazing event. Imagine the power and confidence in the phrase “IF YOU READ, YOU CAN SUCCEED” chanted by hundreds of kids, their hands in the air after just witnessing successful mind reading experiment involving the whole sixth-grade class sitting among them. This event is so powerful and meaningful to remember that it easily carries the message deep into the child’s memory which is important for his or her success.

SUSPENDED STRAIGHT JACKET ESCAPE

I no longer perform this dangerous straitjacket escape due to back injuries. But in the 1980s I used to don my straitjacket and hang upside down just like Harry Houdini, suspended off one of the bents under the Giant Dipper Roller Coaster. I was one of the officers and volunteers to save the roller coaster from destruction who guaranteed a destruction bond, and then went ahead to knock out 10,000 foot long bolts and power wash the entire coaster. We inspected it for damage and found it was runnable and so historical experts were brought in to examine this historic monument from 1926, when Harry Houdini was still alive.
I escaped from the straitjacket using methods developed by Houdini and published in his own books. The Save the Coaster Committee also held a dozen chili cookoffs and other events in the 1980s and EVENTUALLY SAVED THE GIANT DIPPER ROLLER COASTER, donating it to the City of San Diego as a profitable enterprise. Then we supervised further restoration, choice of historically correct colors, and helped the City to find employees who could still repair and operate a wooden roller coaster. We brought most of them down from Santa Barbara where there is another wooden coaster, now over 80 years old. Here are two of the few pictures I can find of this dangerous, funny, exciting, and successful grand illusion.

 

 

Currently I am on the Friends of the Villa Montezuma, intending to restore and operate a museum within this beautiful Queen Anne structure near 20th and K downtown. It is currently owned by the City of San Diego and under the direction of the San Diego Historical Society and the Friends of the Villa Montezuma the structure's tower is being righted, the roof repaired, and the foundations rebuilt to current code requirements allowing groups, meetings, tours, and perhaps weddings.