Amazing Johnathan anecdotes

Discuss the historical aspects of magic, including memories, or favorite stories.
Guest

Amazing Johnathan anecdotes

Postby Guest » February 20th, 2006, 11:33 am

Am currently working on a biography
on the Amazing Johnathan
-----complete with many of his personal favorite stories and recollections.

Anyone have any anecdotes or personal recollections that they would like to see make it into the book?

Guest

Re: Amazing Johnathan anecdotes

Postby Guest » February 20th, 2006, 1:33 pm

They only time I ever saw him live was in 1983 at a comedy club. The show pretty much consisted of him doing topsy turvy bottles for a guy and if the guy was wrong he had to take a shot of tequilla and the fellow went from sober to unable to stand as the show progressed. I don't remember anything else, I was pretty drunk myself.
Steve V

Richard Stokes
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Re: Amazing Johnathan anecdotes

Postby Richard Stokes » February 20th, 2006, 6:10 pm

Saw his night-club act several times in Sydney , Australia in the 1990's.
He really had me laughing and that's quite an accomplishment.
The Sydney Morning Herald reviewer assumed that the person Johnathan selected from the audience was a stooge (which wasn't true!)... and, for me, this demonstrates how powerful Johnathan's routines were.
In the 1990's Sydney was a hardcore bastion of militant feminist 'thinking' and 'gender' political correctness. I remember there was a controversial part where Johnathan violently assaults his female psychic assistant with table cutlery.
I thought this was the funniest part of the show, but it occasionally provoked walk-outs.

Guest

Re: Amazing Johnathan anecdotes

Postby Guest » February 22nd, 2006, 12:26 pm

Amazing Johnathan actually lived down under for quite awhile.

Besides working the comedy clubs and theatres, he was a recurring guest on their version of SNL, .....a show that I believe was called
"Hey,Hey..It's Saturday".

Although he hasn't been back to Australia in years,
he is taking a small break this spring from working
at the Sahara Hotel to perform in OZ for
a couple weeks.

Sean Piper
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Re: Amazing Johnathan anecdotes

Postby Sean Piper » February 24th, 2006, 1:24 pm

While 'Hey Hey It's Saturday' is no longer on the air... I rmember watching when I was younger and it seemed that Amazing Jonathan was on there every couple of weeks.

In hindsight it surely wasn't that often, but he was on that show a lot!!

- Sean
www.swimsean.blogs.com

Guest

Re: Amazing Johnathan anecdotes

Postby Guest » April 21st, 2006, 5:40 pm

...For the Aussie fans,

Amazing Johnathan is now in Australia for the
first time in six years performing
4/25 through 4/30
and
5/2 through 5/7
in the
Palms at Crown Theatre
at the Crown Casino in Melbourne
as part of the international comedy festival there.

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Pete Biro
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Re: Amazing Johnathan anecdotes

Postby Pete Biro » April 21st, 2006, 8:37 pm

I don't mean to be a nit-picker, but if you are writing a story on him... learn to spell his name correctly :)
Stay tooned.

Guest

Re: Amazing Johnathan anecdotes

Postby Guest » April 21st, 2006, 10:57 pm

Correctly? His name is spelled correctly?

Who's on first?

Brian Marks
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Re: Amazing Johnathan anecdotes

Postby Brian Marks » April 21st, 2006, 11:51 pm

I saw him with a friend in 1998? in Caroline's in NY. loved it. Saw him 2x at the Golden Nugget.

Saw him at a mgiac convention after he changed hotels. For several minutes, he went on a rant about how bad the new crew was.

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Steve Bryant
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Re: Amazing Johnathan anecdotes

Postby Steve Bryant » April 22nd, 2006, 5:29 am

Chris, don't overlook that we did a 20,000-word or so bio/story on Amazing Johnathan in the September 2000 issue of Genii and another story on his home in the December 2004 issue. AJ is a blast to interview, but be on your guard!

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Pete Biro
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Re: Amazing Johnathan anecdotes

Postby Pete Biro » April 22nd, 2006, 8:33 am

Hmmm... on Google I searched Amazing Jonathan and got his website. No "H" -- which is what I have seen, but then on his site there is an "H" in his name.

So? If I am wrong, MY BAD... :(
Stay tooned.

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Richard Kaufman
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Re: Amazing Johnathan anecdotes

Postby Richard Kaufman » April 22nd, 2006, 12:05 pm

Pete: there is definitely an h.
Subscribe today to Genii Magazine

Guest

Re: Amazing Johnathan anecdotes

Postby Guest » April 22nd, 2006, 7:47 pm

Steve----------Thanks for the helpful tip.

I did get the chance to read the excellent Genii article from 2000 a couple times. I'll keep a lookout for the more recent article they did on the McMansion in Henderson.

Pete-------his name is commonly misspelled.

On google, "Amazing Johnathan" gets 165,000 hits
and the most common misspelling gets 34,500.
There are at least two other misspellings I've run across.

To add to the confusion, there is a lesser known magician based in New York State by the name of
Jonathan Krackehl who legally owns the web domain
for what would be the most common misspelling of
Amazing Johnathan.

(The Las Vegas based "A.J." offered to buy the web domain from Mr. Krackehl a few years back but the selling price seemed exorbitant.)

The irony in this situation is that everyone from Amazing Johnathan's family almost always refer
to him by his birthname of John.

(He adopted the name Johnathan upon becoming a magician.) As one might imagine, lengthening his name helped him avoid ever having to market
himself as "The Amazing John."

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Pete Biro
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Re: Amazing Johnathan anecdotes

Postby Pete Biro » April 22nd, 2006, 10:50 pm

Thanks all, signed, "The Amazing Peter" (name given to my by P. Diaconis) :D
Stay tooned.

Guest

Re: Amazing Johnathan anecdotes

Postby Guest » April 23rd, 2006, 2:38 pm

The first email I ever received was from A.J., back in the early/mid '90's. He was in Austrailia at the time. I sent him a note complimenting him on his web page (which was pretty complex for those days) as he had created it himself. He sent a nice reply, which ended with the thought that instead of answering emails he should be writing jokes! --Mitch Dutton

Guest

Re: Amazing Johnathan anecdotes

Postby Guest » April 24th, 2006, 9:42 am

Johnathan once told me that if he wasn't in show business, that he would be a web designer.

(however, that was before his interest in
collecting classic cars took off in 2003.)

With his webdesigning skills, he actually created
and designed Billy McComb's site from scratch and helped out more then a few other acts as well.

This reminds me of one of his many pranks :

During the time when Johnathan hired opening acts
for his Vegas show, he would occasionally terrorize them (onstage and off) with various practical jokes.

Once when James Dimmare was working the show in Vegas for a week, Johnathan stole or hacked the passwords for Dimmare's website.

AJ then designed some flash animation on the homepage so that the magician's pristine doves eventually appeared to defecate down onto Dimmare's suave, elegant and "Astairian" image----until he appeared to be covered in a big steaming
white pile of avian feces.

I'm not sure if Dimmare caught the prank before
it was successfully uploaded or not, but in any case,
it was a fairly amusing visual while it lasted.


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