The Houdini exhibit was neat.  Traffic was way lighter than I expected, so I got there around 2:40pm and stayed for about two hours.  The show was a lot smaller than I expected, but cool nonetheless.  Lot's of photos, playbills, information, films, an actual diary, and props, along with art (regular and performance) that was influenced by him and his work.  Some of the props on show were the threaded needles, trunk, milk can, straight jacket and a replica water tank.  I guess the original tank burned in a fire in 1995, so some guy recreated it with materials from that era.  They also had short clips of Houdini movies (Tony Curtis, Norman Mailer, Guy Pearce, etc), along with short film footage of Houdini performing the straight jack escape and one where he's jumping off a bridge all locked up and by the time he breaks the surface of the water he's gotten out of the locks and chains.

One thing that struck me was how small he looked in the photos on display.  I'd never noticed that before!  Just comparing the trunk and the milk can in-person and their sizes to the photos and their sizes in comparrison to him leads me to believe that he wasn't a tall  man.  When I got home, I got online and looked up his height and I could only find figures that showed him as being anywhere from 5'2 to a maximum of 5'6.  I'm thinking he was probably around 5'4 or so (wow, shorter than me!).  Man, his wife must have been tiny!  She was quite a bit shorter than he was.

Strangely, I'd always thought Houdini died like he did in the Tony Curtis movie, I had no idea he died of septicemia as a result of an appendicitis.

Other magicians get a little bit of a mention as well.  Towards the end they've got Penn and Teller stuff, along with Doug Henning (who I LOVED as a kid) and others I'm not familiar with.

If you go to see the Houdini thing, you should also take time out to see the Illusionist exhibit running in conjunction to it.  There's a lot of really interesting items on show, including an Action Comics #14 (with Zatara).  Ha!  Gotta get a comic book mention in here somehow, right?  That show is also mutli-media with film and audio clips to go along with everything else.

I think if I were to plan going to this thing again, I would try to see if someone could go with me instead of going solo.  There was a lot of neat stuff to talk about and some people to make fun of.  If you can believe it, there was a couple, probably in their 30's, walking around and when they saw the Tony Curtis film clip they went from "Hey - Tony Curtis is a magician, cool!.... So is his wife?  Alright!" to "Tony Curtis and his wife are dead and it was just a movie.".  They got there in the end, but it was funny watching them connect the dots. Slowly.

The Skirball Center is a really beautiful place.  If you see things you are interested in being exhibited there, I definitely recommend that you go.  It doesn't have the awesome views the Getty has, but the grounds are pretty.  Oh yeah, as of yesterday, the Skirball exits off the 405 (both ways) are closed, so you have to plan around that.  Since I was coming from the South, I got off at Getty Center, made a left and drove up.  Not sure what exit you would have to take from the north, but there are probably signs.

SDCC Update:

It looks like single day badges are going to go on sale at any time.  I'll update this blog and let you know what happens.

Rants:

No rant(s) for Wednesday.  It's early yet, so maybe later on in the day.  If I do have one, it will probably be related to SDCC.  <grin>.