Stone had apparently been absent the day his class learned the meaning of 'hubris.'

Although in possession of an undergraduate degree in English from Harvard, Mr. Far from appearing embarrassed much less contrite, he took the opportunity to brag about his hard work and magic expertise, strutting his personal sense of intellectual and moral superiority over his fellow competitors and the larger community of magic, while posing as a working pro. Kaufman's prescience, was to write a 13-page feature article about his FISM experience in the July 2008 issue of Harper's magazine. A good wallow in your own failure is sometimes the road to success.' Stone's next public step, 'People like to fail in public these days. But to quote Richard Kaufman, who offered this comment on the Genii Forum in the wake of Mr.

In some dimension of time and space, a man might, in the face of such public humiliation, retire to private self-contemplation, lick his wounds, and perhaps venture forth gingerly to beg forgiveness from those whose life's work and art he had so publicly sullied. Stone was the only act in the close-up com-petition (and one of few ever) to be 'given the hook' because his performance was so utterly execrable and below par.

Most red-lighting at FISM takes place because a performer runs over the allotted time, but Mr. Reviewed by Jamy Ian Swiss (originally published in Genii July, 2012)Īt the 2006 FISM close-up magic competition in Stockholm, Alex Stone, an ambitious journalist and amateur magician (who had gained entry to the competition thanks to an endorsement by the President of the Society of American Magicians), was 'red-lighted' meaning that he was stopped before completing his performance.

Alex stone fooling houdini