Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show with Paul Magid Transcript

A.E. Guy: [00:00:00] Welcome to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show with your hosts, Phil Proctor and Ted bonnet fill in Ted's guest today is master juggler, comedian playwright and co-founder of the world renowned, The Flying Karamazov Brothers. Paul perfected the art of street performance and juggled his way into a global touring sensation at a hit Broadway show.[00:00:30]

And now your sexy boomer hosts, Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt.

Ted Bonnitt: Welcome to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show. I'm Ted Bonnitt. That

Phil Proctor: means I must be sexy Phil Proctor, right? Just, just by process of elimination, which is how I started my day.

Ted Bonnitt: Here we go! It's already down the toilet.

Phil Proctor: Well today, we're talking with us a very special guest who happens to be a long friend of mine, And, how long are you?

Anyway, we've known one another for a [00:01:00] long, long time and spent a lot of time together in various. Um, places, which we can talk about a little bit later, but before we begin, uh, Paul, uh, Mageed Magog.. or Majeed, we have to know how to pronounce your name.

Paul Magid: Paul, Mah-GEED. I am by my member of the McGeedeem the McGeedeem storytellers. That's actually what my name is storytellers.

Phil Proctor: Yeah. And, and you told me once, what's your, uh, your name and what would it be [00:01:30] in, in Sephardic?

Paul Magid: No it's in, in Hebrew and Hebrew. My real name. See, Paul is my, the name that they gave me to protect me from the Christians. So, um, my real name is parents Daveed Mageed, which means the beloved.Storyteller who pushes through. I swear to God. That's what it means. They're pretty good name.

Phil Proctor: That's what you do. My name, Phil [00:02:00] means lover of horses and a Proctor is a procurer. So I am a, I'm a procurer of horses. For very special, special sexual tastes.

Ted Bonnitt: You're wanted in about eight states. (laughter) Paul, most people will know you as a founding member of The Flying Karamazov brothers. The wonderful, incredible juggling. Would you please explain about the Brothers?

Paul Magid: Well, [00:02:30] long ago when Nixon was still president of the United States and we were still at war Vietnam, uh, my partner Howard Patterson, and I, uh, were going to school at UC Santa Cruz.

That's the university of California at Santa Cruz. And, uh, we. Kind of didn't really like each other at first, although his father helped take the door off my dorm room, uh, doorway, because I couldn't fit moving my [00:03:00] sofa from my grandfather. So I met him sort of that way. And then, um, we had the same girlfriend for awhile. Um, it was just, you know, Santa Cruz kind of a thing then. Maybe from the girlfriend.

We're not certain, maybe it was a door knob, got mononucleosis and, uh, had to not be in school for a while. Cause he was just so ill and he couldn't do anything, but each sleep and juggle. So, so goes the story. And so he had, [00:03:30] he just spent time juggling and he learned a few tricks and um, he had some friends from LA who showed him a couple of juggling tricks and came back.

He could do a few tricks and I saw him doing them and if he can do it, I can do it. So, um, Juggling and learning tricks. And next thing you know, we were practicing, um, and I was in theater, uh, at, uh, university of California. And I was in a bunch of [00:04:00] plays and Howard and I started inventing those whole world of, of juggling.

You know, we didn't know anybody really who had any system. We didn't go to school for juggling or, and we invented our entire system. We completely invented and. Uh, anyway, we had a couple of really cool things that we thought were pretty neat. We had a, like a, uh, body, uh, ballad from Elizabeth in England, um, tales [00:04:30] to.

Purge melancholy, I think it was from, and, um, it was Tom Tinkers, my true love. And it was our first bit and which is a very bawdy, little as Elizabethan in song. And we did it wild, uh, singing it and juggling and throwing balls back and forth between each other on certain beats. And we've kind of been doing that ever since.

Um, But anyway, that's how it got started. And then I think [00:05:00] we opened for a play. I was in, it was a, uh, a Commedia dell'arte. They play the servant of two masters. You probably know that one by gold Dawn and, um, or go Dawnie I think. And, uh, we got a better reception than the play did, which of course was not very hard.

Um, and we thought, Hey, there's something here. And then the next thing you know, we were know. Juggling at the beginnings of plays, actually, we mostly that's how we got started was opening for plays. And then, uh, [00:05:30] we also went to a Renaissance fair in Agora. Which you guys probably remember that.

Phil Proctor: Wasn't, that where we met? the Firesign Theatre performed our Shakespearian parody, Uh, anything you want to, or, uh, Shakespeare's last comedy in its initial form, which was waiting for the count of Monte Cristo or something like it, all right. And we saw you guys doing your, your juggling act. That's right. [00:06:00] And immediately fell in love. Fell on the ground, actually, you laughing and we became friends then and have been friends ever since.

Paul Magid: Yeah. So Howard and I went on and in 1973 in the spring and we put out a hat and, or actually we just took off our hats. I think we weren't even thinking about making money and people put money in it and we went, wait a minute. You can like have fun doing silly stuff and make money at the [00:06:30] same time? Bingo! It’s been downhill ever since.

Phil Proctor: Was it always called The Flying Karamazov Brothers?

Paul Magid: No, actually, uh, no, Howard and I came up with a bunch of different names that never stuck. There was a snout and. I was snout of course, for obvious reasons, but you can't see on the radio and it was muck and mire, but spelled differently than what you might think, various names [00:07:00] like that, but none of them ever took. there was Patterson and Magid, I think, and led to a controversy, whose name should go first?

So, you know, we. Started doing it as a duo. And we in fact came up with an hour long show. Um, and I just found the poster for that. I'd been going through my things as one is wanting to do when you start getting towards seven. Decades of age, um, because who knows you don't want to [00:07:30] leave a mess for somebody else.

Um, and I found the first poster to our first show and, uh, yeah, it's pretty, it was pretty cool. And, and so we did these ads, various colleges at Santa Cruz. You know, Santa Cruz is divided up into different colleges, kind of on the Oxford Cambridge. Way. So we came up with this hour long show and it was a huge hit and it was, you know, we just wrote all this sort of stuff [00:08:00] and realized that we had a knack for comedy.

And that's what we kind of realized. I mean, I always realized from the beginning that what we were doing was not a juggling act. It was, you know, it was really comedy and theater kind of mixed. You

Phil Proctor: could say it was an act of the juggler vein couldn't you?

Paul Magid: I might just slice that at the juggler vein.

Ted Bonnitt: So it was your roommate that started juggling when he had mononucleosis.

Paul Magid: Actually, he lived across the hall from me.

Ted Bonnitt: Oh, I see. So he was [00:08:30] a neighbor, a neighbor who had mononucleosis and started juggling. So how did you get interested in juggling?

I had just learned to juggle beforehand, so I was a varsity tennis player.

And when you're waiting around for a match, because you know, there's more people than there are courts available. You've got a can with three balls in it and lots of time on your hands. And you're like me, you go, Hmm. I think I… I remember seeing a juggler when I was [00:09:00] like eight or nine. It seems like he juggled 20 things. Of course. I know he didn't, but it seemed like it was, you know, he did the impossible.

So anyway, I figured that out by myself and Howard, I think started on, on walnuts down in LA. He, he was he's from North Hollywood. I don't know if they call it North Hollywood anyway.

Ted Bonnitt: NoHo

Paul Magid: NoHo-how and no hope so. We'd both knew. The basic way to make juggling happen with two hands and three balls, but we hadn't learned any tricks or anything. And so, [00:09:30] yeah, we just got obsessed and actually there was kind of a movement that went through the, all the campuses in America at that point with people learning how to juggle it was a very strange thing.

Only we kind of took it to a much further extent. We've got very obsessed. We started doing. Eight hours of rehearsal or practice a day of juggling and coming up with all these theories about it and how it would work. And then thinking about it in musical terms, [00:10:00] like how. It wasn't so much seeing the juggling as he was hearing the juggling Howard Howard is technically blind.

You know, he had these huge thick glasses, which he doesn't have any more. Cause he has no, I didn't know that. Yeah. And so, you know, he was, he was definitely your typical Jewish, you know, shtetl. Yeah. Book bookish kind of guy,

Ted Bonnitt: A blind juggler?

Paul Magid: Well not, he was, you know, what do you call legally blind still with his glasses.He could see, [00:10:30] um,

Ted Bonnitt: that's fascinating because juggling his eye to hand coordination.

Paul Magid: Yeah. But juggling, as we discovered is really just another form of music. Right? It's all about rhythm and symmetry and there's all these patterns that are. You can actually write them out as, um, numbers and equations. In fact, lots of jugglers tend to be scientists and mathematicians and musicians because it's all kind of the same stuff.

And that's something we [00:11:00] realized right away, especially Howard realized it because he really. Was someone who saw or heard the world more than he saw it in many ways. Um, playing any instruments. Oh, he plays lots of instruments. Yeah. He's, he's quite a brass player. He is, his main horn was the euphonium or baritone horn, but he's also a trombonist.

And he played his butt sack, but if you know what that is, and I don't know if I can use that [00:11:30] term on the radio, I played clarinet and saxophone. Um, so we, you know, especially Howard saw things in musical, in musical terms,

Phil Proctor: you integrated music into your act.

Paul Magid: Yes.

Phil Proctor: Immediately then later you did extraordinary percussive juggling using especial, uh, pins, uh, juggling pins that you invented, I guess, right?

Paul Magid: Yeah. I [00:12:00] mean, we have many, many different kinds of percussive things and we also have. Actually make music while juggling, we play, we play box two-part invention in D minor on a marimba, wild juggling with each of us being one of the other hand, you know, left-hand in the right hand. Um, and play a note for note,

Phil Proctor: For people haven't seen it, you're bouncing the balls off of the marimba.

Paul Magid: We're juggling wooden malice that we had turned at a shop in, in. Ireland many years ago. [00:12:30] And then we have like rubber around the mallets and they had to be a certain weight, um, because it's in order to be precise while juggling over marimba, we had to invent this whole method to make it work out. Cause you're playing a lot of different notes very quickly with both hands and you have to move.

Back and forth over the marimba. And the mallet has to have a certain kind of heaviness to them in order to control them properly. We started exploring making music while playing on a [00:13:00] marimba. And we started off with simple things like playing a blues pattern and improvising off the blues pattern, you know?

Cause you know, you're just, you can see through your pattern. I mean, there's so many things about juggling. If you wanted to talk about it, but you know, um, juggling is something that you. Have to have many intelligences as they say, in order to accomplish it. And then if you push it farther, like doing musical juggling, um, you have to have even more.

And [00:13:30] which is to say that you have to like work on you're doing many different things at the same time. Right. Like, we have a bit with the marimba, which is, uh, the stupid end of, of the marimba juggling, but the most complicated and difficult one, um, which is of course what most student, the finest stupid things are the most difficult things to do.

And this is where we. Seeing I'm forever blowing bubbles while in harmony, while, [00:14:00] uh, juggling over Marimba and playing the tune in harmony on the marimba tap dancing. And we were funny hats on our heads with bells on them. And then we're playing the bells in different rhythms while we're doing all of this.

Um, and we're chewing gum, of course. And then we ended up by playing harmonica. Doing a very difficult tap number and continuing to play and juggle over the marimba.

Ted Bonnitt: How much rehearsal was [00:14:30] involved in that?

Paul Magid: Oh my God, that was one of the most embarrassing things ever. Right. You like throw the marimba mallet and hit a note and hit, you know, try to do the tap thing.

And, you know, at first it just seems like this is so stupid. I hope nobody's watching me. I, you know, it's never going to happen. Weeks later, suddenly it's all coming together.

Ted Bonnitt: I never thought of juggling being a, uh, well, certainly mathematical makes sense, but to do it [00:15:00] by ear, as much as by site, obviously it's all timing.

I would like to dip a little into the juggling thing. The history of juggling culturally, how long it's been around probably since the beginning of time. Right?

Paul Magid: Certainly since mass agriculture. Um, there are the earliest known. Images of people juggling are on Egypt, Egypt ones like from 4,000 years ago.

Yeah. Um, and there's some beautiful Etruscan [00:15:30] paintings of people juggling. Um, So I think it's been around quite a while, obviously. I think probably even older than that. Uh, there's certainly no cave paintings of jugglers, but I wouldn't be surprised if you were like sitting around, waiting for, you know, on the mammoth hunt, waiting for the mammoth to come by and you've got a couple of rocks there, three clubs in your hands or something like that. Yeah. So, I mean, it's been around for a long time.

It's something that [00:16:00] really primates pay a lot of attention to we've we've done some experiments with going to zoos and juggling for the animals and primates are just, they all react very differently.

They think it is the most incredible thing that they have ever seen juggle for the Gibbons. They all come flying out of their branches and hang in front of the cage, you know, like this going, oh my God, do you see that? [00:16:30] I want to do that. I want to learn that. I want to figure out how that works.

Because their whole thing is spatial and flying. You know, it's. It's just amazing to them. And then chimpanzees are really funny, not Bonobos, but chimpanzees are funny because the female chimpanzees think it's the best thing since sliced bread, they just are like, wow, look at that.

Phil Proctor: That's incredible.

Paul Magid: But the guys go, who the hell are these guys? Those are my women. And they generally go back into their [00:17:00] caves and come out with lots of shit and throw it at you.

Phil Proctor: Yeah, kind of like your audience

Ted Bonnitt: I was going to say, it's actually more difficult shows weren't far from that.

Paul Magid: That's true. I remember really difficult show once we were playing for, um, Hot Tuna. Do you remember those guys or where was that? It was, uh, in, uh, Bimbos in San Francisco. I don't know if you guys remember that place Bimbo 365 or something like that, but, um, we went on and the obviously didn't want to have anything to do with anything but Hot Tuna. And we went on and the crowd would, I've never, I mean, it was like we were going to die. We were going to die. They were like screaming at us and threatening us. Like, why are you doing this? You know, that was a tough crowd.

Ted Bonnitt: How does that affect your concentration when people are threatened?

Paul Magid: Well, it, uh, you know, it's a funny thing. Juggling is a great thing for being able to [00:18:00] concentrate under almost any circumstance. It's it really, you know, one of the other things about juggling, and I know we're kind of rambling here, but is that, um, it really teaches you how to control time and slow it down.

Actually slow down time and, you know, cause sign was really just a perception in many ways. And you know, anyone who's gone and been in a terrible accident and watch time, slow down suddenly, um, can tell you, uh, it really, in, in juggling things are going much [00:18:30] faster, especially when you're passing with people much faster than you could think.

Right? You can't consciously think about it. You have to. W, you know, in a way you can, because you slow down time in a, in a certain way so that you can actually deal with the things coming at speed. When you guys are looking at what we're doing with the Cara mottoes are doing, for instance, from the audience point of view, it seems really fast and all this stuff's going on, but when you're inside [00:19:00] it it's really slow.

Ted Bonnitt: Really?

Paul Magid: Yeah. It's very interesting that way. Uh, you know, especially if you're like on some sort of, you know, like window pane or something like that. Um, not that I've ever had any, but if I had had some, well,

Phil Proctor: this is absolutely fascinating. So stick around for some more amazing stories from the magical [00:19:30] Paul, my GUID of the flying kind of brother.

A.E. Guy: You're listening to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show with Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt. To hear all the sexy boomer shows go to sexyboomer show.com.

Tell your friends about The Sexy Boomer Show and help us build our audience to be notified when a new episode is posted, press the subscribe button in your podcast player. And if you'd like to toss something in the tip jar to boost our show, look for the donate [00:20:00] button on our web. Sexyboomershow.com.

Any amount is greatly appreciated. And for 20 bucks, we'll send you in an attractive sexy boomer show bumper sticker, designed to help you get lucky. Back to Phil and Ted and their special guest, juggler comedian playwright, and co-founder of the world renowned Flying Karamazov Brothers, Paul Magid

Phil Proctor: Okay, we're back again, to hear some more amazing stories from the mind and heart of Paul [00:20:30] Magid and the co-founder of America's greatest juggling act ever. The Flying Karamazov Brothers.

Ted Bonnitt: There was a video I watched on YouTube of one of your performances, where there were five of you and you were moving like in a star formation in and out of each. As you were juggling all amongst yourselves, right? I couldn't even imagine how you did that.

Paul Magid: Well, again, it's all about it's music. [00:21:00] So one of the things we do is we write these things down often on music paper, right? So we've developed a kind of notation to be able to. Juggling pieces so that anyone could learn them. Right. And you can just read it down on a piece of paper and know what you're supposed to do and when you're supposed to do it.

And then of course the real trick is getting everything synced up, so we're all in exactly the same [00:21:30] time. And we're throwing at the same moment. Um, cause. Funny thing about juggling, like compared to magic, you know, for instance, you know, magic is really about, you know, trying to deceive somebody basically, right? It's it's, it's a lot of skill, but it's the skill of, you know, uh, misdirection, misdirection and making people to look where you want them to look when [00:22:00] you are doing whatever it is you're doing and to make the magic happen. Whereas in juggling, you want everybody to see everything you're doing right?

And they still can't believe it. Even though. And that's why my, the first play I ever wrote, which was in 1976, was a play for all these street. People that, you know, uh, Vaudevillians basically is what we call theirselves, new Vaudevillians, new wave Vaudevillians. Um, it was called everything you're about to see is actually because [00:22:30] that was the whole point of, it was like, we really want you to understand and see what we're actually able to accomplish. And it's kind of in a way, real magic happening before your eyes. And that's, I think part of the, pleasure you get out of watching juggling. When you said

Ted Bonnitt: You get the cues going between all of you to get into syncopation, how do you do that? Do you do like a, a verbal cue or something to get into?

Paul Magid: Uh, well, no, [00:23:00] we all can, you can hear it. So, you know, you want everybody's right-hand to be moving at the same time as everybody else's right hand. And he said, yes. And also with your left hand, and then you can hear the beat. Right. And if somebody's off it, it won't go, it all, it all sounded like one note, if you're all in sync. If you’re slightly off, you'll hear those, uh, like a stutter in the pattern. Um, and you can see visually that all the [00:23:30] right hands are moving at the same time in the left hands are moving at the same time. You can hear the slap of the club against, or the ball against your hand. Um, so we have all these various clues about what's going on in order for you to be in, in, in a synchronous situation with everybody else. And then one of the important things you need to do also is be able to look through your pattern, right? So are you looking at everybody else? You're not actually [00:24:00] looking at what you're doing. And so most people that you'd be like, you're having, you're watching yourself juggling because you know, how else could you do it?

In fact, you never are looking at your hands are at all. And you're doing a professional, you're looking at everybody else, especially when you're an ensemble group. Like we are. And that's mean we mostly do ensemble juggling.

Ted Bonnitt: Yeah. I've noticed that it was singular jugglers when they're juggling three balls, for example. They're not looking at their hands. They're looking sort of straight ahead.

Paul Magid: Yeah. Or slightly up a little bit, you know, the [00:24:30] important information is when the ball is losing its energy. And as it is cresting at the top, right. And of the arc. And then he's about to come down. That's when you throw the next object.

Ted Bonnitt: If you had objects that when you caught them, they made a musical tone, you could do a Phillip glass composition.

Paul Magid: We have done things like that. So, um, we've done many, many things we've done. We've played with many orchestras. Most of the biggest orchestras in the country [00:25:00] we've played with. Um, and we have. Three different orchestra shows and the orchestras really get what it is that we're doing.

That's really fun. And in fact, when we do that piece with the marimba, um, the two-part invention, the Bach two part invention that we don't ever tell them that we're going to do that. And they don't watch us. We never rehearse it in front of them. And when we do it, uh, it's the orchestra, not so much, the audience of the orchestra is just,[00:25:30] “Oh, my God, I can't believe they're actually doing that.” So, and then we usually get the biggest ovations from them.

Phil Proctor: Is this an orchestra of chimpanzees?

Paul Magid: No, don't call them that. They're champions.

Phil Proctor: So far, you've been talking about, uh, Patterson and you and how you evolved the act. But when, when I saw you guys working, I've seen you working over the years in various iterations, and it did get up to [00:26:00] what a five guys who were doing it. How did, how did that evolve first?

Paul Magid: It was Howard. And then, um, I thought we should expand it and. Uh, I thought the best actor in the world was my friend, Randy Nelson. Who's also known as the blonde guy. He's incredibly blonde and he's an amazing performer, a wonderful artist, and he didn't know how to juggle it all, but, um, Yeah, [00:26:30] he learned on the street.

Uh, we actually got them involved in 1974 when we went on our worldwide tour of which turned out to be going to Spokane Washington for the 1974 World's Fair. And it's just where we got our name by the way, while we were hitchhiking. That's how we got around in the early years. And trying to get the gigs on time hitchhiking back then, it was almost plausible.

Anyway, [00:27:00] whenever the rights we got our last ride before we got to Spokane to the world's fair, which had a biggest gig we'd ever done at that point. Um, and we didn't have a real name yet. You know, we had the ones I told you about, but not one that included Brandy really. Um, so we were looking, you know, scanning around for a name and while we were.

Uh, hitchhiking, we got picked up by two very pretty young women. Um, one was, uh, Mary Sullivan who turned out to [00:27:30] be the niece of Ed Sullivan. And, oh my God, this is like, so portentous. This is means this means something. And, and, and she had, um, West with her friend, Mona Pogo a Latvian, um, to look for Coors, to get Coors beer, which you couldn't get out on the east coast at that time.

Um, so they were on a, you know, a pilgrimage for Coors beer, which is hard to imagine it that way. [00:28:00] But, uh, uh, anyway, we got a ride with those guys and we were like, oh man, this is great. You know, we were kind of. Hoping something was going to happen, but the girls weren't having, you know, weren't really that interested in a bunch of slovenly jugglers like us.

Uh, so we slept out in a field of corn, um, just before we got to Spokane. And we were like, when we got to come up with a name and Howard was reading the brothers Karamazov at that time, I had read it beforehand and I thought, oh [00:28:30] yeah, that would be great. You know, the characters from that book are kind of like, you know, Comic characters.

And I thought we could be sort of the other side of that, you know, and it would be kind of a funny thing to call it, the Flying Karamazov Brothers, you know, sort of this tragic comic, you know, circus act. And so that's how I got my name. I'm I'm Dimitri and, and Randy is Allie OSHA, you know, the very, uh, [00:29:00] religious serious one.

And, uh, Howard was the intellectual one, Yvonne. Um, and. Then when, uh, Tim joined the next year, he be joined as he was a juggler. We'd never met another juggler, really liked that serious. And he had juggling clubs. We didn't know at the time when we met Tim that you could juggle things other than things that were incredibly dangerous.

We really hadn't thought about juggling. Cause we were juggling [00:29:30] knives and sickles and you know, that was like part of our actors and torches. That was, you know, basically anything that was like, Painful and could really hurt you badly. That was that's what made a juggling act when we were 18. Right. We thought, and I think I was talking to you Ted yesterday about how it was very important to us.

You could get really badly hurt by the juggling equipment. If you know that everything had to be really sharp, very sharp,

Phil Proctor: just like you. And, and of course you were, and again, you were [00:30:00] going for the juggler, but it had, it was the juggler in your neck.

Paul Magid: I mean, we did get cut quite seriously.

Ted Bonnitt: When I watched your juggling of the sickle, I thought, well, they must be dull sickles.

Paul Magid: I think at that point they were dull because we realized no one really cared.

Ted Bonnitt: Except you!

Paul Magid: It was only us who really cared.

Ted Bonnitt: So when you're juggling knives, sharp knives and sharp sickles, there is a real [00:30:30] danger there. Did you ever have a mishap?

Paul Magid: Yeah. Um, when we were doing, we bought handmade knives, unbelievably sharp knives and knives are not the easiest thing to juggle because the handle is the heavy part, right? And you really to make the flip happen, the heavy part has to be at the end because you don't want to catch them by the sharp end, obviously to get them to work for you.

And we were doing this show a street show, and [00:31:00] we were juggling these incredibly sharp knives and passing them. And one of them, unfortunately, erroneously in my hand and cut the hell out of me. Um, and blood was spurting everywhere and the audience just thought it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen because there was so much blood. It had to be fake. That's when I realized that that's a certain part of show business. That's really interesting. Like when disaster happens, like [00:31:30] like when Lincoln got shot. You know, was that part of the play? You know, they, they didn't know. Right. And I remember one time I was at the, we were doing comedy of errors at the Vivian Beaumont on Broadway.

And, um, one of the parts of the show was to come sliding down this rope, um, on a. Eight ring, which is a mountaineering piece of equipment. And I had been a mountain climber in my youth. [00:32:00] And, um, so I was quite familiar with it, but there's the lighting, the way the lighting is at the Vivian Beaumont. It wasn't made really to be a theater so much as like a, you know, an exhibition hall or something.

So I was coming down the line, but in order to get through all this lighting, I developed this technique of throwing the line and jumping at the same time. Right. She was a little bit dangerous. And so I threw the line and I had a glove on one hand, as you were sliding down the rope, you [00:32:30] didn't want to have your bare hands.

Right. And I jumped out of the, you know, where up, up there and the rigging jumped out of my seat. All of a sudden, my hand slipped out of the wrist band that was going around my hand in order to hold me on the eight ring. And I was suddenly in midair and me and the tech guy both had, uh, 30 feet in the air and me and the tech guy both looked at each other and had the same feeling that, uh, [00:33:00] what's his name? Wiley coyote. You know, when he comes, runs off the cliff and he like for a second goes well, uh, you know, and I swear to God, that's exactly what happened. The tech guy later told me it's exactly. He had the same sensations. I bet I went, whoa, and went flying down.

Ted Bonnitt: You fell 30 feet?

Paul Magid: Well, I fell 30 feet and I grabbed the rope about 10 feet down.Cause I'm, you know, being able to, when [00:33:30] you can change time a little bit or deal with time a little bit, you can think. And so, um, I grabbed the rope, but I burned my hands really bad. And you probably can't see it here, but wow. Skin was hanging down from my hands. But anyway, I hit the ground, um, with my, my posterior and my shoulder and my back of my head, which I still have a dent on my head from it.. Um, but I was still conscious. And the whole cast is the moment in comedy of errors, by [00:34:00] Shakespeare, where the Antifa lie, who are exact twins are suddenly revealed to each other, been looking, you know, people been having all these, you know, uh, funny encounters with whom they thought were the same person.

In fact, we're different twins with different. You know, backgrounds, um, and this is the moment the twins are revealed to each other. And so the whole cast is on stage like 20 other people and they all have their back to me when I come down the line. [00:34:30] Right. And so normally they heard so, boom, you know, just as I touch the ground this time they heard nothing and then bang. And, uh, Howard, my partner, who was the other end of. And TIFF, hello and tearfulness turned around and saw me lying there with my eyes up in my sockets. And, um, And I kind of looked at Howard and said, am I all right? And Howard went, [00:35:00] yes. And I still had 10 minutes of the show to do I. And, uh, I got up and I did it.

Ted Bonnitt: Wow.

Paul Magid: That's show business. Okay. That's commitment, man. And when I had to juggle with the skin hanging from my fingers, it was terrible. God. So it's a dangerous job. Like.

Phil Proctor: However you have to say the name of the play was the comedy of errors. And I just think you went too far!

Paul Magid:[00:35:30] and I did, you can still see that show on, on, you know, it was shot on PBS for a great performances. And so you can, you can go on YouTube or something and see it.

Ted Bonnitt: Not only did you become master jugglers, but then you took it to a whole new level. With the playwriting aspect of it. That's what made you unique?

Paul Magid: Yeah, well, we were the first people to actually, you know, the vaudeville of the Vaudevillians, the first people to make it to Broadway.

We first played Broadway in 1983. It [00:36:00] was then called the rich theater, which is now called the Walter curve. Um, and yeah, that was. Absolutely amazing.

Phil Proctor: How did this happen for you? Did you have management?

Paul Magid: We did have management. We had management, but it wasn't really that it was that, um, we had gotten asked to do ABCs, uh, Winter on ice or whatever.

They had an ice show every year. Um, and the guy who was the [00:36:30] producer for that was a guy named Mac Neufeld. You ever heard of him? The producer and, and he also had written for, I think, uh, Ed Sullivan. And you, you mean he'd been a comedy writer kind of guy, but he was a, you know, a hard bitten producer at that point.

But he, he totally related to what we were doing. You know, we were like, guys like him, you know, from like the depression, you know, when there were still vaudeville and we were [00:37:00] doing it kind of doing the same thing, only we, instead of a seven minute act, we were doing two hours. Um, anyway, so we did this show for ABC and we were on like a.

Stage on the ice, which is completely ridiculous, jugglers on ice, um, for another plane anyway. Um, and, uh, And he was, he got real excited and wanted to put [00:37:30] us on Broadway. We did

Phil Proctor: You had a champion who understood what you were doing and helped you realize that dream. I think that's wonderful. Look again, because your career has been so extensive and, and has gone through so many extraordinary, unique changes, but you're still doing it right. nYou just did a performance in Hilton Head.

Paul Magid: I just did. I think I'm one of the oldest I'm trying to find out if I am the oldest professional juggler [00:38:00] left in the world. Um, I, I, I imagine there probably is somebody older than me, but I'm, you know, I'm right at the edge there. If I'm not the oldest I'm right at the edge, but what I just, yeah, I just did a show, Caroline, you know, all our shows of course got canceled our tour from, uh, from COVID except for one.

It was in South Carolina cause they don't care in South Carolina. So about three months ago, my agent calls up and says, so [00:38:30] where's the rooming list. Jeff, what are you talking about? He says, you know, for this show and I go, there are no shows. What are you talking about? What rooming list? He says the show in South Carolina, and I said, they're all canceled.

He said, no, they never canceled. Right. These shows get booked like a year and a half, two years in advance. This show was booked before COVID hit, I think in January of 2020. And they had never canceled the show. And. So we [00:39:00] had to go do it and I hadn't done a show really in almost two years. And so I was like, wait, am I, you know, I'm 67, am I going to be able to do this?

And what I learned was I didn't even break a sweat. It was like, no problem. I had so much fun except for the fact that nobody in the audience was wearing a mask. But besides that, you know, um, it was, it was great. And it was actually great for all of us who were doing it because none of us had. [00:39:30] Anything live like that and so long.

And it's you always wonder, well, can I actually still do it, you know? Yeah. So, yeah. Um, I'm still doing it, but anyway, w I think the original question was how did we get to five? And the answer is that we started making it kind of big in 1980. We were actually doing a show at Chicago Fest on Navy pier in Chicago.[00:40:00] with Henny Youngman. Oh, I loved that. We were on after Henny Youngman. So every day before our show, we go and watch the master at work. And he was like a machine gun. Yeah. Just, just had them rolling in the aisles. And it was just one joke after the other. It was incredible. Um, anyway, so while we were there, we got noticed by somebody at the Goodman theater in Chicago and they came. They told their higher ups about [00:40:30] it. And they came and watched us when we were playing. If you can believe this at the other end, which was also the, The Bitter End at that point, but the other end cafe in New York, which very famous place, only it wasn't made for juggling. It's a very tiny place. So we had to do half the show off the stage.

Um, so we. Did this show and, uh, people from the OBIE committee came and, you know, people from the Goodman Theater and suddenly all these [00:41:00] theater people showed people showed up and we got, we won an OBIE from doing the show there. The shortest run, the farthest off Broadway is what we said. And, uh, we started and the Goodman theater made an offer for us to come and play the Goodman theater.

And we did, and we were a huge hit and we started playing regional theaters starting in 1981, basically. And, but at that point, Randy, um, [00:41:30] who was always been a computer person. Kind of first and foremost, um, and had worked at Atari with, with, uh, Steve jobs as a fellow employee of Atari.

He, um, basically decided to, uh, he got married and decided that being on the road wasn't for him. And he of course had this great other jobs. So he started [00:42:00] working, um, at, uh, I think it was NeXT computers at that point, or, you know, maybe Apple and then next, I can't remember. And then he went to work and then he came back.

So anyway, so when he left, um, this other guy who was from Seattle, Sam Williams, who was a very funny young man, um, and really wanted to be in the group, um, joined the group in 1981. And then when we were about to go to [00:42:30] Broadway, we had done this run at, um, the Brooklyn academy of music and got this incredible New York Times review just one of those reviews, you just like, oh my God, I won't get many of these in my life.

Ted Bonnitt: Which is really kind of all it takes to launch.

Paul Magid: Back then, it was.

Ted Bonnitt: Was the Broadway show what put you on the map in a big way?

Paul Magid: Yeah. The Broadway show. I mean, we've been, we've been doing regional theaters and we were kind of on the map, but the Broadway show definitely [00:43:00] was like, yeah. You know, the thing that put us in the big time.

Ted Bonnitt: Well, Paul, thank you so much for, uh, juggling your schedule to be here on such short notice. Absolutely fascinating. It's been a real pleasure.

Phil Proctor: Thank you so much, Paul. Love you very much and always will.

Paul Magid: Bye bye.

Phil Proctor: There was one evening when the flying karmas have showed up on my street here, uh, in front of this house that I'm in right now in Benedict canyon in a school bus because they were touring the [00:43:30] state and they needed a place to stay.

So I invited them up into the house and, and I think there was four of them at the time. And when they all found places to sleep, they tried to teach me how to juggle and it failed terribly. Although I still have the balls that they left me with, but I didn't have the balls to learn it.

Ted Bonnitt: Well, Phil, another great show.

Phil Proctor: You know, I've known Paul for decades and decades. I learned more today about [00:44:00] juggling, uh, from him then I thought it was possible. Yeah. The insights that he gave us about the musical aspect of it is just mind boggling to me. I'm so glad we had a chance to talk to him about it.

Ted Bonnitt: And it started in a college dorm.

Phil Proctor: Yeah, that's right. So many things did. And of course I never caught, I caught mononucleosis, uh, a very light case, uh, from a doorknob, just like, like he did, but unfortunately not from a girlfriend [00:44:30] because we were in an all male school. You could only catch it from a door knob back in the sixties.

Ted Bonnitt: That was the only upside of getting mononucleosis in sixth grade where they're like, wow, did you? Who's your girlfriend?

Phil Proctor: Thank you once again for listening to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show!

Ted Bonnitt: So long!

A.E. Guy: You've been listening to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show featuring Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt, and their special guest Paul Magid, co-founder of the Flying [00:45:00] Karamazov Brothers. Music by Eddie Baytos and the Nervis Brothers. I'm A. Earnest Guy. Stay tuned for the next episode of Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show produced by RadioPictures.com, the makers of fine podcasts for seasoned hipsters, man.