Word: houdini
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...enforcement is lax here, folks. More lax than Don Knotts was on The Andy Griffith Show. So if you want to sample the native wares, go right ahead. You can probably get away with it. But if you do manage to get caught--a feat that Harry Houdini might find difficult--you will have a more miserable life than the guy who guest-hosts The Pat Sajak Show...
...Moon and Sixpence is still the "real" Gauguin -- a stockbroker and Sunday painter who cracks out of the bourgeois egg, dumps his wife, family and career and hightails it to Tahiti to "find himself" among the breasts and breadfruit. He is part brute and part escape artist, the Houdini of the avant-garde...
...performing one of his most famous escapes, trapped underwater in an icy river. He found air bubbles between the hard ice and the water's surface, and they were enough to sustain him until he broke through. The Pet Shop Boys are on to this trick. They know, like Houdini, that the cold helps set the legend...
...plaza's most striking feature is a large abstract sculpture that sits atop a raised brick platform as though it were on a stage. The piece bears the title of one of Houdini's most famous tricks: Metamorphosis. Re-enacted time after time, the routine by now is familiar. The magician's assistant is handcuffed and placed in a sack, which is tied and put into a trunk. The trunk is in turn secured with locks and chains. The magician, standing atop the trunk, briefly raises a curtain. Abracadabra. Suddenly, the magician's assistant stands in the place...
...speed of the change is what enraptures. Magician Doug Henning and his wife Debby observed Houdini's birthday by paying Appleton a visit last spring. Performing Metamorphosis right in front of the sculpture, they made the switch in a dazzling third of a second. Sculptor Richard Wolter, who lives in Appleton, was thrilled. Says he: "Magic brings to life the wonder our age somehow has lost...