As a child I always wanted to be Danny Amatulo, the most useless of all the protagonists of Fame, the one who was closest to being out of tune and who was never seen dancing in any of the episodes of the series. Amatulo was the ghostly whitest of all the students at New York's performing arts school, dominated by young black men, and he pretended to be like him because he was the European making his way in New York despite all his shortcomings. Succeeding in New York as Amatulo, a nice useless but who lived his youth on Broadway, where the school students danced the opening scene of the series, collapsing 46th Street, and where Irene Cara was heard singing: "Fame, I I wanna live forever, I'm gonna learn how to fly high”.
A four-minute walk away and only one street above, 47, a guy from Badia del Vallés who always wanted to be a magician and work on Broadway has premiered this afternoon in New York, at dawn in Europe, his show Nada es imposible, a show that will It has been announcing for a few days in Times Square next to the whiskeys offered by Keanu Reeves or Mariah Carey or the trailer for the last season of the Billions series. It is surprising that, in the midst of so much night light that makes it necessary to wear sunglasses so that our iris does not explode, the Pop Magician appears in motion with a defiant attitude near the entrance door of the Hard Rock Café where Leo Messi is now advertising some inedible chicken sandwiches and right next to where you can eat the worst prawns on the world market at the well-known Bubba Bar.
Walking through Times Square, on Friday I received a message from Antonio Díaz to eat at Friedman's, right in front of the Ethel Barrimore theater where Mago Pop opens. Antonio was waiting for me at the bar next to Mag Lari, an essential person to understand the huge show hit. I sit in front of the two magicians who transport me, without a blindfold and without a curtain, to ten years ago, in 2013, when Toni Clapés, who, of course, is also in New York today, forced me in the middle of the RAC1 corridor to go and enjoy a magician who performed at the Borràs theater in Barcelona. I left La gran ilusión, one Sunday at noon, levitating because of what I had (not) seen and from there we signed him to do the most difficult thing: magic on the radio with celebrities.
One Thursday while doing the program in Madrid, Antonio Banderas came as a guest and did a card trick where the Magician Pop asked the actor to sign one of them, to shuffle the cards however he wanted and to turn them face down. Then the magician grabbed a coin and with a piece of cotton lit a small fire that made holes in the deck until it stopped on a card that was, of course..., the one signed by Antonio Banderas. Banderas began to yell: “Oh man, oh man!”, putting his hands on his head. That same day, at the RAC1 studios in Madrid, the actor from Malaga offered Mago Pop a contract to perform at the Starlite gala in Marbella the following summer. So it was. And the word of mouth became noisy, the tickets were sold out and what was called magic and which many of us before choked on became a pilgrimage both in the Parallel in Barcelona and in the Gran Vía in Madrid. And then came the Discovery Channel, Stephen Hawking, the purchase of the Victoria Theater and the purchase of a theater in Branson (Missouri) with almost 3,000 seats... and Broadway.
Today the premiere is geolocated in New York and I demand that both of them, both Antonio and Lari, that the next madness be in Las Vegas and that they save me a ticket for the premiere like yesterday.
–How many times have you seen me?- Mago Pop asks me.
"Eighteen," I reply.
And he also puts his hands on his head. We leave the restaurant and he is going to prepare for this afternoon's preview while Lari says goodbye since she returns to Barcelona because she has a gig in Ascó and will not be able to attend the official premiere.
We immortalize the moment in front of the New York theater. And before leaving I ask him if he changes anything in the show and the magician tells me that the beginning, although he continues to listen (now in English): “According to the laws of aerodynamics, it is impossible for a bumblebee to fly. His wings are too short and his weight is too high. But no one told the bumblebee that he could not fly .... and he flies ”.
What insane envy I feel and, at the same time, what unleashed admiration. Now the Magician Pop flies. He flies on Broadway, he flies on New York. Like Danny Amatulo.
“Fame I wanna live forever, I’m gonna learn how to fly high”.
