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| 3/14/2007 8:03:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article |
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| It's the only place in Jefferson County that has the ending of the final book of the Harry Potter series – months before the actual ending is released. In front of witnesses, Port Townsend magician Joey Pipia placed a certified, sealed envelope into a portable safe inside the massive Leader safe – and the safes were locked tight. On July 21, the same day the last book comes out, Pipia will open his envelope before a live audience. – Photo by John Stanger
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PT's Pipia predicts Harry Potter's predicament
By Scott Wilson, Leader Staff Writer
It should be no surprise that Joey Pipia of Port Townsend is fond of the series of books that have gone into the Harry Potter series by British author J.K. Rowland. Pipia has been a performing magician since he was 17 years old, and the world of magicians has never had the attention it is getting through Rowland's popular books.
With the final book of the series expected to be available on July 21 - and not a day before - Pipia is marking the occasion with his own turn of magic right here in Port Townsend.
On Feb. 28, 2007, Pipia posted to the Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader via certified mail a U.S. Postal Service envelope that contains the exact ending paragraph of Rowland's book. In addition, according to Pipia, the envelope also contains a passage that will, during his public show on July 21, be randomly selected by a member of the audience.
On July 21, the small safe will be removed from the large safe at The Leader. The small safe will go, unopened, to Pipia's public performance, where it will be opened to reveal the envelope.
Both the book ending and the randomly selected passage will be pulled from the envelope and shown to the public during Pipia's July 21 evening presentation at his Chameleon Theater at 800 Park Ave. West, Suite 2, in the Port Townsend Business Park. Utterly amazing!
How will Pipia do it? He said he has no idea.
"This is called going out on a limb," said Pipia last week. "Nobody is doing anything like this.
Pipia, in his cover letter to The Leader, said he's been thinking about this act of clairvoyance for years.
"I understand that Las Vegas odds-makers are taking wagers on how the series will end," he wrote. "I present this experiment only to challenge the imagination, and do not intend to profit from it nor will I give unscrupulous individuals that opportunity to do so. Perhaps more importantly, I cannot allow anyone to spoil the ending for the many children (and adults) who eagerly await the series' conclusion."
Pipia, 49, is well known as a magician and performer in Port Townsend, where he and his family have lived for 14 years. Less well known is his pedigree as a magician.
He got his start as "an actual sorcerer's apprentice at the age of 17 in New York City, where one of the 20th century's modern masters of magic" took him under his wing. He started performing comedy at Improvisation, shifted to Los Angeles in 1985 and Hollywood's famous Magic Castle, and studied acting. After seven years he and his wife discovered Port Townsend, where they moved.
This last year he appeared in New Orleans as part of the Jambalaya Vaudeville Tour through the south. His one-man show, Joey Pipia's Delusions of Grandeur, was a critical and commercial success when it ran in Seattle a couple of years ago.
During the years in Port Townsend, the Pipia family has been happily reading Rowling's Harry Potter series. The books are dog-eared and worn from many readings. Pipia recalled sleeping overnight in the lobby of the Rose Theatre to be first in line for the showing of the movie of Book 1.
His new act is a step ahead: Knowing the outcome before it comes out.
Can he do it?
"On some level I haven't been this terrified since the straitjacket," a device he wriggled out of while suspended by his ankles 80 feet above a Port Townsend street a few years ago.
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