The Media wing held the impossible stuff: RealPlayer videos of TV appearances, QuickTime VR tours, desktop wallpapers and press clippings. RealPlayer and QuickTime VR are both long dead — every item below has been converted from the original files so it plays again.
The original page offered these in RealPlayer at 56k, 256k and 512k. Converted to MP4 from the highest-bitrate surviving files:
WGN's Bozo Show. Chezaday levitates a woman over an electric guitar for a studio audience.
Back on WGN five years later with the big illusions.
WTTW's Wild Chicago visits the All-American Rock Illusionist.
The full 8-minute promo video by Presto Productions — “coming to a Blockbuster near you!”
Close-up trick videos
Three QuickTime demos (Sorenson video, 160×120 — shown here at 2×):
A borrowed coin, vanished and found.
The coin tray routine.
The X-Ray illusion, close up.
The original instructions: “click on one of the links below, once the photo loads place your cursor over the image and click and drag at the same time to move around the image!” The panoramas were QuickTime VR files served to a Java applet — unviewable on any modern computer. The image data inside them was extracted and re-stitched for this exhibit. Drag to look around, exactly as intended in 2003:
Steve's bedroom, c.2001
The magic room
“Jabba” — the object movie
The third VR file wasn't a room at all: it's 14 frames of Super Friend Jabba spinning in a driveway. Drag left and right to spin him:
The workshop
The fourth tour was a long panoramic strip of the basement workshop where the illusions get built — drag it too:
The press page carried one full article — “Tricks as a trade: suburban magicians belong to a storied tradition” by Benjie Hughes, Sun news services. The Chezaday passages:
“In Naperville, Steve Cesare — he performs as Chezaday — has a garage full of heavy boxes on castors. ‘This one is a bed of spikes that goes through an audience member,’ he said, unfolding several flaps to turn the box into a few square feet of sharpened metal terror.”
“Chezaday should know — he builds illusions in his basement. The big room downstairs looks like a typical workshop, with saws and drills and four stacked shelves of spray paint, right up to the ceiling. Right now he's building miniature outhouses that explode — there is a mousetrap in the middle — when you drop a coin inside. A Britney Spears poster adorns one wall; a KISS calendar hangs by the door. Chezaday's a rock 'n' roller.”
“‘I'm a mix of Batman from the original series, (1970s magician) Doug Henning and KISS,’ he said. His large-scale illusion show involves plenty of pyrotechnics, flashing lights and — yes — a spandex costume with a lightning bolt on the chest. The lady who made it for him sews ice-skater outfits. This one even has a cape. He has a special, heavy one for winter shows.”
“There are three women, all dancers, in Chezaday's big show. He calls them the Chezababes. They tour the country with two technical assistants for most of the summer, levitating women from guitars and cutting them up various ways in various boxes. Sometimes when they arrive and set up, people ask Chezaday when the band will start. Other times, children have asked him whether he's a wrestler. Sorry, he says. I just do a magic show. And then he unpacks his guitar.”
The same article profiles the neighbors: Marshall Brodien of TV Magic Cards (“the godfather”), Ken Mate, Chuck Romano and the Holsteins — the working magic community of the western suburbs, several of whom also appear in the chezaBLOG.
Nine wallpapers, each offered in four monitor sizes (“most users have a setting of 800x600”). Click any preview for the full 1024×768 original:
