Chris Westfall on the cover of MUM

An article I wrote about a fellow Toronto magician, Chris Westfall, wound up as the cover story for the November issue of MUM, the journal of the Society of American Magicians. The article is titled "Magic Saved My Life" and is not an especially happy story - although it does have a happy ending as Chris is now an important part of the magic community in Toronto; one of the busiest performers in the city. There's an expert which has been published on the SAM site here.

Also in the works; the project that led to the article being written in the first place is still in its super secret phase, so hopefully someone will tell me I'm allowed to write about that soon.

For those that receive MUM, the issues have been printed and are currently in the mail. Back issues are available from the MUM site.

Magic that Sucks

Earlier this year, I contributed a trick to a special project organized by David Peck and the Mosquitoes Suck Tour. His plan was to create an instructional resource for magicians - magicians teaching magicians - and to take all the proceeds (actually all the revenue!) and put them towards the purchase of malaria preventing mosquito nets. It took a number of months to gather all the contributions and edit them together and the final product is now available. The Mosquitoes Suck Project can be downloaded for just $10. It includes contributions from Bobby Motta, Joshua Jay, Anthony Lindan, David Peck, Brian Roberts and Canadian Magician of the Year Winners Bill Abbott and Jay Sankey. All of the performers donated their time for the project and SoChange provided the filming and editing so 100% of the revenue goes towards bednets.

On "set" with Anthony Lindan, David Peck & Brian Roberts

The download comes as an mp4, 106 minutes long, 2.97 GB. It's an enormous amount of content at an incredible value. The reason for the $10 price tag: $10 buys one insecticide treated mosquito net which protects a family for up to five years. So please consider buying a copy now.

Mosquitoes Suck Project

If you're not interested in magic but still want to help, MST also has a bunch of cool stuff like T-shirts, and an assortment of private label fair trade coffee available at their shop.

thirteen

I'm staring at a little present from Bobby Motta. To go along with his lecture at the Browser's Den of Magic last weekend, he produced a set of notes which was available for sale.

notes

The good news is they're gorgeous. They come in an envelope with a wax seal.

seal

The bad news is, they come in an envelope with a wax seal, and I can't bring myself to open them. So I have absolutely no idea what they look like.

Full disclosure: I wrote them, so I know what they say. But I still have no idea what they look like.  They contain five tricks, all of the mental variety. (Actually it could be considered eight tricks; four of them are variations on a theme.) One of them offers an in-depth section on a creation of his, Blackmail, which you would have to own for it to be of use to you. And it also includes the piece which he uses to close his show at Dave & Busters. I'm not allowed to say which one of the five that is; you'll have to go see the show for yourself to figure that out.

The booklets were produced in a very limited number for the lecture (The Browser's Den only fits about 40-50 people before you have to start standing on people's shoulders) so if you're interested in obtaining a copy, you'd probably have to track Bobby down directly fairly soon. They may be reprinted, but if it's done in larger quantities, he might get lazy and the new edition might not look nearly as pretty.*

It's also possible that Bobby won't be around long enough to reprint them after I thank him for his... ahem... generous acknowledgement at the end of the notes. I'm not saying any more here. You'll have to go read it for yourself.

*If you ask me, his wive probably gets most of the credit for how pretty they look. But that's just a hunch.

Ninety-Nine Fabrications Volume 2

I suppose I should correctly call this Volume 2.71828 named after the mathematical constant e, because the characters depicted inside are either irrational and/or transcendental. As I mentioned previously, the members of Ring 99 knew how to have a good time. Unfortunately, it was customary for the club to record its (mis)adventures in regular reports to The Linking Ring which is the official journal of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. Thanks to my partner in crime, Dr. Sammy Jakubowicz, these reports where always thoroughly embellished and the true facts probably cannot be extracted, even by those who were there.

Nevertheless, it gives me great pleasure to present Ninety Nine Fabrications, Volume 2.71828 to audiences with far too much time on their hands. This is an exhilarating read, which should take you no more than twenty minutes. It covers two years' worth of meetings of the club including our farewell banquet in May 2013.

On top of that we have included:

• An alleged history of Ring 99
• Improved author biographies
• The official Ring 99 Membership Oath
• The official Ring 99 Induction Lecture
• The Hat & Rabbit Club 2013 auction reviewed by Ring 99
• Magi-Fest 2013 reviewed by Ring 99
• The Ring 99 Farewell banquet
• "Hail to the Chief" by Lisa Close
• "Mischief, Mischief" by Matt DiSero

The booklet is now available for purchase on iTunes, Kobo and Kindle.

*This booklet contains no reliable or useful information and serves only to prove that I have far too much free time on my hands and need to be booked for more shows.

Seventeen Secrets Volume 2

I've just seen the first copies of the second volume of Seventeen Secrets. The booklet was produced by the Sid Lorraine Hat & Rabbit Club in Toronto. It was intended as a way to create something unique for our members by leveraging the talent of the amazing magicians that the club brings to the city. Editing Volume 1 was a tremendous experience. It was a collaboration with eight other people from three different countries. It was also a valuable growth experience for me as I was working with other people's material covering a wide range of fields from close up magic to stage magic to mentalism to gambling demonstrations.

The format was inspired by an earlier Toronto publication, Ibidem, which was a magazine published irregularly by P. Howard Lyons from 1955-1979. I never met Howard Lyons, so I suppose it is more accurate to say I was inspired by his legend. The cover of Seventeen Secrets was an image that reminded me of the artwork of Pat Lyons, which filled the original Ibidems inside and out. It struck me as suitably unusual for this project.

That volume was very well received and the executive asked me if I would work on another so here we are. I am even more impressed with the final product this time than I was with Volume 1. We were able to obtain more contributions (probably because the first book turned out so well). We were also able to do some rather unusual things. Chris Mayhew contributed his flourish, "Trinado" which took a huge amount of work to describe in print. Denis Behr, from Germany, contributed a card trick that comes with its own smartphone app and is so intricately constructed, I'm not even sure Denis himself knows how it works.  The only one we missed as Shane Cobalt who lectured for the club in November, but I suspect thad had something to do with our print deadlines conflicting with his wedding... next time perhaps.

The new booklet is available from the Hat & Rabbit Club here. I believe there are also a handful of copies of Volume 1 left if you act quickly.

Reality Based Magic - Notes

Last night, I did a special lecture for magicians at the Joan Caesar Hat & Wand Club in Kitchener, Ontario. To go along with the lecture, I prepared a 50-page booklet describing some of the tricks I taught. I have a few copies of the booklet left over for any magicians that might be interested. The trick includes one piece from Lies, Damn Lies & Magic Tricks, an item from my family shows (yes, I perform for children when asked politely) and from my close up repertoire as well as some smaller card items and three essays.

The booklet was originally going to be titled The Magic of Reality, but before I had a chance, Richard Dawkins stole the title and used it for his book for children. (The book is superb, if you don't have it already.) The theme that draws the pieces (mostly) together is that according to certain systems of magic theory, they are all bad tricks, and yet they work. When I say bad, they're time tested in front of audiences but they violate tenets of standard magic theory about how the methods should work. For me they underscore that "rules" in magic are really just guidelines and that reality is the ultimate arbiter of what works and what doesn't.

To match the spirit of the title, the cover image and chapter titles are images from the Hubble Space Telescope, which are easily more impressive than everything in the book.

If anyone is interested, I have a handful of the books left. I may also re-release them in an electronic format at some point.

The booklet is $20, available from the Ring 17 online store.