Just For Fun

Toronto's repository of Wonder

When talking with people after a show, surprisingly often if I've ever been to that store they remember from their childhood near Bathurst & Eglinton. They're talking about the city's local magic emporium, The Browser's Den of Magic (which moved a number of years ago to Dufferin and the 401) and everyone with an interest in magic usually winds their way there eventually. 

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They were recently featured in a short article on Toronto.com when a journalist stumbled on to their monthly magic club meeting. If you have an interest in magic, it's definitely worth a trip to explore what's inside. 

Douglas Adams and the Puddle

The great British author Douglas Adams, who created The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and also... actually it doesn't matter what else he did, because he created The Hitchhiker's Guide and that's enough for a few lifetimes!

Anyways, he was a tremendous fan of technology and thought deeply about its impact on the world around him. Although he passed away in 2001 and never got to see the utter explosion of the internet and platforms like YouTube, so video of him is rather rare and he mostly survives through his writing. 

Here's a fantastic short collection from later in his life when he had shifted his focus from writing science fiction to nature conservancy. But whether he was talking about alien space ships or endangered species, he had a unique way of looking at the world:

It says "Part 1", so perhaps there's more to look forward to. Or maybe it's like Mel Brooks' The History of the World Part One

One of the world's most popular card tricks

If someone has shown you a card trick at some point in your life, odds are it was this one. It's not popular because it's necessarily the most miraculously astonishing thing you've ever seen. You probably wouldn't see it on a David Blaine or David Copperfield special, but it has the advantage of being one of those tricks that is knowledge-based rather than skill-based. 

Often after a show someone will ask me how much I have to practice certain things. Some of the pieces in my show are extremely difficult. If I don't practice for more than a day, I start to feel rusty. But in other tricks, the secret does absolutely all of the heavy lifting for me. Once I know the secret, I could put the trick down for years and pick it up again the next time. (Although I'd probably forget what I was supposed to say, the trick would still work!)

This trick (if you're interested in learning) is especially rewarding for kids to learn because you can learn the steps and remember them and when you try it, you get immediate feedback. (You either have the right card or you don't.) So if you're curious to add a bit of magical mind-reading to your next social gathering, you can try and pick up:

The Fabulous Twenty-One Card Trick

(Hope you like math nerds with British accents.)

You'll notice she mentions modular arithmetic, but for whatever reason, they skip that part of the explanation. Which is ok, because six years ago, they already explained it five years ago with a slightly more advanced version that requires a bit more mental arithmetic, but still manageable:

FISM 2021

It was just announced that in 2021, Canada — more specifically Quebec City — will be hosting "FISM". Short for Fédération Internationale des Sociétés Magiques, it is an international organization of magicians and their conference, which happens every three years, is a combination of get together and a competition which is informally known as magic's Olympics. The news was made earlier today at the current conference in Busan, South Korea. 

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This is the first time that the conference has come to North America. 

And the Award goes to....

The Allan Slaight Awards recognize outstanding achievement in the pursuit of the impossible. The Slaight Family Foundation established the awards in 2015 and has pledged to give $50,000 a year, over five years, to celebrate exceptional work in five distinct categories. Each recipient receives not only a cash prize, but also a specially engraved iPad to commemorate the achievement.
— Magicana.com

The Allan Slaight Awards are distributed every year, celebrating extraordinary talent and accomplishments in the world of magic. This year, the recipients are being announced online, spread out over a week. The first award was announced this morning is the Canadian Rising Star:

The recipient is absolutely one of my favourite performers on the planet, Nick Wallace. His 2016 show Séance remains one of the finest live productions I've ever seen. When I was hosting Magic Tonight, Nick was a welcome guest many times. I once described him thusly:

He may pretend to look all sweet and inocent, but I am starting to suspect that he may, in fact, be the devil. Pure evil wrapped in Mr. Rogers’ sweater.
— Me, ca. 2015

Congratulations, Nick, on this well-deserved award. Stay spooky.