Last week on Magic Tonight

The Magic Tonight director of Secret Operations

I've recovered from Pride. Gotten all the glitter out from around my eyes. Our stage manager also reports that he purged his beard of glitter (thank you Elspeth McRobb)

Our special guest this week was the adorable Ben Train who, due to a slight wardrobe malfunction, performed his astonishing feets of mindreading without socks. It was a fun evening.

Magic Tonight continues through the summer at the Crimson Lounge in Toronto. Readers of this blog can get a discount on the price of tickets and dinner with the code reality when purchasing online.

A Test of Confirmation Bias

The New York Times posted a quick puzzle test which you can try here. If you enjoy this sort of thing, it's a fairly standard number puzzle you may have seen before. But the results are extremely counterintuitive. Go try the test and see how you do before reading any further...

I'll wait... Promise.

I've known the answer since university (Math professors throw these things out all the time) and it highlights that the way most of us go about trying to solve problems the wrong way.

Everyone usually starts out right trying to generate some possible solutions - guesses at what the right answer might be. But then when it comes to choosing the best one, things get messy. The common belief is that we search for evidence which confirms our theory. It doesn't work, since one piece of evidence can be consistent with many different possible solutions, the fact that the piece of evidence agrees with any one solution, doesn't help picking one solution over another. Counter-intuitively, piling on more evidence that agrees with your hypothesis doesn't help distinguish one solution over another; it doesn't move you forward.

The correct path is the opposite direction. You go out in search of evidence which would go against your hypothesis. And if you try hard to find it and come up empty, then you can be confident. When it comes to deciding, one piece of inconsistent evidence is more valuable then a thousand pieces of consistent evidence.

At the Fringe Part 1: Redefining Wonder

Last night I went to the Toronto Fringe and Chris Funk's Redefining Wonder. I felt some sympathy because I've had my own Thursday 10PM opening night at a theatre festival, but the show came recommended to me so I went to go see. Magic shows tend to be slightly out of place in theatre festivals. Maybe it's just a phase, but independent theatre seems to lean such that if you're not coping with abuse, death, coming out of the closet or thoughts of suicide, they don't really want to hear from you. That's not to say that some people don't take those serious issues and address them in upbeat and genuinely uplifting ways, but a huge swath of the theatre community is unable to distinguish between sombre and serious. I remember reading the Summerworks program when I was accepted and my own show (which had to do with lying to people non-stop) was the single most cheerful thing in there.

Magic shows also have a tendency to be more like rock concerts - a collection of individual songs. If you add one in, take one out or mess with the order no one would really notice the difference. As such, they tend to be theatrical without necessarily being theatre.

All that being said, Redefining Wonder, is a wonderful and fun magic show. The protagonist, is a charming and disarming caricature of a stage magician; chuckling at his own bad puns, striking a few too many Copperfield-like poses, and dripping with a bit too much ego for someone with the complexion of a sixteen year old.  He calls himself the "wonderist" — a word he had to invent himself — so he appears at first blush to be a bit too pompous to be taken seriously. Then the magic will start to hit you. This is cutting edge stuff with a nice balance of sneaky gizmos, modern technology and good old fashioned cleverness.

What I appreciate most is that it's magic for magic's sake. I'm going to make your $50 appear inside this sealed back of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish because why not, not because of [insert awkward overextended metaphor here].

Although the show does nothing to "redefine" wonder (although one person sitting near me remarked audibly that she left feeling a mixture of astonishment and terror seeing what he could do) it's certainly worth the climb up the stairs to the third floor Robert Gill Theatre (inside the UofT Bookstore building).

There are six shows left between now and July 11. Buy tickets to Redefining Wonder at the Toronto Fringe.

Magic Tonight Gets Snap'd

Our show was refigured recently in SNAPd Magazine (or just SNAP, depending on exactly which edition you're reading). They're a free print and online publication which covers the GTA by region. Magic Tonight was featured this month in both the Mississauga North and the College editions.

Live magic and fine dining were combined for an unforgettable night out, hosted by sleight-of-hand performer James Alan.

The magicians , James Alan, and special guests Michael Close and Matt DiSero performed an astonishing show from magnificent mind readers, to hilarious comedy magicians to breathtaking illusionists (sic). Guests enjoyed this magical night with delicious gourmet dining.

You can see pictures from the shows on the SNAPd websites (links above) and if you live in the areas, find the print edition which should be appearing in their stands shortly.

See a shrinking Michael Close, a rubber chicken wrangling Matt DiSero, an overexposed Ron Guttman lots of smiling people.

Proudly and Pride-fully Canadian

Happy Canada Day! It's been a busy week filled with both rain, rainbows and no shortage of Magic! Distracting me from the (slightly damp) Pride Celebrations downtown we hosted a lecture with Norman Beck who was visiting from Texas for the uber-secret "31 Faces North" (so secret in fact that I'm not even allowed to admit to myself that I know about it.)

But before that, even before I got into the pride festivities, I learned about the United States' Supreme Courts' ruling on marriage equality. It was a fairly emotional morning. I was flipping through my RSS feed at just the right moment, before the blogosphere went nuts and there was just a single post from Joe My God and in the preview without the images it was just one line:

SCOTUS RULES FOR MARRIAGE!!!

I was alone and it was totally quiet and I just stopped. It's certainly not often, you can read a single line of text and know instantly that the world was not quite the same place it was yesterday.

In hindsight, it wasn't really that much of a surprise. But for a moment it was shocking and beautiful. Then the internet went nuts. Both people sharing the decision with excitement and people eagerly waiting to drink the tears of crushed conservative opponents.

But it's strange to watch the events in the US unfold from up in Canada. For us, when it comes to equality, the writing's been on the wall for a decade or two. I seemed to hit the tail end of it. When I was in high school it was still in vogue to use "gay" as a synonym for "stupid", "idiot" or "moron". But since so much of our culture seeps in from south of the border, it's been unusual to watch both the conservative doom and gloom proclamations and the slowly but steadily changing tide of support. It was clearly on the right track, but it wasn't clear that they were going to get it right. (At least not until a string of federal court decisions started swatting gay marriage bans like flies.) But soon it will feel like it couldn't have been any other way.

But within an hour or two social media became a rainbow explosion and colourful striped pictures what was particularly moving was seeing photos from our show turning up with rainbows. These are the ones I saw, but I'm sure there were a few more.

Of course, for anyone who's been paying attention, we've been celebrating Pride on the show for essentially the whole month. Now that it's July, I can shelve the rainbow duct tape for another year. Although I think the unicorn might stay. Not sure yet.

This week on Magic Tonight

This weekend, my special guest on the show is none other than the adorable Ben Train. Most of the time, Ben is a creator of magic (which is the phrase magicians use to excuse the fact that they spend a lot of time alone in a room playing with cards wearing their pyjamas) and the director of Five Academy, which produces resources for magicians to learn new tricks and generally amuse themselves online. Ben has been on the show many times. Recently, he hosted the show when I performed along with Phil Pivnick. There, he gave me what is quite possibly the worst introduction possible. I had to work a little bit to convince the audience that I was not some mysterious psychotic serial rapist (which is really hard when you're performing a magic act with rope, duct tape and a stuffed rainbow unicorn!) So for those curious to see how I plan to get back at Ben this weekend, come join us.

Magic Tonight is continuing every Sunday through the Summer. Readers of this blog can use the code reality for a discount on the price of tickets and dinner when purchasing online.

July 5 Ben Train