CFI Canada Winter Solstice Celebration

Last night at a special bonus instalment of Magic Tonight, we were joined by a group from the Centre for Inquiry Canada celebrating the winter solstice and raising money for the centre. The holiday season can be difficult for skeptics, freethinkers and atheists, particularly those spending time with religious family members. It can create a feeling of being left out and so it's a pleasure and an honour to be able to provide a place for like minded people to celebrate and have a good time. On top of the magic, we celebrated The Flying Spaghetti Monster and all present were touched by his great noodly appendage!

This year secular organizations like CFI have been busy this year fighting for freedom of expression and freedom from religion around the world. In particular, CFI Canada has helped bring a number of free though refugees and their families to escape religious persecution around the world and make their way to Canada. The best way to support them in their work is to join CFI Canada.

For those who were interested in attending but weren't able to make it because of other holiday commitments, take a look at some of the fun we got up to. There may also be some video coming later in the week.

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Magic Tonight runs weekly at the Crimson Lounge in downtown Toronto, every Sunday night. Readers of this blog can use the discount code cficanada for a discount on the price of tickets and dinner when purchasing online.  A portion of every ticket sold will also go to support the centre and its work.

This week on Magic Tonight

This Sunday, I'm joined by Phil Pivnick - who was the winner of the "Toronto's Best Magician Contest" (which was, oddly, held in Markham... because Magicians are weird.) He's a funny and polished popular children's performer, but at Magic Tonight, we stick a suit on him and watch him perform his more grown up material! He also makes lots of funny faces as you'll see in the photos below. Update: We're sold out for this Sunday's show! Visit us online to grab tickets for our upcoming performances.

December 20 Phil Pivnick Sold Out

Magic Tonight continues every Sunday night at the Crimson Lounge in Downtown Toronto. Readers of this blog can use the code reality for a discount on the price of tickets and dinner when purchasing online.

Strange Manifestations

I was surprised when sorting through the photos of the latest Magic Tonight (with my guest, the irritatingly photogenic Keith Brown, pictured here.) We've taken photos of just about every show we've ever done, and never seen anything like this.

These photos are completely undoctored (except the watermark). It only covers photos from about a three minute period about a  third of the way into the performance.

Of course this could be spirits from beyond the grave, or hyper-intelligent alien beings from the fifth dimension trying to make contact (because realistically, where else would they want to make contact but at a magic show in Toronto?) There was a popular discipline known as spirit photography (where people claimed to be able to photograph ghosts) but I've never heard of it being performed with digital cameras before. But if anyone knows what might be causing this, I'd love to hear from you.

Photos by Ivan "The Witch" Bekcic.

Magic Tonight runs every Sunday night at the Crimson Lounge in Downtown Toronto. Readers of this blog can use the code reality for a discount on the price of tickets and dinner when purchasing online.

And you can see all of the regular photos we take over at my Facebook page.

Reason's Greetings

This Saturday night (December 19) we're doing a bonus instalment of Magic Tonight as a fundraiser for the Centre for Inquiry Canada. This organization, near and dear to my heart, promotes reason, science and secular values and offers a terrific range of educational programming. Dinner is included with tickets to the show and there are discounted tickets for Members of CFI. If you're not a member but would like to join, you can buy a membership along with your tickets, available at www.magictonight.ca/cfi. The evening starts at 5:00 PM with some mingling (yes, the bar is open!), dinner at 6:00 and the show at 7:00.

For those who haven't been, Magic Tonight is our weekly show in Downtown Toronto at the Crimson Lounge (College Street, just west of  Spadina). If you can't make it on the 19th, but still want to support CFI, you can buy tickets for any of our regular shows with the discount code cficanada. You'll get a huge discount and a portion of the proceeds will to go the centre.

Magicians at Google

Google hosts a series of truly fascinating talks at their offices and in the spirit of sharing, those talks have a neat habit of appearing online for free.  Last week, a performance with magicians David Williamson and Colin Cloud was posted and you can see the full program below: 

After about thirty minutes of performing, they sit down for a bit of a chat about how shows are put together and how performers think.

The questions are actually very interesting which leads me to believe that the bulk of them were planted to appear interesting. Either that or British Google people really are that perceptive.

Last week on Magic Tonight

Last night on on Magic Tonight, at the Crimson Lounge, I was joined by my very special guest, the #IrritatinglyPhotogenic Keith Brown. We got the chance to see some new material, presumably a sneak peak from a forthcoming show. You can take a look at some of the photos from the show below. Magic Tonight continues Sunday nights at the Crimson Lounge in Downtown Toronto. Readers of this blog can use the code reality for a discount on the price of tickets and dinner when purchasing online.