Magic & Martini Returns to Oakville

After a break for the busy holiday season, my eccentric one-man magic show for grownups, Magic & Martini is back at O'Finn's Irish Temper last night for an evening of food, adult beverages and mystery. Even though it was cold and windy, we had a packed house. Thank you to everyone who attended.

Special thanks to the young gentleman who features somewhat prominently in these photos. He discovered that the fastest way to get on stage in a magic show is to come to be before the performance and say, "It's my girlfriend's birthday today. She's really shy. You should pick her." #PoeticJustice

Photos by Tyler Williams

Tickets are now available for upcoming performances of Magic & Martini in Toronto, Oakville and Hillsburgh. Readers of this blog can use the code secrets for a discount on the price of tickets when reserving online. 

Magic & Martini @ SpiritHouse

Here is a sampling of photos from last night's sold-out Magic & Martini at SpiritHouse. Thank you to everyone who attended. Our next Toronto show is already sold out, but you can grab tickets to shows in late February, through the end of May. Readers of this blog can use the code secrets for a discount on the price of tickets when purchasing online.

Photos by Tyler Williams.  

A little Spanish magic

Dani DaOrtiz, whom we hosted for a series of special events in 2013 (and again in 2016) is a true wizard. And he has a very special way of making your brain hurt. He does this sort of thing*

* Shared for no other reason than to add a bit of magic to your Wednesday. 

How to beat the house (or at least win at Monopoly)

“We live in an unpredictable world. What are the chances?”

No matter how old we get, we never quite seem to get used to the idea of not being sure what's going to happen next. Recently on an episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage the risible hosts and panel discuss how to deal with chance events, the gambler's fallacy and (possibly most important of all) winning strategies for Monopoly!

Listen to the Infinite Monkey Cage on BBC Radio 4 online. 

Learning how to cope with uncertainty and understanding how to deal with probabilistic events is one of the most important skills we can have. Our instinct is to ignore the problem, trying to pretend that we can predict the future instead of taking the more humble approach and asking, "What is the responsible way to make decisions given my limited knowledge of the world?"

Games offer an useful sandbox to explore these ideas without real-world consequences (of course, I'm not referring to gambling with real money here). In the same way as I've described magic tricks as a safe way for people to explore the limits of their own reason — playing with being deceived by harmless tricksters where the worst possible outcome is someone fails to find the card you picked.

The Infinite Monkey Cage is always a funny and educational resources if you don't mind the British accents. You can subscribe to the podcast just about anywhere. 

On learning new interesting words...

The way we speak reveals a great deal about the way we think. Early in my magic career, one of the books that influenced me was Stephen Pinker's The Stuff of Thought, about how language provides insight into what's actually going on inside our heads.

Most interesting; it contains a chapter on profanity. (You haven't truly read until you've read a Harvard professor discussing profanity.) In particular, he emphasizes how we have different ways of speaking on the spur of the moment — such as the moment after you drop a hammer on your foot — than we do when we have time to reflect — like when composing an essay for school. 

And one of the great secret skills of a magician is taking things which are thoroughly planned and rehearsed and making them seem as though they are happening right here and now. That understanding has helped me create some truly wonderful magic over the years.

In this extended interview Benjemin Bergen sits down with the editor and publisher of Skeptic Magazine, Michael Shermer, to discuss profanity in great detail. Not so useful for making magic, but a fascinating discussion:  

The book under discussion is available here. I haven't read it, but it looks fucking delightful. 

Incidentally, the notion that your word choice impacts the way people perceive what you say has also spawned a pseudo-scientific discipline (read nonsense) called neurolinguistic programming — or NLP for short. I'm not one to underestimate the value of choosing my words carefully, but any such advice that falls under the umbrella of NLP can usually be discounted. 

Magic & Martini Returns

Happy New Year to everyone. After a bit of a break (which was actually a December packed with holiday parties and year-end celebrations) Magic & Martini will be returning tomorrow night for another season. Our last season was a great success with fourteen sold-out in the fall. 

Dates are now available for shows in Toronto, Oakville and Erin/Hillsburgh. Magic & Martini is an evening show that proves magic is really meant for grownups. Tickets are open to the public (19+). The show is an attempt to re-create the atmosphere of intimate hotel lounge performances of great magicians of the past. As a result, we have very limited seating and the first three shows in Toronto are already sold out. 

We'd love to see you at the show. Come for dinner & drinks and enjoy an evening of amazing magic. Readers of the blog can use the code secrets for a discount on the price of tickets.