magic is about honesty
everything here is true
except for the bits I made up
This week I got to host WOW the magic show at the new Jokers Theatre and Comedy Club in Richmond Hill. Thanks to everyone who came out. Here are some photos from the evening featuring Chris Westfall and Nick Wallace.
James Alan
Chris Westfall
Chris Westfall
James Alan
Nick Wallace
Nick Wallace
Quixton Currie & Nick Wallace
Thank you to everyone who joined us for our sold out show at Bar Cathedral this weekend. Live magic has certainly returned to Toronto! Here are some photos from the night courtesy of Max Minuzzo.
James Alan
Kang Pham
Kang Pham
Kang Pham
Chris Westfall
Chris Westfall
Last night we got together for the final performance of The Newest Trick In The Book. This show was created in 2016 to offer magicians of all skill levels a safe place to explore and experiment performing new material. Normally that task falls to parents, children and significant others. It was held at a number of different venues, a mixture of weekly and monthly events. It spent a brief time online as The Newest Trick in the MacBook for obvious reasons. I was on several times over the years and met some wonderful friends in the process.
Here are some photos from that final night.
Ben Train
Ben Train
Niki Runnalls
Niki Runnalls
Niki Runnalls
Jonah Babins
Jonah Babins
(Don’t worry, the Toronto Magic Company isn’t going anywhere. They already have plenty of other projects lined up for the fall.)
Remembering our colleague David “Baldini” Grosfield, who passed away suddenly last weekend. Baldini was a force of nature. His enthusiasm for magic - and for life - filled the room from the moment he walked in and there was no hiding from it.
We worked together several times over the years. He performed and hosted on shows that I produced and was a master networker who was often able to find just the right venue for whatever our next project was.
He went on to host a long-running series of performances at the Ontario Science Center presenting on The Science of Magic. Those later spun off into a series of extracurricular workshops offered to schools through the GTA. In addition to performing and teaching magic, he also had a profound impact mentoring a number of young performers.
His influence and enthusiasm will be deeply missed.
It’s nice these days to be able to post good news!
Just writing briefly to share that the virtual fundraiser show that I hosted last week, Conjuring for a Cure supporting the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation, has passed its goal of $5,000 and is now sitting at over $7,000. Thank you so much to everyone who tuned in to watch the show and everyone who donated.
The show is still up a little longer if you’d like to go and watch (use the chapters to skip past the countdown clock at the beginning). And if you feel like it, it’s never too late to donate.
The show was put on by the Sid Lorraine Hat & Rabbit Club and featured over a dozen magicians performing from Toronto and around the world. Additional video jiggery pokery by Chris Mayhew.
I was out walking, catching up on podcasts when I came across this episode from BBC’s More Or Less. Its focus is math and statistics issues that come up in the news and (unsurprisingly) a lot of that has been about statistics surrounding COVID 19.
I was surprised when the episode contained a magic trick!
The trick in question is a math/mindreading trick which is quite old. It’s not uncommon to find it in children’s math sets. It’s most commonly known as the “Age Cards”. The way it works is that the magician has six cards with a bunch of random numbers printed on them, usually from one to sixty-four. You think of a number and look at the cards one by one and say “Yes” or “No” depending on whether or not you see your number. And that information is enough to determine what number you’re thinking of.
What’s really cool is that this concept is being applied to the technique of “Pool Testing” which is a method of grouping together multiple virus tests so you only have to run the test once but can still sort out who (probably) has the virus.
I was at convention some years ago with the legendary British magician Paul Daniels (who probably performed more magic on TV than any other person in history). He said that it was performing the “Age Cards” for someone randomly on a train led to his first TV show.
