Last time on Magic Tonight

The penultimate Magic Tonight of 2015 featured Toronto's Best Magician [1], Phil Pivnick. While Phil performs primarily for youngsters [2] but he shared some of his more grownup material with our sold-out audience. Take a look at some of the fun we had:

Our last show for the year (December 27) is already sold out. So we want to thank everyone who's been to see us for their continued support. It's been  wonderful year. Readers of this blog can use the code reality for a discount on the price of tickets and dinner for our 2016 dates when purchasing online.

[1] An award presented in Markham because magicians are weird.

[2] I'm allergic to children so if you ask me about performing at an event for kids, I'll likely just be handing you Phil's phone number.

Stephen Fry the Magician

Sat down to watch the Christmas special of the M series of QI with a wonderful surprise at the end involving Stephen Fry and the president of the Magic Circle, Scott Penrose.You'll need to watch until the end, and knowing QI, you'll probably learn an interesting thing or two along the way! 

It's no secret that Stephen Fry has an interest in magic. In fact, QI has magic tricks sprinkled throughout the episodes. He also wrote about his experiences with the seminal text Expert Card Technique by Frederick Braue and Jean Hugard in his memoir, Moab Is My Washpot.

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.

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.

This weekend on Magic Tonight

We're nearly sold out for this Sunday's instalment of Magic Tonight. It's an extremely busy time of year for performers, so originally the plans were to just have me this Sunday, but I'm now being joined by the irritatingly photogenic [1] Keith Brown. Keith spent the bulk of the summer touring his Fringe show Exchange and is back in and around Toronto and London performing his signature trick where he swallows neckties and spits them back up again knotted. [2] We have a few seats left for the show, so I hope you can join us. It's going to be a fun magical evening.

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

December 13 Keith Brown

[1] A longstanding joke here on the blog. Surely you concede the nickname is deserved!

[2] This is not a trick Keith actually performs, but we all wish it were.