I am a proud member of the Magic Castle and visit as often as I can. This story isn’t about the Magic Castle, it just happened at the Magic Castle, and it was a very magical experience. The story actually started 25 years ago, when an 11 year old boy bough a magic book in Prague. More on that later….
Lady Sarah and I were just finishing up our pre dinner drinks and we saw that the line for the close-up show was open. We could pop in and catch the show, an opportunity that we grabbed. We hadn’t even looked at the listings to see who was on! It was Penn and Teller fooler, inventor of the butterfly deck, you know that guy with the unpronounceable name… Ondřej Pšenička (yes I did cut and paste that bit!)
For the record, he was great, amazingly great! I was completely fooled. I sat there with a big grin on my face, enjoying the afterglow of being fried! (And he ate a cricket, you had to be there). After the show, I did what I usually do in those situations, introduced myself and probably blubbed something about how much I enjoyed it. I was actually in awe.
No, that is not the good bit of this story, the good bit happened later…
We were still in The Magic Castle but now it is the end of the evening. We had caught up with Jeff Hobson, who was working in the Palace, chatted with Tina Lenert and Mike Caveney, watched Jonathan Levit in the Peller, now I’m just name dropping because its true. I’d show you some pictures, but they are not allowed in the Magic Castle. Anyway, at the bar was Ondry… Ondrej Pseckwhdyr… that guy (pronounced Andre), and we started chatting. About 30 seconds later he looked at me and said in a quizzical way, ‘Did you publish a magic book in the Czech Republic about 25 years ago?’
In 1995 I wrote a magic book, that was when I had a full head of hair and a slimmer waist! It was translated into several different languages and sold around the world, and it turns out that one of them was Czech. I hadn’t thought about it for years, it was just one of those things that I have done. It was that book that helped inspire him to become the master of our art that he is today.
And that was my magical moment.
Going from witnessing a fantastic and fooling magician to discovering that, although I didn’t know it, I was with him at the start of his journey! I felt honored and humbled as we talked and he told me that it introduced him to the Si Stebbins stack and other card concepts that still fascinate him today.
This started me wondering… how many others discovered magic because of that book? How many languages was it translated into? How many careers were started? Do you have the book?
I would love to share some of your stories and even better, send me a selfie of you with the book… I’m starting a collage!
Cheers
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