Month: February 2022

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Problems That Solve Each Other
or In and Of Itself

Sometimes I set myself challenges. Occasionally personal, occasionally universal.

Personal ones include:

  • How to perform a borrowed ring routine without a borrowed ring?
  • How to perform a matrix on stage?
  • How to perform a show using nothing but paper?

The universal ones are things like:

  • How to end a show with a suitable climax?
  • How to deal with the awkwardness of audience volunteers?
  • how to give a show more meaning?

    • Often, usually in fact, I dont solve them. I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to assume that no one else has ever encountered the same problems as me, particularly the universal ones, and thus my inability to fix them doesnt trouble me too much. After all, some magicians spend their whole lives trying to solve just one such universal problem in a new way, let alone two or three…

    This post contains enormous spoilers for Derek DelGaudio’s show In And Of Itself.

    I never got a chance to see it live but it has now been made available to stream on Disney+ so no one with an interest in magic has any excuse. One month of Disney+ costs way less than a ticket to the show, plus you can invite all your friends around and watch Thor Ragnarok after.

    So do that, then come back to read me talking about how clever it was.

    Continue reading “Problems That Solve Each Other
    or In and Of Itself”

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    The Existentially Terrifying Scale of the Global Supply Chain
    or Mamma’s Got a Brand New Bag

    I think about plastic a lot.

    As you may know from my last post, I have a 3D printer. This troubles me sometimes in an ecological sense, because even though the PLA¹ filament I use is bioplastic, realistically it is neither recyclable or biodegradable, so the wastage and sprews and support material is going to landfill, where the best case scenario is that it will remain there for a hundred thousand years, and the worst case is that it somehow ends up in the food chain.

    Did you know there are now tiny particles of plastic amongst the sands of the furthest uninhabited reaches of the Sahara desert, as well as flowing through the bloodstream of every living human being.

    The thought that I was adding to that worried me… And then I needed a bag.

    Continue reading “The Existentially Terrifying Scale of the Global Supply Chain
    or Mamma’s Got a Brand New Bag”