Once Upon a Time… Magic

For 6 years, I made a living as a professional magician, performing under the name Vlad Kraven. It put me through college, taught me incredible life lessons, and introduced me to some amazing people. Most of all, it was fun.

Alas, my old magic website is no more, but you can see a cached archive of it here: https://web.archive.org/web/20141218155204/http://vladkraven.com/

I practiced several forms of magic:

• Walk-around (aka close-up) magic – a form of magic that relied on minimal props, focusing instead slight of hand and emotional connection.

• I also performed Stage Magic, specifically focusing on Sideshow Stunts and Escape Art.

• My card manipulations got me several TV and digital ad spots, including the hands behind ACE Film Festival:

– and the magician behind Spencer Gordon’s Magic short film –

On my old magic blog, I collected playing card facts from around the web:
-Did you know that the reason for the Ace of Spades having such a large design had to do with 18th Century European taxes? Since the Aces had so much room on them, when playing cards began to be taxed, the Ace would be stamped with a symbol indicating that the duty was paid.

-While some debate exists about who the four kings in a deck represent, there is a general consensus that during the reign of Henry the IV, their identities were set as:

King of Spades – King David

King of Hearts – Charlemagne

King of Clubs – Alexander the Great

King of Diamonds – Caesar

-We know that the Ace of Spades is the ‘Death Card’ and that the King of Hearts is called the ‘suicide king’ (look at one and you’ll see why… ), but were you aware that the 9 of Diamonds is called the ‘Curse of Scotland’? Or that the 4 of Clubs is called the ‘Devil’s Bedpost’? No one really knows the exact origins of the latter two.

– In standard deck, there are 52 playing cards, just as there are 52 weeks in a year; there are 4 suits in a deck, just as there are 4 seasons in a year; there are 13 cards per suit and 13 lunar cycles in a year. If you add up the value of each card, the total will be 365. No one knows the exact origin of this strange coincidence.

There were some cool mind games, like this one:
Count every ” F ” in the following text:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI
FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS…

(SEE BELOW)
HOW MANY ?  3?

WRONG, THERE ARE 6 — no joke.
READ IT AGAIN !
Really, go Back and Try to find the 6 F’s before you scroll down.

The reasoning behind is further down.

The brain cannot process “OF”.