The Magic Challenge

“…one must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.”— From Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

Week 1. April 01, 2023.

Before this mess started, I didn’t expect to be laid out on a stretcher, doing card tricks for the paramedic. Jake didn’t expect to get punched in the face.

Here we are: grown-ass men doing card tricks and getting ourselves into trouble, all for the sake of a magic challenge.

But first, let’s rewind 15 years.

I’m at the top of the world, a penthouse overlooking Central Park. I was a professional magician, and my newest, biggest, bestest client was a finance executive for a major banking institution.

I was in the money. This magic thing would be easy. Easy I tell ya!

Unfortunately, the year was 2008, and my top client was an executive at Bear Sterns. A week later, Bear Sterns collapsed. So did my little magic career.

I went back to school, and after ended up working in a mailroom. The magic engine that couldn’t.

I spent the following 15 years stumbling through a career: plumber’s helper, furniture mover, security guard, mailroom guy. Eventually working my way up to the VP level in the corporate world. A corporate world without magic.

I miss the magic. It’s like I lost a friend in the great recession.

This year, I decided to do a simple magic challenge: to perform a trick for a new and different person every day during the month of April. Magic month, April 2023.

My best friend in magic, Dapper Jake, was crazy enough to take the challenge on from Ohio.

What Jake and I didn’t expect, was that this stupid magic game would lead to card tricks on stretchers, getting punched, even performing magic in front of goats on a farm in Tuscany. Eventually I’d have my first professional gig in 12 years.

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il 1-7

I’m reading a book called Strange Cures by Rob Zabrecky. Zabrecky is an underground legend in the LA magic scene.

He came to magic through an incredibly unlikely path – he was a successful musician, lead singer for the punk band Possum Dixon. One scorching, hot summer afternoon in Baltimore, he stumbled into a magic shop because it had AC. He felt bad loitering in the cool air, and bought a cheap magic trick out of guilt. This grown-ass man was bitten by the bug, and left a successful career to do magic tricks for a living.

Is this foreshadowing?

_

April 1st –

“This is gonna sound weird, but can you think of a card?”

My hands are shaking. Nerves.

I’m a grown-ass man asking the desk attendant at the gym to name a card.

She’s weirded out. Clearly not a lot of magic challenges get performed at the gym.

I insist and she finally says, “three of hearts.” More to get rid of me than anything else.

My shaky hands turn over the pack of cards that I previously placed on the counter. The bottom card is her Three of Hearts. A miracle.

I see her face go from annoyed, to confused, to amazed. All in a fraction of a second.

Before she can say anything, I thank her and run off. A feeling of panic as I realize that I just violated an unspoken social contract. A contract that says you don’t ask random strangers to pick a card.

But if I wanted to survive this challenge, I’d have to do it 29 more times.

The next five days were similar. Grown man approaches a sometimes-friendly desk person. Shows them a trick, then awkwardly scurries away. Door-people watch out, there’s a new magic challenge in town!

Day 7 was interesting and uncomfortable in a new way: magic over dinner with friends. Friends are defined as people who patiently tolerate you instead of spending time watching TV.

Time to challenge that patience.

While my friends knew that I had a magic past, it had been years since I’d shown them anything. But the challenge comes first, and magic was performed that night.

I threw together a hodge podge of mentalism ideas. It sort of worked, but like most mindreading routines, it took too long.

Most importantly, as I revealed my friend’s final thought: a random number named to match the exact change in my pocket, I survived the first milestone – week one of the challenge was complete.

One week down, three to go. Next week: magic in a stretcher.

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