it’s maaaaaaaaaaaaaagic!

Growing up, the most famous magician of the day was Doug Henning. (Sadly, we grew up long after the heyday of Houdini — though Fonzie was happy to do his milkcan trick on Happy Days. But Fonzie doesn;t have a neato action figure.) Then came David Copperfield, the young upstart. And then Sigfried and Roy. And then Penn and Teller (whom we continue to love). And then David Blaine brought a big renaissance of off-the-stage and closeup magic.

But we don’t like David Blaine. Though we can’t pinpoint an exact reason why. Was it the ice block “trick”? Was it the flag pole? Was it the sit in a glass box for a few weeks? Nah, we didn’t like him earlier than that. We didn’t like the “levitation” bit.

And Blaine begat the MindFreak guy, Criss Angel, and this Japanese guy Cyril Takayama. A big trick in both their bags is putting things through glass. What we’ve seen of Criss Angel, we haven’t loved. Maybe it’s that we generally dislike magicians act/say things like “oh my god, how did that happen?” Blaine brought that about, as we recall. But we confess a certain liking for Cyril. Maybe it’s that we can see a fella named Cyril getting his ass whooped plenty in high school.

Metafilter recently pointed us in the way of the x3magic blog, which details a lot of tricks, which we think is pretty neat. Also neat is Glen David Gold’s Carter Beats the Devil.