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.

Calling on Dean Moriarty

On The Road is a longtime favorite. BigSleep666 asked, “Did you finish it and say ‘That’s great literature’?” No, but we didn’t say that about anything when we read it. And it’s a wave we frequently return to.

Of course, when people reflect on OTR, it’s usually on Neal Cassady’s (Dean) talking, his mad driving, and how puppy-dog Jack (Sal) is. Kerouac’s closing bits, which he famously read on the Steve Allen “Tonight Show”, talk about finding fathers, and not finding fathers, and “Don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear?” Sweet stuff.

Especially when you consider the opening, which we think has some of the most overlooked opening lines for any book, and in a way provides the impetus for the entire story:

I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead.

Everything dead. Yes yes yes. Fuck that “no woman / no cry” business! (Sorry, Bob.)

We are cheered by Marc Thorman’s current project, On The Road: A Kerouac Circus, peforming John Cage transformation on Kerouac’s work, including ambient sounds from the locales mentioned in OTR. Nice.