Magic Tricks

R. Paul Wilson's Penguin lecture is in the top tier of the dozen or so I have watched. There's a nice variety here: tricks, from self-working to ones with heavier sleights; both card and coin work; a cool bar bet using a bill; a mini-version of the lecture he gave at Magic-Con; a nice handling for Lennart Green's "Figurine; and moves (his Duffie Wilson spread control is taught). Of course, we all have too many tricks, so what I always look for in a lecture are two things: a sense of the performer, his personality, and how that shapes his tricks and presentations; and, some degree of inspiration. Wilson delivered on both. I've read before Wilson described as a dry performer, and I didn't find that to be the case at all. He has a calm, deliberate style that still has a lot of charm to it. And when it comes to the inspiration part, that came simply from his passion for his material and doing magic, expressed throughout the lecture as well as in the conversation afterward. There's a great little bit where Wilson talks about a very simple trick -- Steve Freeman's "Time Machine" (or, more properly, its Roy Walton antecedent) -- and how it was the most fooling trick he did for years. As that's a favorite of mine, it was just cool to hear someone who knows every sleight in the book speak about how a simple trick like that can astonish just as hard as some more difficult routine it would take months to learn. Recommended.