Secrets of the Magus
I discovered Ricky Jay — unquestionably one of the coolest dudes on the planet — in the pages of the New Yorker in 1993. My mom was a subscriber and the magazine had arrived every week for as long as I could remember. I often tried to read it, but I remember each issue was a muddle of complicated words and prose in-between the only thing I could really grasp at that age, cat cartoons.
One day I picked up a random issue and before I knew it, I found myself knee deep in this amazing profile of Ricky Jay, titled ”Secrets of the Magus.” Jay’s intense, bearded stare beckoned me into the unknown and I just started reading. I may have understood about half of the words and it may have taken half a day to get through it, but I was mesmerized. I’ve had a deck of cards in my backpack ever since.
If you’ve ever wanted to see someone cut a pencil in half with a playing card, do yourself a favor and search YouTube for some of his videos. If he decides to revive his one-man show “Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants,” I will definitely be on top of getting tickets to see it. Or just figure out how to con my way in. I think he would appreciate that.
