(upbeat music) – Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I’m Link. – And I’m Rhett. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we will be exploring the question, are magicians actually cool? – Mm-hmm, I think this is an important question. I think that– – Sure, boy, it is. – And you know, for many years, I thought I knew the answer. – Yeah. – And I thought the answer was no. But– – Are you– – But today, based on this conversation. – Spoiler alert. – I have new information that has come to light via our shared experience at a place called The Magic Castle. – But you don’t think that you have an answer though. – I don’t think I have an answer but I think I need to talk this out because it’s not nearly as simple as I thought it would be. – We’re gonna verbally process that question. – Yeah. – It is an important one. – Before we do, I will say that as you’re listening to this, we took a three week break so welcome back to the freshness of a totally new Ear Biscuit. Thank you for re-listening to some older ones over the past few weeks but we are currently, as you’re listening to this, if you’re listening to a fresh, we’re in Australia. We’re doing the Tour of Mythicality in Australia and if you’re curious what’s going on with us, well, you can look on Instagram and the other places where we’re probably posting things. I imagine the future– – Probably. – The present listening us is sharing our experience. – How’s that for a teaser? We are probably posting stuff. – But speaking of the Tour of Mythicality, if you want to experience us live on a stage, you can still do that. November 8th, we’re gonna be in Toronto, Ontario. – Hmm, that’s Canada. – The Sony Center. Then Friday, November 9th, we’re gonna be in Atlantic City, New Jersey at Caesars Atlantic City. Circus Maximus. And then Saturday, November 10th, we’re gonna be in, oh, my goodness, the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut. So go to tourofmythicality.com. – There are still available tickets for those. They are moving pretty quickly but if you wanna, we don’t make it to the Northeast very often. This is probably the only time that the Tour of Mythicality will be coming to that part of the country. – Come see us. – So make it happen, captain. – And we may have a magician there with us. I don’t know, it depends. – Depends on how this conversation goes. – On this conversation goes. Now, got a really good friend of ours, Mike, who is following in our footsteps of turning 40. And, see, he’s like, I got to do something, I got to have a good 40th party and he wanted to do something involving. – He wanted to go to the– – Like telescope. – The telescope but. – But then, that booked up. – Mount Wilson. You can have a party inside of a telescope and it’s actually– – Pretty awesome. – Much more exciting than that sounded. – We were really excited. – Because I actually toured these telescopes with my kids last year and thought to myself, and they were like, you can have a birthday party here? And I was like, hmm, I don’t even know anything about astronomy. I’m one of those guys who says astronomy and astrology interchangeably. – Okay, that’s cool. – No, I’m not but there are, you know who you are. – But it turns out it was booked up so we couldn’t make that happen but it also turns out that Mike’s second passion in addition to the far reaches of the galaxy is the far reaches of supernatural phenomenon in the form of magic. – Well. – Maybe that’s– – I think you may be misrepresenting his perception there. I think he just likes the thrill of being fooled because he is a very knowledgeable guy about pretty much everything and he knows the secrets behind lots of magic tricks. He’s read about them, he’s fascinated but he likes to give himself over to the process of being amazed by magic. And the best opportunity for that to happen. – In Los Angeles. – Is the Magic Castle. – Maybe in the world, I don’t know. I think it’s a pretty special place, this Los Angeles, because it has a place called the Magic Castle, – Now, we have, so, a whole group of our friends, we went to the Magic Castle to celebrate his 40th birthday. But just to explain what the Magic Castle is if you don’t know, basically, in the heart of Hollywood, kind of up on this slope, there’s a mansion. – [Rhett] It’s not a castle, per se. – It’s a mansion, I would say. It kinda looks like if you seen The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. Now, the house was just there but then, at some point, it was bought by these people who wanted to turn it into a private magic club. – [Rhett] Of course. – I guess decades ago. – [Rhett] Yeah, decades. – So in order to get into this place, you just can’t show up and go in. You can’t even make reservations like it’s a restaurant or something. You have to know someone– – Know a member. – Who is a member. And a member, as far as I understand it, can be an actual magician or someone who is just really into magic and is willing to pay the dues to hang out there and rub shoulders with the magicians. – You don’t have to be a magician to be a member? – No. – I think you either have to be a magician or be very knowledgeable. – It’s different type of member. – You probably have to like write a paper about magic or something to show your appreciation. This isn’t, nobody just gets into this place. – You can be like an honorary member. I don’t know what it’s called. – But we know a member, his name is Joel Ward. He is a magician. – Yeah. – And he was the magic consultant on season one of Buddy System because Page Kennedy acted in that as Maxwell and his character puts on a magic show in one of the episodes if you haven’t watched that. – He’s a horrible showman but he’s a legitimate magic maker. Like I wouldn’t even call him a magician. He actually has magic powers. – He’s is a wizard. – But he’s a wizard but he can’t, he has none of the showmanship required to be an entertaining magician. I think we’re gonna get into that. – We thought that was ironic. – I thought that would be funny. – Right. – So, even though he could do real magic, he could make a woman, he could particulate a woman out of nothing. Like make a person. – Yeah. – His magic consisted of doing really lame tricks, really underwhelming tricks. – But he was actually doing the trick. – Even though they only– – And that was the distinction in his own mind. I still think it was funny. – Like tying a knot in a rope and then pulling it and not disappears. Like taking two rings put them together. – The difference between me and other magicians– – We know you didn’t watch Buddy System season one so we’re explaining it. – You should’ve, the difference between him and other magicians was they’re doing the same thing, the result is the same. However, he’s actually doing it. – He’s actually doing it. Yeah. – Isn’t that funny? – But in order for him to actually do it in that scene, he had to be taught how to do it as a trick because he’s not actually a wizard, he’s an actor. – Yeah. – so Joel showed up under a tent at Venice Beach because we were shooting another scene there and Page met him there and like under a tent, he taught him how to do some magic tricks. – Mm-hmm, yeah, and then he was there when we were shooting. He was still consulting. He’s like a legit magician. – And we had to look him up because you to have an in. And so he put us on the list, so to speak and then granted us access into the Magic Castle. But it’s not that simple because you also gotta have the proper dress code. I mean they send you this long email. They really keep this thing, they try to keep it pristine. – One of our friends, one of our friends had on pants that were not jeans. They were black dress pants but they were jean-like. And he actually called. – They had a denim like-quality. – He called ahead of time and said, “I’m letting you know that I am wearing black pants “that look a little bit like jeans but they’re not jeans. “Am I gonna be okay?” And the woman said. “Yes, you’ll be okay.” Turns out, when he showed up. – I didn’t know up he called ahead of time. – Oh, he called ahead of time. – Wow. – When he showed up, the woman who was not the woman he had spoken to on the phone, who was the woman that looks you up and down to make sure that you are acceptable into the castle. – Uh-huh, the sorceress? – She said, “You can’t come in.” – Oh. – And he was like, I called ahead of time and spoke with, name that will not be spoken here. Eventually, he worked it out. Everything was okay, he got in but just, I mean, they take this seriously. So we knew it we had to dress up. The problem was we had a meeting. We had a meeting leading right up to, ’cause Mike wanted to get there when it opened and he wanted to stay until it closed which, we were there from 5:00 p.m. till 1:30 a.m. – Can you believe that? – That’s 8 1/2 hours. – I have never been at any one thing that long. – Not even at work. – Yeah. – We’re at the Magic Castle. I’m pretty sure we set a record. – Well, I’ll tell you right now. I think we set a record for the most fun that you can have at a Magic Castle. – Yeah. Wait, it was a funny story because we had to get dressed. We were at a meeting with Stevie. The three of us, were at a meeting on the other side of town on the Westside and then we had to drive through the late afternoon traffic to get back to the Magic Castle trying to get there for this very specific act that Mike wanted to see at 5:00 p.m. So we took our suits with us. – Yeah, I’m talking suit, pants, jacket, button-up shirt, tie. – The whole deal. – Dress shoes. – Dress shoes is the only thing you can wear. – Yeah. – But we had to get dressed in transit, on the road. – Because we were running late. – And. – So Stevie’s driving. And, I mean, ’cause at one point I thought we were just gonna take a Lyft or something to get over there. But then we were running so late. It’s just like, Stevie, we just need you to take us. We’re like running back to the car in the parking lot and like talking her into taking us through the heart of Hollywood darkness. – I felt more comfortable changing clothes in a car with someone I knew than just like a Lyft driver that I’ve never met. – Turns out it’s pretty difficult. I mean I’m not six foot, seven. – Yeah, for you. – But in that front seat– – I was in the backseat. – It was it was kind of difficult to change. Like I mean, I’m no magician but I thought I could be a contortionist once I started pulling that off. – Yeah. – Like, literally, I was having to pull things off. – But neither of us were able to button our pants because– – Well, when you’re when you’re doubled over and you’re putting on dress pants and you know the dress pants that they got us in these days. – Oh, they’re so tight. – They’re so tight. And I just think I’m still growing. – Who’s they, by the way? Who? – The fashion mongers. – The people we submit ourselves to when we have to get dressed up? Yeah, that’s it. – The fashion mongers. They deal in fashion. They say well that, I’m like, isn’t this too tight? Like I feel like if I flex a quad, I’m gonna burst a seam like Bruce Banner. – Well, it’s like Nick Kroll broke his, busted as seam on a late-night show recently because– – On Kimmel. – Yeah, because the pants are too tight. But it’s also very difficult to figure out how long your tie is when you’re seated and your pants are untucked, I mean and your shirt is untucked. – Well, when you’re doubled over, I think the tip of your tie should touch your kneecap. – So I had to keep tying my tie and then like standing up in the back of Stevie’s car just to see where it would hit me. I had to retie my tie four times. – Yeah, but we could not, I mean, so she finally gets us there. We’re a little bit late. – I’m glad we have 50 minutes to get across town because I needed every bit of it just to get ready. – And that still didn’t involve zipping and buttoning the pants ’cause we both get out of her car and then we’re like buttoning our pants. – We get dropped off in front of the Magic Castle. There’s like a line of people who have been waiting for this moment for their entire life. We get out and you start tucking in and zipping up. It was like these guys are ready. – Like an old man. You know how an old man, he’ll like, it’s just the middle of the day, it’s like time to retuck my shirt in. And an old man will just unbutton and unzip and then start going elbow deep pushing the shirttail down. – Yeah. – And then, you know, it doesn’t matter what you see. – It’s all covered. – Yeah, it’s all covered. – It’s all covered. – You might see a little boxers action or something. That’s what we were doing. We’ve now made our way into old age because we are unapologetically zipping and buttoning pants in public. – But we did make it to the Magic Castle and we were let in because once we zipped up, tucked in and put the belt on. – You go to the– – We looked good. – And you go to the reception area. They look at your pants, make sure there’s no denim quality to them. You give them your name or the name and they say, okay go over to this bookshelf and say open sesame to the little owl. You go over there and you whisper open sesame, right? That was the magic word. – Yeah. – And then the bookcase magically opens. – Can we talk about this? Are we gonna get in trouble? Because we can’t take photos. So we couldn’t take photos. You can’t take cameras in there. You can take your phones with you. If you’re seen with your phone in picture mode, I don’t know if they make you disappear. I don’t know how it works but. – I didn’t sign anything, I don’t think. – Yeah. – I didn’t check any boxes on the internet even. – We will talk about things and we’ll get specific at times but when we feel like we’re about to cross some line of the magician’s code, we’ll stop. So we’re gonna let you know all about the trip to the Magic Castle and how it is affecting our minds, and how we’re perceiving magicians these days. – And their coolness. – This is not a joke. – Or lack thereof. – This is serious. – Yeah. – But first, we wanna let you know that we’ve got a new mug. It is the mug that sits before both of us that says good luck with that. – It’s got a cartoon version of the RandLer wearing a tank top with ironically, the mythical logo which is the RandLer on emblazoned upon it. He’s giving a thumbs up. Good luck with that is something that we started to say more here on Ear Biscuits. So we’ll probably keep saying it now that we’re selling a mug with it on it. – It’s when we like to give advice to people and at the end of it, we like to say good luck with that because we know that you should take all our advice with a grain of salt. – It’s also in the classic Buies Creek Elementary School colors. That is the blue and gold of the Buies Creek Demons. – Demons. – Where you played basketball and I kept score for the women’s basketball team. – That’s right. – Yeah. – Everybody does their part. – Good luck with that. mythical.store, support entertainment. There’s other stuff there too. – Okay, so. – So here we go, we’re going into Magic Castle. We meet up with our friends. I mean there’s like multiple bars, there’s multiple levels. You eat dinner there at a certain point. We had like a private room because we signed up for the Houdini Seance. – Yeah. – Which happens in this room. Man, I love nothing more, well then, potentially magic, we’ll get to that. But besides that, going out with a group of my friends and then we’re seated at a table that’s round. Boy, that makes me happy ’cause I stress out– – Yeah, as long as the table is round. – I stress out about who am I sitting next to and what conversations am I just gonna be on the fringe of and know that they’re having a better conversation than me but I can’t quite get into it. – And it’s not just the roundness of the table. The roundness of the table is important but you also have to have the private room. – Yeah, yeah, yeah. – If you wanna have a group of 12 people have an open conversation that everyone is a part of which is what happened, it was beautiful. – Oh, yeah. – You need a 12-person round table and a private room. Not always something that can be arranged. There’s only a few places in the world that have it. The Magic Castle is one of them. – Now, I will say that this was my, I believe it’s my fifth time going to the Magic Castle in the six years that I’ve lived in Los Angeles. – Are you sure it’s not your fourth? – I guess, I went– – I think you’ve been four, I’ve been three to four. – I’ve been with– – I’ve been, I don’t know. – I’ve been with you and your parents which is fabulous. – Yeah. – Then I went– – Magical. – Then we went with Julian Smith, the three of us went. – Hadn’t we gone before that too? Maybe it was your fifth time. – And then I went back, Christy I went back with my dad and his wife. And then I guess the fourth time was– – The other night. – The other night with Mike’s party. The first time I went, it was with your parents and there was one magician who, we actually devoted an entire episode of Good Mythical Morning. I’m just remembering this talking about this magician that we saw on the main stage who was this ultra theatrical presentation involving a man in a suit with a whole crap ton of doves. – Of doves. Doves, man. – He’s just backed up. – I’ve never thought you can make doves so exciting. – The truck of dove, just dumped it on us. – He had so many doves. – And they were flying out of every orifice. – We were enjoying– – Of his suit. – Him creating doves out of thin air so much that we both had a laugh attack. Like, there are very few times in my life I’ve enjoyed something so thoroughly that I just began to laugh uncontrollably. – Enter a land in euphoria but we were laughing because there was an element of it that was amazing that how can he be producing doves to this, with, again and again and again. But then there was another part of us laughing. – It was his style. – At his style. – We were laughing at him. – It was– – We were. – It was so cheesy. – Yeah, unbelievably cheesy. – Unbelievably cheesy. I mean he would, like, he would snap his head towards us and like wink or like his eyes would get big or his mouth would open for no reason. Like. He was just kind of– – So a dove could come out. – And there was a woman, there was like a female assistant and that was weird. But it was just, it was almost, I would say, a sad desperation to it that made it poignant. – Wow, that’s harsh. – I mean it was, it seems like something, and the music was like scored in the 80s. Like 1982 and it had not changed. – Yeah, it was old school. – Since then. – But it was as is– – But it was done so sincerely. – He was sincere. He wasn’t being ironic. Now, I think there’s a few things we should say. – It was not cool. That’s what I’m saying. – there’s a few things we should say. – There’s nothing cool about it. – Just to give you the full picture to expand on what you said earlier. So basically, it’s a mansion, a very large house that has a number of large rooms that are basically, you can see magicians in different contexts. Everything from if you go up to a bar, a magician may come up and just start interacting with you and do magic for you right there, you can go to these parlors and they’ll be like a magician set up and like five to 10 people will kind of gather around and watch them do some magic. But then there’s a closed magic room which probably holds 15 people. So you’re really right in there watching a magician. – Like a stadium seating but just 15 people. There’s another room that stadium seating that has maybe 40 people. – 40. – 35. – And then there’s like a theater that’s just flat and has like chairs and it’s got more of a stage. – For doves and whatnot. – And that’s where dove man was. – And whenever you go– – And it’s all scheduled out. You get you get a schedule at the beginning of the night. – It can be different magicians, so. – And there’s also a restaurant, hence, the big table. So you also have a meal if you want. So we had the meal, all the shows and then the seance at the end of the night. – But I’ve never seen the same magician there twice in the four times that I’ve gone. Because people come through LA and then they do their magic. And I’m under the impression these magicians are traveling far and wide doing their thing or their things. Turns out there’s a lot of different things under the umbrella of magic. – Yeah, there is. I wanted to set that stage just for a second just to give people the full picture what we experienced but I do think it’s important to establish the baseline of how we think about magicians before we start talking about what we experienced. That feels like the best way to do it. – Well, I think the dove man was– – That’s that’s a data point, definitely. – Another data point before that is just everything on television. I mean I even heard someone talking about it in our last trip to the Magic Castle. So I was like man, I just keep thinking about Arrested Development. And Gob was a magician of sorts. Well, not of sorts, he was a magician if I remember correctly, and he was very, I mean. – He is, the show’s still on, right? – That’s true. You know, his onstage persona was like very self-serious and dramatic in a similar way to the dove guy. Like, I mean very sharp looks and sharp movements. – It’s very easy to parody because– – No self-awareness. – It’s almost a parody of itself. Now, confession. I’ve had this perception about magicians for quite some time that I will enjoy a magic show especially like a close magician doing something. I like giving myself over to the illusion and at no point am I tempted to think the actual magic is happening but I love thinking, man, the artistry, the craftsmanship that goes into how many hours were put into getting this trick right so that it looks like magic, like, I love that. But at the same time, I’ve always thought, this is not for me. I am separate from this. I am here to observe but I don’t want to cross the line and be the magician because I think less of them, okay? That’s the traditional disposition that I’ve brought to this. In fact, my son was once at Disneyland and there is a magic shop in the Magic Kingdom. – Okay. – Which makes all kinds of sense. – Doesn’t it? – And he went in there and he was like, “Dad, can I get this magic trick?” And I said, son, you don’t wanna be the kid who does magic. (laughing) No, let me say, I feel bad about this. You can talk to me about how bad of a parent I am. I typically don’t do this. – That’s such a your dad thing to say, by the way. – I feel bad about it especially based on how I think now, okay? But I didn’t, I have a perception, I have carried a perception of magicians and I didn’t want my son to fall into that category and I thought that maybe if he gets one trick, it’s all he needs. The next thing you know– – Slippery slope. – He’s got a magic show with doves at the Magic Castle which I will enjoy. – Saw a woman in half. – I will enjoy but I don’t wanna be directly related to. – Right. – Do you know what I mean? – You don’t want that in your own house. – Yeah. – ‘Cause that’s, ’cause. (chuckles) – So you see where I’m coming from. I mean that’s, I confess. – And we wrote a character that we thought it was funny to make when we’ve already been through it but it was, you know, we just saw the comedy and like the lack of self-awareness that you need in order to fully commit to being a magician. So yeah, I mean I’ve shared that sentiment. I mean you actually introduced me to a friend of yours back home who was a magician. – Also named Michael. – And he could do some, I mean the up-close magic that he could do was– – So impressive. – Very impressive. – Mind-blowing. – Yeah. But I mean, my observation is that it’s a certain personality type that, I mean I’m not gonna, again, I feel like… This is tough, right? I don’t wanna be a jerk. – We are jerks. – We are jerks. – Okay? – By looking down our nose and saying, I’m cooler than that. So I’m just, we are owning it. – Right. – You know, it’s like saying okay, like a soundman is a certain type of person. Like if you if you work in touring environments enough, you know there’s a certain personality profile associated with the person behind the soundboard and I’m gonna use that as an example of just, it’s not about being cool or not being cool. This about a certain type of profession is a certain subset of personalities. I think that’s what, magicians are like that. You know? – Definitely. – And I think… It’s kind of a kin to like a band kid. Like, okay, I play the saxophone. And again, I’m not, I applaud band kids. I tried to be one and I failed. Played trumpet in seventh grade. But to make it all the way through the orchestra, I think there’s certain personality types that excel at that. – Okay, what you’re talking about is exactly the subject of this article that Feldman pulled up. This was an Esquire article that mostly talked about the magician Dynamo who’s apparently a really big magician in England. – Okay. – And Jim Merritt wrote this article back in 2015, so a few years old. A few quotes from this. Cool kids don’t become magicians because it requires being alone in your bedroom for hours and hours practicing magic tricks. – Mm-hmm. – Now, the name of this article by the way is will magicians ever be seen as cool? And it centers around this guy, Dynamo, who is kind of trying to break the mold a little bit and then it talks about David Blaine who is probably the best example of someone trying to be anti-magician. – Mm-hmm. – But then he goes on to basically say that even David Blaine who we’ve actually seen do magic in person. – And it made me– – Close up, literally two feet away. – Yeah, and it made me, my pants. – But the point of the article is that while he is cool– – Well, I mean not literally. – He is cool. He’s not actually cool is what this guy says. Now, let me let me continue with this. There’s something irredeemably geeky about the kind of play magicians are involved in, says Lev Grossman author of and fantasy novel, The Magicians. They’re engaged in a kind of public childlike make-believe. I don’t think that could ever be cool or even that it should be. – It’s interesting because he mentioned geekery which, I mean, geekery has become a lane of cool. – Mm-hmm. – And so if magicianry is a subset of geekery, did geekery bring it up closer to the surface and all the way into coolness? – Well, okay, let me continue. There’s a couple other points that I want you to consider. He continues. The thing about magicians– – But can I just summarize that other point? So you’re telling me that he says that because it’s a public, it’s play, it’s– – It’s childlike. – It’s childlike in terms of your suspension of disbelief. I mean is it acting? – Well. – Okay, go ahead. – Okay. The thing about magicians which defines them is that they know things we don’t, Lev says, which is also true of cool people. They understand things that the rest of us don’t and never will. A cool magician, it’s a double negative. We can give magicians everything else, money, fame and attention but they can’t be cool. You can have magic or you can be cool but you can’t have both. That’s his theory. – I don’t know what to say to that. I mean, so it’s, we can’t give them the power of coolness because then, they’ll have everything? – Well, he goes on to talk about how there is a sense of, I think the most compelling part of this is that the thing that draws people to… And again, I’m not saying this is right. I’m just saying that our society has deemed certain people cool and typically, they deemed people who play sports as being cool which I don’t agree with that. I’m just saying that that is… And I do agree with you that that is changing, right? I mean the whole geek culture has shifted that somewhat but traditionally, it’s like okay, if you do things that are social that kind of show your dominance in front of people, whereas the skills required to become a magician do involve kind of being alone, spending a lot of time mastering this thing. But I think that maybe this last thing, I think it’s about authenticity. Perhaps that’s why magic and cool can never mix. At some base level, we sense that the people who do magic are often seeking something. Attention, street cred, power and there’s no quicker way to derail social acceptance than by appearing to want it and want it really, really bad. And above all, there’s the elephant in the room that no amount of smoke mirrors or branded footwear can conceal, when it comes to cool, the currency is authenticity and nothing magicians do is real. – I think that’s an interesting theory. I think a much simpler one to also consider is that I think the tricks themselves, if you’re really good at it are mind-blowing. Like Joel took us aside, our whole group, just impromptu and he sat down and he started doing card tricks right there in front of us and they were absolutely amazing. We were like screaming. – I loved it. – You were like dancing. You’re like doing high knees. – I wanted to run away and come back repeatedly. – It was, it was, he just tricked us so hard. And he’s a very good performer. I think the intersection between the skill to develop a really good illusion or really good tricks or whatever, to pull that off and to blow people’s minds and also to adopt a demeanor of performance. Those are two totally different skillsets to like be an interpersonal performer to adopt a character, even, or the lack of a character in order to draw people in or entertain people. It’s a different skill set than being really good at the trick itself. And so to be good at both of those things, I think is really difficult. They may actually be opposed because I think, to be really good at magic tricks, there’s a level of self-awareness that you might have to chuck out. But then you really have to, like, I think a lot of the best actors, I mean have a lot of neuroses as far as like self-awareness. – But I think that’s the beautiful thing about it. I think that, my operating thesis at this point in the conversation is that magicians aren’t cool and they shouldn’t be and it would ruin it if they were and I don’t want them to be. And when I say cool, I’m using the traditional understanding of what society has beaten. So I could actually say that they actually are cool if cool means, awesome. You know what I’m saying? So ’cause what I will say is that they, if you’re trying, I think this is kind of what the article is going at, if you’re trying really, really hard to be like relevant, well, you can tell you’re already doing this magic thing which is this super attention-getting thing. If you’re doing it and you’re like wearing these cool clothes or whatever and you’re trying to be like super cool in your approach, it seems too try hard. You can’t go all the way. It’s ’cause the authenticity is already in question when you’re doing something that’s, you’re purposely deceiving people. That’s part of your act. You might as well have this caricatured approach to it that shows that there isn’t a self-awareness. That’s what makes it great. Like we got to talk about Zabrecky. – Okay, yeah. I think how you talk about– – And how he got you. – Because here’s the thing. We should tell that story as a case study in what I believe is the coolest magician that I have ever experienced in a room with me. – Yeah. – But before I do, I will just say that, to piggyback on what you’re saying, I started to think about stand-up comedians because there’s some similarities. Like the thing about, they have a microphone, they’re on a stage, they’re basically saying I want to entertain you. I want you to like what I’m saying and respond to it. It has that, it could have that desperate feel of please, respond to me. – And the comedians that seemed desperate, the comedian’s that seem like they’re doing a routine. – It’s hard to make that work. – They’re the ones that don’t work. – That’s not cool. – The comedian’s that are cool are the comedians that you just think that it feels like they’re just saying this stuff directly from their heart. – But that’s a certain type of comedian. There’s a whole other group of, there’s many different categories of stand-up comedians that– – Like a joke-based comedian. – Don’t do the authentic thing but they do many different things and I’m not just talking about like something as cheesy as like prop comedy. There’s many different lanes. – Hold on, but prop comedy moves into, now, we’ve got a Venn diagram between magicians and prop comedians, right? And there’s crossover in the props and neither of them are cool. Carrot Top is not cool. When he tried to get buff and get cool, he got worse. You know what I’m saying? – He should’ve went further into not being cool which made him more entertaining. – That’s precisely what I’m saying. – But there’s a lot more stand-up comedians who figure out their persona in a way that’s like man, that that person is cool versus, in my limited experience, I have a theory that there’s a much lower percentage of magicians who have succeeded at adopting a cool persona than a stand-up comedian. I think it’s that much more difficult because of the reasons that you went in through from that article. – Yeah. – But we did experience somebody that I would say, on a scale of 0 to 100% authentically, like when something’s really, when somebody’s really cool, you have this sinking feeling that you feel like you don’t have it. That’s what really makes somebody cool. It really taps into your own insecurities whatever they may be. I think that’s a component of discerned coolness. And I’d experienced that with this guy before he humiliated me in front of everybody. – Zabrecky is his name. And we saw him– – Mike had done research on this guy. Somehow, he knew that this guy was good and he was telling us and I was like, I looked at Christy and I rolled my eyes, I was like, don’t get your hopes up. I mean it isn’t the close-up magic room which where the best things happen. – Yeah, well, and a little funny aside. Something that happened in that room is we go into the room, you have to stand in line because there’s a lot of demand for different acts and so we’re standing in line for probably half an hour. – 45 minutes. – ‘Cause we were there for 8 1/2 hours so that was a blink of an eye. So we’re standing there waiting and then, I’m one of the last people to come into the room and I see that there’s way more people in the room than there are seats but I also noticed that Jason Sudeikis and Olivia Wilde are sitting in the middle. And there’s like 12 seats in this room and then I also see Nathan from Nathan For You. They’re all in the room. – You also saw me. – And then I said, Link. – Link from– – Rhett and Link. Link is standing up but the real celebrities are seated and one of the guys in our group who’s the most likely in our group to confront in this way said, he was upset that we’ve been waiting in line and then we walk in there and then they’re seated and we don’t have a seat. And of course I’m like, that’s Jason Sudeikis and Olivia Wilde. I’m not gonna say anything. Of course, I’ll stand up, that’s fine. I’m not gonna say anything. But you heard him. You heard him say this. What did he say to them? He didn’t say to them. He said it sort of out. – Well, as will come into play later, I had some something to drink. I was a bit, I was a little inebriated. – It wasn’t milk. – So I wasn’t, all of my attention was not honed on him at this moment but I was, my attention was drawn to him when he started in a loud voice saying to whoever in the room would listen that he’s not a celebrity and he doesn’t have a seat. (laughs) But– – He was like I may not be famous– – But I was waiting in line. – But I did wait for half an hour. – And at that point, my attention was drawn to him and I shushed him. – You were like. – I was like (shushing). – I don’t want Jason Sudeikis and Olivia Wilde to know that I’m with you. – So I shushed him as you would shush a stranger. – But that blew over pretty quickly and then Zabrecky came out. – Yes, I’m standing there kind of in the back and you were further down– – I was– – On the right side. – Two people in front of you down the right side. – Stadium seating. He parts of curtain, comes and sits down and this guy has like a gaunt face, like a very, very thin face. Like you can see like the outline of his skull and his cheekbones. – He looks like he was like– – High cheekbones. – The butler for The Addams Family. – Deep-set eyes. Tuxedo, piercing gaze. He sits down, doesn’t say anything and just looks around the room and he had this like, AI quality to him, like an automaton, like– – Animatronic. – Animatronic, like he was looking around without blinking and then he just starts to speak in a way not much different than this. And sometimes, he would say jokes without changing his intonation or expression at all. – It was beautiful. Right from the beginning, I was like this man is a master. – Strong comedic choice with 100% commitment that– – Unwavering. – Unwavering and immediately gripped me as cool. I mean he hadn’t done one trick but he was kind of scary, he was confident, there was no searching for acceptance and he just commanded the room and that’s cool, man. If you can walk and sit down and say hardly anything. – Yeah, okay, here’s the thing. In the broad definition of cool, I’m 100% in agreement, it’s amazingly cool because it’s amazingly awesome for all the reasons that you just stated. But in the traditional understanding of like, like if somebody was like, is he a cool guy? I’d be like hmm, let me explain some things about him. He’s not normal. He’s weird but weird good and weird good is cool. Do you know what I’m saying? – Well, he was also a character. I didn’t think that was really him. – No, we talked to him after, after the seance ’cause he did our seance and I think while he was still in character somewhat, I think he also was, I think he’s just– – He was amping up himself so it wast invented. – He’s an eccentric dude in a very good way. I love everything about his act, he seems like a really cool guy but the tradition, he’s not like, if somebody said, you know what I’m getting at? He’s not the traditional understanding of cool. He’s beyond cool and I don’t want, I feel like I’m diminishing him by calling him cool. – No. – Because he’s beyond cool. – He did the feather on the nose trick with Lisa and Caroline, right? – Yeah. – ‘Cause I think, this is one of the first tricks that stood out. He brought the two of them. They’re both from our group, up, like facing each other at the tables and then he was in the middle and he got them to close their eyes and then he took a feather and he went, and he touched Lisa’s nose and then he said, if I just touched your nose, raise your hand. – [Rhett And Link] And they both raised their hand. – And then he he kept doing it. He never came close to touching Caroline. – Here’s the thing. – Anywhere with anything. – I have believe that the way this trick works is that he is, at some point– – Touching them. – Touching both people in the same place. That’s my guess. I could not see it and I knew to be looking for it because he knows that’s what you’re gonna be looking for. – Yeah, he did it five times. So after the second time, you’re watching both poeple intently to see if who he’s touching. – But let me tell them my perspective of this trick he did with you. So at one point, he was like, he began looking around the room. He made eye contact with me and immediately pass by me. He looked at the person next to me, in fact, and then he looks at Link and there’s twinkle in his eyes. He’s like I’m going speak with this man. He’s like you, sir. – And at that point, I was in a daze. I think I was kind of looking down and at nothing. – All you had to do, the basis of the trick is he takes a book and he begins flipping through the pages of the book and Link is supposed to say stop and then he’s supposed to stop on the page that he’s at and then the trick proceeds. Well, that took seven minutes with Link, okay? – Well, he started flipping the book and he was like, “Tell me when to stop?” – All you had to do is say stop. – And I’m like, I said stop and he would be done with the book and they were laughing. – No, no, no, this is how long it would be. He would be like all you have to do is tell me when to stop then he go. And then you would say stop. – But you’re trying to present it as if he wasn’t doing that on purpose. That was just me being a numbskull. – I mean it was a little bit of both. – He was doing it– – He knew that he can get you. – He magically could get to the end of the book before I said stop. – He knew that he could get you. – He could see– – And you were saying things like, I know what you’re trying to do to me and I like it. (laughing) Which, by the way, Olivia Wilde thought was hilarious. I mean I was looking at Olivia Wilde the whole time. – The whole time, huh. – Yeah, most of the time. And, I mean, I was tastefully doing it. Like when she was working with you. – You’re looking past– – I had to make an excuse to look back and she was just two people from you so I look to her instead of looking at you and she loved you, man. You should have talked to her later because she has got a big kick out of you. – Well, I finally said stop while they were still pages turning and he stops and then he, it’s like a novel looking book, like a creepy looking book and he starts walking towards me. And he’s like, “Okay I want you to remember the page number “and the word in the upper left hand corner of the book “underneath the page number.” – Right underneath the page number. And you said– – No, I did not say. I did not say it out loud. – Oh, you didn’t say it out loud? – No, I didn’t say it out loud ’cause I wasn’t gonna tell you. – You remembered it. – I had to remember it and then he did some other tricks. He did something else and then he gave me the book at that point and he did some other tricks and then he’s like, “Okay, now, back to you, sir.” He’s like, “Find the page that you remember from earlier.” And I started flipping, I use my phone and the light on my phone in order to see ’cause it was so dark in there. I’m like fumbling for my phone and then I’m fumbling to turn the pages and the page number was 223. It was like a 400-page book, man. It’s not easy to find 223. It took me a long time and everybody thought it was really funny. – 90 seconds. I mean, I don’t know– – I couldn’t find the page. – You do know that the numbers are in order. Like that’s, typically, you can zero in on it pretty fast. – He did a mind trick on me where I couldn’t find the page and then I’m like I’m sorry, this is taking so long. I think you’re doing this to me or something. I don’t know what I said. Then I finally find 220, 221, 222 and I’m like I found it and then I look and the pages ripped out of the book. I’m like, it’s not here. It’s been ripped out of the book. – And then he points to the wall. – [Rhett And Link] And there was a frame. – A framed picture– – That has page 223 ripped out and behind the frame. – And he was like read the word and Lisa goes up and reads 223. – Dandy or something that. – Shabby. – Shabby. – The word was shabby. – Shabby. Anyway, it was amazing. – Again, magic tricks are not the type of thing that you describe on a podcast and then your mind is blown. You kind of have to be there. – Yeah, right. That was probably dumb of us. – But it was mind blowing but in addition to that, the way he was able to manipulate me to be the butt of the joke and there was no escaping it. There was nothing I could do in order to not fall into his trap. No matter what I did, he would have had a way to make it funny and everybody was, you know, and the more people laughed, the more I was like fumbling for the page. He constructed a brilliant comedy routine. – And it was cool. – Using me as the subject. – And it was cool. Now, okay, so Zabrecky is the pinnacle, right? Zabrecky is the pinnacle for us, at least that night. – I started to rethink everything. – Now, let me just take a short aside and I’m gonna, I found this forum where the question was asked in 2007. Magician’s attire, what do you wear? And then presumably, magicians began to answer what they wear. And so in contrast is Zabrecky. So here’s what I want, this is my premise. Not all magicians are cool. No, no, no, no. Just being a great magician does not make you cool. It’s how you’re a magician. Zabrecky, cool. Let me give you some examples of what I consider not cool. – In their own words? – So the question was what do you wear when you go out and perform magic? – Okay. – One guy says I just wear my regular style of clothes which in my case is the whole skater look. – Okay, okay, skater boy. – Another guy says I usually wear a regular white tee and jeans with a lot of pockets. Just picture that for a second. – Yeah. – Okay. – That’s great. Jeans with a lot of pockets? – Okay. – Give me another one. – Usually, when I get the chance to go out and perform for friends, I’m wearing my everyday stuff. You know, bootcut jeans and an Affliction shirt or something. (laughing) I’m not making this up. – An Affliction shirt or something. – I wear a t-shirt, jeans almost every time unless I go to a wedding or something like that. Sunglasses, a watch and my eagle ring every time. – Eagle ring every time. Okay, this is not what I expected you to read. – I’m not done. – I thought you gonna say like, I wear a bow tie and a tux. – No, no, no. – And a top hat. – These are guys who are trying so hard– – To be cool. – To be cool and is it working? I’m just talking about it. It’s 11 years ago on a forum and can you sense the uncoolness? Let me continue. When performing professionally, I wear a nice button-up shirt, jeans and sometimes, a fedora. – Yes, of course, sometimes if you really feel that. – Once in a while, I go all out and wear a gray vest and necktie over it. – There we go. – For everyday performances, I just wear baggy jeans and a t-shirt. Another guy, my modus operandi. – I just feel horrible laughing at people, you know. – No, listen, no. This is important. My modus operandi is to go one step above who I’m performing for. For casual performances, I’m normally in jeans, slash, cargo pants and a tee with a short sleeve shirt on top. In the summer, shorts all the way. Can you imagine a magician in shorts? – Well that’s two more sleeves to pull something out of. Doves are flying out of the thigh area now. – Okay, guys, all right. What you said notwithstanding, I do agree, I’m not trying to make fun of people for the way they dress even though that’s what I just did. What I’m saying is is that there is, look, I mean, there is no world in which cargo pants are cool. I mean, it’s superficial, it’s shallow, it doesn’t ultimately matter. It’s a privilege to just be able to make that observation. They’re functional, they do have a lot of pockets. Maybe you can put things like scarves and handkerchiefs and balls that you’re gonna take out and blow people’s minds. Probably doves! – What if you pulled like really nonsensical memes out your pocket? – But let me tell you right now Zabrecky, my friends, was not wearing anything like this. He was in this very cool black suit with a simple white shirt. He had on black dress pants. He looked like a magician and I’m saying he is doing it– – But no vest. – The right way. No, it wasn’t cheesy, he didn’t have a top hat on. – Fedora, no vest. – he didn’t have weird glasses that are obviously for effect. He just looked like a person that would command your attention. And let me also say that our good friend and our connection to the whole Magic Castle, Mr. Joel Ward, totally different thing going on. He doesn’t look like he should be a butler for The Addams Family. He just looks like a nice guy and he just had on a nice friendly– – Friendly, unassuming guy. – He just had a nice gray suit on with a white shirt. Again, he didn’t like he was trying too hard and he didn’t look like he was trying to not try hard. He didn’t have shorts on, he wouldn’t gotten into Magic Castle if he did, but you see what I’m saying? – If he was putting on that suit on the drive to the Magic Castle to meet us, he probably would have had to zip and button it once he got out too. – And exhibit B. – Because it fit. – Exhibit B, there is actually a guy that Feldman found. Coolmagician.com. – Are you serious? – This guy has self-proclaimed that he is a cool magician and I’ve just done a cursory look at his website which is in Comic Sans font. – There we go. – And I know that he’s not cool, okay? I just, listen, nothing against the guy. But I think my whole point is that magicians are cool but not because they’re trying to be cool, not because they’re giving tips in forums on how to seem cool because an Affliction t-shirt, hello, even at 2007, wasn’t cool. It was never cool. – Hold on, I’ve seen you in some of those shirts. – I never had an Affliction shirt. – You had knockoff Affliction button-ups. – And it wasn’t cool at the time. You had them too. You told me that one we did Online Nation in 2007 that I wore all that stuff and then we brought up the promo pictures and you had the same stuff on. It was a wardrobe person who thought it was cool. It wasn’t cool. I thought it was cool, it wasn’t cool. 2007, the same year. – So we’re not saying we’re cool. Just ’cause you know what’s cool don’t make you cool. – No, no, no. I’m saying magicians are cool but they’re beyond cool. The ones that aren’t cool are the ones that are trying to be cool, saying that they’re cool and departing from the tradition of just dressing like a magician. Just do it, just embrace it. Be weird, you’re trying to deceive people, you’re doing things that stretch the limits of people’s imagination. Just embrace that and build off of that. – Well the thing that I try to grow into as a human through that experience was to experience the artistry of it. I mean there was the guy on the main stage who was very cheesy. It was like very Disney theme park. He like had the fake glasses and he acted like he was in an attic and he was creeping around. – Did you sense desperation in that? – He never talked and it was as if the creepy attic was doing magic on him so he was constantly, he had a mime quality which, you know, is very problematic. And then he was producing things using a mirror. – Which was, that act in itself was cool, like that trick. That trick, not the act. The trick was cool. – All of his tricks worked. No trick that I saw attempted the entire night at the Magic Castle failed or even that I could think, oh, I know how that was done. They all legitimately had skills. – I knew how the shadow puppets were done. – Yeah, there was a guy who did shadow puppets with his hand. That was absolutely amazing. It wasn’t actually magic. – Hold on. – That part. – And did you sense, I didn’t sense any desperation. Let me just say, I think the thing that’s cool is when you don’t sense the desperation that someone’s really trying really hard. – I just think it’s really hard to do, man. – It is but isn’t that what every magician should strive for? – And I think they are. I just think it’s that difficult because again– – You’re not you’re not declaring all magicians cool, though. Are you? – No, I’m saying, because all magicians can’t be cool and because they, I agree that they don’t need to be cool. I was actually just trying to appreciate the artistry associated with not only can this guy do this really convincing magic trick to make his glasses disappear and then reappear on the other side of this mirror, but he put together an entire story which was, without seeing a word, I understood that this Disney character dude was in a creepy attic and magic was happening to him and he was getting freaked out. And then he became a millionaire because every time he would put money bags in front of a mirror, when he reached behind it, he would have double the money bags. – And he would put it in that hand then he would do it again and before you knew it, he had like 16 bags. – Where was he hiding all those bags? – It’s magic, man. – That’s a great trick. – Great trick. – But theme was a bit kidsy. But he did create a world within which he told a story and that is his art. It wasn’t exactly for me but I did appreciate how he went in for it, he went all in. – I appreciated it. I’m just saying that if I’m critiquing it. – I didn’t cringe. – Which is what I am doing right now and again, I don’t have necessarily any right to do this. I’m just doing it. I’m just saying that it was the part where it seemed like I could, I don’t wanna think, when I’m watching a movie, I don’t want to be taken out of the illusion that it’s a story and start thinking about the filmmaking. So when there’s badly written lines, when there’s badly delivered lines, when there’s badly shot shots, that takes you out in the moment because you can see the effort of filmmaking, right? – Right. – And the same thing applies to all artistry. The moment it looks like you’re trying. – Especially when it’s live. When you’re in a room with 19 other people and the performer, I mean you you really feel the tension if they’re not commanding, if they’re not confident. – When you can see somebody imploding. – Oh, gosh. Yeah. – You know what I’m saying? And I feel for these people. I’m just saying that as– – Or oblivious. Oblivious to the fact that I’m no longer– – That it’s not connecting. – Yeah, that it’s not connecting. I mean and that’s why I draw the comparison to a stand-up comic which, you know, both of these take a tremendous amount of guts and skill and artistry and I think it’s, it’s unfortunate that we’re viewing this through the lens of is it cool or not. I think what we’re exposing– – But we’re using cool as a… Again, I think we’ve established unless people aren’t listening. This is not a superficial analysis of magicians. This is just thinking about it through the lens of what people traditionally think is cool and then maybe redefining that. – I’m just making the point that saying magician is like saying stand-up comedian but there’s so many different types of stand-up comics, so many different styles and there’s so many different styles of magicians that it’s unfair to to critique them under that such a broad heading. The challenge with both is to create an act that connects and that is skilled to make you the stand-up comic to assume a character and that may be the most authentic version of you. It may be a totally fabricated version of a character but it needs to connect with flesh and blood in a physical space. And I’ve never had the guts to try either one. Honestly, because it’s extremely difficult and I think magic is so much harder because I think the starting point of stand-up comics is this like edgy coolness and then you can lose that but you get some cool points for even being on that stage all along with just a microphone. – Yeah. – But when you bring props or and then you move further in the Venn diagram to just bring in a top hat with a rabbit in it so to speak. – Or dove. – You’ve really got your work cut out for you. – Yeah. – So it’s, you know, we enjoyed every minute of every single presentation but some of it we enjoy for different reasons than they intended. – And if I was only basing my enjoyment on what I considered cool in the traditional sense, I wouldn’t have had a good time. So what I’m saying is if you’re if you’re getting into magic because you wanna be cool, it’s a huge uphill battle. – Forget about it. – Don’t make that your goal. Don’t seek to be viewed in a traditionally, like esteemed way to do magic. Do magic to blow people’s freaking minds and then don’t try too hard to look like you’re fitting in especially, I don’t know what the equivalent of an Affliction shirt is right now and I’d really don’t know what an eagle ring is. I have reason to believe that the eagle ring is probably cool even still. – Yeah. – Whatever the equivalent of an Affliction shirt is right now, don’t wear that when you do magic because you look like you’re trying too hard. Just dress in an unassuming way that your magic speak for itself because to get back to the question, are magician’s actually cool? Yes, they can be. But not in the way that you’re thinking. – I think it’s much more about, it’s checking yourself as an audience member beforehand. We have the night of our lives because we made up our minds that we were gonna accept it all for what it was and find beauty and entertainment in all of it. Cool or not. And we ran the gamut. If you’re so concerned about being cool. – Your missing out. – You’re gonna miss out. – If you wanna be cool, you can’t even say start a band anymore because starting a band is not cool anymore. Unfortunately, like having a jam band and playing the guitar, now, that’s not cool. If you wanna be cool, you got to be a freaking DJ, right? You got to get like turntables. That’s probably too old now. – Yeah, I don’t even. – I don’t know what’s cool anymore. I don’t try to keep up with it. I’m just saying that there are certain paths to it and don’t worry about it. Just do magic, man. So I think what I’m gonna have to do is I wanna go home and I’m gonna tell Locke. It’s been six or seven years and I’m gonna have to be like, son, you wanna go to that magic shop and get a trick? Now, don’t do it to be cool ’cause it’s not but it could be fun. – Check out Zabrecky. I’m gonna give a shout out to him, man. – He has a Twitter. – I’m a little afraid to say watch videos on YouTube. I don’t know if they exist but I just don’t think that it’s how, you can watch people react to magic on YouTube but I don’t think you’re supposed to watch magic on YouTube. It’s just being the room with the guy, get mesmerized. It’s great. – He’s got a Twitter, go follow him there. – Rob Zabrecky. – I mean, look at that, Link. Look at his frickin’ Twitter icon. He looks like– – An astronaut. – He’s an astronaut. Rob Zabrecky. Zabrecky, Z-A-B-R-E-C-K-Y. – Thanks, Zabrecky, for giving us a great night, man. It’s fabulous, keep it up. – We’ll be back, we’ll be back if you’re there. We’ll be back anyway. – We’ll be back anyway, man. I love it. Get dressed up. – And thank you to Joel Ward. He blew our minds that night. – Oh yeah. – With some magic that we couldn’t even begin to figure out. He was dressed perfectly except for what he was doing and he’s an incredible magician. So shout out to Joel as well. – Let us know what you think. #EarBiscuits and hey, you got a friend of yours who’s into magic or hates magic? For both those reasons, share this episode. We appreciate when you get the Ear Biscuits out there for other people to listen to. Draw them into the fold. And take their wallets. No, is that what, magicians don’t do that. Those are pickpockets. – Yeah, but I’m sure they, some magicians are pickpockets and some pickpockets are magicians. – Sleight of hand type situation. – Yeah. – All right, thanks for hanging out with us. We’ll speak at you again next week. – [Rhett] To hear this Ear Biscuit in its entirety and make sure you don’t miss an episode, follow the links in the description to subscribe on Apple podcasts or anywhere else podcasts are available. – [Link] To watch more Ear Biscuits, click on the playlist on the right. – [Rhett] To watch more of our daily show, Good Mythical Morning, click the playlist on the left. – [Link] And don’t forget to click the circular icon to subscribe. – [Rhett] Thanks for being your mythical best.