Mark Hayward Is My Hero

I had lunch at a Pittsburgh tradition today: Primanti’s. I met my new magician friend Doc Dixon at the Carson St location. Thankfully he warned me in advance that the sandwiches come with the fries and coleslaw in the sandwich!

Without his warning I think I might have been traumatized. We had a nice lunch, and then hung out at the magic shop for a little while. I hooked Doc up with the skinny on which paddleball he needed, and he’s pretty excited about the prospect of a new toy.

The proof is in the picture. Last Friday I got to perform at the annual banquet of the Greater Pittsburgh Magic Network (GPMN), and it was in a real, live castle. Ok, it was a modern castle, and it wasn’t alive, but still.

First there was a close-up show, then dinner followed by a stage show. Since I am new to Pittsburgh no one knew me other than Paul Gertner, who had invited me. Paul was the headliner, so he thought it would be fun to have me come up as an innocent volunteer as part of one of his bits. It was really fun. We planned it so that Paul and I each had a yo-yo, he was telling me how to use the yo-yo to complete the magic trick, and then I showed him up with my yo-yo skills. It was pretty funny. After it was clear that I was a shill, Paul introduced me and I did a routine. It’s always great to be the juggler at a magic show since no one else there does what you do, and thus are not already bored by it.

It’s weird being at a magic show with a bunch of magicians. They don’t clap at the same time as a normal audience. For one thing, they know how a lot of the stuff is done; and for some of the tricks they clap when the secret magician thing is done somewhere in the middle of the trick, not at the ta-da moment at the end when the rest of us clap.

There was a mentalism trick done at one point, where the guy on stage asks for an audience member to pick a “magic” number. Then he takes a marker and fills in some seemingly random numbers into a big 4×4 grid that he is holding. The thing is that the numbers all add up to the “magic” number when you add them together in rows, columns, corners, diagonals, etc. It’s a good trick. What made it totally surreal for me was that as soon as the “magic” number was picked, the guy sitting next to me took out a pencil and his program and started racing the guy on stage to get the numbers of the grid written down. I still don’t know how it’s done (and that’s how I like it), but by itself, the pencil race next to me was really amazing.

I met a local magician named Vito a few weeks ago at the Rocky Ripple Fest here in Indianapolis, and yesterday I helped him build a bed of nails.

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