Houdini Magic) is one of the few people I've met who seems to really 'get' that this isn't TV. For example, I was talking to this person at a convention recently, and as an aside I mentioned something that the media had already covered months earlier, but in any case Houdini was surprised and said, "I didn't even know about that yet." Some of my colleagues in the entertainment business also seem to think this kind of work is special. I think I was being interviewed for a cable talk show recently and someone from the production asked me if I was scared or nervous onstage. I said, "No, I'm just thrilled to be there in person, so they can have some pictures for the show, so they can say we're doing something special." That seemed to amuse the production team, and they were all chuckling, because they realized that their show was about exploiting weird things they thought were amazing, not celebrating real accomplishments. As an example of how real our shows are, the following story may sound funny to you, but it actually happened to me. There was this little girl in this crowd that really didn't want to let go of my hand, so in the spirit of a great public show I had to pretend to get mad with the girl in front of a crowd and say, "You're not going to pull my hand!" and as hard as I could, I threw her hand off my arm and told the little girl to go stand in front of my wife because I was going to do my show for real now. So in order to get the little girl off my hand I put my arm around her and I think it's perfectly clear that I was carrying the little girl with one hand and holding a pair of handcuffs in the other hand to hold the audience. You can watch this on YouTube. I think it's very clear in this video that as soon as I threw her hand away from my hand and she ran off, it was only for an instant that I held the child up in front of me like this, so that I could pretend to have lost a child in front of her mother to show the audience that I had sacrificed a child for their enjoyment and my own personal show. This is a great example of something we do in show business, but it's true, and this happened in front of an audience that clearly understood the show and that I was making it for them as much as they were making it for me. My point is that in the first few months we were just trying to do our thing, and when people showed up they understood what we were doing. We don't have a show without an audience; it's not a real thing. It's a show because of the audience. It's an event and a celebration of real accomplishment, and if people come and they don't want to learn that this is a show or they think this is a circus show and that there's no difference between this and an honest reality show, that's fine; they don't have to be a part of the show. They are just going to be part of our audience. You wouldn't have a magic show if everybody had no appreciation for magic; you wouldn't have a circus if nobody liked the circus; and you wouldn't have a _Gilligan's Island_ if nobody watched. As I said, _America's Got Talent_ , a show that has nothing to do with our show, had this to say about us when they discovered us: "If you're wondering why the magician's performance is cut from a few seconds down to about two seconds, it's because it was too much to take in one sitting. Forget that he took a child's hand out of a sling-dangling ring box and turned it into a solid. Forget that he then pulled a sword out of the sling-dangling ring box and used it to cut a girl in half. Oh, and there's this part too. He turned the lady's husband into a girl with a little help from the wife, then pulled a chair in from the other side of the room to make the transformation complete." So as you can see we have our show, and they don't have theirs. So now I'm going to tell you a story about magic that is probably the best example that I can offer you of how magic is just like magic. This story is about magic by two great magicians named Ching Ling Soo and Al Baker. It's sort of an urban legend about them, but it really happened; they did it, and it's really hard to understand what's real in this story and what's magic. I know Al Baker, and he is an incredible performer and wonderful entertainer. He has a wonderful personality, is always kind to people, and just generally is very funny and friendly and welcoming. He's the first one to shake your hand and the last one to let you go. In fact, a few years ago Al told me a story that I know is true, and he had heard from his brother in law that Al had actually worked at a mental hospital while he was growing up. It wasn't a typical working at a mental hospital; Al worked as a magician, entertaining children who were in the mental hospital. He would perform tricks and entertain the children to make them laugh and forget their problems. As a little boy, I imagine Al performed these tricks as a magician; he would use a glass and a cup, and he would fill the cup up with water, and then he would turn around and make the water disappear. We talked about it a little bit, and we went through several theories on how that trick was done. I figured that he probably didn't make the water disappear, that it was probably one of those "miracle tricks" where the cup disappeared, and the trick was that he could do it while all the kids were watching. As an example, I said that you could probably do a trick like that onstage at a magic show, and you could make the water disappear or appear onstage while the crowd is watching, and everybody in the audience would think you were doing something magically. Al agreed and said that when he worked at that mental institution his tricks weren't as well received as he thought they should have been. He said that kids laughed at him at first, but then they stopped and didn't really want to stay and watch because they knew they had to be quiet in order to listen to the shrinks talking about things they wouldn't be able to understand. I think what Al said about this is that he didn't enjoy what he was doing, but he knew it was something he had to do. He couldn't have been that young, and I was thinking that if Al was working at that mental institution, the show must have been really long, and I just thought that a magician entertaining in a mental institution would be an important thing to do for those kids, because I figured they needed some positive reinforcement and a sense of magic. It would help them feel good and forget all the problems. Maybe at that time Al was doing this show just to give those kids a little bit of joy, and not to make a lot of money. I think in some ways he was probably just trying to be a good kid and he worked there because he loved magic and he wanted to be good to people, just like most magicians do. Al Baker is the kind of person who does magic because he loves magic, and when it's done right, it just means more to him than most magic tricks do. If he's performing in a mental hospital as a magician, then he's really performing a miracle; it's not just magic tricks to him, it's a gift of joy, just like when I perform magic tricks for you. Al Baker's magic is in his heart, and his heart can see what you can't, and that's how magic works. A couple of years ago I was at the Magic Castle with a couple of people. We were all sitting at a table in the lounge area, which is the famous magic room that has been called the Magic Castle. This is where magic is done, not as part of an act to get a show, but as a serious thing done as the day goes on. There are no television cameras anywhere, so you can imagine what's going on at the Magic Castle. We all agreed that it seemed like everyone was just waiting for something to happen, and they were all looking at each other and trying to figure out when the show was going to start. One of the people who was sitting at the table with us was a lady named Julie Hathaway, who I had met before when she worked at the Magic Castle years ago. It was because she used to work there that I even knew about this place in the first place. Julie was sitting at the table with a couple of other people, and while we were all waiting, she decided to talk about some things she had learned while she was working at the Magic Castle. She told us that once she asked Charlie Tribute if she could see the backstage area of the show, and he invited her backstage. She said when she walked into this room, it was her first time there. She looked around at the different tables and booths and counters, and she said that each table had its own area, and each booth had its own area, and each counter had its own area. She said that this is one of the biggest secrets of any kind of magic; you have to have your own space. Each magician has his