Towards the end of August, my work and personal life got so insanely busy, I swear I turned into a literal zombie that woke and started working until it was time to sleep. Every day. Every day. Come mid-October I finally took a step back and said "hold up, this isn't working out." I was playing life on hard mode and it became evident that it was a no-win situation. So, I slowed down a bit and took a breather.
During that time, my presence on this blog and even social media (Instagram and YouTube) pretty much halted. I still picked up a deck of cards during work days, but not once on the weekends or at night. There just wasn't time.
Now, however, I'm back and more than ready! I feel like I have a lot to catch up on, but I will be playing it smart and will take it a day at a time. I still have a lot of work to do (home and personal life), but I'm making it a point to have time for magic as well!
I received an email a week or so ago. It was an advertisement for a block of wood. Err, a holy block of wood. It's name? Holy Wood! Go figure.
Holy Wood by Hanson Chien is a new "card through solid object" trick that, well, yeah. There are two simple descriptions of the trick on Ellusionist's website:
A deck of cards morphs into a wood block.
and
Take a card and push it through a solid deck of cards. When the card box is opened, however, the deck is solid...but a solid block of wood.
At first, I said "nah" and moved on. But then I thought about it a little more and that second description kept coming back to me. I watched the trailer and sure enough, there's a deck of cards in the box first. Then you push a card through the whole box and bam, there's a block of wood! It's a good one-two punch and I really like that.
I don't own any "card through solid object" tricks yet. However, Holy Wood is estimated to be delivered on Wednesday so that'll all change soon!
I will give an actual review of the trick when I receive it, but if you're interested in grabbing one (there are only 67 left in stock right now), check it out on Ellusionist:
If you use the code GBABBITS at checkout, you'll also get 10% off your entire order... so that's a plus!
Season 10 of Penn & Teller: Fool Us just started! Rather, it started 2 weeks ago.
I've been reviewing every episode of Fool Us since I've started this blog and I don't plan on stopping anytime soon. For this season, I've revamped the look and feel of my review pages though! I'm excited to publish the first review and see how y'all like it.
I'm slightly behind on writing them though. There have been 2 episodes of Season 10 to date and I haven't finished writing my review of the first one. But, I have all of my notes written for both of them so it's all a matter of typing them and whatnot.
Overall though, I really liked Alyson Hannigan as the host, but Brooke Burke has been good so far. There hasn't been too much interaction with her yet, but I'm sure she'll do fine.
It's also great to see a live audience return. Yeah, I know that the show is edited and we may not be seeing the actual and/or live reactions -- but knowing that they're there during the performances means that we're seeing a genuine performance from the magician. Added pressure, reactions and laughter, it makes for an even better TV viewing experience!
With that, I want to end today's post with a big thank you to everyone who reached out while I was away.
And for full transparency, I wanted to have a little fun with the header picture on this post and used DALL-E to create it! I won't be using it very often (if ever), but I have to say, it does a pretty good job at putting things together!