Don't blink. Actually, blink all you want—you won't catch it anyway.

I stayed up wayyyy too late watching Ricky Jay videos on YouTube. For those unaware, Ricky Jay is likely the greatest sleight of hand artist alive, no exceptions. What I love about him is not only his elegance and skill, which are unmatched, but also just listening to him speak. In addition to being a magician, he's also a voracious and knowledgeable historian of magic and other performance arts—if you've seen any of his books like Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women, you know what I'm talking about here—and he layers his magic with history, folklore, back-stories and worlds more, all in language you could eat with a spoon.

So. Somebody finally YouTube-posted the bits and pieces of Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants, his Mamet-directed Off-Broadway show that HBO aired as a special several years ago. This is the one that I videotaped, then wore down to a nub, with no way of replacing it. Yay, Internets!

Here's my favorite sections from that special, all of which I highly recommend:
Four Queens, Three Ways
Max Malini's Trick
The History Lesson

I also found some things of his that I'd never seen before, including this one that I want to share. Like I said, half of his appeal is his speaking voice, but here, he doesn't speak a word—and still leaves me utterly floored. Just watch.

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