Things That Should Be Taught In School

This is something that should be taught in school, along with the quadratic equation, how to diagram  a sentence, and the evils of supply-side economics:

If you're the first car at a red light, whether it be in a left turn lane or going straight, it is your job to be alert, to watch the light like a hawk, to give it  your full and undivided attention with as least as much fervor as when you stare at that waitress to see if she's finally bringing you your spinach artichoke dip.

You are not to play on your phone. Or fix your eyeliner. Or shave. Or get in an animated conversation with a passenger. Or face the back seat threatening to turn the car around if your kids don't settle down.

No. 

Your ONE JOB is to watch that light, and when it turns GREEN to GO. You can take half a second to make sure no one's running the light, but that's it.

Your email can wait. You get the luxury of of downvoting a Reddit comment only if you're several cars down the line.

Okay? Good.

Flows The River

 I drove across the Mighty Mississippi this past week a couple of times for what must be the 500th time. No place to stop for a pic and I was alone, so the pictures are terrible, but what can you do.

I've crossed it several places over the years: a handful of times in St Cloud, MN, a few traverses at Dubuque, IA / Galena, IL, scores of times at St Louis, dozens at Memphis, a couple of times at Baton Rouge, LA and in New Orleans.

It still, somehow, never gets old, and I always think about the great volume of water that has made the almost 2500 mile journey from Lake Itasca in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana and all the people that have seen that water pass them by over thousands of years. 

A river is an apt metaphor for time, always flowing forward, always moving, yet with a path and direction that we sometime fight to overcome or redirect. Cultures, cities, and peoples come and go, streaming through the relentless flow of time, with occasional eddies that may form along the way but which eventually dissipate, giving way, finally, to the flow that is unstoppable before all becomes one again in the vastness of the ocean. It can be at once comforting and terrifying. 

As I crossed this last time from Illinois to Iowa I thought of my great Aunt Elaine, my grandmother’s sister who lives in a house her family built on the banks of the Mississippi near St. Cloud in Minnesota. Both my parents were only children, and thus I have no cousins, aunts, or uncles proper. My grandmother and I were really close, and she loved her sister, my great Aunt. 

They were different in many ways: Elaine more gregarious, gram more withdrawn and quieter. But still I saw aspects of both in each, and to a certain extent my gram still lives on for me via Aunt Elaine, and there she sits in her A-frame house on the very river I’m crossing now, again. 

She will be celebrating her 100th birthday next month and we’re excited to be able to see her to celebrate a life well-lived, a life that has seen a century of the Mighty Mississippi pass her by, the river just chugging along, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year. The river endures, and so does she.

 Old Man Baseball Rant

So we went to the Cubs/Rangers game Sunday, the third and final game in the series that was the opener of the 2024 season.

This was our first visit to the Rangers' new ballpark, Globe Life Field or some such. It is the third, mind you, stadium that the Rangers have called home and that I've attended since I've lived here which is kind of ridiculous if you think about it. Stadiums in some cities are becoming disposable playthings for owners probably because they make the city residents pay for it and they have less skin in the game, but that's a rant for another time.

No, what I'm here to complain about is the scoreboard situation in Globe Life Park (or Field? Can't keep it straight.)

There is no permanent scoreboard at *all*.

Now, I'm not expecting a huge thing like in Wrigley where each and every game is updated (by hand). That's not necessary. Nice, but not necessary.

However, some things should always be visible 100% of the time you're at the park.

Such things as the inning, the time, the ball/strike count, at a *minimum* should always be there to see. Now, Globe Life Field (GLF from hereon) has a plethora of "scoreboards": two huge screens in landscape mode in the outfield, a largish screen in thin portrait mode near center, a ring of data that can be lit up that circumnavigates the entire circumference of the field betwixt levels, etc.

They're bright, they're flashy, they have cutting edge graphics that allow you to watch the dot race around the fifth or six inning brought to you by Chick-fil-A (or maybe that's Golden Chick, who can keep up.)

The smiling faces of players still full of optimism and hope at season's beginning along with stats like OPS and moon phases are prominently displayed every minute or so, but if you just want to know what time it is, good luck. No clock anywhere.

If you're between innings and try to determine exactly WHAT inning you're between, you're out of luck. You know how it is... around the fifth or sixth inning one begins to lose track what with the leisurely pace of the game. Can I just look at some scoreboard to figure out if I really need to get some more nachos, or if indeed I have time?

Nope. Unless the Scoreboard Keeper decides to put that graphic up, you will have no idea. You're at their mercy. Instead, while sitting waiting between the fourth (or is this the fifth?) inning, you'll have to watch a Remax commercial or Golden Chick (I'm sure it's Golden Chick.)

And when the game finally gets going again, and they put the box score up on the Big Board for a fleeting second and you see that actually it's only the THIRD inning, and you see Cody Bellinger is at bat again, and if you begin to wonder what he's done so far this game bat-wise: TOUGH.

Instead you'll see what he hit against lefties on the road in 2023, and that for the season he's batting a measly .125 but the season is still young and so maybe that $80 million wasn't a waste let's try to be patient for just a minute, but what did he do last at bat? Who knows.

It took me 7 innings to find where the GD pitch count was for crissakes.

Say what you will about the old Arlington stadium: Sure, you might get second degree burns on your thighs from the aluminum bench seating in the outfield and suffer minor heat stroke, but at least you GD knew what time it was.

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Snorey, Sours, And Two F***ing Hands: A Dining Adventure

We decided to try a pizza and pasta place last night whose menu seemed good. They originally had three locations in the area, but apparently the one in Plano was the last one standing. Upon arrival we were told to seat ourselves after waiting a bit in confusion in the entryway.

We found a booth, and then found some menus and sat down. There were several cocktails that cost under $10, and while that’s great for the budget-conscious, it’s usually not a great sign as to their quality. Still. It was something.

After a bit the waiter approached the booth behind us, as evidently they’d been waiting since before we even seated ourselves. Oh well, perhaps they’re just short-staffed. While we waited, we had decided on a couple of different appetizers, some bargain-basement cocktails, and a couple of pasta dishes. We were ready. We were also listening in on his conversation with the people behind us.

“You see anything you like? Well, enjoy it now, because we’ve been sold to another company starting tomorrow,” which was followed by nervous and confused laughter by the other party.

Finally, it was our turn. He approached our table and it began.

“Are there any entrees you’d like me to get you started with?”

Me, kind of confused: “Do you mean appetizers? Because we’d like to start with those, first.”

“Well, sure, if that’s what you want. I was just trying to be efficient.”

“That’s appreciated, but I just wanted to make sure appetizers are still available,” I countered.

He sighed, making no effort to conceal it then removed the hipster cowboy hat he had been wearing and slowly pointed to his head.

“Look, as you can see, I’m a blond and have some blond moments occasionally,” he said as he gestured at his brown hair matted by his insistence of wearing a cowboy hat at a pizza parlor.

It was our turn to express nervous and confused laughter as he replaced the hat upon his head with a smug look of satisfaction at his “witticism.”

He started to walk away having taken neither a drink or appetizer order.

“Can we order some drinks now?” we asked with building trepidation. “We’d like a frozen Aperol spritz and a figgy mule.”

“Oh, we don’t have the frozen spritz. We’ve been sold, you know, as of tomorrow.”

“Well, do you have any frozen drinks at all?”

“We have a frozen margarita,” he beamed, “and the upside is that it’s really strong. In fact, if I can be totally honest with you, it’s fucking strong.”

It’s not often that a waiter will drop the F-bomb so cavalierly, so we were a bit silenced by shock, but then finally forced out a nervous and confused titter. It was all we could muster.

We decided against the fucking strong margarita and instead settled upon an amaretto sour.

“Oh, that doesn’t have any liquor in it,” he informed us.

“No liquor at all?”

“Nope.”

“So it’s a virgin amaretto sour?” we asked for clarification. “Isn’t amaretto alcohol?”

“Oh sure, amaretto has alcohol, but it’s what we call a liqueur. It’s not liquor though.”

Confused nervous laughter. “Um… that’s okay. That’s fine.”

“Okay,” he replied. “I just wanted to make you aware, since I had someone complain when they ordered one the other day saying ‘this does not have alcohol in it!!’ and I had to explain to him about it.”

“Sure, but to be clear, a liqueur does have alcohol in it, so….”

He started to take his hat off again but thought better of it and left.

As we waited for our drinks to arrive, we began to reassess if we should actually order anything else. We were getting a bad vibe. The other booth adjacent to us held a gaggle of women seemingly having a good time talking about their day. The waiter approached them, and they became hushed.

“Okay, sorry, but what were your drink orders again?” he asked them. After a bit of nervous and confused laughter from the gals they told him “Three waters and a Dr Pepper.” He told them he’d go get them and reminded them that this place had been sold and was changing names starting tomorrow, because why not.

It took about five minutes, but he returned with three waters and nothing else. He asked if there was anything else, and they reminded him about the Dr Pepper at which point he said, “Yeah, sure, but I only have two hands.” More tittering as he fetched the Dr Pepper, but en route decided to go to the back of the dining area and enter the bathroom.

“He’s going to the bathroom first?” one of the women asked incredulously. I wanted to remind them about his hair color situation but thought better of it.

During all of this we decided we definitely were not going to order anything else; we’d finish our drinks and leave. While he was in the bathroom, however, we contemplated just leaving right then since we hadn’t received our drinks, anyway. A philosophical conversation then ensued as to exactly how one defines “dining and dashing”: If you never eat or drink your order and you leave, does it count as dining and dashing? We decided to err on the side of caution and morality.

Finally, our drinks arrived. Or drink. He only had the figgy mule, not the liquor-challenged amaretto sour.

“Anything else now?” he asked after placing the mule on the table.

“Well… what about the amaretto sour?” I asked gingerly.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s coming,” he replied with impatience he didn’t bother to hide. “I only have two hands, you know.” 

So we’ve heard, dude.

While we waited for the other cocktail, we got to listen in on another conversation he had with the booth full of nervously laughing women. He was not bringing food or drinks, mind you, but just went over to them to tell a story about when he worked at a restaurant across the street and was dating one of the other servers whose father evidently did not approve of the relationship (what a shocker). His story was long and detailed with the occasional F-bomb sprinkled throughout, using his name, the girlfriend’s name, the manager’s name and the father’s name to explain how the father dropped by to confront him at the restaurant and who he won over with wit and grace (he must have had more than two hands then) and was invited to drop by and swim at the family pool (“…which was just two fucking blocks from the restaurant”) whenever he wanted. It was gripping; we were on the edge of our seats.

The women left after that, having only ordered some water and a Dr Pepper. I envied them as they walked out.

Finally, the other cocktail arrived, he asked if there was anything else, and we said we’d just like the check. He brought it and we gave him our credit card, but just as he started to walk away, he stopped and turned back.

“Hey, I want to ask you a question.” (Here we go, we were thinking.) “I read a study recently that said that most people cannot name all seven of Snow White’s dwarfs.”

We sort of shrugged with a “what are you going to do” kind of attitude, hoping he’d get to the point or just go run our card, but no.

“How many of them can you name?” he insisted.

“Oh, probably just one,” I replied peevishly. I don’t know what I was thinking. Cindy, on the other hand, started to name a few. “There’s Doc, and Bashful….”

“DOC!” the waiter exclaimed. “Most people don’t remember Doc!”

“Sleepy, Happy…. Is there a Happy?” Cindy continued.

“Yeah, there’s a Happy. And everyone says Doc,” he countered, evidently unaware that he was contradicting what he had just said about Doc.

Please just take our check and run our card so we can go, I was thinking as loudly as I could.

“It’s sort of a psychological experiment I’m running, asking people to name the seven dwarfs. Yeah, sure, everyone knows Doc and Snorey, but that’s usually about it” he said before finally leaving to run our card.

SNOREY? Really? He thinks there’s a dwarf named Snorey? Clearly there was more going on with this dude than simply lack of pigmentation to his hair.

We still left a 20% tip, however. Snorey would have wanted it that way.

Oh, and apropos of nothing, the last remaining Sfereco in the area will be under new ownership starting tomorrow.

Check This Out

I loaded up the groceries onto the conveyor belt today at Kroger after first laying down the dividing bar to separate my stuff from the items of the person in front of me who was currently being rung up, an older lady who reminded me a bit of my grandmother, who was busy chatting with the woman in front of *her* who had just finished checking out. Evidently they lived in the same retirement facility. Suddenly she noticed some pretzel rods in my pile of items on the belt and said, "Oh, pretzels! I wish I'd thought to get some" in a Midwest accent that reeked of Minnesota, but again it might have been memories of my grandmother flowing over. "You want mine?" I asked. "Oh, no.... no. Thank you though." "Okay" "Well... do you really not want them?" she countered. I mean, obviously I want them, that's why I pushed them around the grocery store in my cart for 30 minutes before loading them onto the conveyor belt, but what are you going to do when faced with gramma-polite-strong-arming? "No, I can get some more later," I said as I moved the pretzels from my side of the dividing bar to her side. As she exited the store she looked back at me one more time and said "you're so sweet" and poof she was gone. With my pretzels. I'd like to think that maybe once someone gave my grandmother their pretzels; it helps ease the pain while sitting here having to snack on stale corn chips.

In Which Hank "Reviews" Daniel Fish's Oklahoma! presented by Broadway Dallas

Let me begin by saying that Oklahoma! is one of my least favorite R&H musicals, beating out perhaps only State Fair for that distinction. I don’t like Westerns or things set in the “West”, I don’t like farmers, I don’t like cowhands (I’m friends with neither 😉), I don’t like hick accents, the “thar”s or “fir”s or “agin” or poorly conjugated verbs. There are some great songs, don’t get me wrong; I mean, it’s my least favorite, but I still like it. Now, this cuts both ways: Since I’m not in love with Oklahoma! to begin with, I’m less emotionally invested in how it’s produced and in fact might welcome any interpretation or reimagining that would shake up all these dern territory folk and make them a bit more interesting, iffin’ you see ma point. (Ugh. See? Hick talk sucks). I totally respect and can appreciate trying to update an old moldy musical, making it fresh and relatable to current tastes and styles, even if I might wish to see an unaltered  version from the 50s.

However, and perhaps more importantly, I’m just done in general with the sparse stylized single static set designs and lack of full orchestra that has been predominant these last several years of musical theater, so of course this didn’t thrill me, though I’ve come to accept that this is how things are now. I just assumed that there would be no real set to speak of in this version, and I was right. Again, this bothered me, but it is not unique to Daniel Fish’s current production of Oklahoma.

I’m just old fashioned. I like curtains. I like changing backdrops. I like little scenes front of curtain while a new scene/set is being put in place behind the curtain. If the scene takes place in a school room, I want to see desks and a blackboard. It if then changes to outside in a park near a gazebo, I want a gazebo and I want trees. I know, I know, how literal of me. But I’m old. I want to see a play, not what looks like the cast sitting around a table workshopping it, working on their delivery. Those days are gone, however. I’m not bitter.

Moving to the music (they’re called musicals, you know), I like more than one viola. I like hearing an oboe. Some timpani. Seeing the soft glow from an actual orchestra pit. I no longer find it “cool” or “edgy” to see the musicians on stage. Put ‘em in the pit where they belong. I can’t remember the last time we saw a musical where the “orchestra” was not on stage (or under the stage, waves at The Sound of Music and Miguel Cantu IV). Tommy, Jesus Christ Super Star, In The Heights, Rocky Horror, Rent, West Side Story, Oklahoma.

Distorted electric guitar is fine in Rent, or JCST, or Tommy, but not Carousel or Brigadoon.

So, all of these things are my Angry Old Man issues with most current productions of musicals and are not specific to this version of Oklahoma. Given that I expected all of this going in, I perhaps was not as bothered as some with the staging and direction of this production. I’m resigned to having to watch “not your grandma’s musical” and have that built in already. However, this needs to be executed well, and unfortunately, this was not the case.

I enjoy on-key singing. I guess I’m funny that way. Almost without exception the entire cast of this production was a bit pitchy as Randy Jackson used to say, and even when they hit the right notes, sometimes the delivery was questionable, as was the case with Sean Grandillo’s almost falsetto singing at times. During “People Will Say We’re In Love” it was often hard at times to determine who was singing, because Curly and Sasha Hutchings’  Laurey were basically singing in the same range. Not a fan. To me, this was the production’s biggest failure, its lack of a strong vocal ensemble.

There was also the anachronistic stylizing that has also become de rigueur as of late: The cast would sing in the traditional manner, then suddenly grab a wired mic and sing into that. The change in volume and dynamics was jarring, and even if this was the point, it just removed some of the inherent charm of these songs and also jerked you out of the moment, calling attention to the artificiality of the whole situation. Add to this the also now ubiquitous use of a live video feed projected onto the backdrop. All cool, and artsy, but again, overly artificial, and I almost always get pulled out of the moment and start watching the camera man in such situations, and wonder how they walk in the dark, or what kind of night vision lens they are using. Should I look at the screen, or the actor on stage? Did they even have wireless hidef video in turn of the century Oklahoma Territory? This worked when we saw Network on stage, as the whole point of that show was how media and technology effects and influences our lives, but in the grass prairies of 1906 Oklahoma it seems to be just a stunt.

Now, the ending, the wedding scene. I didn’t really have a problem with that. As it started to come to an end, Cindy said (in what seemed full room volume for everyone to hear), “this is EFFED UP.” (and yes she said “EFF” because she’s demure that way 😉). I mean, plot-wise, it really doesn’t differ from the traditional production, it was just more graphic. This part reminded me of The Bride from Kill Bill, in a good way. Who doesn’t want to hear a rousing reprise of the title song sung whilst drenched in blood from the person that your newly betrothed husband just shot to death in cold blood? And they sang that final reprise with a lot of anger and aggression, while Laurey stared out vacantly.

Cut to black.

So there you go.

Oh, and the "ballet." That could be an entire post on its own, so I'll spare you.

DETERMINERS

I have a beef about comic books, or comic book movies, or maybe both, and it's not that old chestnut that why is every movie now about comic book characters. No, I'm resigned to that. Maybe My grandchildren's children will be able to see non-super hero movies again one day, but not in my lifetime.

No, I'm bothered by the misuse and nonuse of determiners.

When did Joker lose the "the"? As in "THE Joker." That's the joker I know, THE Joker. Now, evidently, he's just Joker. And I'm supposed to just shrug and say that's okay and move on?

And the "the" didn't get lost, it seems to have migrated to Batman, who's preferred name is now "THE Batman." Why does he get the the, but the Joker loses the the? Why the willy-nilly use of the the as if it doesn't matter? IT DOES.

What's next, The Mr. Freeze? The Alfred? (which actually sounds like a character in The Handmaid's Tale, but let's not get sidetracked).

Riddler?! (turns out he *is* just Riddler now. Dammit). Is The Penguin still The Penguin or is he just Penguin now?

Why are they doing this to me?

12:00

My grandmother’s birthday is today. It would have been her 97th. After hitting the ninety-six previous birthdays in a row without fail, she’ll miss this one, and I’ll miss her, as I miss my grandfather who left eight years ago. That was hard and took me a long time to move past, to the degree that I’ve even moved past it yet. I wonder how long it will take this time. 

I’d seen her about a week before when I went over to her place to give her a backup power supply for her Bose radio. Every time the power even flickered for a moment at her retirement home, the clock on the Bose would reset, flashing 12:00am. Every time I visited her I’d have to reset it, and sometimes she’d even call when the flashing began to get to her before I noticed it for myself. Sometimes the power would go out for a second the day after I’d reset the clock, and she’d not want to bother me about it so soon. But the next time I was over…. There is was. The flashing clock.

So, finally, after over ten years of this battle with the digital radio clock, I purchased the backup power supply so this would never happen again. It was a Friday, I arrived around lunchtime, and saw she was eating lunch at her table with the three other “elder statesmen” of the retirement home. In this group my grandmother wasn’t the oldest member. She wasn’t even the second oldest. There was, as my grandmother referred to her, “a little old lady” who was 101, and there was another who was 97. My grandmother was a “young kid” at 96, and the last of the group was 91 or something. A mere baby. 

I pulled up a chair and tried to describe to my grandmother what I’d brought, but told her it would be easier to just show her than explain yet another piece of technology that she really didn’t need to worry about, so we walked up to her room and I plugged it in. I explained that the time on the radio would always be correct, now, that she wouldn’t have to rely on me to reset the clock every other day due to the poor wiring in the retirement home. She was happy, but wasn’t sure if she needed to do anything, to reset anything, to flick any switches herself. I assured her she didn’t have to do a thing, that the time would be correct from now on.  As I left I gave her a hug and kissed the top of her head and told her I loved her. (I lucked out there).

However, as bad luck would have it, the Sunday a week later  was the end of Daylight Savings time, so that morning her clock was now off by an hour. I hadn’t thought of this, I had forgotten to mention that twice a year the clock would still have to be changed. She called me the next Monday and left a message on my answering machine. “Hank, the time changed this Sunday, so that clock is off an hour. Could you come by and fix it for me?”

We don’t get a lot of calls to our land line. In fact, my grandmother usually called on my cell. But this time, she called the land line and left a message. A message that I did not see until two days later, when I rushed home from work after getting the news that she had died.

 

The message still sits there on the machine, her last communication with me, about a clock that I took ten years to fix, only to have it finally keep the correct time for just the final week of her life. It’s as if that clock knew something the rest of us didn’t, counting down the years, hours, minutes, and seconds of a life well-lived, but finite none the less. So yes, it’s going to take a long time for the pain of her not being here to pass (or at least subside), and I hope I it’s a very long time before I see another flashing digital clock.

Four years later

Four years later and a week doesn’t pass by without me thinking, for a fleeting second, “I need to tell my grandpa this.” Then, of course, reality sets in and I get angry. Angry that four years have passed and the hurt still remains at the realization that he’s not here, and at the thought that soon, one day, it will be twenty years. 

I was led to believe, or at least hoped, that this would go away with time, but something will still come up that will remind me of him, and for a brief second I’ll forget that he’s no longer here. 

Something as simple as a mosquito bite will remind me of how he’d daub calamine lotion all over his arms and legs after being bitten at the lake, oblivious to how ridiculous he looked with all these bright wet spots covering his body like some sort of flesh-toned leopard. 

Or I’ll find myself whistling and remember how he could carry a tune in that manner like a songbird in search of a mate. He had a great memory for names and people, and occasionally I’ll be wondering about something or someone from our days in Oak Park and I’ll think, for a nanosecond, “I’ll have to ask grandpa if he remembers,” only for me to remember that this is no longer possible, and I get angry. 

I miss him, yet the rest of the world keeps going forward like nothing is wrong. I know intellectually this is how things are, but it doesn’t stop me from spewing a string of profanities in my mind at my perceived unfairness of “how things are.” 

And it makes me think of my own future and my own death, and how we come and go in a blink of time’s eye, the world moving on like a steamroller on steroids, leaving a trail in its wake that over time fades until nothing remains. 

My grandfather, at least, touched and impacted many people. His force still leaves tendrils going forward that are intertwined with others to such an extent that, again, I sometimes forget he’s not here anymore. If someone like him will someday be forgotten, his impact lost over the passing years, what hope is there for someone like me who has basically done nothing with his life compared to him? 

I know some will be irked with me saying that and remind me that this is not true, that you can’t judge a life by accomplishments, and for the most part I agree. I just expected more, having him as a role model, and while, yes, some things that steered the direction of my life were beyond my control, others were my own doing, or more precisely, my own not-doing. 

I hate even expressing such feelings openly, because it smacks of feeling sorry for oneself, even though this is not the case; I know my life is so much better than most (First-World Problems and all that… ;-) And you know what? My grandfather was good at discussing such things with me, and he was able to make me feel better. 

That was one of his roles, being the anchor of the family. I feel like I must take on that roll for my family, for my daughter and her son, but worry that there will be no way I’ll be able to succeed in this as my grandfather did, and think to myself, for the second time this week, “I’ll have to ask him about this.” 

And we’ve come full circle.

Magic, Statistics, and The Holy Grail

The following will be dry and probably be of interest to no one but other magicians, and even then that's doubtful. But I'm writing it anyway... ;-)

So, for the last few years, due in part to the legendary (at least in magic circles) David Berglas, many in the magic community have been obsessed with an individual effect called "Any Card At Any Number", shortened to ACAAN. The basic plot is as follows:

One spectator names a number, a free choice between 1 and 52. Another spectator names a playing card... another free choice. A deck of cards, which has been lying in full view the entire time, is handed to a third spectator who counts down to the selected number, dealing cards face up. When the selected number is reached, the playing card at that position matches the card named.

Ta Da!

Here's a Youtube clip that looks pretty much like this pure effect being performed:

ACAAN- The Berglas Effect



While Berglas didn't originate the plot (early descriptions of this plot include "The Acme Card Trick" by Chas. Shepard in the March 1908 issue of The Sphinx, a couple methods exist in Erdnase, etc), his performances of ACAAN have become stuff of legend. In fact, many think it is just that, a legend. He rarely performs this effect. Few have actually seen him perform it first hand. Those who have, however, including magician Barrie Richardson as related in his book Theater Of The Mind, describe an effect that seems impossible. Barrie actually got to witness it twice. On one of these occasions, David and Barrie were driving somewhere when David suddenly asked Barrie to name a number, which he did. He says he had a free choice, with no use of equivoque. Then he was asked to name a card. Again, a free choice. David then told Barrie to open the glove compartment of the car and remove the deck of cards he found there. He did so, and then was told to count down to his number and turn over the card at that number. He did, and it matched the card he named.

Over the years, this pure version of ACAAN has also been called "The Berglas Effect", and duplicating this effect using a set of conditions has pretty much become the Holy Grail of magicdom. The required conditions are as follows:

1. No stooges (i.e. confederates/secret helpers of the magician)
2. Free choice of card and number
3. Only one deck
4. Spectator counts the cards, the magician never touches deck during the entire effect.

Berglas seems to have met these predictions, but he's never revealed his method. Well... not fully. In The Mind And Magic Of David Berglas, a book that was eagerly awaited by the magic community due to the fact that supposedly Berglas would reveal his method to ACAAN, he devotes and entire chapter to this effect. However, the secret can basically be summed up as follows: You have to be David Berglas to do the Holy Grail version of ACAAN. He claims to use psychology, audience management, luck, the right time and right circumstances and taking advantage of such things when they come up, and several different methods and means in order to achieve "The Berglas Effect". It's an interesting read, but there's no way someone reads this chapter and then is able to go out and perform ACAAN for his friends at a bar.

So the search for this Holy Grail continues.

Several marketed versions have been released over the years, but none fulfill the requirements set forth fully. Some use two decks, some turn out to be more of "Card At Any Number" (notice the missing "A"), some use multiple decks, some limit the choice of number, some require the performer to count the cards. Etc. However, and this is where it gets interesting (really!! ;-p), all this causes philosophical arguments within the magic community. Many think that this ACAAN effect is really just "magic for magicians", that the average layman doesn't really care, that, to them, the effect is no more amazing than any other card trick, and that some (especially The Invisible Deck), are even stronger from a layman point of view with basically the same plot. (For those who have never been forced to watch me perform the Invisible Deck, the plot is basically someone names any playing card, and that named card is found to be the only reversed card in a pack of face-up cards).

Let's focus on The Invisible Deck (ID) for a moment. An argument can be made that to the spectator this plot is the same as ACAAN. A freely thought-of card is proved to be known in advance by the performer. In fact, the plot is simpler and more direct than ACAAN, because no counting or choice of number is required. The fact that ID is easy to do, has no set-up and an instant reset is another plus in its favor. But magicians love to fool other magicians, and to say that the ID is universally known among magicians would be an understatement. We all want the Holy Grail, we all want to fool fellow magi, and we all sometimes forget that the point of magic, especially to a working performer, is entertaining laymen (or at least our family and friends if we're hobbiests). Thus the obsession with ACAAN.

There are also disagreements about the need to steadfastly stick to the conditions "required" for a pure ACAAN as if they were handed down to the magic community by Moses himself, i.e. if all the requirements are not strictly met, but to the layman the effect is the same, who cares? Often, no matter what conditions are met, the spectator walks away thinking he saw the magician perform the Holy Grail version. One forgets all the minutia of the routine the performer used to achieve the result. As an example, compare this version of ACAAN to the one above:



This version obviously isn't the Holy Grail, but really, does the spectator care? When he or she thinks of the effect later, and describes it to his friends, how will it really differ from the pure Holy Grail version that Berglas supposedly has performed? Again, it would seem that only magicians care about this. We're a bored lot it would appear.

I'm also interested in the statistics, and while I'm better at most at such things, the ACAAN problem it's hard for me to wrap my head around the supposed odds involved. Magicians, amazingly enough, also can't agree on this (again, we're bored). Many say that ACAAN isn't that amazing, anyway, because it only represents a 1 in 52 chance, which isn't that high. However, I don't know if i agree with his. To me, ID does represent a 1 in 52 chance: A card is named, it is the only card reversed in the deck. I tackle this problem this way: how many decks would the performer need on hand to assure a successful completion of ACAAN on the one hand, and ID on the other.

For ID, you'd need 52 decks. Each deck would have a different card reversed. One deck, for example, would have the two of hearts reversed. Another deck would have the Queen of Clubs reversed... and so on, using a separate deck for each card, totaling 52 decks. You'd either have to have 52 decks hidden about your person, pulling out the correct deck once the spectator names a card, or you'd have one deck and take your chances. The chance you'd be correct with only one deck is thus 1 in 52. Right? Right.

Now let's move on to ACAAN. Most magicians claim this is also a 1 in 52 chance, but to me this can't be correct, since these are the same odds as ID, and obviously ACAAN has two different criteria: the card, and the position. In my way of thinking this would require 52 decks just for a single card, say the Queen of Clubs. You'd need one deck where the Queen of Clubs was the first card, another deck where it was in the second position, and so on until you had a deck where the Queen of Clubs was at position 52. This would seem to require 52 decks for each card, or 52 X 52, or 2704 decks of cards (hidden about your person. Fun!).

However, others have sussed the odds as follows: Once the number is named, there is then a 1 in 52 chance that the named card is at that location. In other words, spectator A picks the number 17, then spectator B picks the Queen of Clubs. Once the number is named, there is a 1 in 52 chance that the Queen of Clubs is that card. Makes sense.... BUT that would mean the ID and ACAAN share the same odds, and that seems counter-intuitive. I've tried to think about this, and perhaps, since the order of the other cards make no difference, there are 52 possibilities out of a total of 2404 for a given card, or 52/2704 = 1/52. But again, this is the same as ID.

My head hurts. I need input from people on this. But if true, and if most spectators sense this on some level, then why not just perform ID and be done with it? Why? Because magicians are bored. ;-)

And no, I am not a geek... :-P