Houdini vs. Houdin

The Magic gods Smiled That Day

I hope everyone had a weight-gaining, new-belt-hole-punching Thanksgiving! I know I did. It was baby Oliveah’s first Thanksgiving. We hung out with some friends for the big day. Of course, I got asked to perform some magic. So I busted out 10 ESP cards that I keep in my wallet. I performed an effect where the spectator handles the cards for the most part. However, the cards must remain in a particular cyclical stack for the effect to work. As I was about to perform the effect, one of the guests (friend of our friend whose house we were at) snatched the cards from me and insisted on shuffling.

However, as I watched him shuffle, I realize that all he was doing was cutting the pack multiple times. In my head I’m doing the happy dance. On the outside . . . cool as a cucumber in a bucket of ice. After he’s done “shuffling,” I’m fully aware that my cyclical stack is still completely intact thanks to his mere cutting over and over.

Additionally, I didn’t need to touch the cards again, so he did all the work, and yet I was still able to nail the effect. He was totally blown away. I stopped there. You just can’t top that moment of astonishment.

Clark Nielsen

Who the heck is Clark Nielsen? Is he an underground magician? Nope. He’s a really cool guy I work with. If I were to describe him in one word it would be bi-lingual-php-programer-author-creative-thinker-extraordinaire.

He has a fun site where you can just post things that annoy you. You should definitely check it out: Some Things I Hate. He also happens to be an author of a few books. I’ve read his book, The Second Page. It’s very well written and fun to read. It’s actually one that you and your teenage kids would enjoy reading together. Check out Clark’s Author Page on Amazon. You can pick up The Second Page for around 8 to 12 bucks. The Kindle version is only $5 bucks. It’s definitely worth your time to peek at it.

Anyone who has read anything about Houdini, likely knows that his real name was not Harry Houdini. It was Ehrich Weisz. A nickname for “Ehrich” is “Ehrie” which sounds an awful lot like “Harry.” “Houdini” comes from adding an “I” to the end of Houdin (as in Robert Houdin, Ehrich’s Idol). There are certainly more details to the story than what I’ve shown here, but they are beyond the scope of the point I’m making which is this:

If there were no Robert Houdin, then there likely would have been no Harry Houdini . . . sure he may have still been a famous magician, but he would likely have a different name – either his given name or another stage name, but not Houdini.

So here’s the fun part. Open up an MS Word Document and type the two names into the document. You’ll find a fun little squiggled line under “Houdin” but not under “Houdini.” Of course, what that means is that “Houdin” is NOT in the MS Word Dictionary, but “Houdini” is. I think there’s something quite poetic about that. Did Houdini have an impact on the world? Oh Yeah!

Enjoy the November issue!