Word: decking
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...choice. Many shows employ elaborate sets, detailed costumes and numerous performers, yet never come close to tapping the transcendent power of theater. It is a tribute, then, to the supreme talents of Ricky Jay that, working with a minimal set and little more than himself and a deck of playing cards, he is able to bring the audience thoroughly into his own universe—a place where card cheats are spoken of with the same respect reserved for the greatest innovators in history and the audience is dazzled not only by a performer’s dexterity...
...surface, the piece is a magic show. Jay has audience members take a card and place it back in the deck so that he can then locate it. Jay cuts the deck to an ace (repeatedly). Jay even pulls out reputedly the oldest of magician’s tools—the cup and balls. Yet Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants is far more than a magic show, it is a theatrical experience blessed with wit and genuine charm. Jay sets the tone early as, after he cuts an ace for the first time, he drolly deadpans...
Luck, though, isn’t an element in Jay’s performance. He proceeds instead with a self-assuredness that is not arrogant but rather appealing, even comforting. And he backs up that confidence with tremendous skill in manipulating a deck of playing cards. At one point, having dealt an audience member two pair, he asks what card he might like drawn next from the deck. The audience member, already wowed by Jay’s abilities and sure a full house is coming, shrugs and tells Jay that whichever of the already paired cards he had planned...
...World Series represents everything wrong with baseball, the bird episode shows us so much that’s right—except, I guess, for the violent death part. It’s history. It’s inane chatter that makes bleacher and upper deck tickets the best seats in the house—always. It’s spinning yarns about the weird and the wacky, about the crazy thing that happened “that one time” when the secure boundaries set up by the rules of sport were bent and twisted by the unexpected...
Self-described serious-minded people may laugh at all this. Particularly strange is a widely circulated photo of a young man on the World Trade Center observation deck, a plane looming just yards behind and below him. It has clearly been manipulated (the man is wearing a parka and ski hat on what was an 81[degrees] day, plus the observation deck wasn't open yet on the morning of Sept. 11). Still, people have latched onto it, even creating a backstory that the camera was found in the rubble. "To you and me, that fellow standing on the observation...