Word: randiness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Everywhere the irrepressible Randi goes, usually in a flowing tweed cape and a brown, broad-brimmed hat, bewildering events occur: spoons bend, watches stop, wallets disappear, pencils move mysteriously, minds are read. And everywhere, Randi's message is the same: the remarkable happenings are simply magic tricks, not psychic or out-of-this-world phenomena...
...James Randi barely made it into this world. Born prematurely in Toronto in 1928, he weighed only 2 lbs. 3 oz. Despite that precarious debut, Randall James Hamilton Zwinge soon took center stage. At nine, he invented a pop-up toaster; by his early teens he had taught himself trigonometry, calculus and hieroglyphics...
Disenchanted with school, Randi often played hooky and one afternoon found himself in Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theater, where Magician Harry Blackstone Sr. was performing. For Randi, it was instant addiction. "What I've since recognized," he says, "is that it is the kids who don't quite fit the social picture who go into magic...
...What Randi recognized much earlier was that magic was sometimes misused. Hearing about miraculous happenings in local spiritualist churches, he decided to see for himself. Disaster. Watching the preacher divine the contents of sealed envelopes handed him by his parishioners, Randi, then 15, was outraged. "He was using the old 'one-ahead' method," Randi explains, still indignant. Striding to the pulpit, he fished one of the opened envelopes out of a wastebasket and accused the preacher of cheating. An uproar followed, and Randi was arrested for disturbing a religious meeting. At the police station, he vowed that he would someday...
After dropping out of high school at 17, Randi joined a traveling carnival. On tour, he wore a turban and a beard, was billed as Prince Ibis, did a mind- reading act and supervised a "ten-in-one," carny talk for ten attractions under one tent. Among the features, Randi recalls, were Kong Lee, the electric boy, and the 10-ft. indigo snake ("It was only six feet, but who counts...