Ricky Jay Profile
Boing Boing has a pointer to a profile of Ricky Jay in the June issue of Smithsonian magazine.
I first heard substantially about Ricky Jay in a New Yorker profile of him from 1993 and managed to miss Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants from around that time. I had seen House of Games in college, but, of course, didn’t realize one of the world’s great magicians was on the screen before us. We did catch him a couple of years ago when he was performing On The Stem in New York, where he did some utterly baffling card tricks on stage. No flicking playing cards into watermelons, but awe and wonder.
I had no idea he was involved with Deadwood. I’ll have to point Tivo at it now (after first ordering HBO from Adelphia). Boing Boing also kindly points to Jay’s site, which has an archive of his radio shows on public radio in Real format. I’ll listen to these later.
Next time he’s in New York performing on stage, I have to make a point of flying back to see it. As the Smithsonian profile quotes Charles Krauthammer, some people can tell their grandkids that they say Ali box; I can say that I saw Ricky Jay deal.