My old friend John Bushey — a magician and escape artist from Duluth, Minnesota — turns 50 next week. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, his sister and his friends threw him a surprise birthday party at Twin Cities Magic in St. Paul. Guests flew in from Chicago, Virginia, New York and even AUSTRALIA!! A bunch of us stayed overnight in the magic shop.
Here is the gang the morning after. John is the 3rd from the left.
The Century Club in New York is a private club for artists, writers, actors, designers and other creative types. It is a beautiful building filled with art, and with an inviting library with floor-to-ceiling books. I had worked there before - when I presented with Dr. Edelman - but I’d never had a chance to really look around much, so it was a treat to be able to do a show for the club’s Fifth Floor Forum series last night. I had a lot of fun performing for the ‘Centurions’.
After the show, my friend Bonnie Roche invited me to join her for dinner. At our table was art historian and art dealer Robert Simon, who recently discovered a Leonardo Da Vinci painting of Christ - titled Salvator Mundi - which is now on display at the National Gallery in London. Needless to say, we had an absolutely fascinating conversation about his astonishing discovery! You can see a great CNN interview with Robert here, and below is the painting…
For the third year in a row, I attended the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. This time it was held in Washington DC. My friend Stuart Firestein and I always manage to have a series of adventures at this conference…
One night we found ourselves at a party at the Spy Museum, and from there we went over to the Air and Space Museum where Jeff Lichtman from Harvard presented mind-blowing images from inside the brain showing how our neurons are connected to each other. His talk was followed by a very fancy party hosted by Zeiss, the manufacturer of incredible microscopes. In fact, this party was so fancy that they served miniature, two-bite, baked Alaskas and chocolate mousse-filled brownies for dessert. Friends from Columbia University brought over the CEO of Zeiss, James Sharp, and had me do a bunch of magic tricks for him. Then James Sharp took us over to Jeff Lichtman, and I did magic for him as well, and was able to ask him questions about his amazing presentation.
Tipped off by my friend Moran Cerf, we then headed to the third party of the night. Stuart used to drive a cab in DC many years ago and when he heard the address, he worried that it was in a dangerous neighborhood. But that didn’t stop us! Late at night, we pulled up at an Animal House-like party in a 2-story home FILLED with students where we found Moran and Christof Koch, (the Chief Scientific Officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science) in the middle of the throbbing crowd.
It was a fantastic and very nerdy night.
Performing magic for James Sharp, the CEO of Zeiss:
Presenting to the students in Marisa Carrasco and Allen Mincer’s freshman seminar at New York University.