Hidden Talents

We finished Hidden Talents Week. Some highlights were a magic show, bowling, and watching a movie. I've got kind of a thing for magic shows. They're usually marketed to children, so as an adult, I have limited opportunity to go to them. You assume that they are marketed to children because as an adult, knowing there's a trick behind everything will ruin the magic. Besides, with the knowledge you gained in your Developmental Psychology class, you'll probably be able to detect all the tricks anyway.

But last year's magician blew me out of the water. If anything, as a child I had the excuse of magic to write away what seemed to be impossible, and the fluidity of my perception of reality made what appeared before me less abnormal. As an adult with a more cemented sense of what can and cannot be, having those perceptions challenged gave it much more impact. And knowing that there is a trick behind everything but failing to perceive it created the sense of being teased, and caused doubt in the reliability of those five senses to determine the reality you've grown so attached to.

If anything, it's better as an adult.

Developmental Psychology didn't help me at all. I knew to look in linear patterns if the magician moved in a non-linear way and vice-versa, but it came to nothing. He still made a rabbit appear out of a balloon that was placed on four-legged table with a thin surface that I could see on all sides, a balloon smaller than the rabbit itself. And he still turned a plume of fire from a lighter into a live dove. Astonishing.

This year's magician was very charismatic, very engaging, and very personable. But his tricks were a bit lacking. Very entry-level stuff.

The movie we went to see was Minions. Got to see it on the opening day. It was good, but it's a prequel to the Despicable Me movies, and since I've watched neither of those, I felt like I missed out on a lot of inside jokes.

Bowling was bowling. I'm not the best at it, but I'm not quite the worst anymore.

Today I went to the Latitudes Storytelling Festival, and a Latin Music Festival. They were placed side-by-side, so when I was listening to the stories, the Latin music kind of served as mood-setting, and the story and the music more often than not failed to match.