An Honest Liar Page #4

I am Carlos!

Though I had, just a year or so before this Australian event,

actually met Jose Alvarez,

I was very pleased at what it did for our relationship

because it really cemented it pretty well.

We decided after that that we sort of belong together.

I recognised, I guess, at a very early age

that my feelings were different from those around me.

And it was pretty evident to me that that was heavily frowned upon.

I perhaps felt like a bit of an outsider.

My father only really spoke to me twice in my whole life.

Calling me aside, sitting me down

and having a discussion.

We did that twice during my life, I was surprised both times.

I was pretty well educated on my own. The local education system

in Toronto, Canada, actually allowed me to stay out of grade school,

only going in there to take the tests.

I was free to wander

around Toronto and I found the Casino Theatre on Queen Street.

I saw The Great Blackstone advertised.

I had never seen a magician before in my whole life.

Harry Blackstone walked out on stage

and did wonderful things that I had never dreamed could be done.

He had this young lady walk out from the side of the stage

and he cast her into a trance. And he said,

"Princess Astra...

"..rise!"

She floated up into the air.

And I looked very carefully,

and I could not see any means whereby she could be suspended

in the air and caused to move in the air!

That was wonderful, I was transfixed.

How could the man do such a thing?

I determined at that moment

that I was going to become a professional magician.

And so at 17, I decided I wouldn't graduate from high school,

I left home and I joined the carnival.

I never went home again.

Now, is it possible that I could have drawn anything on there?

Do you want to take one more look? Take one more look, there's

nothing in there except a crushed piece of chalk, right? Now,

before you open up the slates, what was the word that you looked at in

- the book? Would you mind telling us?

- Mackerel.

I was doing, well, so-called mind-reading tricks and such,

psychic tricks, so to speak.

- It's been in your hands all this time, right?

- I assume so.

- All right, then,

would you open them and see what the spirits have brought us in the way of a message.

Don't tell her how it was done.

When I introduced myself as a magician,

I used to say to my audience, "Good evening,

"my name is The Great Randall.

"I am a liar, a cheat and a charlatan.

"I will blatantly lie to you, but for purposes of

"entertainment only, of course.

"And those lies may not be discernible from the truth."

Randi had this sense of trying to be bigger than life.

And the easiest way to be bigger than yourself

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