In the summer of 2022 I attended FISM, held that year in Québec City, Canada. The convention itself was poorly organized, and many people who had paid for registrations simply didn’t show up due to the resurgence of Covid.
But there were excellent moments, and four highlights for me. The first was the opportunity to present an award I had organized to Max Maven for his service to FISM over many decades; he received an enormously long, roaring standing ovation and was deeply moved.
The second was attending an interview conducted by Luis de Matos in which Max discussed many things, including how his impending death from glioblastoma had changed his views on life: “One of the things I’ve learned is that being cynical takes a lot of effort, and it’s much easier to be nice.”
The third was when Max presented me with one of his three special FISM awards, the one for History and Scholarship. After almost 50 years of friendship I loved Max and miss him every day. A few months after the convention he was gone. I don’t mean to be maudlin, but I can’t separate the experience of that FISM from Max’s last hurrah.
But, and here is the fourth highlight, and truly the magical high point: I saw one of the finest and most deeply fooling performances of coin magic by someone new to me, Luis Olmedo, who went on to tie for first place in the category of Close-Up Magic. (FISM willfully calls it by the outdated term “Micro-Magic,” which I chose to ignore.)
Olmedo didn’t simply engage in digital pyrotechnics, but created real mood and emotion. The routine and his performance of it are a masterpiece; the lovely man has given it to me for Greater Magic. You can watch him do the same act on Fool Us:
The following trick presented here is a piece of a longer routine, but the benefit of its modularity is that you can use it to open any routine using cards and coins that you already do. It’s not easy—nothing Luis does is! But it’s great, and he’ll explain it.