We've lost another great magician…and a personal boyhood hero of mine. Mark Wilson, the Master Magician of The Magic Land of Allakazam, died last Tuesday afternoon. His son Greg, who followed in his old man's footsteps, posted this on a magician's forum…

Whether you know him from his TV appearances, his Live productions, the Mark Wilson Complete Course in Magic book, or one of his many in-person Magic University classes at the Magic Castle, or through one of his many other achievements…Mom and Mike and I are so proud that he brought "Happy Magic" into not only your life, but the lives of more people around the world than he could possibly meet.

Mike is another brother. Mom is Nani Darnell, aka Mrs. Mark Wilson and maybe the loveliest assistant who ever got levitated, sawed-in-two and vanished from an endless series of boxes. To Greg's list of his father's achievements, I would add that I think Mark Wilson has the world's record for inspiring young people to take up magic and also perfecting and popularizing the presentation of magic on television.

The Magic Land of Allakazam was on CBS and later ABC Saturday mornings from 1960 to 1964. Most professional magicians have enough tricks in their repertoire to fill thirty minutes…a few can do an hour…but Mark Wilson somehow managed to fill 98 half-hours over those years. To do that, he had to be an expert at every kind of magic there is — close-up, sleight-of-hand, grand illusion, parlor magic, the works. And almost every week, he also taught home viewers a trick they could do at home with everyday objects.

That's where I learned my first feeble feats of prestidigitation. That's where an awful lot of kids learned their first tricks and a hefty number of them went on to do that professionally. I cannot tell you how important this man was to the Art Form. One of the great perks of being a member at the Magic Castle was that you occasionally got to talk with Mark and sometimes even see him perform.

One evening when I was there with friends, we went into one of the small showrooms to see a magician perform. The scheduled gentleman had a sudden emergency and had to run so, to everyone's delight, Mark Wilson walked and did a completely-unplanned half-hour show. He hadn't gone there that evening to perform. He didn't even have any props with him but it isn't hard at The Castle to scrounge up a deck of cards and a couple of hankies…which was all he needed.

He was in his early eighties at the time but he was just as skilled and charming as the star I watched on Saturday morning when I was eight. And like everyone else in the room, I was just as entertained…and well aware we were in the presence of one of the world's great entertainers.

Antonio Prohias, who drew "Spy Vs. Spy" for MAD for many years, would have turned 100 last weekend were he still with us. Not that we need a reason, but that makes it a good time to remember his amazing story. In some places at some times, it has been highly possible to be killed for drawing cartoons. Here is how he almost did.

Let's get off the subject of politics. As you probably heard, Siegfried Fischbacher — who was one half of the popular duo Siegfried and Roy — died last week at the age of 81. His partner Roy Horn died last May.

Siegfried and Roy were superstars of magic and Las Vegas. They first played that town as the star act of the Folies Bergere at the Tropicana in 1967. In 1978, they got their own show — Beyond Belief — at the Frontier and then in 1987, Vegas Mogul Steve Wynn signed them to be the star attraction at his new hotel, The Mirage, when it opened three years later. The showroom was built to their specifications, the money end of the deal was astronomical…and suddenly, every hotel in Las Vegas was looking for its own superstar magician or team to compete and every magician who did "Grand Illusion" (big tricks) was trying to get a Vegas residency.

I saw their show at the Mirage a grand total of once. If you went in expecting to be dazzled by incredible illusions and beautiful live animals, you were not disappointed, though I think I was more impressed with the folks who designed and built the illusions than with the two men who fronted the show. I remember thinking that apart from the handling of the big cats, elephant and other creatures — which was mostly done by Roy — most of the magic was the kind that anyone could learn to "perform." You just had to stand in the right place and point to the right thing as the stage crew pulled the levers.

This may sound like a "faint praise" review and I guess it is. I'm not as fond of animal acts as I used to be and I like my magicians with more personality and I like to see them doing the tricks instead of the tech guys. But there was no denying that millions of people passed through that showroom and enjoyed the hell out of what went on in there and that S-and-R, as some called them, did a lot to promote the art form. And of course, I wouldn't expect a magician working in a show that size to be standing on stage doing sleight-of-hand card tricks.

Their long run there ended abruptly when…well, there are two versions of what happened on stage the night of October 3, 2003. One is that Roy had some sort of stroke in the middle of the show and Mantecore the White Tiger, sensing his master/friend was ill, locked his jaws onto Roy's neck to drag him offstage and in the process, caused him to lose enough blood to make the stroke worse. The other is that Mantecore for reasons unknown simply attacked and mauled Roy.

Take your pick. Either way, the result was the same: Roy seriously disabled and the end of the act. Such an awful way for one of the most popular live shows ever to come to a close.

Our video today is a 46 minute version of what they did six nights week at the Mirage, not only trimmed down but modified somewhat for the cameras. It will still give you a good idea of what the show was like and what Siegfried and Roy did to become that rich and that famous. It doesn't fully capture what was great about the performance, magic sometimes being a "you had to be there" kind of experience. But you'll see why the countless folks who went to see them thought it was well worth the price of the not-inexpensive tickets…

One more political post right now: William Saletan compares yesterday's speeches by Biden and Trump. Biden's was all about humility and compassion and working together and doing what's best for the country and for all of us. Trump's was about how friggin' awesome Donald Trump is and how great everything he's done has been and how everything that wasn't great is somebody else's fault.

Even if you're not an actor or model whose picture gets submitted to those who hire such people, you might benefit from this article. It's advice from five photographers who specialize in headshots about how to get a good one.

There's so much to say about the exit of Trump-Pence and the takeover by Biden-Harris…but as I look at the 'net, I see everyone else saying it.

It's gotta be strange to be a die-hard Trump backer today. They believed in that "mountain of evidence" that he really won the election in a landslide and must find it difficult to process the fact that most of the alleged evidence was never presented to any judge or higher authority and what was presented didn't impress anyone; not even Trump appointees or G.O.P. state officials. If they stormed The Capitol or cheered on those who did, they must see that they didn't rally the Senate to say, "The hell with what voters might have said, give the man four more years!"

If anything, they had the opposite effect and Trump's post-election popularity suffered a lot for it. His exit from Washington, D.C. has made him look worse than anyone he ever derided as a loser. I'd feel sorry for him if I thought he'd ever felt sorry for anyone in his whole life. Even Mitch McConnell, whose one aim in life is Republican Control, thinks that that can be arrived at via — too little, too late — some repudiation of Donald J. Trump.

I do feel a little sorry for Joe Biden, whose "honeymoon" will probably be even less than the week or so they gave Obama. That man has a lot to do. I only caught a little of the inauguration but it sounded like his speech was a good one and there's something hopeful about seeing Kamala Harris on the job. She's certainly not going to be the kind of vice-president whose main job, as someone once said about another one, was to "sit around waiting for a foreign leader to die."

Anyway, I'm not expecting instant results and neither should anyone. For the time being, I'll be happy if they just somehow slow down things getting worse.

• Gee, it's nice to have a president who can talk about something other than himself.

I stopped posting links to articles about Trump partly because everyone else was posting plenty and partly because at some point, I got sick of reading about him. But here are some I've come across lately that might be of interest to you…

The Complete List of Trump's Twitter Insults — a list of everyone and everything he insulted on Twitter. You may notice a tendency to predict unemployment and failure for everyone who mocks or criticizes him…and almost all of those folks are doing fine.

EXPLAINER: Election claims, and why it's clear Biden won — Two Associated Press reporters explain why it's clear the election did not go Donald's way. It will forever baffle me why, when every single poll (including right-wing ones like Rasmussen and Fox News) showed Biden winning handily and Trump never had an approval rating higher than his disapproval rating, so many people think it's inconceivable that he lost.

The Final Tally on Trump's Campaign Promises — Politifact takes a look at what Trump promised to achieve and how few of them he actually made good on.

Jonathan Chait writes about how Trump is on the verge of losing everything and how little of Barack Obama's legacy Donald was unable to undo.

The full list of pardons that Trump issued — Wish I'd had the money to get one. I don't expect to be charged with any crime but it still would be nice to have a presidential pardon around, just in case.

There are a lot of articles online condemning the Capitol Insurrection and saying that Trump incited it and bears more than a little responsibility for it. I'm just linking to this one by Daniel Larison.

And lastly: Here's a quick montage of Lindsey Graham, who by my reckoning is in a dead heat with Rudy Giuliani for the title of Public Figure Who Most Debased Himself in Service of Donald Trump…

And the song parodies keep on comin'…

The wonderful Laura Benanti performs as the person who will no longer be The First Lady tomorrow…

Randy Rainbow's been busy…

The evening of Saturday, October 26, 1996, I was in New York and a group of my friends and I went to see the Broadway musical of Beauty and the Beast, which was playing at the Palace Theatre. The Palace was and is located smack-dab in the middle of Times Square and enjoyed the show tremendously and we also enjoyed going backstage afterwards.

Someone in my party knew the lady playing Belle and she talked with us for a while, introduced us to other cast members and took us on a tour of the place. I love old theaters so that was as fun as watching what all those skilled performers had done on that stage. That extracurricular add-on took maybe an half hour and then we said our goodbyes and walked outside into…

…absolute bedlam.

There was screaming and dancing and yelling and crying and cheering and hugging and groping and drinking (there was a lot of drinking) and singing and shoving and some women with their tops off and one guy with everything off and smoking (some of it apparently even tobacco) and hysteria and police trying and failing to control the crowds and more outrageous happiness than I have ever seen in my life.

The Yankees had just won the World Series. Their first in eighteen years, I believe.

Not long after, someone who knows a lot more about baseball than I do — which is only like four-fifths of this nation — explained to me that with any other team, eighteen years between World Series wins would be an acceptable interval. Most go a lot longer between 'em and the Chicago Cubs once went 108 years. But the Yankees, this fellow told me, expect to win it every year. "They regard it as their birthright," he said. "They feel they're disgraced if anyone else wins."

I have never been in Times Square for the big ball-drop on New Year's Eve but it could not possibly be louder and more crowded and more alcohol-driven than the crowd that evening. It took a long time for us to get through the throng to a few blocks away where we were able to flag down a couple of cabs and proceed to our next destination. I was amazed at what I was seeing and I still can't think of anything that could make me as deliriously happy as some of those people were that night.

If I suddenly won a billion dollars and the secret of Eternal Life and had every woman I've ever found attractive lined-up to service me and they finally rid the world of cole slaw, candy corn and Donald Trump and I suddenly had the power to make famine, poverty and disease disappear and I could bring a lot of people I miss back from the dead, I'd be happy. But maybe not that happy.

I mean not like that naked guy in Times Square who had climbed and was trying to dry-hump the statue of George M. Cohan.

And here's the thing: From my vantage point, most of those people partying there hadn't won anything.

The team they chose to follow had won. Those players got rings and trophies and World Series bonuses and probably better contracts and a helluva lot of bragging rights. Maybe some of the celebrants had wagered and therefore won money on the Series. But some of them were merely ecstatic that "their team won." I understand being pleased about that but not that pleased.

It's something I just don't "get" about sports. I admire athletes and their skills. I understand being excited about masterful performance. I even understand picking a team and being pleased that you picked the right one.

But I don't understand having so much of your personal happiness hanging on whether that team won. I just don't.

Do you know what a Bait Car is? In some areas, police use these things called Bait Cars to catch car thieves. The car is rigged up with a hidden camera and audio recording. It has a tracking device on it and in most cases, the cops can remotely disable the engine and lock the doors so the folks inside can't get away.

Then they park them on the street, sometimes leaving keys in the ignition or otherwise making them easy to steal…and they wait until they catch some rats in their trap. There are a lot of Bait Car videos online but this one is kinda funny. Can you imagine being the prosecutor who has to prove his case in court and you have something like this? Rudy Giuliani would probably blow it but no one else…

P.S. Yes, yes. I know this is a skit. But the real ones go a lot like this.

When I sit down to write posts for this blog lately, I ask myself a question: Do I want to write about what's going on in the world today or get my mind (and therefore maybe, yours) off those oft-depressing topics? The topic of Trump leaving the White House is both joyous and depressing in so many ways, especially when you think how poised everyone is at the moment for the peaceful transfer of power to not be so peaceful. At times, I wish my life was playing out on my TiVo and I could press that little button on the remote control that skips me ahead.

I'm installing and configuring a new computer system this week. There's much to do there and in a way, I welcome the distraction. I do find it helps me to not watch the news a lot. During the 1/6 rioting in D.C., I followed some of it and then at one point, because my sleeping lately has been so erratic and so disconnected to any form of Normal Sleep Hours, I suddenly needed a nap.

I turned off CNN, went to sleep for about 75 minutes, then got up, turned on CNN again…and nothing had changed. I was hearing the same newspeople saying the same things as they narrated the same footage of the same protesters breaking the same windows. I really did feel like my life had done one of those TiVo skips. While I like the concept of 24/7 news, one has to remember that there isn't enough news to fill 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They have to repeat, repeat, repeat…and also find ways to make it sound new when they repeat, repeat, repeat.

They also have to dig up a lot of rumors and statements that might at some point be news but aren't yet. I feel like we've now seen every single person in or around an elected office call on every other single person in an elected office to resign that elected office.

In my younger days, before we all lived on this Internet thing, I'd follow breaking news stories like my life depended on not missing a beat. Now I have to remind myself that that's not necessary. Whatever it is, it will be replayed again and again and again, etc., plus it'll be on YouTube or some other site. You almost can't not see it, whatever it is. Have to remember that the next few days while I need to set up my new computer.

CNN announced the death of Phil Spector with a headline that read, "Grammy-Winning Record Producer Phil Spector dies of natural causes." I suspect a lot of people complained because it's now been changed to "Grammy-winning producer and convicted murderer Phil Spector dies."

I dunno what kind of Journalism classes would suggest that the fact that he went to prison for murdering someone was kind of an aside in his life…and then there's the question of cause of death. The New York Times article said…

The cause was complications of Covid-19, his daughter, Nicole Audrey Spector, said. He was taken to San Joaquin General Hospital in French Camp, Calif., on Dec. 31 and intubated in January, she said.

But the CNN piece still says…

Music producer and convicted murderer Phil Spector died of natural causes on Saturday at the age of 80, according to a statement released by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. An official cause of death will be determined by the medical examiner for San Joaquin County.

Not sure how they can say "natural causes" and then say someone's going to try and determine the cause of death but okay.

I had more than a little interest in his trial for the murder of Lana Clarkson because I'd met Ms. Clarkson, thought she was lovely and smart and in no way — as the defense tried to argue — the kind of person who'd kill herself. I also know a lot of people who knew her better than I did and they all agree.

And I read a lot about the trial and I was about as sure as you can be without sitting in the jury box that he killed her. I'm amazed that it took two trials to convict him but at least they did. From that point on, I had no interest in Spector. Life in prison does not seem to me a whole lot better or worse than being executed unless there's a chance of someday proving your innocence. Which in this case there wasn't.