Sublime

Unlike the professorial Declan, Ben Diamond looks vaguely menacing, with his shaved head and black leather jacket. It takes innate command presence to pull off a look like that at age seventy-three, but Ben still has it.

When the daimon speaks it says: The stories I tell about tinkering with watches (Ford) or about rising from poverty all on my own (Bernstein) are the facts. The fables I tell more truly tell who I am. I am telling the story that gives backing to what has happened. I am reading life backward. I am telling the story of genius, not of little Lyndon, l

We sat in the living room (then dominated by a flat-screen TV, with no tabletop cities even dreamt of) and he told us about his current task at ILM: the design and construction of a bloodthirsty demon with blue-denim skin. It was part of a horror movie set inside an Abercrombie & Fitch.

"cunning" interviewer, one might say. Yet cunning he was not. There was no duplicity: Dr. Whitehorn genuinely wanted to be taught. He was a collector of information

The man I had come to see was Danny Garcia, one of the world’s most prominent consultants for magic television shows. Danny, an incredibly innovative creator, has, like Doug McKenzie, been a mainstay in the consulting community for more than a decade.

challenge the culture,