Yo and welcome back! We got magic and Dr. Seuss who many consider magic.

Yo : #SetTheVCRLast night Derek DelGaudio's In & Of Itself premiered on Crave. (This was on Hulu for Americans since January 22, this is it's Canadian debut.) This documentary (is it a documentary? What are comedy specials?) is sublime.

It's PostSecret (if you've ever seen that show live it's incredible) meets Simon Baker's Mentalist (the vest and mentalism part...not the whole serial killer saga).

This is magic! Yes! But it’s also the spark magic ignites…it’s the same spark we’ve seen in Justin Willman’s Magic for Humans. I cannot stand vulnerability. It's like farting at a funeral but this a celebration of its many benefits.

Know that Derek DelGaudio’s remarkable one-man show, which enjoyed a lengthy Off-Broadway run between 2017 and 2018, is brimming with card tricks, optical illusions, and even teleportation. What?!

If you don't know the magician then you know the names in the credits: executive producer Stephen Colbert and director Frank Oz (who of course worked with Jim Henson's Muppets. As a puppeteer he performed Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal,Grover and Cookie Monster. So dude knows all about optical illusions.).

Echoing Magic for Humans DelGaudio transforms the usual magic hustle into a powerful meditation on existential yearning and his own bumpy quest for meaning in life. I mean what’s more important? The magic or the magician? The story or the writer?

Magic is the ability to re-see: it's the distinct capacity to focus like binoculars or a camera. Even accepting misdirection at face value we just suck at it (ask witnesses to a car accident what they saw. We mucho suck.)

It's the classic difference between hearing and listening. The problem is that to see and to listen takes time. It’s like when somebody stutters don’t jump in and finish the word for the: let them work to get the word out. Even if that's slower.

Really: Arcade Fire have written DelGaudio’s anthem:"It seems strangeHow we used to wait for letters to arriveBut what's stranger stillIs how something so small can keep you aliveWe used to wait."

We used to wait! In & Of Itself is patient: the zen meditation of developing photos in a darkroom waiting for the revelation.

We're a culture speed-addicted to eliminating friction: the only thing we wait for now is the bus. Everything else is instant coffee: digital photos, streamers, emails. Except healing. It doesn't matter if it’s a broken arm or a broken heart we can’t fast forward the healing process. And that’s what this magic special is: an invitation to chill; take a moment like loafing in the airport lounge waiting for your flight. Eventually your flight will be called and you’ll be on your journey. You’ll be busy again.

These chill moments like this magical documentary are a gift.

For more on what you can see on TV this week; here is this week’s #SetTheVCR.

Yo: My Summer LairToday is Dr. Seuss Day! So to celebrate attached is My Summer Lair interview with Brian Jay Jones who wrote the incredible biography Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination. I didn’t know much about Dr. Seuss so this was great at filling in all the gaps.

Yo : Morning Tea LinksAnd keep with Dr. Seuss Day! A strange bit of news...oh the strange places the culture will go.

“6 Dr. Seuss books will no longer be published due to racist imagery.” A silly decision from Dr. Seuss’ estate. The whole point of his estate is to manage his legacy which means showing HIS evolution. Not ours. There's no such thing as problem books; there's only problem readers. I don’t understand how some people are terrified of pop culture.

Make sure to ah...tweet this out? National Day of Unplugging is an awareness campaign that promotes a 24-hour respite from technology every year the first weekend in March: this year it’ll be March 5. Is that also consider National No Pants Day?!

Lastly, how about Audio from Mars!!!! “This set of sounds from the surface of Mars were recorded by the microphone on the side of NASA’s Perseverance Rover on February 20, 2021.” So now we have images, video and audio from a planet. This is a wild time to be alive.

This magic moment was brought to you bySammy Younan-28-

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