When I started doing magic as a kid, my parents had no problem.

The first trick I bought at Macy's was a little wooden board where a quarter would appear and disappear.

I brush my teeth with a Sonicare toothbrush before every show.

I fell in love with magic acts and bridged into that.

But Vegas is really my first home.

For me, I was watching Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Orson Welles, Victor Fleming movies, and I said, "I want to tell stories like that. I want to move people like that. But I'm good at magic, so what am I going to do?" So I started using magic for the right reasons - to get the girl.

There was a guy named Ed Mishell. He was this grandfatherly guy who did all the illustrations for the catalogs and reviewed magic effects for the magic magazines, so all of the magic dealers would send him magic effects for free-it was a great deal. His basement was full of this stuff. He took me under his wing, and he would sneak me into the Society of American Magicians meetings in New York. It's the world's oldest magic organization.