The number of grown human beings who look people in the eye and sincerely declare that they are bona fide wizards is mercifully small, but I have managed to stumble into the path of at least two of the more influential ones, and both times my life took a turn. Harry “Dark Veil” Wise, whose legacy remains at the core of our little enterprise here, was the second of the two, but the man who oversaw my introduction to this business was Charles Russell Brumfield, known to all as Russell. His company, The Wizard’s Workshop in Clearwater, Florida, as its name was changing to Wizard Studios, took a strange leap of faith on my utter lack of experience, and proceeded to put me through a few years of creative and technical boot camp in the mid to late 90’s, surrounded by patient and deeply talented experts who tolerated my wide eyed ignorance on virtually all topics. Together, we built custom designed special events for corporations or crazy rich citizens looking to turn a hotel ballroom or a mansion into anything from an undersea wonderland to a futuristic neon city to a jungle full of dinosaurs. A year in that company, if you said yes to everything you were asked, meant that you could install and run lasers and fog, build and paint a 50 foot long pirate galleon, drive a truck to Miami two or three times in a day, dress in a gorilla suit for a Gilligan’s Island party to fill in for a no show actor, have a run in with Norman Shwartzkopf’s personal security, hang pyrotechnics in the rafters of a sports arena, help load fake blunderbusses for a pirate raid on a beach island, and lead a lost mariachi band to their stage at a millionaire’s house in Marco Island while trying to explain to them that their horns were upsetting the live donkeys that were rented for that night. The most insane part of that last sentence was all the things I had to leave out. Russell was the creator and driving force behind that company, and was known to all as The Wizard. A giant, energetic Viking of a man, he went on from Wizard Studios to become a traveling motivational speaker, which surprised absolutely no one. Unfortunately, the world lost another mad wizard when Russell succumbed to disease in mid October, and Earth instantly became a little bit more boring, if perhaps slightly more financially stable. He put a lot of strange miles on me, but he will be missed. Due to the chaos that surrounds them, we should be glad there aren’t many true wizards out there, but we also need to mourn when we lose one, because Normal is the rust of existence. Namasté, Russell, and thanks for lighting my fuse.