  Q: What do Popsicles have to do with skateboarding? A: It’s the fingerboard. It all started with a popsicle! Ernon Troya invented fingerboards by bending popsicle sticks and making mini skateboards for the fingers.  Airboarding, like air guitar, is a real thing. Skaters often act out skate moves with their fingers without the fingerboards! Also, finger surfing is a thing. Stones are put into small streams to create a little wave and people use mini surfboards for a doll-sized surf session. I might start exploring this as a way to create some magic tricks in nature, with water, and the boards.  Lance Mountain is often credited as the inventor of fingerboards as we know them today. He innovated off other other models and popularized them in the skateboard film Future Primitive. Fingerboards were seen skateboarding in sinks, mimicking the moves skateboarders do in pools. I might start doing this when I do dishes! Fingerboards are often seen as a novelty in the media, but the boards often work as a way for skaters to sketch out trick ideas and then try them on their boards in the real world. There is sort of this micro/macrocosm effect of the puppet becoming the puppeteer.  Lance hinted on some deeper levels when he did an interview with Fingerboard Magazine: "I think I will have to answer that by saying I don´t think skateboarding is a sport! I guess sport means that you can take it and make some kind of competition out of it. So there is an aspect of skateboarding that is competition. I don’t think skateboarding is not a sport at all, but I think there is much more to it. And with fingerboarding I think it is the same thing. It is more than a sport.” Perhaps the skateboard and popsicle are connected - yes, it’s the origin of the fingerboard, but also, they both keep ya cool! Happy Fingerboarding!  A journal is a magical tool. For me, it is a place of magical play - to create sketches and drawings for ideas, write down philosophical thoughts, and to work on my imagination. The magic happens when we will these ideas into reality, making our dreams come true. I thought I would start a series of sharing little glimpses into my journals and sketchbooks so you can see some of my creative process.  If you throw a coin and spin it so it stays flat in the air, and it hits your palm near the center (creating a cushion of air), there is a loud pop. This became the thunder sound in my Thunderbird piece.  This is a sneak peak of a new trick that I'm so excited about, that hardly anyone has seen.  Here are some quick assorted ideas for magic.  Usually when I'm trying to come up with a show, I draw all the effects and then pick the ones that flow together.  This is a an idea I had to make a quick table that participants would hold.  This was the start of planning for my book, The Magic of Skateboarding. So that is a little bit about how I use a journal as a magical tool to manifest my dreams!
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