Random Thoughts — No comments
25
Jul 09

I am now cooler than Hannah Montana!

I don’t know why magicians hate doing kids shows.  Sometimes I get the greatest feelings of achievement after I perform a magic show for kids.  You just need to know how to do it.  You can’t take the exact same show that you would do for adults and try to perform it for kids.  Kids will inherently know whether or not you created this show for them.  You need to respect the kids and give them a show built just for them.

I have a great show for kids between the ages of 4 and 10.  And I have a great family show and adult show.  However, a couple days ago I was called upon to perform for a summer camp with kids between the ages of 8 and 16.  OH NO!  In the past, every time I’ve tried to perform for the tweeners age group, I just barely scraped by.  At this age, they are not interested in the kids magic and they do not appreciate mentalism.  So I took my own advice and started building a show from the ground up, just for this age group.

The show was phenomenal.  I mean, they absolutely loved it.  After revealing the final load on the cups and balls, I brought the house down.  But I wasn’t quite finished yet.  The finale was John Kaplans brilliant “Mind Reading Orange”.  When I pulled the selected card from the orange and the corner fit, they couldn’t get their jaws off of the floor.  It was priceless.

However, I’ll never forget what one of the kids said as I had packed up and was walking out…

“He is now cooler than Hannah Montana!”

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Random Thoughts — No comments
25
Jul 09

It was intense!

Went to lunch yesterday with some friends.  They were having a business meeting and I was asked to stop by and perform some magic for their acquaintances.  So I went to lunch with them and performed my regular close-up set.  They were suitably impressed with what I had done and were a very captive audience, so I decided perform one more routine.  Something new, something a bit different.

I performed Docc Hilford’s amazing Living or Dead routine with the pendulum.  It was something that I’ve been playing with for a while and decided to finally try it out.  HOLY CRAP!  The reaction was amazing.

If you are not familiar with the effect, it’s essentially a living and dead test that utilizes a pendulum to determine which of several business cards has the name of a deceased friend written on the back of it.  As a kicker, without ever apparently looking at the other side of the business card, you then reveal the name of the deceased.

Trust me, this is powerful.  However, Docc’s routine and patter turn this into a pure miracle.  It’s definately something quite different than just a mere card trick.  In fact, before I began this routine, I led into this with a powerful mentalism routine just to set the mood.

This is strong stuff.  While they may never remember how that magician made that card jump to the top of the deck repeatedly, they will always remember this.

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Tips and Tricks — No comments
22
Jul 09

Why didn’t I think of this?

I was having dinner the other night with the very talented magician and hypnotist Chuck King.  While we were going over the subtleties and intricacies of “the pass”, Chuck gave me a beautiful tip for practicing card moves:

Add an additional 25 cards to your deck of cards when practicing.  Anything you can do successfully with 77 cards, you can do with 52 cards without thinking.

Now why didn’t I think of that?

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Random Thoughts — No comments
21
Jul 09

I Didn’t Get the Memo!

Just a few days ago, I was perusing one of my favorite mentalism message boards (The Mentalist Sanctum), and I came across a post that gave me some food for thought.  In this post, the author mentioned that he is going to leave mentalism.  By this, he meant that he is going to stop performing, stop visiting the message boards and stop actively participating in the field altogether.

Is anyone else as awestruck as I am?  I didn’t know that this was even possible.  I didn’t know that we could just leave.  Since when was this allowed?  I didn’t get the memo.

Seriously, for me to do that would be like cutting off an arm.  This art is something that I have been absolutely consumed by since I started out as a 7 year old prestidigitation extraordinaire.  Not an hour goes by when I don’t think on some aspect of this art.  Whether I am thinking of a new line to put into my show or a new way to earn money from my passion, I am constantly consumed by it.  I constantly find myself lurking in some magic or mentalism forum whenever I get a free moment.  I break out into hives at the thought of not being able to perform on a consistent basis.  Sometimes I swear I might perform for free if my clients couldn’t pay.

Think about this:

  • No more lurking around the message boards (God knows we love the “Green Place”).
  • No more frothing at the mouth at the latest offerings from the dealers
  • No more grumpy cat fights about the latest from the “Penguin Boys”
  • No more e-books
  • No more fancy clothes for performances (where else am I gonna wear my bowler hat?)
  • No more gasps of astonishment
  • No more involuntary dirty language from amazed spectators
  • No more use of the word “spectators”
  • No more trying to amaze the wife
  • No more thumbtips (that’s just crazy)
  • And bunches of other stuff that I can’t begin to relate…

What the hell else would I do?

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