Cake!

I had to share this picture ... I did a Star Wars show a little bit ago. The mom really did a fantastic job setting the room up and making a great environment for the party. The crowning touch was the cake - she had a cake made up with me and R2 on it!

I love this woman!

Clone Wars cartoon

There is a sneak peek of the upcoming Clone Wars cartoon on starwars.com -
http://www.starwars.com/video/view/000478.html
It looks GREAT! My wife and I don't have TV - we have a set but we just never watched much television so we just turned off the connection. When this comes out we may have to reconsider that. :-) Or visit some friends once a week!

Stories

The forum went quite well. It was outdoors - I just entertained folks as they went by. I had one lesson to learn - I planned to do about ten minutes for folks. In my mind, I figured they'd be moving on and I'd get a new crowd and do about ten minutes for them. I was limited to stuff that could be done surrounded and had no reset time so that I could just keep performing without having to stop, so I could only bring certain tricks with me but that fit with my plan.

So I gathered some folks, did my ten minute set and I discovered the flaw in my plan. No one left. :-) I suppose that's a GREAT problem to have, they liked what I was doing, but ... I ran through all the routines I brought with me, ran through some I brought that I hadn't planned on doing, and then just just warned them I was going to start repeating and went for it. Fortunately that went pretty well!

Another public show!

The library show went wonderfully - there are even pictures of it on my site now, under the Star Wars section. Everyone was in a great mood and laughed and was really responsive - so I was very pleased with how everything went.

I'm doing another public show on Saturday May 19th at the Forum, on 5155 Peachtree Parkway in Norcross. That will not by my regular show, it'll be closeup magic. As folks walk past I'll gather a small crowd, do some effects, and repeat. I'll be there from 1 to 4.

If you're in the area ...

Library Show

Want to see my show for free?

I am doing a library show Saturday at the Fayette County Public Library at 1821 Heritage Parkway, Fayetteville, GA (maps.google.com will tell you how to get there - http://tinyurl.com/2s9eng ) at 2:00 on Saturday. They are doing a Star Wars day and called me up and asked if I would do the Star Wars show, so … I recently found out there would be more Star Wars stuff after my show, but I have another show afterwards and can’t stay to see it. I’m a bit disappointed about that, I wish I’d known about it before I booked something else!

Card Trick

This was a very interesting card trick ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voAntzB7EwE
Someone sent me the link. I watched the first half and thought "Cheesiest trick EVER!" But then the second half ... well, that part made it worth sending the link about.

Babies and plots

My new provider is working GREAT - I'm very happy! My old one was fine until about two buyouts in a row happened, so I was sorry to see that go away, but it's nice to be stable again.

My wife's second pregnancy is going well, and I'm very excited about it! Babies rule. Our first child is now a toddler, and it turns out that toddlers rule too - he is so much fun! He can say a few words now. One is "shoe". If we ask him to get his shoes he will get all excited and run as fast as he can to get them because he knows he's about to get to go play outside. Yesterday he ran all the way up the stairs (with me right behind him to make sure he didn't fall) which is a laborious process for a little guy - but the whole way up he was excitedly saying "Shoe!" So needless to say my wife and I were pretty much wrapped around his little finger.

So that's my personal news! Show wise, I have a routine with a rope that gets pulled through a coat that a volunteer wears - I love the routine but it always seemed to have an anti-climactic ending. So lately I've been rewriting that routine - it's got a similar structure, but now it has a plot and some new props. I'm going to try the new script out tonight and see how it works. That makes me nervous - I get comfortable with a routine and completely shaking it up always leaves me hoping I remember to do everything I've planned out! But I think it's a really good change, so ... we'll see what the audience thinks of it tonight!

Web changes

Well THAT was fun! My ISP got bought out and seems to have been shuffling things around a lot...I wouldn't mind, but I keep finding my web pages down, or email no longer working, etc, and they keep not bothering to tell me until I call to find out what's changed this time. So as a result I've just finished moving everything to another provider. I'm blogging about it because if you've emailed me in the last few days and never got a response, or if you saw my pages down, that'll be why! (I think I lost a days worth of email in there somewhere!)

Hopefully everything will be smoother from this point on ... I have some other pages hosted with my new provider and they've all been fine. So it's nice to have everything with one provider.

Copelands

I'll be performing at Copelands tonight, Feb 20th, for Mardi Gras - from 6 to 8. I haven't been doing much public restaurant work lately, so come on out! It's a good restaurant and I've got some cool stuff to show! It's at 3131 Cobb Parkway in Atlanta.

I'm going to see the Thrasher's play hockey Saturday night ... that's the one funny thing I found when I started performing magic. If my wife and I make plans, I have to make sure I make them well in advance, put them on my calendar, and not take any bookings that afternoon! I'm looking forward to seeing the Thrashers play, though - my wife actually got me into it. So I'm relatively new to hockey, but I've really been enjoying it!

New personal record!

I've been doing two shows on most Saturdays lately, which has been quite interesting. I originally would stop between shows in a parking lot and reset things for the next show, but as I did this more I started changing things so that I could reset the show while packing it up, so as I left the first party I'd be ready for the second party. (That now works easily for everything but ONE trick ... so I don't always do that one, even though I love it!)

So last Saturday I had two shows, and got a call about a third show. It just worked out, it was right after my second show and in the same area, so I took it. That's the first time I've done three shows in a single day - I was quite pleased!

The other interesting thing is that they were all totally different shows - one was a birthday party, one was a Boy Scout Blue and Gold, and the third was a corporate event. They all seemed to go quite well, though - I certainly hope that everyone had a good time!

R2!

I got a lot done! The middle foot is in, and raises and lowers electronically (so it's set to be hooked up to a remote control later.) Then I got curious, so I took all the bits I've been working on and hooked them all up. The legs move from two leg to three leg position electronically fine, the only big piece remaining is to figure out how to have the foot hinge to the leg - the hinge has to lock in both two and three legged mode, so it's not as easy as one would think. But check this out!

R2!

I have a bit over a week off from everything ... so I'm quite excited about that. It's not often that I get that much time off, although I usually try to arrange it over Christmas so it happens. So, this means one thing - R2 building! R2 is actually close to done if I were to just stick all the pieces together, but where's the fun in that?

So over the next week I'm going to try to give R2-D2 a third leg that extends mechanically. Wish me luck!

Rewrites!

This was a busy weekend for me! I did a corporate show Saturday and two Star Wars shows Sunday. (The corporate show was quite the shindig - I was impressed!)

The two Star Wars parties were interesting. I'd been tinkering with the script, and since I had two shows in a row I rolled out the new script. Several routines were totally refocused - the same trick but with a different routine presenting them - and the show itself was changed in focus. I thought it flowed better this way, so I'm pleased with it. It's always fun changing the show up. It keeps me on my toes, and every once in a while I hit on something I'm really pleased with. :-)

I also have been thinking about the show I'm presenting now and the show I had a year ago - both were good shows, but about half the material has changed in the last year. I really have fun trying new tricks, and the show keeps changing as a result. Hopefully for the better!

Coolness!

I did two parties Saturday, both for repeat customers which is quite nice, I always appreciate that quite a bit.

When I went to the first show, they walked me into the room where I would perform, and in the back was an eight foot long banner with my logo on it! I was totally blown away! I have never had anything like that happen before!

They'd found some magic imagery on the web, added my logo, and it looked great. And after the show they rolled it up and gave it to me! The father told me how to make a frame for it, so I am going to do that and might start using it as a backdrop. I'm totally delighted with this, that really was the coolest thing I've ever had happen during a show!

Star Wars magic

I worked at a restaurant in Douglasville last night. I work there sometimes for another magician. I had been doing a trick with six Star Wars action figures - I just tried it out for several weeks to experiment with a magical concept and see if it would work. It did, and I stopped doing it eventually.

My magician friend told me people had asked him about it. I hadn't expected that - but when folks start asking about a trick I usually try to pay attention! So I started performing it again last night.

I showed my son his first magic trick!

Yep! I can now prove that I can fool a one year old baby!

He was busily emptying the laundry baskey (he loves to take things out and put them back) and he handed me a dirty bib. So I tossed it back into the hamper. He took it back out and handed it back to me. I tossed it back into the hamper. We repeated this a few times, then I took the bib, and put it into my left hand and held my left hand shut in front of him. He grabbed my fingers and opened my hand ... and no bib was there!

He had a VERY confused look on his face.

I'm very proud of myself.

Jeff Dunham

Last Saturday my wife and I went to see Jeff Dunham at the Punchline. I like him a lot, he's very funny indeed and I got tickets quite a while ago. Good thing, too, as they sold out!

When we got there, our seats had been given to someone else. Evidently they had double-booked our seats, which they weren't sure how it happened but there it was. So they sat us in the balcony. I was a bit iffy about that at first, but what the heck. So we got up there, and sat next to a guy and his son. They actually walked us through the offices and whatnot to get there, evidently it's a private "VIP" sort of thing. I started talking to the guy we sat next to, and found out that we knew each other slightly through the magic community and had friends in common, so we were chatting away in no time.

Now the interesting thing is that he also knew Jeff Dunham, and Jeff Dunham actually came up to say hello. So that was WAY cool. I didn't really have anything interesting to say and it was brief, don't get me wrong as it wasn't a huge deal, but it was pretty cool. After the show we passed Jeff Dunham again and talked to him for a few more seconds. For the record - not only is he funny as heck, he's a VERY nice guy.

So what started out as a misfortune turned into something nicer than I'd intended ... I was pretty happy about that!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving should be fun - I don't have any shows booked and I am spending the whole weekend with my wife and baby. Although I am planning on spending some of it working on the Rocky routine and another routine that I'm excited about. Gotta have SOME magic in there!

I also finally finished working on my garage - I now have a decent workshop in there. We got a new minivan, which is really nice - the Star Wars show finally fits nicely in my car, and it's wonderful for my son - but it wouldn't quite fit in the garage. Which means I suddenly had a space to build out a workshop.

So ... now that it's done, I am looking forward to getting back to R2. I am setting aside some time around Christmas and am curious to see just how much I can get done!

Rocky again

I have been working a bit on Rocky the Raccoon ... he has some new props. It's still the same routine, but now it's new and improved with more props! My wife and I found a little cell phone, some binoculars, a blindfold, and a top hat. I haven't yet attached the top hat, but I tried the rest out at a really fun party I did in Smyrna and had a good time with them. The kids recognized the cell phone (we got it at Build-A-Bear) but that's OK. I might paint it, though, to make it less recognizable.

I haven't yet really converted the routine, I'm just playing with it a bit, but there's one more big piece I need to do and script before I really rewrite the Rocky routine. I'm quite looking forward to doing that. I also still need to operate on Rocky and add magnets inside his skin so he can "hold" some of the props ... Rocky isn't looking forward to that part.

Halloween

Wow, October was a busy month! I don't know why exactly, but Halloween seems to be the busiest time of year for me. I think I set a personal record for the number of shows I did in a single month!

I have a new routine called the "Lie Detector" that I tried out at a few parties. I think it has potential ... but after working with it I think it's going to get a much smaller spot. I'm planning on rewriting my routine with Rocky the Raccoon, and I think I'm going to use the lie detector as a prop in that routine instead of by itself. I have been planning on reworking the Rocky routine for a while - it's a fun routine with a nice trick (cutting him into thirds and restoring him) but I've had some ideas lately that I'd love to try out, so ... I am going to use him with the same trick but a whole new routine.

So I've been shopping for props ... so far my wife turned up a little top hat that is just Rocky-sized. I love it! I have to figure out how to attach it to his head, but I am thinking magnets might just be the answer. He hasn't got any arms either, so if he's going to do anything with props like that I suspect magnets might be the answer!