Well shoot, I slept in and work up at 11am, a solid three hours too late and missed the stage contest. After a quick shower and running out the door, I realized that I couldn’t get off the block my hotel was on, it was barricaded. With a little bit of hangover, I figured one of the breakfast spots on my block would be just what the doctor ordered. Little do I know that I would be eating my eggs benedict while the pope drove by!
This led to my second disappointment of the week, and that he was in a Fiat, not the famous Pope-Mobile. I’m giving FISM a pass on this as the Pope’s choice of car was beyond their control.
I was able to catch the close up contest in the afternoon and it feels like as the week goes on, the competitors in both contests are getting stronger and stronger. I don’t know if it’s designed that way, or if it was just a coincidence.
After the contest, I snuck down to the dealer room to make my first purchase. I had seen a lot of the different smoke devices that were being offered by different dealers and I’ve had an idea for one, but the technology really hadn’t been there until recently to do what I wanted. These devices that create smoke have come a long way in the last few years. During all of the contests, smoke was frequently used to enhance the vanishing or appearances.
The show tonight was the close up show hosted by Rob Zabrecky. It was set like a late night talk show. Aside from some camera issues, the show was great. Tickets to these evening shows are sold to the general public and I always wonder what they think after seeing something like this. There are soo many inside jokes that non magician’s wouldn’t get. Then in the show both Paul Gertner and Michael Ammar did the cups and balls. If I wasn’t a magician, I’d wonder why at a huge show in an international magic championship that two people would do the same trick?
After the show it was down to the dealer’s room for the late night jam. A quick word about the layout of the convention. The stage and close up competition rooms were upstairs and almost everything else was two floors down. They had escalators to take you up and down two the two floors. These escalators were constantly breaking. At first the hotel thought it was too much weight on them and would only allow a few people on them at a time, but that didn’t solve the problem and as the week went on they were frequently closed. I’m not complaining about walking up the stairs, but I know for some magicians with mobility issues, this was really inconvenient and painful.
Tonight in the back of the dealer room Olmac from France was showing off some of his card color changes. He has a very unique take on this, it’s all with a “single card” and he has many different techniques for achieving the change which range from amazing to impossible!
When the finally closed down the dealer room jam at 1:30am, it was back to the Ninkasi bar, but this time to the upstairs floor (I’ve been going there all week and didn’t know it had an upstairs) for some super late night beers!
At 3am when the bar closed, we all moved out into the street and kept the magic flowing until way too late. I don’t know what time I crawled back to my hotel as my phone had run out of battery power long ago!