This week I’m lecturing and performing at the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians (PCAM) convention aboard the Holland America ship, the Eurodam. I got into Canada the day before the cruise. With the extra day in the Vancouver BC area, I went to see Shawn Farquhar’s Hidden Wonders show!
Shawn’s show is great and it’s a really smart format. It’s not a rigid show, and they way it’s presented makes it feel fresh for the audience.
Then a bunch of the magicians who were in town the night before the convention all went out to hang out!
That brings us to day one of the convention. This year’s PCAM convention is on the cruise ship Eurodam. Before I got onto the ship, I had breakfast with Paul Romhany and Peter Samuelson.
Paul isn’t attending the convention, so it was nice to see him.
Boarding the ship was a potential problem for me as I had my show with me, but I wasn’t a guest entertainer hired by the ship. That means they didn’t have to let me bring any props onboard that they objected to. I really lucked out. I have a whip and that’s the prop I was worried about getting taken away.
I got really lucky, the x-ray screener saw the whip and told the person next to her that I had she thought I had a whip. The second person took my case and handed it to a third person and said, “He has a wire“. The third person opened the case and and saw a coiled up power cord and said, “is this the wire?” I said, “yes” and they closed my case and let me proceed.
Now that I was on the ship with all of my gear I could relax a little bit.
The opening event for the convention was James Cielen‘s show.
We were supposed to see his show in the main theater as part of the cruise, but his schedule shifted, so he did a show just for us. The show he did was close up magic that was projected onto a screen. It was a solid choice of material and I it was great to see what a full close up show for a theater looks like.
The next two events were presented by Daniel Garcia.
He performed a close-up show, a Q&A session, and a lecture. His material is great, and he did a great job explaining why he does things the way he does.
I picked up his One Card, which is a great way to do a named card in envelope.
That took us to about 11 pm, and it was time for me to go to bed.
Today is day two, which has the close up and stage contests. James Cielen has a Q&A about working on cruises, and my lecture is tonight. It’ll be a full day, and I’ll probably need to take a nap or two to make it through.
-Louie