In January, I have two magic lectures: one was last week, and the other is in just over a week. I usually don’t do many of these, as my performing schedule is busiest during the summer, when the magic conventions happen.
I had a blast at the one last week for the Portland Society of Magicians. Here’s a peek at what the 90 minute lecture looks like in 60 seconds:
If your local magic club would like a lecture, feel free to contact me and we can try to make it happen!
If you’re not a magician, but “magic curious” this is a great way to get some insight into magic and also learn a bit more about the magic magic club.
If you’re a magician, there’s lot of magic to learn. This is more that tricks, there’s a lot of insight into the how’s and why’s of performing magic tricks.
The third day of the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians Convention started with the Teach a Trick workshops.
These are hands on workshops which ran about 20 minutes each. There were several stations that the magicians rotated through. It was a lot of fun and a great way to make sure everyone took away something new!
The next event was one of the things I was really looking forward to, and that was Peter Samelson’s show. I’ve heard a lot about him, read his book Theatrical Close Up.
His show wasn’t what I was expecting. That’s not bad, in fact, I really loved his show. I thought it was going to be a more “artsy” show, but his show was amazing and FUN! I chatted with him about this, and he said that he used to do a more artsy show, but wanted to do a more fun show, and he definitely succeeded in that!
After the show it was a happy hour magic jam in one of the ship’s bars.
Later that night we had Peter Samelson’s lecture. It’s a great lecture on a 12 minute act that has a lot of texture to it. His Ashes on Palm stuff is amazing!
The evening wrapped up with some late night BS’ing and magic jam
It was a super fun day! Tomorrow, the ship stops at Santa Barbara, CA, which is the ship’s only stop on this short run. Tomorrow is also my show day; I have an afternoon show at 3:30 pm, so I need to go through my gear and make sure I have everything I need for it.
The second day of the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians convention started out with James Cielen’s talk about performing on cruise ships.
James’s talk was a great insight into what it takes to consistantly be working on cruise ships.
Then it was a break for lunch, which was hosted by Henry Tom.
After lunch was the stage contest. I was recruited to be a judge, so I couldn’t watch for fun, I had to watch for “work”. Lots of great acts! One of the acts produced two live fish! These weren’t gold fish, they were about 10ish inches long and were FISH!
Last night’s lecture was a blast, it looks like we had 119 magicians attend the zoom meeting! Thanks to Drew Cardella to letting me talk to the group that he hosts every Wednesday.
One of the more fun things about the lecture was towards the end I showed something that was new that I’m working on. It was my Take Out Box production and you can read my previous posts about it by clicking here. That turned into an impromptu jam session with some great ideas. And some ideas that I had thought of and discarded for one reason or another that I’m going to revisit.
During that jam session on the take out production box a well known magician said I should release it soon “before it gets out there and someone else does“. While I agree with why I should release it soon, honestly I don’t like the idea of putting out things before they are ready. It’s a sad state of magic where someone would hear about the idea and rush to beat me to market, however that’s the nature of the business world. I’ve always said magicians need to play business like it’s a real business, that means protecting things with patents, copyright, etc. So it’s really my fault if someone gets ahead of me on putting the Take Out Box Production on the market.
Later today I’m doing a virtual magic lecture at 7:30pm eastern time. If you want the link to it, send me an email!
I really enjoy doing virtual lectures because I can use video elements for me doing the tricks in actual shows. This allows people to see me do the tricks that I teach in the actual setting they are intended to be used in. I’ve seen soo much good material die in a room full of magicians over the years. I think going forward, if I ever do in person lectures again, I will have a video element of the lecture.
During the Pandemic, I did many virtual lectures for magic clubs. I stumbled across a review of one in the Linking Ring magazine:
I really enjoyed doing these lectures. I would like to continue doing them, however moving forward with in person shows opening back up, I honestly don’t think that it would be possible to do them for a donation to the IBM or SAM endowment funds due to my performing schedule. I will keep doing in person lectures at conventions or as I travel and am in an area for the local club. It was nice to be able to give back a little bit!
Recently I did a virtual lecture for a magic club in Wisconsin and one of my favorite parts of the lectures is at the end when I do stuff that’s not normally in the lecture. One of the things I did was my Coins To Glass:
It is my great platform for me to talk about fixing tricks you like, but are broken. What I mean by that is the original Copentro trick. It’s a great trick, but that base doesn’t really work with modern standards of what magic props look like. Sure you could come up with a reason to justify the base, but it still looks strange. My method was used to completely eliminate the need for a the thick base, as the coins don’t move vertically.
What’s great about show and teaching this routine to magicians is it really illustrates how I think. How I won’t stop at the original idea (usually), and will keep pushing it until I figure it out. Also that I’m open to suggestions from other performers.
One thing that I’ve been doing are virtual lectures for magic clubs. It’s really a good medium for what I do as I can show video clips of how things actually play, versus how things play for a room of magicians out of context from a real show. The vibe of a lecture is something that’s very different from a show, and when doing the tricks, it’s hard to capture the same energy, so showing the video clips really helps me out!
LECTURE NOTES
One of the advantages to doing the lecture from home is that I have soo much stuff within an arm’s reach. If someone asks a question about a trick/prop/routine that I wasn’t planning on talking about, usually I can quickly grab it. With an in person lecture, I’m limited to what I brought with me.
Here’s some feedback from last week’s lecture:
Currently I’m doing these to raise money for the IBM Endowment Fund. The magic club that hosts the lecture makes a donation to the fund in place of my fee.
If your magic club is looking for a lecture…shoot me a note!
A couple of nights ago my local magic club hosted a lecture by Fred Blanco (Wildcat Jackson) who talked about character development. I’d seen this lecture before at another magic club and when I had the chance to bring him in to the Emerald City Wizards magic club, I took him up on it.
What I like about Fred’s talk is that he breaks character down pretty well. It’s a something you don’t need a theater degree to understand. He does a great job of teaching beginner level character, that’s accessible to everyone.
It was a fun night, and Fred also has a ton of cool props!!!
