Aaron
At Bar Intiki Magician
This month I will be performing at Bar Intiki Magician in Takamastu, Kagawa Prefecture. I will be peromfing close-up magic at various times during the evening with a few other magician. The dates and times I will be there are:
August 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16th from 8:00PM until 12:00AM
Aaron
Luis de Matos, Rudy Coby, William Kalush, and David Copperfield only at EMC!
The second Essential Magic Conference was held July 7, 8, and 9 2011. And wow it was another great year. Here is my review from last years event. Again this year the event was 3 days packed with great speakers. There were some returnees from last year like Eric Mead and Max Maven who are always great to watch and hear, but also some new presenters like Rudy Coby, David Kaye (Silly Billy), Fuji Akira, David Berglas and a whole lot more. The event and the content was excellent and was equal to if not better than last year. Both events had very high quality performances and talks that all magicians should see. One of the best parts of this years event was the tour David Copperfield gave of his magic museum.
On the technical side there were a few updates to the viewing system like the ability to now watch the event from an iOS device like an iPad. They also seemed to move the live chat which I believe was under the video feed last year to the side bar which I think was better. There were some technical glitches this year especially during session 7 which was the first session on the third day. From the EMC staff explanation it was a problem with their provider’s stream leaving Portugal. This caused session 7 to be unwatchable. However by session 8 the problem seemed to have been solved and during that time they created an backup stream to help those that where still having issues through another provider. I know some people where upset by this but the EMC staff was working hard to resolve this issue and they did. Sometimes problems happen unexpectedly and there is nothing you can do about it. However I applaud the EMC staff who got things back on track.
One sad point was that the live chat seemed to be a place this year from a lot of complainers which caused me not to want to use the chat. Most of the event seemed fine for me except the one session where they had big issed but other times it was working great. People who had difficulties at really brought the feeling down with what I think where complaints there we too strong. Such as this is a rip off etc. EMC is far from that. Anyways such is the net.
Overall I loved this years event and I applaud Luis de Matos, Marco Tempest, and David Britland from another great event and I look forward to next year event.
Aaron
Ouch My Thumb!
Going to start another section to my blog and is is “my stupid magic stories”. These will be stories I have of things that happened to me because of doing magic, things that happened during my shows, at magic conventions etc. I hope you will find some of the storie interesting!
The first story I would like to share happened when I was 15 in the December of 1990. This was during the height of my Christmas shows and this year was really the first year for me to have a large amount shows where I made a lot of money. I remember well that for this Christmas season I had bought myself a nice stylish tuxedo like suit with a shirt with some cheesy frills. It was in a style that was hip for 1990. Anyways, it was a family Christmas show for a kind of boat club if I remember right. As I was 15 I could not drive yet so my mother was my driver and was at the show. The show stared well but the problem came when I did the cut and restored rope. You can probably smell what is coming. Anyway I started the routine in my regular way as I was taught by Tony Eng at that time and there is a sequence where a member of the audience cuts the rope. So I had this about 8 year old boy come on stage and cut the rope. I even did all the cheesy lines of “don’t cut the pink cut the white, the pink’s my finger” etc. Well the kid cut the rope and at the same time he did cut through my thumb. At first I thought it was just a scrape. I sent the kid back dipped behind my table and sucked the blood off and all seemed fine. I quickly finished the rope trick and moved on to the next effect which was the magic colouring book. This is where things got worse. I realized when I riffled through the colouring book that there was red all over the pages, well that red was you guessed it my blood. At this time audience members also noticed that I was bleeding very badly. A nice lady came running up with a band-aid and I patched up my thumb and went on with the show. After the show when I got home I was heart broken as my frilly shirt sleeve was covered in blood and I was never to use it again. And here is the kicker to this story the next day I was helping Julie Eng with her Christmas shows as her assistant at one of the shows the kid that cut my finger was there!!!! It was like he was he was coming back for seconds. Anyways when you perform a cut and restored rope effect be careful or if you are an audience member asked to cut a magicians rope be careful! I am lucky I didn’t need any stitched but my left thumb still bears the scar.
I hope you enjoyed the first of my stupid magic stories.
Aaron
Well the Essential Magic Conference is getting close to its second conference this July. This year it will be held July 7,8,9, 2011. I attended last year and I will attend this year. You can click here to read my review of the 2010 Conference. It looks like thay have a great line up this year. Some of the presenters from last year are back with a new ones for this year. There will be 33 presenters at this event. The surprise for me this year is that David Copperfield will participating. For the list of all the presenters for this year you can check here. The nice thing out this conference as it is an internet conference you have access to the content after the live event and the DVD’s that come after. There were a few technical issues last year and I hope that they will be solved. Also, last year it took some time after the live sessions before the replay feed was available to watch. This year it would be nice to see them be uploaded faster after the event than last year.
I am really looking forward to this year and I hope to see you there as well.
Below is a video highlighting last years conference.
Aaron
Sorry it has been a while since I have blogged. These days not sure what to blog as sometimes I feel as if what I have to say is not really important to other things happening here in Japan. However I realize moving on is important to I will start blogging for frequently again. This should be a good weekend for me. Tomorrow I will attend the Shikoku Magic Friends monthly meeting in Takamatsu, then on Sunday I will attend a Hannami party. Hanami means watching flowers and it is when people go out to enjoy the Sakura Japanese Cherry Blossoms in the spring. There may not be much left as last weekend seemed to be the peak. But the important thing is I will be able to spend some time with some good old friends. We can learn a lot from Sakura, as they teach us about life and they have helped Japan recover emotionally over the past week or so. Anyways, until next time take care.
Aaron
Yesterday the Shikoku Magic Friends Club held is 5th annual show. However this year we changed the event to raise money for the horrible quake and tsunami that hit Japan on Match 11, 2011. This year we performed only close-up and there was a great turnout. After the close-up show we headed to the Marugame Shopping Arcade in Takamatsu to continue to raise money. In cooperation with the Marugame Shopping District association we where able to put this event on. We don’t know how much money we raised yesterday bit we should know soon. It was a great event and I hope that with the money we raised us magicians can help out in the tragic event.
Aaron