panamerican

all weekend long, this coming weekend, from Friday, Oct 28, through Monday, Oct 31, i will be performing as many magic tricks to as many people in as many places as possible.

see my calendar at http://www.myspace.com/panwalker

sorry i haven't updated this blog lately.

i've been performing street magic every weekend for the last 6 weeks to get ready for this weekend.

this weekend is the official "birthday" of my semi-pro magic career. that is, on halloween, i will no longer consider myself amateur.

hopefully i can finish the business cards by this weekend.

and apparently, i'm doing LIVE AT FIVE this week. thanks, Katie!

Last night I got to Market Square (in Knoxville, TN) about 6:05pm. Talked to Scott, who said it'd be fine for me to perform wherever I wanted in the city. I ended up spending the next 4 hours doing card tricks to people in Market Square.

One of the highlights: I had two groups of people as an audience (2 young guys and 4 nice ladies, respectively). I showed them an ordinary pack of 52 cards, showing that the cards were all different and fully mixed up. I hand the deck to the first guy. At my instructions, he cuts the deck, thinks of a number between 1 and 10, counts down that many cards from the top of the deck, looks at that card, cuts the deck, and hands it to the next person. The next person does the same thing and hands it on down. All in all, I had 5 people cut the cards, think of a number, count down to that number, look at the card, cut the deck and pass it on.

I then go to the first guy, holding the deck of cards face down in my left hand, and holding my right hand outstretched to direct his eyes up and to his left. "What's your name?" "Rob" "What was the number you thought of?" "Seven" I am only looking at his eyes and his aura. "Repeat after me: Clubs Spades Diamonds" "Clubs Spades Di..." "No, you can stop there. It's a club. 1 2 3 4 5 6... The Two of Clubs. Is that right?" "Yes!" I continue and end up naming the card each person selected at random, for all 5 people.

And THAT was the trick I performed most often last night. I loved it as I made it up myself, it definitely appears amazing, and it kind of creates a mentalist persona automatically.

Since I have a lot of experience with sensing people's auras and energies, the patter actually has a lot of personal truth in it.

Yay.

I also did the Queens to Aces trick, a couple of Card Transpositions (changing in the audience's hands), some Size Changes using really big and really small cards, the Pick Any Pile But Don't Notice Your Card Is On My Forehead Until Everyone Else Is Laughing trick - an old favorite, and only a couple of the rest of the dozen tricks I had taught myself for this. Mostly, it was the Read Your Mind / Eyes / Aura / Voice And Guess Your Randomly Chosen Card trick, as it is both astounding and 100% mine.

So I've decided that I'm going to do some street magic in front of Java in the Old City next Friday, but only for 30 minutes as I'm not getting paid for it.

Well, I went to my first meeting of the local Magicians ring, and showed them the technique behind the tricks I'm inventing. Some of them seemed quite impressed, telling me "no one has ever done that here before" and that "you need to do this trick every time you come here"...

I can't wait for next Friday.

This morning I reached a new milestone in my journey towards becoming a semi-professional magician/illusionist.

While waiting for the treadmill in the heart center at Baptist Hospital, I thoroughly shuffled a deck of cards and then mastered my new technique for the first time with an entire deck.

The system I'm using is called the Dominic system. Lots of fun.

The beginning alluded to in the subject is my first visit to the Internation Brotherhood of Magicians local ring / guild tonight at 7pm.

Hopefully, I can find some card trick tutors. I have close to 20 books on the subject, ranging from very basic beginners stuff (aka using a key card) to very detailed movement-by-movement sleight-of-hand analysis. But you can only read so much.

I am very tempted to pay for and download some card trick instructions via the web (Ellusionist.com), but I'm still hesitant to spend $40 on something like that when we're currently on a modified Dave Ramsey plan out of debt...

Anyways, I'll be performing on the streets of Knoxville for First Friday (Sep 2), probably in Market Square and on Gay Street.

I'm planning on doing the two-card monte, the card through the window, the bigger card predictor, a few mind readings, perhaps some blindfolded tricks (maybe), a couple of card switches through the audience's hands, and maybe a few tricks ala David Blaine (like levitation, having someone think of a card and turning it over in an closed deck, etc.). still not sure. need to hammer out a couple of routines of six tricks apiece, and stick with them. also plan on doing lots of story improvisation.

the hard part is coming up with a street persona.