Naquada

Well tonight is my stag do, and we’re off for quite a fitting evening at Simon Drakes House of Magic in London.

Simon of course brought the wonderful and now cult following ‘The Secret Cabaret‘ show to Channel Four in the 1990’s…

The show was excellent, and featured a huge number of fantastic names, for years it was only possible to watch the series on tape if you’d recorded it, but last year Simon managed to negotiate the rights to his portions of the show to create a DVD of the two series.

The bad news is that for a number of reasons the license for this is coming to an end..

So again the Secret Cabaret will vanish, as mysteriously as it appeared.. However there is a plus point though… Simon will be selling the remaining stock of the DVD’s at half price (£12.50+p&p) from his website.

Tonight’s going to be great.. my friends.. Magic, Simon Drake and a few drinks.. I’ve never been to the House of Magic, but heard great things, and when I spoke with Simon he was all up for letting me have my stag do there, and have go out of his way to help us and be the ‘ultimate host’…

..you can’t ask for much more!!!!

The Berkshire Magicians are again holding a Magic Show - ‘An Evening of Comedy Magic. Illusion and Mind Reading‘, this time at Loddon Hall, in Twyford. Berkshire. You may remember we ran one of these events back in January this year..

The doors open at 5:30pm for close-up magic in the bar, and the show starts 7pm sharp.

Simon Alexander will introduce international Illusionists ‘The Molins‘, Simon Williams will present Comedy Magic, and Ian Souch will demonstrate his awe inspiring Mind Reading.

Clive Winterton and Robert Bone will provide additional closeup magic before the show and during the interval.

Tickets are £10 and full details and maps can be found at www.berkshiremagicians.co.uk

A clever way of getting your brand across.. and as I mentioned before.. It’s nice to see magic in demand for stuff like this..

Dynamo is one the UK’s young an bright magicians.. In huge demand for a number of high profile companies, he’s now turned his hand to helping Nokia with their new Nokia Connectors campaign

Both videos feature some nice magic with the Nokia phone’s

It’s nice to see magic coming back into the mainstream again.. and it’s nice to see it’s the UK guys working in conjunction with companies like Nokia to bring it to the public eye..

If you read my blog, you’ll be aware that Dynamo did his first UK lecture last year at the International Magic Convention in London

Jack Parker passed away a year ago, on the 30th June 2007. It is no exaggeration to say that Jack was one of the best card magic creators of our time. He was an inspiration to many card magicians and showed just what it takes to develop a great magic trick. A lot is owed to Jack Parker.

His good friend Andi Gladwin, published a book on his card magic last year; 52 Memories, with contained 52 pieces of Jack’s best work, and you known when people like Richard Kaufman, David Acer, J C Wagner, and Paul Harris and David Regal sing his praise, it was a huge loss when Jack died long before his time, and we should remember his life.

To celebrate his magic, Andi Gladwin will be sharing a video of his magic every day for the next week. If you’ve never seen Jack Parker perform before this is a perfect opportunity to experience him performing some of his best creations. The video marathon will have a new video posted each night at 12am (GMT) each day this week at http://www.andigladwin.co.uk/jack-parker/

You can also get the book 52 Memories directly from Andi, which without doubt is one of the best books on cards I have read from some time.

So its been a little quiet on the blog the last month, mainly due to wedding planning commitments (invites, information sheets, websites and so on), but also due to some of the other projects I’ve been working on.

The Magic Convention Guide is now up and running well and attracting a lot of visitors, especially now that you can search for and book hotels for conventions through our partners on the site. The Home Counties Magical Society Website is also going great, with literally thousands of visits now per month!! I’ve also now joined the management team at what I think is one of the best Magic forums on the internet, The Magic Woods.

I’m very proud to have been asked me to come on board to The Magic Woods Team and help further the forum. There are some exciting things that I hope to do with conjunction with The Magic Woods Forum over the next year.

Recently The Magic Woods completed a Q&A session with Teller from Penn and Teller that ran for over a month, and other names that have frequented and openly discussed magic with the members have been Ben Hart, Simon Drake, James Randi, Jeff McBride, Jason Palter, Dynamo, Angelo Carbone, Justin Miller, Michael Paul, Jay Sankey, Whit Haydn, Eugene Burger, Cardone, Zenneth Kok, Paul Zenon, Keith Pascal, Nathan Kranzo, Banachek, Paul Daniels, Daniel Garcia, Steve Dela, Luke Jermay, and Daryl.

It’s also always been my goal to join The Magic Circle, in fact I actually joined as an associate member when I was much younger, but neglected to really pull my finger out and do my exam. The Magic Circle don’t run associate memberships anymore, so it’s all or nothing now!!

Our Society now has in it’s midsts The Regional Representative of the Magic Circle for the Home Counties, Keith Churcher who is a Member of the Inner Magic Circle with Gold Star. This of course means that if your in the ‘Home Counties’ area, which includes Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, arranging your Magic Circle entry has never been easier. and you can contact him for more information.

This morning Keith kindly delivered my welcome pack, which is a bit daunting when you see it in black and white (and a splash of colour!).. It looks like our regional exams might be around September, just in time for the wedding!!

So I just need to work out, and polish my routine, practice, relax and practice a bit more!!!

Fingers crossed, and sorry to everyone over the next few months who will have magic forced on them whilst I’m practicing…

I said previously that I’d been busy, and hence the blog has got a little side tracked, so what have I been up to.. Well quite some time ago a site was set up to list Magic Conventions, talk Magic Conventions, review Magic Conventions, and cover.. well.. pretty much everything you needed to know about Magic Conventions..

The sites been a little dormant for a while, but after a long period of dust settling on the site, I’ve taken over running it, and The Magic Convention Guide is back and cranking up to running at full speed again!

I’d like to express my sincere thank yous to Table Magician Noel Qualter, Creative Design Agency - Monster Creations, and Publisher and fountain of all knowledge Andi Gladwin, for their generosity, and agreeing to let me loose with their original project.

I have some very exciting ideas for the site, and I hope that you will support it’s growth. As well as the features that were part of the site before, I’ll be offering a lot more, including more interviews from the convention celebrities, convention gossip and rumors, and even practical things like a list of hotels in the area of each of the conventions (as well as the reviews), I’ve teamed up with a number of hotel providers to allow you hopefully an easy method of finding hotels near to the convention centers, and we hope to get the inside track on whats coming up. You might even see the odd game on the site to fill those convention gaps.

This site will now be running to generate money for two organisations, we will be donating all money from the site to The Home Counties Magical Society, and The Conjuring Arts Research Center. I hope as visitors, and contributors to the site, you will help me support both of these worthy organisations. Advertisers should contact me for information on how to sponsor the site, or advertise on it.

I’m also now looking for a team that will help me with information, although anyone can submit a review of a hotel, or convention to the normal email: info@magicconventionguide.com, I’m looking for a small team to cover conventions outside the UK, again if you are interested in joining the team, please let me know on the above email.

If you know of any conventions not listed, please let me know, and I hope, together, we can make a site dedicated to magic conventions, and how to survive them.

The Magic Convention Guide can be found at : http://www.magicconventionguide.com/

I’ve been pretty tardy with updating my blog, mainly down to a number of reasons (all good) that I’ll go to in another post at some point, but last Monday, Clive, Ian, Mo and Simon invited me up to The Magic Circle in London to see Joshua Jay.

Contrary to popular belief, I am not a member of, and have never actually been up to The Magic Circle itself, so the prospect was quite exciting, and, of course the double plus was that I’d also get to see Joshua Jay lecture.

The Magic Circle itself is located not far from Euston Station, and from the outside looks very unimposing. Turning the corner into Stephenson Way, a pair of doors with the Magic Circle Logo on them hides the wonders inside. Walking in, I was greeted by The Magic Circle’s security guard, given my guest pass for the evening, and we headed up to the Devant Room to watch the examinations for that evening.

Standing at the back of the room, watching the performers getting ready, and waiting for them to start, I actually started to feel quite sick. That nervous; I shouldn’t be here kind of sick, I’m not sure why. I think it might have been some sort of sympathetic nerves for them, about to perform for those sitting in the room, ready to mark them and establish if they were the caliber to join the ranks of The Magic Circle. I think it was the stone cold thought that soon, that might be me sitting in front of the same audience, waiting to be judged.

Once the auditions were over, we headed down to the Club Room. It was nice to bump into a few people I knew; Sav, Andi Gladwin, Noel Qualter, Iain Moran, in fact there probably were more people I knew that I didn’t get a chance to talk to during the evening, as it turned out to be quite a busy night..

Almost too soon after sitting down, it was time to head up to The Magic Circles own theatre, a 162 seater custom theatre located on the top floor of the building. I’ve never been to a magic club that really boasts such great facilities as The Magic Circle, it’s not many clubs thats can seat 162 and project the lecture onto a back screen behind the performer.

Joshua’s lecture was excellent, although I’ve read most of the content of his set in various publications it was great to see Joshua himself perform them. It’s actually quite thought provoking that Joshua is so young, and so talented.

After the lecture we headed down to the the club room for some drinks (again, a club room with it’s own bar!!), to chat and savor the atmosphere. It’s quite overwhelming, but a great place to be..

..I just need to polish up my skills to get through the interview and audition…

Pixar Studios, creators of Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Cars, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles and Ratatoullie, also create ‘short films‘. Normally to accompany the features films (you may have seen ‘lifted’ if you went to see Ratatoullie). Pixar have now started on their latest short, a film based around a magician character and his long suffering rabbit.

The film, entitled ‘Presto’, is described as featuring a turn-of-the-century magician named Presto DiGiotagione, who’s become famous for an astounding rabbit from a hat trick. His rabbit Alec become more and more dissatisfied as he shares none of Presto’s wild success.

One day while Presto is out eating a lavish dinner, Alec is left behind, locked in a birdcage with a carrot tortuously out of reach…

via: HCMS website

I’ve seen all the previous shows Derren has done, indeed I’ve seen this show at least twice, and after a busy day up in London I headed back to Reading to meet up with two other members of HCMS and two non magical friends to see the show.

Thankfully Derren has also opened a west end run of this show this time, and the Home Counties Magical Society hopefully will have some interesting news about that event in the next few days.

Last year Derren didn’t do a run in Reading (possibly to do with the Reading crowd managing to, lets say deviate most of the effects from their intended outcome year!!) but thankfully he’d decided to give them another chance and return to the Hexagon this year. We had back of the flat stalls, center tickets, a very good view point. I think one of the nice things about Derren Brown shows is that the tickets are very reasonably priced (unless you pay the £200 odd on ebay!!) and the programs are a fair price at £5.. anyhow… On entering the theatre I instantly spotted a Malloy Master Prediction box hanging above the stage, that was quite exciting in itself, since I’ve been wondering how it worked (now I know!). The stage was set in the guise of a Victorian front parlour, think Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, seances, mediumship and mystery, fitting the show very well

Before I go further, I should warn you there are some spoilers in this review, so.. if you’re lucky enough to have tickets to the remaining sell out shows.. go away.. come back after the shows run is over.. You’ll just enjoy it more…

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