Alki Beach Magic Studio - Tuesday Night Session

Another intimate gathering of a few magical friends. Our regular Tuesday Night Sessions come and go with varying levels of attendance, enthusiasm and inspiration. Lately we have enjoyed fewer guests, the smaller group this week (Steve, Mark, Buster, Me and Becky showed up later) made it easy to focus. Mark Jensen filled us all in on the Las Vegas Magic Invitational. Sounds like another good convention put on by Danny Archer. The one I went to a few years ago was one of the strongest line-ups I had seen in a very long time. 3 days of drunken debauchery with Korn, Greer, Liptak and all my other key Homies from the old days. I talked to both Thomas Wayne and Mark about their reactions to this years convention. They both saw some great magic and had fun.

I busted out a couple of card things that I had never showed the gang before. Funny how you forget completely about a trick you once learned. Mark was talking about the David Solomon lecture and I remembered a great trick from his book "Solomon's Mind" A streamlined variation of the classic "Lie Detector" trick. There was a time that I performed this trick a lot. I used to ask the audience, "who is the best liar?" Then I explain, that the magic profession is one of the few professions. . . outside of politics. . . where lying is a prerequisite. It's a good trick that's a fooler. Another forgotten mystery pulled out of my fading memory, is the old "Clock Trick" an excellent prediction routine using "Time" and a deck of cards. Both tricks could be classified somewhat as "Self Working". I performed both of these routines on the street today at Pike Place Market. After doing them a couple of times, I realized that self working is bullshit. NO trick regardless of how easy it is to perform from a technical standpoint, performs by itself. It takes the will of the performer to say, HERE is a masterpiece, I perform for you now, FUCKING MIRACLES! I did the Lie Detector during a close up set today, after, I said, "now the big finale!" The guy in the front row had his money out and said, "what? that wasn't the big finale. . . that's what I'm talking about.

Another fun session. Tim emailed us a list of everything he recorded in his magic notebook. He's been keeping notes for the last 8 months we've been doing these sessions. It's an impressive list. We want to review, revisit and rejuvenate some of the tricks that we learned. Steve has been playing with a killer JC Wagner effect. He also brought his new James Riser Copper Cup. A thing of beauty.
Speaking of cups, Mark freaked on his high end set of copper cups sticking improperly. Both he and Steve were concerned, as we have been told, "Good cups don't do that". I said, what the fuck are you talking about. . . good cups DO, do that! I've said it from the beginning, they're just metal cups, you drop them, you beat on them, you use and abuse them, they're gonna get a bit bent out of shape. Big deal, get over it, learn to use them. I think Mark will try and fix them. Good luck. Mark did a nifty card thing he learned from Gaeton Bloom at the Convention. Buster did Dr. Daley's Last Trick that he learned at a recent session. Becky learned Sibyl (the card cut) from Tobias at the last South Center Session. She was doing well with it and some of her other cuts.

The journey continues, week after week, month after month, year after year. Maybe someday I'll get it all figured out.