Magic Coventions

How does a whole day of card tricks, magic lectures, magic shows and a lot of magic dealers inb one room sound? Well it sounds and feels like a magic convention :-) In my early years of magic. I attended many conventions - some of them back to back. But now I rarely get time to go to these wonderful events. This year I was fortunate to attend one day of the Golden Gate Gathering which is a local magc convention in Foster city. Kent Gunn and his buddies arrange this great 2 day convention and it is a more intimate event as opposed to the grand national events. It is still well attended by many top magicians and a lot of fun to attend.

This year on the first day, we had letures by Bob White, Lee Asher and Curtis Kam. And of course many impromptu performances. I also had the opportunity to purchase some books from Byron Walker who was one of the only 2 dealers at this event. If you get a chance to attend a magic convention do take advantage of the opportunity. It will be a very memorable event. Convntions do end up being quite expensive to attend but you also learn a lot.

Summer is a great season for having parties and organizing magic shows. Do give me a call at least 3-4 weeks in advance if you want a magic show for your party. See http://www.amazingvijay.com/ for contact info.

Outdoor magic shows

People often ask - can you do a magic show outdoors? This can happen when you want the show in your backyard or if you want me to do the show in a park. Well this weekend, I did both. On Saturday and Sunday we had beautiful weather and I did one show in someone's backyard and one show today in a park. The shows were a huge success and everyone loved the magic and the entertainment.

You do have to watch a couple of things. I need parking close by and you need to find a spot preferably in the shade - otherwise the kids may have the sun shining in their eyes. I may also not wear my grand Indian costume and may go for something colorful with a vest instead. Most of the times I can do the balloon also but if it is too hot or if you have too many kids, you may want to do the illusion show instead.

In general, it is a lot easier if you can arrange to do the show indoors but in the coming few months, outdoors is definitely an option. I am looking forward to long days and a great summer ahead. My Google places page has been very active and many of my recent customers have given me 5 STAR ratings, so do feel free to browse this page.
http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=14991854654008109352

Enjoy the rest of Spring season!

Math Fun

You may have seen the Fun Stuff page on my web-site http://www.amazingvijay.com/. If you have not, here's a taste of the kind of stuff I have there. Let me prove (yes mathematical proof) that 1=2. Sounds impossible - read on.

Well, that's not possible - is it? You are right, it is not - but can you spot where the fallacy (mistake) is? If you cannot figure it out, do send me an email at amazingvijay@gmail.com and I will tell you where it is.

If you enjoy this type of stuff - do read that page on my web-site or send me an email. Until next time, have a magical spring !

Magic tricks using your iPhone

I recently got an iPhone in December 2010. It is amazing that there are many magic tricks you can do with an iPhone. One of them is called iSoda and I have been doing this in my birthday party shows these days and invariably the kids love it. In fact some of the kids menstion that it was their favorite trick. Basically what happens is this - there is a screen that looks like a vending machine. You press the slot and the screen fills up with a soda. You can actualy shake the phone and it appears that the soda shakes and froths also. Then you put the phone to your mouth and empty the soda. Looks very real indeed :-)

This trick is done as part of my "3 quick tricks" segment that I introduced into my show last month. If I don't do this at the show - please ask and I will do it just for you. As always go to my web-site if you want to learn more about magic:
http://www.amazingvijay.com/

Magic Contests - continued

I am happy that news about our Close up contests appeared in the magazine for the Internation Brotherhood of magicians. Look here for the article that appeared in the January issue. There's a better version on my website http://www.amazingvijay.com/

Magic Contests

Several magic clubs have contests for magicians. Our magic club San Jose IBM ring 216 has 3 full competitions every year - one for walk-around magic, one for close up magic and one for stage magic. This year I participated in the close up competition. The winner is decided by the audience. Unfortunately this year there were very few non-magicians in the crowd - so it was mostly magicians voting for magicians. While there is nothing wrong with this per se, it does change the tone of the competition. I did pretty well in both my perormances (each performer did their show twice) but did not win. All of us did have a fantastic time. Our club was fortunate to have as many as eight talented magicians compete that evening.

If any reader of this blog is interested in attending a magic club meeting as my guest, please do send me an email at amazingvijay@yahoo.com

Before we wrap up the year 2010, I wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Multiple shows on the same day

This month I have had two weekends where I had to do two shows on the same day. I have done this several times before but usually the shows are far apart e.g. one show at noon and one at dinner time, But this month the shows were back to back i.e. I finished one show and immediately drove to the next one. Some of these shows were also quite far apart and hence this was an added challenge. I discovered that the shows needed to be about 2.5 hours apart if the shows were far away from each other and I had to pack quite efficiently after the first show in order to be able to do the second show effectively.

Now I bring a fair amount of stuff for my show since I believe in a large and visual show as opposed to entertaining out of a small box. I know I can entertain a crowd with a deck of cards but I also think the larger effects also have their place and kids just love large colorful effects like my popular Hippity Hop Rabbits. It is amazing how many kids have not seen this wonderful effect and absolutely love the ending. People also love the famous flower trick from India and that is also a large item that I have to pack and carry from show to show. I recently purchased a Lefler table and this makes the packing and hauling easier thought it is very heavy.

I can assure you that 20 years ago when I started doing magic there was no way I could do 2 entertaining shows (sometimes with slightly different effects) back to back but now that I have a streamlined show and effects for different age groups I can do this easily and I enjoy it. Today is the start of Fall (or autumn as they say in England and India) and I hope to do many shows in Fall and Winter.

By the way, we now have short video clips on my web-site - so do check out:
http://www.amazingvijay.com/