Boy he's fast!

Often times i will hear something like:

' He's fast...he's so fast with those fingers...'

when i peform close-up magic.

Do you know what this means?

It means i'm FUCKING PATHETIC.

Fucking great news!

I'm travelling to Europe next July!!

YEAH!!

Travelling ROCKS!

My old pal is getting married and he invited me.

I'm not rich so if i want to go there to visit him and his family (he's also a brand new father!) i need to get some work done so as not to spend too much.

So i'm gonna go to Benidorm,Spain to BUSK! I'm a busker!!

My idea is to go to the coast in Spain and work the bars and places there.

If you know anything about making money with magic in Europe in summer, let me know!!

Cheers! :)

Travelling Magician

How good is to travel? How good is to travel for work?? I love it.

Love the hotel life! Isn't it GREAT? You arrive and everything's clean and they take care of you and the big shower head! :)

I had to travel about 500 km to the country to work at a party. This man met me at the casino (last summer) and wanted me for his daughter's sweet sixteen party. The hotel was not a 5 star but staying in a hotel for work excites me.

The gig was good. I had to stroll the reception. I did mostly card magic.

I don't know exactly why but i dropped the deck like 4 times! Duh!!! What an idiot!
The last 3 times it fell i made it part of the trick. Like i was 'eliminating' cards. I took advantage of the messy situation to generate a 'randomness' feel to the trick.
It worked out pretty well in the end.

Lots of classic forcing too. Whenever i had a card selected, i'd classic force it. At one moment i was in a classic force high and i was hitting them all. It was beautiful.

Card under the seat too. Spectator takes a card, Magician buries it in the pack, the card ends up beneath Magician's arse. Very cool trick.

Lots of improvisation too. Sometimes i'd classic force the wrong card or forget it in the process and my 'guessings' would go wrong. At that very moment i'd search rapidly for the one i had mentioned and while misdirecting the bunch, i would perform a top change. You know, nothing new...but it would work so good!

Improv rocks.

What are your thoughts while you perform?

I tend to think of Juan Tamariz's teachings. He shows up in the middle of the show and says ' don't forget to look them in the eye! All of them! Keep the threads tight!!'
His teachings pop up while i perform. He's and Williamson's. I guess i admire these guys pretty much.

How important is to be in the moment? Are you in the moment when you perform?
Or are you in auto-pilot? Auto pilot SUCKS. Sucks because you're so elsewhere instead of in your shoes.

Auto pilot destroys your work. AP means your delivering the goods like a zombie.

The power of now!

Have you read Eckhart Tolle's book? Good stuff.

When you're in the moment, you're vibing better. Things just flow.

Heavy Hecklin'

Hey!
Last gig was full of hecklers.

These old rich drunk bastards raised some hell!

They were interrupting and having their own little party and not letting others enjoy the show. Their bombs were not only aimed at me but at the rest of the audience as well. I certainly did not lose it at these drunk guys interrupting me permanently.
I fought them back pretty well. I did not take it personal in any way, counter attacked and even pre-empted many of their moves.

At first i tought 'ok, let's play hard ball then bastards' but then it was so obvious (not only for me, but for other spectators who stood up to these fellows and demanded respect for me and the rest of the guests) that they were behaving like spoiled brats that i just lost interest in beating the hecklers.

It all went right in the end. I left the place in a good mood, accepting the host's apologies and getting my money.

Had this happened a year ago, i'd have returned home rather depressed.

oops...i did it for the first time!

It just had to happen!

I arrived very late at last nite's second gig and well, she was pissed off.

'NO' she uttered as soon as she saw me.

I'm such an idiot!

I don't know, in the first place, why i said that i'd be 23.30 at her place if i knew that i'd never make it.

Sometimes i'm simply an idiot!

It's not the first time i'm late to a show. It's the first time they reject me though.

I feel a little bit 'dirty'.

I know why i perform

Because it CURES me.

When i finish a good performance i´m in my best shape.

Giving a show is the best shrink you can have.

I´m cruising some WEIRD family problems. WEIRD STUFF.

My head was all clogged up with this shit before getting to my last gig. Then i did the show and EVERYTHING was erased completely during the gig. It was like a parénthesis in my life. After the show i was feeling very good and not worried and a free spirit.

Performing cures!

Nuthouse Rock

This was weird.

I was invited to give a show at an event held at a well known madhouse in my city.

The whole thing was pretty creppy if you ask me.

The sheer sight of the building gave me the chills. Check it out:



Then those guys, madre mía, i could not feel but very sorry for them. They are out of their fucking minds!

As soon as i arrived a couple of them gave me a warm welcome. Then i learned they were after my cigarrettes. I gave the whole box away and they were so happy!

I started my show and one of them was ´taping´ the whole thing. He was recording my show with his invisible camera. This guy, ´pajarito´, turned out to be pretty funny. He had a way with words and rhymes. He also knew everything about everything. He was some sort of natural magician. He could make you travel anywhere in the world if he wanted to. He also could tell fortune and know it all about slot machines. And he was not crazy, people just call him crazy.

My show was allright. I mean, i have given better ones but the experience was unique! They liked it. They loved it untill i made some guy´s money disappear.

Usually when i ask for money during my show noone ever gives it to me easily. It wasn´t that way this time. On this ocasion, José gave me his $5 bill as soon as i asked for it. I thought ´what a lovely crazy dude!´ and he was. He was one of the guys who gave me a nice welcome and did not ask for marlboros. He actually had a nice vibe. But then, when he realised his money had disappeared from the purse...jesus christ. He started yelling and screaming and kicking and throwing stuff to the floor. ´ I want my moneeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyy ´ he yelled. He was quite out of control. A woman who was there says to me ´ oh don´t worry, he´s an actor ´. I quite freaked out so i decided to speed things a little bit. I made his money appear inside a bag-o-chips and he recovered his cool. Everyone clapped and i got the hell outa there.

Even though i left the place feeling a little bit sad i enjoyed the whole experience. It´s a GREAT thing to do stuff like this. To use my Magic and talents for a good and honest cause. I´m actually thinking of doing more of this sort of gigs. Gigs for people who actually need them.

Zoolander´s disease actually exists!

I was giving a show at this boring corporate party and i summon a female spectator onstage. We talk a little bit and then i give her instructions: ´ you´ll have to read the first word on the left page of the book´. She gives me this weird little face and whispers something.

Me: ´is there any problem?´

She: ´Yes, there is a problem´

Then somebody approaches and says something to her. Her face goes back to normal and then she says ´ok, i´m done. I got the word´.

I finish the trick not knowing exactly what happened, she goes back to her seat, the show ends, etc etc.

After the show it all came cristal clear. Someone from the audience came and tell me she suffers from some sort of Zoolander´s disease! She cannot tell left from right! She just can´t identify them. Even if you tell her which is rite and which is left, she WILL FORGET IT INSTANTLY. SHE CANNOT REMEMBER WHICH IS LEFT AND WHICH IS RIGHT, NEVER EVER!

I thought i had seen it all!


Ps: Same thing happens to me with Sashimi and Niguiri.

Earning my chops

That´s the phrase i would use to describe the current stage of my artistic development.

The month at the casino went by and it was a good experience. Not only money-wise; i FINALLY tried new stuff out. All the stupid whinning reached it´s end. All i had to do was WORK. Williamson once said that the best advice for a magician was ´work, work, work´. And he´s damn rite! When you work, you naturally tend to try stuff out and to take ´little risks´ that end up paying a lot. You get sharper and fit.

Among the items that i´ve been getting a lot of pleasure and education from, were:

Spoon trick by Dr. Sawa / David Williamson.

Man was i shy and fearful to try this item out! The first times i did it only for kids. They are the BEST judges for a couple of reasons. One is that i fear not kids and two is that they are usually more shrewd than adults and can spot the trick more easily.

Eight kings treathened to save...

I did some Erdnase reading and picked up this item to experiment. Lovely. It´s old but what the heck? It´s great. The old ´guess your card´ trick is lovely! I just love doint it!

Card under the seat

This was a killer. Whenever i was invited to seat i´d start ´jazzing´ with a selected card and it would usually end up below my pompas after sundry revelations.
It´s so easy to do and it´s so powerful. I learned a lot from this.

There is one trick that i started doing some time ago with good results and was getting rather confident doing but now i´m not ´cause it backfired a couple of times:

card under spectator´s watch

I did it a couple of times but it did not go well. Once they even saw me carrying the folded card under the guy´s wristwatch. It was pathetic :)

Many times i pulled a miracle doing some version of Vernon´s:

The trick that cannot be explained.

Don´t you just LOVE when you somehow (ie: spell the name of the spectator and there resides the card he thought of) manage to pull a miracle out of NOTHING? :)

Lot of second dealing too. Tried out Paul LePaul´s spread pass too, and even some real fortune telling!

Good times!