What A Show!

Jimmy Durante used to say, "Wow, What a show!"
I got up early today and yes, I did my work out! Shoulders and legs and some 10 minutes on the Recumbant bike...
Packed up my wife and daughter and drove North to Everett.
Smoke and Mirrors. The 2008 edition put on by the Lynnwood Magic Club. This is an anuual event that is a fund raiser for The Burned Children Recovery Foundation!(www.burnchildrenrecovery.org)
It was held in the Historic Everett Theatre.
My magical friend Roger Needham asked me several days ago if I would help out by doing "walk around magic" before the show and during intermission.
I replied in the affirmative! I hadn't really ever done this, and felt like it is a great chance to get in some work and see how my "small" magic plays!
It plays pretty good! I enjoyed myself, I mainly did the Hot Rod, Crazy mans hand cuffs and a super card trick by John Cornelius called, Marked For Life. Marked For Life slayed people, I was astonished at how well it went over. Guess I needed to get out and put it in front of some people. The verb, WOW, comes to mind! I guess Roger got into a little hot water asking me to help out because I'm not a member of the Lynnwood Ring of Fire. Oh well, Better him, than me! Haha... I tried to bail him out by joining right then and there, I mean c'mon, it's only 15.00 bucks a year.

The show was great! Not from a technical stand point, although there were some wonderful magical moments, but rather from an entertainment point of view. The audience was greatly entertained. laughter and applause, and ooh's and aah's were constantly being heard.
My 14 year old daughter really didn't want to go, we made her! that's right, us meany's made her. She wanted to stay home and do homework, big assignment coming up. Well, we put our collective feet down and dragged her with us!
I peaked over at her during Don Brisbanes' wonderful newspaper act and saw her smiling and laughing! Sweet! Don's act was really cool. Not really magic, but greatly entertaining. Wish I could describe it. Scissors, newspaper, cuts and tears, paper hats, and paper dolls and moons and stars and, well it was quite entertaining.
The show actually opened with a fellow named Magic Joe. He did a nice dove act and multiplying balls and a nice card revelaton with a spectator.
Philemon followed that with a Rubicks cube/Die box trick, it was pretty good in Philemons darkly humurous sort of way, actually he carried it off nicely!
Charlie the juggling clown was my favorite performer. I thought he stole the show actually. Really good stage presence and a bit of audience participation. Spinning plates on sticks, juggling balls and all kinds of great slapstick humor with magic as well.
Jeff Dial, I was a little disappointed in his performance, I saw Jeff last year at Day of Magic. He performed superbly that day doing Whit Haydn's linking rings.
I think he was introducing something new tonight. It was o.k. but lots of flaws, maybe they were intentional? I saw myself a little in him, dropping a silk and getting a bit flustered...
Steve the Pretty Good closed out the show and did a marvelous job. He has come a long way. Nice Zombie ball routine to start his act, a sort of Zig Zag girl in a box effect. After that Steve got pretty comedic. He asked if we would like to see a dove effect, but he could never quite get a dove to appear, a rubber chicken, several eggs, but no dove, ending with the miraculous appearance of a live rabbit!
One other act, the M.C. Trickery. A spoof about M.C. Hammer done to rap music and patter. Two guys and it was quite nicely done and entertained everyone.
The MC's of the Magick Happens Troop of Zinger and his two young lady assistants, maybe his daughters(?). One was VERY pregnant, they did a good job MC ing the event. Did some comedy and some magic.
All in all, I enjoyed the evening, even though it was over a hundred miles round trip! ;)