Standards are different from Old and Boring

As a self taught magician I have learned most of my magic from books. Most of these books however are old already and I mean really old even dating back from the early 17th Century. Here's a sample page of that book that I have in pdf.



As you will see the book itself is written in Old English which makes it quite hard to understand but dedicated as I am I tried reading it and of course it has been useful for me. Well although I don't use all the routines in this book I still find it very useful even in this modern age.

Now this brings me to a question, why do most beginning magicians nowadays actually consider this stuff as inferior to what they see and what most DVDs teach nowadays? Don't they know that these are the standards and what they are watching right now are actually from these same books too? Sad to say but most beginner's in my opinion actually know little of the History of Magic.

Most Magic Books nowadays actually have a little History of magic part wherein you could know who were the best and innovators of a certain trick like for Card Magic there was Hugard, For Coins there was Bobo and for Close up there was Vernon etc. Again of course many don't read this part anymore because they jump immediately into learning the tricks.

I see nothing wrong with that but of course proper credit should be given to the people who have worked their entire life creating and innovating magic to go along with the times. So for all beginning magicians I would like to make an appeal that before you jump into learning a trick please do appreciate and try to know who did it first. Also before you say that the classics are boring please watch it first then if you are not left wondering how did that happen, then that's the time you should say it is boring.

Coin Magic- Some Thoughts

Coin magic is one of the most effective and beautiful types of magic. In my opinion it is very effective because it taps into one basic human need and that is money. NO I'm not saying that money is the most important thing, rather for me it is a necessity too nowadays and not having it would be very hard to live nowadays.

As I have said Coin Magic taps into our need of money and since we all know that money is very hard to earn, coin magic gives us the illusion (or at least a moment of escape) that money could be easily attained. Well I emphasized that it's just an illusion to remind us that we still have to work on it but not work for it.

Anyway, I've been trying to get myself a coin magic routine because I would like to add it to my performance. Unfortunately I only know a few moves and they don't seem to fit in a routine. So here I am still looking and practicing better moves and hopefully getting my own coin routine.



Now I'm going to share with you some videos on my take on coin magic.

Here's a simple coin vanish and reappear:



And this one is a trick I call "Got Change" (If anyone knows the real name of this trick please inform me)




I hope you enjoyed these little tricks and maybe soon I could get to have my own full coin routine.

The Magician (1973)

I've discovered this series via youtube when someone placed a comment on my page and asked me if I'm familiar with the 1973 series the Magician starring Bill Bixby. So I clicked on his channel and there I was being drawn into watching the series.The Magician is about Tony Blake a magician who does detective work. Along with his friends and sexy assistants they solve crime.

I only saw episode one and it was really interesting. The main character is very different from other detective roles, because instead of solving crimes the hard way (meaning car chases, fight scenes, gun shooting scenes etc.) he solves it with wit and magic.







The first episode too has a lot of things to watch out for. Like the use of his sexy assistant to create misdirection while he sneak in the enemies' hideout. I won't go into details on that one let's just say it's the 70's and almost every man is just like Austin Powers. That's the main reason why that misdirection works so well haha.

I like how he used magic to actually outsmart his enemies haha. I remember one when there was this thug that was about to shoot him but he pointed somewhere to divert the thugs attention and then he hit him square on the face with I believe a very hard extending magic wand. The thug was knocked out thanks to misdirection and a very hard wand

Although it was canceled after 21 episodes, it was still a great series, with magic done by Bill Bixby (no camera tricks involved)along with the interesting story lines. I wish this could be released into DVD and I hope I could get to watch all 21 episodes and who knows I might star in my own series too. LOL

My Youtube channel

I have been uploading some videos of my magic on youtube during the past few weeks and as of now I already have ten videos. I'm hoping to add more videos soon. Right now most tricks here are card tricks and maybe soon I'll be filming my own magic special LOL. Haha anyway enjoy my videos first here and i Hope you Subscribe, Rate and Comment after Watching my videos.



I hope you enjoy them all. More to come soon

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The Magic of the UP PEP Squad- Champions UAAP 2008 Cheerdance

Yesterday eight schools from the University Athletic Association of the Philippines, competed for the cheerdance competition held at the Araneta Coliseum. Unfortunately the tickets were sold out already, so I just have to be content watching the live broadcast on TV.

The drama and rivalry unfolded once more that Sunday between the two schools who had been record holder champions. Our school the University of the Philippines (UP) has been the champion record for 5 years until the University of Santo Tomas (UST) started winning and had 6 championships on their belt. Well last year was payback time for UP as we won it again with a very big margin against the other school.

Since then the pressure was on our school to defend it's title once more. being the benchmark of creativity and excellence. (Sad to say the other team keeps on claiming they are the standard)I remember back then when cheerleaders always wore skirts we were the one who started wearing pants and shorts. When cheerdancers always used pompoms we dared not to use any. Still for five years in a row we won first place always. We always set the standards that are really very difficult even for us to achieve. Although we didn't make it six in a row, we were still able to take it back and now we have defended it once more.

During the event, there were a lot of streamers showing support to each one's own school as well as streamers who try to demean other schools. My favorite of course is "100 years of excellence is more than 400 years of existence" No more explanation needed for that one. We've been the top school in this country in terms of academic excellence and we have done that in just a span of 100 years. Some may have been around longer but we are still the top.

Now back to the cheerdance proper. We were the third to perform and of course everyone was expecting more from us after the rival school had performed before us. Honestly in my opinion the school who performed before us was really boring. Although it was flawlessly executed it has nothing new and exciting about it. Our routine of course, although there were a flaws from the beginning, the fact that it is very exciting and with new moves. It was no doubt the best during that time.

Now here's the video of our championship routine:





The tribal theme really set us apart once more from the other schools and just like magic the "weapons" they were holding actually transformed into pompoms. I also enjoyed the last one when they made the vanish and formed the letters UP from their pompoms. Just to clear things, the guy who was left after the others have "vanished" is not naked, he is wearing skin tone trunks. Also he represents our famous symbol the oblation who with arms widespread, offers himself as a sacrifice for the country and who is naked for he has nothing to offer but knowledge.

Congratulations again to the UP PEP Squad for being champions in the UAAP 2008 cheerdance competition.

Is your brain wired for creativity?

77%

Created by OnePlusYou - Online Dating

I took this random quiz in a website. Synesthesia according to Wikipedia is...

Synesthesia (also spelled synæsthesia or synaesthesia, plural synesthesiae or synaesthesiae)—from the Ancient Greek σύν (syn), meaning "with," and αἴσθησις (aisthēsis), meaning "sensation" — is a neurologically-based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.

Well I've read about this phenomenon years ago in Time Magazine and I'm really not sure if I reflected some characteristics of a synesthete. Anyway as far as I know I am a person who is visually and spatially intelligent. That's why maybe I'm into magic.

I hope that I could verify if I really have Synesthesia so that I could understand myself better. In that way too I might improve my magic because I'll be inspired to be more creative. Well it might be just wishful thinking but I know that I am really special in more ways than one.

How many colors can you name in five minutes?

38

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Dating

Magicians.com Feature- Me

I was really surprised and flattered when I was featured at magicians.com blog. Here is the blog entry about it. Magicians.com is the definitive magic community of magicians by magicians. There I met a lot of magicians from all over the world, and of course it is really nice to have someone to talk with magic from different cultures and point of views. With that I was actually inspired to learn and do better magic. Also because of the community of magicians there I was able to improve on my already existing tricks and even to the point of creating my own routine.

I remember joining that community just this June although I'm part of another community that hosts a forum on magic. I remember just randomly typing on the address bar magicians.com and then I was lead to this magicians community and I immediately signed-up to be part of this community. Unlike my other community, this site has videos, blogs and a forum for all. I have actually a blog entry for this community here.

Honestly I really wasn't that active during my first few months there because I was still under training that time. Back then I would visit the site form time to time because I really want to watch videos on magic. (Although Youtube has a lot of them but of course most are clumsily done) Watching those videos actually inspired me to shoot my own and share the magic from here. Actually my videos posted there helped me improved more with my tricks with the tips and advices from other magicians out there.

I really didn't expect that I'll be featured there especially that there are a lot of better magicians than me in that community. I'm just happy that despite the hustle and bustle of the daily life as part of the labor force, I still get to do one of the things that I want and that is magic.

I'm back from four days of being offline

I'm usually off line during weekends because I allot the weekends always for the people I love the most. Anyway I really didn't expect that when we moved into our new office, the internet connection wasn't really okay yet. So for the past two days I have been reading my e-books on magic and I was also busy beating my top scores on minesweeper and space pinball. Our work relies so heavily on the internet so for the past two days we really did nothing in the office but to arrange files, play games and watch some videos.

So I'm back now and online, Well it also means that it's back to work again but of course rest assured there would be more magic here.