Live Chats were a Success

As part of the anniversary week of Club Magicians live chats with famous magicians from all over the world and in these chats we had special guests that talked about various aspects of magic. It was very helpful not only for beginners as well as experts who want to improve more on their act.

Also Check out this TicTac Trick by Justin Meitz. Very creative indeed



Not only we had fun but we also had contests and the prices were really big time. Entity was given on the first day, DEEP and Amazing Alexander on the second day and Gecko just awhile ago. Too bad I didn't win the Gecko because I wasn't able to look for all of them:




It was really fun for all the members of the club.

Club magicians anniversary day one was a sucess

If you haven't able to visit club magicians yet then I'm telling you are missing a lot . Today we had a live chat with Jeremy Hanrahan creator of Entity. He shared his magic on a live chat on his group and gave us insight on a lot of things about creating new effects as well as tips on performing.

It was really nice with more than 20 people joining the chat and there were great prizes too. 2 Entities were given away to the lucky winners. It lasted for more than 3 hours and Jeremy gave Now isn't that sweet. Read more about the chat here.

Anyway just stay tuned here and read this post if you don't know about the line up of events for the whole week.

Come Join us at Club Magicians 1st Year Anniversary

If you have nothing else to do on the week of January 26-30, why don't you log on the internet and go to Club Magicians by Magicians.com and we'll be celebrating its First year anniversary! Club Magicians is one of the leading Magic websites out there when it comes to exchanging ideas among magicians and other magic enthusiasts.

Here are the details:

Join in the party!
When: January 26-30, 2009
Time: All day, every day with special appearances nightly by very special guests!
What: Live video chats from leading experts and magicians in the magic world! Lots of fun - contests, prizes, giveaways, and more!

Special Guests
Live Video Chats (all chats scheduled for 8pm EST/7pm CST/5pm PST):

* Monday - 26th: Jeremy Hanrahan - Magician, Creator (Entity)
* Tuesday - 27th: Justin Meitz - Magician, Author
* Wednesday - 28th: Jim Rosenbaum - Creator (Gecko), Magic Innovator
* Wednesday - 28th: Andy Amyx - Magician, Creator, Magic Instructor
* Thursday - 29th: Danny Orleans - Corporate Magician


Magic enthusiasts and the magic community alike are invited to join in the “Magicians.com: Sharing 1 Year of Magic” festivities for a jam-packed week full of magical events! During the week of January 26-30, 2009, Club Magicians will feature an all-star lineup of special guests for live chats and discussions, contests and giveaways, prizes and much, much more.

So what are you waiting for mark these dates on your calendars!

Looking for inner peace

It has been very stressful during the past few days and even I became quite tired with doing magic. My magic isn't like the way it used to be and it looks quite worse than before. Maybe I just need take a rest from it and maybe clear my mind from what I'm feeling. Basically it's like that I have too much magic in mind that leaves me frustrated since I can't do them all.

Maybe I'm experiencing some sort of fatigue from magic so I decided to actually go back to my original hobby which is drawing. I just set up my own deviantart account and maybe I'll get my old drawings up there. Last night I really didn't touch my magic stuff at all and I just took a paper and pencil and started drawing.

I know there is real magic whenever I draw and it has been quite a while since I experienced how my hand would guide the pencil to the paper, drawing images with each light stroke and like an artist who is so focused with the work, I didn't notice that it was quite late already when I finished the drawing.

I had been drawing since I was 5 and I got into drawing anime when I was 12. It was really frustrating for me back then not being able to draw in the style of let's say Marvel or DC and appareantly Anime and Manga offered me the way to actually fill in this frustration and made me draw human figures beautifully.

Honestly it was drawing first before magic and back in school I was really so much into it that almost every moment is an opportunity for me to practice. I drew everything from my classmates to the professor to the pictues in the book up to the 13 Presidents of the Philippines (My best work so far when it comes to caricatures too bad the teacher asked for it and who knows she might be using it as her visuals too)

I think my break in magic would do me good as for it will give me the inner peace that I'm looking for.

Just a few thoughts: Being featured again

Well I may not be famous around in my own land but I am slowly becoming famous worldwide thanks to the Worldwide Web. I am really happy whenever I get featured from different websites for magicians. My first was when I was featured at club.magicians.com the entry could be found here. Anyway since then I have been more inspired to be the best I can be in magic.

Recently I found another magician's website called the Magic classroom. I joined, got my membership approved and then I was featured. I was really surprised that I had been featured. Here's a screenshot of me being a featured member of the site. (Click to enlarge)




If you want to be a member click the banner:


Visit The Magic Classroom



I was really flattered that although I'm really not that good, I still get featured. I just know how to get around with tricks, present them and make people happy. I am really not a fan of very complicated routines and maybe that's what makes me good at least for the audience.

I do hope that someday I'll get to be known in this country too. In that way I could share with them too what I've learned from mingling with other magicians even through just the internet.

The 21 (or less) person cabinet

This is a very mind boggling illusion wherein from a small cabinet would come out a lot of people. It is believed to be originally by Guy Jarett an eccentric magician who was a genius. Until now it is still being performed byu different magicians and I find this illusion very interesting.

This is from Archini



This one from Luis de Matos



This one from Doug Henning



I hope you enjoyed this videos.

The Youtube generation Magicians

The internet has really provided us a new medium of expression. From blogs, podcasts up to video sharing sites all of them has surely provided us with new mediums of expression. With magic, it is quite common to see some people (even non-magicians) to do tricks on youtube. Sad to say though some of these so called "performers" do more harm than actaully help magic.

I myself had been guilty of posting videos in youtube, some are ok some are really bad. However in doing this I always made sure that I didn't expose any secret of the trick. Also it has helped me a lot as a magician to improve on my skills and presentation style.

Here are a few magicians whom I think that are very good and has used youtube to share the magic all over the world.

Antonio Zuccaro


Jorge Blass



I mean because of them I was actaully inspired to explore beyond what I know in magic and to become a better magician myself.

I think youtube has helped a lot of magicians in a way that it made magic from all over the world to be easily shared with other therefore helping it expand and to improve all over. However there are these so called "youtube magicians" who are actually very bad in performing tricks to the point that they are actaully exposing them.

They are very different from those who actually expose the trick (some of them I have written about already here. Back to those bad magicians, I think it is ok that they don't reveal the secrets however I think that as performers I think they should be showing tricks that were well practiced. An inferior show is a fatal blow to any magician and it might take a long time for him to get back the audience.

Anyway just a tip to them, here's a little checklist on what needs to be done.

1. Have a good Camera Ready.
2. Practice your trick
3. Get as much help as you can (stage hands, cameramen, video editors etc.)

I hope you appreciate these tips.

I don't know if this is because of too much magic or too much typing

Image Source

Right now I would like to tell everyone that I won't be posting any new updates as of the moment since I think I need to go rest my wrists for a while. My right wrists isn't feeling that good and I think it needs some rest form all the typing and the computer activities I've been doing. I really need to rest these hands because if I don't I might not be able to give you updates anymore. If anyone knows what to do please tell me for it will be greatly appreciated.

Please stay tuned for any updates on the blog.

I've just been reading a few blogs and practicing lately

After the holidays it's been quite hard for me to go back from what I usually do. When the Holidays came, I found it hard to do my usual exercise routine every morning and for two weeks that had been cold there was really very minimum movement from me.

Not only I didn't do exercise but I somewhat took a break from practicing magic. I took the whole two weeks of vacation for rest and relaxation. Honestly there are times when magic is stressful and frustrating especially if you can't get it right.

Anyway it's been quite a break from me and it has actually helped me to get things right and to do things better. I think that in whatever we do, we should always take the time to get a break from it so that we won't be burned out by it. Taking a break and relaxing from all the stress of our activity gives us a better insight because we are able to see things clearer because our minds are clear too.

I've been reading some blogs lately too hoping too find good material to write about. I chanced upon this entry that it is about a subject that is becoming a sensation in the world wide web. Here is the link with the screenshots of a facebook blog entry. Really shame on the writer of this entry and that teaches us a lesson that we should never post entries publicly less we want that the whole internet wrath on us.

Same goes with exposure of magic tricks all over the net. I may want to write a topic on it but of course it would take another long post about it.

My 100th Post

Well yes this is the 100th post in this blog! First of all I would like to thank all the readers who have been constantly reading my updates here. Although this blog is already 7 months old it only has a few posts because I would like to leave the readers with really quality posts.

I want to make sure that the readers are always left with inspiring and enlightening insights after reading this blog. Similar to what I've been learning from this podcasts by Tyas

Listening to these podcasts gave me more insight and maybe during the next few posts I'll be sharing from you my own takes on the lessons on his podcasts. Also I'll try to add my own experiences on the lessons on his podcast.

Anyway back to the achievement on this blog so far I'm still working on putting more in this blog. and hopefully I could put more features for all of you readers out there who keep on supporting this blog.

Watching TV and discovering a magic show

I was watching TV last night when I saw Rannie Raymundo's The Boss The conjurer show on ZTV on local TV. It was ok especially when they perform but problem is the set of the show makes it look very cheap. In my opinion it looks as if it was a home video shot in a garage.

Here's a sample video of the show




Sad to say but the show seems to me to be a very low budget one. The Black Background on the hosts table made it look bad and even worse the lighting was really bad. Sad to say although the magic was great the show isn't and some acts are quite boring.

Like last night there was this guy who was supposedly doing card manipulations. Honestly it was very boring. Obviously there was a mistake when the black flash string was lit it didn't burn the flash paper wherein supposedly the fan of cards would come out. Besides that the music was boring and producing fans and fans of cards (actaully the same two fans I think) are quite boring. I switched the channels after seeing how he produced the same cards over and over again.

I may not be good at card manipulations but hell I know which is a good one.Anyway back to the show, I have a suggestions though for the show not to be boring. Seeing that it is a show made for magicians, I think too much is given for magicians to see rather than just entertaining audiences. Maybe they should think about the format of their show rather than just showing magic tricks why don't they entertain using it?

Anyway just voicing out my thoughts and maybe just maybe I could find a better TV magic show.

Studying new card tricks: Gambling Tricks

As a magician, it can't be helped but be too flashy sometimes when performing tricks. Over the years however, I've learned that sometimes the simplest and subtlest act is the most effective especially to the most doubtful of audiences.

This realization led me to review again Erdnase's Book as well as to study gambling techniques. The techniques for both are quite similar but I found gambling techniques more effective since it's very subtle. Although something I found disadvantageous about it is the use of a table. Although my style is generally walkthrough, finding a spot in the table to do a trick is quite a hard especially during parties where the food is overflowing.

I actually first came to know certain techniques when I got to see a feature on John Scarne, exposing the methods of cheating in gambling. That's the first time I heard about Bottoms, Seconds and Pull- Throughs. The documentary didnt only show cheating methods but also good tricks and the narrator just sounded really entertaining and fun.

Unfortunately my skills aren't really that good and I'm still practicing a lot of these methods. So far the only gambling theme magic that I could say that I am good at is the Classic Three Card Monte. No special cards, no gimmicks just pure sleight of hand. I still have to test it though to the real world but since I'm really hesitant at it (for the fear of being arrested especially if performed in public) so I might be just showing it to friends.

Another thing that I'm working at is a "always winning hand trick" wherein a series of shuffles and cuts would always leave me with a winning hand no matter what. I know I'm still far at producing this effect but who knows, I might just nail it.

Oh well for now I jsut have to read and practice more, until then...

My New Year Wishlist

Well I really don't make resolutions for the new year rather I make goals that I think I could attain. I think it's better to have something to look forward to rather than to have something that forces you and actually drags you. Anyway here are a few of what I'm planning to achieve for this year 2009.

1. Become an instructor in French and Spanish at my Alma Mater and maybe share the magic and spark interest to it to students.

2. I hope to buy my own video camera so that I could share with you a lot of wonderful videos of magic here.

3. In line with this I'm hoping to have my own computer. It may be still far fetched but who knows I might be able to buy my own.

4. I would like to do magic professionally even on a part time basis. (Since my first walkaround was a success it has really inspired me to move into earning via magic)

5. Have more material for my magic, not only with cards but with coins, rope and silks as well. Maybe if I'm lucky I might start doing stage shows too.


Those are actaully my priorities for this year and hopefully I could achieve them all.

The First Magical Post of the Year

Well with the new year that have just arrived I know that all of us still that have holiday hangover and maybe we are all still busy making our resolutions. During the holidays, I was really very busy and sorry for my readers who weren't updated of what happened to me over the past few weeks.

I've been studying a new book I have bought and it has given me good ideas and it has even given me ideas for two new tricks that I have invented. I have also improved a few tricks of my own and I have been practicing a lot.

Of course it wasn't all about magic as the year was coming to a close. I was also busy preparing food for the family and doing grocery for the mas well. While doing this I would visit bookstores hoping to find good magic books. Although it wasn't that successful at least I have new material for my magic.

Anyway I'm wishing you all a magical New Year and hope that all your goals ans wishes will be accomplished for this year.