Yes, I'm an idiot also

 I occasionally purchase magic DVDs.   Much prefer books, but occasionally there'll be either a sale, or some particular information that I want that is best presented in graphic format.

And most of the time, I'll flip through the DVD and watch just the part I'm interested in.   I'll especially do this if I'm conversant with the rest of the DVDs' contents.

This is stupid.   This was driven home recently.

Years ago, I picked up the Johnny Thompson 4 DVD set "Johnny Thompson's Commercial Classics of Magic".

And I super-briefly scrolled through them, concentrating mainly on my lunch, since I knew so much of the material already.

Well, after my finding that the CUTTING THE ACES routine was HUGELY different from what I knew, I decided to watch all 4 volumes.   And actually pay attention.

I ended up with a list of about a dozen items....11 of which I already "knew".   And these items contained hints and tips, and tiny pointers that I would never have come up with on my own in a million years.

And it's these hints and tips and pointers that elevate a trick.   Maybe not a ton, but I'll accept anything I can get.

For example - THE ENDLESS CHAIN game.  Used to do this myself.  Rarely though, since there's no ending for it, and I couldn't figure one out.

Mr. Thompson did.  And when I saw it, I almost wept.   So obvious.  So "of course."  And so beyond my thinking.   THIS ONE BIT has made the trick performable.  What's THAT WORTH!?!?!?!?

And even worse was the trick called "The Travelers - Card in Envelope".   I've known about this trick for years.   I hated the entire idea of it, since about 1/2 the sleight of hand....and there's a ton....but about 1/2 wouldn't fool Mr. Magoo in a dark room.

Well.    I stand corrected.

The moves - correctly done - flew past myself and my wife.

I knew the move had to have been done...but darned if I could see it.

Now, I'll be spending the next few months updating my skills and my thinking.

Because I'm an idiot.   And I bet you are too!

www.LarryBrodahl.com

www.BestOmahaMagician.com

If you want a fresh way of looking at your art, may I recommend a book?

 The book in question is UNDERSTANDING COMICS (The invisible art) by SCOTT McCLOUD.

It's a book on comics.  Like Doonesbury, Peanuts, or Family Circle, not people that tell jokes.

And it's a tour-de-force analysis of comics.  How they're made, how the mind processes the language of comics, and even what happens between the frames of a comic.

It's an attempt to discover the universal process that allows the human mind to see a human face in a simple 2 dots and 1 line icon.  😑

And it makes you realize (hopefully) that you are saying things with your magic that you don't know about.

Which makes you think (hopefully) about those unspoken things and how to make them work to make your magic stronger, more impactful, and entertaining.

And even if this book doesn't inspire you as it does me, it certainly is an educational and fun read.

 www.LarryBrodahl.com

www.BestOmahaMagician.com

Be careful when you think someone is ignorant.

 A while back, I had someone send me an email regarding one of my manuscripts.

They said that they thought the ENDING of the trick would have been better if I'd used the .... let's call it THE ENIGMA PRINCIPLE.

And I very honestly said.   "I don't know what the ENIGMA PRINCIPLE is.  Could you explain?"

And my correspondent replied that it was.....and to keep secrets, I won't spill exactly what he said.  

Later, on a forum board I found this person insinuating that I wasn't very bright/good at magic since I didn't know the principle.

Suffice it to say that I DID indeed know the principle, I just didn't know the name of it.

And the reason that I didn't know the name of it is because I had no interest in it, since it was one of the LEAST magical ways of doing something that I could imagine.

This principle was a process-heavy, SLOOOOW, plodding way of accomplishing what is a very simple task.

True, it was self-working, and my way wasn't.   But my way required a bare minimum of skill to achieve, so I'm really curious as to the skill level of the other magician.

It saddens me that magicians think this way.

 

www.LarryBrodahl.com

www.BestOmahaMagician.com

 

Organization

 As a programmer/director type during my work career, I really learned to hate yet appreciate what it takes to organize a project.

You have to find the right staff, figure out the right solution, schedule resources, and break your solution down into small manageable pieces.

And while doing this, you have to create status reports, track progress, allow for unexpected bumps in the road, etc.

And here I am...fully retired...doing this crap again.

The Omaha Magical Society is trying to create a 1 hour(ish) video to give to hospitals to show their patients.

So the video needs to be upbeat, full of magic, and do this without having the actual audience present, no laugh tracks, and not even any volunteers.

And so I'm trying to find the right performers with the right material that can hit their marks and time slots without causing a fuss....AND....do it for free.

Herding cats is easy.

www.LarryBrodahl.com

www.BestOmahaMagician.com

Some magic...some not

 It's pretty much every day that I think of magic.   Many days I actually play around with ideas and props.  Some days are all rehearsal.

Some days...not so much.

Take today.   Doing taxes, laundry, getting supplies for the dogs, taking care of emails.   Not much time for magic.

But it does make me realize just how much work it takes to keep your life running smoothly, so why do I sometime bemoan how hard it is sometimes to make your ACT run smoothly.

You've got planning, preparation, thinking ahead, documentation, and scut work in real life.

Why wouldn't I have this in magic?

And I do.  

But it's still early (15:00), and I've only really got 2 non-magic related tasks left, so I'll be getting some time in.

Unfortunately, it's the part I hate.   Writing a prologue to a small lecture I'll be doing.  Blech!   Fortunately, I should be able to hit this out in about an hour.

....while doing laundry!

www.LarryBrodahl.com

www.BestOmahaMagician.com

Do a review..no matter what

 This is going to sound self-serving, and quite frankly, it is.

You see, I write manuscripts for magicians.  I have almost 50 of them on Lybrary.com, covering a gamut of ideas, scripts, and tricks.

And very few of them have reviews.    And reviews are - to me - of the utmost importance.

Not because they help others decide if they want the manuscript or not, but because it helps ME figure out what my readers want to read.

I need to know if I'm unclear.  Or if I don't give enough options.  Or if my material is too...corny?, sophisticated?, literate?, whatever.

And without a review, I can't tell what the readers are thinking.

And there's 2 types of review.    

The first is a simple 1 out of 5 stars.  Which is ok, but if you give me 3 stars or less, I have NO IDEA why.  Which means I can't correct anything, or even provide you more information if you're confused on something I wrote.

I include my email address in every manuscript, and literally BEG readers to contact me....and it's never happened yet.

So please...write reviews.  Even bad ones are better than nothing.  And if there's something I'm doing wrong, maybe I can change it.

But until you tell me...I'm in the dark.

www.LarryBrodahl.com

www.BestOmahaMagician.com

A day of ...things...

Today is research for an upcoming vacation, which I've pretty much finished.

 I'll also be converting a lamp to a touch 3 way dimmer lamp.  I have the parts off of the net, just have to wire things together and not start a fire.

 Also will be practicing for the upcoming lecture for the OMS.   15 min lecture on shuffles, cuts, and forces.    Fun!

 BTW:  The quick cooking bread I made yesterday was quite delish.   Highly recommend it.

 

www.LarryBrodahl.com

www.BestOmahaMagician.com

 

Day of other things.

Today is not a particularly good magic day.  I do have a 15 minute lecture coming up, so I did run through my material a few times, but other than that???

 

• Made a new bread recipe using the microwave and vinegar.  Looks amazing.
• tightened runner on the stairs.
• Cleaned the basement
• Move some less used muffin tins, etc. to the basement to make the upstairs shelving easier to use.
• pre-baked my bacon so I merely have to nuke the frozen bacon in the mornings.
• some research on SEO.

So a quiet day.  Do have an interesting plot and move that I'm dabbling with.  Probably will never come to fruition, but maybe......

 

When it's hard to practice, maybe this will help.

 There are some tricks that are just hard to practice.   They're boring to do over and over.  

Yet to get good at them, you must do EXACTLY that.  Practice over and over.

And of course, resetting and using the bills over and over wears out the bills, which means you have to rebuild the bills, etc.   Which removes even more time from practicing.

Well one of my "helpful" ideas for this is to use dummy props.

I'm currently working on a redesign of a trick I did quite a bit about 15 years ago.   And this trick requires SPRING BILLS.    [ If you've read my other posts, you're well aware of this. ]

Well spring bills are the most annoying things to practice with.   Every practice takes about 5 minutes to reset - and that's just the bills!

This means that the 3 minute routine takes 8 minutes to practice, and most of that time is spent folding up the bills.    That's not practice, that's torture.

So, what I did was make a dummy stand in for the bills.   I took some playing cards and traced the outline of the bills on the cards.    Then with a razor knife and a straight edge, I cut out the lines.  [ Yes, it would have been smarter to use scissors, but smarter isn't always the way I work. ]

Anyhow, after I had a block of cards that gave me the same feel/thickness/dimensions as the folded bills, I taped the block together.

So I have this odd little block of taped cards that I use to practice with.  Because honestly, I could care less if I see the bills open.  I just want to rehearse.

Now, a 3 minute trick takes 3:30 to reset.

THIS is reasonable. 

www.LarryBrodahl.com

www.BestOmahaMagician.com

Did a talk -

 Did a speech in Lincoln last night at the Lied Center.   Never been there.

What a nightmare of driving.   NO PARKING, roundabouts that drop you off in roundabouts.....Lord, the designer of their streets deserves a good slapping.

The talk itself went well, I think.

About 50 people or so.  I was allocated a DEFINITE length of time I could take, and I hit shy of the mark by 34 seconds.  Which I'm fairly proud about.

But everything else about the process was poorly run and inefficient.

Won't work there again.

www.LarryBrodahl.com

www.BestOmahaMagician.com

 

CHEAT SHEET - 

 

Practicing - a fatal error

 If there's one thing that 98% of all magicians do poorly, it's practice.

 A ton of magical methods require nonchalance, and a carefree handling.   And the only way you can get to that degree of casualness is to be casual.

And to be casual means that you've done the sleight/move/script so much that you don't have to talk or think about it.

It just happens.

 I personally keep decks of cards laying around the house, and as I walk through a room, I'll pick up a deck and run through a couple of moves.  Moves that I've done for years.

But I'm in a no stress, can't-get-caught environment, so I'm practicing the moves without any worries.

And eventually, this worry-free attitude gets 'baked' into the handling of the moves and you can just not think about it.

And if you're not concentrating...if you're not thinking about...it you're not even conscious of  doing a move......the audience won't be either.

So if you think you need to practice a move 100 times to get it perfect, try bumping that by 10.   Do it 1,000 times and see if the move isn't much, much better.

www.LarryBrodahl.com

www.BestOmahaMagician.com

 

A first

 Somehow, somewhere, people have gotten the idea that I can give talks and lectures about magic.

I seriously have no idea why anyone would think that.  But they do.

So, this fall I'm giving a talk at the Criss Library at UNO about science and magic and Robert Houdin.

And this coming Saturday, I'm giving a talk on magic in Nebraska at the Lied Center.

I'm pretty sure that if I do enough of these talks, people will quit thinking that I CAN give talks like this.  /s

www.LarryBrodahl.com

www.BestOmahaMagician.com

Giveth and Taketh

 Ah, the universe has smiled - at least a little - on me.  

The domain of WWW.BestOmahaMagician.com now successfully redirects to WWW.LarryBrodahl.com.

Finally!

Now mind you, the universe also pooped on my plans to go to Alaska in late Sept.   Apparently, after Sept 15th, the entire state shuts down.

Oy!

But still batting 500!

Ah, the lovely internet....

 In a vague effort to push my website more, I decided to pick a more generic URL ( www.BestOmahaMagician.com) and have it redirect to my website ( www.LarryBrodahl.com ).

Well, of course nothing is that simple.  I went to my hosting company, looked over the instructions for doing a redirect, as it's called....seemed simple.

Purchased a domain name.    And THEN found out that the plan I had with the hosting company did NOT support redirection.

Argh!   Lovely time to find that out.

And they couldn't refund the domain cost, as that money goes to a DIFFERENT company that handles the DNS.

Fortunately for me, they understood the issues involved, and have worked with me to get this straightened out.

So, within 2 days BestOmahaMagician.com should redirect seamlessly to LarryBrodahl.com

Nifty tip on springbills

 Quick post on something I learned.  

If you are making or rebuilding spring bills, you can cut the tip off like this.

It looks the same in use, but it saves a little space, which can help when doing large loads.

 

I actually have a couple of free PDFs on Hint and tips if anyone is interested.

www.LarryBrodahl.com 

www.BestOmahaMagician.com