Latest / The Magic Guys / Bizarro! Character, Creativity and Vegas Magic #284

Transcript

Bizarro! Character, Creativity and Vegas Magic #284 · The Magic Guys

• 0:02
  They're guys they do magic they are the magic guys,
• 0:11
  we made it we did it was a close one,
• 0:15
  it was friends welcome to the magic guides podcast episode 284 i'm your host
• 0:22
  nick k joining us this week is papa say hi papa hey y'all i'm back.
• 0:27
  Buddy, good to have you back. You look great. Thank you.
• 0:30
  Yeah. I feel good, pretty much. Yeah. You know, where you been?
• 0:35
  You been on adventures? You having a good time?
• 0:37
  No. No, I've been through the valley of the mountains, but I'm climbing the
• 0:42
  cliffs right now to the promised land.
• 0:46
  Part of that journey starts here tonight. Awesome. That's good to have you back.
• 0:50
  And, of course, we're all stoked to be part of your journey.
• 0:52
  We've also got our friends in the chat. Scotty Link, good to see you,
• 0:54
  brother man. Tim Askin. What up, my guy? Oh, Gutbuster Mike is back. What's up, my guy?
• 1:00
  Josh Nubito is also in the chat, sending his love. He cannot be here.
• 1:03
  He's out there just crushing the game, doing his more gigs than you can imagine.
• 1:08
  We also have Thomas Conger. Oh, Gary Davis. Good to see you,
• 1:11
  bud. He's excited to see our guest today, as well as Rob.
• 1:14
  There is an abundance of folks in here today. Friends, good to see you.
• 1:18
  All great. Grandpa the great. That's a new one. Good to see you, brother, man.
• 1:23
  Friends, thank you all for being here. We do have an amazing guest today who
• 1:27
  is currently not sitting in his chair. So we'll do a quick bit of filler before we press on.
• 1:31
  So, Doug, things on your side of the planet. Oh, he's ready.
• 1:34
  I dialed it back just a little bit. I'll go down a little bit more and try not
• 1:39
  to pronunciate so loudly. I don't know. How's that?
• 1:44
  Old man yells on podcast. I mean, that's what I do.
• 1:49
  Okay. I think we're ready to rock. I got a thumbs up.
• 1:53
  Man, I'm so excited for this. Let's get started. All right.
• 1:56
  Let's begin. Friends, our guest today is one of those people in magic who doesn't
• 2:00
  just think outside the box i don't think he he turned the box into a into like a hectagon like,
• 2:08
  he's a performer a creator an inventor a prop builder a professional problem
• 2:12
  solver there is very little this man can't do he's a literal one man orgy he's
• 2:16
  worked with everyone from copperfield
• 2:18
  all the way down to you name it and today he's agreed to come have
• 2:23
  a little chat on our cheeky little podcast friends,
• 2:26
  we've been waiting for this moment for a very very long time so please join
• 2:30
  me in welcoming All the way from Las Vegas, our friend and yours, Bizarro.
• 2:52
  I heard there was going to be an orgy.
• 2:58
  Yeah, well, he said he did everything. I didn't know puppetry and ventriloquism
• 3:03
  was part of the skit, but why am I not surprised?
• 3:06
  Sorry. I told him to stall for time. Hi, I'm back. It's even good. That's a good puppet.
• 3:12
  I didn't make it. That was actually made for me by Ryan Stock up in Canada as
• 3:18
  a white elephant gift. So, uh, I would, my ego is not so fragile.
• 3:23
  I would make a puppet of myself.
• 3:27
  You know, a better thing is, even though you hadn't, I bet you could,
• 3:29
  and that's because you are, I could, yes.
• 3:32
  A man of many talents. Of course, bizarre. There might be some people who haven't
• 3:36
  lived on planet earth experiencing you for the first time. So please tell everybody
• 3:39
  who are you. What do you do?
• 3:42
  I wish I knew.
• 3:47
  Yeah what's the what's the bizarro elevator pitch like i'm just a weird guy
• 3:52
  who likes i'm a weird performer with a weird sense of humor i i like as i like to tell people,
• 3:59
  i like to create the stuff that i would want to see if i was in the audience
• 4:03
  so and because i have a weird sense of humor i make magic and escape rooms and i dabble in,
• 4:09
  all sorts of different facets of the entertainment business depending on the
• 4:13
  day and i've been doing this since i was six so you know 10 years at least,
• 4:20
  and yeah i just i just like weird stuff,
• 4:25
  it suits it suits you yeah well the stage names the stage name helps,
• 4:30
  yeah yeah can you imagine if my name was john smith and i joined i did the stuff i did.
• 4:37
  And now there's gonna be a magician named john smith in the chat be like hey,
• 4:43
  i do like to use duct tape,
• 4:47
  uh okay so bizarro we've we've had so many conversations where we've dispensed
• 4:52
  our own wisdom and i can proudly say that you make up a very big chunk of my
• 4:56
  magic dna and i'm very thankful for that and it's even more of a blessing to be able to share
• 5:00
  those sorts of thoughts on here and some a lot of the questions we get asked
• 5:05
  that I don't feel that I'm nearly as equipped as yourself to answer and it's
• 5:08
  questions on character.
• 5:10
  So could we please explore some things on character? So for example,
• 5:14
  the first question I'd like to ask you is,
• 5:16
  do you think that most magicians actually have a character or they're just playing
• 5:22
  slightly exaggerated versions of themselves?
• 5:25
  So if anybody who has my creativity notes that I, that I give out for free,
• 5:30
  and if anybody watching this would like them, hit me up on any number of phrases.
• 5:34
  I paid $3 for that on your store. Stay off those China sites, man. They're ripoffs.
• 5:40
  Could I get those and I'll share them on that Discord? How does that sound?
• 5:43
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll send them to you here when we're done.
• 5:46
  So one of the things I talk about in there, and I've talked about in my lectures
• 5:49
  and things like that, is we use the word character too much.
• 5:54
  We use it a lot. And the problem is it's become this weird catch-all.
• 5:57
  And people have different definitions of what a character is.
• 6:00
  And some people, when they think of a character, they'll think of something
• 6:04
  to the extreme edges of things like Rudy Kobe or Sylvester the Jester,
• 6:07
  the guys who are very much characters,
• 6:09
  to the point of, you know, being, some people would call it a caricature because
• 6:13
  they're playing, you know, a character of an archetype kind of of a character.
• 6:17
  But I sat down and I was like, how do we figure out what else are there?
• 6:22
  What are the other options? If we're not, if you're not a character, what are you?
• 6:25
  And one of the, these three things, I have three little characters.
• 6:30
  Things. They're not, they're not the only things. There are gray areas in between each one of these.
• 6:35
  And you may have your own definitions of these as well, but this is,
• 6:39
  this is how I see it from my viewpoint.
• 6:41
  So you do have your characters, you have your extreme examples,
• 6:45
  as I mentioned, and then you have kind of the other side of,
• 6:49
  of the, of the coin over here.
• 6:50
  And these are people with what I call a style, right? A style of performing.
• 6:53
  And it's the people who, if you met them off stage, they're basically going to be the same person.
• 6:58
  Obviously on stage, we're all theatrically wrapped up in whatever way we need to be doing.
• 7:04
  To mask and engage with the audience and so we so that's kind of a guys like
• 7:08
  amazing jonathan david copperfield those guys are very similar off stages they're
• 7:13
  on stage right there's not a major shift in personality or tone,
• 7:17
  and obviously the character side of things on the extreme other side is like
• 7:21
  that world they create rudy kobe special gesture those guys there's this whole
• 7:24
  world they create that exists only on stage Once they're done,
• 7:27
  that world dissipates, right?
• 7:30
  Like they're not technically that person. There's parts of them there.
• 7:34
  And if they're offstage, they might engage as that character.
• 7:37
  But Chris Hendricks, Lucy Darling, great example of that. Very much a character.
• 7:41
  And that is a very intentional choice. And her and I always joke about how the
• 7:45
  best part of having an extreme character that is so different from you is it's
• 7:50
  like being a ventriloquist.
• 7:52
  Because the character gets to say stuff that you cannot and would not say and
• 7:58
  get away with it and the person gets mad at the character but not you.
• 8:03
  Can i bounce off that for half a second and just ask which parts of you do you
• 8:08
  allow to go on stage and be amplified versus the parts of you you leave backstage yeah.
• 8:14
  Uh, well, that's where the third thing comes in, right? So you've got what I
• 8:17
  call the, in the middle, which is what I call persona, right?
• 8:20
  Which is you have a, you have a, you have a certain way of doing things.
• 8:24
  So you have a little bit of a style and you have this undefined character, right?
• 8:28
  That is a little more extreme than who you are on stay off stage,
• 8:33
  but it's still, it's still very like, oh, this guy, I have a feeling has a backstory,
• 8:37
  right? Like that's different than the actual backstory.
• 8:40
  And so they kind of come together in the middle. And I always say that people
• 8:42
  like Kevin James and Jeff McBride have that, right? Where it's like,
• 8:46
  they're definitely have, they have character.
• 8:49
  There's like this, like Jeff McBride to me is a time, like a tour guide through
• 8:54
  time, right? He shows you magic from different time periods and all this stuff.
• 8:58
  And Kevin James obviously is an inventor and, and kind of that, that, that guy.
• 9:03
  Right. But he, they don't lean so far into it that they're putting on like,
• 9:06
  like Rudy Kobe, like lab equipment, call themselves a lab man, stuff like that.
• 9:09
  So there's this middle ground. And so a lot of times that middle ground for
• 9:13
  me personally, you know, it's, I would definitely say that I land somewhere in the middle.
• 9:17
  Like I have, I don't have a defined character. And one of the things I do when
• 9:21
  I go on stage, depending on which show you see, because I have two different
• 9:25
  shows. I have a talking show that's more comedy and prop magic based.
• 9:29
  Then I have my silent act, right?
• 9:31
  If I need to do 10 ish minutes, people get the silent act. If you want an hour,
• 9:35
  you get the talking act. And so the talking act is very much myself just saying
• 9:41
  unhinged things because I can. And.
• 9:46
  The silent act is kind of this, like, it's the...
• 9:52
  One of the things about trying to be creative and original in magic is people,
• 9:56
  very much relate to you if there's something that they are familiar with,
• 10:01
  right? Like a lot of people, like the Shocker.
• 10:03
  Oh, Shocker's a wrestler. Dan Sperry's a goth.
• 10:06
  Stuff like that. And I have found that I'm just trying to lean too much into
• 10:10
  being who I am. It's like I like fedoras. I like trench coats.
• 10:13
  I always have since I was young. So I'm going to wear that on stage.
• 10:17
  But you're talking about what do you leave off stage? Obviously.
• 10:22
  I, that's a hard question because it's, there's, there's, I'm trying to think
• 10:27
  what's like, there's, I put a lot of the stuff I like on stage, right?
• 10:30
  Like there's very little eye purse I leave behind, but like some people you see them.
• 10:35
  So some people will be very quiet and shy offstage, but when they go on stage,
• 10:39
  they are a maniac. They're wild, right? They're crazy.
• 10:43
  So i think in a lot of i think in a lot of ways
• 10:46
  a lot of people leave that behind they use they leave behind their insecurities
• 10:50
  they leave behind the stuff that they feel makes them not as cool of a person and then they,
• 10:59
  they they leave that off and they come on and they get to be somebody else again
• 11:01
  they get to be the ventriloquist puppet right they get to be the puppet and
• 11:05
  then they come off stage and now they're back to normal and some people i don't
• 11:09
  think it's intentional i think is just the way some people are, right?
• 11:11
  Like, especially when you watch, like there's certain people who if they're in a rehearsal,
• 11:15
  They're just kind of walking through it, right? They're not being super crazy.
• 11:20
  But then you'll have people who are just, but when they hit stage,
• 11:24
  man, they are on. They're ramped up like 200%. You're like, where did that come from?
• 11:30
  And so there's definitely, definitely, I think, some stuff people leave behind
• 11:35
  and then bring with them.
• 11:37
  But, you know, it's dangerous to go alone and take this with you.
• 11:39
  I feel like the more extreme characters are the most challenging roles to play correctly.
• 11:45
  For a magician like the ones who do it well it's some of the highest art form
• 11:49
  i've ever seen like rudy rudy coby's.
• 11:53
  You know his television work back in the 90s god that's so good
• 11:57
  oh yeah yeah when he had all that fleshed out well before because he's basically
• 12:00
  was like just writing his own comic books right so he had he knew what he was
• 12:04
  doing going into it right like he had all this stuff planned out for years like
• 12:08
  very similarly i used to as well i had all these crazy characters and this whole
• 12:11
  storyline and stuff and then i realized nobody wanted to pay the money to for us to do it.
• 12:16
  So I just kind of left it all in Texas when I moved out here.
• 12:19
  It's tough, right? Like maybe a little bit harder of an act to sell to the general
• 12:24
  public if you're doing extreme character work.
• 12:27
  Oh, absolutely. Well, it is nowadays. There was a time when that wasn't a problem, right?
• 12:31
  You know, I watch old, I was watching an old video of the, before Oingo Boingo
• 12:35
  was Oingo Boingo, they were called the mystic nights of the Oingo Boingo.
• 12:38
  And they were like a street performance troupe of like 15 people doing crazy stuff.
• 12:44
  Very experimental things. And I watched this because, you know,
• 12:47
  we're talking late 70s, early 80s. And I just watched this and go...
• 12:51
  I'm really jealous of them being able to get 15 people together with the same
• 12:54
  vision and just show up and do it.
• 12:57
  I can't get two people to show up sometimes. What about late night magic?
• 13:01
  That's on some level, and we should talk about that. But I would suggest in
• 13:06
  maybe the decades we were growing up, having seven to ten minutes could take
• 13:10
  you around the world. I don't know if that's the case anymore.
• 13:13
  I mean, not really. Not like it used to be, right?
• 13:16
  Like nobody will have Johnny Thompson's career again because those opportunities are just— gone.
• 13:21
  Now you, it is absolutely possible to tour theaters and do stuff,
• 13:25
  but you kind of have to do it with your own show.
• 13:27
  You have to have a full show now, not just, you know, we can work cruise ships and not push boxes.
• 13:33
  Modern working magicians can command a stage and the modern audience understands
• 13:39
  we don't have to be in a wizard robe or a tuxedo with dancing girls.
• 13:44
  Do you hear that? Stop wearing that shit.
• 13:47
  Well, see, I think, I think what, what I find interesting about your comment
• 13:50
  is that like, it seems like, especially with the example of Rudy Kobe,
• 13:53
  that you could discover a character like intellectually, like without having
• 13:59
  to develop it through hundreds of performances. Yeah.
• 14:02
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. There's a, especially if you have that kind of
• 14:05
  brain where it's all mapped out and planned out ahead of time, right?
• 14:09
  Having, having a, you know, some people need like a backstory for their,
• 14:13
  you know, to like, to know the ins and outs and what's, what's my motivation,
• 14:17
  you know, like all the actor stuff, right? Which is great. You should know all
• 14:19
  that stuff. You should have the answers to some of those questions.
• 14:23
  If, if, if one was to ask, but they're not necessarily.
• 14:28
  There's it's something i i refer to when i talk to when i tell people about
• 14:31
  when they're performing and so especially a silent act i always talk about having
• 14:35
  an inner monologue that's driving you that's not necessarily obvious to the
• 14:39
  audience like you're not trying to convey it to the audience
• 14:42
  it's what's going through your head at the time to help you,
• 14:46
  be help you drive forward and also be in the moment right being one of the problems
• 14:50
  i see a lot of silent acts is a lot of people they're not present, right?
• 14:54
  You can just see that they're, it's almost like somebody who reads a script
• 14:57
  as they're, it sounds like they're reciting script because they are,
• 15:00
  but you can watch people's silent acts and just go, oh, they are just walking
• 15:05
  through choreography, right?
• 15:06
  There's no intent, right? There's no, there's, Alice, what are you doing?
• 15:11
  I don't understand how people can work that way. Just not care.
• 15:14
  Just go through the motions. I guess if, I guess if you've done the same act
• 15:17
  oh look it's a cat pod we love that.
• 15:21
  This is our little terrorist right here hello is,
• 15:25
  that a baby looks like a young cat she is she's very young
• 15:29
  the story the story is crazy i'll tell you sometime how this little monster
• 15:32
  found her way but she this is this one here is a white is an albino orange cat
• 15:38
  he has the mindset of a terror orange cat,
• 15:41
  for sure aren't you a little monster Yes, you are.
• 15:45
  Go bug Liz. Okay, so...
• 15:49
  Yeah so sorry what were you what were you saying go ahead okay well let's let's
• 15:53
  cycle this into like the next portion obviously once you have character there's
• 15:56
  a level of creativity that comes along with that and it's kind of interesting
• 15:59
  because some people will say things like i don't levitate things my character
• 16:02
  doesn't do that you know and that would be me i am not losander,
• 16:06
  yeah but we had we had that conversation in vegas recently and i think that
• 16:10
  that's kind of an interesting thing and i love the notion of creating with restriction
• 16:13
  that you've also I spent that in the past.
• 16:15
  Well, and that's also, that's also, you know, that's the kind of,
• 16:18
  John Armstrong has something like that, where he says, you know,
• 16:20
  decide what your superpower is.
• 16:21
  And I'm like, decide what your superpower isn't, right? Like,
• 16:24
  just sit there and like, it's the same thing. It's just, sometimes it's a shorter
• 16:28
  list to go the other way, you know? I like that.
• 16:33
  Yeah, no, that, that was very, that was, that was John Armstrong's,
• 16:35
  uh, what his like talk on like characters. Oh, I've seen that lecture.
• 16:38
  It's a killer one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 16:41
  So it's, it's, yeah, but it is true. It's like deciding on the restrictions,
• 16:45
  you know, having those things where you go, I won't do that. I won't do that.
• 16:49
  Screw the double undercut. I'm not doing that. You know, whatever.
• 16:56
  Do you even do card tricks? I think I've seen you do a card trick.
• 17:02
  I know more than people would think I do. Yeah. Well, I think,
• 17:05
  you know, card tricks, but I've never, I'm trying to think if I've seen you
• 17:09
  perform one, but I think I have.
• 17:12
  Probably. I mean, I've been carrying a deck of cards in my pocket since my 10th
• 17:15
  grade of high school. So I always have one at all times.
• 17:18
  You're a card carrier. Uh-huh. Yeah.
• 17:21
  I would have expected razor blades.
• 17:24
  I know that's dangerous. That's, that's for stage. That's, you got to pay to
• 17:27
  see the dangerous stuff. I see. Okay.
• 17:31
  So, okay. One of the things that I think is the hit me the hardest is like,
• 17:37
  wouldn't it be cool if, wouldn't it be fun if that's one of the things that
• 17:39
  you sort of touched upon. And I think that has been one of the most inspiring
• 17:43
  things that I ever heard with regards to creativity.
• 17:46
  And we've spoken about a couple of impossible ideas that I've hit.
• 17:50
  And I'm curious when you're going through a journey where you have an impossible idea,
• 17:54
  is there a point where you just change the method oh yeah absolutely,
• 18:02
  well if you say change the method do you mean change it where,
• 18:06
  where you you you're you have a method and you do a different one or do you
• 18:10
  mean i tried this it didn't work okay now i have to try a bunch of other things,
• 18:14
  yeah i guess you know sometimes you have this vision of like what you want the
• 18:17
  effect to be and it's like i don't want to do it like that i want it to be this
• 18:21
  absolutely yeah yeah absolutely there's an effect that is on my,
• 18:26
  Instagram and I'll send you a link to it where, so I have a thing where I make
• 18:30
  an empty, like one of the like 12 packs of Oreos.
• 18:32
  I rip it open, show it empty on both sides. Then I produce Oreos out of it.
• 18:35
  And I go, huh, I wonder if, wouldn't it be funny if, or wouldn't it be cool
• 18:39
  if I could do it with a full package, like one of the big packages where you rip the top open.
• 18:43
  And so I had this idea and I had a couple of different methods and none of them
• 18:47
  worked. They all suck. They all look terrible. And so I just sat on it,
• 18:50
  let it sit in my brain for a while.
• 18:51
  And I was walking through a hardware store one day and I go, hey, those look like,
• 18:56
  wait a second.
• 18:58
  And so I figured out the method as soon as I saw the thing I needed immediately.
• 19:03
  But you know, that was a couple of years in the making, you know,
• 19:06
  there's, there's effects that I will, that I create and I'll sit on for a while.
• 19:12
  Like a lot of, so when I first moved to Vegas, I worked with a comedy troupe
• 19:15
  and I, and I, and when I was in Dallas, we had like a weekly show we did where
• 19:20
  we just tried new stuff all the time at a pizza place.
• 19:23
  And so one of my, the things I do is I come up with an idea,
• 19:26
  I make a version of it to test it and I get it in front of an audience.
• 19:29
  I find one of the good places to be bad kind of joint and I test it a couple
• 19:33
  of times, make sure it works and I go great.
• 19:35
  And then I put it on a shelf and I never come back to it. I don't,
• 19:39
  not never, but a lot of times I don't come back to it till later or sometimes
• 19:43
  it'll stay. I'll sit there and go, okay, there's something here.
• 19:44
  I really want to mess with this more and more.
• 19:46
  And so I have like shelves in my magic room, just full of half-assed ideas sometimes,
• 19:53
  but it's stuff that works.
• 19:54
  And so that's how you end up with a lot of unpublished material,
• 19:57
  unfortunately. But I have all these ideas. And so as an example of this,
• 20:02
  in my old lecture, I had a thing where I would take a normal-sized soda can
• 20:05
  and I'd rip it into two tiny ones, right?
• 20:08
  And I originally came up with that. And every so often, I would come back to
• 20:13
  it because I was like, it's fine, but it's not what I want.
• 20:18
  And so I eventually just by messing with it over time, I eventually got it to
• 20:23
  where I liked it and went, oh, this is what I was looking for. This is what I wanted.
• 20:27
  And so sometimes, and that was, that was over the course of like eight or nine
• 20:30
  years of just messing with it.
• 20:32
  Are you a notebook now? Do you like write down your ideas in notebooks?
• 20:37
  I do have, yes and no. I have a, I have a handful of things written down.
• 20:43
  Sometimes they are in notebooks. Sometimes they're on my phone.
• 20:46
  Sometimes they're, they used to be, before I had a sports smartphones,
• 20:49
  I have stacks of receipts I would just write notes on and stuff and then transfer
• 20:53
  them over and things. So, but yeah, I, I do have notebooks, nothing more,
• 20:57
  nothing really current.
• 20:58
  I do have like a notepad on my computer. I have a notepad on my phone.
• 21:03
  And so I have ideas just strewn about various places. That's relatable.
• 21:08
  What was, let me pull up. I'm going to pull up one. I just thought of the other
• 21:10
  day. What was it? I don't remember if it was a joke or if it was an idea. What was it?
• 21:15
  Seems like a nice, nice, uh, mobile database of some sort to catalog ideas. It would be the way to go.
• 21:22
  Yeah. But you need to, you need to have it in multiple places because any electronic
• 21:27
  stuff, have backups, even, I mean, everything can, everything can be destroyed pretty much.
• 21:33
  Right. So it's like multiple, multiple places. If an idea is really important
• 21:37
  or it's something that you don't want to lose, definitely different places.
• 21:41
  Do you ever videotape ideas and upload them for the document? Four man's copyright?
• 21:46
  Yeah. I mean, because you're like wading in the deep end, you have some really
• 21:50
  valuable ideas. So yeah, I have a few unlisted videos that are kind of sitting
• 21:55
  off in case I need them. Yeah.
• 21:59
  Yeah. I have. Okay. So this was a joke I wrote down because I have,
• 22:01
  I'd write down jokes. I wrote down ideas and stuff.
• 22:03
  This was, I forget where this joke came from. We were joking about,
• 22:06
  we saw, we saw a, a story, we were driving around. We saw a story that said
• 22:10
  accurate nails. And then we were like, as opposed to inaccurate nails, like what do they do?
• 22:16
  And then it's like, Oh, instead of filing your nails, they file your taxes. That's like, what?
• 22:22
  It's it's stupid stuff like that you know next door with sloppy nails right,
• 22:31
  just next door to the massage parlor in las vegas also sloppy inaccurate happy ending,
• 22:38
  you know what's what's a bit of a creativity do you think that knowing too many
• 22:43
  methods or not knowing enough methods and coming up with your own like what do you think is better.
• 22:48
  I mean, so I, I have, well, there's, I have a couple of different thoughts on that.
• 22:53
  It just, it depends on who you are, but definitely knowing what's out there,
• 22:58
  the more you know about the world in which you live in, the more you can use to create.
• 23:02
  And I mean, the world, not just the magic world, but the whole world, everything.
• 23:05
  And you, you find anything, anything can, can be used to create a magic effect, right?
• 23:10
  That's why the show wizard wars and PCAM's bag of tricks thing is so good.
• 23:14
  They just give you random stuff and you have to make magic with it,
• 23:17
  which is an amazing exercise that more people I feel should engage in,
• 23:21
  right? Like if you go in, go into any store, pick three random objects and go,
• 23:24
  what would I make magic out of this with? Don't rely on the magic stuff, right?
• 23:28
  This would be a great activity for magic clubs. Yeah, absolutely.
• 23:32
  And I'm sure some of them have done it.
• 23:35
  I wouldn't, I guarantee you some of them have done it for sure.
• 23:38
  But the the idea of you know having,
• 23:42
  a rolodex for the those of you who are old enough to remember what a rolodex
• 23:45
  is having a rolodex of like,
• 23:48
  stuff that has come before and moves and things like that help you create a
• 23:52
  method because when i always tell people like don't don't think of the effect first think it's,
• 23:57
  it's it's same thing we do when we write escape rooms where it's like think
• 24:01
  of what you want the audience or the players to experience and don't worry about
• 24:04
  method you can find a method, you can figure out a method.
• 24:07
  And if you can't, there are a lot of people such as myself, you guys who can
• 24:12
  recommend stuff, right? If somebody is stuck, they talk to whoever and then,
• 24:17
  or you jam with friends and maybe they have knowledge you don't and you go,
• 24:19
  oh great, that'll work. Perfect.
• 24:21
  So having that knowledge is great. Now, unfortunately it also creates a bias
• 24:25
  because then you get stuck in this weird magician feedback loop where all you
• 24:30
  know is magic and all you immediately go, oh, we'll use a drawer box.
• 24:35
  No, be better. We'll turn it into a card trick. No, stop it.
• 24:39
  Be better. And so there is.
• 24:43
  Everyone needs a little bizarro on their shoulder. Like a little bizarro angel
• 24:49
  to be like. Be like, there's new groove where it's just like,
• 24:51
  no, no, he's got a point. It's fine. Yeah.
• 24:53
  So F in the chat for Sylvester, the jester. And he had something in his lecture
• 24:57
  he talked about, which was he's like coming from a place of ignorance is sometimes better.
• 25:04
  Than having too much of community-related knowledge. And what he meant by that
• 25:08
  is you don't have the biases and your brain hasn't learned what is possible and what is not, right?
• 25:15
  So there's a handful of performers who I know who started later in magic.
• 25:19
  Anna Rose is a great example of this. Anna Rose started life,
• 25:23
  started magic way later. And so she is encumbered by, it's like,
• 25:28
  oh, this trick, that trick. She just kind of makes up her own stuff based on
• 25:31
  her sense of human personality.
• 25:33
  And so that's helps her create stuff and of course if there's anything it was
• 25:36
  like i had this great idea she can come to any number of people and they'll
• 25:40
  go oh yeah that's like this thing but it's still a good idea right because nobody's doing it,
• 25:45
  like it's you know it was in a book in 1903 and nobody has touched it whatever,
• 25:50
  and so there is there is something to be said for now if you create something
• 25:55
  and it turns out it's somebody else's and especially if you try to sell it and
• 26:00
  they say, Hey, that's not yours.
• 26:01
  Then go, Oh, I'm sorry. And stop.
• 26:04
  Don't be one of those ass hats who goes, well.
• 26:08
  This is a blue deck. Yours is a red deck. Don't be one of those people.
• 26:13
  Don't let your ego get in the way. You can always create other ideas.
• 26:16
  It makes me want to talk about mainstream commercial magic and your general
• 26:19
  thoughts on the subject matter. Yeah.
• 26:21
  Well, as somebody who has been stolen from many times.
• 26:25
  Yeah. And when you say that, what do you mean? Like having, say,
• 26:29
  overseas knockoffs or just people lifting your ideas and putting their name
• 26:34
  on it? Yes. All the above? Yeah.
• 26:38
  Well and the joke of course half a joke is,
• 26:42
  the the only the one solace i have is well at least i know the ideas are good enough to steal,
• 26:47
  right yeah it seems inevitable and it's sad but it's like when i think about
• 26:52
  like releasing products i'm
• 26:53
  like well i better have a good two weeks with this one because you know,
• 26:58
  well and that's that's the way it is now it's not the way it used to be obviously,
• 27:02
  but that's the world in which we live in.
• 27:03
  And you know, I think, I think some of, I think a lot of people now that you're
• 27:09
  about to have a visitor, one of the, I'm just going to let her do what she wants.
• 27:13
  One of the fun things nowadays that you can do is just make your own platform. Right.
• 27:21
  So there's a guy here in the outside of outside. Oh, don't stand on the keyboard.
• 27:26
  I don't want you to accidentally turn this off. I already had enough problems. Yeah.
• 27:30
  One of, there's a guy outside in Boulder city. His name is Tom Devlin.
• 27:33
  He's a special effects guy.
• 27:35
  And he, he has this place called the Tom Devlin monster museum.
• 27:37
  And he has, he's, he used to do special effects for movies and TV shows in Hollywood,
• 27:41
  then started working in, he kind of got sick of that and we started working
• 27:44
  for B movies and stuff like that. And he loved that. And now he's making his own movies.
• 27:50
  And he recently wanted to do a crowdfunding thing, even though he wasn't super into it.
• 27:54
  And he looked into all the options and said, these all suck.
• 27:57
  So they just made their own crowdfunding funding platform because you can.
• 28:03
  So i think the way for magic creators now is going to be almost like privatizing,
• 28:11
  that stuff where it's kind of like patreon right it's like hey you want to learn
• 28:14
  the new stuff i'm not releasing it you got to come learn it from me right i
• 28:18
  think i i have plans to do that at some point for myself when i have time,
• 28:23
  but there's social media allows enough reach that if you have a good idea, you want to market.
• 28:28
  If you can get a halfway decent video out about it, you know? Yeah.
• 28:33
  Well, and I'm a big believer in like,
• 28:37
  If I don't want, I don't necessarily want to make stuff for the merely curious.
• 28:40
  If you want to, if you're a serious student and you want to learn and you want
• 28:43
  to know specifically what I think and what I, what I have to offer, you come to me, right?
• 28:48
  Like it's like putting stuff online is fine. It's self-promotion and all that.
• 28:53
  Or if you're trying to do like what you're doing, which is teaching,
• 28:56
  right? Like it's like, Hey, I want to help influence others and make people
• 29:01
  better. Right? Like that's obviously a different route.
• 29:04
  And then you get accused of being one of the guys who's exposing magic.
• 29:07
  And those people can jump off a bridge.
• 29:10
  Yeah. You make choices. I have, you know, I, yeah, I'm not, I don't want to
• 29:15
  make this about me, but yeah, I'm not a maybe one or two regrets,
• 29:19
  but I'm happy that I've been able to provide useful information to students that can't get it.
• 29:25
  And the serious people will stick with it and the non-serious people will fall
• 29:30
  off just like it has always been as is tradition.
• 29:33
  And this too, times change, you old fuckers. You know, sometimes people don't read books anymore.
• 29:40
  Yeah, I was talking to somebody about that the other day. I have a,
• 29:43
  there's a, you've met Kai here, and it's our stagehand at our show.
• 29:47
  I've taught them a few card tricks, and we've talked about how,
• 29:51
  it was like, oh, I was looking at this on the internet.
• 29:53
  I said, listen, I very firmly believe in learning from different sources,
• 29:57
  be it a lecture, in person, mentorship, videos, books, whatever.
• 30:02
  Now, the nice thing about books and text and lecture notes and things like that
• 30:07
  is you get mostly no biases, right?
• 30:10
  Like you don't pick up bad habits, but you don't want to pick up bad performing
• 30:14
  habits because you can't really infer performance from text that well.
• 30:19
  So you get to enter, you were forced to interject your personality into those things.
• 30:24
  But if you watch a video or a lecture, you might pick up, you might start doing
• 30:27
  what they're doing, which isn't who you are.
• 30:29
  And as I, as I very often to say, it's like, you should always make the magic
• 30:35
  to who you are. Don't make yourself to the magic. Cause that's how you end up
• 30:37
  being a cover band and looking and sounding like other people.
• 30:40
  Yep. You know, there's a level of originality that I think is sort of we're
• 30:43
  touching upon right now.
• 30:45
  And it seems like these are the sort of pathways that lead to you being original,
• 30:48
  but I'm curious what your thoughts are on like being original,
• 30:51
  like is being original in magic overrated?
• 30:55
  Just don't be too original. Cause then, like, as I said earlier,
• 30:57
  if people can't associate with something, it can alienate you, unfortunately, but,
• 31:01
  no, there's, I mean, the, the, the nice thing about being original and this
• 31:06
  goes back to what we were talking about earlier with the character,
• 31:08
  the, the, uh, style and persona, right?
• 31:11
  So all three of these things sit under an umbrella and then umbrella is identity, right?
• 31:15
  It's what make your identity is what makes you unique and make you stand out.
• 31:19
  Now there are a bunch of people who, what I would call cover bands who would
• 31:22
  just do other people's stuff and buy magic and do it.
• 31:27
  But there's also cover band or there's also people who write original songs
• 31:30
  that do covers of other people's stuff that are amazing, right?
• 31:33
  So like there's, you know, as Eugene Berger would say, there's many rooms in
• 31:38
  the house of magic, which means there's room for everybody, which is fine,
• 31:41
  even the terrible people, but they're out on the lawn somewhere.
• 31:44
  But there's definitely something to be said for if you want to stand out.
• 31:50
  And it also depends on how you treat magic. There's...
• 31:54
  For a long time, I blindly thought everybody was in magic for the art,
• 31:59
  and they are not. Some of them are hilariously in it for the money.
• 32:03
  And obviously, you can make a great living doing magic.
• 32:06
  People always scoff and go, you're a magician. And it's like,
• 32:09
  yeah, I make in an hour what you make in a week. Shut up.
• 32:15
  This is a very viable career option. But you need something that makes you stand
• 32:19
  out if you're really going to succeed from everybody else, especially if you're
• 32:24
  doing close-up, if you're doing birthday partings. You know,
• 32:27
  like think about Silly Billy.
• 32:28
  Silly Billy very much stood out from all the other birthday party people by
• 32:32
  looking a certain way and having a certain type of show and stuff like that.
• 32:35
  And that comes from just his personality and what he wanted to see and do.
• 32:40
  And some people are fine just being like, I like linking rings and cups and
• 32:43
  balls. I think they're great. It's like, oh, good.
• 32:46
  You're going to blend in with a hundred other guys and girls.
• 32:50
  But if you were like if but if you can find it a creative way to do cups and
• 32:54
  balls that makes you stand out great you know sean farquhar has those solid
• 32:58
  cups you know that kind of stuff chris sorry jason latimer had the clear cups,
• 33:03
  you know there's all sorts of pre-show i saw matt king last week he does the
• 33:07
  chop cup with the oatmeal container yeah he does larry denning's routine on
• 33:12
  stage with an note wheel yeah,
• 33:15
  nobody nobody knows that outside of us so you know it's,
• 33:20
  but it's the the bar for creativity and magic is sadly very low uh and the joke
• 33:25
  i always make is if you want to be creative magic just take a prop paint it
• 33:28
  a different color turn it 90 degrees oh my god you're you're you're.
• 33:35
  Look, the struggle's real, but it's probably real for all art forms, right?
• 33:39
  Like there's amateurs for all art and you're allowed to suck and not be great.
• 33:44
  But man, the beautiful thing about magic, when you can exceed and have a great
• 33:49
  character and develop original magic and portray that to an audience,
• 33:53
  you're delivering some of the highest art on the planet.
• 33:56
  Yeah. And it doesn't have to be even original magic. It just has to be original presentation.
• 34:01
  Yeah. But if you have the perfect storm and it's all coming together and I would
• 34:04
  give you, would say you're doing that yeah well that's because magic magic kind
• 34:08
  of to do good magic you have to do good theater and so you have to steal,
• 34:14
  from all of the disciplines right like magic at its base is the tricks and the
• 34:19
  moves like that's kind of what magic is it's the props it's the it's the effect of,
• 34:23
  you know magic happening and and so once you add music and movement and theater
• 34:28
  and comedy and makeup and costumes and lighting and blah blah blah it.
• 34:35
  It becomes more than magic. It becomes a presentation. That's why I always will
• 34:39
  tell people, it's like, listen, I'm an entertainer. I can entertain without
• 34:41
  magic, but I know how to use all these theatrical elements. And a lot of magicians,
• 34:46
  have never studied theater.
• 34:48
  A lot of them have never studied improv. A lot of them have never studied any
• 34:51
  behind-the-scenes theater stuff.
• 34:53
  Most of them think, most magicians are terrible actors.
• 34:58
  They think they are good actors because they can get in front of an audience and recite lines.
• 35:01
  But most of you were terrible actors myself included,
• 35:06
  i i'm not an actor of the back of that we did like a workshop with the slavic
• 35:10
  snowstorm clown the and and we
• 35:12
  did like a full acting thing and we're all sitting there before the thing
• 35:16
  and all the magicians think that like crying like on cue or on stage or on camera
• 35:21
  is like the key thing that makes you a great actor like they all just have a
• 35:24
  stupid belief these are grown men by the way having this conversation and i'm
• 35:28
  going like Yeah, of course.
• 35:29
  And I was, I reckon I could cry. I could too. I'm like, of course you can.
• 35:33
  You're fucking, you're freaking loser. You're just going to think about your life.
• 35:37
  Well, the thing about acting is it's like, it's naturalness,
• 35:42
  right? It's being able to deliver, to make an audience believe this is real.
• 35:46
  Like this is the first time, the only time this is happening in the now.
• 35:50
  And a lot of guys do not know this. What I was talking about earlier.
• 35:53
  A lot of, a lot of, a lot of performers, male and female and other don't know how to be in the moment.
• 36:01
  And they don't know how to have conviction in what they're doing, right?
• 36:05
  They are just going through the motions and that's not even because they lack training.
• 36:09
  Some of them have had the training and they just don't have the it factor as,
• 36:13
  that, I forget who wrote that book, but there is definitely some people who
• 36:16
  have it and some people who have learned it and some people who may never find it.
• 36:22
  Let me suggest that if you genuinely care about your audience,
• 36:27
  it helps. And I think maybe a lot of magicians are ego-driven.
• 36:32
  Yeah, they're doing it for themselves. And they're performing at the audience,
• 36:36
  not for the audience or with the audience. And that's very important is to be
• 36:40
  present in everything you do.
• 36:43
  And obviously, after you've done thousands of shows, you're not going to be
• 36:46
  100% present, but you need to be mostly.
• 36:49
  You're going to definitely hit autopilot. So like I've, I've definitely watched,
• 36:53
  this is not a slam on Mac, but I've definitely watched Mac get thrown because
• 36:58
  he, I watched him, you know, he's, he, he says a line, he expects a response
• 37:02
  because he's done this so many times.
• 37:05
  And I've watched the audience member say something different and he started
• 37:09
  to go into the next line and all of a sudden, what?
• 37:11
  Like he snapped him out of it a little bit. And I'm not saying Mac's not present
• 37:15
  or there. It's just, you get used to certain things. Let me tell you about doing
• 37:18
  10 demos a day for five years in the mall.
• 37:23
  I've done my, I've done my hard time. I've done my community service at a magic shop. I know.
• 37:28
  Yeah. The magic masters was just like, it was a theatrical event to work that
• 37:33
  gig. It was 10 to 15 minutes of scripted presentation and you better be in the
• 37:37
  moment or you weren't going to make any commission.
• 37:39
  Yeah, absolutely. And what we were talking about earlier, talking about the
• 37:41
  different reasons for doing magic, right? Some people are absolutely doing this
• 37:44
  for the art and there are definitely people who are doing it for a paycheck.
• 37:47
  And there's definitely people who are doing it for their ego or because,
• 37:52
  because daddy didn't love them enough for whatever reason. Right.
• 37:55
  They were hugged. They weren't hugged enough or they were hugged too much, whichever one it was.
• 38:00
  And so it's also a good brain food for some dysfunctional humans,
• 38:06
  right? Oh, it's very much therapy. Magic offers an endless rabbit hole for anyone,
• 38:11
  that needs, you know, brain candy.
• 38:14
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Or, you know, they might make some people mad with this
• 38:19
  statement, but it's like,
• 38:21
  I'm going to go on a limb and say 99% of, of people who are in the art arts
• 38:27
  are neuro spicy in some way. Yeah.
• 38:30
  Or else we wouldn't want to point fingers. Exactly. Listen, it's Baskin Robbins
• 38:34
  31 flavors of autism and it's crazy.
• 38:37
  And it's, you know, you sit there and you, it's like, why?
• 38:40
  It's like, wow, there's a lot of interesting people in magic.
• 38:42
  Oh, wait, you mean there's an art form where they can sit isolated and hyper-focus
• 38:46
  on something for years and not have to interact with other humans and then get
• 38:50
  really good at it and then get praise for it. Why does that appeal to these people?
• 38:59
  Boy, that hits a little too close to home. And if you're mad at me for saying that,
• 39:05
  Take a look in the mirror. Guilty. Fuck, man. First 20 years of my life was
• 39:11
  just spent learning card tricks to satisfy my soul and other magicians.
• 39:17
  Well, and again, what are you doing magic for? It's like, are you doing magic
• 39:20
  for real people? Are you doing it?
• 39:23
  I, I, I, again, I make the magic I want to see. And if I happen to make magic
• 39:27
  that satisfies non-magicians and magicians at the same time, great.
• 39:31
  I'm really happy with that. but there's definitely magic invented and created
• 39:35
  for magicians for them to do and for them to enjoy and a real audience is just
• 39:40
  like yeah you found my card at my chosen number thanks cool.
• 39:45
  Right like yeah there's definitely magic that is not for every you know it's not,
• 39:50
  people really are like no i always i say this a lot i'm like,
• 39:54
  reaction should not be the sole metric on how good a magic trick is right because
• 39:59
  i could microwave a dollar burrito for a hungry person and get a good reaction
• 40:03
  that doesn't mean it's a good burrito it just means they're hungry,
• 40:07
  right like i have definitely seen audiences react to some,
• 40:10
  lackluster magic because they don't know any better and it's fine whatever but,
• 40:15
  it doesn't you know i was i was just commenting on one of the forums or one
• 40:19
  of the groups recently where i was talking about how because me and other performers
• 40:23
  have sat around and we gone, do bad performers know they're bad?
• 40:25
  And we're pretty sure the answer is no. Yeah.
• 40:28
  Because if you did, you would fix it, but they're as good as they can be at the time.
• 40:33
  And some people will rise above their station. I've said for years,
• 40:37
  it doesn't matter where you enter magic. It's where you go with it.
• 40:40
  Right. Cause some people will
• 40:41
  enter through exposure. Some people absolutely will see a magic trick.
• 40:44
  I know two magicians who I've talked to, who said they watched secrets revealed
• 40:48
  on television and went, Oh, I could do this.
• 40:51
  This is easy. And I'm like, okay, well, that's not the, that's not the takeaway, but sure.
• 40:56
  But they, they entered in through an exposure TV show. And I'm sure people have
• 41:01
  entered in through exposure YouTube videos.
• 41:05
  But if you stay there and now you're like, oh, I'll just expose magic,
• 41:08
  that's bad. But if you rise up through the ranks and you take it and go,
• 41:12
  oh, this is cool. I want to make this better. I want to be a better performer.
• 41:16
  The secret to being a better performer is giving a damn. If you care,
• 41:18
  you will be a better performer. And if you don't care, you won't.
• 41:23
  That's just how it is. Care about robots.
• 41:26
  There was Mike Rowe said something once that pissed me off, but it was very true.
• 41:31
  He said, just because you're passionate about something doesn't mean you're
• 41:33
  good at it. And I was like, ouch, damn, dude.
• 41:37
  You know, that's, yeah. I remember having a conversation with Blay Sierra,
• 41:40
  same deal. And we're talking about how it's very hard to manufacture a passion
• 41:44
  in somebody, but you can definitely manufacture talent.
• 41:46
  Yeah. Like you can't, you know, you know, talent is something that you build.
• 41:50
  And when you work at, you get better and better and better and your talent improves,
• 41:54
  but you can't really improve upon passion.
• 41:56
  Yeah. I mean, it's there. And well, and again, like I said, there's certain
• 42:00
  people who you can, you can lead a horse to water kind of thing, right?
• 42:03
  Like, yes, you can, you can teach somebody how to do something and how to be
• 42:07
  good at it, but you can't teach them how to connect with an audience or how
• 42:11
  to be natural at something.
• 42:12
  You know, I've definitely watched performers who, and you know,
• 42:15
  some of these people are young and I'm like, oh, they're young.
• 42:18
  They'll get better. And maybe they will. Maybe they won't. I know people who
• 42:21
  I've seen who are in their forties. I'm like, oh, you just never got better. That's a shame.
• 42:28
  And then you can't say that to them unless they asked your opinion.
• 42:31
  You know, I'm not going to go up to sweaty and go like, you should stop because that's just rude.
• 42:35
  But, but if they said, Hey, do you think I can do to improve my performance?
• 42:39
  I'd be like, and let me tell you why, you know, like, yeah.
• 42:44
  Good, good, really good magic is really, really hard.
• 42:49
  So it's challenging for people to even find the time to make it good.
• 42:53
  Sometimes, especially if you're a worker, birthday parties a week. Yeah.
• 42:58
  No, I've definitely taught magic to a few people who wanted to,
• 43:01
  you know, do stuff. And I'm, and I'm one of those people, I'm not going to like
• 43:04
  tear you down and I'm not going to tell you suck, but I will be like,
• 43:06
  Hey, this could, this is good, but this could be better. Right.
• 43:09
  I'll be tactful in my criticisms.
• 43:11
  And it's and if people come to me want notes i'm always like make sure you know
• 43:14
  what you're asking for because i will not sugarcoat it just just letting you
• 43:19
  know it's not a thing but i have had definitely worked with people.
• 43:25
  Who who have who's been like it is really hard to do magic well and i go yeah
• 43:29
  you know who knows that nobody how much outside of magic has ever tried to do it well,
• 43:35
  Is this a busy part of your life, helping others with their magic?
• 43:38
  Because I know at Trick Supply, people would come in all the time and be like,
• 43:42
  hey, I was at Bizarro's yesterday. So, you know, it's all the time.
• 43:46
  It depends. You know, because my focus is now on escape rooms and immersive
• 43:50
  attractions, I'm not as prevalent in the magic world as I once was.
• 43:55
  So that's still a busy part of your life as well, the escape room stuff.
• 43:58
  Yeah, that's my main focus.
• 44:00
  You know, we have the show in Vegas, which scratches that itch.
• 44:03
  We need to talk about that too. Yeah. And I talk, I get to talk with cool people
• 44:07
  like you guys every so often, which is nice. But, uh, you know,
• 44:10
  if somebody comes to me and says, Hey, I'm working on something.
• 44:12
  If I have the time, absolutely. I'm happy to help.
• 44:16
  I don't build as much as I used to for magic. Just because again,
• 44:18
  if, if it's something I can knock out my garage in an hour, sure.
• 44:22
  If it's something that's going to take a lot of R and D on my part,
• 44:24
  I'm like, you know, you're not going to want to pay what it's going to cost
• 44:28
  for me to figure this out.
• 44:29
  Yeah, like I've been making these 3D videos and people are starting to email
• 44:32
  me with a 3D printing bag. Doug, can you make me this? I'm like,
• 44:34
  man, it's going to take eight hours of my life to make that box.
• 44:38
  You're not going to want to pay for the eight hours of my life.
• 44:41
  I'm like, yeah, but yeah. It's like there was a magician at Magic Live who asked
• 44:47
  if I could help him make something. And I said, yes, but listen, it's so easy to do.
• 44:52
  Here's what you buy. Here's how you do it.
• 44:55
  Go make it yourself. It'll be satisfying. you'll be able to make your own you'll
• 45:00
  be able to make backups and you don't all you all you do is spend money on the
• 45:03
  parts that's all you gotta do like and some people are absolutely capable
• 45:06
  of doing that some people again do not want to i have found the people who are
• 45:09
  in it for money just want to buy the stuff and do it and it works and they don't
• 45:13
  care about the subtleties or the artistry or any of that stuff they just,
• 45:17
  want that they want that adulation and that paycheck and those people i'm just
• 45:21
  like all right fine Yeah.
• 45:24
  Let's talk about your show. What are you doing later? I'm doing a show in a few hours.
• 45:28
  You've got to work tonight. I'm surprised you're even here on a Monday.
• 45:31
  You guys bump your show time up.
• 45:33
  Yeah, we're at 8.30 now because almost late night magic. I love that for me.
• 45:38
  Oh, yeah. No, it's great.
• 45:40
  I'll be contacting you soon about coming to see you. Yes. There's a lot of people
• 45:44
  who are like, oh, 8.30 is not late. I'm like, it is for some people. I guarantee you it is.
• 45:48
  Yeah. Well, I mean, it is late night for a Vegas magic show.
• 45:51
  This isn't like a midnight town anymore, really.
• 45:54
  Not really i mean there were people we definitely used to get people who would
• 45:57
  come to our show and be like oh we were looking for something to do and seeing
• 46:00
  if there were any shows at late at night and this was the only one and we're
• 46:03
  like great glad we could accommodate so i'm sad we're gonna we're gonna lose
• 46:06
  out on those people because those people usually loved the show
• 46:09
  and and had a great time and we're happy to have something to do so i'm a little
• 46:13
  sad we're gonna lose those people but there weren't enough of them,
• 46:16
  to really facilitate how about the elevator pitch on late night what is the
• 46:19
  show late night magic is the island of misfit toys punk rock magic show that It shouldn't exist.
• 46:25
  There is, you know, most, most ensemble magic show casts are like,
• 46:29
  here's four generic magicians on one weirdo, you know, and, and ours is just,
• 46:36
  here's a bunch of weirdos.
• 46:38
  Here's all the rejects from the shows that nobody would know. Sounds about right.
• 46:42
  But it's an amazing show. I love it. I recommend it all the time.
• 46:45
  Happy to see Kylie about it. And I'm happy to hear that.
• 46:48
  I can't wait to see it again. It's been about eight months. Well,
• 46:50
  no, it's been since you were at the Orleans. When did you guys see it?
• 46:54
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you even been to the magician's room yet?
• 46:56
  I haven't, but fixing that soon. Good, good. I'm ready to be in the sunlight
• 47:00
  again. Yeah, right, yeah.
• 47:03
  I need to get me some vitamin D. yeah the the late night magic started in 2021
• 47:08
  right like right near the,
• 47:10
  right near the tail end of covid because there was a producer who reached out
• 47:13
  to our producer uh lefty and was like hey do you have any where i'm looking
• 47:17
  to put shows this little theater at this place called lexus park do you want
• 47:19
  to do you have any shows and he goes i might,
• 47:22
  because late night magic started as like a weird once a month different performers
• 47:26
  every month variety show kind
• 47:28
  of thing by another by another guy his name was michael mayfield and he,
• 47:32
  asked lefty if he wanted to host to be and help co-produce it and and then that
• 47:36
  happened and then covid shut all that down and then,
• 47:39
  lefty said hey let's make it a show with a stable stable not mentally physically stable cast and.
• 47:46
  And so he called me, and so it was me, Anna Rose, Mondray, John Shaw, and Lefty.
• 47:52
  And so that was the show. We did that at Lexus Park for like a year and a half.
• 47:56
  And then we moved to the Orleans for like a year and a half.
• 47:59
  That was a late show, right? That was like 1130. Oh, yeah. Lexus Park was late
• 48:04
  night magic. That was like 11 o'clock at night. It was rough,
• 48:07
  man. I was here right after COVID, and it was too late for me to go.
• 48:10
  I mean, I'm in my grandpa era, and I'm like, damn it.
• 48:13
  It's just not coming home at three in the morning from this night.
• 48:17
  How long do you think our show is? Jesus.
• 48:19
  The, the, the one day, the one problem with the later you go,
• 48:22
  the more impaired the audience becomes, especially in the summer.
• 48:27
  That's a big factor. Well, in the summer audiences are tired because they've
• 48:30
  been walking around the heat all day and they are wiped out.
• 48:33
  Even if they're not drunk or stone, they're just done.
• 48:37
  And we have people who pay money for the front row and just don't show up because
• 48:42
  I think they're just, done for the day right and i'm like okay that's weird,
• 48:46
  thanks for the money suckers but we it's,
• 48:50
  we used to come out i remember i went on stage one time at lexus park and i
• 48:54
  came out and went i was like whoa this smells like my parents house out here
• 48:56
  it's like a dispensary that's good that's a bad sign uh-oh,
• 49:00
  oh my they all came on the weed yeah.
• 49:03
  And anna rose used to like you know be talking to the audience and then if they
• 49:07
  were just like staring at her like the rca dog she'd be like You guys too high
• 49:11
  for this because I'll slow it down.
• 49:13
  And then people sometimes will be like, yeah, we are.
• 49:19
  Those were rough shows. We, the first night, the very, very first show we did,
• 49:25
  was probably the worst one of all five years, right? It was just,
• 49:29
  this audience was not into it. The show also wasn't cemented how it should have
• 49:33
  been yet. It didn't have the format yet.
• 49:36
  And so I remember I did three routines instead of two in my set.
• 49:41
  And this was one guy. He lives in my brain rent-free forever now.
• 49:47
  This dude, right there, stage right.
• 49:50
  I remember him just loudly over the music just going, oh are you done yet.
• 49:58
  And i i just go i can't say shit because i'm a silent act i'm performing the
• 50:02
  music right there's i can't just there's not much i could do and so i'm locked
• 50:07
  in and i just remember sitting there going sir you are my favorite person forever
• 50:10
  and ever from now on just in my brain,
• 50:13
  and but that was but it's been nothing but uphill ever since so it's been nice,
• 50:18
  some night vegas is a weird place right the audiences are hit or miss like because
• 50:22
  we get everybody's assholes here right we get every different kind of person
• 50:27
  from all different parts of the planet
• 50:29
  and they all react differently to live entertainment and so some nights it's
• 50:33
  rough and some nights you feel like a rock star and so everywhere everything in between,
• 50:38
  some nights it's a comedy crowd some nights it's a magic crowd some nights it's
• 50:41
  none of them and some nights the unicode the god smile upon us and it's both it's it's nice,
• 50:47
  but we i keep joking because we're coming up on a year at magician's room and
• 50:52
  i i want us to i want to see if i can convince lefty to have us celebrate our
• 50:56
  third one-year anniversary,
• 50:59
  because we've been in three different venues at least a year.
• 51:04
  Well and you left the orleans they closed that theater right it's not like your
• 51:07
  show closed because it wasn't no no they kicked everybody out yeah they were
• 51:10
  like hey you know what we're gonna do with this space we're gonna make it an
• 51:12
  empty room that generates no money yeah,
• 51:16
  Good job, we Orleans. Yeah, I was curious when I actually scripted it out myself.
• 51:20
  I was like, yeah, I remember a business place was here. Then I walked through
• 51:23
  and I'm like, what is it now? Is it a restaurant? Like, what does it even become?
• 51:25
  Like, it's just boarded up.
• 51:27
  Yeah. Well, that room has been so many different things over the years.
• 51:32
  It was a comedy club at one point. It was a restaurant at one point.
• 51:34
  It was a wine and painting, one of those things where you go get drunk and try to paint.
• 51:39
  It was that. It's been a number of things, but there has also been nothing in
• 51:43
  between that for a lot of times, too.
• 51:46
  So i mean i mean if you look at the orleans though that buffet is sitting empty,
• 51:50
  for how long like that's yeah the orleans really likes their empty rooms apparently,
• 51:57
  yeah what other shows are at at the magician's room currently well let's see
• 52:01
  currently we david goldrake just just left to go pursue greeter pastures,
• 52:06
  so right now we have on the marquee we have the conjurers who are i think are gone for another week.
• 52:13
  We have Feral Dillon in the afternoon. You have, there's a new show there called The Spanish Magician.
• 52:19
  His show is entirely in Spanish, but all his advertising says,
• 52:24
  you don't have to speak Spanish to feel the magic. And I'm like, oh, okay.
• 52:29
  What do you, what does that audience have to do? The Magician Dream is open to new ideas.
• 52:34
  Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, no, the owner, the owner Pompeii Entertainment of that
• 52:39
  space definitely is willing to try stuff.
• 52:41
  So that's nice. And then of course our show now at eight 30,
• 52:44
  we stepped into the gold Drake's spot. So, so there might be another late night
• 52:48
  show at some point, or we may move again. Who knows what's happening?
• 52:53
  How long have you been running at this eight 30 spot two weeks or one week?
• 52:57
  No, no. This is our first weekend at eight 30. So tonight is our second show. How it turns out.
• 53:02
  Yeah. No, for sure. I'm well, when we were at 10 o'clock at the Orleans,
• 53:05
  it was so much nicer. It was so nice. Oh no, I'm sorry. Not 10 o'clock,
• 53:08
  nine o'clock. We were nine o'clock at the Orleans. 9 o'clock was so nice.
• 53:13
  And I suspect...
• 53:14
  You know, as I'm sure you're aware and other people watching might be aware,
• 53:18
  things are not great economically in this town right now, but they're not great
• 53:22
  economically anywhere.
• 53:23
  But because Vegas is a solely entertainment town to a lot of people,
• 53:28
  there's just nobody coming here right now. Like there's tourism was down by
• 53:32
  3 million some odd people I read the other day this year.
• 53:36
  Yeah, like they closed Mad Apple or they're closing it. This Mad Apple Awakening,
• 53:40
  the big shows going down, man.
• 53:43
  It's interesting. Look, I feel like more intimate variety theater is cool.
• 53:47
  I think we're down to do shows for less than 100 people even and be happy about
• 53:51
  it. Ken Axel's Ghost Stories.
• 53:56
  That show is going to survive. Magician Study is going to survive.
• 54:00
  All the small intimate spaces, I think, will survive, especially the ones that have good deals.
• 54:06
  They're not having to rent out a ridiculous amount of—they don't have to pay
• 54:10
  exorbitant rent on a space.
• 54:12
  That's the problem. It's rent is always going to be the problem.
• 54:15
  And if you can just have a two wall deal with a, with like a casino where you're
• 54:19
  in a banquet room somewhere doing a small show, I think that's where things
• 54:23
  are going to be for a while.
• 54:24
  And also I think people really like that. I think, you know,
• 54:27
  there's, there's a part of me that's like, man, I would like to do like a small 30 person ish.
• 54:34
  Show for people there is there is something very appealing about that as a performer,
• 54:39
  i'm not really interested in wading in that pond in this city i i've,
• 54:43
  had a i've i've had my own show here i want no part of it it's just not this
• 54:47
  it's just not for me like i i,
• 54:49
  what i have now is what i've always wanted bigger like small part of a bigger
• 54:53
  show 10 15 minutes go home i don't have to
• 54:56
  worry about greasing the palms of the ticket brokers and going to talk to other
• 55:00
  concierge and dealing with the everything that comes with having your own show.
• 55:04
  It is not, you know, there's, there's, I'm a very big believer in people who
• 55:08
  are good at, who are good at the art are not great at business and people are good at business.
• 55:12
  They're not always great at the art. Some of them are good at both.
• 55:15
  I'm banking on my social media skill sets to sell the tickets.
• 55:19
  I think like you, like the magician study, I think that's how they're rocking that show.
• 55:24
  I think we can have success on that. Well, and I know you're a fan of the R
• 55:27
  rated magic show here in town.
• 55:30
  Have you seen it? oh yeah i just went and saw it again yeah you know grant you
• 55:34
  guys are bros i performed in the show with him when it was on tour and that's
• 55:37
  what i was gonna say he toured around did theaters with the show
• 55:41
  and did great you know because he he understands how to mark he understood how
• 55:46
  to market it right like that was he just figured it out,
• 55:49
  and if you can figure out that that if you can speak the algorithm,
• 55:54
  you you can do okay or hire somebody who does yeah you know it's like if you
• 55:58
  If you know how to pay for it properly, you can make that work too. If you know.
• 56:02
  And, and I, anybody will tell you like touring is where the money is sitting still,
• 56:08
  sitting still isn't all can be where the money is but it depends on where you
• 56:12
  are like greg frown up in niagara falls has his own theater right and i'm sure
• 56:16
  he still is what you have a home show yeah,
• 56:19
  yeah yeah it's being in one spot but like places where there's not as much competition
• 56:24
  right like there's a there was a there's a performer here in town steve daly
• 56:27
  he moved back to iowa where he's trying to open a mini golf course indoor mini
• 56:31
  golf course which i hope is going well for him because it looks cool.
• 56:34
  But he used to have this lecture where he talked about The whole point of it
• 56:37
  was like, welcome to Vegas.
• 56:38
  Now go home. And what he meant by that was like, it's, you come to this town.
• 56:43
  So I have a couple of thoughts on it as well. Like people come to this town
• 56:46
  wanting to have their own show and wanted to be a big shot. But the problem
• 56:48
  is a lot of people come here without material, without a show.
• 56:51
  They want, and Vegas is not a town to start in.
• 56:54
  Vegas is a town to continue in. You've got to have material and have something
• 56:57
  to bring to the town and have already concrete enough that you can jump into
• 57:03
  something or do something. If you're trying to start a career here, this is not the town.
• 57:07
  This is a town of professionals. This is not a town of starting amateurs or semi-pros.
• 57:11
  And what he used to say is his lecture was about, you know, if you're a big
• 57:17
  fish in a small pond, you should stay there because you don't realize what will
• 57:22
  happen when you become the medium to small size fish in the big pond.
• 57:26
  And there's a joke in Vegas. It's like, how do you make $10,000 in Vegas?
• 57:30
  Well, you start with 20,000 and lose your half your ass. You know,
• 57:33
  like it's, it's, but here's the thing.
• 57:36
  I am proof that you can, you can make it in Vegas. Cause I moved out here and
• 57:40
  I just wanted to work. I didn't try to have my own show.
• 57:42
  I did have it cause somebody else set it up for me, but I didn't want, I wasn't trying to do it.
• 57:46
  But that, but again, I came in here to work, not, I just was willing to do anything,
• 57:51
  jump in and do stuff here and there, you know, work variety shows, work, whatever.
• 57:56
  Well, I know when I moved here, I was certainly not looking to be a professional
• 57:59
  performer out of the gate.
• 58:00
  You know, I had to have other plans to make money, trick supply,
• 58:04
  revving up social media again, things like that. Because, yeah,
• 58:07
  trying to be a pro in this town, especially, you know, a noob, good luck.
• 58:12
  Yeah, well, Nick, I mean, you have, you've had shows in where you're from. Right.
• 58:17
  Right. And how many, how many shows did you, do you have to,
• 58:21
  would you have to compete with where you're from? Like how many other magic
• 58:24
  shows or whatever you were offering, would you say you had, you were up against?
• 58:28
  Yeah. There's probably like half a dozen in this town alone that you, you got up against.
• 58:31
  Yeah. Right. And that's six, right? Like that's right. That's nothing.
• 58:36
  That's in five. You got 5 million people there, right? Right.
• 58:40
  Yeah. We have Vegas locally has like two and a half, 3 million.
• 58:44
  That doesn't count tourism, but we have not even counting non magic shows.
• 58:49
  We easily have a dozen, 14. So I've made a list for trick supply.
• 58:54
  It's on their website. There's 24 shows. You can buy a ticket to online.
• 58:59
  Is that magic shows? Yeah. Just magic. Okay. That's,
• 59:03
  interesting yeah so yeah that's that's a lot and then you pile circ the sphere,
• 59:08
  donnie and my brother not donnie ran around anymore but you know what i mean
• 59:11
  like shows like that yeah that
• 59:13
  is rough like it is this town is this town is not for the weak of heart.
• 59:19
  I and i'm glad somebody else is dealing with all that honestly yeah that's the
• 59:24
  nightmare part for sure in this town like trying to navigate that you know you
• 59:28
  know what i think about is like getting a joint and a place off the strip.
• 59:32
  And I don't know if you've been to Bentley's like over by trick supply that
• 59:35
  has like a, we used to love, we used to love Bentley's and have a good time
• 59:39
  going there. And until an incident, I will tell you about off camera occurred. Yeah.
• 59:43
  That's what I envision. Like screw going, but still it's a problem.
• 59:47
  Yeah. Well, and I tell people this all the time. So the thing,
• 59:49
  the variety show I told you about, right. So back in Dallas before I moved here.
• 59:53
  So me and a bunch of friends, somebody was like, Hey, you want to do this like
• 59:55
  variety show, weekly variety show at a bar? We're like, sure.
• 59:58
  Why not? It'll give us a place to try new stuff.
• 1:00:00
  And we show up to the one night to the bar, the bar has shut down without telling
• 1:00:03
  anybody, including the employees. It's just. Oh no.
• 1:00:07
  Right. And we're like, there's people here to see a show.
• 1:00:10
  What do we do? So thankfully we're on kind of a, an area of Dallas called Greenville
• 1:00:13
  Avenue. So there's a bunch of like bars and stuff, shops and things.
• 1:00:17
  So I'm running in and out of the, I'm just like, okay, I'll find a place for
• 1:00:19
  us to do something. So I'm running into these bars and finally I hit a pizza
• 1:00:21
  joint and I go, Hey, can we, it's like, and it's kind of like shotgun style,
• 1:00:26
  right? Like New Orleans house.
• 1:00:27
  Like it's super long, but not super wide. Right. It's like there's a narrow
• 1:00:30
  pizza joint and, and I just go in and go, can we do a pizza,
• 1:00:34
  a show in the pizza place here at the back of the room? There's nobody in here.
• 1:00:37
  They're like, yeah, fine, whatever. We're like, cool. Thanks.
• 1:00:40
  So we would do this show every week for tips. So we take those tips and we go
• 1:00:43
  eat, we go to like a place called cafe Brazil or Denny's or whatever.
• 1:00:48
  And we, we talk about the show afterwards, right? It was like five of us.
• 1:00:51
  And it was one of those things where we weren't doing it to make money.
• 1:00:54
  We were doing it because we just wanted to perform and we needed the space and
• 1:00:57
  needed a place to try stuff.
• 1:01:00
  But we, you know, we called it, we changed the name of it to like Slice of Variety,
• 1:01:03
  you know, because it was a pizza place.
• 1:01:05
  And that was great. We did it for a number of months and maybe even a little
• 1:01:09
  over a year. And we had guest performers coming in and out and stuff like that.
• 1:01:12
  And so one of the things I tell people is, because a lot of people are like,
• 1:01:15
  oh, there's nowhere to perform in my town where I'm at. I'm like, I get that.
• 1:01:19
  But sometimes you just got to make your own luck man just find a place find
• 1:01:23
  a restaurant that has a little tiny banquet space that they don't use and if
• 1:01:29
  they do just don't do a show that they'll know ahead of time they're not going
• 1:01:32
  to spring it on you usually,
• 1:01:34
  but it's like find a small space it's like you know when i was when i was younger
• 1:01:38
  when i was in late 90s early 2000s we had a shop in dallas called insomnia and
• 1:01:43
  they had a little stage out back but i would
• 1:01:45
  during the week or weekends i'd go there and i'd do magic for tips that's how
• 1:01:48
  i was keeping a float and then i would,
• 1:01:50
  every couple of months i'd do a show on the back patio just to do a show and
• 1:01:54
  i'd lay out flyers and you know it was one of those things where you just sometimes just have to,
• 1:01:59
  punk rocket man like you just gotta do it yourself because nobody else is gonna
• 1:02:03
  help you and if they do good for you yeah.
• 1:02:07
  Good advice. Now, that doesn't involve you leaving your house and talking to
• 1:02:11
  people directly. I know that's the hard part for a lot of people.
• 1:02:15
  Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of interesting how people have this mindset where it's
• 1:02:17
  like, I'm going to go there and make it. And it's like, you've got to come there made.
• 1:02:22
  Vegas especially, yes. There's other towns, you know, Chicago,
• 1:02:25
  New York, LA. You could probably do that in. But Vegas is, I'm not going to
• 1:02:30
  say nobody can do it, but I'm going to say it is highly unlikely.
• 1:02:35
  Yeah, there's a few things that we have around town here. where there's lots
• 1:02:38
  of opportunities that we have.
• 1:02:39
  And like, for example, the theater and magic that we have, where we put guests
• 1:02:41
  in to perform, it's, you know, we've got other opportunities where you can get
• 1:02:46
  good, but then theater and magic where you perform is when you are good. Yeah.
• 1:02:51
  And it's a very polite way of saying it, but like, don't come here to work on
• 1:02:54
  material. Like the price point of the tickets and everything else,
• 1:02:56
  like they come here to see good things.
• 1:02:58
  And there's many other places we can polish our turds.
• 1:03:01
  Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And it's, and those venues,
• 1:03:05
  those good places to be bad are invaluable you know it's Vegas doesn't have
• 1:03:09
  a lot of them every so often one pops up but but,
• 1:03:12
  it's nothing compared to other places where you can just you know what is it
• 1:03:15
  find your Hamburg for those of you Beatles fans you know like it's it's it's
• 1:03:20
  one of those things where you just have to,
• 1:03:22
  you know you have to want it like if you want to again if you want to be a better
• 1:03:25
  performer you have to want it and when you're young you've got to take gigs
• 1:03:29
  you don't I've you you'll know you've made it when you can take the gigs you
• 1:03:33
  want to do and not the gigs you have to do.
• 1:03:36
  That's great advice, you know, because there's so many kids that I've dealt
• 1:03:39
  with where I've said like, Hey, there's a gig. And it's like,
• 1:03:41
  well, it's under what I'm worth. I'm like, well, this is what the gig is paying.
• 1:03:45
  Yeah. I know you're broke. You've been asking me for work.
• 1:03:48
  And then I give you a gig that's only a hundred bucks less than what you ordinarily would take.
• 1:03:53
  And you're going, wah. It's like, you're not in a position to be, to be doing this.
• 1:03:59
  And a lot of kids come at you, they're like, Oh, you know, I want to do more stage stuff.
• 1:04:04
  There isn't a lot of stage stuff there's roving yeah you know and the way i
• 1:04:07
  would it is like don't come to me and ask for swordfish okay right they're hard
• 1:04:11
  to catch but i've cast a net and my net has lots of mackerel you want mackerel i'm gonna hook you up,
• 1:04:18
  do you think i'm gonna give you my swordfish after like wrestling it for weeks
• 1:04:21
  and weeks you know like right i ain't giving you swordfish right learn to fish
• 1:04:25
  for your own swordfish buddy.
• 1:04:28
  That's the thing right like and And when you're younger, man,
• 1:04:31
  you got to do what you got to do.
• 1:04:32
  I, I will listen, listen, you, if you think you're too good to dress in a generic
• 1:04:38
  Winnie the Pooh costume for like 60 bucks, you're not. All right.
• 1:04:42
  I got news for you. You need that $60.
• 1:04:47
  Bro, I've done some shit character work in New Orleans. I've had a fucking parade
• 1:04:53
  of character work. You know how many times I've been a big head?
• 1:04:58
  I can guess. You know, the marty-drop parades where you're walking around with the big heads?
• 1:05:03
  Listen, it's not always glamorous. You know, I love, like, one night you could
• 1:05:09
  be, you know, rocking a 2,000-seat theater, and your next gig is a Cub Scout
• 1:05:15
  banquet for 10 kids who don't like you.
• 1:05:18
  That is the life. And the goal is to not do the banquets, unless you want to.
• 1:05:24
  That's fine, whatever. But the goal is to not do the, again,
• 1:05:29
  the gigs you don't want to do. You get to do the, like, and the,
• 1:05:32
  it was Simon Lovell. Simon Lovell was doing a workshop many,
• 1:05:35
  many years ago in Dallas.
• 1:05:37
  And I remember him talking about how he raised his prices. What he,
• 1:05:40
  the goal was to work as much as he wanted to and make what he wanted.
• 1:05:44
  Right. And so, cause he was like, I'm making what I want, but I'm working too much.
• 1:05:48
  So he's like, I'm going to raise my prices. and eventually he reached an equilibrium
• 1:05:52
  where he was making what he wanted and working as much as he wanted to and he said the secret to how,
• 1:05:57
  to getting higher fees is having the balls to ask for it and that is very true
• 1:06:02
  and as you raise your prices you're going to lose clients and you're going to
• 1:06:05
  be afraid you're going to i can't lose these clients yes you can because other
• 1:06:08
  people will take their spot the higher you climb the more you will find those people but it's,
• 1:06:14
  and again you're going this is we're going to book in back around having an
• 1:06:18
  identity that makes you stand out from every other generic ass performer in a suit or whatever.
• 1:06:25
  Costume it is will benefit you greatly right because if somebody calls an agency and goes hey,
• 1:06:32
  i need a generic close-up card mad magician they're like i got 30 of these guys
• 1:06:37
  but if they call and go hey they call the agency you've already lost well yes
• 1:06:41
  and no i mean i know i have friends uh you nick knows my friend,
• 1:06:45
  doc andrews he, he used to be on it.
• 1:06:47
  He used to work with an agency, but he was very different from everybody else. Right.
• 1:06:51
  He's still, he was very different. I guess if you have one that books you,
• 1:06:54
  that's. Yeah, right. Well, absolutely. But if you're, let's say you're on a roster.
• 1:06:59
  Of like you know a dozen guys but you know people will call if you're if you're
• 1:07:03
  doing it right people will call and specifically ask for you
• 1:07:05
  right they'll be like hey i want to book bizarro i want to book doug whatever
• 1:07:09
  right obviously the dream is to not have to work for those people and they just
• 1:07:12
  come directly to you obviously,
• 1:07:14
  but casting many nets and sometimes helps especially when you're starting out
• 1:07:19
  but but again if somebody was
• 1:07:21
  to look at a picture of a bunch of guys guys and you stand out in some way,
• 1:07:25
  they're likely going to pick you like if your promo photo is interesting your
• 1:07:29
  costume is interesting and you don't have to go crazy you don't have to be like
• 1:07:32
  red hat fish tie you don't have to be like you've got guys like what is his uh what's his name here
• 1:07:38
  with the the duck tie you know talking about the bald mormon,
• 1:07:42
  adam london there we go adam london i haven't seen his show yet i'm like god
• 1:07:46
  damn it i don't know what you're talking about yeah he was.
• 1:07:49
  He was he's been around yeah afternoon thank you but he has his whole thing
• 1:07:53
  is rubber ducks he's got a rubber duck tie but he wears a suit right not super
• 1:07:56
  outgoing not super crazy and you don't have to be to stand out but you need
• 1:08:01
  to have you also want like your costume,
• 1:08:04
  or your your performing outfit to look like something that's not off the rack
• 1:08:08
  and even if it is make it look like it's not add some zhuzh to it you know it's
• 1:08:13
  like a good a good way to do that without going too crazy is to mix fabrics, right?
• 1:08:17
  Like if you're wearing a velvet like suit, put some matte trim on it or something
• 1:08:22
  like have, have some texture, have some, something that just makes it look, makes you look special.
• 1:08:27
  I've heard, I've heard the phrase, like you either want to be the best dressed
• 1:08:30
  or the most interestingly dressed in the room. Right. And how that occurs is up to you.
• 1:08:36
  You know, I, I, of course, again, I'm an extreme example of it,
• 1:08:38
  but even if I don't wear, even if I don't wear the fish tie and I just wear
• 1:08:41
  a normal suit and a red hat, that's enough, you know, that's not too crazy, but,
• 1:08:46
  or you just need to look interesting and how, you know, it's like that,
• 1:08:50
  how that works is up to you, you know?
• 1:08:52
  And again, that's how you stand out in a market and just get more work is just
• 1:08:57
  having that identity that makes you unique.
• 1:09:00
  Bizarro, can you want to plug? You got a website or something?
• 1:09:04
  Yeah, I was going to say, we should wrap this up and give Bizarro an opportunity
• 1:09:08
  to do the fine. He's got to get to the Vegas Strip and get ready to perform.
• 1:09:12
  That's not a hit me in the next two hours. He's panning. Okay.
• 1:09:17
  I've got another hour.
• 1:09:20
  I got another hour to kill. It's fine. I mean, getting to the Strip is never like a given, right?
• 1:09:26
  No, coming from the east side, it's not too bad. If I had to cross the highway,
• 1:09:29
  it might be iffy. and cross the strip, but I don't have to cross the strip for
• 1:09:32
  where I'm at. You got it figured out. Yeah, I know.
• 1:09:36
  I'm okay. The only time it's a hassle is when F1 is going, and I have to kind
• 1:09:40
  of navigate around that. Yeah, come a night. Yeah, yeah, very soon.
• 1:09:45
  So, okay, let's get ready to wrap this up. Before we go to ending the show the
• 1:09:49
  way we always do with the final word, you can scope out our merch on themagicguyshow.com.
• 1:09:53
  Doug, anything exciting coming up from your side of the planet?
• 1:09:56
  Yeah, I'm blowing up my YouTube channel again. and turn into YouTube Doug Conn
• 1:10:00
  and find out all the good shit.
• 1:10:02
  Amazing. Scope that out. I will be in Toowoomba for the Theater of Magic.
• 1:10:06
  If you're in Queensland and around the area, come and say, hi,
• 1:10:08
  what's up? I'm going to be there. I've got to fly in, fly out. Toowoomba?
• 1:10:12
  Toowoomba. Toowoomba. That's a, that's a, that's a name.
• 1:10:16
  It is. It is. It's a funky little, it's a gorgeous little town and a gorgeous
• 1:10:20
  little theater. So I wanted to stick around, but just due to my commitments,
• 1:10:24
  unfortunately, I was going to stick around in Brisbane for a bit.
• 1:10:27
  Not an opportunity this time, but I will next time to catch up with all of our
• 1:10:31
  magic guys and gals who are on that side of the planet. But yes,
• 1:10:35
  by all means, if you are in town, look it up.
• 1:10:36
  Of course, jump on the Discord. Bizarro will kindly share that information he
• 1:10:40
  mentioned earlier at the start of the podcast.
• 1:10:42
  I'll put it in our Discord. You guys can get the information from there and
• 1:10:45
  we'll end this episode the way we do every episode when we have a wonderful
• 1:10:49
  guest like Bizarro by giving you, my friend, the final word.
• 1:10:54
  Thank you, Bizarro. Hey, no.
• 1:10:58
  So if you want to know more about me, I have a few websites.
• 1:11:01
  I have bizarro.ninja, which is my main website.
• 1:11:04
  You can see where I'm going to be performing and traveling. I'll be at the Orlando,
• 1:11:08
  Magic Convention here next month or next month. We're close enough to September.
• 1:11:11
  In October, if you're down anywhere near Florida, come check it out and hang
• 1:11:15
  out with us down there. That'll be fun.
• 1:11:18
  My prop making website, if you need a prop made, is bizarrobydesign.com. and if,
• 1:11:24
  you are one of the escape room people, if you need weird stuff made,
• 1:11:28
  written, any kind of stuff with that, if you are an escape room owner and want
• 1:11:31
  to get some new weird things made by other magicians, hit us up at testsubjects.com.
• 1:11:38
  I'm all over the internet. If you put in the word SMAPDooda,
• 1:11:41
  S-M-A-P-P-D-O-O-D-A, you'll find me all over the place.
• 1:11:45
  And if you're in Vegas, come see Late Night Magic because we'd love to see you
• 1:11:49
  there and we'll teach you some new words.
• 1:11:53
  Thanks for listening.