* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Magic New Zealand * www.watson.co.nz/ezine.html * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Issue Number: #466 Date: Sunday 3rd December 2006 Editor: Alan Watson www.magicianz.com www.Alan-Watson.com e-mail: AW@Alan-Watson.com ================================ Hi here is the latest news ================================ 1. Editor's Message 2. David And Dania - Royal Variety Performance 3. Uri Geler - The Heir Second Part 4. I.B.M. 2007 Convention In Reno - Hurry For Discount 5. Meetings With Remarkable Magicians # 37 - Nick Lewin 6. Creativity: A Brain Storming Technique That Works 7. IBM Ring 316 Halifax Nova Scotia Wanting To Book Lectures 8. For iPoders and iTuners - S.A.M. Convention Updates 9. e-zine Archives 10. Privacy Policy And Copyright Notice -------------------------------------------- 1. Editor's Message -------------------------------------------- Docc Hilford's Australian and New Zealand Lectures and Workshops have been cancelled due to an accident. He fell down a flight of cement stairs and smashed disc in his back putting him in hospital. Docc is now at home, but he is confined to bed for the next 7 to 10 days. ----------------------- Remember if you have any magic news drop me a line: AW@Alan-Watson.com -------------------------------------------- 2. David And Dania - Royal Variety Performance -------------------------------------------- Message from Martin Saunders (UK) David and Dania the quick change act that recently performed and did so well on America's got Talent. They have been invited to perform December the 4th for the Royal Variety Performance at the London Coliseum. The following week they will be back in Chicago where they are slated to appear on the Oprah show. -------------------------------------------- 3. Uri Geler - The Heir Second Part -------------------------------------------- Message from Yosi Notkowitz (Israel) The second part of the TV life transmission Uri Geler - the heir, was transmised last Saturday on the Israeli TV. On the show performed Amir Lustig who changed a gum taste and closed people's hands which couldn't open, Ehud Segev found a chosen flight place and its cost, Simi Atias stopped his beat, Asaf Nisim found a chosen song and sang/played it with his guitar. All performance was again known magicians and members at the Israeli Magic club ISPAM. Uri Geler performed by calling to El Al pilot who was during a flight from Bangkok, the pilot chose a painted a figure, Uri Geler painted also this figure and gave it closed to the TV people, after the pilot's landing the pilot arrived to the TV studio, Uri Geler's and the pilot's paintings were opened and they were the same, a fish painting. During last 2 weeks the newspapers reports wrote that all performances were known magic shows and not more, some wrote they saw better mental shows. Future information about the heir will be sent. -------------------------------------------- 4. I.B.M. 2007 Convention In Reno - Hurry For Discount -------------------------------------------- Message from Scott Wells, IBM Convention Chairman This is the last call for getting your Early Registrations for the I.B.M. Convention and saving some money. After January 1st, standard rates will apply. This is by far the best magic convention value available on the planet. We're not kidding!!! The talent, venue and brotherhood will be unsurpassed. But Wait!  There's More!  If you are not yet a member or the I.B.M. and you join prior to January 1, 2007, then you will receive a $50.00 voucher good toward your convention registration in 2007, 2009 or 2010 (not valid for the 2008 combined convention) and is non-transferable, providing the person maintains his/her membership.  The voucher will be mailed with the membership certificate.  For more details, please contact Steve Hart, Membership Chairman at steve@magic2motivate.com or get membership details through the I.B.M. website at www.magician.org If you have already got your reservations - the entire I.B.M. Convention Staff promises to make this a convention to remember. Many thanks for your support! For those of you that are still holding out till next year -- just look at the talent already booked: Gay Blackstone and Rich Bloch are cookin' up something amazing for the Friday Night Gala Show.  This show alone will be worth the price of your registration. Other magicians booked by Dale Salwak include Trevor Lewis, Jason Byrne, Murray Hatfield & Teresa, Hikari, Chuck Jones & Co., Mark Merchant, Antje Pode, Terry Seabrooke, Yugi Yasuda, Jon Armstrong, Henry Evans, Pattrick Przysiecki, Boris Wild, Tony Chapek, Arthur Trace... and more! Wow! Happy Holidays everyone! Early Registration Member or Family (Before 1/1/07) - $155.00 Registration with Voucher (Before 1/1/07) - $105.00 Registration Member or Family (After 1/1/07) - $175.00 Late Registration Fee (Starts After 5/31/07) - 20.00 Registration IBM Youth - $100.00 Registration IBM Youth with Voucher (Before 1/1/07) - $50.00 Registration Child (Under 12) - $75.00 Initiation Dues/Non-Member Fee - $55.00 Grand Banquet - $40.00 Merlin Breakfast -  $18.00 You can register online by going to www.magician.org or call Roger Wicks, Convention Registrar @ (937) 826-1133 Don't wait! Happy Holidays from Scott Wells, Convention Chairman and the entire I.B.M.  Convention Staff -- The Greatest Annual Magic Convention on Earth. -------------------------------------------- 5. Meetings With Remarkable Magicians # 37 - Nick Lewin -------------------------------------------- Message from Nick Lewin (US) Amazing Johnathan: Bad Boys of Magic #2. As you may have noticed from my recent article about him I hold Michael Finney in very high esteem as a comedy magician. Generally speaking I display as much enthusiasm for my fellow comedy magicians as a dog does to a tub of water he is about to be washed in. It's not that I don't like them; it is just that we're in the same business and thus potential work rivals rather than warm and fuzzy buddies. Maybe this is not an attractive trait on my part but it is realistic on several levels. Apart from Finney there are a few exceptions to my general rule that I feel it only correct to mention. Top of the list is Amazing Johnathan. It is impossible for me to go any further without stating clearly and categorically that I consider him the funniest comedy magician currently performing. He makes me laugh more often and harder than any act since Rodney Dangerfield went on to that great gig in the sky. I first became aware of A.J. when I was working the Comedy Club Circuit. He was something of a legend: an act who really opened up rooms to comedy magic. When he appeared in a club; audiences loved him and club owners felt that much happier about booking other performers in this genre. I didn't actually see his act until much later and didn't meet him 'till later still. We have been good acquaintances ever since. If that sounds less than a tight bond well that's just fine by me: I told you where I stand on the warm fuzzy thing. If you haven't seen A.J. work I can only describe his act as being a non-stop assault on good taste and conventional magic wisdom. What you don't understand till you've seen his act a few times is how damn disciplined it is in a very loose seeming manner. This is a man who knows exactly what he is going to do and then does it. One of my goals as a performer has always been to be slick without ever seeming to be. Audiences laugh at things in A.J.'s show without catching on how controlled his work is. Eventually they catch on to this but instead of laughing less they become his hard-core fans and can watch his show time and again without tiring of it. In fact I suspect at a certain point their chief delight is in bringing unsuspecting friends with them and watch them watching his show. I must have seen A.J. present his show in at least five different Vegas hotels (I suspect every hotel on the strip keeps the billboard letters that spell his name in an easy to access spot!) and never once have I failed to be in stitches seconds into the show and remain that way until the show finished. The reason I have seen Amazing Johnathan work this often is because of the generous but also extremely shrewd way he incorporated the great Billy McComb into his Vegas show as an opening act. I just loved this combination: it was a blast! To see these two generations of Comedy Magicians onstage in the same show was an experience that never failed to make me feel proud of my career choice. By employing Billy well into his 80's A.J. single handedly did more to improve Billy's later years than anyone else in magic. I wish I had been able to do it. Amazing Johnathan seems set to be a fixture on the Strip for as long as he chooses and just like a couple of decades ago he is still opening up magic and raising it's status with comedy audiences. I am pretty sure that I will be there laughing my rear end off in the audience the whole time. Just don't expect me to do the warm and fuzzy buddy thing! Please send any 'bricks or bouquets' to nicklewin@earthlink.net -------------------------------------------- 6. Creativity: A Brain Storming Technique That Works -------------------------------------------- Message from By Kyle Peron E-Mail: Magic4u02@aol.com Since I have been talking a lot recently about creativity in magic and how you can open yourself up to being more creative with your magic, I have gotten a lot of requests from folks wondering if there are any brain storming techniques that can be used to help in the creative process. I would like to share with you one of the techniques I use most often and that has really helped me out over the years. I hope it might do the same for you. Being an artist and graphic designer, I have always used different creative and brain storming techniques to generate art ideas for my fine art as well as my logo designs. I just had never thought about the fact that some of these techniques that I had always used, could not only carry over to magic, but could really work well. The problem with creativity and brain storming is that we can not always focus as much as we want to be able to. There are so many outside influences and distractions that prevents our mind from staying on topic. We tend to drift around too much and never get a chance to lock in on some great ideas and to really explore them in detail. The other problem is that we over think things too much. We often get hung up on trying to be creative and trying hard to figure out a particular idea, that we allow other great ideas to just roll on by our mind. All this frustration often leads to lack of creativity and so we shy away from trying it again out of fear. So how can you brain storm effectively to really generate results while avoiding some of these more common pitfalls? Well, one suggestion is to occupy your mind and teach your mind to think a certain way by simply fooling it. The mind is great at doing tasks and accomplishing them. When your mind is actively involved in a step by step process, there is no time for it to wander like it often does in most creative processes that we have used in the past. One way to do this is a form of brain storming that was taught to me years ago and that I have modified since then over time. It is a process that focuses the mind to being creative even if it does not realize it is doing so. It works something like this: Start off with an idea that you have for a act, routine or even a show. Figure out to yourself what are the main words or ideas that you want to generate ideas for in this new act or routine. Try and come up with the single words that best reflect this act. For example, let's use the idea of coming up with a magical routine that is themed around the idea of art. When we look at it we get two main words that are the focus for this act. Those words are "art" and "magic". Next, take out a sheet of paper and on the left side of the page, write the word art on the top. Now go over to the right side of the page and write the word Magic. Start with the word art. Start to think of any word that you can think of that has to do with the word art. The idea here is a free-flowing generation of words. You are not trying to develop ideas or thoughts. Just simply write down words that you associate to the word art. Some of these words might be; paper, color, paint, paintbrush, easel etc. I think you get the idea. Now you do the same thing for the word magic. Just generating words and not stopping to dwell on any of them. Once you have compiled your lists, the fun and creativity really starts to happen. The idea is to start to cross reference words from both lists to generate new words and new creative ideas. For example you may take the word paintbrush from one list and the word "vanish" from the other list. All of a sudden you generate the idea of a vanishing paintbrush. You keep doing this by cross-referencing other words together. By doing this, your teaching your brain to stay focused by occupying it with a select group of steps it must do. But in the end your generating ideas and creative thoughts that you may not have come up with on your own or in other means. It really does work and is quite amazing what can be generated just from this simple process. I hope you may give this a try. If you do, please let me know how it works out for you. I am sure it will work. So sure that I can almost guarantee you will create better ideas and at a faster rate then ever before. If anyone would like other thoughts on this, or a better explanation of the process, please just e-mail me at magic4u02@aol.com. I would be happy to discuss it more with you. What other brain storming techniques have worked for you? As always, I encourage you the readers to let me know your thoughts. So if you have any thoughts on my articles or suggestions or comments, please feel free to e-mail me directly at magic4u02@aol.com. I would love to hear from you. Kyle Peron Magician and Illusionist Graphic Designer and Illustrator (Specializing in Logo creation) www.kyleandkellymagic.com -------------------------------------------- 7. IBM Ring 316 Halifax Nova Scotia Wanting To Book Lectures -------------------------------------------- Message from Bill VanGorder Magic and mentalism lecturers are invited to contact the IBM Ring 316 in Halifax Nova Scotia to arrange bookings for lectures.  We are currently booking for 207 2008. We have 30 - 40 persons attend most lecturers.  If you are going to be in our beautiful part of the world as a lecturer or as an interested visitor to Ring 316, which meets the last Monday of each month, contact board member Bill VanGorder at bill.vangorder@ns.sympatico.ca Our website is http://www.conjurerscourt.net/ -------------------------------------------- 8. For iPoders and iTuners - S.A.M. Convention Updates -------------------------------------------- Message from George Schindler - Dean - the Society of American Magicians To Listen via your Internet Browser: The NEWEST S.A.M. Convention Updates are just a click away: http://www.samconvention.blogspot.com For iPoders and iTuners: Paste this RSS link into your subscription window, and you'll get every update as it comes out! http://samconvention.hipcast.com/rss/new.xml -------------------------------------------- 9. Magic New Zealand e-zine Archives -------------------------------------------- Back issues of the Magic New Zealand e-zine go to: www.watson.co.nz/fezine.html Both the User Name and Password MUST be entered in lower case to gain access. User Name: magic Password: kiwi When you enter the archive the e-zines are in issue order and are coded. Eg 001 Nov06 1999.txt first three numbers (001) denote issue number, then the date (Nov06) and the last figures the year (1999) -------------------------------------------- 10. Privacy Policy And Copyright Notice -------------------------------------------- Our subscriber list is NOT made available to any other companies or individuals. We value every subscriber and respect your privacy. You can subscribe to or unsubscribe from the Magic New Zealand® E-zine at www.watson.co.nz/fezine.html. Magic New Zealand® E-zine is published each Sunday. The opinions expressed therein are those of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of Magic New Zealand®. Neither Magic New Zealand® nor Alan Watson vouch for the accuracy or reliability of any opinion, message, statement, or other information reported via Magic New Zealand® E-zine. Subscribers to this publication and authors who contribute to it by doing so agree they will not hold Magic New Zealand® or Alan Watson, jointly or individually liable or responsible in any way for the opinions expressed therein. Magic New Zealand® reserves the right to alter, correct or disregard any articles submitted. Readers are encouraged to submit timely articles or news items which may be of interest to subscribers. By submitting articles to this e-zine, the authors grant Magic New Zealand® the right to publish such articles and such authors confirm their copyright of the material submitted. All works published by Magic New Zealand® are protected by international copyright legislation and articles must not be published for profit by anyone other than the individual authors without the written permission of Magic New Zealand®. Notwithstanding the foregoing, this publication may be freely redistributed, but not sold, to other magicians if copied in its entirety, including the copyright notice below and the above disclaimer. © Copyright 2006 Alan Watson