In every performance, I always gun for applause and laughter on top of enthralling the audience with astounding magic. So when the audience claps or laughs or oohs and aahs, those reactions are things I expect. People are supposed to do that, since I always bust my butt off to produce those reactions.

However, if the client, a few days after the event, takes the time to write her glowing reflections of the show, I consider that as an extra-special reward for all the hard work my team and I put into the show.

Here’s one such positive review I received in my Inbox today. Let me unabashedly share it with you:

Dear Leodini,

We would like to thank you for making our daughter’s first birthday very meaningful, memorable and indeed magical!

Your performance last Jan.15, 2012 brought so much laughter, joy and happiness to our family and everyone who watched your show. Until this day, my husband and I still talk about your hilarious show. You are so funny, great and witty.

The day after the party, my relatives sent me text messages thanking me for a successful party. Some asked for your talent fee while some asked if you have been peforming overseas

According to my cousin’s husband who’s an Austrian, “It was a brand new experience for him,” as he thanked us for inviting him. Well, we believe that one of the contributing factors, which made our kid’s party a success, was your outstanding performance. It was one of a kind, amazing and hilarious. Don’t be surprised if you get another invitation from us again (smile).

From the bottom of our hearts, we would like to say, “Many thanks for many things, Leodini!” May God bless you and may your tribe increase!

Sincerely,

Aris & Jessica Acosta

Thanks also for going to a great length to let me know the guests enjoyed the show as much as we enjoyed performing for them.

Best,

Leodini

www.sirleodini.com

Related articles

• Leodini, Please Help…Can You Write Funny Lines for Me to Tickle My Audience? (innermagicclub.wordpress.com)
• Run-of-the-Mill, Everybody-is-doing-it Magic (innermagicclub.wordpress.com)
• Comedian Pete Holmes is Grateful He is Not a Magician (innermagicclub.wordpress.com)

As a result, many Filipinos will wise up in the ways of litigation and pick up a few legal terms to grow their brains a bit.

One of these terms might be “prejudgment”, which, according to dictionary.com, means “to pass judgment on prematurely or without sufficient reflection or investigation.”

In a metaphor more familiar to lay people, it means “judging a book by its cover.”

Prejudgment, whether the legal type or the “book by its cover” type, is wrong. A magician in the Philippines named Leodini, who has been nursing the delusion of grandeur, had warned against it when he wrote a long time ago this sage admonition: “Don’t judge a book by its cover but its Table of Contents.”

He also wrote, “Don’t judge a book by its cover if you are not a judge.”

See? The guy’s a genius.

Well, I think prejudging is bad because it leads to wrong decisions. Not only that, it is unfair to the one being prejudged.

However, prejudgment is a usual occurrence at birthday parties. Unless his name rings a bell, a huge bell like the one’s you find in old churches’ belfries, a magician will be prejudged long before he starts performing.

The typical audience verdict is either, “He’s going to perform something only children will appreciate,” or,”He’s going to perform magic I have seen before.”

The wrong impressions usually lead to audience members not being keen on watching the magic show. They already decided the magician sucks even before he mounts the stage.

If you have the bad luck to perform for people who have a low opinion of you, because they have seen substandard magic before, then your performance will be an uphill battle.

You might need a lot of work to make your program distinct from the other magicians’. It might be a good idea also to structure it, so that it will suit the taste of both children and adults.

How?

Let me amplify my thoughts about this topic in follow-up posts.

Stay magical,

Leodini

www.sirleodini.com

No doubt you also have seen him levitate on a sidewalk before a trio of screaming girls.

I’m sure you also have caught the episode of Mind Freak where Criss Angel walks on water to the befuddlement of passers-by.

Well, I’ve stumbled upon YouTube videos where these astounding miracles are performed not only to astonish people but also to make them laugh hard.

For the life of me, as a magician in the Philippines, I would not dream of using these jaw-droppers as anything but for totally flooring audiences. However, the creative people behind the Just for Laughs TV program have thought up ways to make these venerable illusions into irreverent gags.

Surprise, surprise! As a magician, I’m not fuming mad that classics tricks like the Miser’s Dream, Levitation, and Walking on Water are misused by some humor maniacs in such sacrilegious and blasphemous ways. Instead, I love how they set them up to produce laughter and amusement. And oh, yes, amazement, too.

If only the traditional presentation of magic can be this entertaining, magic shows would be a blockbuster everywhere magicians perform.

Start the week laughing. Watch and enjoy these three videos. I had a lot of fun, not to mention stomach cramps, watching them over and over.

Jesus Makes Money

Jesus Levitates

Jesus Walks on Water

Stay magical,

Leodini

www.sirleodini.com

Related articles

• The Art of Viewing Video Ads (innermagicclub.wordpress.com)
• How to Make a Car Disappear (innermagicclub.wordpress.com)

The reason I like pranks and magic might be that they both employ the same principles to achieve almost identical results. Both use stooges, misdirection, and elaborate set-ups to snare their intended victims. The payoffs are howls of laughter on the part of the pranksters, and amazement and consternation on the part of the victims.

Practical jokes and magic tricks, though, when they go wrong, can end differently. When a magician messes up a trick, he merely gets booed by the audience. However, when a prank goes horribly wrong, accidents do happen.

Let me share with you a video of a prank that is both a practical joke and a magic trick. Watch how the perpetrators set up their victims and how well they pull off the prank. Study how they use misdirection. Savor the vicarious joy of creating amazing moments in the life of ordinary people.

If only magicians could create these reactions consistently with their thumb tips, thumb tip tricks would always be fun.

Disappearing car prank. [VIDEO].

Stay magical,

Leodini

www.sirleodini.com

I have this sneaking suspicion that my inability to sustain focus has something to do with growing old, a prospect I don’t care about. I’d rather grow tomatoes in the garden than grow old, but, hey, it’s 2012. Another year has passed. There’s simply no stopping aging.

That must explain why when I’m distracted I become testy. I often shoot the person(s) causing the distraction a baleful stare.

Sometimes I bare my fangs and snap at them. At other times, I growl at them. When I’m in my most cantankerous mood, I give them a mouthful of tirades—while the microphone is live.

It’s not good showmanship, but sometimes, when the show is in danger of flopping, I need to take drastic steps to prevent it from bombing.

The microphone conks out, and I forget my lines. Somebody in the audience suddenly stands up and leaves, and I’m thrown off balance. Parents talking in the back of the room, guests taking group pictures of themselves, waiters serving the children ice cream—all this throws me for a loop.

That’s the reason I’m thinking of studying Yoga. I figure I need to teach myself the discipline of keeping focus on entertaining my audience instead of constantly fighting off distractions.

Stay magical,

Leodini

www.sirleodini.com

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 46,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 17 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

The great truth is this: magicians appreciate magic differently from lay people.

Magicians love clever props, subterfuges, and difficult sleights. While many love good presentations also, most don’t mind sleep-inducing performances. Provided the methods of the trick are clever and cutting-edge, they will lap up the performance.

A birthday mom, on the other hand, loves magic that energizes both children and adult guests. It doesn’t matter to her if the magician uses hack comedy, store-bought tricks, or dated methods out of Tarbell. If a kid in the audience laughs so hard he pees in his pants, she would take that as having gotten her money’s worth.

An audience made up of magicians will root wildly for a dull performer who can do a bill switch using a thimble instead of a thumb tip. For them, the magician is entertaining, because he is clever, innovative and creative. They seldom mind if his performance sends lay people to dreamland. As long as he can turn a P20 bill to P500 bill using a neon thimble, this magician must be good.

Lay people, however, want magic that entertains. Except for the few hecklers and curiosity seekers, they don’t care about methods. They have no interest what variation of the Double Lift the performer is using. They will not do cartwheels when they discover the magician vanished the coin by holding it edge-wise behind a fingernail. Lay audience will howl with delight, roar with laughter and gasp with astonishment watching an entertaining Square Circle routine.

Most magicians would fuss over their props, admire how deceptive their bases, swoon over the hinges of his Run Rabbit Run props.

Lay people, however, don’t mind seeing garishly painted props stenciled with dragon images or faux Chinese characters. For all they care, a magician may use illusion props made of a Balikbayan box (or Victory carton). As long as he leaves the children happy, then he must be a great magician.

They are right. It takes greatness to entertain people with magic.

So to whom do you perform? Do you perform for magicians or lay audience?

Lay people pay your bills. Their money brings food to the table. Their business sustains you financially.

Magicians, however, will only nitpick your performance. They will tell you how you flash your body load. They will belittle the quality of your props. They would adjudge them rip-offs, if name builders did not build it, even though you bought the illusion plans legally.

For this matter, you may want to hold self-improvement sessions with magicians. Invite them to nitpick on your act and props. Those sessions can be helpful to your growth as performer. They will keep you sharp. They are never exhilarating, though. They are a form of self-flagellation. Don’t overindulge in them.

To sum up, unless you are world-class caliber like Jeff Mc Bride or Michael Ammar, prefer to perform for lay people only. They will pay you money instead of sneer at the rusty hinges of your Sub Trunk.

Stay magical,

Leodini

www.leodini.com

Related articles

• Run-of-the-Mill, Everybody-is-doing-it Magic (innermagicclub.wordpress.com)
• Comedian Pete Holmes is Grateful He is Not a Magician (innermagicclub.wordpress.com)
• Are All Magicians Atheists? (innermagicclub.wordpress.com)

I know many magicians in the Philippines suffer from the same impairment. The difference is that many are not aware of their condition. A few others don’t miss the beautiful feeling of being mystified. I miss it sorely, though.

The onset of the malady is the same. We magicians begin to love the battle of wits with the performer, instead of enjoying his performance. We deconstruct magic tricks. We try to penetrate its veil of secrecy. We take pleasure in seeing through the deceptions.

We watch out for ruses, moves and techniques. We do it instinctively. It is the fun part we find in magic. That is the reason we take it up as a hobby, then as a serious pursuit and finally as a profession.

The mystery of magic attracts us. It challenges us to ponder its method. The result is that we dull our sense of wonder.

A shuttle pass to vanish a coin used to bug out our eyes. Today, even the most cutting-edge sleight-of-hand will not probably mystify us. We have become jaded, like a surgeon who doesn’t feel squeamish anymore at the sight of blood and gore on the operating table.

Often, we have an explanation for every trick we see. The explanation may not always be correct, but we have one ready anyway. If the performer did not use a shuttle pass to make a coin disappear, he must have topitted it. Or he might have sleeved it, PK ringed it, pulled it, or used any other myriad methods.

We come up with solutions unconsciously. By force of habit, we look for methods and secrets of the tricks we see. The result is that we rarely feel mystification anymore. Astonishment seldom jars us. The sense of wonder is mostly gone.

We have forgotten how to be laymen again.  Most lay people watch magic for entertainment. Unless you presented your magic as a puzzle, they wouldn’t care how you did your tricks.

What a shame that for most of us magicians, magic is gone. It has left through the window of distrust, doubt and disbelief. Only techniques survive. Santa Claus is not real. The tooth fairy never comes at night. And Sleeping Beauty never got kissed by a prince.

Stay magical,

Leodini

www.leodini.com

Related articles

• Are All Magicians Atheists? (innermagicclub.wordpress.com)
• Run-of-the-Mill, Everybody-is-doing-it Magic (innermagicclub.wordpress.com)
• Comedian Pete Holmes is Grateful He is Not a Magician (innermagicclub.wordpress.com)

The strutting around is sometimes not physical. It also happens figuratively on online forums.

Someone writes a Yoda-like post and counsels everyone against the use of unfamiliar magic props. To be amazing, he pontificates, a magician must use only ordinary, everyday objects in his performance.

And then he proceeds to declare that he uses Black Tiger playing cards when doing card tricks.

The irony is so pure you can almost hear someone cues for a canned laughter.

A similar thing happened to me in real life. A magician railed against magicians who love to use nondescript, garishly painted, out-of-this-world magic props. After spending some time complaining about unusual magic props and dispensing Yodaisms of magic, he fished out of his pocket a black, nondescript, somberly painted, out-of-this-world Black Tiger playing cards.

At that moment, my real life became surreal.

Now, I don’t have anything against Black Tiger playing cards, or any of the arcane brands of playing cards. Trust me, I love playing cards.

If you go to Ellusionist, you will find several brands of playing cards designed exclusively for magicians. There is, for example, the Infinity playing cards (it boasts of performance coating finish), Arcane Playing Cards (it embodies everything a magician is [whatever that means]; Artifice (it possesses the dark psychology of artifice and deception), and Black Tiger (it claws its way into your card handling).

And now the latest offering is the Arrco US Regulation playing cards. They have been out of print for several years. Recently, the New York Magic Project commissioned a special, custom run of White Arrcos for magicians to play with.

Those playing cards are engineered (so their ads claim) to improve handling and the performance of magic tricks. They have beautiful back designs, come with custom indexes and Court cards, multi-level embossing and debossing and many other features.

Fine. I have no quarrel with that. I’m sure they are excellent playing cards to use for performing magic tricks.

My issue is against magicians who say they dislike using uncommon objects, articles or props when performing magic, and then proceed to false shuffle, do hot-shot cuts and perform tricks with one of those arcane, for magician-use-only playing cards.

If you fulminate against the use of queer, unusual or exotic magic paraphernalia, then don’t use curious-looking brands of playing cards.

In case you didn’t notice, no lay person plays with Infinity, Arcane, Artifice, Black Tiger or Arcco playing cards. At least not in this country. To the ordinary citizens of the Philippines, even the most unlucky member of Gamblers anonymous, those cards don’t look ordinary. Or even feel right. For all they know, those are marked or gimmicked cards. They probably will not play poker using them.

At the risk of sounding like a skipping CD, let me state my position again: I have no issues with those brands of playing cards. My issue is with magicians who profess to hate uncommon magic props but use arcane playing cards to perform card tricks.

If you hate unfamiliar props, then don’t use playing cards except Bicycle, Bee or Hoyle.

¿Entiendes?

Even I, a magician in the Philippines, have been using only Bicycle playing cards since I was still a cute, cuddly and cooing baby. To me, Bicycle cards are the most ordinary of all magician’s props.

I think I’m pissed off already. When I start expressing myself in Spanish, I’m usually pissed off.

Stay magical,

No, it’s not done by smoke, mirrors, trap doors, escaping gasses.

Yes, it’s a math trick.

And no, in its present form, it is not entertaining. The truth is that it is so boring you will entertain thoughts of suicide while watching it.

Card tricks based on mathematical quirkiness are inherently boring. Add a lot of counting and repetitious moves (like on the video), and you ensure a boring performance.

I’m showing the video clip to you to give you a good example of a boring card trick. It is the finest specimen of a sleep-inducing magic.

Once you accept that fact, here’s a challenge you may want to take: tell me how to make this trick entertaining.

As I said earlier, the trick is amazing. Unless you are a math whizz, you may not be able to explain it. My challenge is not how to bedazzle your audience with it. Rather how to make it entertaining, enjoyable, and fun.

Send me a script of your suggested routine of this trick. I’ll be the judge, jury and executioner of it. I will tell you if your routine is entertaining.

Here’s the prize: if you are a male magician, I will send you Angelina Jolie to sleep in your house for one night. If you are a female magician, I will sleep in your house.

Here’s the video clip of the card trick. Do some thinking to win the prizes I’m putting up for grabs.

Stay magical,

Leodini

www.sirleodini.com