dgmagic - UK magic blog by magician Dan Gifford

Last night was the close-up magic competition at my local magic club, Leicester Magic Circle.

It was a close competition, with a good mixture of old pro’s and newer members of the society taking part. I picked a couple of my friends from [Headfry->http://www.headfry.co.uk] as the possible winners, [Dade Freeman->www.headfry.co.uk/kinesis] and [Will Gray->http://www.willgray.co.uk].

Dade’s act was simple and direct, with a great signed torn and restored card effect to music - very dramatic.

Will’s act included a card trick which ended up with one card being found inside Will’s wallet and another inside a pepper (that’s right, the vegetable) which had been in the possession of an audience member the whole time.

And the winner was… (more…)

I stumbled upon this amazing [penetration effect->http://www.metacafe.com/watch/40754/stunning_illusion/] performed by a Japanese magician called Cyril Takayama. Make sure you watch it untill the end, it really is a peach.

I love the second part.

(more…)

I have finished a couple of the pages in the [Learn Magic->http://www.planetstrange.co.uk/?page_id=8] section. I’ve put this section together because I am often asked how I got into magic and to give advice on where to learn magic tricks.

The pages includes some pointers on where to find out about magic, buying magic, [why magicians keep secrets->magical secrets] and [how I first became interested in magic->how I got into magic].

I’m going to be adding some more about magic books and videos, and magic on the web when I get around to it!

I hope you find my experiences and ideas useful.

I’m putting together a magic website aimed at magicians. My aim is to have all kinds of articles related to magic on the site - how to learn magic, reviews of magic books and DVDs, profiles of magicians, news and a directory of magic websites. I want it to be a portal to everything related to magic - eventually.

I know there are loads of magic websites out there already, but there aren’t many that try to pull magical information together and also include articles about performing magic as well as the tricks and methods themselves.

I’ve been looking at content management systems to do the job of organising the site and I’ve decided on [Mambo->http://www.mamboserver.com/]. It’s pretty cool, with built in features like polls, newsflashes, and user management, and you can add third party functionality.

I’ll post the address of the new site when it actually has some magical content on it…

The other night I was performing close-up magic at a private birthday party. I’d finished going around the tables just after the band started up and went in search of the client to check everything was OK before leaving them to it.

I had trouble finding the guest of honour whose 60th birthday it was but spotted his wife moving towards the back of the venue, and she asked me to hold on for a minute or two.

The band finished a song and the singer announced ‘Something special…’, the title theme to 2001 A Space Odessey began and the main man appeared wearing the full white Elvis costume, wig and dark glasses.

He made his way to the stage (guided by a friend, because they weren’t prescription Elvis shades) and went into what can only be described as an ‘act’ - Elvis songs interspersed by some tried and tested gags. And he was pretty good!

You see some strange things in this job…