Magic Tricks

Michael Ammar's lecture was a great night, and a great value. I'm sure most folks walked away with at least one strong item to add to their repertoire. Michael's reputation as today's foremost teacher of magic is well-deserved. While he's great on DVD, the chance to ask questions as he goes along adds a whole level of usefulness. He said his goal was to create a live lecture that was better than his "better than live" instructional videos, and I'd say he succeeded.

I was amazed to see that even when he's told you exactly what's going to happen, where to look, and when to look, it was still often hard to catch his moves -- even when he was purposely slowing down and demonstrating things for us. The "work" is so well-motivated, choreographed and covered that there's often simply nothing to so. That itself was wonderful to see.

Here's an idea for the Penguin folks running the show. If you print adhesive name tags ahead of time for everyone who has preregistered, and then make up new tags for walk-ins (try a Dymo label printer with name tag labels) it will make it a lot easier for you to be sure you've checked everybody in -- and it will make it a bit easier for the folks in the audience (all of whom share a love of magic) to get to know each other.