Henderson Children's Centre Christmas Show 07

A group of us decided to make Christmas special for a group of under-privileged children from the Henderson's Children Centre this year on the 14th December at the Henderson Community Club. Working with the Raffles Junior College Interact Club, we took magic to these children - some of whom come from low income households; single parent homes; special needs cases; and some of whom whose parent are serving time.

I was running around snapping photos - there were 7 performers: Jasper, Delvin, Timothy, Gordon, Adrian, Jonathan and Zian. They really made this a VERY special Christmas for the children. I hope we can do more of such events in the near future.

Check out the photos below (sorted by performers):


Adrian




Adrian doing his thing with his vending machine







Impressing some babes






Zian (Adrian's TWIN - almost):




A worm's eye view








Zian impresses with Sponge balls. Red. Sponge. Balls.







Coins across!






Timothy and Jasper - Tim's supposed to partner the relatively inexperienced Jasper (he's not friendly):





Jasper showing off








Timothy going the distance... and...








Timothy BLOWS his audiences away time after time!





Jonathan Low (Or, more commonly known as J-LOW!):




A close up vanish of a silk!







Jon does origami?






Delvin:




Worm's Eye view of Delvin doing some serious card work...







Delvin looking like a devil with his RED eyes... click for a larger view to see what I mean... scary man!





Gordon:




STUN MAN at it!







Gordon does a BIG show for the RJC people...






After the show, we retired to a nice cool spot at Geylang (not what you think) for a great dinner - Zian's idea really - of CHILLI CRAB! Check out the photos of the meal:




Jlow watches something in the distance as he decides if he wants more food






Jasper ducks behind Jlow as Delvin takes a mouthful of crab; Timothy watches on in disgust at how much these young upstarts simply gorge themselves on food.







Adrian looks very very weird here... I wonder what's going through his mind? LOL






Zian looking VERY Pissed - somebody took the last piece of bun that was supposed to go with the chilli crab gravy. *COUGH* JASPER *COUGH*







Delvin reaches for more food!

Check out HOT Gordon. REALLY HOT.

Zian choking on his own smoke! ROFL!

Well, thanks to everyone who came for this one - you guys made a difference!

For MORE photos (in hi-res), click here.

Gripe.

Charities are used extensively in scamming Artistes - today, there are as many 'charities' vying for a performer's 'free' services as there are genuine charities that need them. There are so many event companies out there now that get artistes to do performances in the name of charity. And here's the beauty of the situation - they charge the charity for organising the event, but they don't pay a single cent to the Artistes; after all, aren't they performing out of the goodness of their hearts?

I don't believe in doing free shows - a free show only serves to devalue the performer and the material that he performs. As of late, I tend to be more critical of the charities that I choose - after all the NKF scandals and crap, it really raises the heckles every time I hear the word 'charity' tossed about like a turkey sandwich; it just means we as performers/entertainers need to be more discerning who we choose to work for. I think it applies especially so for Magicians. Most events view magicians as somewhat of a nuisance - you know, it always gets down to the point at the end of the budget meeting they go, "Hmmm, how much is left? Do we want to squeeze in a magician?". We kind of fall into the category of 'nice to have but it's okay without'. Hence, it is easy to forget that magicians are entertainers too!

Anyway, as I was saying, I don't believe in doing free shows. I DO believe however, in making donations and I know that I am working directly for the beneficiaries of a particular charity, I would consider it a donation of a show. There is a huge difference between performing for free and donating a show. In the latter, it serves to build goodwill and also transfers the cost of the show to myself - hence a donation. In the former, I'm doing a show at NO COST - it cheapens the material I perform and is an insult to magic. It is also more professional - it implies that I take what I do seriously and the quality of my magic will not suffer just because I am not collecting money for a show. It also makes a lot of sense to me - what kind of charity am I doing if it costs me nothing at all? It's like Bill Gates giving a million dollars to any charity organisation - it means nothing; the money (a considerably huge sum by most standards of common folk - such as myself) is not even an insignificant dent in his garguantum bank account.

People associate cheap stuff with low quality; FREE usually means NO QUALITY. Even if you do not intend to charge for your next charity show (and you shouldn't if you're sincere about doing the charity - it should cost you SOMETHING), do make it clear that the show isn't FREE - it cost YOU something.

Merry Christmas to All!

A Happy Christmas to ALL!

Hope everyone's been busy getting their New Years' Resolutions ready. I know I got a few things on my own mind that I'm dying to put into practice...

1) Get some Exercise in my life.
2) Get more Exercise in my life.
3) Spend more time Exercising.
4) Spend LOTS of time Exercising.

I hope I will succeed. SIGH.

New Stock Bicycle Deck Review

I wear down my stock of cards very quickly and I estimate that I use over 200 decks of cards a year. Between practicing and performing and occasionally playing around with friends, it's sometimes a wonder that I have any on hand at all.

Hence, it makes sense for me to purchase the decks in bulk - I tend to purchase 3 dozen at a time or so whenever I make a trip down to my supplier. The supplier (who shall remain unnamed) has been kind to me and supplies his cards to me at distributor rates - that's about $45 a dozen after counting the Goods and Services Tax (GST... grrr).

My friend Zian recently managed to get his hands on a stock of cards at a good deal and was offerring it at $4 a deck and $42 for a dozen on the Singapore Magic Circle forums. You can check it out here if you're interested in buying some bicycle cards:
http://forums.singaporemagiccircle.com/index.php?showtopic=7968&hl

As of late the stock of cards that I have been getting from my regular supplier has (for some reason or other) dropped in quality. Although I'd be the first to accept any minor fluctuations in quality when it comes to playing cards, I have to say that the latest deviation from quality is starting to irritate me. Misprinted (off centre, faded... etc) I can deal with; but poorly cut corners and sides I really cannot stomach. It throws off much of the more detailed work you can do with a deck of cards.

Anyway, Zian very graciously passed me a blue deck as a sample to test. I put it through the usual tests I perform whenever I'm toying with a deck's quality. The new cards slid out of the cardcase like a dream. Some cards come out as a block - a sure sign that the cards have been kept for too long. I was worried that the reason he manged to get them at such a low price is because the stock's been around for too long. I was thankful that my misgivings were unfounded.

I have no complains about colour - this is standard from USPC; anyway, the colours change from one batch to another batch. It has something to do with the manufacturing process - they can never seem to get the EXACT same blue. This seems more pronounced with the red cards though. But the print is slightly off centre, which also seems to be another consistent thing about USPC - all their cards are usually printed slightly off centre. LOL. Check it out: both the faces AND the backs!

Well, there are many devious and nefarious uses for such cards; I won't go into detail here, but the wise cardman knows how to exploit such inconsistencies to his advantage.

The texture is consistent with the standard air-cushion finish, but the stock is slightly thinner than the ones supplied to me by my regular supplier. It's quite negligible, but since I always preferred thinner stock anyway, I took to it well from the onset.

The edges are cut well - smoother than the ones I got from my supplier anyway. Check it out:

My regular supplier's deck is on the left. You can see that some of the edges are actually protruding - rest assured that I had the deck squared up tight. Somehow during the cutting process, some cards were cut a little less?More? Who knows? It screws up all major riffle shuffling work! Zian's sample deck (top right) looks so smooth I could use it to wipe a baby's ass!

The fact that the deck has no protruding edges makes my life a lot easier - runups and precise shuffle work on the table is less difficult.

Anyway, the final test for me is always the faro test. The deck faros perfectly in the hands. In fact, some cards have their edges cut so badly it takes a few runs, shuffles and quite a bit of handling before the deck actually faros. Elmsley has a very innovative way of solving this (check out his Collected Works, Vol 2. If you can get a hold of it. Still.)

Finally, I put the deck to the challenge of a tabled faro. Since this precise work requires that BOTH the edges AND the corners are cut well, it's a good test of the card's cutting. It usually takes a new deck some breaking into before it would faro well on the table, but this deck didn't need much coaxing. Almost fresh out of the deck, watch it go!
Tabled Faro Shuffle:


To sum things up, this deck's a sure fire go for me. I'm getting my next 3 dozen from Zian. At least until he runs out of stock. :)