I’m competing in a contest tomorrow for “Stage Magician of the Year”. I considered sticking with my time-tested “A-list” corporate material, but decided to be a little more daring and came up with something new and fresh. I would feel more comfortable with material that I’ve perfected over years, but it’s kind of exciting to go out there with new material (that I only recently came up with). It’ll keep me on my toes.
Wish me luck!
Absolutely, Shai’tan! Luck, luck, and plenty more of it! Let us know how you get on. 
Do you happen to have any of your magickal stuff on-line that we could watch?
Oh, yeah…good luck!
No, not yet. Haven’t used Youtube to post anything yet, and my website is still pretty basic. I’ll put something up soon though. Thanks for the well wishes!
Just remember that you need to be able to be able to put the person back together (alive) after you’ve sawed them into little bits… 
Best of luck, Shai’tan!
I can vouch for how good of a show Shai’tan puts on. He was kind enough to perform for us at last year’s KCDope, and he was, of course, amazing. Good stuff.
Yay!
I’m going to a magic show tonight. While I won’t be at your show, I wish you the best of luck.
Go get 'em, fella. If you lose, make the winner disappear.
punches fist Poimanently.
Break a leg. 
I second our esteemed moderator’s opinion. I was lucky enough to be at the same performance, and the guy is great. I tried so hard to figure out how he did some of those tricks, and all I can say is, “it’s magic!”
Good luck Shai’tan. I still have your business card!
I WAS ROBBED!
There were eight of us competing. We drew for position, and I drew the final slot, which I was happy about. With the ten minute limit I did two effects. The first: I told a humorous, romantic story about myself and my wife illustrated with a cocktail napkin (playing the role of me) and a lighter (playing the wife). In the telling of the story I formed the cocktail napking into a rose and placed it in the air, where it stayed. I walked away, then came back to make clear that there were no strings or any means of support. Using the lighter I set the paper rose on fire (mid-air) and reaching into the six-foot fireball, pulled out a real rose. It went flawlessly and the crowd and judges were suitably impressed.
The final effect was a humorous mentalism piece. Before the effect I hung an envelope containing my “prediction” on a board in plain sight, center stage. I handed a spectator a stack of 8 by 10 photos of various female celebrities and asked him to memorize one. I hung the photos on another board (also center stage). While my back was turned (facing the audience) I had him move at random around the board. Periodically I would remove celebrities until he was left with a final one.
Actually that is what was supposed to happen.
Apparently the man couldn’t count. He couldn’t follow instructions. And he didn’t care. When there were three celebrities left I removed one of the three and announced that he was not “on” that celebrity. He told me I was wrong. I did a double take.
“I’m wrong?”
“Yes.”
“Really…”
“Yes.”
In my head I’m thinking: Impossible..
I’m not new to this. I’ve known the method I was using for 16 years or so. It was impossible for me to screw it up. I knew immediately he had either miscounted, cheated, or just disregarded my instructions. Of course since my back was turned, I was unaware. And despite the enourmous number of people who saw him miscount and disregard instructions, no one made it known during the performance.
With nothing left to do, I asked him to name one of the remaining two celebrity photos and open the prediction. The prediction read simply: “The celebrity you just chose is standing here with you on stage.” I had my two stage-hands slide the two board/screens aside to reveal the celebrity he just named. I thanked him, and the crowd, and walked off.
My stage hands were my magic students and had worked *so hard * to perfect this routine with me. They did their parts flawlessly and were so upset that it didn’t go quite as planned. I was a little disappointed, but have been in show business long enough to know that live performances don’t always go as planned. Five minutes after my performance, one of the judges came and found me in the dressing room. He said that he and the other judges spoke and said that as far as stage presence and performance, I was by far the best performer. He said that they unanimously agreed that if I had chosen a volunteer that could actually count, or even cared to try, that I would have won first place hands down. He said it wouldn’t have even been a tough decision.
I’m glad it was so well received. I know that I have the respect of my peers, because they could see the quality of my performance. It was just my bad luck to get such a spectator. But as I told my students (the stagehands), you can learn something from every performance. There were a couple of things I could change that would let me know if I had such poor volunteer on stage. But they are more disappointed than I. They would have been so ecstatic to have won. They were somewhat appreciative of the fact the judges *wanted * to vote for me, and enjoyed our performace so much. I tried to impress on them that our show would have won, despite the fact that we were competing against a couple of magicians using illusions that must have cost around 3 grand! Us, with our inexpensive home-made props.
So, so many people approached me afterwards to tell me that he miscounted not once but three times. And that they were impressed with my poise and recovery. Nobody expected the revelation/appearance of the young lady. Several magicians told me that they didn’t detect the method during the performance and were surprised at the end, which provided for a nice recovery for the effect. I did what I could with the circumstances.
But I was robbed…
Could he have been a shill for another magician? Purposely screwed with your act so his buddy would win?
Too bad, but, live and learn. I stopped having people memorize cards for tricks and made sure they showed them to the whole group long ago. Some people is just idgits.
-Tcat
You know what sucks?
That I missed your show, that’s what sucks!
Now I’ve gotten the selfish bits out of the way, I think that going for something riskier was the right decision and I do hope that it still brings you gigs… which, let’s not forget, is the real benefit of those shows. The medals are pretty, though.