On Developing A Character

I mentioned recently that I attended Bill Goldman’s lecture. One of the attendees paid him a tremendous compliment when he said I can’t tell when you’re talking to us and when you are about to do a trick. It was true – Bill was the same performing a trick, teaching a trick or just bull shitting before and after the show. This is the essence of what Vernon was talking about when he talked about being natural.

If you’re working a party or a restaurant, then the fellow performing the magic should be the same fellow that, hopefully, ingratiated himself to his audience before the magic began. I so often feel like I’m watching 2 different people – the guy who introduced himself and the magician. I keep waiting for him to turn around and then turn back as Elvis Presley, a la Andy Kaufman. I believe it was Leipzig that said people like to be fooled by a gentleman. Certainly he lived in a simpler time, but I believe it still holds true.

However, suppose you are an incorrigible ass hole. What can you do?

There are options:

  • Do a mime act
  • Hide behind some exaggerated character
  • Make balloon doggies to music
  • Start an Internet magic talk forum
  • OK – before someone else says it – Write a magic blog!

Actually, there’s a time an place for character magicians, but not when personal interaction is involved.


Take care………

Drivel & Drool

Things I find useful:

Evernote – someone recommended this to me recently as a free form database to use while browsing the Internet. Really well done and free. The web site is http://www.evernote.com/en/.

IESpell – A nice spell checker that integrates with Internet Explorer. When you are typing a message online of filling out a form, just right click and choose Check Spelling. It’s as easy as that. Check it out here.

Roboform – Roboform is a Password Manager and Web Form Filler that completely automates password entering and form filling. I find this indispensable. I don’t know about you, but I have a boatload of log ins to track and am constantly filling out forms. Roboform is the best at making this job tolerable. They are at http://www.roboform.com/. Oh, it costs 30 bucks. They have a free version, but it is virtually worthless.

Irfanview – Since it’s free, I’ll let the web site do the talking:

IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003.

It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals.

IrfanView was the first Windows graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple (animated) GIF support.

One of the first graphic viewers WORLDWIDE with Multipage TIF support.


The first graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple ICO support.

  • Some IrfanView features:
  • Many supported file formats (click here the list of formats)
  • Multi language support
  • Thumbnail/preview options
  • Slideshow (save slideshow as EXE/SCR or burn it to CD)
  • Show EXIF/IPTC/Comment text in Slideshow/Fullscreen etc.
  • Support for Adobe Photoshop Filters
  • Fast directory view (moving through directory)
  • Batch conversion (with image processing)
  • Multipage TIF editing
  • Email option
  • Multimedia player
  • Print option
  • Change color depth
  • Scan (batch scan) support
  • Cut/crop
  • IPTC editing
  • Effects (Sharpen, Blur, Adobe 8BF, Filter Factory, Filters Unlimited, etc.)
  • Capturing
  • Extract icons from EXE/DLL/ICLs
  • Lossless JPG rotation
  • Many hotkeys
  • Many command line options
  • Many PlugIns
  • Only one EXE-File, no DLLs, no Shareware messages like “I Agree” or “Evaluation expired”
  • No registry changes without user action/permission!
  • and many more

This is an incredible piece of software AND they update frequently. Go to http://www.irfanview.com/ and see what I mean.

There once was a man from the sticks
Who’s hobby was writing limericks.
But he failed at the sport
‘Cos he wrote them too short.