We did a 9 hour drive yesterday from cloudy NorCal to Sunny SoCal and crashed fairly early last night. Somehow our client set our schedule to include two shows that would occur hours before the event even started. Not sure how it worked out that way. well, I ha have a guess or two but a gentleman knows went to keep his mouth shut. (
most of the time, some of the time, rarely, never).
So we pulled into the park at 7:30Am and commenced setting up. We were excited to present our newest illusion, which is actually a used illusion but new to us.
It's an antique Crystal casket. From this we make Belle the wonder dog appear. And the immediately we make Amelia and Olivia appear. The wood work on it is beautiful.
We also did a great "sawing the woman in half" illusion that is more parody with a hint of early Penn and Teller than an actual trick. After all the box fits a 5'10" woman and Amelia is only 40" tall and some miraculous way her legs are stretched all the way to the other side and she is cut in two. Then after getting out and as I take my bow the little hilarious twist comes into play. I will tape it and post it.
Jim tried something out of the blue. He balanced a 6' ladder on his face while balancing on an 8' ladder.
A side show geek friend stopped by our stage to say howdy. He is as weird as they get, and I am sure he wouldn't mind me saying that at all. He used a small parabolic mirror then a Tv screen to actually melt a rock into glass.
In regards to the shows we pulled in as many people as there were to watch the show. As I mentioned 2 shows took place prior to the event starting even though the park was open to the public. All 35 people in the park at 11am were at our stage. The second show was a stacked show....stacked on top of the last show: the 11am show ended at 12 and the next show started at 1pm. Still 2 hours before the event officially started. We managed to fill the seats and make a lot of folks happy. And I have to say we had a lot of fun. Experimenting with the new stuff and playing around with new ideas for the show proved to be a lot of fun.
Our next show was at 4:00pm and it two was stacked on a 5:30 show. We managed to pack the seating. And had SRO for the last show. My Aunt and Uncle who live nearby came up to watch us as they have for the past 16 or 17 years. We are blessed. We even went out to dinner with them after the show.
Sadly, since we have traditionally done a dark show (a show at 7:30 or 8pm) for the past decade-plus more than fifty people came up expecting our dark show. But we had the sad duty to tell them we weren't scheduled. We told them that instead there was a great hypnotist down in the lower part of town to watch but none seemed happy with the answer as we had become a tradition. It broke my heart and I half wanted to say to heck with the schedule and do a dark show anyway. But experience from last year shows that we would have drawn audience away from the hypnotist and that might not make the hypnotists or the organizer happy. But it sure would have made the audience happy. Two of the shop owners confronted me about the schedule because we drew large crowds up at the top of the town and therefore brought lots of business to their shops. I told them the schedule was out of my hands. Both were not very happy. I feel bad, though I have no control of the schedule, that there were so many un-happy people. I am flattered, humbled and blessed by the compliments paid our show but I am helpless and would be remiss to counter what the client orders. I don't like the idea that the owners are loosing money from the lack of business in this already sour economy. Not to mention our own sales of magic tricks and novelties are suffering too. But what can be done. If any of our Calico fans are reading this I am sorry if you came out to see our night show and we were not there. I have no control of the schedule.
On the homefront: Since Jim and I have election day off we both thought it would be fun to work at the election polls. We both applied and took a simple test and found out we were put on a waiting list. That was two days ago for the application, and yesterday finding out about the waiting list. Today I got the call and I will be a Electoral Inspector. I will train for it Tuesday morning. This is something new and exciting. I feel patriotic. I hope Jim gets a spot too.
I also want to add a personal request. My sister's daughter, my niece, has Krohn's Disease. It is pretty serious and she is just a very young teenager. So please lift her in your prayers for healing, coping, and love.
Thanks .
