The TSA xray tech was a little confused by this.

Justin Robert Young and I made this video while we were waiting for our flight at Logan International airport.  I saw on Twitter that Katie Kenner was at World Magic Seminar in Las Vegas giving out decks to anyone who showed her a card trick (Chris and Katie Kenner are among my favorite people in the world.  They get first-class seating in my space ark).  I don't really like winning free stuff.  I just like winning.  Since I was thousands of miles away I decided to do a card trick on my iPhone and send it to Katie in the hopes that I could win a free deck that I actually don't need.

I thought about something that would be fun and quick.  Partially inspired by Marco Tempest and by the kind of camera stunts I used to pull back in high school with a camcorder I schemed up a teleportation effect.

In most of my stage shows I do some kind of teleportation illusion.  I've even used to do it every night in a small night club in Japan under the most difficult conditions.  In there I'd sometimes appear in the middle of an audience sitting on the floor.  

I explained everything to Justin and we shot it in the first take (not counting a partial take where I said "Magic Live" instead of "World Magic Seminar" and stopped recording).  No editing of any kind.  No reshoots, what you see is exactly how it happened.  From conception to upload, the whole event took less than five minutes.

David Copperfield and Chris "One Meter of Fun" Kenner

The first lecture was at the fantabulous Diamonds Magic Shop in Peabody, Massachusetts. It's the kind of shop that actually has the stuff you're looking for in stock. A rarity nowadays, I know. Eddie and his wife are the owners and super nice folks. Please stop by the shop if you're even remotely in the area. Thanks to everyone who showed up. We actually ran out of chairs!

That night we ended up where every magic lecture ends up: TGI Fridays. The waitress was politely amused by our magic tricks and seemed unphased when Cameron and I screwed up basic tricks in the most basic ways. For future reference to anybody reading this; if I hand you a deck I openly shuffled with the aces culled to the top, please do a miracle for the waitress with the godsend I gave you and don't just shuffle the cards like some idiot who gets stuck in subway turnstiles holding a toy trumpet.

The next day we took a trip to Boston and actually parked a car in Harvard Yard (well, close to it). No trip to Boston isn't complete without a trip to the Boston Apple Store. For MacHeads like me it's like visiting Cathedrals in Europe, or In-N-Out Burgers in LA.

While walking through Boston we came across this rather inexplicable metal plate on the ground.

Speaking of borderline obscenities, we got to watch Justin co-host the NSFW show from Cameron Ramsay's living room.

The next day was the Rhode Island lecture at Cameron's magic club. We had a much larger turnout than was expected and I'd like to thank everyone who showed up. A special shout out to Todd Migliacci (@upcomingmagicia) who may be the only person to have seen my lecture in two states.

After the lecture we took a stop by the infamous Lizzy Borden house where the spinstress (probably) murdered her family in 1892. While there we conducted an impromptu ghost hunting investigation and made a startling discovery. I caught the whole thing on video:

We spent most of Wednesday waiting for our plane at the airport. In an attempt to entertain ourselves we made a video for Katie Kenner who was thousands of miles away at the World Magic Seminar handing out Theory 11 decks to any shemp who showed her a card trick. Not wanting to be left out, I concocted this. It was shot in one take and on the first take:

That was pretty much our entire adventure. Oh, and I also ate 12 Boston creme donuts for no apparent reason. Thanks again to Big Pasta a.k.a Trumpet Boy a.k.a. Cameron Ramsay for being an awesome host.

Peabody, Massachusetts - February 28th

Sunday 7:00 pm
Diamonds Magic
515 Lowell Street
Peabody, MA 01960 (978) 535-8950

Rhode Island - March 2

Tuesday 7:00pm
Rhode Island Society of Magicians
American Legion Auburn Post 20
7 Legion Way, Cranston, RI 02921-2730

Atlanta, Georgia - March 28th (all-day)

http://magiccomedyjam.squarespace.com/
Sheraton Atlanta Perimeter North 800 Hammond Dr.
Atlanta, GA 30328

Want to create and give away an impossible object your audience will never forget?  

Create an inside-out balloon right before their eyes in this 3-phase routine.

Phase 1: Rip the knot off a balloon and make it vanish

Phase 2: Create a new knot on the smooth balloon

Phase 3: Push the knot INSIDE the balloon and give it away

In this DVD Andrew teaches his method for tying a knot on the inside of the balloon and using it in an incredibly visual magic routine.

+ Uses regular balloons.  

+ No special tools required.

+ Place a playing card or business card in the balloon as a giveaway!

DVD running time 20 minutes

Get the DVD for just $14.95!

US and Canadian orders (free shipping)

International orders (just $2.00 shipping)

Not since the last election has the country (or world) been this divided on an issue.  Some love it, some hate it, while many just don't get it.

Speaking as a consumer of content

I'm excited about it for a lot of reasons.  The main reason is that I read a *lot*.  Books, magazine, blogs, long form essays, etc.  I've been looking for a device for a long time that makes it easier for me to consume that content when I'm away from my desktop and want a screen larger than my iPhone.  I passionately hate the current state of e-ink technology and would never consider a Kindle or Nook as is.  Watching the screen flash black every time I want to turn the page is an affront against everything that is right in this world.  It's a horrible, horrible artifact of a technology that's not ready for prime time.

Is the iPad the most perfect device for reading?  No device will ever be the perfect device for that.  But is it the best one that'll be available in the near future?  Certainly until iPad 2.0 comes out.

My iPhone 1st generation phone was the best phone until the 2nd and then the 3GS.  The next one will be even better than that.  For technology to move forward it has to start somewhere.  I think the iPad is starting from an awesome point.  It promises to do some very specific things extremely well.  That's enough for me to get the 1.0 version.

What about a competitive device?  There aren't any at the moment.  There are promises of devices either mythical Chrome or Android tablets with no specific feature set or price and then there are warmed over tablet PC's heralded as iPad competitors that weigh twice as much, have a third as much battery life and cost three times as much.  At the low end are a group of specious products that promise to be nothing more than netbooks with touch screens instead of keyboards.  I challenge anyone to show me a sub $500 netbook that has ever approached the build quality of anything from Apple.  There's a reason Acer said they plan to sit 2010 out as far as the tablet market goes.  When Apple put the price point at $500 they made a very bold statement about what people should expect for that price.  An underpowered notebook with horrible battery life is a better idea in the abstract than the concrete.

Eventually these devices will get better.  3 years after the iPhone there are some great competitive products out there like the Nexus 1 that give people more choice and Apple a reason to keep innovating.  Meanwhile there's nothing on the horizon that looks like it comes close to the iPad.  The tech blogs are filled with "iPad Killers" that are expected soon but they all suffer from the aforementioned problems: vaporware, too expensive and huge or built by companies that are known only for building crappy cheap products.

As a creator of content

For someone who produces DVDs, blogs, books and applications, the iPad is an exciting new area to create for.  There are a lot of things you can now do in digital publishing that just didn't have an outlet before.  Interactive ebooks, digital magazines, instructional videos, there's a ton of content waiting to happen for this device.

I think the future of magic publishing is going to be on devices like this.  It's also going to help bring back books  (digital ones) as a viable means for publishing content.  As it is now, the magic market is too niche to make publishing a growing market.  The cost of launching a book outweighs the average return most can expect on a title.  Unlike DVDs that have an almost zero launch cost.

As a magician

There's a whole generation out there that's entire exposure to magic is Internet based.  The likelihood that they'll ever pick up a printed book on magic is next to zero.  The iPad is another way to approach this kind of content.  It's a different medium in which to have an experience learning magic.  I know I'd prefer to sit on my couch or dining room table and look at a device like an iPad to learn a new effect whether it be from an ebook or magic video.  I think it'll give us a better way to interact with this kind of content.

The application lets people mix an onscreen deck of cards - this is being generated in real time using a physics engine so no two shuffles are ever the same.  They're then asked to concentrate on a face-up card.  Some adjustments are made to the camera and then the image of their card develops on a polaroid right before their eyes.  it can be repeated over and over.

I also have two other effects in the app.  One is a new take on the Princess Card trick where the thought of card ends up as a blurry smear.  I've also included a modern take on a classic number trick.

When the app hits the iTunes store it'll be just $.99.

The effect is Bob's version of the Princess Card trick using a flame thrower.

Available now in the iTunes Store for $.99.