799: TRICS 2023 - Days One & Two Report

Thursday, November 2nd

Kayla Drescher 7:00pm – 8:00pm
David Jonathon 9:00pm – 10:00pm

Friday, November 3rd

Blake Vogt 11:00 – 12:00
Eric Jones 1:00 – 2;00
Lunch 2:00 – 3:30
Jon Armstrong 3:30 – 4:30
Insights 5:30 – 7:00
Dinner 7:00 – 8:30
Friday Night Show 8:30 – 9:30
Pizza Party 10:00 Until

Time stamps for this episode:

00:00:17 - Scott takes off on his “flying carpet” from Houston to Charlotte for the TRICS convention. He talks about some of the talent who will be at the convention.

00:05:28 - at the registration desk we chat with Tiffany Allen (the wife of Boris Wild) who talks about the registration at this convention plus what it’s like after moving to France

00:12:07 - Shawn Farquhar (the Guest of Honor at this convention) plus Billy Hsueh talk about their recent travels around the world

00:21:44 - Marv Leventhal tells us about the health status of Tom Craven

00:32:58 - Kyle Purnell and John Wolfe chat about this convention and why they attend here regularly plus we recap the lectures from the previous night

00:38:45 - Scott Robinson, main organizer of TRICS tells us that this is year number 14 and some of the special things going on

00;44:00 - Joe Daniels will be the host of the Insights event later today and talks about who will be on the panel

00:49:19 - Roy Eidem confirmed that Tom Craven had passed within the past few hours and since Marv Leventhal and Scott Wells talked about him

00:52:03 - David Coll, Chris Sharp, and Robert Sands are all first-timers to this convention and explain why they came to this event and what they are looking forward to seeing. It’s a nice perspective from the viewpoint of first-timers.

00:55:48 - Michael Kaminskas and Scott Wells give a wrap-up of most of today’s activities.

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A very hard week for the magic community. We just lost these six incredible magicians.
Graham Putnam, Dirk Arthur, David Berglas,
Dick Gustafson, Karl Fulves, Tom Craven.
I am so glad that I had some of these legends on the podcast. Aloha, my friends.

767: Randy Wakeman - I've Been Around for a Long, Long Years

Randy Wakeman has been around for many decades and was often seen lecturing and performing at magic conventions. Nonetheless, I have always seen him as an “underground” magician who appeals to the true sleight-of-hand experts. He is one of those guys who has “been there, done that, has the t-shirt” as he was one of the regular performers about the Chicago Bar Magic Scene before the turn of the last century. He has written several books on magic (card magic mostly) and is still relevant in our community as a performer, teacher and author.

While at the recent Senior Tour close-up convention in St. Louis, The Magic Word spoke with Randy as part of the convention report content. He was preparing for a workshop, so we didn’t get a chance to go in-depth as I had wanted. But we agreed to get together at the 4F convention in Buffalo a couple months later. True to his word, we sat down to complete our chat which results in this episode. The content of our chat in both places was a little disjunctive, so the editing required us to put the second conversation first then plug in the chat in St. Louis and finish with our talk while in Buffalo. This sounds more confusing that it actually is, but I know you will understand and enjoy our chat.

608- Jeff Bibik - Bar Magician Extraordinaire

Jeff Bibik is a Chicago comedian and a magician. Originally from the Detroit, Michigan, area, he regularly performed magic in local restaurants and comedy clubs until 1985 when he moved to Chicago where he continued as a comedy magician in close-up and stage for the public and corporate audiences and he also performs a hypnosis act. Over the years he developed a large repertoire of jokes and gags that serves him well today as the house magician at the Chicago Magic Lounge.

Jeff Bibik pulls no punches this week in sharing the secrets behind getting work in restaurants performing magic, plus he tells lots of stories about working in bars and restaurants with a liberal sprinkling of funny gags, jokes and puns. This was recorded using StreamYard with Jeff joining us from the bar in his basement in his Chicago home. A video of our chat was also recorded and posted to YouTube. To view that video, please click on the video link below in this blog.