Wednesday, January 26, 2011

I'm amazed! After numerous delays I somehow made my connecting flight and got back home pretty much on time. Sweet!

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Ready, set, Merrimack College here I come!

Monday, January 24, 2011

Made it to Boston. Looking forward to tomorrow's show at Merrimack College. Met the coolest chick on the flight in. Great conversation!
...and on to Boston.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Do you strive to create and perform original magic and illusions? http://ping.fm/0KbdL

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

What a blessing! Mike Pyle joins us at the SAM 50 meeting tonight! So glad to see him.
Need help finding quality entertainment for a special event? Great advice here - http://ping.fm/oqqO9

The Most Important Things You Must Know Before Booking Entertainment For Your Next Event – Part 4

Well, it’s that time again! This is the fourth part of several earlier blog entries on how to successfully find and book the very best entertainment for your upcoming event. As a professional entertainer, I have dealt with numerous meeting and event planners that have planned all sorts of amazing special events. This series of articles is intended to make your life (as someone looking to find entertainment) easier. You might even find the whole process fun! Enjoy!

5. Deposits
The deposit is basically a protective monetary agreement that demonstrates you are indeed serious about hiring a particular entertainer or speaker for your event. Once a date has been booked, the entertainer or speaker cannot offer his or her services to another client for that same date and time. The deposit guarantees that you will not cancel at the last minute, costing the entertainer both your event and other potential events that he or she didn’t book out of deference to you. Upon receiving your deposit, he or she is committed to you.

Not all entertainers take deposits. It often depends on the norm that entertainers and agents set in certain areas. Truthfully, I don’t think deposits necessarily indicate one way or another just how professional an entertainer is. I know average speakers who always take deposits, and I know top-notch professional entertainers who never do.

6. Contracts, Confirmation Calls and Letters
Once all the details have been decided on, you should expect to receive a performance agreement/contract from your entertainer or speaker. This is not something to worry or stress over. It is normal operating procedure for any professional entertainer or speaker. In fact, if you don’t get a contract, you should start to wonder.

The performance agreement/contract basically spells out all the details that have been agreed upon when discussing your event. You should take the time to review all of the details, including type of program, start and end time, venue address, price, etc. The performance agreement should set you at ease because you now know that your entertainer has all the details correct and can prepare to deliver a dynamic, appropriate program.

Within one week of the show, usually a couple of days before, your entertainer should call or email you to confirm that he or she will be there. It is just a courtesy to contact you to be sure that the directions and details are correct. If you don't hear from them and it's the day before the event, you may want to place a quick call, on the outside chance that they had the phone number wrong or simply couldn't reach you.

Wrap Up
Click here to read Part 5, where we discuss what to expect the day of the event. To start at the beginning of this series, click here for the first entry. And to receive a free copy of my brand new book (where most of this information is coming from), visit my website, fill out the webform, and I'll rush you a copy today! Blessings!

That's me entertaining onboard Royal Caribbean’s Mariner of the Seas!

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Final Dress Rehearsal for Shakespeare's Case tonight http://ping.fm/0h8Mo

Monday, January 10, 2011

Have you been following the Adventure on the High Seas? Day #3 just posted - http://ping.fm/79tiV

Adventures on the High Seas, Day #3

Day #3 started off with us getting off the ship and going through the disembarking process. Basically you just have to make it through customs. No big deal there.

Today my goal was to find a place where I could get on my laptop and try to reach out to a few business contacts and make a couple of personal phone calls. (You know, I didn’t realize how much I used the internet, or how much I enjoyed talking to my friends, until I got on a ship and didn’t have access to either phone or internet except when we were in port in the US!)

We found a great little Starbucks and hung out there for awhile so I could take care of my emails. Kristin was still cracking up over her David Sedaris book the entire time I sent emails and made phone calls. She’s quite a little bookworm! After Starbucks, we found a great little Mexican restaurant and enjoyed tacos for lunch.

Day #3 is the day that I was going to meet the cruise director and he was going to see our show for the first time, so there were a few loose ends I still wanted to tie up with the show. We went searching for some fabric and had to go to a Michael’s and a Wal-Mart before we finally found a Joann Fabric store and picked something out.

I think the best part of today was that I had finally found my comfort zone with the show. My stress level was non-existent. The past two days I had been totally stressed out which completely exhausted me. To have the experience of the two shows under my belt helped relax me and made the rest of the week a lot of fun.

The show that night was super fun and easy. I knew what to expect, Kristin and I did our thing, and the audience responded very well.

At this point what I realized was that we had gone through the cruising cycle once and we just had to go through it several more times. Since it was only a two day cruise, we now knew exactly what to expect for the remainder of the week.

Well, that’s what I thought at the time. Wait until Day 4’s report when everything gets turned on its ear because of some pretty bad weather.

If you just joined this little adventure, click here and start the journey at the beginning.  To read Day #4's adventure, click here.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Ever been in charge of finding entertainment for a party? There are some good tips herehttp://ping.fm/IVSUk
Man this is crazy! I can't sleep! Somebody tell me a bedtime story.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Coffee fan? I highly recommend the P.Diddy at Bongo Java. Yum!
Got a preview of Nashville Shakespeare Festival's winter production Shakespeare's Case. Very funny show. It opens Jan 13. Check it out.
Keep up with the latest news here - http://ping.fm/5BWiJ

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Adventures on the High Seas - Day #2 - http://ping.fm/NPTav

Adventures on the High Seas, Day #2

Well, I slept like a rock after the stress of the first day onboard. Day #2 was relatively calm in comparison. We got going and grabbed some breakfast. Because Day #2’s show was a completely different show than Day #1’s show was I still was feeling a bit apprehensive. Day #2’s show was a bit more artistic and not quite as much what I would call “commercial” magic. And we still had to go through a quick tech rehearsal and sound check. Luckily, we had planned that for late morning, so all my stressing would be over once I knew we were good from the technical side. We took care of the sound check without any issues and were free for the rest of the day.

You know, I just realized that I didn’t explain the most challenging part of this gig in my first blog post the other day. Part of the reason for my stress level being high was because I was performing on a stage that was completely surrounded by seating. Yes, the stage was surrounded 360 degrees by people. Now I knew this coming in, so I was prepared. It’s just that magic can sometimes have angle issues or lighting issues and performing with people surrounding you adds to the difficulty level. Not only do you want to amaze everyone, you have to make sure that you perform in a manner so that everyone will be able to see what you are doing. I think it’s natural to be a little stressed until I had actually performed each of my shows at least once in front of a real audience. Day #2’s show would be yet another test of both my planning skills and my performing skills.

The day was spent in Freeport, Bahamas. It was actually quite cool and a little bit rainy, so Kristin and I decided to spend the day exploring the port area and not go into the city itself. Unfortunately that was a short lived plan. Because the weather was so sucky there really wasn’t much happening in the port of call. We explored several local arts and crafts and souvenir vendors and ended up stumbling into a local bar that had a really good wi-fi connection. We made the decision to just hang out there for much of the afternoon and I fetched my computer from the ship so I could get caught up on some emails. I took care of some business on the computer and Kristin read a book by David Sedaris that kept cracking her up. It was a pretty tame day in the Bahamas. In fact, if we hadn’t known that we would be back several times later in the week we would have definitely made more of an effort to see some things. As it was, we knew we would have time to explore later.

Today, we both made the rather intelligent decision to take motion sickness pills before we left port and headed back to FL. And I think that decision was in our best interest. Both shows went well. Actually, I was a little verbose on the first show and went over my 20 minute time limit. I had to make a conscious decision the second show to tighten up the script and make sure the show kept moving so the other two entertainers would also get their allotted time. Overall though, the audiences responded well and I was quite pleased with this show.

Afterwards, we hung out and enjoyed meeting audience members. Then we just took it easy before calling it a night. Click here for Day #3's adventure.



Here's the showroom. As you can see I was completely surrounded by seating on two different levels. On another note, as soon as the show was over the showroom turned into a disco and the stage became the dance floor. Towards the end of the week, I got down and shook my groove thing after the show while Kristin watched me much to her amusement.

If you missed Day #1's entry, click here to check it out.

Monday, January 3, 2011

My cruise adventure - http://ping.fm/6mCrc

Adventures on the High Seas, Day #1

I recently had the opportunity to work on a cruise ship for a week. The opportunity landed in my lap at the very last minute and was kind of a lucky fluke. It’s the type of booking that entertainers love to get, but certainly don’t ever expect to have happen. I had worked all of my holiday bookings in the month of December and ended up getting a phone call to take the place of a magician who had canceled at the last minute for this cruise line. I had a blast on the ship and thought I would share some of my adventure.

Because it was such a last minute gig, I ended up not being able to take my normal assistant Jamie. Fortunately, Jamie’s roommate and close friend Kristin was available and was excited about the opportunity. We rehearsed for a few days and then we took off from Nashville and headed to West Palm Beach.

We took the drive in two days. When we arrived at the port it was time to get down to business. We touched base with the cruise director and got all checked in for the cruise. Kristin and I, along with several crewmembers, loaded our equipment on to the ship and into the showroom. Once that was accomplished, we had most of the afternoon to get comfortable on the ship and get ready for the show.

Now, I’ve worked on cruise ships before, but I had forgotten just how tight it can be in the cabins. Initially, it was a little bit of a shock when I opened the door to my cabin and realized that I was going to be living in this small room for the next week. (Let me say that it was a very nice cabin and I got used to it really quickly. It was just the initial shock of going from living in a house to living in a cabin that caught me off guard!)

So, we ate lunch, explored the ship and I set everything up for the show that afternoon. Somehow I was under the initial impression that we only had one show a night. Imagine my surprise when I was told that it was two shows an evening! It’s a good thing that I’m super paranoid about being prepared. I had actually brought twice as many show supplies as I thought I would need. That ended up giving me just enough to do two shows a night! We had sound check at 6 pm and went through everything with the sound guy.

Our next adventure was dinner. Normally dinner wouldn’t be an adventure. It would be awesome food in beautiful surroundings. However, we had left the port of West Palm Beach and were in some of the choppiest waters I’ve ever experienced. To say I wasn’t feeling well was an understatement. Kristin didn’t look too great either. I ate very little the first night because I wanted to make sure that I didn’t get totally sick during my act.

So, Kristin and I go back to our cabins and get ready for show time. When 8:30 rolls around neither of us feel any better and it’s time to take the stage. I didn’t feel great, but when I took the stage I totally focused on what I was doing and made through the show with no problems (other than sweating profusely).

Kristin had the bright idea of taking some motion sickness medication between the two shows and I followed suit. By show #2, I was feeling much better. Show #2 also went off great. The only thing I was really worried about was during the Metamorphosis illusion. Both Kristin and I have to stand on top of the trunk at different points in the routine and I was a little worried that with the ship rocking back and forth that one of us might lose our balance and fall off the thing! Luckily, that never happened.

After the show, we got a small snack since neither of us had really eaten any dinner and called it a night. The first day onboard was quite an adventure all by itself and we had just started our weeklong run. Click here for Day #2.



Thought I would throw in a picture of Kristin and I standing outside the showroom. Whoa, we look like a couple of bums here! If I remember correctly, this was taken on the first night when we felt pretty rough. Anyway, this photo is proof that we were actually there!