The Assembly Convention Highlights! #212

What's up fellow Magic Guys? We are here at the Assembly Convention.

This is a convention we've been talking about on the pod for a while, but it's here in Brisbane, Australia. And there's a lot of fellow magicians around the place that listen to the podcast. So I'm going to show you a couple of them now and let's have a look around. Scotty P here, Magic Guys viewers, putting a face to the name this time because I'm here at the Magic Convention, the Assembly, and I'm learning a lot, taking a lot of notes, spending a little bit too much money,

but that's how it goes here. On to the next. Good day, this is Matt. We're here at the Assembly 2025 Magic Invention in Brisbane. Just here to be inspired by local and international talent. It's a great opportunity to see some new ideas, get the creative juices flowing and be really intentional about investing in ourselves as magic as a hobby and a profession. I've got a joke for you. Do you hear about the magic tractor? He went down the road and turned into a field.

Hello, my name is Chi Han. I'm here to show you a quick card trick here with the four aces, I think. No, that's not an ace. There we go. I need the four aces for this. And one last one right over here. The four aces. What's going to happen is they're going to disappear. Maybe next time. Hey, hey, this is Brendan Dooley, comedy magician from New Zealand. I am here at the assembly convention in gorgeous Brisbane and I'm about to go and open the gala show for magicians.

Now people often, well Josh and I were just talking about what it's actually like to perform for magicians and I was just thinking about it. And it is absolutely the motherfucking freaking worst thing on the absolute planet. I question my life choices. I mean, take two, take two. I am so excited. This is probably the most exciting opportunity of my career. It's so great to perform in front of my peers. They're such a supportive audience. I'm not lying at all.

They're guys. They do magic. They are the magic guys.

Ah ladies and gentlemen welcome to episode 212 of the magic guys i hope you enjoyed our little intro which is a big uh foreshadowing of this episode but to my left i have my twin from melbourne nick k hello brother man it's nick k from melbourne but this week we were brothers in the same city it was actually it was funny because we were going to talk about it but we did a show together and you know we both were the main feature act in different sessions but it almost looked like

it was the same person in both because you know we had nice shiny heads and great magic extremely handsome and extremely talented it's yeah and also a lot we should do like wasn't there a movie wasn't there a movie with von jean cole van damme double exposure or something i'm sure there was yeah all this arnold schwarzenegger you know total recall i think was at that one when he's like yeah he actually has a clone but you know what we're talking about my friends is the assembly

convention wait let me do that like it should be done.

And that happened in brisbane which we talked about in the weeks leading up to it and we had a whole series of events happen which we're excited to talk about starting from friday through to saturday to sunday and nick was in town so it was just a whole weekend of shenanigans firstly nick i don't think you slept much how are you feeling now at the end of it before we start the stories finally rested and today is definitely going to be a rehab day of just

like doing laundry and pulling my life back together in preparation to do it all again on the weekend i suppose with performances but oh yeah it is so great just to like i so i flew down on the friday so it's a weekend event in a sense. So on the Friday, I caught up with a bunch of magicians. We had really good sessions at the bar. We played a really fun game where, I don't know, I should give it a name or something, or maybe even like try to implement it in the show.

But the idea was that we had like 10 of us at the table. And I said, all right, new challenge. We're going to do controls to the top of the deck.

One at a time in a circle and you have to do as many as you can right taking a turn at a time you cannot repeat one that anyone else has done and and if you do you're out of the game and it's last man standing let's play bro we were playing for 45 minutes and nobody was out like there was so much hell yeah there was so much talent at the table and we just went like all right enough of this let's let's do forces instead oh my god like it was so and because what happens is you go in this

circle and then all of a sudden someone does something you go whoa whoa stop the game the hell was that show us and then they give you a tutorial and so it's this really cool way of sort of exchanging ideas but making it quite fun right that's such a great game you start reaching into these like corners of your mind that you like i totally forgot that i knew how to do a control like that. Super fun. So that's what my Friday was like. That's cool, man. I didn't even. Wow. I had to.

Well, yeah. So everyone was flying in on the Friday. For me, I had a gig, you know, which is wonderful to say on a podcast for magicians. I had a gig. Yeah. It was about two hours away. So I had a late night, but just from performing. And Nick, are you familiar with the band Thirsty Merc? Absolutely. So they were headlining this gig that I did. So I was doing all the roving and then they came on stage and played for this corporate event, private company.

And I wonder if our viewers know who Thirsty Merc are as well, like in the US and stuff. Because they had some mainstream songs. Yeah, they sure did. Yeah. Anyway, that's all. So that was my Friday. And then we get to Saturday.

So Saturday was an absolute banger because that was the day that the Theatre of Magic was holding their two shows, one an early session and the evening session. The sessions were, the acts that we had rather, were our two international guests who were part of the assembly. We had Christian Grace all the way from the UK.

If you don't know who Christian Grace is, I'm surprised because he is one of the greatest card guys i've ever seen he's affectionately known as the uh evil genius of card magic it was actually and rightly so he's not like you know i i've seen his stuff i've seen it performed and i thought to myself like that's that different level like i'm not at that level then that sort of pond to the smith coin stuff you're like i'm gonna look at that that's the way i feel

about christian grace's stuff but it's actually genius very clean stuff it doesn't look like he's doing any moves or anything when he performs and we can both contest to that after seeing it live and more importantly seeing his lecture which we'll talk about a little little bit later on so really cool to watch him do his thing that was beautiful we also had martin braises amazing magician from argentina who performed really beautiful spanish style stuff you know what

i mean i say spanish style because it's that european beautiful style of magic and you know lots of sort of singing along i love it yeah. And his stuff was beautiful and his lecture was even better. So it was really, really awesome to see that. So these two guys were performing their sets at the beginning. And then afterwards, Josh headlined the show. I got to say this before we go any further. Josh, it is the best. It is the best I've ever seen you perform.

That was so killer what you did in that set. He was absolute fire, you guys. And it was such a pleasure to watch. Like I was just, you were like a laugh every 10 seconds. You had a laugh, an interaction or something, and your cube routine slays. Oh, my God. Can we talk about that? Thanks, man. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's funny because I knew we had two acts before and Christian went longer than we had planned for.

So I actually did a tighter set than I normally might, but it worked out great.

Taken a few things out it like let the individual effects I did in in 35 minutes I do only do like three sets I'm like a coin stuff some cube stuff card stuff but that audience was like, they just seen like two international acts by the time I get there they're just like their minds are blown I'm like all right let me just you know add to that it was a fun night man yeah it was it was red hot but yeah so the the cube act right you had a bit that you wanted to share from that right yeah so

we have we have two clips i thought i would grab one from myself from my show and then one from nick in his show and i'll get mine ready so mine goes for it's a two minute clip essentially it's just me solving a cube right i'm just doing an instant solve and back in the day i would do that in the intro of my cube set i would come out and you know to show like skill I would say, look.

There's whatever, 43 quintillion different ways you can mix a cube, but we all want to see the one that looks like this and I just solve it.

And it would get a little, and so over the evolution of doing probably over a hundred shows at Theater of Magic, like my challenge has always been to get more out of that first time they see it solved and to see if I can make the audience care about wanting to see it solved like almost like a movie add this arc of like tension and conflict before the release to make the reaction bigger if they're going down here not thinking i'll be able to do it anyway i won't say any more

this is me riffing with the audience just to solve a bloody cube. Here we go are you ready now wait how will you let me know that you're going to start obviously we're trying to do this as quickly as i can but how will you let me know you're going to start accounting. You'll go, okay, you'll just count. That makes sense. That makes sense. Hell yeah. Are you ready? Wait, hang on, hang on. Okay, so you're going to say go and then, okay, one more thing.

Are you familiar with counting in Mississippis? Okay, never mind. Never mind, never mind, never mind. 50 seconds, all right. Go. Wait, wait, wait, sorry, I can't hear because they won't shut up. No.

Sleep. The show's normally over in two minutes, but I love your enthusiasm. You guys are great. Get out. I'm kidding. You're kidding. All right, are we ready? Hassan, are you ready? Yes. I'm ready. Go. Go. Go. I can't. Hey, I'm just... Martin. Martin. Martin, okay, watch, ready? Just say go, don't even count, okay? Just say go and say it. Okay, perfect, we got the green. But we also got the orange and the blue and the red and the yellow and the white. Every color it is for you!

Jesus, okay, that was awesome, that was awesome.

Ta-da! See what I mean? like a laugh every 10 seconds fooling around and and that's the thing right like so many people, rush to do the magic you know and there's nothing more painful than when you watch a performer, who's saying their script only so they can just get it out as quickly as possible to do the bit they want to do which is the magic you know whereas you're just connecting with them so perfectly and they're bouncing up you and they're in

your corner and they're going like this is funny you're having a hard time we see the humor in it it's such a good set my guy and and thank Thanks, man. And the real secret for a magician is to make the audience think that that's an off-the-cuff moment that's off-script and they want to see how you handle it. But really, this happens in every single show. Like I've learned how to make the spectator initiate this off-the-cuff seeming moment.

And when you can make the audience think this is impromptu, that's the real trick. Yeah. I think it was Tommy Cooper that said that the most impromptu moments are actually rehearsed or the best impromptu moments are rehearsed. It was somebody comedy-based who'd said that, but there's a lot of truth in that. There are some things that obviously... The beauty of what you're saying is that like, it's really nice when you feel like the only time I'm ever going to see this is because I'm here.

Like this will never be repeated again. When you have those impromptu notes, for example, when you do your, how would you like me to find the cards? You did this bit and you were like, I want it to be under my seat. And you're like, well, fine, bring your seat up here. And you did. And it was, and it was great because it's the type of thing where like, if you go to the next show, you know, it's going to be different. And I love seeing shows that did that.

There was a comedy duo called max and evan that did that in a show called the con men i think it was called and they improv this whole bit in their show and then like did a bit of a confab at the end of it like you know nice they tied it all together in this storyline it was a comedic show not a magic show at all but i've been in love with that aspect ever since because it made me want to watch every single show or if there was an ability to watch

like the improv moment across the 20 shows like in a compilation i would i would die to see what that is and how they handled it you know and that's the strength that routine has and then there's other situations like mine was. Yeah that's right so i did the first show which had a few more kids in it you know it's earlier in the day it's 4 30 p.m by the time i go on stage it's like five o'clock and no one's drunk yet essentially.

Now, in the past, we used to have a nine o'clock show at the Theatre of Magic, but we stopped it because there was just a few too many times where people were drinking, enough that they're a bit too chirpy in the show when you need them to be quiet in certain moments for certain magic. Magic's very delicate. So we actually moved the show times to earlier so that that wouldn't happen as much. So it's 4.30 and then we have a 7.30 show, which is when Nick was headlining.

Unfortunately, and this is the time that it happens, sometimes a work group will come to the show and it's the boss who's bought tickets for their staff and their staff have no prior investment into the show. They just know they're going out to have drinks with their colleagues and that's where problems come up. And that's what happened on Saturday. To foreshadow this video you're going to see, these people came in with two cocktails each in hand, and you know they've been drinking beforehand.

So I'm like, I try to warn Martin and Christian, like, hey, just so you know, like, this is a little different to the first show that we killed. Like, these guys may give you problems. And so this clip is...

Everyone's done magic we've had halftime we've had to kick some of them out as well and the four that are left have just been chirping throughout the show and and yeah like annoying everyone can i can i can i add to that yeah by saying like in the first set it was so full-on that like our good friends brendan dooley sitting in the back and and a bunch of other magicians who were kind enough to come to the show were quite literally saying to this group like they were shushing them They were like,

shh, like in the middle of the set, like just shh, trying to get them to hush. They were that out of control. And they weren't like, they weren't necessarily like disrespecting the act. They were just talking amongst each other. Yeah, that's right. They kept talking and just getting. It was like this energy was like, we got to sit here for 45 minutes when we could be sitting at a bar. It was just that energy, you know?

Absolutely. They didn't know they're coming to the show and they maybe shouldn't have if they're going to drink that much and chat away. So at this point in the show, everyone's had enough of them. And Nick's gone, I need four people to help. And it just so happens that the four hecklers that are left are the ones that want to get involved. And then here we go. Yeah. If you want to play, do this. Okay. You two can play. That's great. And anyone on this side?

Just the four. The ones in the middle. Okay. the ones that we affectionately call the ones in the middle okay, madam you got a name everyone say hi jordan what do you do jordan uh i wait for my mother what does mom do sleep wait sleep scientist amazing what does it mean lucky that's so sweet, no that's hilarious because my comedy brain was just like now he's awake. Well he was asleep jordan you're going to choose a card say stop,

Okay, we'll try that again. Summer in the middle, Jordan. Okay, here we go. Say stop. Good job, kiddo. Jack, you're playing? Yeah. Okay, you say stop, Jack. Stop. What do you do, Jack? Polish heads. It means he's a mechanic. Sorry, we don't allow soliciting in our building, Jack. We're going to have to ask you to leave. I'm very... Don't worry about it. What is your name, Your Majesty? Ondra. This is Andra, everyone. She meant that. Andra!

Hello, Andra! What is this? She really meant it. What's your hustle, Andra? I'm a sleep scientist. You guys are? Oh! Really? Okay, so apparently studying sleep makes you wild. Okay. Go with that. Okay, Andra, tell me about this dream I had. It's coming from the moon. She's like, not unless there's an invoice attached. You shut up, magic man. Andra, say stop. Right there. You want to go on more? You want to stay?

I feel like I rushed. Yeah, as long as you're... As long as you're... Nope. I'm good. What's your name, Mr. Buzzity Butter Language? What is this? What's your name? Andrew. Andrew feels a little... Like an attack. Make him feel welcome. Say hi, Andrew. It's okay. Loosen up. Loosen up, Andrew. No one's going to get... Just okay. Just loosen up, bud. AA meeting. Yeah. Yeah. I think I speak on behalf of all of us when I say you should go more often.

Thank you. Good night. I can't get better than that. That's what happens when you come to a Nick K show. Yeah. And knockout. Now, the whole thing about that is after that routine, they were putty. They were one of us. It dissolved all the unpleasantness that the audience had because at that point, I was basically representing the audience, pulling them apart, and then we all became one, and we all got along after that.

And even when the show had ended, we got outside, we thank everyone for coming, and and every single one of them like literally hugged me in fact jack who's the biggest douche bag of all of them yeah jack talking to you grabbed my butt cheeks when he hugged me like which yeah not polite but he did but that would just like that will they absolutely loved me and like in and the boss lady like full gave me a hug and kiss and yeah like

it was it was really interesting to be able to turn that around but what was really lovely was having my peers and And other people come to me and say, you saved the night. Like, you saved the show. Yeah, because what's most impressive is it shows how seasoned you are and everyone else in the night was trying to do their show and ignore them talking, you know, or make little gestures. Like, hang on, wait, wait, wait.

But you just, like, went straight for them and showed, hey, wait, like I have control here. And then by the end, like after that routine, they did just like let you do your thing. And, and so essentially in that routine, like it's so funny, but you really told them three times, like you guys are talking too much and stop. Cause you said, ah, the group that we call the group of four. And then you, you know, gave them the line of, ah, this is what happens when a work group gets wild.

And then you said, ah, the AA meeting, you guys should go more so like three times you put them in their place while just having fun and not directly saying it yeah it's very very cool. Yeah, it's really, you know, I wish there was more of a science to it. I'm very organic in situations like this. But I think the only takeaway for me is that sometimes there's certain things that you can't hide. And I'm reminded of a thing that Gregory Wilson said, if you can't hide it, highlight it.

Now, he was talking about method when he said that. If you can't hide a method, highlight the method.

You know and he does he's like a really ugly pass uh to like get away with it was like it was something of that nature but like we couldn't hide the fact that this group was out of control that they'd over drank and that they were behaving improperly so i had to highlight it and you know when i had old mate go and mind you there was a few more people down that line that were, equally bad but they were the particular work group we're talking about and

scotty painter said if there's an elephant in the room nick k is writing it.

So good stuff yeah and so it was just good to end especially that moment when it's like this was like an aa meeting i was like yeah you should go more often like how perfect by the way that he said that like yeah obviously amazing that you clocked that and used it but how funny that he said that for this moment it was too good and there's like there's so many other moments where nick heckled back at these guys in the show but this is just like the one where he took on all for at once and it's

just too good and this is something that will happen when you're performing even if it's roving i mean roving even more people give you less authority sometimes if they're drinking and stuff and so sometimes there's this moment where as magicians we feel like if one person if we're if we tell off one person it's gonna ruin our career like words gonna get around that we're mean to people and like you know i can't tell that person to stop talking but.

The whole the rest of the audience appreciates it and so sometimes it's required even though it feels like because the last thing i want to do is create conflict in a show it's meant to just be fun but it is required and i would say in a year and a half of doing theater magic it's probably only happened three times that we've had to directly in the show say hey we will have to ask you to leave if you don't stop talking. It's so rare, but it happened on the convention weekend, of course.

And yeah, Nick took it like a chimp.

Otherwise we got two standing ovations in our shows thanks to the magicians and the amazing nigel and what a night so that was saturday and you know what just on a little just a personal note what was really cool was meeting martin and meeting christian and as i'm meeting them, they're saying to me oh i've seen your videos i love your stuff great to meet you and we already had this instant rapport because obviously I already adore them, but they've seen my stuff.

And Christian was like, Christian's such an instant bro. He's like, bro, I love your stuff. Oh, this is going to be great. And that was, I'm not saying to post more videos, guys, but I'm just saying it helps breaking the ice sometimes. And it did. And it was great for that reason. Anyway, I just wanted to say that. That was great. And you did a fantastic performance. When you're headlining a show, there is this huge responsibility.

And we'll wrap up by saying this, if I may. It's just that I genuinely turned to my peers. I turned to people like the Dooley and Byron and people I was hanging out with. And I actually said to them quite openly, I said, this is the first time in forever that I've actually felt nervous for a performance. And I had to reflect as to why that was. And it was like, well, I'm going to be in front of my peers. I'm following world champions of magic and international magicians.

And I think that what I was most nervous about was that I had a set list that, made me feel like I was locked in. And then I made the decision before the show to go, okay, I've got a plan, but deviate. And I wasn't going to do those routines to control those audiences. I was going to do other stuff, but I had to change. And the stuff that I didn't do and the stuff that I threw in, because by reputation, Christian was like, you need to do this phone vanish thing.

And I was like, I wasn't gonna, but now I will.

So I had to change. so i changed my whole set in order to keep everyone happy and and that's when i felt like at peace before i did my set i'm like i got a couple of things i'll try and then i'm gonna freestyle and see how it goes there it is and so theater magic night wrapped up we had an awesome night hooray us round of applause good job boom do i even have the applause oh yeah there you go then taking it to the next day the happy sunday everyone went to church nobody went to church And

then we ran to this convention. Yeah. The day kicked off. It was great. Firstly, what I loved is that I met so many nice people who listened to the pod. Did you meet Gregory? Yeah, of course. Gregory. Yeah. Yeah. I had a meeting before, but that was so cool. Dave, Mr. Perfect met him as well in a lot. He was like, Hey man, like you make my drives home, like so much more bearable. And I'm like, thank you so much, man. Like, that's so cool.

Yeah. And then hanging out with Scotty P as well. And he was like, did a paid gig last night. And I'm like, my boy, you know what I mean? Like it was just. Actually. Yeah. If we get time at the end, we have a speak pipe from him. I made him send in a speak pipe about his first paid gig, but whether we play that now or next time, it's okay. But that's in the bank. We'll do a dedicated speak pipe episode the week after like that. Either way, we'll figure it out. Heck yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We'll maybe just send it down. You want to do it now? Yeah. We're doing it. No, no, no. I was saying that like, send through your speak pipes. Next week we're doing speak pipes. Sorry. Do we have anyone coming to interview? Not yet, but someone pretty exciting is in the works right now. But, you know, we'll leave that for now.

Also, just while it's in my brain, next week in Brisbane, if you haven't got this email already, we have Jeff Hobson coming to lecture in Brisbane at our Theatre Magic venue, but obviously through Piper Magic. And that's crazy. I've heard people have messaged me saying already that they're going to fly in to come and see this. It's a one-off lecture because he's here doing a show. He's part of a big performance at QPAC, I think.

And he's going to be here anyway. So the next day when we do the podcast, we'll be coming off of just having seen his lecture. So I'll be able to report back on that as well. Tim's asking, how many people were in attendance? How many people do you reckon? Well, they're both sold out shows. What's the capacity? Oh. I think it was limited to like 150, wasn't it? Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah, yeah. Which is a lot of people to have in a Brisbane magician convention.

Like to have in Brisbane that many years, great. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, so circling back to the convention, we kicked off the day with some performances, which was really cool to start off with that. So there was two rooms that were separated. The room's up, really well seated, and then the act circulated performing. It was awesome, you know? So you see Martin Bresos go up there, do his set, killer stuff. Then you see same thing with Christian Grace. He was awesome.

And then we had Card Genius. Sean Taylor? Oh, Sean Mergaard. Well, no. Well, that's about his storytelling. Oh, Andrew Wimhurst. Andrew Wimhurst did a bit. And man, watching the mechanic work proper is pretty cool.

Like he's he's doing things that that i see done with breathers and so forth and he wasn't doing no breathers man like he wasn't doing any of that like it was just the the the most perfect cheating method used to achieve magic effects watching him do that it was very very cool watching him work was quite quite lovely and but yeah let's talk about sean murgaard real quick because I have been dying to meet him forever. If you don't know who he is, he's like, let's just, he's one of Brisbane's best

kept secrets is the way I'm going to paint him. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. He's affectionately known as the storytelling magician, which is, I think, a difficult thing to be able to achieve. And he gets up, he tells really interesting, meaningful pieces. And when he speaks, he has this kind of gravity, this magnetic sort of acting ability that I've only ever seen in someone like Edward Norton.

And he has that energy. and when he speaks and he's telling his stories of during these performances man i was just so suck it in and the guy had my full attention and he performed really cool stuff like just really really cool stuff and i was so happy to finally meet him so i just wanted to sing his praises while we had an opportunity while and more importantly while he was on topic yeah you went around for the first portion of the close-up show where are you josh you would I had to sleep in,

like in classic magician fashion. I needed a sleep in after Theater of Magic and my event on Friday. So I missed the close-up show. But what Nick's talking about is the convention started with a close-up show where the audience is split into two different rooms and you watch people do close-up magic. Then everyone would switch to the other room. Yeah. And then they'd see the other show that, you know, the first audience saw.

So Sean Mogar's been a good friend in Brisbane. been he's like so well researched in his magic and and yeah great storytelling he was a mentalist for a long time but yeah his magic's just so well thought out so i'm glad you got to see him in person so stoked and yeah if there's an and he'll be performing with you this weekend at the theater of magic so if you guys are in town i implore you go scope it out if it hasn't sold out already because he is fantastic.

Now, moving along. First lecture, Christian Grace. Bro. I think Martin went first, but that's okay. I'm just going off what the program said. Yeah, that's fine. I love it, Christian Grace. Sure. Great. Well, yeah, Christian, I love his energy, man. Like, it's so funny. His character, if I had to describe it, would be a guy that just got, you know, it's like Peter Parker just being bitten by the spider and discovering

he has magic. And he's so excited to share with everyone this magic that he's like, able to do now. Like he, he just seems like a normal dude at the bar, but he can just fucking blow your mind.

And then he can even like, give the power to someone else in the audience and make them have magic powers like he just and he's having so much fun in the meantime while doing it and then of course we start to learn about some of his thought process for how he's doing his magic and he just kept frying us and then he'd teach us how we did it and we're just so impressed and then he'd fry us again then he'd borrow a deck and like fry us with someone else's deck and like and not

only is he an amazing card magician but he is also the creator of the cog is it cognito cognito app the that was called enigma that's sorry that's what i meant to say that was my second yeah the enigma app as well yeah as well as his magic monthly it's you know what it is i i almost feel like he's like one of the world's best mentalists disguised as a card guy because he has this psychological process in what he does that is so convincing and it's really nice that people

take the time to think about that they think about the actual psychological experience they're having and and the premise is very interesting he did this particular effect it was called paradox the paradox yeah the paradox routine and i'm going to do my best to describe this quickly so you could appreciate it and i the reason i bring this up is that he has a online forum.

A monthly magic thing that he does, where if you were to join, there is already 100 plus routines that is created, and you have access to all of that should you join tomorrow. And we might even do our best to try and bring him on the pod so we can have an opportunity to tell you himself about it. So I won't say much more about that. But I will say there was one particular routine where a card is selected in the most fairest condition.

And then there's this visual image that he wants to lock in everyone's mind in which there is one card in front of you, the spectator. And he, the magician, there is a deck of playing cards. And then he just starts, without going near them, other than giving them some cards to shuffle.

They shuffle their card into just packs of cards and he has them take cards and take cards until there's only like three or four left and he's like choose one take one top middle or bottom great and they make all the choices and then they now have shuffled their card you haven't touched the deck once and there's one card left in his hand and it's on the table so then there's this beautiful reverse paradox moment where in the beginning of the routine he had the pack they had one

card at the end of the routine without going near their selection which they still have they now have the pack and their card in that pack and he's got one card in front of him only he doesn't he turns the pack over spreads through their selection is gone and the one card in front of him is their selection like it is so cool man so cool because it's this it's just so cool and the method's even cooler like it's even method is really cool and i watched i watched him do

that twice at the theater of magic in both shows and then in his lecture and every time like i'm fooled i was fooled like tremendously the first time i saw it second time i'm still pretty fooled and then even by the lecture i'm still like i still couldn't go on perform this i. Still don't know x1 like and then he reveals it and you're like oh my god i wouldn't even think that you would be doing that yeah it was yeah juggling liam is saying yeah christian was amazing

yeah his thought process is so good and he even taught an effect using someone else's deck where they just peek at a card and then you can cold read them and divine what their card is and you're actually doing cold reading for a good portion of it to genuinely find out what parts of their card is. And he just, and then he taught it. And I'm like, oh my God, this is so great. Yeah, we'll definitely get him on the pod, I'm sure. I mean, why wouldn't he want to come on and promote Magic Monthly?

So I'll shoot him off a message. We will beg him. Beg him, absolutely. Come on. Yeah, yeah. So good. So then he shared a myriad of wonderful things. We could talk about him for the entire episode almost, you know, but the thing is there's so much more to talk about.

So after that, we had a lunch break. That was great. And then we pop back into the next lecture. Martin Braeces, amazing magician from Argentina.

His lecture for me was the best thing about the assembly for me personally because he had so many ideas and beautiful thoughts that i wanted to implement in myself and i knew the methods out there but i didn't want to use those ones and then he just come forward and goes well i do these methods and these are my solutions check them out beautiful stuff absolutely beautiful oh do we need a reference um what's just popped up yeah absolutely matt matt sigmeyer

thank you for the ten dollar donation to the magic guys that will get us some sweet sweet couple of decks of bicycle bicycles thank you my friend his question is i mainly do close up but i've been hosting a local trivia night on the mic and want to try a parlor style trick for a group of about 30 to 40 people, Why am I scared out of my boots and how do I work through it? Ooh, you've come to the right place, my friend.

And thank you. These trivia nights, you know, I have another friend named Max in Brisbane who does the same thing. He hosts a trivia night because Magician's a great showman, naturally. Trivia nights, you know, no piece of cake. But you know what? This is a great place for you to start trying magic because you're not there predominantly to do a whole show. You can just start with one piece at a time. So Nick...

How does he work through it, being scared? Well, here's one thing you might want to do, Matt. If you do close-up magic and you're obviously more comfortable performing what you know. One thing you want to sort of understand and consider about close-up magic is that it's performed like typically on a table flat in what I guess this is the horizontal plane. If you have a way of performing the same routine, but think about presenting it in a more vertical plane, right?

Like in front of you, you might be able to do the same stuff you already know, just present it on a different plane, which means that you don't need to feel worried or frightened about it because you know the routine. You're already working an existing repertoire. You're just doing it up high where people can see it a bit better as opposed to holding it down here on a flat plane where they would look at it from the table above.

So go through your repertoire and see if there's anything there that you might be able to perform in a stand-up position as opposed to flatten the table. That's my first thing to advise. Josh? Yeah, that's exactly right. Find the thing, a routine that you're most comfortable doing. You've done a thousand times. Find a way to present that standing up. If card magic is your jam, then learn the homing card, the cards to pocket.

It's ambitious, but you can do it standing up. The audience can understand something was here and now it's here. And that's it. You're always going to feel comfortable. You're always going to feel scared because of the unknown. Like you just haven't done it yet. That's all. But you're being scared of something that hasn't happened yet. So why be scared? You know, once you do it, you'll feel great. You'll learn from it either way.

Just make sure the thing you're doing isn't, if don't do something new, like completely, completely new that'll make you more worried. But yeah, confidence comes from preparation. So just rehearse it a lot, standing up. Do something quick, like just do something that's like. Quick prediction or something fast, then the next trivia night you host, do something that's a little bit longer. Yeah. I think you'll have fun with it. I think you'd be okay.

And I look forward to hearing, send a speak pipe of you giving it a go. Tell us what happened. Absolutely, buddy. Best of luck with it. And yeah, lean in, of course, if we can be of any help. Yeah. A hundred percent. I love it. So Martin, now I, yeah, watching Martin's lecture, I could, I loved it. I loved it. And I could see it being down your alley, Nick, especially with some of his methods. And like, he did this one tidbit, just the effect, like what I saw happen.

How cool is this? He takes flash paper and he takes a lighter. He lights the flash paper and it turns into the lighter. He just lighted the flash paper with and he turns back and now there's nothing in his hand.

Like, like discombobulate someone's brain for a second like what did i just see happen yeah and he's explaining that this is something he would do casually where he hasn't said he's gonna do magic he's just with his friends or at a bar or people don't know he's being like that he knows they're watching him he'll just do it and it's the lighter like that's and that's just the tip of the iceberg but i was the first person to get in line to buy what he was selling because that it's typical when a

magician lectures if you haven't been to a convention that they'll actually talk about some things that they will sell like because some things will require props or gimmicks or whatever and and he did and man like the line was i think every single person that i've talked to so far left with a martin breces effect because it's so good he has this beautiful gimmicks in which you let me describe the effect and when you purchase the gimmicks it allows you to do this so there's a candle and he

basically hand palm down touches the candle and turns his hand up and he's holding fire he is holding fire one more time he is holding fire okay he then closes his fist to put the fire out and when he opens his hand he's got a coin on his hand and then it's Takes the coin, does it again. He's holding fire, closes his hand, fire goes out, opens it up, another coin. He produces three coins in this manner.

Sick stuff, man. And then he shows how you can adapt the gimmick where you can produce billiard balls. You can produce like all manner. You can produce a cookie from the event. Yeah. Like you can have firing, turn into a cookie, take a bite out of it. Yeah. He made a sponge ball appear from fire. That was impressive because sponge balls don't like fire. And he's like, and then it's a red sponge ball. Yeah. Like...

Just so cool yeah i immediately find that intriguing to use more than flash paper for certain items because it's just so cool to be able to come up to like how many times at events are they little those little bowl candles on tables and if you can just come up to it and instead of doing flash paper throwing it to your hand for whatever you just come over it they see you pick up the freaking flame and then you close your hand and it's an item it's so great it's unreal uh yeah yeah very

good Liam was saying he had an electric fire wallet yeah those are pretty epic yeah in fact it's so red I even find those nowadays he had he actually has some stuff that he hadn't even demoed yet but that was available at his merchandise stand that really cool thing with the silk which is not his but he had access to it there was a particular gimmick deck that he had this this this blank deck effect that he was performing and that was that was really special And so I

bought the deck because I like having utilities. I like things that you can create your own stuff out of it. You know what I mean? If someone said, look, there's a saw you can build houses with. Great, I can build my own house with this saw. I like that manner of thinking. So it was really cool. He is lecturing here in Melbourne. Any Melbourne listeners out there, if you haven't got tickets. It's not just a dedicated boring card lecture. It's not my advice.

You have to see it. Like I said, for me, it was my favorite thing of the whole convention because it speaks to me in my style of magic. Go see it. If you haven't got a ticket yet, please go get one now. So after that, we had dinner. Oh no, we had Sean Taylor's lecture. Come on, Sean Taylor. He is now originally from the UK and now an Australian national treasure. That's what this guy is, honestly. His accolades are phenomenal.

He's worked on so many things. One of the best routines that were part of the Penn and Teller tour. You might recall when we went and saw Penn and Teller, how he did this effect with these balloons and so forth. Sean Taylor had a very big hand in that. And a lot of people don't know that, but it goes to speak to the volumes of knowledge this guy has. And he's released so many books, Minecoaster and the other one, was it Minefields?

Mind i know he has mind storm or his mind storm and that was my coaster that's the right right the two main books his thought process on the mentalism game is very good very practical and it's genuinely things that he performs himself and i'll talk about his performance in the gala later but the lecture was so good and one thing the me that stood out he has this deck of cards that emulates the esp thing never really liked where people go like i have these esp cards and

they only have six cards but he has this genius thought process where he's taken esp cards and literally converted them into a proper pack of playing cards where you have four different colors representing four different suits and each value is represented by an esp symbol that is extremely easy to remember with a very good marking system and a whole bunch of other stuff.

I cannot tell you how good this is. If you are a mentalist and this is not in your kit or you don't own one of these, you're doing yourself a disservice. It is so good. So, so good. Yeah, it was great to see a pro that just like, he's released so many effects over the years because he's just so great at creating magic while performing. And he just, yeah, like, yeah, he just banged out like so much magic in the lecture. He's like, here's another thing I created. Here's another thing.

And yeah, his ESP deck, to have an entire deck of essentially different ESP symbols because there's different colors and variations. Now you can do card effects, but it's not a card effect because you're, Using symbols, reading their mind, and totally different. And yeah, he fried us with a good bunch of effects. Yeah. His work on the envelope was awesome. That's him texting you right now, I think. He goes, yeah, he could tell. I was talking shit about him. He can tell.

Yeah. Yeah. So it was the envelope stuff that he did as well. You know, he did this beautiful, I'm getting sent nudes, I'm sorry, from Sean Taylor. I'll mute that. So, yeah, his envelope work was really, really cool. Like, really, really cool. And it's not something I mess with, and I regret it now. Like, it's definitely something that I'm now going to mess with.

Yeah, scope out his work. Yeah, his envelope, real quick, like, for example, he showed, instead of doing a coin flip where you have a whole audience standing up, this macro effect, you do a heads and tails game until you whittle down to one person, he has a way to do it with envelopes, and it's asking questions like what do you prefer, A or B, and just freely just ripping this envelope open, taking out the answer. You can whittle down and predict who will be the final person.

And now you're not relying on can I sense which way up or down this coin is or in the moment you forget or accidentally say the wrong one. It's a very surefire method that you can tailor to have. Like if you're at a company event, The questions can be tailored to the industry you're in. It's very, very, very clever. Definitely search it out. And yeah, he's a pro. You can tell he's a pro. He's done it forever.

So we could yeah oh oh and we'll like we'll circle back to his oh let's can we move on to the gala now and talk about like what that was like yeah so after that amazing lecture which again we could talk about for a whole episode we had a gala show in which we had a bunch of a mixture of our international guests and of course our local talent performing there one of which of course was our good friend the amazing nigel who took the night out doing his signature pieces which are amazing but

the night kicked off with our mc who is an absolute hero of mine if you don't know him his name is darren carr and he oh my god if he's not one of the funniest people on the planet christ almighty christ almighty yeah darren carr please i need to i need to see that i need to say because this is my first time I'd heard of Darren Carr because he'd been on one of the earliest seasons of Australia's Got Talent. And I knew he was working the scene doing corporate gigs.

I'd hear about him talking and stuff like that. Scotty P is saying in the chat, Darren had me peeing my pants. Absolutely. And that was even before the show. I'd never seen Darren work in person. So anytime I met him, he just looked like a very polite guy because he wasn't, you know, in show mode. So I assumed he was good, but I, you know, that was kind of it. But seeing this guy work was freaking mind-blowing. Unreal. His timing and writing ability for jokes and callbacks and his tonality

and like the silence before he continues to make you laugh. Like he'd make you laugh by not saying anything. And then obviously he's a comedian, but his act is... Ventriloquism. Throughout the show, mixed up amongst his comedy. And, you know, when sometimes when you hear us talk about magicians, you know, we, we sing them praise because, you know, we're nice guys and they're nice guys.

So we'll sing them praise, but this is not that this is genuinely, this fricking guy had 150 magicians losing their shit every single time he came on stage.

Like Nick, what was the first thing he did and and by the way he's quite a chunky dude and he uses that in his act so we can say that right like he's a big dude so you see a big dude come on stage and then what happens nick yeah he's a heavy set dude super stocky looking but more like a cuddly wholesome thing right and he comes out he's got his suit on he grabs the microphone and then he says.

He grabs the microphone he then grabs the mic stand and says let me get this out of the way so you can see me that hit so that hit so well just to start things off you know especially when he's this heavyset dude and it's like we can see you buddy we can see you and it's so rather with the single line that everyone goes like he hits so fast and so hard as far as a laugh goes yeah like it is crazy and then he gets up he does this

opening bit everyone's red hot from the laughs he's a proper good vent like it is just he's just he's just a master and and this circling back to the first time i saw him and the first time i also saw a good friend the amazing nigel. He headlined the show when we first, this was back in Rudy Hill at the GenieCon convention. And everyone was like, no, no, no, I'm not going after Darren. And because everyone refused, I am not going on after Darren.

Like, that's it. And I'm like, who is he? And then he actually ended up like headlining. And I went, now I know why. Because it was the first time when you see those like, oh, this will have you rolling in the aisles, genuinely rolling in the aisles. I was literally on the floor. I was laughing so hard that I had tears in my eyes and I was trying to wipe them because I didn't want to miss anything. I was like trying to hold my eyes open.

And the beautiful thing is because he's ripping on himself first, like he makes lots of jokes about his weight and his life. So that gives permission to now rip on the audience or, you know, like he did some great digs at Piper Magic who organized. Yeah.

And you. what did he say to you he's like why do you have nothing on top it's like you're upside down you got hair at the bottom and nothing on top he was like how come you're bald but you got a beard looks like your face is upside down that's right that's right and he's like you know it's a pleasure to be here so glad that i'm not getting paid today you know but you get to come for free.

But his delivery is so good and and his ability to let the audience laugh just long enough and then he's like anyway and then he just has another killer line ready to go we need to have him on this podcast why the hell have we not had him on yet we let's that i'm sending a message to him let's beg well he probably needs to recover but this week i'm definitely sending him a message you guys need to see how great this dude is i understand why you don't see videos of him going up and promo and

pushing media and stuff because he doesn't need to he's just fucking funny so it funny proper yeah just just for reference there is like this particular award i forget what it's called but it's quite prestigious to the point where john farnham who is i don't know what you want to the australian icon yeah he's an australian icon he's kind of like the i don't know he's like the bruce springsteen or something of you know like like he's he's affectionately known to

us as australia as the voice like he isn't that voice he's won this award like seven times darren cars won an eight of like being australia's best entertainer like just for reference that's how good that sounds right that's how good he is so anyway so he opens up following him is my friend and yours brendan dooley all the way from new zealand and he performs his killer bit uh hoop and glass routine which man rock rock the room.

Like he does this bit like, and, and I half wonder if he did it on purpose because you know that thing where jugglers do, it's like, they're going to do their final trick and they screw it up once or twice. Yeah. Sometimes wonder, I should have asked him, but it's this whole like flip on the front, flip behind the back, flip this and that, catch it, toss it in the air, grab the drink and then skull. Like it was. I've never seen it in, in real life. It was crazy to see.

And Brennan's a tall guy and the roof is a low roof. So he even had to, for the finale, so we're just talking about a little wooden hoop and a glass of water that's balancing on it and you're spinning it around and he like does a double, he throws it and it spins around twice in the air. Catches it, throws it up, catches the glass. And yeah, he dropped it once or twice, like, which what, like what to Nick saying, sometimes you have to stuff it up to let people know what you're doing is real.

Because like for a second i'm like how is that water not coming out when you're flipping it around like maybe it's a gimmick glass but the fact that it did spill on one of the early ones maybe go oh holy crap okay this is all as it is yeah and then when you see him nail the the big finale i mean every version he was doing was amazing but then when you see him do it it's like holy crap this is insane absolutely he followed up with a killer card trick and then he finished

with his killer piece of he's just a bill a bill inside crunchy bar it's one of the cleanest things you'll ever see credit to him on the method for that super genius stuff and and then yeah people were talking about it like consistently afterwards so like well done to him oh yeah yep then our good friend martin he also performed a set as well again just beautiful spanish magic yeah that's it found a way martin's found a really nice way of like you know he's English is great,

but it is, he does have a Spanish accent, obviously being from Argentina. So, but he uses that to his advantage. Like he will say things and like how you say, you know, cup and ball. And it'd be like, ah, you know, this saying is better in Spanish. Yes. And then, you know, he, he, and he, he uses his Spanish style of like very one time. It's like, do this and chat and da, da, da, da, da, like shuffle the deck.

Like, can you, instead of saying, can you shuffle the deck? Like, he's like, can you cha-da-da-da-da? Great. And then as they're shuffling, he's like, cha-da-da-da-da. He's just like having fun and there's no like dull moments. And like, he's like teaching some Spanish words throughout the show. And it's like very unique to any of the other acts. Like everyone else that came on stage is trying to be funny and trying to be like, you know, comedy magic.

But he's, he's stood out as being so, so different, but really engaging. He does this really funny bit where he's like, my English is not so good. Your name is? And he's like, I'm Liam. He's like, can I call you Martin? Good. And then goes another person, what is your name? And he's like, Martin. And then he goes to the third person. He's like, and your name is?

He's like, Gavin. He's like. And after an awkward pause goes Martin oh good Martin yeah and then he gets a woman and then he gets a lady he's like in your name Martina good come on Martina and then there's a beautiful piece of magic with them like just really fun, really really fun stuff so and again he's a pleasure to watch he slayed yeah then we took a short break after that which I had to pee because Darren's so

funny Sean Taylor I've got to talk about Sean Taylor's set he's mentally in peace bro, what are you going to say about it okay so he did the thing with the balls like okay you know that thing where it's like all these bags go in a ball you grab a ball and then you say.

Like there's there's one black ball one miscolored ball in amongst all these white balls and you got to guess which color the ball is and then you saw like no magnets no none of that jazz like just really really cool and i'm like this was this was awesome this was really really awesome and what i loved about watching his act as well is that it's fun watching the process like i i say this i don't say this with any beguilement but it's that type of thing where like what is mentalism it's a

one minute routine crammed into 30 minutes you know and that process or watching people attempt to make it look like a process can be so laborious and so like can you do the magic already or can you do the the moment already and you're like oh but watching the way sean does it master. It's just beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. And so that was great. Then he did this awesome...

Lottery prediction and i loved that because i'm working on a lot of predictions myself and his was so clever like so clever and and i just thought it was brilliant i just thought his set was absolutely killer he knocked it out the park and yeah i just don't have enough good things to say about him it was such a pleasure to watch him like work it was just great yeah and then i think rounding it out was our good friend uh the amazing nigel to close the night right yeah the amazing

Nigel you know he's so seasoned and he just like he was the perfect guy to close the show because he even after the audience watching magic for an hour and a half or an hour and 50 minutes he just came up with such energy like he always does like a champ and he loves doing magic that's like weird and peculiar and funny and so good so he did a routine with cheese which if you've seen him perform you'll know what it is if you haven't you should just

come to see him perform because is at the theater of magic every week. And so he's getting people up. He's like having people throw slices of cheese into the audience and putting them, they're putting cheese down their pants and all this hilarious stuff. And then, and that's great. And then he closes out the convention like a fricking champ, man. Like he, as people are coming in and sitting down, he walks about the place, he shakes your hand. He says, what is your name?

You tell him, and he goes radio and remembers it and then at the end of the show. He thanks every one of you by name to show that he remembered every single. And not only that, there was people who were like, you moved seats. You were over there before. Yeah, that was so good. Like, we all know he can do this. Like, he's the only person in Australia I know of that is a memory expert in this way. And that's why he's had such a long career.

He's the only person that can freaking do it. So we all know he's going to do it. Like, we know it's going to happen.

We know he can do it. but yet seeing him recite 150 people's names is still so incredible to watch and when he said you were sitting over there you change your name and like oh you gave me this name but your real name is this name and like he's throwing in jokes as he's naming every single person in the convention we have another sean there's a sean there sean there sean there and sean there and a sean there you know and like scott p is saying a

lot of complicated names too like there are a lot of like asian names that had that phonetically in australia is hard to pronounce but he not only pronounced it but remembered it and yeah and what's funny is like i think his record is 300 names so for him at the theater of magic when he does this 50 people is like a walk in the park for him but But for me to remember 50 names, freaking impossible in an hour. So yes, and then 150 names is still not even maxing out his CPU and his brain.

But like for us, it's incredible. So that got a standing ovation to end the gala show. And it was just like the perfect placement to have him there and to have Darren emceeing. For me, Darren and Nigel were the highlights because I'd never seen Darren work. And it's just so, so funny. It didn't even have to do magic And then Nigel's always going to be a favourite Because like. That's a skill no one has. I don't know a single person personally that does it.

And yeah, to me, it's Harry Lorraine and the amazing Nigel. I can't remember names, you know? Yeah. Now we have interviewed Nigel once before on episode 178. So if you do want to listen to that, you can, thank you, Google. You can listen back on your favorite platform or of course, go back and scope it out on YouTube.

If you just look up memory master, the amazing Nigel, that's episode 178 so yeah if you i revisit that episode it is brilliant yeah all in all the assembly convention was unreal there's talks of it coming back next year sean throughout he throughout the line maybe next year so maybe it's a time to consider coming and visit australia and checking out a cool lecture because there's always top tier guests coming along to it and now i'm just more excited even

more excited now for magic live in august because this was like such a great time such a great weekend and now i look forward to doing more of that convention-y stuff indeed it was great but you know the good thing about conventions as well friends is not only what happens in the convention but the moments in between the moments that you make friends there are so many people that i met i met harry i met lewis amazing hassan he was just these guys these guys have hands,

man. These guys have hands and it's like. That's the beauty of these sort of situations. You meet these people, you set up these friendships and you watch them do stuff. That, that, that's where the magic is. Those moments in between. Unfortunately, we're at an hour and seven minutes now here on the YouTube. So it's at the point where we sort of need to wrap up and we could talk about all that stuff, but I implore you have an opportunity to be a part of a convention and learn some knowledge.

I highly suggest you do it. And again, we will keep pushing to ensure that Piper does these again in the future and And we'll do everything we can to be a part of it as well. And everyone who came and said hello and listened to the pod, hey, man, so cool to meet you. Again, shout out to Dave and Gregory, who I hadn't met before. And of course, to catch up with good friend Scotty P, who we love immensely.

It was great. So I think as we take out the episode, is there anything we want to make mention? Look, I'm saying this to the universe. We want to have Christian Grace on the pod. We want to have Darren Carr on the pod.

But otherwise it was just yeah it was great to see fellow magicians people that listen to the pod people who don't listen to the pod but just you know just great guys and yeah it's great to watch my fellow brother nick work at the theater of magic as always we're gonna do more of that and yeah all around such a fun weekend so that's it my friends i hope you could live a little bit vicariously through us yeah in fact everyone out there message christian grace on instagram

and go please go on the magic guys podcast just shoot him that and i'll i'll do the rest thank you yes and we will see you next time on the magic guys thanks for listening it's time for us to disappear now disappear now but we'll see you again on the next episode of the magic guys.