Speaking of the first day, so far that’s all I have gotten through. Sure, I listened and watch parts of the sessions from days 2 and 3 as they were happening live but its taken until now for me to have the time to actually study the first 3 sessions from day 1. As of last Friday, all 9 sessions are available online as video on demand for people who signed up for the conference. So, if you missed this conference in real time you can still get more than your registration fee out of these videos.

As someone who still considers himself a novice magician, I gained loads from the first day( and even the first session) with speeches, performances and presentations form the likes of Lennart Greene, Barry & Stuart, Ponta the smith, Apollo Robbins, Gaetan Bloom, Max Maven and many more.

While I gained a lot from everybody, I gained the most from a magical duo I hadn’t heard of before – Barry & Stuart. They had a first day speech entitled, “Everything We’ve Learned So Far” [Registration Required]. What drew me in the most was an idea that their presentation kept dancing around and they summed up in one of their final bullet points as:

If you want to subvert your art, you need to first learn your craft.

While I have never come across as much of a rebel who would want to subvert much of anything, I do have this constant need to make things my own and I latched on to many of their ideas. Barry and Stuart are 2 young guys who have worked hard and created a niche and name for themselves in magic. And while there are many performances from day 1 I’d like to show my readership ( Ponta the smith’s performance in session 1 comes to mind ) – I don’t have access and permission to do that. So, I’ve looked up an entertaining video of Barry and Stuart for my magical and muggle readership alike. Enjoy.

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However, the following video proves ( if you don’t speak chinese at least ) that magic, and the language of “holy crap that’s insanely awesome”, doesn’t require much more than body language to convey its message. Watch and be amazed…watch more and be amazed more..keep watching its worth seeing all of it

Eliza Coupe on Scrubs

I love flight of the conchords. I also love Scrubs. I am also a fan of comedy and the french language. These 4 things came together in the first season of Flight of the Conchords. Watching season 9 of Scrubs, where Eliza Coupe plays Dr. Denise Mahoney I am constantly thinking about “A Kiss Is Not A Contract.”

Definitely No Sugar

Of course, the number one song and video for me from the series is Foux De Fa Fa. If you ever took French in high school and have forgotten everything since this should be pretty funny for you. If you are a francophile with a sense of humor( like myself ), enjoy.




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The name itself didn’t tell me anything about the show. Immediately upon visiting the show’s site though told me all I needed to know. The Legend of Neil is a show loosely based on the original Legend of Zelda. A game many people of my generation look upon fondly. In Game Informer magazine’s 200th edition they listed the the top 200 games of all time and Legend of Zelda came in at number 1.

Kill Link!

The Legend of Neil twists these happy memories a bit. Mostly by loosely basing it of memories of the game rather than going back into the game for research. They then pervert by well thinking,”what would a drunk guy who got transported into the game because asphyxiated himself with the controller probably see in game?” Maybe Zelda is less caucasian than the games would have us believe. Perhaps the fairy’s are a bit frisky.

Did I mention that the fairy is played by Felicia Day? It’s not a role I would expect to see her in but according to Sandeep Parikh ( the Guild’s Zaboo ) this is the type of improv she does all the time. In fact the first episode I watched was The Legend of Neil’s musical episode where a spoof of “My Favorite Things” gets a little uncomfortable for a more normal elf.
Legend of Neil, Season 2, Ep. 3 — The Musical

The funniest line comes in early when Felicia the Fairy says, “Oh, i don’t know. I’m not really into online musicals”.  Nice.

I’ve now watched the whole 2 seasons of Neil and am hoping for a season 3. Have you seen Legend of Neil? What were your favorite parts? There are lots of other classic video game shows floating around the web, what do you like.  All I can say is this made me want to play Legend of Zelda again and now my 6 year old is learning about games through one of the games I grew up with. Sweet.

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Before I go too much further, Scam School is not a show teaching you how to do magic.  According to the intro it is, “The only show dedicated to social engineering at the bar and on the street.” However, Brian Brushwood is a magician and a great entertainer. The following clip is an episode of Scam School that deviated from its normal format to show Brian’s performance at SXSW.

Scam school is great for magician’s to watch because of its perspective. There is a movement of bizarre magic out there and Brian Brushwood is one of the people at the forefront. For non-magician’s it is great to watch for its edutainment value. It is very entertaining, and you get to see a cool thing to do at a bar or just hanging out with your friends. For instance, check out this episode on “The Static Shot.”

In the end though, the show is called Scam School and it presents itself as thus. Even though the homework is usually to watch movies like “The Sting” or buy domain names and do a domain smack on someone. All in all I recommend this show to all lovers of magic ( and bar scams ).

For more information:

• Scam School Website
• Brian Brushwood’s website
• Follow Brian Brushwood on Twitter
• Check out one of Brian’s other shows
  • BB Live Show
  • NSFW

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Movie poster for The Musketeer

Tonight I decided to watch a movie I hadn’t seen in a while, The Musketeer. This is the movie my wife and I were watching when we chose D’Artagnan as the name of our first child. Having such a fondness for my french heritage, I loved the name. Unfortunately, I had only seen D’Artagnan as portrayed in The Musketeer, The Man in The Iron Mask and Disney’s version starring Charlie Sheen, Keifer Sutherland, Oliver Platt, Chris O’Donnel and a host of other big names. Since then I have also seen a cartoon made in Australia based on the novel and a year ago I finally started reading the books.

Reading the books, quickly made the movies a disappointment. They each take so much liberty with the story that it isn’t the same story at all. In fact, the one that keeps closest to the original is the Australian cartoon version that is barely 30 minutes long.

Who can blame the movie companies though? The Three Musketeers is a long book with enough sub plots to make 3 or more full length movies easily. The second book in the D’Artagnan romances doesn’t even start until 20 years after the first ends so there probably aren’t plans for a sequel. Finally, if they kept precisely to the book(s), people of today would not understand the culture of gentlemanly honor – something that makes D’Artagnan and company ( especially Athos ) much more interesting. In fact, I would say it defines their characters and the time period.

So, when I first started watching The Musketeer I quickly became annoyed. It just wasn’t as good now that I had read the book. Especially since “The Musketeer” is the least similar to the actual story in the book. So I started to think about why a movie could still be about The 3 Musketeers. As I thought through the different version, I noticed something. The major concepts, if not plot points, are there but just modernized and presented in a differing fashion.

For instance, The Disney version portrays the bonding brotherhood between D’Artagnan and the 3 Musketeers quite well. The Man in the Iron Mask shows how so much has changed since the Musketeers were young and yet as they come together much of their youthful vigor is returned. The Musketeer… well at least that movie has Planchet in it ( sort of ) and Cardinal Richelieu isn’t pure evil. And of course, it was marketed as The 3 Musketeers like you’ve never seen them before.

So in much the same way as most people call facial tissue the brand name of Kleenex, any movie with D’Artagnan ( and possibly Porthos, Aramis and Athos ) is somehow The Three Musketeers. The names, locales and even the story may change but it all goes into the same cultural mythos of musketeers. I guess that’s not really a bad thing, considering the stories are works of fiction anyway. Perhaps all the rest are just Musketeer fan fiction – with a budget.

That reminds me, I really should try to find episodes of Young Blades.

And, if you are now interested in watching the series from the beginning: