I need to get something off my chest...

...and it is related neither to school nor magic.

There are sometimes, when you combine two separate items, become either really good or really bad.

Let's say the first is a cool group of people. Like gay people. Think: George Takei.

Let's take another thing that's really awesome: singing, and otherwise famous and catchy songs.

Sometimes, you get a good mix. Broadway comes to mind, or Neil Patrick "The King" Harris".

And sometimes you get something completely horrendous, completely and utterly terrible. Like this show called Glee.

I tried to see what people liked about it, I really did. In fact, I was actually kind of excited when I first heard about it. I don't have much experience in musicals or singing, other than an cappella group I joined in college and a semester of choir. I was also a band geek in high school and middle school.

3 episodes I tried, each more painful than the next. The show is super contradictory (you want geeks, and you want them to suffer to relate to them, but they're all attractive and talented people and that's the reason no one likes them?), the characters were written from fifth grade cookie cutter books, the characters are annoying as hell, the plot is something I write when I make a bowel movement, and worst of all...

...they are butchering some of my favorite songs. DO NOT TOUCH THE DOORS. DO NOT TOUCH JOURNEY. DO NOT TOUCH THE BEATLES. YOU ARE REMIXING THEM IN A HORRIBLE WAY. Believe me, I have heard many weird renditions of all of them. Some good, some bad. Glee was the worst.

It took me 5 episodes of Justified and its WELL WRITTEN, WELL SCRIPTED characters, dialogue, and plot of Raylan Givens to wash out that mess of a show. It was written by a fantastic author and writer, so no wonder it's eons ahead in some intelligence (put it this way: ever watch 3:10 to Yuma? Remember how incredible it was? Same writer).

Then I heard Glee won a Golden Globe? I really wanted to cry. America, we used to make good shows, with good characters WHO ACTUALLY FIT THIS RELATE-ABILITY SCHEME.

Stick with Broadway if you want good musicals.

As I practice my linking rings routine with my new Shoot Ogawa DVD...

....I'd like to bring your attention to Lu Chen (Liu Chen, Liu Qian), my most favorite magician of all time. While he doesn't have the quiet, mysterious nature of Ponta the Smith, he has amazing presentation, psychology, and technical skill.

Not sure? Let this video answer your question:

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=hwVy_2eOfsE#t=78


I just wrote a review for his new DVD, which I absolutely love! It's called Close Up!Up!Up! and his abilities and skill are very creative and inspiring. Check my review out here!

http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=362265&forum=111&0

Linking Rings!

Fate would decide that I would try out, and consequently LOVE, linking rings.

I went to visit princess over the weekend, as we would go to the Met together to see one of her professors lecture (only 3 classmates showed up, 5 people in total including me and another friend's girlfriend), but I'm glad it was small. Her professor lectured about Islamic art, and I learned a ton. It was truly an engaging lecture and he was very nice and a very knowledgeable historian. Definitely worth missing Tannen's (more on that in a bit).

So we browsed around the Met for a bit. At first I wanted to rush a bit because I wanted to try to make Tannen's, but I realized it's not a big deal, and told her to slow down so we could see everything we wanted to see. I think she might have still felt I was rushing her, so I felt bad about that and tried to slow it down as much as I could despite my frequent back pain. The only bad part was the food was ridiculously expensive for such a small portion. Other than that, great trip; the Met is a very immersive experience.

So instead of going to Tannen's afterwards (or Momofuku, both were closed at 4!), we stopped at a magic shop I've been meaning to go to for a while, which was Fantasma Magic. I'm glad we went; the staff was way more knowledgeable, and much better magicians as they also performed full time. One of the guys did a mismatch bill and some crazy card forces I had never seen, and another did a few coins across rountines, 3 fly similar to those on Sick (but were in fact David Roth, but Ponta credits David Roth and the handlings were very similar). Then he showed me Shoot Ogawa's linking rings rountine (that included phases form Ninja Rings), and it was really incredible. It was linking rings like I had never really seen. I was still reluctant, because linking rings never interested me. However, Princess liked them so much, and the routine I was shown was different and mesmerizing, I decided to go for it.

What will ensure that I go back for their business was not only that their staff was super nice, but that the guy told me the set was 30. He rung it up to find it was 35, but charged me 30 anyways because that's what he said. Incredible!! I went home, studied the DVD for a while, practiced for a bit, and have the basic routine though not entirely smoothly (and to think, Shoot Ogawa really does teach on it!!). It also came with this great ring-from-rope routine, which I think could transition well from Sander's hyperring and Fiber Optics routine. And the ring-from-rope could transition perfectly from or two my Mikame MC box/crystal cleaver trick!

Basically, this linking ring set was the right purchase. Plus the rings make this really sweet clinging noise, and they're super shiny and strong. I like! My creative juices were flowing like nuts yesterday.

Time to wait for income to buy the Ninja Rings dvd =P.

Bullets After Dark!

Let me say, this is my most favorite DVD I own for magic. It literally, has EVERYTHING. John Bannon explains how he constructs his tricks, his psychology behind performing it, and explains most sleights in detail, but not too much as to let you experiment and make it more usable for yourself. It is literally the DVD I compare all my instructional DVD's to.

And, I can proudly say, I can do all but one trick on that DVD (ugh stupid faro shuffles). I feel really good, and I think with lots of practice, I'll be able to perform the sleights and tricks confidently and smoothly!

In other news, I did very well on my OSCE exam! This makes me feel more like I belong in the field of medicine, lol.

Yay!

Well now, my exams have been completed, and I am but one day away from completing my preceptorship! I am a little concerned about the Monday's written exam, as I came out feeling fair, but have heard nightmare stories about people's grades, people who normally excel on written exams. I guess I have nothing to do but to wait.

What I am most excited about, besides having some time off finally besides the labs and preceptorship Friday, is the fact that I've noted considerable gain in my card magic skills. I say this because revisiting the awesome compilation Bullets After Dark by the unmatched John Bannon, I have noticed that with practice, I actually CAN do the Bullet train ace assemblies as well as the Watching the Detectives/New Jax/Full circle routine. Obviously, I can't do it as smoothly as Bannon does, but I think with a few months time, I will be able to perform them fairly nicely! The best part, they can be done with a borrowed deck!

Using my own deck, this easily lends itself to start prepared with Origami Prediction, or better yet, Dead Wreckoning...or better yet, both! With a deck switch, I could divide the tricks up using two decks. Two FANCY decks. Like my bike Guardians, or my 1800's. Then some Sankey tricks using Tally Ho's! A card show doesn't get better than this!

My next step is to learn some more off of Malone Meets Marlo. Let me tell you, that is a heckuva step, but I feel they are on the same difficulty as Bullets After Dark, and Malone's 3-phase 21 card routine is KILLER!

Okay, I am fairly furious right now....

It's clear I was screwed out of my spring break, and that because I never got these days off like everyone else did, it is as if I am jumping straight from the shelf exams, into these physician's core exams.

Fine, I'll suck up the burn-out, and just do it even if I don't do it well. I did the best I could with the crappy hand I was dealt.

But now, I find out the class labs are mandatory, and I can't stay at home at all, not even ONE day off. To make matters worse, they are all in the afternoon, meaning I have to delay making up my preceptorship until Friday, which means I get an entire week of more work. And next week is too many lectures to make up for me to take any day off.

Fuck this shit! You try going from studying to more studying without a break when everyone else around you got one, and tell me you aren't pissed!

Yeah...

So let me just say, that OSCE went terribly. I KNEW everything that I had to do, but I either ran out of time, completely froze, or thought I forgot something when I really didn't. Awful awful awful, I feel like utter crap, and studying for the written on Monday is really painful right now.

However, to get me through this, I ordered Crystal Cleaver from Tenyo, Fiber Optics Extended, and LU CHEN'S NEW DVD YAAAY! Another great thing I realized is after practicing Mirate et Trois so much, some of the sleights in Ponta the Smith's "Sick" DVD look a lot less threatening. Still insanely hard, that kind of smoothness will take forever, so right now I'm just focusing on his one coin routine, without the jumbo ending. I'm sure Bobo will help me be creative at the end.

The beauty of magic really helps me get through the worst times of med school.

Hm, OSCE...

Thursday is my OSCE exam, and I have been preparing feverishly for it, marking every nuance from Bate's into my notes and rehearsing the exams on my invisible patient. It is hard enough to still be a little sick with incredible sinus congestion and pain. I got screwed these last two weeks!

I'm mostly angry that I can't see what the rooms with the standardized patients look like. Obviously I could not go at all last week, or else I would not have missed preceptorship days, and before then was finals time, and before that was cramming for fourth ISF exam, and before that was, well, trying to actually catch up and learn everything. I barely had enough time to eat, sleep, and study everything. So yes, this whole situation of not being able to view the rooms infuriates me. I will have to hope that the gloves and the tongue depressors are in an obvious location. I will carry all my own equipment, and have practiced setting up my white coat for easy access to everything I will need.

Things left to get for the exam:
- a small, cm ruler
- heat pads to warm my hands and stethescope

Okay, now for something worth mentioning. magictrickstore.com actually has two Tenyo products for only 10 bucks a piece, so I plan on getting those when my OSCE is done, and I will have them after Mondays written exam. Then that Saturday when I visit Kait, I will have some fun pieces of prop magic, fun because I never do any prop magic. Plus Fiber Optics, this will be entertaining!

Spring break?

So yeah, it really wasn't a spring break for me. Spring break is typically for relaxing, and I had caught pneumonia after visiting my sister at Cornell on Saturday and Sunday. Wow, until Friday I was just too feverish, in pain, and unable to breathe properly. Thank goodness for those antibiotics. Basically, the latter half of Friday and Saturday were all I had to to go out of my room and do anything remotely interesting.

Saturday evening however, I was well enough to invite Kaity over (since my cough and fever were gone at that point and I had finished my antibiotics). I didn't think I could travel to NYC, so we stayed around, went to sushi, and decorated chocolate cupcakes at my house! Then we watched Ponyo (which was deliciously adorable). Because I had been sick I didn't get to practice any of my magic, so I just performed the B***** T**** for her (don't need you fools looking it up), and performed it successfully, I think. It was pretty cool

Currently, I'm working on Fiber Optics by Richard Sanders, and Mirage et Trois by Eric Jones. MET is like a gateway of intermediate coin magic, and is not Ponta the Smith difficult, so I think it's a great routine and very appropriate for me to learn at this point.