Promotional Photos

I'm not upset that I'm not doing photos for a certain convention, because that's not something I typically market specifically.  Yes, I do headshots for magicians; so does Faverty, Amyx, etc.. but we don't try to get in on the "convenient headshot" market.

A guy named "Ken Reedy" is doing them for Abra-CORN-dabra.  He's not charging much, and that's a good thing.  First off, I spent nearly 4 minutes trying to find this guy's website. (For the record, that's WAY too long for someone like me to find something).  I found it, and his MySpace, and his LinkedIn and a few others, and in all of them he professes to be a "professional photographer for 12 years and a professional magician for 35 years."

This brings me to a very, very specific point:  professional, here in America, has come to mean 'get paid to do it,' not about the quality of your service.  Everywhere else in the world, a professional service is qualified, high quality, and masterful.

http://newphotosbyme.com/

Take a look.  It's terrible.

So, I'm not upset in any way about not being the photographer there -- I'm upset that people are going to pay for that crap.  I've done most of my really good stuff for free.

"Banned" Together

I'm not sure why, but today I was banned from yet another magic forum.  It's not like I particularly care, but this seems to be for no reason at all.  Did I just win the buzzword bingo?

I could always just make a stage name and become "super popular" with that name instead, but I really like my name (so does Disney, apparently).  

Anyway, I'll be in Las Vegas a couple of weeks.  It'll be fun to see a lot of other performers and a few great friends again.  I'm actually only going to shoot promo shots for people, but I might drop by WMS once, just to see what I'm missing.

Also, there is a fun entry on my other magic blog.  If you know where it is, it's worth a read...

Covert Operations

I now have more domains and "TragicCafe" usernames than they could ever track down.


On a totally different note, I'm going to be teaching classes out of my apartment again!  I'm listed as an instructor on BetterFly, a tutor website, specifically under the category of "Magic Instruction." This makes me happy..

Also, I wrote out an entire script for my McDonald's magic show.  It should be rather hilarious.  Video to follow after I move...

Special Delivery

One of my favorite memories of the road [wow does that sound cliché] is from Colorado.  We were stopped for the night at a truck stop, in between two huge mountains.

1. Noun · In this case, mountains does not refer to breasts.

I google'd Domino's and convinced the guy to accept directions instead of an address.
It's kinda odd, having pizza delivered to a tour bus with your name on it.
But very fun to describe to people over the phone.

It's also fun to play "emotionally sensitive drama queen." I walked into a truck stop, while the crew is filling up the diesel, the cashier says, "So who's Aaron Stone?"  I looked insulted, and walked out.  While the crew inside calmly explained "he's a magician, miss, a damn good one -- and you're lucky he just walked away after a comment like that."

It's nice to feel like a rockstar once in a while.
Even when you're really not.

Having pizza delivered to the bus is certainly something I don't mind bragging about.