Magical Monday --- Henrietta

Henrietta (pictured above) is my "Magical Assistant". I have been doing a comedy magic routine in my show with a rubber chicken since 1999. I entered our routine into the "Magician of the Year" contest through the International Brotherhood of Magicians in December of 1999. The following is the story behind the creation of this original routine and how the competition went:

Shortly after I moved to Pittsburgh in 1998, I joined a local branch of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. This club really made me take my magic to the next level (as it is VERY difficult performing and impressing other magicians). One of the things I loved about the club is its mission to spark creativity. We met monthly and would always be given an idea we had to work out for the next meeting...things like, "invent a new trick using a pair of socks" or "create a trick using just 2 cards". I have always been very creative with ideas, so I quickly gained a lot of respect with the tricks I created (and some of the guys still use them in their shows!).

We would have a "Magician of the Month" contest every 2 months. You would compete against about a dozen other men and women and be judged by the magicians. Every year I was in Pittsburgh I won one of these awards. At the end of the year, all the monthly winners (6) would compete for "Magician of the Year" in front of the public. As the competition in 1999 rolled around, at that point in my career, I was far less skilled than the other winners, so I needed my creativity to pull me over the top.

I had been at a conference a few months before the big year-end competition, and learned my most valuable lesson about magic...it is FAR more important to entertain than to amaze. This has be so true! People rarely remember how I blew them away with an awesome trick, but always remember how I brought their boss on stage and stole his underwear! I have seen awesome magicians far more talented than me do terrible shows, and magicians with hardly any magical ability put on a top-notch show. If I had to put it in numbers, a successful show probably consists of 20% great magic and 80% great entertainment.

With that in mind (and knowing I would be judged by the public and not other magicians) I used my creativity to come up with a routine that would make people laugh first, and impress them with my magic second. So came the e-bay purchase of Henrietta, and many "trial runs" with the routine until I had it perfected and it was the hit of my show (which it still is today). At the end of the night, I became the club's youngest (age 25) "Magician of the Year". I also won again in 2003.

Tomorrow I will be performing this trick for a Community Event here in Ashland and promoting my show at the county fair later this month. Below is a short clip of the routine...