About 6 hours ago, I drove in from the Midwest Magic Jubilee in St. Louis. I wasn't sure if I was going to attend this year or not, as I was already planning on attending SEAM in Atlanta later this month, and most of the Kansas City crew would not be there. I'm glad that I attended though.

The convention was a blast. While the first day was relatively slow, I did have a nice long talk with Kozmo about Cellini, Slydini and the art of Street Magic before heading off to dinner with John Greget. The stage show was, shall we say, under par, it thankfully did not set the tone for the first convention. After the show, Tony White had a lecture, but I missed it. I don't do silk magic, and his performance piece that evening was not appealing to me. I spent most of the rest of the evening in the dealer's room looking at John Greget's books.

I was able to attend Steve Daley's lecture though. While there was no information in there that I could probably use, it was highly entertaining for me. I left around 1:30, not staying for his card portion (as I had to get up at 7:00 for the close-up competition).

Even though I got little sleep the night before, I had a difficult time falling asleep, as I was sleeping on the floor, since I was sharing a room with Michael Baker and Joseph Young. I don't know if I got any sleep or not, but my alarm eventually let me know that it was time to get up.

I figured I would have little problem with the act, since I had already put a lot of work into certain portions of it in my restaurant, and performed it multiple times the month before (and winning 1st at my local club's competition). I realized, however, that I failed to pack a prop. It wasn't pivotal for the act though, just a waiter's pad, so I picked up a notepad at the shop in the lobby before heading off.

We had five people competing that morning (close-up competitions, or any competition, should not be held at 8:00 AM), and equally as many judges. The incomparable Mark Mason, restaurant magic expert Dan Fleshman, Marlo protege Jimmy 'Cards' Molinari, Celebracadabra host Jonathan Levit and lay person judge Jay Meyers. If that's not enough, the legendary Howie Schwarzman was in the front row.

I won't go into the details of what everyone did, or what I did (as you probably know by now), but everyone did a spectacular job, and I walked away with first. I don't know how the judges did it, I know I couldn't. (I found it funny that Jonathan suggested using a waiter's pad instead of a regular notepad, the lesson is to quadruple check your props!)

Mark and Dan left some minimal feedback, but the suggestion they made will solve a major problem in the act, and I have already found a solution. Jonathan also gave me some very good advice, which will require me to tweak my script a bit, but there's nothing wrong with that. I had a 'Duh!' moment when he told me.

The day progressed slowly after that, with a lecture from Tom Craven, who was frying everyone the night before with a trick I later learned was from Apocalypse (I swear, if it's not in Apocalypse, it's Marlo's), he had some very nice ideas. Michael Baker was up next, who also provided a nice lecture. A group of us went off to lunch at a BBQ restaurant down the road from the hotel. They were proud of their Kansas City style sauce. It wasn't Kansas City. The food was good though, and reasonably priced.