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I can’t wait- on August 24th I’ll be headed down to Vegas with my girlfriend for 11 days. Thankfully my girlfriend loves magic too so we’re going to check out a whole bunch of shows while we’re there. Here’s our schedule:

25th - Gerry McCambride
26th - Mac King in the afternoon, Lance Burton in the evening
27th - Cirque O
28th - Magic at the Edge
29th - Blue man group
30th - Extreme magic in the afternoon, (Leaving the night free for the clubs :))
31st - Penn and Teller
September 1st - David Copperfield
September 2nd - Free day to do whatever we want

There’s a few different clubs that we want to check out, along with old vegas and things like that, we haven’t really planned when we’re going to do those things. But hopefully we can get them done in the afternoon or one of our free evenings.

Its going to be so much fun! When I get back I’ll post about all the different shows that we check out while we’re there.

A magic moment at the library

[ Peachland View August 2008 - Library Magic Show Article #2 ]

Ali K. Zam Performs magic at the Peachland branch of the Okanagan Regional Library for members of the library’s Summer Reading Club.

Mardi Gras Street Festival
Downtown Kelowna

“The Downtown Kelowna Association is pleased to present the 20th Annual DKA Mardi Gras Street Festival on Saturday August 9th. Mardi Gras takes place on Bernard Ave from 10am - 5pm. There are 3 stages of entertainment, street vendors, food galore, sidewalk sales, a kids zone and much much more! Bring the family down for a day full of Mardi Gras fun! For more information on Mardi Gras please call 250-862-3515. We’d love to see you…Downtown!”

I’ll be performing two shows on the streets of Kelowna in the central part of the kids area. The first show will start at 1:00 pm and the second show will start at 2:00pm.

Tuesdays in the Trees
Vernon, BC

“Join us each and every Tuesday in the summer for great entertainment in beautiful Downtown Vernon.”

I will be performing two shows on August 12th at Cenotaph Park ( 31 Avenue & 30 Street). The first shows begins at 11:00am, and the second begins just shortly after 12:00 noon. For more information contact the Downtown Vernon Association at 542-5851.

[ Chase, BC - 'Reliving the Dream' 1908-2008 Newspaper Clipping ]

Sorry I haven’t been posting much for the past few weeks. Boy have I been busy! Just in the past few weeks I performed at BC150 event in Trail, I finished the last of my library shows for the season, performed at the Rutland Centennial, and yesterday I was up in Chase for their Centennial as well. Its been great to get out there and share my magic with audiences!

[ SNAP Magazine August 2008 - Library Magic Show Article ]

Fun Day in Gyro Park in Trail, BC includes live performance’s all day long

Rossland, BC – July 3, 2008 - The West Kootenay Boundary Regional Spirit of BC committee is pleased to celebrate BC150 and YOUR Heritage! The committee has a fun filled day planned for Sunday, July 27, 2008 to celebrate the province’s 150th anniversary of becoming a crown colony, as well as the Kootenay Boundary’s multicultural heritage. The cultural celebration will take place in the West Kootenay Boundary city of Trail at Gyro Park on Sunday, July 27 from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and will feature a performance by Rivers Edge Theatre Group, Can-Can dancers, magician Ali K. Zam (From 12:00-1:00pm) and Canadian Country music recording artist, Craig Moritz. “The West Kootenay Boundary Spirit of BC Community Committee is pleased to organize this event that will coincide with BC’s 150th anniversary of becoming a Crown Colony,” said Maritza Reilly, Chair of the planning committee. “Our event plans to celebrate the cultural diversity, community strength and widespread achievement of not only our province but also of the West Kootenay Boundary area.”

I took the time and figured out how to solve a rubiks cube this past year. The reason I did is because I wanted to be able to solve a rubiks cube while blindfolded during my show. The cube is handed out, mixed up, I get blindfolded, the cube is returned, and then I solve it.

I haven’t had the opportunity to perform it too often just because it takes about 5-7 minutes to solve the cube, which is a long time for the audience to watch you. I still love the concept of the blindfolded cube solve and hopefully in the future i can include it in shows more often. I’m thinking I might also be able to include it in my evening school show program.

Anybody who really sets out to try can learn to solve a rubiks cube. Maybe not blindfolded, but, just the regular way. You can order a regular cube from amazon at the link below. To learn how to solve the cube this is the website I used.

The reason I mention all this is because today I came across some rubik’s cube ad’s that I thought were funny. (3 in total)

(more…)

Today I was hired to perform at a lunchon type event at a private residence in the back yard. It started out fairly nice out, a little windy but nothing too bad. I’m glad I have lots of material in my mingling magic that’s versatile so that when the wind came up it was a non-issue, I still had lots of magic to perform. About halfway through the event it started to drizzle a little, then about 5 minutes later we got some heavy rain and wind. Then the tree in the neighbours yard fell over. The party was moved indoors and I continued to perform. Although the party goers were excited initially about the garden party, I was happy when we moved inside because it was much easier to perform and I had better attention from the audience.

When I got home about an hour later the wind still hadn’t left off. The winds ended up approaching over 100km/hour! Tree’s all over the city fell over landing on homes and power lines. About 500 homes and commercial buildings are without power now. Most of it is expected to be back up tonight though, with the rest of it being restored by tomorrow morning. The Kelowna Marina was hit really bad. The wind slammed the boats against each other and the dock causing about 80% of the boats to be destroyed. No serious injuries were caused by the windy day.

Thankfully the only thing that was destroyed on our property was a small lamp.

I’ll be performing at Westside Daze on Sunday Night (June 29th 2008) at 7:00pm at the Johnson Bently Stage. Park behind A&W, you’ll see the signs and the shortcut to the park.The show runs till about 7:45pm. After me ABBA Again, an ABBA Tribute band, will be performing after me. So come on out and check it out.

You can see the event on Facebook by searching on facebook for “Ali K. Zam performing at Westside Daze!”. Apparently I can’t directly link to it because you need to belong to the “Kelowna” network before you can see it *shrugs*

For more information on the Westside Daze events check out their site for the full schedule.

PS: Tomorrow there’s a parade at 10:30am and tomorrow night in the Fireworks as well.

Today I helped out setting up for Westbank’s Westside Daze Festival. I love helping out because normally I get to an event or a festival and everything is already setup and everything just runs like clockwork. I think its important for me to get “behind the scenes” and see what REALLY happens during an event.

I was helping setup the main stage today and they just got brand new chairs for the festival. In past years they had old wooden chairs but they’re getting pretty beat up these days. Well anyways, So I guess they ordered the chairs through Canadian Tire. They were told that it wasn’t a problem to order 250 of them and they could ship them to them in the next week. Well, it took them over a month to finally arrive. Half the lot of chairs ended up in Winnipeg somehow! But that’s not the bad part. Every chair had a sticker on it from the manufacturer. But get this, when Purolator sent the chairs by air shipment, they added one of those tracking stickers to EVERY SINGLE CHAIR. On top of it all, they added a “shipped by air” sticker too! So we had to setup all the chairs, and remove 3 stickers from every single one. And let me tell ya, those little tracking stickers are made out of some industrial strength glue because they’re designed to never come off! We tried our best to take them off but it just wasn’t working. We ended up having to buy a few bottles of that “goo be gone” stuff, soak the chairs, then remove the stickers, then we had to hose down all the chairs to get all the “goo be gone” residue off. It was just a nightmare.

Next year remind me not to help out. I’d rather just show up and see everything running like clockwork

Over the years I’ve received gifts from my audience. Sometimes though its a drawing of me (as seen here).

Recently though, Ceara did this charcoal drawing of me based on the photo that I have on my business card.

Not bad at all

For my newsletter I decided it would be neat to teach a magic trick. Now, I know the old saying that a “magician never reveals his secrets”. Well, that’s only half true. There are lots of tricks in magic that have been around for a long time that just keep getting passed on. The linking paper clips effect can be found in many beginner magic books, and has already been exposed online. For those reasons I don’t feel bad about putting together my own instructional video. I’ve also included it in my beginner magic trick section in the menu on the side.

I hope you liked the video. What do you think?

I hope everyone had a great day