As many of you know, Dirk Losander and family are in need of our help. Here’s the letter Losander wrote to the magic community:

“I Need Your Help. Our little baby “Ione” was born 6 days ago. Today we found out she needs a heart operation and our insurance is not going to pay for it.

I am not writing you this to beg for money but if you need to buy something from my website now would be the time to help us out. Every Dollar counts and we really need all the support we can find right now! So if you feel like supporting this cause, go to my website and find your self some great magic and make this operation happen for us.

Click here!

Even if you are a non magician, we just came out with a new dvd “Las Vegas Greatest Magicians” which teaches you easy to learn magic. You can find it right here
or if you just want to donate some money for us please send it via PayPal to: losander@mac.com or just keep us in your prayers. Thank you so much for your support”

This is what Steve Brooks from the magic cafe had to add:

Now, since this letter was written little baby ‘Ione’ has had her surgery and is in revovery and doing very well.

That said, the bills continue to pour in to the Losander family on a daily basis. Not only has surgery been performed but many more visits requiring medical attention will be required.

So PLEASE, I emplore you to take a moment and seriously consider this very worthwhile cause. You’ll feel better for doing it and literally change lives in the process.

Thank you all and God bless.

If you’d like to support Losander but can’t find anything on his site that you’d like, check out the Vanishing Rabbit in Calgary Alberta.

The Vanishing Rabbit Magic Shop is donating 1% of all sales in July to Losander, Luna and their NEW Baby. So come in and by something.

Thank you to everybody who came out to see my show tonight at Westside Daze! I had a blast- the audience had so much energy!

Don’t forget about all the other great events going on for Westside Daze 2008:
June 30th schedule
July 1st schedule

I was also featured in an article for Westside Daze last week, but I haven’t gotten a chance to scan it yet and post it. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to do that next week.

This is a preview of Pixar’s newest short “Presto” that I talked about the other day. It will be releases along with the new Pixar film “Wall*E” that’s playing now.

Ten Cool (and Free) Magic Bar Tricks Check em out. A few I had never seen before.

The other day I posted about The Pendragons on America’s Got Talent. Well, there were a few other magicians who also made it in front of the judges but apparently they weren’t too impressed…

Its too bad actually. That last act that you saw was “Bizzaro” who’s material defiantly isn’t “mainstream” but that’s what everyone loves about it. Check out his 2006 Promo video below:

I love it. Its so different. America just doesn’t understand…

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

I’ve never had a chance to see David Copperfield live before, but I grew up working his magic specials on TV and wanted to be like him. Well, Now I’ve learned that in my magic I’d rather be me than David Copperfield, I still love watching him perform. At the end of August when I goto Vegas I’m hopefully going to get a chance to see David perform as well. I can’t wait!

I came across this video of David performing a classic routine with a twist. Its done just brilliantly. Enjoy!

The Magic of David Copperfield – Mr. Roger’s bandana trick

At the start of every Pixar film they have a little short comic movie before the “featured presentation”. For the next movie coming out tomorrow (June 27th) titled Wall-e, There’s going to be a pre-short filmed called ‘Presto’.

“Presto DiGiotagione, a turn-of-the-century magician, is famous for an astounding hat trick. Presto’s apprentice rabbit, Alec, however, is dissatisfied as he shares none of Presto’s wild success. While Presto is out eating lavish dinner, Alec is left behind, locked in a birdcage with a carrot torturously out of reach. Directed by Doug Sweetland. Sweetland also voices Presto and Alec. 5 min”

Last night The Pendragons performed on America’s Got Talent. Thanks to Doc for tip.

I doubt anybody, ever, will do that trick better than that.

Lance Burton will be on ABC’s The View either tomorrow (June 26th) or the next day (June 27th). After its over I’ll see if I can find a video of the segment for anybody who missed it.

Well, fret not my Canadian friends who can’t watch Celebracadabra on VH1, or even on the VH1 website. It turns out that Celebracadabra will be airing on Much More Music. You need to check your local listings, but it looks like tomorrow (June 22nd) that show will air at 10:30am, at 6:00pm, 9:00pm, and Midnight. Each time slot is airing the premiere episode of “street magic”.