Christmas party?

[DannyT]

I've been really busy with college/work these days and had very little room to improve on magic. I've been flourishing in my free time, but not really learning new effects and such like I used to. I thought I was slowly growing out of magic, like it was a phase or something.

A month ago I had this block party where I performed once or twice through the whole night. One of the people I performed for was my father's boss. No biggie - so I thought.
I performed Portal from Smoke and he was impressed along with a few card tricks.
The rest of the night I just enjoyed hanging out with my friends and whatnot.
I haven't thought about the performance once until now.

Today as I got home from work my pops tells me, "my boss volunteered you to perform at the Union Christmas party".
Me: What?
Pops: -Yea, he didn't even ask me about it, he just told me, "I volunteered your son for the party".
- Like it's already a done deal.

So now I'm in a conundrum.
Part of me is saying I should do it, and it would be good exposure for me.
The other part of me is asking if I have the right material to perform with.

It's walk around. Possibly table hopping.
Only problem I have with is I have way too many gimmick/set-up tricks to perform with. I hate having bulky pockets and hate being afraid to shuffle a deck once I take it out of my pocket.
I guess I'm asking for some material that fit impromptu magic that can be done for walk around.
I have some material, but I'd feel better if some more ideas were thrown at me. Anything Christmas related magic reffered to me would be appreciated too. Just nothing corny. I can't pull that off.
Thanks.

 

[notsoltd]

The Real Work on Restaurants and Bars by Jay Sankey http://www.mjmmagic.com/store/the-real-work-on-restaurants-and-bars-by-jay-sankey-p-2688.html

Infact, anything by Mr. Sankey is great, and usually impromptu and very practical. Check out his site. www.sankeymagic.com

 

[Mat La Vore]

Jamie Grant wrote 2 good threads that I think will be beneficial to you:

How Many Tricks Should you Learn?
http://forums.theory11.com/showthread.php?29190-How-many-tricks-should-you-learn

Developing Your Sets
http://forums.theory11.com/showthread.php?29261-Developing-Your-Sets-Essay-6-from-JDG

You have plenty of time to put some thought into it, and it will be good exposure for you as well as a good chance to get some more experience. You'll be fine, man. And you'll be glad you did it after it's over.

 

[mehar]

damn, matt beat me too it!

Anyway, if you don't have enough impromptu and you're doing street magic, you have a problem (especially if we're talking about cards).

Anyyyywhooo here is what I personally work with (note: none of it is christmas related)

Two Card Monte - one of my biggest hitting tricks
Here Then There - very simple, any magician should be able to pull it off, yet again, it's a very hard hitting trick
Erdnase Classic Colour Change - one of the best and simplest colour changes I've seen
Gemini Count - like an invisible deck but without an invisible deck!
Elmsley count - hell, you can make up a damn good routine with it, I have...
ACR - one of the most common tricks in a magician's arsenal. I got mine from i think one of them street magic/ninja's from E
Topsy Turvy - decent trick. The deck appears cut face to face then reorganizes itself
Mindreading - aka a force, hits very well. Recently RK magician told me of a good routine: you force the same card to multiple people but in different ways, you then give one card to one person (ur dad's boss) tell everyone to shout out there card on 3. and they all say the same card, and your dad's boss is holding the card.
Phoenix Effect - this thing is so fun to do. Mostly cause it makes big flames

umm... those are all my big hitters I can think of as of now... oH WAIT... this is also good ''the trick that cannot be explained'' dai vernon

yeah... that's bout it!!

Mehar

 

[RickEverhart]

What up Danny? Thought I'd move this for ya. Ha. I hope for your sake it is just table hopping and strolling. It will be much easier and less stress on you then performing a big stage X-mas show for the union. Like I've said in the past, I only perform strolling / table hopping with effects that are completely instant reset. That means absolutely zero having to run to a corner to reset a bang ring, or stack a deck, etc. When the effect is finished it should be already reset, place in pocket and it should be good for the next table.

Common effects that are reset items would be spongeballs, rubber band magic, mismade bill, any card effects that do no require restacking the deck, Thumb tip effects, etc. You will definitely only need about 8-9 effects. 3 sets of 3 as mentioned in Jamie D's thread is perfect. Heck I've actually done strolling before with just two sets of 3 effects. Yes...you read that correctly. I have done wedding receptions before with only 6 effects on me.