magic_fella
Tagged (Explored August 13/09)
I always read the “Tagged” entries with great interest. But it’s different when you are the one that’s tagged. Let’s see:
1) I run a special events company. We do Game Shows and Gangster, Western, Vegas, Western and Mardi Gras casinos. Our casinos are cast with professional actors and they blend theatre with gambling, live mystery and music. We work almost exclusively with corporate and convention markets and have done so since 1984. (I was twelve. Ahem.)
2) I am a professional magician. I perform close-up magic for adults at trade shows, conventions and corporate events. I also do stage shows for children. I like kids a lot. They remind me of me.
3) I am midway through writing my second novel. The first one I wrote to see if I could actually do it. I have very high hopes for the second one. I try to write something every day to keep it from curling up and dying for lack of attention. My goal is 2,000 words a day, but I don’t hit that often. I want ultimately to write for a living. That’s my long range plan. I am going to pen a few best-sellers and Sheree and I shall maintain matching luxury condos in New York and Paris. Yessir.
4) I live and breathe Photoshop. I teach it, I use it and I have unreasonable amounts of fun with it. Up until recently, I had a website up, designed to teach the basics of Photoshop in six hours.
Photoshop is a HUGE part of my life. I freelance my work in custom-designed PowerPoints that I build in Photoshop.
I love visual things…love the way colors blend and the image changes. I can spend a LOT of time tinkering with stuff and I won’t stop until it looks right to me. I like the idea of trying to speak word and concept into my images.
5) Winston Churchill once said “My single most important accomplishment was convincing the greatest woman in the world to marry me.” I totally understand that…but I disagree with him because I have the greatest woman in the world. His must have been the second best.
6) We love to travel and photograph this fascinating world. Later this month we’re off to New York (to see Alan) then Rhode Island (to see Gina) then Philadelphia (to see Sharon) and Washington DC (to see Peter and Elie) then back to NYC for more Alan. In January, we’re going to AFRICA! (You probably think we are fabulously wealthy, huh? See? Caught you! We’re not wealthy…we’ve just decided that travel is our number one priority.)
7) In college two of my friends and I were sent out to pick up cases of booze for a “Meet Your Potential Media Employers” night. (I was a journalism student…and later turned into a radio reporter for twelve years.) We all three got blotto before the event even began and I clearly remember sitting on the floor and telling the publisher of Edmonton’s largest daily newspaper that in MY opinion, the media had become a “whore to the advertisers.” I am unreasonably, unaccountably, rather childishly fond and proud of this memory.
8) My emotional and spiritual reset button is pressed each time I remind myself of the verse “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” This keeps me out of an awful lot of crap. So God is my favourite author, followed distantly by Bill Bryson, Michael Connelly, Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, Robert B. Parker, Christopher Moore and John Sandford.
9) My life has been saved twice. The first time was when I met Sheree in the mid 1980’s. The second was when I met Jesus about ten years later. Both times I was circling the drain.
10) I have music around me all the time: Andrea Bocelli, AC/DC, Sarah Brightman, ZZ Top, Beach Boys, Billie Holiday (and Etta James singing Billy Holiday – which is a sound as close to heaven as we are going to get), Eric Clapton, Eva Cassidy, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Led Zep, T-Bone Burnett, Leonard Cohen, Jeff Healy, J. J. Cale, Norah Jones, Rod Stewart’s American Songbook recordings and Vladimir Ashkenazy’s Mozart and Beethoven recordings are big favs. I have three iPods because, frankly, I could not imagine being without good music. Plus I am so absent minded that I can put one of those puppies down and lose it for a week. Having more than one keeps me from snivelling and weeping uncontrollably, since I am also a wee bit obsessive. And moody.
Now you know.
Don’t you feel better?
PS: Sheree took this picture of me one perfect afternoon in Rome. I have tinkered with it...a little.
Tagged (Explored August 13/09)
I always read the “Tagged” entries with great interest. But it’s different when you are the one that’s tagged. Let’s see:
1) I run a special events company. We do Game Shows and Gangster, Western, Vegas, Western and Mardi Gras casinos. Our casinos are cast with professional actors and they blend theatre with gambling, live mystery and music. We work almost exclusively with corporate and convention markets and have done so since 1984. (I was twelve. Ahem.)
2) I am a professional magician. I perform close-up magic for adults at trade shows, conventions and corporate events. I also do stage shows for children. I like kids a lot. They remind me of me.
3) I am midway through writing my second novel. The first one I wrote to see if I could actually do it. I have very high hopes for the second one. I try to write something every day to keep it from curling up and dying for lack of attention. My goal is 2,000 words a day, but I don’t hit that often. I want ultimately to write for a living. That’s my long range plan. I am going to pen a few best-sellers and Sheree and I shall maintain matching luxury condos in New York and Paris. Yessir.
4) I live and breathe Photoshop. I teach it, I use it and I have unreasonable amounts of fun with it. Up until recently, I had a website up, designed to teach the basics of Photoshop in six hours.
Photoshop is a HUGE part of my life. I freelance my work in custom-designed PowerPoints that I build in Photoshop.
I love visual things…love the way colors blend and the image changes. I can spend a LOT of time tinkering with stuff and I won’t stop until it looks right to me. I like the idea of trying to speak word and concept into my images.
5) Winston Churchill once said “My single most important accomplishment was convincing the greatest woman in the world to marry me.” I totally understand that…but I disagree with him because I have the greatest woman in the world. His must have been the second best.
6) We love to travel and photograph this fascinating world. Later this month we’re off to New York (to see Alan) then Rhode Island (to see Gina) then Philadelphia (to see Sharon) and Washington DC (to see Peter and Elie) then back to NYC for more Alan. In January, we’re going to AFRICA! (You probably think we are fabulously wealthy, huh? See? Caught you! We’re not wealthy…we’ve just decided that travel is our number one priority.)
7) In college two of my friends and I were sent out to pick up cases of booze for a “Meet Your Potential Media Employers” night. (I was a journalism student…and later turned into a radio reporter for twelve years.) We all three got blotto before the event even began and I clearly remember sitting on the floor and telling the publisher of Edmonton’s largest daily newspaper that in MY opinion, the media had become a “whore to the advertisers.” I am unreasonably, unaccountably, rather childishly fond and proud of this memory.
8) My emotional and spiritual reset button is pressed each time I remind myself of the verse “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” This keeps me out of an awful lot of crap. So God is my favourite author, followed distantly by Bill Bryson, Michael Connelly, Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, Robert B. Parker, Christopher Moore and John Sandford.
9) My life has been saved twice. The first time was when I met Sheree in the mid 1980’s. The second was when I met Jesus about ten years later. Both times I was circling the drain.
10) I have music around me all the time: Andrea Bocelli, AC/DC, Sarah Brightman, ZZ Top, Beach Boys, Billie Holiday (and Etta James singing Billy Holiday – which is a sound as close to heaven as we are going to get), Eric Clapton, Eva Cassidy, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Led Zep, T-Bone Burnett, Leonard Cohen, Jeff Healy, J. J. Cale, Norah Jones, Rod Stewart’s American Songbook recordings and Vladimir Ashkenazy’s Mozart and Beethoven recordings are big favs. I have three iPods because, frankly, I could not imagine being without good music. Plus I am so absent minded that I can put one of those puppies down and lose it for a week. Having more than one keeps me from snivelling and weeping uncontrollably, since I am also a wee bit obsessive. And moody.
Now you know.
Don’t you feel better?
PS: Sheree took this picture of me one perfect afternoon in Rome. I have tinkered with it...a little.