Magifest 2023 - Columbus, OH

I attended Magifest this year. It was a fun-packed couple of days and I had a fantastic time. 

Before the show even started, we met one of the performers, Peter Turner, in the convention space, just hanging out with fans and doing mentalism tricks. When I approached the crowd gathered around his table, he immediately asked me if I would like to help him do a trick. IT WAS AWESOME. We attended his performance and lecture later that evening and that, too, was awesome. 

Peter Turner, center

The first lecture we actually attended was about Ionia - a famous female magician in the early 19th century. She only performed magic for a few years, but her act was said to be spectacular, and the beautiful promotional posters that survived from that time are highly valuable collectibles. 

Ionia - Inspiration

Charles Green

Aside from that, she lived a long and interesting life, married a Russian prince, and eventually returned to France where she died in 1973. This was one of my favorite talks. The presenter, Charles Green, researched, wrote, and published a gorgeous book about her life.

Book cover

 
 We saw another great presentation by Margalit Fox, the author of The Confidence Men, a true story about two men who used mentalism to escape from a POW camp. 

As luck would have, we ran into another magician/performer that we've been following on Youtube for some time - Chris Ramsay. 

Chris Ramsay, on right

One of the biggest highlights of the whole weekend was meeting Lance Burton, who gave an interview about his life and career, and generously signed posters for 1000 fans at this convention. 

Lance Burton

So, I spent way WAY too much in the dealer room. I picked up a beautifully bound hard copy of the catalog for an auction of items from Ricky Jay's collection that will happen in February 2023. He had a lot of weird bizarre interesting things in his collection. 

Now I have a couple/few beautiful magic-related coffee-table books to display around my home. 

We saw many other amazing performances by other magicians including six different winners of FISM, and Paul Gertner, who appeared on Penn & Teller's Fool Us FIVE times. Interestingly enough, Paul Gertner was born and raised in Pittsburgh, and his father was a steel worker. 

That's all I will say for now. A magician never reveals her secrets. 

Recent adventures in Orlando, FL

Even though I was in Orlando all week, I wouldn't call it a vacation. It's more like a job that I love.

MegaCon had it's moments. I rocked the "Mad Men"-inspired dress that I made, and got lots of compliments. I like being recognized for my mad sewing skillz.

Me with Space Marine from Warhammer 40k, I think?

Otherwise, I helped run registration for the USMSC event, and on Saturday, I put on a monster suit and played "alien" for a few rounds, to give some of the other NPCs break. Playing "monster" is a physically demanding job, maybe more so than playing marine. I really enjoyed doing it at my first MegaCon, and that's kinda what got me hooked into playing this game, but after I got banged up pretty I good, I went back to the registration table. I didn't get to see much else of the con. I walked around the exhibit hall for maybe 20 mins., ogled the Star Wars stuff, and that was it. I saw lots of very young Doctor Who's, a few good-looking super heroes, and TONS of kids in bad wigs and mediocre anime costumes.

So MegaCon, was MegaCon. It was a good team-building experience for our crew, if not a great success for Mindgame Productions.

The following week in Orlando was like any old work week, except that I was sitting on someone else's couch, and I had a really bad cold. It seemed that lots of people had gotten sick that week. "Patient Zero" was probably at MegaCon. I am still hacking up the remnants of said virus. The only marginally interesting thing that I did was go to Skycraft - a candy store for tech nerds. This is the place where junk from old data centers and Radio Shack stores goes to die. This is the place where you go to find parts for building your robot, props for filming a science fiction movie, etc.

We picked up what Stefan calls a missile case, for $40. This is a big plastic "Pelican"-style shipping case that was probably used to ship servers or large electronic equipment. I can't imagine what it would cost to buy new. They had stacks of these cases there.

Last Saturday was the Amerika airsoft milsim event at Wayne's World of Paintball in Ocala. Now that was hella fun times. After helping out with registration in the early morning,

Check-in at Wayne's World. Photo by Brian Gilbert.

I actually got to go out and play!!! It had been a long time since I had that kind of fun. My gear performed well. I managed to stay in the game a lot longer than I thought I could. The nice weather was an extra added bonus.

Here, I am holding another player's rifle while he is "interrogated," while my own M177 dangles from it's sling. Photo by Chantal Jost. I'm wearing black, because I was playing a "bad guy," LOL.

...and then it was a long drive back home.

MegaCon Costume Stuff

Spent a couple weekends in sunny Florida, and that was nice. Had fun at MegaCon, even though it isn't entirely my cup of tea. Sure, I like comic book superheroes, and I'm a huge fan of anything Star Wars, but the con is now dominated by the anime kids, and I don't really get all of it. My favorite anime films are 25+ years old at this point. So, I'm a bit behind on the current trends.

I did squee over all the hype for the upcoming release of the "Thor" movie.




S.H.I.E.L.D. - the fictional law enforcement agency in the Marvel universe

...and took photos of everything Star Wars...

I am currently working on an imperial officer uniform, and Stefan has informed me that I could make one for him, too, if I wanted.

The costume that I wore at MegaCon is my own invention - it is a very faithfully constructed 1870s period ladies dress, made out of the digital urban camo fabric of the fictional US Marine Space Corps uniform, with all the appropriate emblems and insignia of such. No one was going to guess that one, but a lot of people thought it was something "steampunk." I just wanted to do a twist on the USMSC uniform. That is not unusual to see at a con. For example:

On the right - Gladiator/Roman Soldier Stormtrooper. And, there was also Pimp Vader.

I thought the BSG folks looked great, and I promise myself that I will do a BSG costume, probably a deck hand or shuttle (viper) pilot, at some point.

So I got to thinking about a lot of other fantasy/sci-fi costumes that I would like to do, like a Romulan, or Borg from Star Trek...maybe something from Babylon 5...