Hi, I’m Tall Paul, New Mexico’s funniest Family Entertainer and welcome to my Vlog. In the future, I plan on interviewing other party professionals giving you lots of birthday party or party planning tips and things like that, but for now since I don’t have any of those interviews done and I’m just putting this together on the spot, I’m going to tell a little bit about how I got started in Magic and my journey to get me where I am today.

 

So when I was about six years old and my brother got a magic set for Christmas and on his birthday, in February, I watched him perform some of those tricks and one of them was the cups and balls. Now if you’re not familiar with it, it’s one of the oldest tricks known to man actually. And it’s where little balls go through cups and it blew my mind. I had to know how those balls went through the cups and he wouldn’t tell me like a good magician. I do plan on teaching you some magic on this Vlog as well someday. Because I had to know, I thought Well, if he’s not going to tell me I’m going to go to the library and check out a book. So I checked out a book called The Amateur Magicians Handbook. I poured into that thing and read it and when it was time for me to return it back to the library, I called the library said I wanted to check it out again. I did that over and over and over until they finally said, “You checked it out too much. You have to return it. Sorry.” I turned it for about a week and then I went back and checked it out again and I kept that book for months and months and months and months. And finally I have my own copy now. Thank you to Wayne Hicks, he gave me a copy when he heard that story. So I thought that was really cool. Thank you.

 

Anyway, then I remember performing at I think it was my second or third grade talent show and horrible horrible horrible performance. I’m looking back on that thinking, “Why did I stay in the magic?” It was so bad. I had a little Matchbox that that I cut a hole in the back and and I would slide things into the empty Matchbox through the hole and and I didn’t have anything so I had pocket lint and just really gross stuff. It was it was horrible.

 

My brother and I would rake my grandma’s leaves and she would pay us a dollar a bag. I would take my money and go down to the grocery store that was right next to her place or real close to her place and they had a few magic tricks. They had somethings I actually still do today. I would go get the magic tricks and I learn them, one was a linking rings. I had professors nightmare, which is a rope trick. A way to make a handkerchief disappear, which I do in bigger magic wands. I it’s the same exact method that I got at the at the grocery store near my grandma’s house. In fact, I think it actually might be the same prop after all these years to which is pretty cool. And there’s one ring on rope which I never did. But but the professor’s nightmare I still do. the rope trick, and the linking rings I still do and the course making the handkerchief disappear. I still do and so that’s kind of cool.

 

I learned The Wonderful World of Magic shops. When I was old enough to take the bus. So I would take the bus down to Pyro’s magic shop and hang out with him. And I remember one day. I walked into Pyro’s and a gentleman by the name of Rob Weinstein was in there and I asked where Pyro was he said he bought the shop. So I worked for Rob for several years until he sold the shop to Neil and I worked for Neil until it went out of business. And then I there’s no magic shop for a while. Wayne Hicks opened the magic and juggling shop, which was home. I really really really liked that place a lot. I love the people. Yeah, that was that was probably the best magic shop here in town hands down no equivocation and then Max bought the shop and called it Max’s magic shop and he he moved to Minnesota or something like that fairly bout a couple years ago. So there’s no magic shop in town so I can get all my stuff online. Shame there’s no place to hang out. But anyway, that’s my story.

 

I started doing magic professionally. I did my first show for my grandma’s hairdresser. I did balloon animals and magic and again, that was a total nightmare. I was probably about 11 or 12 years old. My mom had to drop me off. That was my first paid show. I think I made 50 bucks or something like that.

 

I really loved coin magic through high school. I was really good at coins. And 1998, I went to a marketing seminar by another magician named Dave Dee and he taught marketing to magicians and now he teaches marketing to all kinds of business owners. And he’s the one that told me, “Do kid show magic.” I asked him. How do I go from being a getting calls for kid shows to doing the close-up which I loved and he says, “Well, why don’t you do kid shows?” At the time I really didn’t want to. I didn’t have the props, I didn’t know how to handle being around kids, I just I just didn’t know I didn’t want to. I took his advice I switched over to kid show magic and birthday parties and it changed my life. I actually grew to really really love doing kid shows and I have a lot of fun developing kid shows. And so yeah, it’s a lot of fun. So I hope to see you at a birthday party or some show soon. Anyway, that’s that’s the basic idea of my story and I hope to see you soon. I hope you enjoyed my Vlog. This is tall Paul reminding you to be kind of this day because it’s the only day of its kind.