Nathan Burton, funny illusions, many illusions

One of my friends who has been in Las Vegas before suggested we could go and see Nathan Burton in the afternoon. He had seen the show before and said it was good. We got tickets in the middle of the audience, which was a good place to sit.

The show was very funny. The show is called "Comedy Illusions", and the pure number of illusions they performed was astounding, haha. They also had very funny presentation ideas for standard illusions, so it was much more entertaining than illusion shows usually are.

There was a short segment were another magician did a short close up magic performance too. He was seated very far from us so we could not see him, but they had a camera on him and showed what was going on on a big screen too, so we could see that.

The screen was used before the show started too. When you entered the theater they took a photo of you, and when your photo was on the screen you were asked to make as much noise as you could. The noisiest group would win a trip to Las Vegas. Groups with many members of course tended to be much noisier than groups of two or three. We entered so late that they never got to our photo. In the end, the screen said that since everyone is already in Las Vegas, no one would actually win anything in this competition.

I thought the show was so funny that I bought a DVD with Nathan Burton and his team performing the same or similar illusions on TV and in other places. He signed the DVD for me too. And I also ended up buying the photo of us entering the theater.

This show was the greatest positive surprise. I had not heard of Nathan Burton before, but the show was very funny. Definitely recommended.

Mac King at Harrah's

On the second day in Las Vegas we bought some tickets to the show I wanted to see the most, Mac King. We got pretty good seats, and it was super cheap. The show was great. I laughed so much that my stomach hurt. My friends don't speak nor understand that much English, so they missed out on large parts of the fun. Some of them slept large parts of the show.

The magic in the show was good too, though. I knew Mac King was funny, but seeing him live you also realize that his magical skill is also very very good. His card control, for instance, was very impressive. What was most impressive was the way he interacted with the audience and the structuring of the show, though.

He had a few different spectators help him out with various tricks, and he was very funny with them, without being mean to them. After the show I bought two books with magic tricks. They seem pretty interesting, and while they are aimed at kids some of the tricks are very good. When he signed the books for me, Mac King asked me if I was a magician. I guess the jacket gives it away? Or maybe people who are not there with their kids but still buy the books are mostly magicians.

Me and Onigiri

I ran into a guy who was presented to me as "the comedian Onigiri". He was really nice and funny. He wanted to see me do some magic, so I did a short performance for the people in the bar we were in.

I have a deck of cards that are Japanese alphabet cards (called "hiragana cards" and sold at the Daiso dollar store). The card with "o" has an "onigiri" on it, and says "o is for onigiri". Everyone thought it was hysterical when I produced that card for him. They were pretty drunk.