A little magic, a little mystery…

Want to catch Fish’s adventures straight from the field?  Check out his audio blog-lets on Utterz for segments including the barbershop quartet and various oddments!

This has been a busy week for us — on Thursday, Fish and I spoke at Harvard’s Berkman Center, for their blog/citizen media interest group, on mixed reality magic.  Fish performed what may be the first “mixed reality” magic trick, where the card was picked by a person in the real life audience, but revealed in Second Life, in the tiled pattern of the sky.

Then, Saturday and Sunday, Fish was a featured performer on the Polar Express train, linking Boston and Providence families to a great benefit theatrical experience with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus (and of course, magicians, clowns, and many other entertainers!).

It’s sad when you’re too busy with life to blog about it…but we’re back from a very packed month or so…

This weekend was the Second Life Community Convention in Chicago.

Fish started out entertaining at the Indigenis launch party, where about 5% of the convention (probably a larger proportion of Friday night attendees, since programming didn’t start till Saturday) enjoyed drinks, good food, excellent company, and a little magic.

The next day included interviews with the Discovery Channel and ABC, plus strolling magic as part of the art show program. We capped the day with the masquerade, where Fish dazzled a few with closeup magic.

Tuna got photos on Flikr:

with Sidewinder — serious and comic
and by Sidewinder — a casual candid
And props from an amateur magician among the SL developers who got to see very close-up magic at the masquerade.

To our great delight, we got treated to a philosophical and charming conversation over lunch with Eugene Berger on Monday.

And to cap it, we got a great review for the Oddball, our weekly experimental music night, from Crap Mariner. Woot!

Finally, Yahoo fixed our site!  Sorry for the recent silence…  There is new information on the front page, gigs page, and press page.

Most excitingly, check out the youtube video of Tuna (and Fish!) from Second Life’s Life4U video news service.

I’ll “embed” this video as soon as I figure out how… Yahoo hasn’t updated their wordpress in ages, so the youtube widget won’t work with their version.

The July 4th party was awesome — thanks for everyone who showed up for the filming!

Due to a technical issue on their end, we can update the blog but not the rest of the website for up to three days! What kind of hosting service that specializes in small business has a three day queue before they can even so much as look at your trouble report?

Please watch the blog for updates, and leave your favorite hosting service as a tip in the comments!

Thanks!
Shava

ummmm…. was that *it*? Did they just congratulate Tuna on a 10 second clip and that’s it?

Feh. We’ll have to do our own production of the thing and post it on youtube, if so.

Well, I suppose the good thing is, Fish’s hourly is now capped at around $2,250,000.00 per hour of broadcast.

More news as it happens!

We got less that 24h notice, but we’re on NBC’s AGT tonight! If you’re local, we’re having a viewing party at our house — c’mon down!

Today we took a day…well, if not off, almost off!

Friday, a million linden dollars hit Tuna Oddfellow’s bank — that’s the approximately $3750 prize for NBC’s America’s Got Talent promotion in Second Life. After picking up a few toys “in-world” as Shava Suntzu and Tuna Oddfellow, we decided to spend some of Saturday catching our breath from the last week of whirlwind interviews and events.

Today, we caught a nice brunch at Sabur, a Bosnian restaurant in our neighborhood, and then drove out to look for patterns and fabric for the next round of costumes for the act. Last week, we spent a little money ahead for a new tux, rather Edwardian in style, for Fish. Today we picked out almost two dozen patterns for historical costumes. My favorite is this period piece, which I’m thinking of doing in a rust or burgundy velvet coat.

Then, a great splurge, sushi for dinner.

Tomorrow, (or at this late hour, really later today on Sunday in the US) Tuna will be performing and lecturing in Second Life twice, at 11am and 4pm SLT, talking about being a magician in real life, Second Life, the contest, recreating his performance (more or less), and then taking questions from the audience. This is part of the overall festivities for the Second Life 4th Birthday bash, and will be held at the reproduction Globe Theater on Cookie island, courtesy of Ina and the folks from sLiterary (SL’s premiere literary magazine).

I hope to see some of you there!

Well, possibly due to Lindex issues, we’ve not yet seen the one million lindens due to Tuna Oddfellow from NBC, and due to editing of the clip, we’re not likely to see the segment on America’s Most Talented until at least next Tuesday.

But we’re very excited that Tuna, Fish’s animated alter ego, will be on a show with over twelve million viewers!  (Not to mention the possible Internet exposure from the nbc.com and youtube clips).

Fish has already had more interviews in the last week (mostly in-world Second Life media) than in his previous years as a magician — we expect that we’ll be inundated with press once the segment airs.

I am working with NBC to negotiate a joint press release, and as a courtesy we’re holding off on a general release on our own.  We’re also talking with Linden Labs’ agency.  Look for more developments on the web and in other media!

Shava Nerad — Fish the Magish’s beautiful assistant (and bookings manager)
Shava Suntzu — Tuna Oddfellow’s beautiful assistant

Yes, folks it’s official! As of last night, Tuna Oddfellow, my avatar in Second Life, has been judged the Most Talented Avatar by NBC’s America’s Got Talent folks. Three judges from within Second Life screened nine auditioned contestants, and then the popular vote from three studio audiences in world voted me in.

Tuna will be on NBC’s America’s Got Talent sometime later this summer — Shava and I are hoping we can turn this into an amazingly big break for my real life “Fish the Magish” performing. Amazing, simply amazing!

Not to mention that the prize for the competition was one million linden dollars, which translates to about $3500.  That’s all pouring back into my magic and promotion of my magic (well, except for one weekend at a B&B just to celebrate!).

Thanks to all the folks who supported me with coaching, tech, and morale in this process!

I’ll post more here later, but I did want to put something up to say…Wow!

Thanks everyone!

–Fish