Kids Party Magician Dallas TXMrGoodfriend’s “Amazing Magic Hat Show” is perfect for kids birthday parties. The birthday child is the star of the show with the help of MrGoodfriend.
Ok, here’s a recap of my April. What an exciting and eventful month April was. With family birthdays, new magic opportunities, and some surprises, I had a really fun month.
We’ll start with the Special Interest Groups of the Dallas Magic Clubs. Jointly the Family Entertainment, Close Up/Restaurant, and Mentalism magic sigs met the first Wednesday of April at Humperdinks. Not one of the best attended meetings, but certainly far from the worse.
That first weekend began my performance run for the month. I appeared at the Allen Americans Playoff Hockey game, pregame festivities. There were lots of things to do, including watching a magic show! Also, my wife and little Angelynn went with some friends to Destin, Florida for a few days, leaving me and Thomas to be bachelors. Monday was Thomas’ birthday, so we went to Dave & Busters for some birthday fun.
The next weekend was “Blessing of the Vines” festival in Grapevine. I performed for 5 hours of close up magic at the Cross Timbers Winery in Grapevine. Here’s a link to what a few people thought about the magic of MrGoodfriend at Cross Timbers Winery. Next was Sunday and Angelynn’s 3rd birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. I was so impressed at the way Chuck E. Cheese handled the entire event, I had to write a review and blog about it. Check it out here: review of Chuck E. Cheese.
Next was the monthly meeting of the Dallas Magic Clubs where I was elected Vice-President of the club for 2012-2013. Don’t worry, there’s no extra pay. And actually, there’s probably more head aches. But I have lots of pills thanks to my coupon wife!
I took a week of vacation on April 23, and got a lot of things done around the house. Plus, I helped a few friends with their internet marketing, search engine optimization, and online reputation management.
Classic magician standing by classic car.
We ended the vacation week with a fundraiser barbecue at First United Methodist Church of Allen for Impact Mango.
So that rounds up April 2012. I already know May has a lot in store too.
Your group enjoys a good party. How do you make sure you host a good party? In real estate, they say success is “location, location, location”. In partying it’s “people, people, people.” In real estate, not all businesses are located on the choice spot. And in partying, you have to make consolations for the people.
Let’s assume you are preparing for a party of 50 or more people. That’s a considerable sized party. Even if it is just friends and co-workers, and everyone expects to bring extras to make the party better, you have to have some control. If you aren’t hiring a party planner, you must do these few steps to make sure your party is great, and that your friends and co-workers have a incredible time, and are safe.
With such a large number of people to feed, it is quite difficult to ensure food safety, and quality in a home environment. Caterers and restaurants are well prepared for making buffet amounts delicious food and have it ready in time for your party. Additionally, see if the caterer has a person that will serve and clean up. It will be well worth the price to keep your place tidy and organized.
Everyone imagines they are a bartender. Even worse is when you as host allow your co-workers to tend bar. Who sets limits? Do you have any idea what the financial and not to mention the mental cost of allowing someone to over drink and then get involved in a collision? A professional bartender can keep this under control and assure your guests have professionally made drinks.
A karaoke host in control of the music will make sure the music hog that wants to play or sing only their kind of music won’t ruin your party for the other guests.
A magician, mentalist, psychic, fortune teller, black jack dealer or any of a number of entertainment choices will make sure your guests can find something to enjoy and share with the other guests. Don’t over do it, though. One entertainer with the appropriate music entertainment should be enough.
Derrel Allen is a professional magician in Dallas. More information about The Magic of MrGoodfriend can be found at his facebook page.
Independent studies done recently show that children like to sit down at the supper table and have a meal with their parents. Also, they tend to eat a well-balanced, nutritious meal when they eat a family meal. Many health care professionals believe that having dinner together is a critical piece of the childhood obesity prevention puzzle. However with the overwhelming lives parent and children seem to lead these days, bringing the family all together in the same place at the same time can be a mountainous chore. Between work schedules, after-school activities, errands, and the like, it seems we have less and less time. However with a few innovative ideas and some arrangement, meal time can be a treasured and enjoyable family time.
Designate no less than one night per week to have a sit-down meal with your family. Sunday nights are generally a good choice for this event because you have more time to enjoy and the weekend chores have been completed. Next, the parents should think up ways to spruce up the family meal.
Tell an Amazing Story About Dogs Night. Suggest it a few of days ahead of time, so everyone will have time to think. A couple of ground rules: Everyone gets to tell their story uninterrupted. And each person thanks the person who has taken a turn before him or her.
Make Believe We’re at a Restaurant Night. Talk quietly, and eat in a sophisticated manner and act polite.
Tell Something Good About Broccoli Night. You don’t have to eat it, you just have to research it and tell the rest of the family one good thing about it.
Make Believe We’re on an Island Where There’s Nothing to Eat but Vegetables Night. Be sure to take requests.
Involve your children in choosing the meal and preparation. This gives them a strong sense of value and the basis for a life of healthy meal planning and preparation.
Avoid outside interruptions. Make sure the television is off, and establish that all phone calls go to voice mail or the answering machine during the meal. Take this time to communicate with one another and enjoy the family’s presence. This is a good time to reconnect and discover what events happened this week. Don’t rush through eating, and teach your children how to do the same in the process. Slowly eating is a healthy habit. Don’t jump up and start clearing dishes and putting things away until everyone is done eating and talking.
Doing your meals this way at least once a week should provide a significant foundation for healthy diet and healthy living for you and your family.
Derrel Allen is a father of five, information technology adviser and professional entertainer. Read more about kids party entertainment at his website http://www.magicmarketnews.info
So, we got a few gift cards recently. American Express gift cards, to be exact. And the problem is that AE charges merchants more than V/MC charge and so, it makes finding a merchant that accepts AE a little more challenging. Then what happens if you find an online place and they take PayPal or whatever, so AE is accepted. Well, if you have a gift card, it will be declined if you don’t do the little magic “trick” you learn later in this post. Additionally, when it gets declined, you’ll have a $1 or $.99 charge (reducing the value of your gift card.) When you go to americanexpress.com/reward to check the value, you’ll see the charge and have an “AVS” fee (Address Verification.) It will get removed after 8 days.
So, how do you keep from getting declined? Here it is:
Look on the back of your gift card.
Call the 800 number.
Enter the card number.
Push the button that states something about having “Other” issues.
Then press “0″ for operator.
Tell the live person that you want to register your name and address for the gift card. They will verify your possession of the card. Next they will ask for your name (spell it like you will online), address (same address as you use online), and that should fix you up to use it online or with PayPal.
Now get out there and spend them there (sic) gift cards.
And if you happen to feel particularly charitable, you can always use it with my PayPal. This birthday party magician can always use an extra few bucks for the next magic trick!
[paypal-donation]
Finding holiday party entertainment isn’t all that hard. Finding GOOD entertainment, well, sometimes that’s a crap-shoot. Now if you are doing a vegas night, you might have everything covered. But a good holiday party can become GREAT with a skilled, professional, talented magician.
People love magic. A good magician loves people. Get those two together and you have the ingredients for the perfect holiday party entertainment. The truly skilled magician will be dazzling with his performance, kind with the mystery, and humorous with the show. A good holiday party magician can accommodate his routine to fit with the theme of the party. And of course his act would be fresh and new, not some rehash of the 1950′s.
Now how do you find this perfect holiday party magician? Simple: check with the event planner from last season’s party. Oh? You didn’t have a magician last time? Hmmm… that makes it a little tougher. Yellow pages? Who uses that any more? Maybe your friends will know. Check Facebook. You could check with the International Brotherhood of Magicians, or the Society of American Magicians. Heck, you could even check with the Dallas Magic Clubs. Wait a minute. Maybe you could check right here, right now.
Yes, MrGoodfriend is the perfect holiday party magician. Performing for groups from Europe to Asia, and all across Texas, you will have a great time with MrGoodfriend at your holiday party. But if you inquire and MrGoodfriend is already booked, what then? The best thing is, MrGoodfriend can and WILL recommend one of his talented and competent colleagues. Since many holiday parties involve children, you can be assured that MrGoodfriend is right for your guests. MrGoodfriend has been vetted by the Allen Independent School District for duties on all school campuses. You can additionally check on background checking sites such as Public Data.com.
So, just to sum up on how to find a holiday party magician, you need to do three main things:
I’m sure you will have a great time at your holiday party, and I know that it will be MAGICAL!
Read About Restaurant Magician
My wife does coupons. I mean she really does coupons. And she has gotten THOUSANDS of dollars in savings for us. We have often gone to the Staples office supply store in Allen, TX on McDermott Road to shop. Occasionally, we have an OfficeMax™ coupon that Staples accepts. It’s nice to save some $$.
Last Saturday, I needed some things to finish up a few props for my new magic show and I drove the 2 miles up to Staples. In my hand I had another OfficeMax™ coupon for “20% off everything you can fit in your shopping cart!”* See the “*”? That means there are serious disclaimers. No monitors, computers, store brand ink cartridges, HP ink cartridges, Canon ink cartridges…. yada yada yada…. It just so happened that I needed construction paper, and a KODAK ink cartidge. Total price RETAIL? about $35. I had something else in my hand too. My lovely little Angelynn. 2½ years old and full of distracting daddy. So we go to the checkout, and the young male cashier can’t make the 20% work. He asks the more senior cashier (she must have been at least 3 months older than him), and she called someone. The someone said, “we can’t take the 20% off coupon from OfficeMax™.”
So, I left my purchase and started out the door. Then I stopped. I needed more of a reason than some phone call to some office. I asked to speak to the manager. After about 7 minutes (a LONG time when wrestling with a 2½ year old), here comes Jayme Browder strolling from the back of the store sucking on some fast food soft drink. I surmised from a distance that she was the Manager On Duty. She looked to have been recently graduated from SFA (go Lumberjacks.) She passed me and Angel standing in the middle of ‘no-man’s-land’ and inquired with the cashier who called her as to with whom she should speak. Of course, she was directed to me.
I explained I didn’t understand why they would not accept the coupon since it had been their policy to accept competitor’s coupons before. Here was her explanation, which was so well spoken, it had to have been a part of management training (Staples should be proud.) The coupon is for all you can get in your shopping cart and there is no way they could honor that.
I countered with the massive amounts of exceptions plainly spelled out on the coupon. She countered with there was nothing she could do.
I countered with showing my wife’s Staples reward card with thousands of dollars of purchases made on it, explained that the $7.00 discount she was avoiding giving me would result in no more purchases on the Staples reward card. She countered with “If I do this for you, I would have to do it for everyone else.” Now why would a 50+ year old man get flustered by a early 20′s manager girl (I know ways that SOME men would get flustered, but this was NOT one of them)? I simply thanked her and said good day.
Here’s what I SHOULD have done and said (of course I would not have gotten my satisfaction.) I should have looked around and said, “What others? There’s no line of people here with 20% coupons. They are all at OfficeMax™ using their coupons which is what I’m about to do!”
Staples is 2 miles, OfficeMax™ is 6. That’s 4 miles I can use to talk to my brother and sisters.
See you next time, OfficeMax™. Staples, Staples management, and Jayme truly made this an Easy decision.
Happy birthday do me! Today is the anniversary of me discovering America. And since it is an event that marks the passing of youth, I take this time to tell you how to keep the youthful vim and vigor not expected of the old and ancient.
READING!
A lengthy discussion about the things going on at work with one of my colleagues led to some observations of how to implement fixes. And this lead to discussion of reading material. So, two books were brought to my attention, and I immediately made obtaining them top priority.
Hopefully, I’ll be full of vim and vigor for many years to come. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have.
It was late February 2008. I was living in a 2 bedroom condo near Walnut Hill and Webb Chapel in Dallas. I didn’t have a lot to do that day, but I went to visit a couple of near by customers. Even though the neighborhood was not known for being pristine and crime free, I had not had any significant trouble since residing there in 2006. I locked my door, but not the patio gate, as was my normal procedure when leaving. I had finished with my first customer, and contemplated going home for lunch, then returning to the other customer. But I decided I would just rather get it all done, and then when I got home, I would be done. When I did arrive home, about 1:45pm, I noticed the door was messed up some. I instantly thought that workers doing some work around the condos might have been working on it. Then, when I got inside, and noticed some computer parts in the living room that had been upstairs, I wondered why someone I had given a key to my condo had come by and moved my stuff? After realizing that something bad had happened, and not knowing if they were still in the place, I dashed outside and to the town home office. There I was informed that one of the employees had chased three teens from my condo. He wasn’t successful in catching them, and it probably was a good thing he didn’t. They took some stuff, including a handgun (I didn’t have a safe then) and my cable box. The cable box is what this story really is about.
Obviously I couldn’t watch TV. So after the emotions of being burglarized eased, I was able to go about the insurance, police reports and everything else to get my life back in order. New steel door, dead bolt locks, safe, burglar alarm, etc. Then, I went to Time Warner Cable (TWC) 
near my office. I had called by phone to inform them of the burglary and stolen cable box. I also asked for a value so I could claim it on the insurance. No one could tell me a value. Even with a supervisor, face-to-face in the office, I could get no answer on what the amount was. No one at TWC would provide me with an invoice. They did give me a new box, though, and I gave them the police report.
I filed my insurance claim, listing the cable box, but no dollar value. I got a check less deductible for all my stuff (except the cable box.) Texas Fair Plan was exactly that! FAIR! Thank you, Russ Davis.
One service issue I was having with TWC was concerning High Definition. Seems I was paying extra for HD, but EVERY night, I would lose the HD signal. Some times it was for a few seconds, most of the time it was for a couple of minutes. They made two or three trips to test the lines from their system to my box. Every time, they could not find a cause. Once they reburied the cable to my condo. So fast-forward to Oct 2009. We bought a house in Allen. Since I knew I would be leaving TWC, I decided to stop paying for service. And of course I got the phone calls from collections. Even months before making the decision to stop paying, I had been trying to get TWC customer service to do something about the outage. It got to be a game: call in, first person couldn’t help, would check with a supervisor, supervisor not available but would call back. I documented 49 times (YES, FORTY NINE TIMES) that I was promised a supervisor would call me back. A couple of times, I did get to speak to a supervisor after being passed from the customer service representative. But they would always say they would investigate further and call me back. And those failures to call back are included in the 49.
I did say ‘fast-forward’ right? Okay, now we are moving from the condo, and I have disconnected my TWC. I go to take back my equipment, and the guy says: “Where’s the other box?” I had actually forgotten about the stolen box. But when I realized what he was talking about, I remembered what the supervisor at the TWC center in Irving, near my office, had said when I pressed her for an invoice: “Don’t worry about it.” At this point, I am VERY upset. Weeks later the collections calls and other things started happening, and I decided it would be me against them, and I wasn’t going to give in! And I didn’t. I told multiple callers from TWC that they could have a supervisor call me, and one never did. I did finally get a bill for a couple of months of over due service AND $325 for a cable box. I just laughed.
Then one day, I was checking my credit, and there was a “bad debt” from TWC. So, I finally decided to see if I could slay this dragon. I sent the invoice of $325 to Texas Fair Plan. This was in March 2011. They paid it! Then I went to the TWC center near my office again. I wanted to pay what I rightfully owed, the cable box cost. I got to speak to a gentleman, Antwon Whiteman, Retail Supervisor. You won’t believe what he did. He LISTENED to my issues, he APOLOGIZED for the trouble, and he TOOK CARE OF IT! I told him that he was fighting an uphill battle and that I hoped he was rewarded adequately for his service at a place that seems to have forgotten what customer service really is. He wrote me a letter that I can post to any lingering credit bureau blots.
Needless to say, I had less trouble with the burglars than I did with TWC. But in the future, if you have issues with TWC, try to talk to Antwon Whiteman.
As she laid her pet on the table, the vet pulled out his stethoscope and listened to the bird’s chest.
After a moment or two, the vet shook his head and sadly said, “I’m sorry, your duck, Cuddles, has passed away.”
The distressed woman wailed, “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I am sure. Your duck is dead,” replied the vet..
“How can you be so sure?” she protested. “I mean you haven’t done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something.”
The vet rolled his eyes, turned around and left the room. He returned a few minutes later with a black Labrador Retriever. As the duck‘s owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from top to bottom. He then looked up at the vet with sad eyes and shook his head.
The vet patted the dog on the head and took it out of the room. A few minutes later he returned with a cat. The cat jumped on the table and also delicately sniffed the bird from head to foot. The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly and strolled out of the room.
The vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys and produced a bill, which he handed to the woman. The duck’s owner, still in shock, took the bill. “$150!” she cried, “$150 just to tell me my duck is dead!”
The vet shrugged, “I’m sorry. If you had just taken my word for it, the bill would have been $20, but with the Lab Report and the Cat Scan, it’s now $150.”
