However, just because you’re stuck in an office all day doesn’t mean Christmas fun can’t extend to your workplace. Depending on the environment where you work, it’s certainly possible to mix holiday fun with work.  If your boss doesn’t like it, scream Scrooge in his face and blame it on the eggnog the next day.

One obvious choice for some fun at the office during the holidays is to have a party. You could have several, in fact. How about a cookie exchange party? Plan to do this at lunchtime one day, and during that block of time, everyone brings several dozen cookies they made. You have to set a particular number of cookies for everyone to bring.  Here’s how it works:  Everyone has an empty plate, they go around the table picking up cookies that look good to them and place them on their plate. If everyone brought 3 dozen cookies, say, then everyone gets to take home 3 dozen cookies. This is not a particularly unique idea, but one that brings a bit of fun into the workplace.

Keeping in mind whether or not the public visits your workplace, you might choose to decorate. Why not have a Christmas tree decorating event? Everyone brings 6 ornaments and as a group activity, everyone decorates the tree. This is a good way to build team spirit and decorate your workplace at the same time.  Sure. it’ll probably piss off the Jews in your office, but my dad’s Jewish and he got over my family decorating for Christmas.  He even still sends me money.

Don’t forget to institute a “secret Santa” event at work, where you secretly buy gifts for someone and have some type of gift exchange.

However, ever heard of a “Santa’s helper” activity? Someone in the group has to begin this on the sly. Essentially, this first person (the only one in the know about how the whole thing began) puts together a little gift. Ideally, it’s a basket with a few gift items in it. They might be decorative items, baked goods,  bath items, or whatever else seems appropriate. Attach a card saying that “Santa’s helper” dropped by and brought these items. Now the person who received the “helper’s” gift must put together a little something for someone else and – again on the sly – deliver it to the next person. It continues until everyone has received a visit from “Santa’s helper”.

Nothing brings people together like a group activity designed to help others. What if your office-mates came up with an activity designed to help people less fortunate at the holidays? You might adopt a local family and everyone in the office purchases items for that family. You might choose to purchase Christmas trees for needy families. If the public visits your office often, you might even begin a “sharing” tree and people can bring items to put under the tree for needy families or children. As a group activity, the office workers can then deliver these items to the needy.  If you did indeed scream Scrooge in your boss’s face, you’ll be the one delivering the gifts.

The particularly festive office might want to have someone come in and do a cooking demonstration. If there are enough people interested, you can hire a cook or baker to come into your office on your lunch hour and do a demonstration or class. Say you want to bake but don’t know what to bake this year. A baker can come in and demonstrate cookies or other goodies you might not have thought to make. Or someone can come in with ideas and samples for the perfect Christmas meal. These ideas are perfect for the environment where people work many hours and are quite busy but still want to do their regular cooking and baking each year.

Of course, the best thing you can do is hire entertainment for your company’s holiday party.  It’s not too late!  I still have dates open and would love to come and entertain at your office or wherever you’re having this year’s party.  Simply go to Los Angeles magician and fill out a booking request form.

For four years I taught an enrichment program at elementary schools called MatheMagic.  I know what you’re thinking, “Wow, math AND magic, that’s a recipe for pussy.”  Let me just say, teachers are freaks and I’ll leave it at that.

Basically, I taught kids K-6 how to do magic tricks based on math instead of sleight of hand.  As a result of these classes, I booked a lot of children’s magic shows.

Over time, I got too busy to continue teaching the classes.  My main business has always been high end private parties.  I book most of these events by performing public magic shows in Los Angeles at places with great clientele.

Frankly, I was also a little fried on doing these gigs.  I’ve been performing paid magic shows for kids since I was about 14.  I love the little germ ridden bastards, but I’d had enough.

With rare exception, I now pass all kids’ shows off to magician friends I know will do a great job.  This is a story about one of those exceptions.

I really like the family that hired me for this show.  I’ve done both adult parties for them as well as birthday parties for their little one.  This was my third time doing their kid’s party.

When I arrive, I find out I’m performing outside.  Here’s a tip for anybody hiring a comedian or a magician.  Outside sucks!  The acoustics suck, audience management sucks, cards blow around, props get dirty, and if I didn’t mention it, the whole thing sucks.  Many of my magic shows in Los Angeles have been outside but I rarely take these gigs, no matter the price.  That’s how much I hate performing outside.

Next, I see all of the kids are in the pool.  Once they see me, they of course scream and come running my way.  I threaten to kick them if they come near me and that holds them at bay.

When I go to where I’m supposed to perform, the chairs are set up in a perfect ‘L’ shape.  Why not just have me perform in the round?  Here’s another tip if you’re hiring a comedian or a magician.  We hate people behind us or on the extreme sides.

As a comedian I want an audience close together and all in front of me so I can easily connect with everybody.  Obviously, magic is harder to see if some people are in front of you and others are to the side.  For instance, if I make a playing card visibly change from one to another only half the audience will see the effect.

I tell the soggy children to dry off while I set up for the show.  They take this to mean they should jump back in the pool.  I try to stop them, to no avail.

There are about four or five parents just staring at me.  They make no effort to help. Frankly, they look beaten down.  Their faces are shell shocked and zombified.  I realize I’m officially the babysitter.

All of the kids at the party, with the exception of one or two, are ten year old girls.  Trying to get them to do anything is like herding cats.  Only, cats don’t scream in each other’s ears for no apparent reason.

I know a lot of these kids because they were in my class at one time or another.  Also, I’ve been doing magic shows in Los Angeles a long time and you’d be surprised at what a big, yet small city it is.  Funny enough, one parent asks why I don’t teach MatheMagic anymore, as shrill, wet children run around us, nearly knocking over a table.  After he asks, he kind of nods before I answer like, “Never mind, I understand.”

Once the show is set up, I get the chairs arranged in two rows in front of me, and I’m ready to start.  I want to perform new material because these kids have seen me so many times before.

My first effect goes great.  The response is huge, it’s new, and I’m on my way to doing a great show.

I hate to say that any magic trick is easy to do.  Even the easiest effect requires a great presentation, showmanship, and a lot of other things that take years to learn.

With that said, the effect I’m about to perform is the easiest trick in the world.  I’ve been performing it for about nine months and I love it.  It’s a torn and restored newspaper trick, except the paper is already torn up.

The magician that teaches the effect is named Mark Mason.  He carefully explains the workings and points out that if you do this one thing wrong, the trick won’t work.

Seriously, I couldn’t believe he bothered to explain that one thing.  It’s very obvious and you’d have to be an idiot to mess this effect up.

Normally, I would reach into my case and pull out pieces of torn up newspaper one by one.  I make up news stories about the birthday girl and other ridiculous stuff.  Each piece of paper gets me a bunch of laughs.

On this occasion, I pull out one of the pieces of newspaper and all of the girls start screaming.  I turn it over to see what’s on the paper and it’s nothing weird.  It’s a woman in a bathing suit.  It’s a real newspaper so she isn’t naked or anything.  She didn’t look like this:

However, now that I’ve turned the piece of paper over to see what they were screaming about, they start screaming even louder. So, of course, I turn it back over to see what’s on that side.  It turns out to be a guy in a bathing suit.

Without giving away the secret of the trick, it just so happens that this bathing suit piece of paper has to be in a particular place for everything to work.  I’m in this crazy cycle of turning the pieces of newspaper back and forth with the girls screaming at different levels each time I turn it over.

I’ve got to be honest, I was thrown.  It’s been a long time, and I don’t know what did it.  Maybe it was the shrill course of screaming, or perhaps the lack of parental supervision, but I got flustered.

In my haste, I actually do the one thing that messes up the trick.  That’s right; the one thing I didn’t think was even worth explaining.  The one thing I said was so obvious only an idiot would mess it up.

Normally, I take all of the little pieces of newspaper and in one swift movement the newspaper is restored.

Now, I gather the little pieces together and the newspaper sort of restores and the audience starts to clap.  Then, everything suddenly turns into confetti and there’s this kind of, “Awwww” sound.  It’s like they started to see a miracle and instead got garbage.

I make some jokes about the trick and how I really don’t know what I’m doing.  Who knows what I’m saying but they’re laughing.  I make the person recording me promise not to put it up on YouTube and move on.

The rest of the show goes great and the kids take off to smash a pinata.

It was an awesome event.  After I was done, the party moved to the front yard and this guy had these beautiful sheep herding dogs doing amazing stuff.

For instance, he hid a bunch of objects around the yard and then he would hold up a sign with a letter on it.  If the letter was M, the dog would find the toy monkey that was hidden.

The most amazing thing was how well the dogs listened.  To be honest, as I watched this man’s incredible show and the kids ran around like lunatics, I thought, “Wow, those dogs behave better than the children.”

The hardest move to make is the approach.  Just take a look at guys as they get their nerves up to approach women.  The fact that they’re rarely sober when they finally do stagger over proves my point.

Since the approach scares people so much, it’s no surprise this fear keeps people from taking action.  Obviously, nothing happens until you take action.

By the way, the approach starts when you go looking for restaurants and bars to perform in.  Again, that’s the reason there are so few professional magicians working these gigs.  Most people don’t want to walk into a restaurant, ask for the job, try to explain they don’t do kids shows, get looked at like a weirdo, and then get rejected.  You’d think they’d be glad you didn’t want to be around children.

Anyway, you get my point.  A lot of magicians want restaurant or bar gigs, but they don’t want to approach these places and face the hassle.  What they’re forgetting is when they do get hired at a restaurant, the entire job is the approach.

Only now, instead of being rejected by the manager of the Stevie Nicks Fajita Roundup, you get to endure the vacant stares of European tourists that think every American approaching them is going to pull a gun and ask for their three Euros.

Don’t get me wrong, all of this isn’t as bad as it seems.  It’s probably way worse than you think.  Still, it’s a fun job and most people are super cool.  Think about it this way.

If you have an office job and don’t like somebody you work with, you have to see him every day.  When you’re a restaurant magician, you may have to put up with entertaining lawyers, republicans, and other unsavory types, but then they leave.  Well, they may leave.  In my case, I just described the regulars (and my friends) at one of my bar gigs.  See, magic brings everybody together.

Since the approach is the hardest part for most people, I wanted to share some of my thoughts on how you can make doing it better.  By better, I mean less painful and more success with people that want to see your magic as opposed to telling you to they’d prefer to watch the hockey playoffs on TV (even though its July).

Like everything, a good approach doesn’t sound canned.  There is nothing creepier than a sales guy that delivers a canned script to you in person.  They always have a far off stare that reminds me of the kids in Children of the Corn.

Just like your show, you have to learn to be yourself.  Being yourself means being honest.  As a matter of fact, a good approach will blend into the opening effect and the rest of your show seamlessly.  Something I was guilty of years ago was “stepping on stage” when I started the magic.

For example, I would walk up to a table being myself and when I started in with the tricks, I suddenly “stepped on stage” and became someone else.  It wasn’t like I was doing a character, I was just scripted.  I also insisted everybody call me Malakai.

As I found my voice, which is just another way of saying I got comfortable enough to be myself on stage, my shows and my approach became more honest.  When you achieve a high level of stage comfort and can be yourself, everything becomes way easier.  In fact, it’s so easy, you wonder why you made things so hard on yourself.

I’ve never been able to bullshit an audience.  For instance, when I work The Magic Castle, I do four shows a night for seven nights in a row.  I improvise a lot and when I first started at The Castle, I would do a show, and if something in particular got a big laugh, I’d remember it for the next show.

However, when I repeated the line, it never worked again.  I had people watch for this phenomenon and they agreed I was performing the joke exactly the same with the exact the same wording, yet it wouldn’t work the second time.  The audience could sense my lack of enthusiasm and sincerity.

That’s not to say I couldn’t use the line ever again.  What often happens is in the heat of battle weeks later, I’ll remember what I said as renewed passion and it gets a laugh.  The bottom line is that it’s not the words, it’s the honesty of my intent at the time I say the words.

You may be wondering what this has to do with approaching tables at restaurants.  If you recall, I mentioned that being honest in your approach and being honest in your show will make the two indistinguishable.  By being yourself and by being honest with how you feel presently, as opposed to canning enthusiasm you once had, you can accomplish this goal.

For example, I may be working one of my steady restaurant gigs and the place is slow.  I don’t want to just stand around doing nothing but it’s possible the few people in the restaurant don’t seem very approachable.  Now, there’s a difference between not very approachable and not approachable at all.  I’d rather do nothing than try to interrupt a couple fighting with a baby crying at the table.

Assuming the tables are approachable but not the most desirable, I may walk up and say, “Hi, my name is Zach.  I’m the house magician.  Now, I know you want me to leave, and believe me, I want to.  However, it’s slow in here and if the manager doesn’t see me working, I may be a victim of the recession.  Here’s my first trick whether you like it or not.”

That opening is actually pretty close to what I’ve used.  It’s always gotten huge laughs because I’m very charming and talented.  You probably aren’t, so I don’t suggest you take my opening.  Not only will you get in trouble, you’ll be labeled a hack and beaten with a tube sock filled with bars of soap.  The kind of tube sock with the colored bands you pulled up real high around your knee as a child of the 80′s.  I never did that even when the other kids thought it was cool.  I knew, even then, it was a lame look.

Actually, the real reason you shouldn’t take my opening is because it wouldn’t be honest for you.  I don’t use that opening all of the time.  I only use it when I really feel that way.

One of the mistakes a lot of beginning restaurant magicians make is to have memorized openings.  You don’t need to memorize what you’re going to say when you approach the table.  All you have to do is be a normal person walking up and introducing yourself and explaining what you do.  Now, I understand that being a normal person and being a magician rarely go together.  Do your best to see how human beings behave and learn impressions.

Sincerely, I believe the sooner you can get comfortable performing and being honest, the faster you will achieve happiness and success.  Your shows will be effortless because you simply express the truth as you see it in your present moment with charm and a little magic.  Remember, be yourself when you approach the table and continue to be yourself throughout your show and people will love you for it; unless of course, you’re a jerk.