When I was a teenager I was given a La Galeria -The Gallery of Merlin vanishing birdcage that had a couple of broken bars. I used that for a long time and struggled through the broken bar occasionally snagging on my sleeve. Then about 12years ago I had someone fix the bars, and I used that cage until I got an Owen vanishing bird cage.
Recently one of the La Galeria -The Gallery of Merlin vanishing bird cages popped up for sale and I bought it!
The solder and rivets on the bars of this one appear to be in much better condition that the one I’ve have for 30+ years. I’m happy to add this to my collection and can’t wait for it to arrive! -Louie
With social media eating up content, I’m always looking for things that aren’t from my show to use. I personally don’t want to burn material from my show on social media. Recently when I was in Cartagena, Columbia there was a parrot at the port, so I did a trick for it:
It’s not the best trick in the world, but it was easy content to create and fun. More importantly, it’s not my act, so I’m not burning material.
Also, this parrot was kind of a card trick master. I put the shuffled deck down and he flipped over the four aces right away. I wish we had recorded that, but it wasn’t planned and caught us off guard!
Keep an eye out for fun moments that you can use for social media videos!
In the 1980’s and 1990’s Mike Bornstein had ads in magic magazines for his money magic. I found a set of his lecture notes and have been going through them. One of the tricks that I though was interesting was this torn and restored bill:
While the method now is fairly standard for torn and restored things, what makes his interesting is the tearing sequence. It’s backwards from how most are done. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse, but different!
Finding unexpected things is one the fun thing about all these old lecture notes!
Yesterday I posted about using the miracle pad by Mike Giles. In a funny little coincidence I was having breakfast with David Williamson and he brought up Michael Giles! I’m assuming Mike Giles and Michael Giles are the same person. That led me to looking him up, and it looks like he was primarily an illusionist.
Here’s a few video clips of him doing illusions:
It also looks like he had at least one close up magic release:
I always love it when something takes me down a rabbit hole of learning about a magician that I didn’t know anything about!
I’ve been playing with some shuffle sequences. You can see one of them at this blog post from a few days ago called Red / Black Separation. In a natural extension of that shuffle sequence I came up with what I’m calling A Shuffle and a Cut to Order.
I like the progressive nature of this routine where the cards go from shuffled, to separated by color to finally them all in new deck order! The trick has three different beats to it (but not three effects) which I like and each builds upon the previous. The other night thing about this over the previous Red/Black Separation is that this is much easier to do!
Many years ago there were several matrix effects using pennies. I think Bruce Kalver and Steve Duschek both sold versions. If I’m remembering correctly, both used steel pennies. I was cleaning up and found some copper plated steel pennies and wanted to put together a little coin assembly. I don’t think it’s technically a matrix as the coins aren’t in a square.
What I like about this is that it has an ending, while the ending isn’t very magical, it’s an ending and it has a tag line. As for method, there’s really nothing new here.
Sometimes “working” magicians are pieces of sh*t. I posted a video of a trick with bills on TikTok, and Joe Rodiguez (Jrod Illusions) decides to post how he thinks it works. That’s part of TikTok’s game with magic videos for amateur magicians and I understand that and am OK with that. But when a supposed working magician exposes stuff, it’s makes me want to post on all of their videos how they do stuff. I won’t because that gives them engagement, which is TikTok gold.
Ok, you’ve seen the video, now here’s his comment:
Here’s the problem with his comment…he’s 100% wrong. Like a beginner magician should know there are no magnets involved in the trick…and he calls himself a professional. It really makes me wonder about the quality of the material of his show based on the lack of knowledge displayed in that comment. While I haven’t seen his show, I would suspect it’s pretty much garbage tricks done poorly by someone who doesn’t understand magic. I could be wrong, and that’s just my opinion.
A couple of months ago I published Elmsley Plus count in Vanish Magazine. This is a way to do a face up Elmsley Count and not show the same card twice. It’s a little tweak that will make tricks where you have to pass the first and fourth card of the count as different cards hold up better on video.
If you post a video there and there’s a discrepancy like showing two of the same card when there shouldn’t be two of them, people will mention that in the comments. The routine above passed the TikTok test with no one noticing the method behind the Elmsley Plus count. I think the reason it works is that the count shows exactly what the audience thinks they should be seeing.
Is using a gaffed card to remove the discrepancy in an Elmsley Count worth it? For recorded video, YES! In a live show I don’t think it’s necessary.
The new hot trick right now is the Atomic Deck, which is an ACAAN, here’s the trailer, then I’ll give you my thoughts on it:
When I watched the trailer and the first thing that jumped out at me was this:
That’s a very specific statement, not “NO ROUGH AND SMOOTH”, so that instantly tells me that it’s roughed, just not by traditional methods. I don’t know how I feel about that in its marketing as it’s technically correct, but very misleading.
That aside, the trailer above leaves out something very important, this trick requires a phone or computer. Of course this part of the trick is completely left out of the trailer. It is mentioned in the ad copy, so it’s only sorta deceptive in its omission from the video.
With the current issues that Inject 2 is having, relying on app or website isn’t a good long term solution. The site is only good as long as the deck is selling and they’re paying for the hosting. You’re relying on something outside of your control for the trick to work.
OK, not to the effect, it’s not a true ACAAN in my opinion. You have multiple cards named and multiple numbers and then you essentially pick the combination that will work the best. So instead of Any Card at Any Number, it’s more of a “Selected Card from a Selected Group of Cards at a Number from a Selected Group of Numbers“. That’s a huge thing that to me distances this from the Berglas Effect.
It should look like this: Spectator names a card and a number. The cards are dealt and the card is at that number!
Here’s a video of me doing ACAAN at a gig that I was just supposed to be playing the organ at, however someone requested I do a magic trick.
