Tricks – Page 101 – MagicShow.Tips

Routining The Writing…

The last couple of days I’ve been writing about putting together a script for the Ring on Rubber Band trick that I’ve been working on. Yesterday I wrote a bunch of jokes, and today I’m going to try to put them together in some sort of a logical way.

“This is the most expensive trick I do. The rubber band cost me 37 cents, but the ring cost me half of everything I own. The ring represents the 18 years I’ve been married and the a rubber band which memorializes the one time I bought broccoli ”

Show ring and rubber band. The rubber band is around your left index and thumb. Point to the sides of the rubber band as you say:

“This rubber band has two sides, just like congress…a left side and tea party”

“I will push the ring through each side of the rubber band defying the restraining order from the laws of physics.”

Push the ring through the first side of the rubber band

“Through one side…that’s the easy side. It’s the bunny slope of the rubber band. The second side is the double black diamond. Three men have died trying this next part, but they all had preexisting conditions… and latex allergies.”

Push the ring through the second side of the rubber band.

Pull the ring off the rubber band one side at a time.

“and that’s how I wrote my wedding off on my taxes!”

Alright the routine looks like more of a routine now, and not a bunch of random jokes. The routine now runs about a minute. That’s way better than the 12-15 seconds before I started writing for it.

The jokes still need some tweaking. The congress joke needs a better punchline, and the double black diamond needs a better word/name in its place. I also need something in between the the two penetration phases, where the ring is over both sides of the rubber band, but before I pull it off.

Writing for Ring and Rubber Band…

In yesterday’s blog post I started writing about putting together a script for the Ring on Rubber Band routine that I’m working on. We’re really starting at nothing and trying to come up with something to say, otherwise the routine is 12 seconds long.

Let’s start by making some associations to the props.

Ring:
-wedding
-fashion
-circle
-gold
-marriage
-expensive
-cheap

Rubber Band
-office supply
-latex (or not latex)
-holds things together
-yellow (or whatever color it is)
-rubber band gun
-circle
-snap

Using that list, how about I introduce the props by saying, “a ring which represents the 18 years I’ve been married and the a rubber band which memorializes the one time I bought broccoli (asparagus?)” I think I prefer saying “bought broccoli” as the alliteration sound funnier in my head.

Let’s keep writing and see what comes up:

“Just like congress, this rubber band has two sides, a left side and tea party”

“I will push the ring through each side of the rubber band defying the restraining order from the laws of physics.”

“This trick is even more dangerous once you know that I have a latex allergy.”

“The best part is that I can write off my wedding on my taxes”

“The rubber band will jump through the ring like a tiger through a flaming hoop in the circus”

“Through one side…that’s the easy side. It’s the bunny slope of the rubber band. The second side is the double black diamond. Three men have died trying this, but they all had latex allergies.”

“Beyonce’s favorite trick”
Do the hand dance move from the Put a Ring on it Song

“This is probably the most expensive trick I do. The rubber band cost me 37 cents, but the ring cost me half of everything I own.”

“I tried to do this with the governor’s ring, but they escorted me out saying I had to have an appointment”

“I showed this trick to Pete Rose and when I told him what was going to happen he said, “I BET you can’t do that”…”

For the quick little writing session, I wrote down everything I thought of. I didn’t censor any ideas because I thought they were bad. Bad ideas may lead to a good idea, so they stay. Obviously I won’t use all of the jokes and I’ll have to arrange them into an order that makes sense. That’s a job for tomorrow.

Ring on Rubber Band…

The trick I’m working on is Ring on Rubber Band. I’ve got the technical end of Russ Niedzwiecki’s Pinnacle routine figure out. I had to make some adaptions to how he handle the ring and band. In Russ’s routine he holds the ring and band at belly button height. I want to move it up closer to my face, so a couple of the hand positions needed to be tweaked.

Now that I can technically do the routine, I need to figure out what to say. One way to do this is start by writing what you have to say, then figuring out how to make it funny. Here’s what I need to say and the important actions that accompany them:

"I've got a ring and a rubber band."

Show ring in right hand and rubber band looped around the index finger and thumb of your left hand.

"The ring will pass through each side of the rubber band, one side at a time. The pass back through each side of the band"

Ring passes through each side to have the rubber band in the middle of it, then passes back through to be completely free of the rubber band

There’s really not much to say right now, and it’s clear to me that the routine needs a presentational hook, and some sort of ending. That may be a joke at the end, but simply going onto the rubber band and then off lacks an ending.

In tomorrow’s post I’ll start to write some things to say.

Relearing Zarrow…

Sometimes it feels like I’m perpetually cleaning my office. Yesterday I came across the DVD The Zarrow Shuffle by Herb Zarrow. I watched the very beginning and realized that I learned to do this wrong. What I’m doing looks fine, but they first way the Herb demonstrates looks way better!

When I learned to do the shuffle, it was in the context of the trick Triumph. For the Zarrow Shuffle, I slip cut one card. I used that method for other tricks as a false shuffle. If you slip cut a block, it’s soo much more deceptive than with a single card. Also Herb’s way of jogging the cards is much more deceptive than pushing them out with your index fingers.

I’m glad I came across this, but now I’ve got a challenge ahead of me. I’ve got to undo 25+ years of the way that I’ve been doing it. The changes are fairly minor, so hopefully it won’t be too much of a pain.

Recently I did this unlearning and relearning process with how I get a card injogged. I figured out a way when I was a kid by reading something wrong and it worked for me. However I relearned to do it Jerry Andrus‘s way because it looks better.

Don’t be afraid to unlearn thing if there’s a new (to you) way of doing it that looks or works better than what you were doing before. I know it’s a pain to spend time basically learning to do something you can already do, but I think it’s the little things like that that make someone an artist.

No Contact Roving Magic…

It’s a strange world we’re working in. I was just hired to do roving magic, and in a pre-covid world that’s not strange, however it is in the covid world. That means I need to on some no-contact close up magic. The booker wants something that resembles traditional roving, not small “street style” shows, so I will be working out of my pockets with no table or sound system.

Before you get on me about working during the pandemic, there’s a few things I feel I should mention. Way back in March when cities and states first started putting in regulations I decided that I was going to go by what the local health department where the venue is located says is OK (read the post here). Doing a live, in person show is allowed where the venue is located, and there are some restrictions that I’ll have to follow. I’m not required to do a no contact, however that’s what I’m planning on doing.

Looking at the restrictions, I can still do a lot of my normal roving set that is kept in my pockets. However I need to work on a couple things to add to my normal set. I’m going to add some rubber band tricks. They are small, but can play from a short distance. I’ve done rubber band tricks in the past, so putting them back in isn’t too hard.

The one trick I’m adding is ring on rubber band. In the past I’ve played with the one in Michael Ammar’s book, as well as the one in Thomas Blomberg’s book. I just downloaded Pinnacle by Russ Niedzwiecki and have Pi: Ring on Band by Michael Scanzello on it’s way to me. I think I can put together a workable sequence, it just needs to be a few phase. This is more to have as filler if I need to add some time to a set.

Cocktail Demo…

On Monday night I was a guest on the IBM’s facebook live where I played some online games with Billy Hsueh and Amy Nichols. Before the game, I did a cocktail demo. You can watch it here:

There’s a couple of magic tricks in the demo. I like using a loaded cloth to produce a bottle that’s not loaded in the cloth, then producing the bottle in the cloth and finally producing a third bottle, that’s not in the cloth. All three bottles use different methods, and it’s a fun little sequence.

After having done a few of these demos I’m starting to have little tricks that I like and keep falling back on. I think it’s good to have my “go to” tricks, but I still need to be creating new stuff for them.

Quad-Triumph…

Here’s a video of the Triumph shuffle sequence that I wrote about yesterday. The view is my view, so you can see an angle of the cards that the audience wouldn’t normally get to see.

I kinda like the four shuffles where you flip half over each time, but I still don’t think it’s better than the standard Triumph routine that most people do.

Less Than Triumphant…

Way back in March I was playing with using the old card reveal where you drop the deck on the table and the top card flips over as a clean up for a Triumph type effect.
You can read the post here
It’s an interesting way to clean up a reversed card on top of the deck. You get a little trick that happens that does the dirty work for you.

Last night I was shuffling some cards and came up with a Triumph sequence that left you in position to do the drop clean up. Here’s the sequence:

Card is selected and controlled to the top
Zarrow shuffle with half face up and half face down (selection remains on top)
Strip the face down bottom half to the right, flip them face up. Riffle shuffle by running about 10 cards with your left hand, then shuffling with both hands, leaving about 10 or more cards of the right hands stack to fall on top of the left hands stack. This will put the face down selection about 10 or more cards from the top of a deck that’s face up (the audience thinks they are mixed face up into face down).
Strip the top half to the left, flip them over (face down card will show) and do a Zarrow Shuffle.
Strip the bottom card (face down cards) the right and shuffle the card together. Have the left hand’s packet’s top card be the top card of the shuffled deck.

The order from from the top down is a face down card, then the rest of the deck face up with a selection face down somewhere in the middle of the deck.
Do the drop flip over reveal thing to flip over the top card of the deck.
Spread them out to show all of the cards are now facing the same direction except for their selection.

I’m going to be 100% clear that I think this sequence isn’t the best way to do a this style of trick and is inferior to the common method of a Zarrow Shuffle, Daryl’s Triumph display (Don’t know the name of it) and then openly flipping over half the deck.

It is a sequence that gets me into a position where I can do the drop flip over thingy. It was also a fun exercise to try to figure out how to get the cards where I needed them to be.

Zoom Angle…

Recently I was hanging out with a friend on Zoom and he did Goshman’s Cards Thru Newspaper. This is a fantastic trick and I think a really good trick for Zoom due to the static camera angle. It makes everything easy to see and laid out well (unless you’re watching from a cellphone, like I was).

Exploring trick that aren’t right for a live show for your virtual show is one of the very fun things about right now. Personally I’m doing things I’ve never really been able to do before, it’s great!

Servante!!

The switch of tables from my smaller table top to a larger one that’s mounted on a speaker stand is done. First I added the new, larger dice holder and today I put the servante on it. I 3d printed some brackets to hold the wire frame of the servante to the table.

Here’s how it looks from the floor looking up:

Finally here’s what it looks like from where I stand behind the table:

In my live, in person show, I don’t do any performing on the table top. It’s simply a place to set things. However for virtual shows, action happens on the table top. I really love having a servante and it kinda makes me want to put a topit in all of my coats for when we get back to in person shows. It’s super handy!