Torn Corner…

Personally I dislike using a torn corner to identify a card or bill. It’s very clunky compared to having is signed and you lose the punch of the item reappearing and having it immediately identifiable.

Ok, that’s out of the way, now I’m doing to explain why I’m playing with a trick with a torn corner.

A long time ago when Gaeton Bloom’s Intersessor trick came out, I thought it would lend itself to a trick in Tarbell where a card jumps out of the deck when the end is riffled. I never did it because $50 to play with an idea that I would probably never use was a bit steep. Recently I found a super deal on a used Intersessor gimmick and bought it.

Here’s me trying out the idea before my show and my comments on it:

I think I’m going to switch it up and use a corner switch or a scored duplicate card instead of the Intersessor gimmick. That will solve having to ditch the gimmick. With scored card or corner switch, it will allow me to use a bigger tear which will let me do a bigger tear and get a bigger jump of the card.

Five Card Surprise…

Here’s another packet trick that I got from a collection of magic that I’m revising. Today it’s Five Card Surprise, and there was not creator listed on the packaging. It’s sort of like an illogical princess card trick.

Here’s the video of me doing it the original way as written, then doing a revised version for a real audience:

This trick suffers from trying to make it easy to do. What I mean by that is the card selection is you simply telling them what card to take. I think it not being a choice weakens the trick a lot. The simple addition of a force of the card (any force) greatly improves the trick.

Cheap Vanishing Birdcages…

People still shoot me notes asking questions about my Take Up Reel. One of the questions I get asked a lot is, “will it work with the vanishing birdcages from India?

The answer is yes, here’s a video of me doing it with one of them:

Pretty much if you can vanish it with a traditional wrist to wrist birdcage pull, then you can vanish it with my take up reel!

Four Card Monte…

Recently I ended up with a collection of magic tricks and in that collection there were a bunch of packet tricks. Most weren’t very good, but that got me thinking about trying to improve them. The first one that I tried was called 4 Card Monte, and there are a lot of packet tricks with this title, so don’t judge them all by this one.

Here’s the effect as written in the instructions, then the effect reworked by me:

The trick as written is pretty bad, and doesn’t make much sense with the addition of a fifth card at the end. I think my version where there’s only four cards shown the whole time makes more sense. The addition of the kicker ending really adds a punctuation to the end.

One thing I think that’s important when you get a magic trick is to not discard because you don’t like the trick as written. Play with it and see if you can make it work!

Magic Jam..

I’m cleaning out the computer and found a video of a magic jam from a while ago when my state was briefly open for people to hang out before closing again. Jamming in person is the way to go, you can creatively play off of each other a lot more efferently than over Zoom.

In the video there are a couple of cool tricks. The trick with the arrow drawn on a card and it makes the coin move was interesting to figure out. Then the ketchup packet to ketchup filled portion cup looked great!

If you don’t jam with other magicians, you are really missing out on fun, and working on your creativity!

Mr Smiley gets a hat

With COVID restrictions loosening up, we were able to get in a little magic jam session!

One of the things that we were playing with was some little hats that I found that are being sold as novelty thumb warmers. We combined it with Jonathan Friedman’s Mr Smiley Face trick and here’s the result:

It’s a fun little trick. It’s not the best trick in the world, but a fun little thing.

Three Coin Con…

My whole life I’ve been fascinated by monte type effects. When I was a teenager I had a trick called Three Coin Con by Eddie Gibson. It was a shell game style routine that used three coins (one was a different color than the other two) and three identical covers. Here’s Paul Daniels doing it:

The trick is a bit of a fooler, it’s got some great magical moments along with the “monte” presentational hook.

The set I had as a kid has long been lost, and recently I’ve been searching for a set. Up until about a week ago, I could only find them in European coins, but I just found a set on ebay and very excited to start doing it again! I’ve got a 8 day run at a fair in about a week, hopefully with a bit of dedicated practice I can start doing it there!

Mixed Feelings…

Sometimes I see a magic trick and I don’t know how I feel about it. The routine below is one of them, I’ll let you watch it first:

First of all, let me say that I am not the demographic he’s going for, so factor that into my opinion of it.

Here’s what it has going for it, it’s 100% on message. All of the props are themed and it doesn’t veer away from the message. If I was booking for a large religious event, I would definitely consider this. It’s big and fills the stage.

What I personally don’t like is his almost animatronic performance of it. The clip may be taken out of context, so there may be a reason why he’s doing it like that. In my opinion there’s nothing real happening, he’s not trying to connect with me. It could be a movie on a screen, not a live performance. Once again, it’s out of context and maybe that’s what it’s for.

I love seeing things that make me think about what I like or don’t like in a performance. It makes me look at my show with a more critical eye.

Reverse Three Card Monte

About six month ago I came across a principle that would allow me to do a reverse three card monte, or I guess it’s technically a divination effect. I rip off three corners of a playing card, so two have indexes and one doesn’t. They are mixed up by a spectator with my back turned and I always know where the odd one is (non index corner). It’s a good puzzle, but not a good trick. It’s missing a lot, mostly an ending. I think it’s a good 3 am magic trick at a magician’s convention.

Here’s me doing it for another magician:

I’m not sure what I want to do with this. I’ve put some energy into trying to make it more than “you mix them and I tell you which one it is“, however I’m thinking that might be what it’s destined to be.

The Great Carazini

The other day my friend and great magician Terry Godfrey shared a video of The Great Carazini on his social media. There’s a lot I really love about this, but first here’s the video:

The act is well done and ad clearly something he’s done before. It’s character driven and doesn’t use a lot big props. The props he uses would play in a big theater or smaller cabaret. If he was doing multiple cabaret shows in a night, he could easily be popping around down with it as the set up is pretty minimal. For thing that had more set up (like the silks from mouth) he could have multiples set up.

The big thing is that the entire act frames his face. The act is about him and how he reacts to the strange things that happen. The whole act is great, I love it!