Theseus – review

theseus by nathan colwell

Over the summer I drove through Chicago and stopped at Magic Inc and picked up Theseus by Nathan Colwell. The book is on a single trick, but has multiple methods and a bit about the journey that Nathan took to get to the different solutions to figure out the different methods.

The effect is a card is signed and torn into four pieces. Each piece is replaced by a turn corner from four different cards. When the four replaced pieces of card are turned over, they are the original signed card.

I really like the premise of the trick. It’s based on the Ship of Theseus thought problem. Essentially it’s if you took all of the parts of a ship and replaced them, is it the same ship? It’s a hell of a premise for a card transposition and great presentational connection that Nathan made!

The methods are good, and there are many of them. Just a heads up, this isn’t an self working trick to do, you will need to do some sleight of hand. That said the methods aren’t that hard if you’re not afraid to put in a little bit of work. Honestly it’s not that hard to palm a quarter of a card.

My big complaint with the book is that Nathan uses a lot of non standard techniques and unless you already know them or own the original source material, you’d have to spend and additional couple of hundred dollars on books/videos to correctly learn each method correctly. An example of this is you end up in “master palm” position. If you don’t know the palm, you don’t know if you’re doing it correctly. Nathan does give a credits and where to find the info, however a quick description of the master palm position would be helpful.

With the lack of complete descriptions considered, I still think the premise of the trick is great and if it appeals to you, get the book. There’s enough info in the book to kinda figure out the moves you don’t know, or at least get from point a to point b. That’ll give you a feel for that particular method and you can decide to invest in the source material for the moves you don’t know.

-Louie

Choices….

Sometimes you find things you weren’t expecting when you are searching for other things on the internet. I ended up finding a video clip of me performing an early version of the final version of my “invisible deck routine“, which I call Choices

Here it is:

It’s not really an invisible deck, but that’s how I describe the routine to other magicians as that gives them an easy idea of what the effect is. Before I go further, yes I understand the trick would be stronger if I said, “Name a card” then it was reversed. HOWEVER, that’s not what I’m going for. First of all, I’m trying to get a little bit more time out of the routine.

The video above starts about 45 seconds into the routine, so that gives me a routine that’s about 4 minutes. It also allows me to involve more than a couple people from the audience. The trick also reveals some personal information about me (that’s at the beginning of the routine that’s not in the video). The routine is a lot more personal than, “I had a dream someone picked a card and when I work up I flipped it over“.

I’m happy with how this routine has progressed since that was recorded in October.
-Louie

Appearing Canes…

A year or two ago someone got the idea of marketing an appearing cane as a portable Bo Staff to be used as a self defense or martial arts tool. I’m sure someone made a ton of money on it as well…assuming they didn’t get a lot of people returning them and asking for their money back.

Visually it looks great for what they are selling it as, but the reality is different.

This brings me a social media magician’s group I’m in where someone is complaining about “exposure” and it ruining the trick for them. First of all, I honestly don’t think many people are fooled by the appearing cane. It’s a second of eye candy, but not the strongest magic trick. If you showed someone the appearing cane, then asked them how they thought it would work, I’m betting they’d say it must be collapsible.

As for the exposure part of it, the appearing cane was invented in 1947 by Russ Walsh, so it’s 75 years old. If you’re hanging onto the exclusiveness of a 75 year old piece of technology where probably hundreds of thousands have been sold worldwide and that resembles nothing that exists in the real world. That style of cane really hasn’t been used in my lifetime. I wonder if you put an expanded appearing cane in front of a kid without context, just set it on the table and asked them what it is, I’m betting you won’t hear “cane”.

Honestly, I think it’s up to the creator of the trick to get publicly upset first. Once they’ve voiced their opinion, you can jump on the bandwagon. If the creator has been dead for 50 years (like Rush Walsh is, the trick is legally (in the USA) in the public domain and not a “secret”.

I would say 99% of appearing canes don’t fit within the acts they are used in. It fits James Dimmare‘s act:

James Dimmare’s act is very stylized and it fits. Just because you wear a tail coat, that doesn’t automatically mean an appearing cane fits your show. You’ll notice that Lance Burton‘s act has no appearing or vanishing canes:

Look at what you do in the your and why you do it. Are you doing the appearing cane because it’s an easy way to get a reaction, or does it actually move your show forward?
-Louie

Historical Vanishing Birdcage Videos…

I was digging around on the British Pathe website and realized I’ve never searched it for the Vanishing Birdcage. I came up with a few videos of it. Here’s Howard De Courcy doing the cage:

And here’s Will Goldston doing it:

Both Will and Howard are using the older style rectangle cages. These are the ones that have the “spoon” sleeve guard. They both use the same vanish motions, and I wonder if the reason for that is because that’s how you had to do it to make the vanish look clean with that older style cage?

Here’s an unknown magician doing the cage:

That’s with an Abbott’s cage and you’ll notice the vanishing motion is different than the first two videos. I may have to hook up one of my older style cages and give it a try…
-Louie

Camera’s on…

One of the greatest challenges in magic is getting audiences in virtual shows to turn on their cameras. In the pic below I’m doing performing for about 50 people, but only a handful have their camera’s on.

There are a lot of reasons why people don’t turn their camera’s on, and I honestly don’t blame anyone who keeps their camera off. There are some solutions, for example some ticketed shows have a requirement that all cameras are on. This isn’t an option when you’re hired by someone…I guess you could put that in as a condition in your contract, but I bet it would be a hard sell for a corporate meeting.

The first step is simply asking for people to turn their cameras on. That’s the single step you can take that will yield the most cameras to turn on. In my experience the more I interact with people the more cameras turn on. Once someone figures out a way to get 90% of the camera’s on without requiring it, these shows will be soo much more rockin!
-Louie

The Moisture Festival Podcast – Scramble James

In this episode we hit the road to the Rose City (Portland) and interview the super positive Nate “Scramble” James from Circus Luminescence. Scramble is one half of the group and discusses how the group started from a chance encounter and also the successes and failures of the group throughout the years. He also talks to us about why they decided doing glow in the dark juggling was the way to go. A fun interview with one of the more unique juggling acts you will see at the Moisture Festival. 

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Pin Thru SD Card…

We live in a really cool time right now. I got an invite by Tommy Burnett to his lecture for IBM Ring 26 and was able to pop in and watch it while I was running at the gym! One of the the silver linings of the pandemic is that sometimes these Zoom magic meetings and lectures can be attended while you’re doing other things, like working out.

After the lecture they had their club meeting and I got to do the SD card trick I’m working on. That’s another silver lining of the pandemic, is that through Zoom you are able to get an audience almost instantly if you want to try out new ideas. Here’s my first time doing the Pin Thru SD Card trick (sorry, for some reason my screen recorder didn’t pick up my audio)

It’s always nice to get your first live performance out of the way. It’s a good way to shake the nerves of doing the trick and give you some confidence…or it’ll be a train wreck and show you the weak spots in the trick.

If you’re one of the holdouts not embracing Zoom after almost two years, you really should learn to use and perform on it. It’s a great learning tool.
-Louie

Erasing Memory…

Sometimes playing with an idea without a real goal in mind will lead to something unexpected. Originally my first idea using and SD card was pen thru SD card (pen thru bill). That’s really an unoriginal idea, it’s just putting the pen thru something unusual, but doesn’t really contribute anything to the effect.

Well, last night I came up with an idea, where the effect is essentially pen thru SD card, but different. Here’s what I came up with:

From a creative standpoint it’s a much more interesting solution to penetrating the SD card with another object. This effect was inspired by the Flexible Mirror trick and the old Paper Coin Fold trick. Method wise, it’s different from the Paper Coin Fold, which was fun to figure out. The shape of the SD card makes the method work, where if it was done with a coin, you really couldn’t do the move. Sometimes changing the prop will open the door to a new method and that’s why play is an important part of creating!
-Louie

Printing Memory…

The idea of using SD cards for magic tricks is interesting to me. I’m not sure why, it’s basically a coin trick, but there’s something about the prop that I find interesting. I think that it’s potentially fragile and has value. The value can be either monetary or sentimental, and usually both.

Designed a SD card for my 3D printer

and printed them out:

There are a few different ones. Regular SD card shaped and then the ones with the holes could hold micro SD cards in the slots. I’m not sure what I want to do with the ones that will hold micro SD cards, I’m thinking a 16gb card turns into two micro 8gb cards.

I’ve got another fun idea, that’s sort of like an “omni” SD card. You mention that memories are contained on them. Someone from the audience mentions a topic that someone would take pics of. Let’s say they choose “Pets”. The SD card turns clear, but inside there’s a the image of a cat.

Now the fun part, playing until I find an idea I like!
-Louie

Memory Magic…

sd card

This morning I was doing the writing I do in the mornings and started playing with the idea of using an SD card for magic. I quick Google search makes it seem like no one has really worked on much with them. The SD cards are essentially coins, with them being about the diameter of a half dollar.

My initial idea was to do a Pen Thru SD Card as all of the props are related at office things. There’s really no new territory to explore there, it’s either a gimmicked pen or SD card and a pretty basic idea. However that idea got my brain going, so it did have its place.

One of the ideas I liked was having a 32 gb SD card, magically split it into two 16 gb cards, then finally split one into two 8 gb SD cards.

Another idea was doing a color changing SD card or a transposition with one black and one blue card.

Then I started thinking about making novelty SD cards with my 3D printer. Since they are essentially plastic, it would be easy to make a jumbo one, or a stretched one, or whatever.

Well…I have something new to play with.

-Louie