At night when I’m hanging out with the family watching TV, usually I’m dinking around with a deck of cards. Frequently I’m working on a fancy cut, I try to be able to do a little bit of the cardistry so the kids at magic conventions think I’m less of a dinosaur. Sometimes I work on new card sleights, or just try to keep the rust off of old ones.
The last week or so I’ve been playing with the side steal. It’s a move I’ve done for a long time and can do it, but I don’t do it exceptionally. When I do it in a live performance, it’s an attitude thing, versus a technique thing. Usually when I do it, I use Scotty York‘s method for the side jog, which automatically side jogs the card.
Sometimes I do the proper side steal technique where you push the card into a squared deck, steal the card and either palm it, or move it to the top. I’ve been working on my technique to get it into full palm using proper technique the last week. It’s starting to look a lot better, I still have a studder between the side jog and full palm. I’m working to smooth that out. It’ll take time…
Tag: side steal
Even More Cracker Action!
One of the great things about working at fairs is that you have a lot of chances to perform and work on new material. This trick with a cracker that I’ve written about here over the last couple of days has progressed nicely. A big change I made is that instead of making the cracker … Continue reading “Even More Cracker Action!”
One of the great things about working at fairs is that you have a lot of chances to perform and work on new material. This trick with a cracker that I’ve written about here over the last couple of days has progressed nicely.
A big change I made is that instead of making the cracker reappear in an impossible location, I’m restoring the broken cracker. After I catch the cracker and smash it, I’m putting the crumbs into an envelope and offer it to the kid as a prize. I then rip open the envelope and dump out a restored cracker! I’m still doing the restored cracker with the wrong name, but this restoration phase is new.
The other change is that I was doing a pass to bring the signed cracker to the top. Doing a classic pass with crackers is really hard to do invisibly, so I’m doing a side steal. A side steal is sooo much easier with a cracker than a card!
The final change was switching from a Ritz Cracker to a Saltine Cracker. A saltine is less greasy and the signature shows up better on the white cracker.
All of these small changes are starting to add up a bigger results.