Magical Blog

Its a case of more is less with this one I’m afraid.

Paul Harris Art of Astonishment had an effect called Twilight Angels which you’ll see on numerous videos on You-Tube. Its a great effect and I intended to buy it when I turned up at Davenports this week.

I actually got the latest version of it called Naked Angels on Bikes which has an extra gimmick which allows you to perform the effect in a spectators hands and also makes it easier for walk about.

Luckily you do get the gimmick to be able to do the version of Twilight Angels you’ll see on the net. Its a great trick and the transmogrification of the card using a mirror is just spot on. I love it to bits so feel more than happy with my purchase.

However the extra gimmick I am not so sure about – Yep the effect happens in the spectators hands but not as visibly as with the mirror. It also screams gimmick and, with that gimmick being in the spectators hands, you are going to have to be really on the ball to make sure they don’t just start examining the props mid way through the trick to see whats happening.

So Twilight Angels – Great

Naked Angels – Not convinced.

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Well, whilst the hordes descended on Blackpool yesterday I went the other way. I had some work to do In London so that gave me an opportunity to pop into Davenports and pick up a few things.

Not for me the new fangled tat that gets chucked out left right and centre- these were more in the nature of stocking up on some classics.:

So the first up was a new set of Skinners Ultimate 3 card monte. I love this trick and can spend hours just doing it for myself ( oooh madam !) but the indices get dirty very quickly because of the specific handling. Still a new set every now and then aint going to bankrupt me and this trick is worth it.

Then it was John Kennedys Mind Power Deck. I’ve seen a version done by Derren Brown and that was really impressive although I was under no illusion it would be quite as effortless as he made it out to be. It was a great moment when an astounded Stephen Fry told him to “Fuck Off” when Derren performed it for him.

Having played around with it for a while and done the usual sad twat piece of practicing it on the wife and kids I have to say that I am really going to enjoy this one. It’ll take some refining and audience management but it will be worth it. Here’s how it played :

Son No 1 ( Entirely trusting and looking to be entertained) : “Look at the Deck and focus on one card . Done it. Think it over in your own mind focus on the number and suit .. so you may think for instance “4 of Spades, 4 of Spades, 4 of Spades.” Hit !!!

Reaction was priceless. “Thats just wrong, I know its a trick but you can’t have just done that…how?”

Son No 2 ( Smart alec….feins a cool disinterest but when I am not here eagerly raids my magic cupboard and plays with the tricks.)

“Card…focus…4 of spades, 4 of spades, etc etc” ….Looks at me laughs and says ” Yes I am thinking of something and no its not the 4 of spades”. Go into the questioning and hit after two No’s. He starts quibbling about the questioning then thinks about the odds of me getting his card. Then gets seriously impressed. I’ve hidden the deck for the time being .

Wife : In a thoroughly bad mood. Not playing at all. Says I am guessing by a process of elimination and Eastenders is on TV in a moment; “Get on with it”. I say its only a trick and if her TV show is more important then to go and “fucking watch her tv show”. She says she “fucking will”. We call it a draw.

Fantastic trick.

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Despite running the mass marketing machine that is Sankey Magic, Jay Sankey is still an incredibly humble guy.

I know this because the latest marketing email from Sankey includes this :

“Jay is one of the most humble people I have ever known. I was shocked, because of his success and notoriety, to find him so down-to-earth. He never takes anything for granted and is extremely appreciative of what he has and who he has become.”-Mike Skutt

So Canadians don’t do irony either.

Still we can’t ignore the opinion of Mr Skutt – as he and Mr Sankey have produced some notable products not least of which is this fantastic collaboration.

I was going to comment on some of the free material that Sankey now offers as viewable lessons on his site. These are generally items that have appeared on previous DVD collections and I think that most of them have been tat.

However I have had my opinion rather reversed by this weeks lesson on an effect called Recurrency which is I think is really very very good. I probably need to learn to see the wood for the trees with Sankey and ignore the tat, the ridiculous and pathetic “humour” redolent of a somebody who isn’t entirely all there , and his awful smugness. If I could do that there is some real creativity lurking in the morass of crud.

Heave yourself over to Sankey Magic to have a look at Recurrency.

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You know that there are some folk in the past (including myself) who have had a rather negative stance to some of the goings on at magics Big Green Monster.

Still can’t say I am entirely at peace with he place but I do have to say that, over time, I have come to know where to go in there to have a pretty enjoyable experience.

Particularly fond of the crowd who gather around “Not Very Magical Still” threads and some of the stuff ( a lot of it in fact) that gets posted in “You Ought to be in Pictures) is great.

But there are still the odd folk in there who wind me up something rotten. Its usually the self important or arrogant folk..idiots I can generally cope with.

So, by way of venting without getting too personal, I offer this little competition – to be played in your own minds, to see if you can guess which Cafe regular this particular fictional character most closely resembles.

Don’t go naming them on here – if you get it , have a quiet little chuckle at how similar they are to their fictional counterpart.

Nasty sniping over !!!!

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Just having a little fun at the moment practising my cups and balls technique…I’m gotten to slightly above average.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a huge fan of most things you might call classical magic. I thing many of them are patently obvious or painfully embarrassing – the appearing cane gets a great laugh on a night out with friends however ( just be careful bouncers don’t regard it as a concealed weapon).

But the cups and balls I like….and the reason…the load at the end…which I think is great magical moment and a more than adequate pay off for people having sat through you maniplulating (in a fairly obvious way) one little ball from one cup to another.

So my technique is to do a few jiggles with the little balls in and then get the final load in before people become comatose.

Witness this video – both magicians are good…one cups and balls lasts asbout 3.5 mins one 4.5…I could feel myself nodding off on both of them.

What a philistine hey.

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How ???

I mean HOWWWWWW!!!!

Oh my God!!!

WOW: WOW : WOW : WOW: WOW !!!!!!!

I can’t believe this is being sold so cheaply either…WOW WOW WOW!!!!

http://papercranemagic.com/crush.htm

Deep Breaths Deep Breathes.

Sorry, I lost if for a bit there as sheer astoundedness assaulted my brain .

It was just so…but wait , whats this :

http://itricks.com/store/2009/12/event-horizon/

Holeee Crap !!!OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG !!!!

WTF !!!!!!

These people have supernatural powers I’m telling ya.

Call the JREF !!!

OMG OMG OMG !!!!

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The musings over at the Cafe on the upcoming “Little Man” trick by Paul Harris had me digging out the only Art of Astonishment book I have of his..volume 1. And then surprisingly I realised that I hadn’t posted my thoughts on it…like you care !!!

So my thoughts:

The humour
The “unleash the moment” spiel.
The “Art of Astonishment” spiel .

Is in my view hippyish sounding, pretentious, bullshitting, noxious shite.

So having got that out of the way :

Positives: The ever present , “entertain your spectator, make them part of it, don’t make them uncomfortable, don’t be a smart alec”, message really needs to be rammed home to those F$$!**%* losers out there that insist on “Frying” people.

For all my bile about the “unleash the moment” spew I do understand the underlying message but don’t think it is delivered too well and I don’t need the crappy rambling humour in every trick description.

The tricks themeselves are hits and notso hits but there are some very good things in there and don’t underestimate any of them. I almost passed over “unshuffling Rebcca” as being a tad too simplistic and and obvious until I tried it out on a canny spectator who insisted on microscopically examining every card after the effect ( its gimmick free) because they were totally gob-smacked as to what had just happened.

Again Unshuffling Rebecca is opened with two unnecessary paragraphs of “humour” and this space could usefully have ben taken up with some more hints on the effect e.g. how to not be revealing too much when you are riffle shuffling the deck. And thats another thing. You get the broad idea on here on the trick but it doesn’t exactly go into minute detail on every aspect so you need to know your magic – its a book for the Intermediate – that in itself is good news as an awful lot of the stuff out there is beginner level or worse.

Don’t regret getting this at all, there are some great thoughts in there, some very nice tricks and you see a really creative guy at play. Not so eager to get the other books because I am not enthused overly by his communication methods, but maybe one day I’ll “get it”.

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I found an old episode of Happy Days called “The Magic Show” on You Tube today.

In it virtually all the cast found an excuse to do a magic trick as part of the plot.

What should be a humiliation for all magicians who think they are a bit smarter than the average bear is that even Ralph and Potsy ( the shows resident imbeciles) were shown to be able to do magic tricks.

We really are the lowest of the low …sigh.

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Well I saw the first of the Event shows this week. It just shows that I might have been a tad busy at the day job in that I never even got wind of the show until Friday night when my kids were talking about the lottery prediction on the Wednesday night.

So essentially we had a 10 minute segment on Wednesday night where Derren “predicted” the winning lottery numbers and then for Fridays show we were exhorted to tune in to see how he did it.

Well, like many of his TV shows compared to the stage shows, this was largely pants.

Out in the big bad world between Wednesday & Friday people had analysed how he had done it and come up with a pretty good explanation for it. Tuning in on Friday what they got was a few more tricks dressed up in the usual psychobabble to try and persuade us that automatic writing and Deep Math was the answer. Nobody bought it. They had had time outside of Derrens undoubted showmanship skills to get their own thoughts in order so actually his usual approach came across as an insult.

The various online forums have been awash with people calling him a charlatan and a liar ( a mentalist lying, really!!) and I think this is largely Derrens fault for misunderstanding and probably underestimating his audience.

Be interesting to see if he can get himself out of this one , whether there is a deeper plan (no there isn’t) or whether this is a gross miscalculation that could cost him dear.

Would still see him live though.

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Look at the new effect/pamphlet from Ben Harris…Crossroads.

I can’t complain about the advertising on this one it is patently obvious what it is and we are told by Ben that it is nothing new but still, encouraged by the usual “download” suspects, the ignoramuses, who lap up everything and think of nothing, are ready with their dosh.

What appears to be being sold is an effect whereby you can force a spectator to pick a card (using at least some equivoque) and that card isn’t in a deck of cards which the spectator has had in their hand since the start of the effect. Miracle !!!!

Except for the fact that you are effectively just selling a force and a negative find aren’t you. Surely the biggest magic imbecile in the world could think of a way to narrow down a spectators choice of card and then for the spectator NOT to find that card in a deck.

Apparently not and apparently there is big money to be made if I decide to sell people my tried and tested routine on which way round to wear your thumb tip.

Ben shows towards the end of this demo another way to reveal the card they thought of. Again big gasps of amazement which show me that these so-called magicians are just lazy so and so’s who cannot pay attention for one second. Its obvious whats happened here – its also obvious that this reveal would be fairly impractical…well no to some it isn’t that obvious.

Morons with money.

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