Dancing On The Ceiling

As a thirteen year old I did a birthday party for a young girl in my neighborhood. I did 20th century silks using a Tommy Windsor type popcorn box,

Chinese sticks purchased from The Coney Island Faker himself, Al Flosso, (I remember after demonstrating the trick for me I said “Pretty good”. To which he replied, “What do you mean pretty good!?)
I bought them right away. They served me well for many years! At the party I also did Zombie, and Card on Ceiling as taught by Bruce Elliot in “Great Secrets of the Master Magicians”. Good effect, easy sleights. Since then I occasionally performed Card on Ceiling but not that often. I suppose I didn’t want to have to play “help the magician pick up his cards”. Later I saw Whit Hayden perform it with the deck bound with rubber bands. (I regret I did not get to know Whit better while we lived in the same town!). Every time I met Whit he was kind, friendly and always professional. One class act guy! Not to mention, one of the very finest ring routines you'll ever see!
Since then I’ve seen other magicians perform Card on Ceiling in simular ways. I didn’t perform it much anymore. I could do a few nice card sleights but those paramount (and difficult) ones still eluded me. After seeing it performed by real professionals I felt like I was wearing training wheels and lost interest in performing the effect.
Since my return to magic last August, Card on Ceiling has been on my "must become proficient with" list. I chose it not only because of it’s powerful impact but also because it serves as another vehicle for the classic, professional quality sleights I've been working so hard to achieve. I knew my CP was up to scratch (could still use improvement)
and now it was time to test my one handed TP. So last night while sitting in the car while my kids were having piano lessons, I hatched an idea for a plot. The script pretty much wrote itself. I wrote the misdirection onto the script for the crucial moments and the story line was something people could relate to and allowed for plenty of humor. I felt like I had a gem! I got to school early and beat the devil out of a brand new deck throwing it at the ceiling.
The first performance was just lame. My fault. The tricked worked (Sort of. More on that later). But my delivery was crapola. The next performance was a little better. By the 5th and 6th performance the drama and humor were on track. And after throwing the deck at the ceiling the audience gasped and broke into applause as the signed card came floating down. Floating Down? Yes floating down. You see the acoustic tile ceiling would not do. But I did have a 5 or 6 inch wide beam across the ceiling I was going for. Being a computer lab it was also quite cold in the room which had a negative effect on some very old and cheap material I was using. Am I disappointed?
Not a wit sir! First, the audience did not expect to see a card stuck to the ceiling so there was no let down. (So to speak) The performances (except for the first one) were interesting and produced laughter. When the deck hit the ceiling the card released itself and (because of the extra weight) floated down flat and face up making it easy to pluck from the air and display with triumph. But the main reason I am grinning ear to ear tonight is because 6 times I successfully pulled off the CP and one-handed TP semi-surrounded by a demanding and skeptical audience. After months and months of practice I can now add these powerful weapons to my arsenal. Now I’m going to have to peel myself off the ceiling!

Friday the 13th

How appropriate! Today’s performances were really strange. I’ve been working on “Expansion of Texture” from “The Dai Vernon Book of Magic”. Over 100 years ago T. Nelson Downs credits this effect to Jose Antenor de Gayo. aka: L'homme Masque. It is also generally accepted that it was none other than de Gayo that taught the "Downs Palm" to Downs himself. Imagine that. The effect is also described in "Modern Coin Magic" by JB Bobo as "Silver or Copper Extraction". But it was Dai Vernon that improved the effect with his brilliance in simplicity and naturalness.
I really like the audible component of the effect. In fact, I changed the handling just a bit to capitalize on this aspect of the routine.

I have also been working on David Roth’s copper/silver routine.
I thought I’d do both of these effects today. I have been practicing the palm to palm change for months. I worked the Copper/Silver routine until I had it down. Or so I thought. Like many people, I get nervous when I perform. This usually goes away after a few minutes or until I start getting positive audience feedback. Anyway, I didn’t count on sweaty palms. The English Penny kept slipping during the effect. There were a couple of audible clicks (which I clumsily covered by making it seem like the coin struck my wedding band). After two less than thrilling performances of Copper/Silver I decided to cut it from the day’s program and just do the “Expansion of Texture” routine. Three groups seemed to accept the performance of “Expansion” as adequate. Another group was bored with it while the 3rd group was flabbergasted by it! Thank goodness for that! I've never seen the effect performed so at least now I know the effect CAN look as good to an audience as I imagined it would. The challenge is to be consistent about it.

As for the under-whelming response of the other groups, the common denominator is me, so I can only blame myself. I will spend time this weekend analyzing the effect and my performance of it. And more practice of course. I believe in the effect and I am confident I will be able to perform it beautifully and consistently. I am determined to make it my own and perform the routine as well as it can possibly be done. It just requires more work.

Note to self: This is new. In the past I would have been discouraged by a limp performance and given up on an effect. But now I am simply resolved to whip the effect into submission until it begs for mercy. Where was this determination when I was young?

As for Copper/Silver, I will try writing my own script for it and continue working on the palm to plam change and practicing it ad nauseam. To the degree that even the sweatiest palms will hold fast to the little buggers.

RING & STRING

Another magic Friday has come and gone. And so has another success. This week it was Jim Tyler’s Ring and String Routine. I started working on this last summer. I put it down for some reason and picked it back up a couple weeks ago. Last week I didn’t feel it was ready to perform so I did my own handling of Card Warp instead. This gave me another week to smooth out the Ring and String Routine. Good thing too. I think Mr. Tyler would have approved of my performance. Confident and smooth for the most part. At the start of the 3rd performance I handed the string to a football player to examine. While testing the string’s strength, he snapped off a third of it! Oh well, one must continue nonplused. As I was performing with a shorter string than usual the (borrowed) ring got a little hung up during the 1st and 3rd stages. This caused a very sleight pause instead of the normal flowing movement. No exposure though. The audience may have suspected a move was afoot, but there was no loss of surprise at revelation. I kept things moving and did not lose any entertainment value. The rest of the performances were smooth and successful. I love this routine. There are heaps of fun and magical moments in it. I still need to iron out some of the timing in order to fully exploit these moments. Tyler’s Ring and String is a joy to perform and a great audience participation piece. It was hard for me to learn, but now I will always have a length of string with me for that moment of opportunity.