Sidewalk Shuffle

Back in the day “Sidewalk Shuffle”, created by Martin Lewis, was one of my staples. I think I first saw it performed by Doug Henning on one of his TV specials around 1977.
When ever I performed “Sidewalk Shuffle” I always followed it up with “What’s Next”. (Affectionately referred to by my buddy and me as “Dots Like Hell”). A genuine slice of magical cheese to be sure. But it plays so well after the “Shuffle” that I can’t imagine not performing these two effects together. So that’s what was on the menu for this Magic Friday. Sidewalk Shuffle followed by “Dots”.
The funny thing is, for years I was performing Sidewalk Shuffle all wrong. I followed the directions and my handling was correct. No problem there. My timing was fine and people were amused and baffled. So what was I doing wrong? It was my performance. I “looked” like an amateur. It never dawned on me until recently that my performance of the effect was amateurish. Last year God jerked a knot in my tail and set me right on a number of issues. This led to the re-ignition of my passion for magic. Fortunately, my thinking now is more objective than it was 20 years ago. (We may define “objective” as not tequila infused).
One of the problems with my performing was that I didn’t trust myself. And it must have been obvious. Without realizing it I was not performing the effect. I was watching it. While holding up the jumbo cards I would hold them a bit to the side so I could also see what was happening. Although nobody criticized me for it, I must have looked ridiculous at worst and unconfident at best. Nobody enjoys a trepidatious(?) performer. No, an accomplished and professional performer would be confident to the degree that there would be no need to even glance at the cards.
It’s simple really. It is the essence of Dai Vernon’s greatest gift to magic. Naturalness. If I were really telling a story about being hustled in the big city I would be focused on the story and the audience, not the cards. And so, this would be the only way for me to perform the effect. I had trouble remembering the initial set up, but once I got started, it all came back to me like a flash. (Muscle memory is a wonderful thing)! After a few hours rehearsing, I was ready to perform. What a joy it is to perform with confidence! Instead of obsessing over whether everything was on track or not, I was enjoying the faces of my audiences. This is far more entertaining to me than watching my own hands! As an added bonus, being focused on the spectators’ reactions makes it astronomically easier to fine tune the timing. During the 3rd performance there was a malfunction. Operator error actually. During the second phase I replaced the blank card on the bottom instead of the top. This of course led to a misalignment that could not be surreptitiously repaired by the time I realized something was wrong. So I was forced to stop right there and jump right into “Dots Like Hell”. That audience knew that something was wrong,
but I performed the silly dots trick with so much enthusiasm that when I was finished the audience all but forgot my slip up and was satisfied with another “Magic Friday”. The rest of the performances that day went as smoothly as the first two. I’m actually happy I goofed. It reminded me that although there is nothing like performing with confidence, one should never lose sight of the invisible hyper-awareness necessary for performing quality sleight-of-hand. Balance Grasshopper! This is another example of the practical lessons I have been learning since August. And the real beauty of it is, I have a willing and skeptical audience in front of whom I can work out these sorts of kinks. It’s the perfect symbiotic relationship. They get 10 to 15 minutes of free entertainment every Friday and I get the opportunity to test, perform and refine my skills as I build a quality repertoire. I should have done this 20 years ago. But I was not ready. I believe God had something else in mind for me between then and now. Oh yes. But that is a whole other story…

Tales From the Book of Thoth

As mentioned last week, “The Princess, the Sword, the Jewels & Everything” came about from working on “Cops & Robbers” (Expert Card Technique by Jean Hugard) and reading Stephen Minch’s “The Book of Thoth”. The result was a unique and successful bit of “bizarre” magic, if you will. That being done, I found two effects in Minch’s book that appealed to me. One is called “Towering Prediction” and the other is “Lunar Fating”. I decided I would perform both for “Magic Friday”.

“Lunar Fating” is a very pretty effect. At first I passed it over since it deals with a top stock. I don't remember ever performing a card effect involving a stock. It always seemed like too much preparation and too little flexibility. But I was intrigued by the effect and the aesthetically pleasing visual at the conclusion. (Not to mention an unexpected revelation). Minch tells us this effect is an adaptation of
Harry Lorayne’s “Coincidently Yours” from his book “Close-Up Card Magic”. But in order to feel confident in the effect I had to work on my false shuffling. I’ve never been great at false shuffles. That’s because I never spent enough time to make one look natural and convincing. I remembered there was a beautiful false riffle shuffle described in “Stars of Magic”. This is part of Vernon’s legendary “Triumph” routine. Adapting this shuffle to tarot cards was not difficult. I also polished a fantastic false overhand shuffle I learned from Ian Kendall in his marvelous series “Basic Training” in MUM. (Dec. 2009). And now, the greatest secret I have learned in magic. I learned it years ago, but I never tire of being reminded of it. Give no attention to the slight. Broadcast no indication that something important is happening. Casualness wins the day. And that is what I did. I briefly showed the tarot cards as I mentioned they were the same ones we used last week. (Which were thoroughly examined at that time). I false riffle shuffled 2 or 3 times (and a few running cuts) very casually as I explained that I discovered something unusual about the cards and called for two helpers. Once my helpers were in place I momentarily asked them if they had their psychic mojo on etc. During this short by-play I (again casually) did 2 false overhand shuffles while looking at my helpers. My goal was to make it look like I was toying with the deck before beginning the trick. I must have been successful because this routine played BIG. I am so glad to have put aside my prejudgment of stock routines. As a result I have acquired a beautiful routine that leaves a very strong impression.

The other effect was “Towering Prediction”. It’s an old principle. Nine cards are laid out and the spectators make a series of jumps. One card is removed after each jump. Finally, if instructions are followed, everyone ends up on the same card. I saw Kevin Spencer perform this last summer in a wonderful stage show. Spencer’s version involved travel destinations. It was extremely well presented and played powerfully. I think I also remember David Copperfield using this principle on one of his television specials in the ‘80’s. Since I have a “Smart Board” in my classroom, I scanned in some tarot cards a made a “PowerPoint” with the cards fading out after each jump. It looked great. I even worked it out so each class would wind up at the end on a different place and card than the other classes. (Teenagers talk to each other).

Results: I expected “Towering Prediction” to be the big winner today but I was wrong. All audiences unanimously preferred “Lunar Fating”. I understand why, it’s a beautiful routine, but I really expected my audiences to be totally blown away by “Towering Prediction”. It was successful, but not as strong as I thought it would be. I must rethink my presentation. I believe some people suspected that the effect was mathematical in nature. I need to find a way to make the number of jumps seem more random. One possible solution might be to present the effect in the light that although everyone has endless choices of directions and combinations of jumps, everyone will (by psychic means) choose the very same paths. It’s worth a try.
To conclude, Stephen Minch’s wonderful little book “The Book of Thoth” has provided/inspired at least 3 very successful bits of professional level magic. In fact, there is one more effect from that book I am looking at. Until then…

The Princess, the Sword, the Jewels & Everything

It’s been said that great scientists do their most powerful work before their 30th birthday. Einstein himself will tell you that science is first and foremost a creative and imaginative endeavor. So a real concern I had as I threw myself headlong back into magic last summer was whether or not I still had the imagination and creativity I once enjoyed.

As is the case with most magicians, when I was a teenager I spent countless hours alone in my room coming up with all sorts magical ideas and solutions. Most of them of course were impractical at best. But what fun! There were even a couple that served me well. One of these that stand out in my mind is something I performed for as long as I had doves. After producing a dove from a handful of multi-colored ribbons, the ribbons were turned white and the dove, rainbow colored. Oh, the many hours spent painting a live dove with food coloring. There is probably nothing that looks more like mental illness than a magician working out a solution to a problem! At any rate, this bit of business was only a small part of a 12 minute choreographed routine from back in the day. But people who saw me perform all those years ago remember this more than anything else I did.



Today’s magic Friday sampling was an effect I had unintentionally created over the past two weeks or so. To begin, several months ago I started working on “Cops and Robbers” from “Expert Card Technique” by Jean Hugard and Frederick Braue. This is a beautiful effect with a very strong visual component. Four kings are placed face down on the table. A selected card is cut into the deck. The deck is dropped onto the face down kings. The deck is immediately spread and the kings are now face up in the middle of the deck with the chosen card sandwiched between them. I wound up putting the trick on the back burner as I was having difficulty with on of the sleights. Then last week, quite by accident, I ran across a book by Stephen Minch I purchased 20 years ago. It’s a 45-page book of card magic using Tarot cards
called “The Book of Thoth”. I had completely forgotten that I owned this book. As I read through the book a thought came to me. “Why not do Cops and Robbers with Tarot cards?” As soon as I began working on it I decided I wanted a double climax ending. This called for an entirely different handling and forced me to clean up my top change. Soon the thing took on a life of its own and looked nothing like “Cops & Robbers”. Here’s the effect.



A tarot deck is given for examination and mixing. Upon receiving the deck the magician removes (among others) the 4 Knight cards. The patter revolves around a super thief known only as “The Magician”. The performer searches the deck and produces “The Magician”. This card is shown and buried into the deck. The four knights are then placed in different parts of the deck which is then cut one time. A spectator freely selects a card from the deck and marks it. The chosen card is placed face down in front of the spectator and a small sword is placed on top of it. The performer removes the top card from the deck, shows it and explains that it is really “The Magician” in disguise. This card is then cut back into the deck. After a magic pass or gesture with the sword, the deck is spread. The knights are seen to have magically gathered together and reversed face up in the face down deck. Between the 4 face up knights is a face down card. (Presumably, the magician). This prisoner card is turned over to reveal… the spectator’s chosen and marked card! The sword is removed from the spectator’s card on the table, the spectator’s card is turned over revealing that it has changed into… The Magician.


There’s more to it than that really. The Tarot cards with their 14th century artwork facilitate story telling. So that’s what I did. Using some kid’s craft beads for jewels and other cards to represent a king, a princess and a dark tower the story really wrote itself. But was the effect itself direct? Magic should always be uncomplicated and direct, right? On the other hand telling a story using magic is nothing new. I’ve heard it called “bizarre” magic. Whatever it’s called, performing magic within the context of a story makes sense to me. It takes the pressure off the audience, and the focus off the “cleverness” of the magician. The story becomes the star and the audience gets to help tell it. Everybody wins. The problem is I was concerned about the magic getting lost in the story telling. I didn’t want
the “magical moment” to get watered down. I was also doubtful that the story I wrote for the effect would be interesting enough to create suspense and hold the audience’s attention. I decided the only way to find the answer was to go with my gut and try it out.



The first performance, in my view, was weakly presented. Also, the “Magician” failed to show up at the end as he was supposed to. I think he may have gotten lost during a triple lift. The second performance was much better. One knight got lost during the “facing” so only three knights showed up back at the castle with the prisoner. This had no ill effect the magic and actually added a bit of comedy…”The Knight of Cups must have lost a drinking contest with a serving wench. I don’t think we’ll be seeing him anytime soon”. During the 3rd performance I just plain forgot to face the knights all together. Everything else worked fine though. I just lost a nice visual component. Even though these first 3 performances came up a little short, there was enthusiastic applause when I reached “The End”. The 4th and 5th performances were dynamite! Everything came together as I hoped. After each performance I did something I had never done before. I polled my classes. I really wanted to know what they thought. So I asked them to rate the effect on a scale of one to ten. They were very honest and told me what they liked about it and what would have made it better. I didn’t think to poll the first group but the second group scored the routine at 8.8. The group that I forgot to face the knights for awarded me an average score of 6.8. I thought that was fair. The last two groups were all 9’s and 10’s! Some of them remarked that they really enjoyed the story! I felt like I had come up with a decent presentation but it played much stronger than I expected. Especially toward the end of the day once I worked out the rough spots got into the rhythm of the effect.



I’m so excited that most of my audience ranked my own effect right up there with the classics I've been performing. However I would not want to set everything I do to a full story. That would be contrived and probably pretty boring. But it reminds me that even the most simple and direct effects should have a recognizable beginning, middle and end. And best of all I’ve got a unique and powerful new effect that proves to me that there’s still some creativity left in these old bones.

Mentalosity

For weeks, no, months I have been working on Vernon’s “3 Ball Transposition”. The more I work on this effect the more I have to keep postponing it from “Magic Friday”. The progress continues but it’s going to be a while yet before I am satisfied with my ability in the handling and presentation.


I looked over the effects on my “working on” list and everything was either not yet performable or just didn’t appeal to me for one reason or another. I noticed there was only one mental/psychic effect highlighted in blue in my repertoire spreadsheet. (Blue = successfully performed and ready at will, Green = work in progress, Red = would like to add to repertoire). I thought it would be worthwhile to add another mental effect. But what? There’s only one place to turn in times like this. Tarbell. About 26 years ago my Dad gave me all seven books in the Tarbell course as a present. Did I mention I've got the world's greatest Dad? These books are an absolute goldmine.



In Tarbell #5 I found a brilliant center tear bit credited to none other than Dai Vernon. The word genius is carelessly thrown around these days but in my humble view, Dai Vernon meets all criteria needed for that category of intellect.

Anyway, as much as I loved the routine, I wanted something bigger. Something that involved multiple participants. I certainly didn’t want to tear up and burn 3 pieces of paper one at a time. As I was rolling things over in my mind I thought of a nice “Epic Board” performance I saw a while back. I like the “one ahead” effect but didn’t want to mess around with a board. So after a bit of thought I worked up a handling using envelopes instead of a board. The next day it was off to Office Depot for envelopes, glue sticks, notepads etc.


The result was an Epic Prediction type effect. Instead of writing the predictions on an Epic Board, I wrote them one at a time on a pad and placed each of them in a numbered envelope. The three prediction envelopes in turn went into a larger manila envelope. Instead of using a selected card as one of the predictions I used that Vernon center tear business from Tarbell #5. An added bonus to this handling is that a spectator can remove and open the prediction envelopes. Something that cannot be done with an "Epic Board".



The audiences were all blown away by the 10 to 15 minute routine. I call this effect "Epic Three Envelope Prediction". Although I've never heard of anyone doing an "Epic" type routine in this way, I'm sure I'm not the first to think of it. The most enjoyable part of performing this routine was "writing" the name of the departed spirit on a piece of paper while reading the flames of the center tear. When the performance was over some said it was the best thing I’ve performed for them so far. A very successful day!

However, a couple of people didn’t realize what had happened. Once they were hit on the head by a neighbor and told the predictions were written on the display (by a 4th student) AFTER the predictions were sealed in the envelope, they too were mightily impressed. There was a valuable lesson here for me. That night when I got home the mailman had kindly delivered this month’s MUM. (The magazine of The Society of American Magicians).

In it, columnist Charles Reynolds expounds on several crucial elements every successful magician knows. One of these elements is the importance of never letting the audience lose track of the effect…

“We cannot expect an audience to react to a magical effect
If it is not clear in their minds what the effect is, or if the
action leading up to that effect (the “moment of magic”)
is confusing and unclear.”

Wow! This was precisely the information I needed to be reminded of! The older I get the more convinced I am that there are no coincidences. There are instead growth opportunities all around us. The hard part is remaining aware and open to them when they present themselves.