Category: News

Hello everyone!

In this fifth installment of The Magic Memories let’s discuss the Classic Force. Just one aspect of it: what to do if it fails? In other words, we’ll talk outs. As you’ll see this implicitly means making it (almost) unfailing.

For the benefit of those who would like to review the sleight, here are a few sources where I have previously discussed the Classic Force:

• Book: Card College Volume 1 – Chapter 15, pp. 217 (in the updated German version its Grosse Kartenschule Band 2, pp. 313)
• Book: Stand-up Card Magic, “Classic Force Light”, pp. 65
• DVD-Download: Card College 1&2 – Personal Instruction – Lesson 16, The Force 2 (you can buy this lesson individually for a mere € 4.95 HERE)
• Book: Hidden Agenda , entries of July 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th

Welcome back.

Once you’ve understood and mastered the mechanics of the force, also its timing, and absorbed its underlying psychological principles (that’s a lot already!), you’ll find that more than most other sleights the Classic Force depends on experience, i.e. you cannot just practice it at home and in front of a mirror and camera as you could a Zarrow Shuffle or an Elmsley Count, but you’ve got to do it for real people. In Corona times this is a problem. A remedy: take a thick book, Hilliard’s Greater Magic preferred, place it near the edge of a table with the pages towards you, approach the book as if it was a spectator, and then force it/him/her the card by shoving it into its pages – you can do this sitting or standing (better!). The experience is much better than it reads.

So, once you can do that smoothly, you’ll find that the only hurdle to overcome is…fear! Yes, the fear of failing. The first and foremost way of overcoming the fear is as always: understand and practice, or as the Zen Master said:

“Before you practice, understand. Once you’ve understood, practice.”

Also, apply Ascanio’s strategy to reach mastery (see “Studying a Card Trick”, pp. 477 in Card College 2), i.e. use the technique in the context of a trick for a while, then reread and rethink the original instruction, and other instructions of the same I might add, and then retrain and apply with the new insights. Repeat until “internalization and full command” is reached (this is the step before “perfection”).

A positive aspect of the Classic Force is that its “In-flagranti Degree” is very low. In flagranti, from Latin, means being caught red-handed, in the act of doing something. To wit: the In-flagranti Degree of the Palm is very hight (degree 3 of 3), because if you’re caught with a card in your hand you have no out (well, maybe you say, “Oh, look at that, my sweaty hands, everything sticks to it…” – works in summer…). With the Classic Force, though, no problem. If it works and they say you made them take that card, they can’t prove it, and you can always say, “Oh, I wish I could do that”, or, “Nonsense, anyway, I have a 3-days-back-guarantee, you can return the card and take another one.” And now you perform another trick.

Which takes us to the core of this week’s topic, the Outs for the Classic Force (or any force that can fail).

First, if I may, and even if I may not, I’ll do it anyhow, since it’s my post and it’s free 🙂 realize that this is a big subject, a concept within a concept (reminds us of fractals, doesn’t it). Whenever I identify an idea as a concept, I open a new note in my electronic notebook, in my case that’s Evernote. This simplest way is to then make a list of all the outs you know and those you find by research (check your books, ask friends, ask the Internet, go to Behr’s Archives etc.): give it a title, and underneath describe the out in enough detail that you could send the note to someone and it would be understood. That’s a basic principle of note-taking.

Electronic notes have the advantage that you can also add a photo, a short video clip, a screen shot, a clip from the Internet, a voice message. A technique I use a lot is to add a PDF to the note. In this case I’d go to Card College 1, use a scan app (I use Readdle’s “Scanner Pro” for iOs) and take 3 photos of p. 222, 223 and 224, one after the other resulting in one PDF, not three jpgs. I can then annotate that extraction, even highlight, underline it etc. I will treat the subject of taking notes in a future post or in my Secret Newsletter, but below is a screenshot of a note for a taste. You can see it consist of text, links, and two PDF extractions, one from an old French book and one from a German magazine – the advantage of knowing six languages 🙂 My note about “Outs for the Classic Force” has close to one hundred entries 🙂 – yes, I know, I could write a book about the subject, but I won’t…

I don’t want to bore you with all those entries, so will just briefly discuss one category of outs, because, oh yes, the OUTS themselves have a taxonomy of their own – it’s really “outward simplicity hiding great complexity”, as Unamuno used to say (ya, ya, I’m repeating myself).

The category of outs I’m thinking of is “Out by Doing Another Trick”. I’m sure everyone knows that out, but here is my question to you: can you write down ten tricks you would and could do in such a situation? I mean right now, without going back to any note? In order to be able to react immediately and without apparent thinking when the force fails, have three tricks up your sleeve which you can do right away. And in order to have that, make a list of ten quick tricks, sometimes called “Quickies” in the specialized literature (magical, I mean).

Again, this is a big subject, so it deserves a note, or even a whole notebook. My current list has 92 items, however, some single items, as you can see in the screenshot below, refers to a complete publication with dozens of “quickies” e.g. Ed Marlo’s Discoveries from 1946, so the total number of tricks I’ve collected under this heading exceeds one hundred by far.

The “greenish” text is an internal link to another note, where the trick is described in detail. The “grayish” fields denote a PDF of the text or even the complete publication which contains the item.

To get you going here is a pick of ten items from my big list, for your convenience. However, I encourage you to make up your own list, based on your own repertoire and your own books, magazines and videos.

1. “Applause!”(by Marconick: the selection on top of tabled deck is bent upwards at its inner side. Both hands held on the tabletop join for a clapping, the air flipping the selection over à la “Acrobatic Card”).

2. “There is is” (from Hugard’s & Braue’s Expert Card Technique)

3. “The Question is?” (by Karrell Fox, see Card College 1, p. 81)

4. “Gymnastic Card” (production of selection à la LePaul’s “Gymnastic Aces” from his The Card Magic of Paul LePaul).

5. “Card in the Glass” (by Vanni Bossi, see Card College 3, p. 731)

6. “A Card in Hand” (by Annemann, see Card College 1, p. 133)

7. “Revelation with Benzai Slip Cut” (by John Benzais, see Card College 1, 116)

8. “Rub-a-dub-dub” (in Hugard’s & Braue’s Expert Card Technique)

9. “Gun Trick” (Peter Kane’s “Shooting Joker Production”, see Card College 3, p. 695)

10. “Spooky Revelation” (by Steve Draun, in Secrets Draun From Underground, p. 53)

Last Word (for today…)

So, without intention, this has also become a short lesson in how to take notes (to be added to what I already wrote on the subject in my Secret Newsletters #6 and Secret Newsletters #9 – access all Secret Newsletters BY CLICKING HERE. This is enough work for the next week, provided you can resist the temptations of Internet and all that new stuff publicized on a daily basis…don’t trade true progress with novelty.

Keep up the enthusiasm!

Hello everyone!

This is the 4th installment of The Magic Memories, and I thank all those who wrote in to say that they like it.

Let’s talk “Cups & Balls”. In the video clip below you will see me performing my own “Cups & Balls Opener”, which is published in my book Confidences (Hermetic Press 2012), there titled “Overture for Cups and Balls”. The video is by Giacomo Bertini, of coin magic fame, who recorded it at his “European Close-up Magic Symposium” in Milan (Italy) on NOV 10 & 11, 2012. This was a gathering that took place from 2010 to 2018 and was inspired by my own “Magic Symposium” in Torino (also Italy), which in turn was inspirited by the “31Faces North” private gathering organized by David Ben and Julie Eng, sponsored by Allan Slaight; as you can see all things connect somehow 🙂

This opener in its slender, minimalistic structure has its merits precisely in its outward simplicity that harbors great complexity, to paraphrase one of Ascanio’s favorite quotes by Miguel de Unamuno (1864 – 1936). You can simply enjoy it, or dwell a bit deeper into its internal structure by studying my thoughts exposed in Confidences. The book is out of print, but you can get one of the last copies HERE, autographed on request. However, as promised in the “Mission Statement” to The Magic Memories, this project has no commercial purpose, but I will mention the sources for the convenience of those who want a bit more. To prove that this is true, you can find the explanation of this C&B opening inside the lecture-PDF I gave you in the Magic Advent Calendar of December 7 absolutely free 🙂

To me, the epitome of a C&B routine is still Dai Vernon’s version described by Lewis Ganson in The Dai Vernon Book of Magic, and which I have thoroughly discussed in my DVD project The Dai Vernon Seminar. It is still the template on which almost all modern versions build on. Anyway, my little opening sequence leads elegantly into it, if I may say so myself, and as a bonus it pre-loads the first cup with the fourth ball, so you can go into the first vanish as clean as a whistle. This has a nice intra-personal benefit, as by “starting clean” you build self-confidence; add to this that the opening sequence itself is almost self-working and you have a truly practical way of starting a successful performance.

If you want still more on the subject, see Sam Horowitz’s fine C&B routine in the Magic Advent Calendar of December 9. I came up with my handling totally independently, so you can imagine my surprise when I read that Horowitz had an almost identical handling decades before I was even born!

Have an excellent week!

Hello everyone!

One of my books, the success of which surprised me most, is The Art of Switching Decks – A Guide for the Beginner and the Expert – it is now in its third printing, and has appeared in English, Spanish, Italian and French, with other languages in preparation. Neither me nor my publisher, at the time Hermetic Press now Penguin Magic, had expected this. Meanwhile, I have received lots of feedback from readers and found myself plenty more, so I could write another volume, or fill the next 50 installments of these The Magic Memories with deck switches. But fear not, I won’t 🙂 , well,  I might give away one of two more, if some of you insist…

A personal comment, if I may: Besides the content, I believe that the structure of the book is of great use to the discriminating reader, as it exemplifies how a single subject can be approached by first creating a taxonomy, and then trying to identify the problems specific to each category. This allows for a systematic and at the same time free-flowing creative process, which results in practical solutions, in this case feasible deck switches.

One of the categories I was most pleased with was what I dubbed the “No-switch-deck-switches” (pp. 127), i.e. procedures which would naturally motivate putting a deck in use aside, and then taking another (cold) deck. The simplicity of the concept is inverse proportional to its use in real-life performing. How this came to be is a typical example of a “Butterfly Effect”: a small event yields a far more important consequence. It started with a question someone asked Dai Vernon in his column, which made me aware that this is a category, which then started a first list, mentioned in one of my Genii columns, later expanded in Secret Agenda and Hidden Agenda (SEP 28), and eventually grew into a full-fledged chapter in The Art of Switching Decks.

Anyway, here are two more ideas.

1. The Out-of-necessity Deck Switch: After any trick that leaves the deck unusable, there is a good reason – out of necessity – to use a new one. Such tricks can be Card Stabbing, where all the cards are spilled on the floor, or a trick where all cards turn blank, or after the Razor Deck Trick, where all the cards end up cut-up. Try this for a stand-up situation: Control a selection and palm it. As a spectator shuffles the balance, you have plenty of time and cover to get the card in back-palm. Take the deck back and holding it with the hand concealing the selection in End Grip, spring the cards in the air. As the cards are falling, reach into the card shower with the obviously empty hand and produce the back-palmed card. Do a non-card trick, or tell an anecdote, then offer to perform another card miracle. Obviously, the cards being spilled all over, you produce a “new” deck..
2. Miniature Deck Switch … and Jumbo Deck: This was triggered by reading an idea by Fred Braue  in his column  «Roundabout” in Hugard’s Magic Monthly (1946), where he wrote: “Why not make up the Brainwave Deck in the small half-size cards. Explain that they were given you by Dr. Rhine of Duke University for ESP testing. For close-upping, eliminates a pack switch . . .” As you can see, this short comment already contains the concept of the “No-switch-deck-switch”, long before Vernon’s column! As a general idea, introduce a miniature deck, which is an intriguing thing to a lay audience anyway, and then perform any type of adequate trick with it. Meanwhile you put the deck in use in its case and in your pocket, from where you later extract apparently the same deck, but of course… As an analogous idea use a Jumbo Deck, maybe explaining this has been invented to make sure there is no sleight of hand involved in the proceedings. Different, but exactly the same 🙂

PS: If you don’t have the book and would like to order a copy before it goes out of print again, get it directly from Penguin Magic (free shipping worldwide), or if you want to support the author (me!) order it from my webshop (CLICK HERE). In the English edition the book comes with a free DVD that has my two-hour lecture on the subject recorded at the  Genii 75th Anniversary Convention, Orlando, Florida, October 4–6, 2012.

Hello everyone!

It is SUN 10th January 2021 and time for the Magic Memories Number 2.

In my life I’ve given quite a few interviews, and if you find this one interesting I might upload another one or two in the course of this year’s 52 Magic Memories. Those in English, of course. I say “English” because I have text, audio and video interviews in six languages, a feat so remarkable, that I’m forced to mention it myself – with apologies to Ricky Jay 🙂

Personally, I prefer written interviews, especially those where they send me the questions, and I then have time to reflect, formulate, reread and eventually release the definite version. However, there are at least two major drawbacks to this type of interview: first, it takes a hell of a lot of time on my side, second, it lacks spontaneity. The reward to the reader, though, is that you get concise and to-the-point answers (provided the interviewer and the interviewee are any good…).

A live-interview, on the other hand, might have more “babble”, the interviewee will perhaps say things he later regrets etc., BUT it is arguably more fun to listen to, and you can do so while driving a car, practicing Tabled Faros or while stuffing a capon for your next dinner invitation (if you don’t know what a capon is, do the Graved Lax taught on the Magic Advent Calendar of DEC 21 &23). And this brings us to my interview I gave for Benji and Richard and their sensational Of Sleights and Men Podcast. Frankly, I have not had the courage to listen to the lengthy chat, for similar to videos I do not like to see or listen to myself….and I’m told I’m not the only one 🙂 But I certainly had a good time chatting with these two well-prepared and competent gentlemen, and if my memory serves me well, we’ve touched upon some fascinating subjects and I gave a few not-so-stupid answers. Possibly I also gave some not-so-clever answers, for which I apologize, but at least I can claim to be always sincere, which is why I never went into politics…

The podcast is 1 hour 22 minutes long, and you can find it here:

Muttenz, SUN 3rd JAN 2021

Hello everyone…

…and Happy New Year!

The Magic Advent Calendar, which ran from December 1 to 24 in 24 installments, was quite a success, and I would like to thank all those who kindly wrote in saying that they are missing it 🙂

The facts: at its outset the post got over 3’500 views, so the statistics of the site say; towards the end it was still almost 1’500. So, assuming that figures don’t lie, here is an attempt at continuing the experiment for the year 2021 with what I’ve dubbed The Magic Memories, and this is its first installment. It will go viral every Sunday at exactly 00:07 (with occasional exceptions, this being the first one…oh, my!)

Similar to the Magic Advent Calendar it will reflect the things I’m interested in and which I believe connect in one way or another to the complex world of magic, briefly it’s the kind of things I would like to read (texts, PDFs, web-links etc.) and see (film clips). Conceptually this is similar to my agendas (Secret Agenda, Hidden Agenda  and Secret Twitter) but with the infinite possibilities of Internet.

My first contribution is a PDF with the Treatment of my first Penguin Live Video Lecture that dealt with the topic of performing card magic in a stand-up situation and which reflects pretty much the content of my homonymous book Stand-up Card Magic. A “treatment”, for those who are new to this type of thing, is a concise description of what one intends to do, in this case in the instruction video: have a quick look at it, and you’ll immediately understand. You can put this to various uses:

1. If you have the lecture as a DVD or as a download, you can use the PDF as a table of content, where you can highlight the items you like and add short or lengthy comments of your own. The app I use for this is “PDF Expert” by Readdle, but I assume that any good PDF app will allow similar functions.
2. It is a very practical way (there are always several ways, of course) of preparing for any type of performance. It is not a script, although it could be turned into one by adding an extra column where you write what you intend to say.
3. It will give you an idea of how one can run through a performance process mentally, trying to identify potential problems.

Don’t worry, this is really all very simple, and by just looking through it you will learn several things. To read and/or download the Treatment for the Penguin Live Lecture 1 – Stand-up Card Magic CLICK HERE.

To see the trailer of the first Penguin Live Lecture 1 – Stand-up Card Magic CLICK HERE.

Hope you like it!

One last thing: The Magic Memories have no commercial purpose and are just a gift to those who have a similar taste as mine. However, more often than not, the content will be related to previous studies of mine (one reason why this is called “Memories”). And many of my studies of the past 48 years (!) have resulted in some type of publication (book, lecture, video etc.). So, I will reference them for those who are interested, and if I can will even offer a promotion to help in a year that starts out as difficult as the past one. In this particular case, you can download the lecture (5 hours 25 minutes – the longest Penguin lecture ever!) by CLICKING HERE, and I think it’s a real bargain, as you don’t just get a bunch of good trick, but a complete course, making it an investment rather than an expense. If you want the physical DVD you can get a copy signed to your name (please mention on order form) directly from me HERE. And if you get both Penguin Live Lectures, I have a promotion HERE.

PS: I appreciate if you leave a positive comment and click the “Like” button, as my webmaster – my dear friend Andrea – tells me it will make me successful and rich…I don’t understand why and how, but I don’t argue with him 🙂