Magic Advent Calendar – DECEMBER 12

Knoff Hoff is not misspelled, but alludes to the English term “know-how”, of course, spelled as a speaker of German would pronounce it – this is considered amusing over here 🙂 Anyway, it was a successful and most interesting program on German TV, which combined scientific topics with entertaining presentations, I guess they call it “infotainment” nowadays. In one of the episodes they invited Jerry Andrus, and you can see him demonstrate some of his fantastic three-dimensional optical illusions – I’m sure most of you have never seen them.

Pour la petite histoire (english: anecdotally) let me tell you that I met Jerry Andrus for the first time in 1982 at the FISM convention in Lausanne; I was 23 at the time. Part of the program was a ship cruise on beautiful Lac Léman, on a splendid sunny summer day, with an amazing view on the Swiss-Italian-French Alps. However, to Young Giobbi this was mere decoration, as for circumstances I cannot remember I somehow got to talk to Jerry Andrus. Although I was an absolute nobody at that time, Jerry took to me, and we spent the whole trip doing magic! Or more precisely I should say that Jerry showed me (almost) every item from his Andrus Deals You In, a remarkable book. Years later we met again, when he and his card magic were the subject of one of those legendary Escorial Card Conferences, and I once again had the pleasure and privilege to experience his genius.