Hello everyone!
Today’s topics are: Circolo Amici della Magia Torino; Let’s Keep Sleights And Gimmicks, please; Playing With Food (food illusions); Comedy Card Opener
These are The Magic Memories 127, gone online Sunday, June 4th, 2023, at 0:07h sharp.
All The Magic Memories from 2021, 2022, including the Magic Advent Calendar from 2020, can be found HERE.
My friend Yves Carbonnier from Paris is about to visit with me for a few days, and in a few minutes I will be picking up our mutual friend Lorenz Schär: We are off to an excellent restaurant for a magical lunch in Alsatia, France, right across the border from where I live 🙂 I will tell you more about these two very talented chaps and our adventures in an upcoming post (they both have a very interesting book!)…
Circolo Amici della Magia
In last week’s report about my travel to Italy (The Magic Memories 216) I forgot to tell you about my visit to the new premises of the Circolo Amici della Magia (CADM), Italy’s largest magic club with over 300 members. Since its foundation in 1971 it has changed its premises several times, each time to the better, to land now in an incredible place. Below are a few photographic impressions I’ve taken from my visit in May:
So, when in Torino (“Turin” in english), make sure to contact president Marco Aimone through the “Contact” item on their webpage, and I’m sure he’ll cordially invite you to the club, where they have something going almost every night of the week. This is one of the most active magic clubs I know, and they even made me an honorary member, too, and have always been very generous toward me, and I have given as many lectures and masterclasses as for the members of CADM 🙂
More info and much better photos than mine about CADM and their activities HERE (it’s all in Italian, but Google Translate will get this in sufficiently understandable English… I hope).
Let’s Keep Sleights And Gimmicks, Please
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.As part of the negotiations, the British Government [rg note: before BREXIT] conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year-plan that would become known as “Euro-English”.In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of “k”. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f”. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e” in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v”.During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou” and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.
Rereading the amusing text above, reminded me of an utterance attributed to Dr. Jacob Daley that goes something like this: “If you take a card trick with three sleights, and replace the first sleight with a subtlety, you get a better trick. If you eliminate the second sleight, you get a small miracle. But if you eliminate the last sleight, then you usually end up with a mathematical atrocity.” This is my wording from memory, and similar quotes can be found in the foreword to Frank Garcia’s Million Dollar Card Secrets, as well as in the foreword to Marlo’s The Cardician.
So, let’s keep those sleights and gimmicks, with parsimony, and use them skillfully and intelligently, always keeping the effect in mind, knowing that methods are merely a means to and end; this will get us closer to perfection and to a miracle. The result will be Artistic Astonishment.
***Sudelbuch Volume 3 is number three in a series of my personal notebooks devoted to “good thoughts, useful and useless information, remarkable quotes, and all things that one likes to read from time to time…”
Playing With Food
Although we have been told not to play with food, some simply refuse to listen.
At Heston Blumenthal’s stellar “Fat Duck”, a three-star Michelin restaurant, a chocolate dessert is served in form of playing cards, opening up to all sorts of magical shenanigans at the table, provided one of the guests knows how to force a card…
If you’re interested in the subject of “food illusions”, maybe to combine with a “Magic Dinner” you plan to do at a nearby restaurant of yours, CLICK HERE to get an idea of some possibilities.
Comedy Card Opener
This seems like an old idea, but I’ve never seen anyone use it, although it is so simple and effective… and practical at that.
The illustration below says it all.
I use this with a vest that has four pockets (very convenient!), two lower and two upper pockets. (As explained in my video lecture The Close-up Act of Roberto Giobbi, I use the lower left pocket for “trash”, i.e., it receives everything I discard, such as the thread from Gipsy Thread, torn pieces of paper etc.)
If you place the deck in the lower right vest pocket you can then simply take the deck out, hold it in Dealing Position with the flap upward, and by slowly moving backwards make the deck rise out of the card case.
Remember to move the body backwards, not the hand forward – this is an application of the theory of the Space-Information-Continuum (Sharing Secrets, p. 102) and makes big difference – try it.
To prevent the thread to cut into the card case, the hole should be reinforced with a metal eyelet, but that’s obvious, Watson, isn’t it?
Wish you all an excellent week!
Roberto Giobbi
