Hi everyone!
Here we go with nr. 36 of The Magic Memories, gone online on SUN, 5th September 2021, at, yes, of course, 0:07!
This week’s offering is another excerpt from the Zoom-lecture I did for The Magic Apple on SUN, 18th July 2021, and it features “The Guarantee Joker”, that albeit a minor trick, harbors some interesting technical, presentational and conceptional ideas useable in many other tricks. This polyvalence is in my opinion the true value of this and similar tricks. In all of my books and lectures I aspire to these qualities. Because then you do not just get a “new trick”, which you might or might not like, and even if you like it, you might not do, but you get to know new tools that you can use to shape your own creations, or reshape and improve your old ones. That’s the idea.
As most of the other clips from the lecture I’ve uploaded up to now, this one deals with a particular characteristic of my Card College Playing Cards, namely the Joker. The deck has two Jokers, a “big Joker” and a “small Joker”, the latter being at the same time the “Guarantee Card”. Years ago it occurred to me to use Bicycle’s “small Joker”, which also has a guarantee text from the manufacturer on it, as a presentational idea: I would misread (artistic license) the text as saying the manufacturer guarantees that all magicians using their decks would never miss a trick performed with them. This led to a few interesting pieces that I’m using to this day, e.g., “Card Call” from Stand-up Card Magic.
In the Card College Playing Cards deck, though, I’ve created a specific text that you can see in the illustration of the Joker below. This allows for some novel presentations, or just as a gag. As I’ve mentioned in my previous blogs that dealt with the characteristics of my deck, you can of course do almost all with other decks, too, just “use your head”, to quote Dai Vernon, and you’ll find how.
And before we leave, here is a little bonus idea: Place a second “big Joker” in the deck you use. You will hen have three Jokers, two identical ones and one Guarantee Joker. With the two identical Jokers you ca do some veeeery interesting things, but we’ll leave that as a koan (and a new note in your notebook that might read: “Duplicate Joker – Things to do with it…”).
To watch the video CLICK HERE. I hope you like it.
Wish you a healthy and inspired week!
Roberto Giobbi
