Hello everyone!
Today’s topics are: Part 4 of “List of tricks & bits from Sharing Secrets“; Video of “TTTCBE”; PDF of “Golden Rules of Magic”; Remembering Rolf Andra with PDF.
These are The Magic Memories 81, gone online Sunday, July 17th, 2022, at 0:07h sharp.
List of tricks & bits from Sharing Secrets – Part 4 (31 – 40)
This is the fourth and last part of this series listing and briefly discussing the “practical” stuff from Sharing Secrets.
31 – p. 109: “The Trick That Can Be Explained”. It has become a cliché to say that “this trick is worth the price of the book”, but in this case I can’t think of anything more appropriate to say. I assume that this is the most overlooked item in the book (as some others are), and it is all my fault, the reason being that an item that is given only one page cannot be any good, can it? But this, alas, is the concept of the book, and all in all I still firmly believe that it is an excellent idea.
Note 51 explains most of the “extras”. To this I would add that I have fooled the pants off almost everyone with this over the past ten years I’ve been performing it, mostly as part of my lecture on deck switches. I remember doing this for Juan Tamariz in his summer residence in San Fernando years ago, and he had no idea of how it worked, which is very, very rare, believe me – I hesitated to call this “the trick that fooled Juan Tamariz” 🙂
On another occasion I did it for Bernard Bilis, another super-card-expert, in Paris at the dinner table of my dear friend Yves Carbonnier, and it left him with no clue, as he readily admitted, and Yves as well 🙂
Now, a trick that fools magicians is not necessarily a good trick for laymen, but this one is.
For your convenience I’ve uploaded a very early performance of it on my YouTube channel, and you can watch it by CLICKING HERE.
Since this is part of my deck switch lecture, and in case you wonder where the deck switch is, well, it comes right at the end, and is “The Joker Deck Switch” on p. 87 The Art of Switching Decks (the book will soon be out of its third printing, and if you don’t have it I urge you to get it before it remains out of print – you won’t regret it, as the many reviews and comments will tell you). BTW: To ring the deck in after performing “”Card Call” (p. 105 of Stand-up Card Magic), and before getting into this trick, I used “The Simplex Deck Switch” (p. 127 of The Art of Switching Decks).
Possibly the most useful lesson in this performance is how to use a short anecdote as a Prologue to a trick. This gets often forgotten, especially when you have an already good trick and think this is self-sufficient. Well, it is not, in my opinion…
32 – p. 113: “CardSpeak”. I have performed and explained this trick as “Belchou Aces” in Lesson 2 of the video download course Card College 1&2 – Personal Instruction, but here it is written down for the first time, with focus on the importance of text.
Besides being arguably the best version of the “Belchou Aces” family of “Spectator Cuts to the Aces”, it should make you take another look at anyone of the tricks you are performing, especially so-called self-working tricks, in case you have that in your repertoire, and ask: “What is the effect? What is my prologue? Do I have a dramatically meaningful reason to do what I’m doing? Does my presentation have an emotional hook?”
33 – p. 115: “The Persian Flaw”. This little amusing anecdote makes a charming “out” when you miss a trick and there is no way around everyone noticing it. Tell this little story, tongue-in-cheek, and everyone will love you and pretend to believe that you did the “mistake” on purpose. To absolutely put in your note titled “Final Outs”, which is a list of outs to use in desperate situations.
34 – p. 117: “Triple Prediction”. If you’ll perform this once, you’ll experience that this is much better than you think… and it will fool most of your magic club members, too 🙂 And if you do, remember Rolf Andra (see below), please.
35 – p. 119: “Waiter’s Theory and Actions of Recall in Practice”. Here are four four very practical ploys you should use if you do any of the mentioned tricks or variants thereof (they are all “classics”, so it’s a good idea to have a t least one version in your repertoire). Above all: Take a trick you are actually doing, and then think about where you could insert an “Action of Recall” – it will make the piece clearer and more memorable. Do this with all the tricks in your active repertoire.
36 – p. 120: “Four Coins Through Table in Glass”. This is one of the best routines of its genre, actually the best I know… Going through it in a practice session will also help instill the many theoretical concepts discussed in the book. Yes, it will require work, but like everything else in life, you won’t get something for nothing, for everything has a price, and even death costs your life.
37 – p. 128, “The 13 Golden Rules of Magic”. Use this as a check-list and it will be of great practical value. For the benefit of those among you who give magic classes, regularly or occasionally, for beginners of your magic club, laymen or children, I herewith authorize you to photocopy and distribute this short essay-list. By CLICKING HERE you get a nice PDF that you can use.
38 – p. 134: “Artistic Magic”. Although this is not really a “practical” trick or technique, it still is very practical if you use it as a check-list to go through maybe your very best trick, and ask yourself how the criteria I discuss are present. If they are not, think about why, and how you could implement them.
I remember Flip wrote to me when I published an early version of this essay in my Genii column saying he had photocopied the easy and distributed it to all of the members of his magic club in Holland. I can’t think of a higher compliment. I truly think that this is one of my best essays I ever wrote. Maybe you want to read it again…
39 & 40 – pp. 142: “The Lists”. All of the lists are of great practical use, in my opinion, else I would not have included them, but possibly most of all the “List of Card Plots” (p. 144): Have you got a version of each? If you do, you may consider yourself a “Complete Card Expert”, maybe 🙂
All That Jazz…
As I’m writing this it is a very hot day, and the sound of “Jazz on the Place”, a yearly one-day Jazz event in the village of Muttenz where I live, reaches me through the open windows, so I want to keep today’s The Magic Memories shorter than usual 🙂 Nonetheless, I do not want to neglect my “Remembering” section…
Remembering Rolf Andra
Rolf Andra was one of the magicians that influenced me most, not so much for the tricks and presentations, in both of which he excelled as a consummate professional, but more for his unconditional and unselfish love for magic, something that is hard to put into words, and that brings tears to my eyes each time I think about it…
Rather than a lengthy text, below are a few photos showing Rolf Andra, and a short essay I wrote about him as part of my Genii column “The Genii Session” (May issue of 2012).
To read my little homage to Rolf Andra CLICK HERE.
And now I wish you all a great summer week, and a sunny winter day for my appreciated readers on the other side of the planet 🙂 reminding myself that we are all “on the other side of the planet” as well as “foreigners”, depending from where we look.
Talk again next Sunday, at exactly 0:07 o’clock!
All the very best,
Roberto Giobbi
