Music: “Wake Up” by Rage Against the Machine (iTunes)
History:
It had been about a year after I’d gotten into magic, and it was around that time that I started frequenting this new place I’d heard of called Magic Castle. No, not that one – it was just a Singaporean magic shop that ‘happened’ to have the same name. While most of the other shops I had been to before “MC”, as my friend Justin and I used to call it, were kind of hokey and focused more on stage magic, this was the first time I felt like I was in a place dedicated primarily to the art of close-up. The guy who worked there, Solomon, became sort of a mentor to me over the years, and I would visit the place at least twice a month to watch him perform new material, show him some ideas I’d been working on to get feedback, and hang out with some of the other magicians that dropped by every now and then.
I’ll never forget the first thing Solomon showed me when I first arrived at MC after a 45-minute bus ride there. Holding four face-up Jokers in his hand, they started to turn face-down one by one, with literally no suspicious movements whatsoever. Then, after they had all turned face-down, Solomon flipped the Jokers over to reveal that they had magically changed into the four Aces. My mind was blown, and I left the shop that day with $25 less in my pocket and and an awesome new trick in my arsenal.
As the months went by I found myself sucking less and less at magic, and along with that came a different approach to the art. I was still fascinated with all the fancy gadgets and gimmicked decks, but it was becoming too much of a pain to have to carry them around all the time. At one point, I kid you not, I had on my person:
- A regular Bicycle deck
- A Svengali deck
- An Invisible deck
- A Stealth Pen
- A Hot Rod
- A Ring Flight wallet
- A lighter
- 2 rubber bands
- 3 silver half dollars
- A Jumbo half dollar
- 4 Sponge Balls
- An ITR hook-up
Ridiculous, I know. I felt like I was becoming more of a clown than a magician, in more ways than one. As a result, I started to leave everything else at home and just bring a single deck of cards around with me, with the philosophy of ‘Pack Small, Play Big’ in mind. I started to read more magic books and watch more DVDs, trying to learn as many sleights and effects that I could with just a regular deck. After a while of practicing and playing around with the basics, I started to look back at some of the material I used to do with gimmicked cards and wonder if there was a way to emulate them with sleight-of-hand instead.
Which brings us to this effect. One night, after coming home from a party, I suddenly remembered that effect that Solomon had showed me when I first visited MC. Using a combination of some counts and replacements I had just learned a few weeks prior, I constructed a gimmick-less version which made it possible for the cards to be handed out and examined at the end. The routine would later come to be published in my first set of magic notes, and more than anything else it showed me that I didn’t have to present a certain plot with the exact same handling, a way of thinking that later led to creations such as Punk’d and Collectors: redux.
-Kev
hahaha Kev I laughed out loud when I saw the things that you once had on you, because I remembered of myself 2 years ago, hahahahah xD I had like 1 invisible deck 1 svengali and two regular decks to do, the do as I do trick, I also had the color change polska (I think its called) and some gimmicked cards xD.. I’m glad I wasnt the only one :)
Aris
wasnt that the mercury card trick??? correct me if im wrong .. or this have a small difference?
The difference is that this was created and published first, and that it’s impromptu and starts & ends completely clean ;)