Root:

Let’s remember our roots. This month’s root: Not everyone likes the same stuff.

This particular Bon Jovi tune is not one of their most popular. It never reached the fame of Runaway, You Give Love a Bad Name or Livin’ on a Prayer. But in my opinion, this song blows those out of the water.

Take the Young Guns II soundtrack. It’s 100% Jon Bon Jovi, and it’s incredible. It could be one of the most under appreciated albums of all time . . . certainly the most under appreciated Bon Jovi album.

However, many of my friends do not like My Guitar Lies Bleeding In My Arms or the Young Guns II soundtrack. Yet they’re both in my top ten for sure. My friend and fellow magi Jay Sankey is another perfect example of this. Over the years he’s released over 1300 effects. They range from ok to miracle status, but which ones are ok and which ones are miracles? It depends on who you ask. One of my all time favorites, Ear Plugs, is my friend Dan Paulus’s least favorite effect.

To each his own as they say. My point here isn’t to review Bon Jovi or Jay Sankey. It is however, to point out the fact that when performing for your various audiences, you’ll have a variety of people who like and hate a broad range of your effects, personality facets, performances, etc. How do you cater to them all? In short, you can’t.

Should you perform the effects that are most likely to appeal to the most people? It depends on who you ask. Some say yes. While others say you should have variety and texture in your show. I tend to lean toward the latter. In my close up set, I have a really creepy tarot card effect, but I also have poker-based demonstrations of sleight of hand. I have comedy, drama, silliness, etc.

I certainly can’t take credit for this concept. It was Eugene Burger who first turned me on to this concept. Rather than focus on the lowest common denominator, I say “take a risk.” Try something that’s different. Try stuff that you enjoy doing.

Branch:

Let’s build our branches. Your challenge: Take a leap of faith. Take a look at your repertoire; then take a look at the stuff you that you enjoy. Find an effect that you’ve decided not to do because you think people won’t like it. There’s someone out there who’ll like it. Go find him/her. Take the time to dust off an effect that you’ve abandoned for the above reasons, and try to make it relevant. Gauge your audience. See how they react and try to get feedback from them, particularly if you’re a close up performer. Look for those who like it and learn from it.

You’ll also find those who don’t like it. Find out why. It may be a simple thing that you could tweak to give it a broader appeal. Or you may not want to tweak it. You may want to leave it in just the way it is allowing it to appeal to only those few who appreciate it. The call is yours; my goal here is to simply get you thinking about your magic. That’s it.

Now go study the classics and go discover your true magical self.

Latest Reviews:

Check out Magic Reviewed. I’ve added a bunch of new reviews and republished a couple of older ones. Here’s the list of some of the latest:

• Spider Pen Pro (With DVD) by Yigal Mesika
• The Timeless Project by Russ Stevens
• The Time Travel Manual by Josh Zander
• Four Told 2: Modern Symbol Edition by Devin Knight
• Wonder Worm by Alan Wong
• Tricks that Work (Jokes that Work) by Moses Silbermintz
• Knock ‘Em Dead II by Peter Nardi
• Essentials In Magic: Mental Photography Deck by Daryl Easton
• Essentials In Magic: Invisible Deck by Daryl Easton
• Essentials In Magic: Svengali Deck by Daryl Easton
• Essentials In Magic: Stripper Deck by Daryl Easton
• Thought of Card in Balloon by Luca Volpe
• This, That, and The Other (Cards and DVD) by Stephen Tucker
• The Changer by Mark Southworth
• Ultimate Work (2 DVD Set) by Tony Giorgio
• Tagged by Richard Sanders
• Wings by Matt Mello
• Quadrant by Christyrious & Brandon David

Beware of the Haunted Magazine!

For all of my long time subscribers, you know the tradition. Every year, I trick out the site with a few random scaries for October . . . beware . . . the site is haunted again! Enjoy!

Bob Hummer and Theodore Annemann are among the few magicians with the audacity to discuss politics through the medium of a card trick. That’s probably just as well; agitprop rarely produces a comfortable fit in performance. Casting caution aside, we’ll add just a dollop to this presentation.

The performer brings out a face-down packet of cards, and says, “Have you ever noticed that criminals seem to like working in teams? Of course, as in almost every profession, there are soloists in the field. But it’s the partnerships that are really memorable. For example, if I show you this name . . . ”

With this, he turns the top card of the packet face up and deals it to the table, revealing that it is not a playing card. Instead, it bears a name: Bonnie.

The performer says, “You would immediately connect it to her partner.” Without pause (and without fail), the spectators respond with the name “Clyde.” The subsequent card is turned face up and tabled next to the first; it indeed has Clyde inscribed on its face.

Dealing two more cards, the performer adds, “Then there’s the team of Leopold and Loeb, the notorious ‘thrill killers’ of the 1920s.

Two more cards are dealt, with the comment, “Or, if that’s too far back in history, how about Erik and Lyle, the Menendez brothers who murdered their parents a few years ago.”

Two more cards are dealt as the performer blithely continues, “The point is that it’s quite standard for criminals to work in pairs.” The names on the just-dealt cards are not uttered out loud, but the audience can read them: Bush and Cheney. (Okay, yes, we’ll discuss the joke at the end of this write-up.)

The cards are gathered and mixed, as the magician says, “Of course, when a criminal team completes its work, the members lose themselves in the crowd.”

A spectator is invited to give the packet one or more complete cuts. This done, the performer gives the cards a further shuffle, then deals the packet back and forth into two piles, and explains, ‘It’s safer for the partners to separate.”

The dealt packets are recombined, and handed to a spectator, who is asked to redeal the cards into two groups, then reassemble them by placing either group atop the other. This is repeated as many times as desired. The performer turns away, so that he does not know how many times the process has been done.

The participant stops at any point when there are two piles on the table. The performer, still turned away, instructs the participant to remove the top card of either pile, and pocket it, unviewed.

The other pile is now dropped on top of the first, and the combined seven-card group is squared.

Reiterating the fairness of the circumstances, the performer turns to face the audience. “Obviously,” he says, “the challenge is to track down the partner of the secret culprit who is hiding in your pocket.”

“Fortunately,” he continues, “criminals aren’t the only ones who work in teams.” With this, the performer brings out two more cards. One bears the name Holmes, the other Watson.

“The detectives round up the usual suspects.” One of the new cards is slid, face up, beneath the packet’ the other is placed, also face up, on top of the packet.

“And now they go to work, trying to narrow things down to identify your secret partner. If they can accomplish that, perhaps the partner will rat you out. To simulate this investigatory process, please do a Criminology Shuffle.” The participant is guided through this activity, which is, of course, an Under/Down Deal^{[footnote 1]}. (You were warned.)^{[footnote 2]}

At the conclusion of this procedure, the packet is spread. The two face-up detective cards are seen to have repositioned themselves closer together; in fact, there is only one face-down card between them.

“Look!” the performer exclaims. “They’ve narrowed it down to one suspect!” The flanked card is extracted and turned over. It is, for example, Lyle.

Pointing toward the participant’s pocket, the performer shouts, “All right, Erik – Come out with your hands up!”

Copyright © 2002 by Max Maven

Time out For this Station Break

Note From the Editor:

I picked up this book a couple of years ago and have read it, literally, at least 6 times since then. The book is extremely cleverly written. There are fun little subtleties all throughout the text (they’re even in this write up) that show you just how clever Max Maven really is, and how well thought out the book is.

It’s very easy to read and covers (in some form or another) the Stay-Stack, the Gilbreath Principle, and so many other wonderful ideas that can be applied to Tarot cards, ESP cards, playing cards, and many many other cards.

I highly recommend this book. There are three different effects in my active repertoire from this book. For the meager price of $15, you can’t go wrong. Because I’m such a huge fan of this book, I emailed Max Maven to ask permission to publish this particular effect in the magazine. 24 hours later I received an email back granting his blessing to publish this effect. I tell you this because, Max Maven did not ask me to advertise this for him. I asked him if I could advertise it.

So . . . order it already: Redivider

The plot and method are related to an idea I have explored a number of times in the past, starting with “Sherloct,” which appeared in Abra in April 1992. Here, the work should be fairly evident from the description above.^{[footnote 3]} When the criminal cards are initially displayed, they’re put into two piles. One pile is then placed on top of the other, forming a cyclical arrangement (abcdabcd).^{[footnote 4]} This is followed by a false mix, a complete cut by the spectator, then a further mix to put the cards into Stay-Stack condition.^{[footnote 5]}

The spectator does the redealing and reassembling activity as many times as desired.^{[footnote 6]} The top card of either pile is pocketed, then the other pile is dropped on top of the three-card remainder. The result is that the card that partners with the pocketed selection is now fourth from the top of the seven-card packet. The two face-up detective cards are placed on the top and bottom of the packet, and an Under/Down Deal is executed. The result will be as described: The detectives will end up sandwiching the partner card.

The teams described in the presentation above are the ones I use. If you think some pairs are too obscure, there are better known substitutes available, albeit what defines “better known” is determined by the cultural literacy of your audience. Some examples: Jesse and Frank James, Burke and Hare, Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. Then again, you may prefer to make use of fictional teams that carry less disturbing baggage, such as Butch and Sundance, Boris and Natasha, Norman Bates and Mom.

Now, a word about the political joke: If you don’t think it’s amusing, don’t use it. Having said that, I think you’ll find that, unless you’re working for an explicitly partisan audience, the joke will work for just about any group, no matter what their individual political affiliations may be. In fact, it’ll work no matter what party happens to be in office at the time you read this, and it will obviously work in just about any country, not just the United States. The truth is that, in one way or another, we tend to think of most political leaders as, at the very least, scoundrels; so, including them in a line-up of criminals is grist for comedy.

There are, of course, non-political alternatives. It’s not as funny (at least for me), but you can get the desired surprise and laughter by capping your line-up with a classic duo of a decidedly non-criminal bent, such as Laurel and Hardy, or Simon and Garfunkel. Or, you may choose to split the difference and go with Penn and Teller.

Well, if this presentation strikes you as being in embarrassingly poor taste, the next one is likely to make your face even redder.^{[footnote 7]}

Copyright © 2002 by Max Maven

For those who’ve not yet read the book

Notes From the Editor:

[Footnote 1]:
Briefly, the Under/Down Deal is this: With the packet in dealing position, deal the top card to the bottom of the packet. Then the next card to the table, then the next to the bottom, then the table, then the bottom, etc., until the entire packet is on the table in a pile.

[Footnote 2]:
Earlier in the book, in the write up of the effect Never Odd Or Even A/K/A I Prefer PI Max Maven is discussing his interest in the Under/Down Deal and states that “Most lay people actually find the procedure rather charming. Then again, they’re not reading this book; you are. So, we’ll soon move on to tricks that don’t employ that activity. (It will reappear before we’re done; consider yourself warned.)” Many pages and several effects later, we find that his warning was well warranted as we read in the above effect.

[Footnote 3]:
Of course, this effect is written in the Redivider at a point where over 20 other effects have been explained and much of the proceedings to the readers of the book are obvious at this point in the book. So if they weren’t obvious to you as you read them, that’s ok; you haven’t read the book yet. Though I highly recommend you spend the mere $15 to obtain this book, it is not needed to understand this effect. Everything you need is within the above text.

[Footnote 4]:
In other words, as in opening of the effect when you display the partners, Pair “A” is placed on the table (A1 on the left and A2 on the right). Next, pair “B” is placed on top of that (B1 on top of A1 and B2 on top of A2), etc., until there are two piles each with (from the back up to the face) A, B, C, D. Thus when you place one face up stack on to the other, you have the order ABCDABCD.

[Footnote 5]:
Stack-Stack is a palindromic order (ABCDDCBA). There are many ways to get to this position. Probably the easiest is to overhand shuffle the first four cards of the stack and then thrown the rest on top. BAM! You’re done. Another method (also described in the book) is Gene Finnell’s Klondike Shuffle. You’ll do what’s referred to as an undistributed Klondike Shuffle. Simply this: hold the packet in Biddle/Overhand grip from above with the right hand. Milk the top and bottom cards off together in a pair and drop them to the table. Do this again dropping the next milked-off pair on top of the first. Continue this until you have only two cards left in your hand. Drop those two cards on to the tabled packet and you now have an eight-card packet in palindromic order (i.e. Stay-Stack).

[Footnote 6]:
From the Stay-Stack condition (as thoroughly addressed in Redivider), you can deal two piles back and forth, then place one pile onto the other and then deal back and forth and repeat without disturbing the palindromic condition. After dealing back and forth into two piles, it does not matter which pile is placed on the other pile. Once the two piles are reassembled the deal and reassable can be repeated ad naseaum. In the context of this routine, we have the spectator do this procedure to their heart’s content asking them to stop at a point where there are two piles on the table.

[Footnote 7]:
One more reason to buy Redivider, to find out what the next presentation will be . . .

Brain Dump

Currently the working title on my latest book project is Brain Dump. It’s a fitting title certainly and was suggested to me by my friend and fellow magi when I told him that this book was basically a brain dump of all of my mentalism, mind, psychology ideas in my journals. He replied with, “that’s a good name for the book.”

He’s probably right. However, if you’ve got a better title, I’m all ears. Post your titles suggestions in the comment box below. If I use your title you’ll get a free copy of the book when it’s done. It’s coming along nicely. I’ve got a ton of writing done. The hope is to release the book mid to late fall. Right now, the only plans are to release it as an e-book.

Other Projects

Likely, “Brain Dump” will be the only other release (besides Tarot Below Zero) this year. However, I’ve got a few things in the works for next year. I’ll keep you posted as things progress. I’ve got a couple of other non-magic books that I’m co-authoring as well. One is sort of magic related . . . it’s a magic-centric novel. Additionally I’m working on a co-author quasi-religious series of books and a solo authoring of another quasi-religious book. Those three non-magic projects will take me into next year for sure.

Reviews

Many of you visit this site strictly for the reviews. I’ve developed quite the reputation out there of not being afraid to speak the truth no matter whose feelings I hurt. I should just point out, briefly, that my intentions are not to hurt feelings, only give the truth. If my rhetoric has been insulting I truly am sorry. I’m just seeking the truth and offering you loyal readers some guidance on where you spend your hard-earned money. More recently I’ve been very careful attempting to be more diplomatic toward the creator (not the creation). I’ve adopted the love the sinner, not the sin kind of attitude.

If any of you out there are creators, and would like your material reviewed on the site I’ll happily add you to the stack of stuff, and because you’re a loyal reader, I’ll bump your products to the top of the list . . . and it’s a darn big list by the way, so if you’ve recently released something and want a review relatively quickly, let me know.

You can mail the product here:

Stone Cold Magic Magazine Reviews
3367 South 6400 West
Salt Lake City, Utah
84128

For virtual products, you can email them to me here:
Product Reviews Email

Writers

Stone Cold Magic Magazine has been publishing monthly ever single month (sometimes a little late) since July of 2007 . . . That’s over 4 years! Over the years we’ve had some excellent guest columnists:

• Jay Sankey
• David Acer
• Harry Lorayne
• Danny Archer
• Don Theo III
• Geoff Williams
• Oliver Meech
• “Grandpa” Chet Cox
• Cameron Francis
• Dan Paulus
• Brad “Scarnecky” Gordon
• Donny Orbit
• Diamond Jim “The Cardslinger” Davis

Just to name a few. If you’d like to add your name to this prestigious list, send me a brief email explaining what column you’re most interested in contributing to:
Guest Columnist Email

Tarot Below Zero

Tarot Below Zero/Spectral Chill was written up in the August Issue of Magicseen Magazine . . . The one with Richard Sanders on the cover. You can subscribe to Magicseen at Lybrary.

Testimonials

Finally, you may have noticed that in the top right navigation is a new link for Testimonials. You’ll find a small sample of some of the happy customers, friends and reviewers of Stone Cold Magic products. I’ll keep updating this so make sure you check it out on a regular basis.