Gardyloo #46
/Going forward I will try and put more thought into trick titles. In The JAMM #12 there is a trick called The Immortal which was my variation on a trick by Christian Knudsen called Angel. But, as it turns out, Knudsen's trick was a variation of a Christian Chelman and Gaetan Bloom trick called... The Immortal.
Methodologically they're not the same. Knudsen's version uses a gimmicked deck. The Chelman/Bloom version uses two gimmicked decks. My version uses a normal deck.
Thematically they're all similar as mine was based on Knudsen's, but I was like, "Let's dump this goofy angel theme and just go with the subject of immortality." Not realizing he had thought, in regards to Chelman's trick, "Let's dump this immortality theme and go with the subject of angels."
So, I'd like to one-up everybody and take every possible iteration of the immortality naming concept and re-name that trick, Immortal Vampire Angel of Dorian Grey Who Is Also A Robot.
If you have that issue, please make this simple fix.
- Buy an HP Laserjet Enterprise 700 Color Printer
- Print out that issue on high quality magazine paper.
- Hire a graphic designer to redesign every reference to the trick The Immortal so it now says: Immortal Vampire Angel of Dorian Grey Who is Also A Robot
- Buy a high quality scanner (if you don't spend at least $2000 you might as well make a copy with silly putt)
- Scan the hard copies back into your computer
- Insert the scanned pages back into the original PDF document.
Simple.
Here's a good magic trick of which I was on the receiving end. Well, maybe not a "magic trick" maybe it's just a "trick," but it felt supernatural when it was happening.
I had a friend visiting me recently. He has always struggled with his weight. And so, to be a bit of a dick, I was bragging about how I had recently gone down another belt size. Because that's the type of supportive friend I am.
The next day we were walking around the mall together and he said THINNER like the gypsy guy in that Stephen King story turned shitty movie.
I didn't really understand what he meant at first. If he had rubbed the back of his hand against my cheek I would have caught on sooner, but I just thought he was commenting on something he saw or saying something under his breath that wasn't really meant for me.
But then, a minute or so later, I felt the need to tighten my belt. And then, a minute after that, I had to tighten it another notch And then again not long after that. What the hell was going on? Had I really lost three inches off my waist in a matter of minutes? Had he put a gypsy curse on me that would cause me to whither away to nothing?
No. No he hadn't.
What he had done was cut a slit in my belt with a razor blade from the hole I was currently using to the hole I had been using. See the red line in the pic below (I would have taken a picture of the actual belt, but I tossed it before I thought to write this up.)
He didn't remove any of the leather of the belt, he just cut a slit. So what happened was I would tighten the belt like normal and as long as I wasn't moving around too much it would stay in place. But when I was walking, like we were in the mall, the "stick" part of the buckle would slowly travel back from the hole where my pants felt comfortable to the older (looser) hole. So I wasn't tightening my belt inch by inch, I was just moving back an forth between the two holes. I'd tighten my belt, it would eventually shift back, and then I'd tighten it again.
The first time I tightened my belt I did it pretty absentmindedly without any thought (as you might if you've been between belt holes for a while). When he noticed me do that, that's when he said "Thinner" to me.
I asked him where he got this idea and he said it was just something he thought of that night. He had no clue if it would work, but it actually worked really well. For a couple minutes I had no idea what was going on.
You might think, "Andy, what kind of sociopath friends do you have that would just take a razor blade to your belt. Are you friends that indifferent about damaging your property?" No. That's not the case. It's more an issue that he knows me well enough to know I wouldn't get hung up on him ruining a $10 belt. Certainly not when it led to a good story.
This is from an old post...
I used to do a trick where I wore a blue t-shirt and across the front it said, "This Shirt is Red." When someone would say, "No it's not." I'd turn my back to them and say, "Not even on the back?" They'd say no, and when I turned back around my shirt would be red and it would say, "Yes It Is" across the front.
This was how I would do Dresscode by Calen Morelli.
Reader, R.E.D wrote in to show me his version of the shirts he made for this trick. Nice.
Reader, Sean Maciel wrote in to say this about The Red Pinetree Gift Lottery from The JAMM #11.
"Like everyone else, I performed the red pinetree gift lottery to what might be the best possible reaction I've ever received on either a christmas gift or a magic trick - people still talking about it weeks later, even though it's just a bit of quick and dirty papercraft."
Below is his climax for the trick/game/experience. I love seeing these...
