Dustings #98
/The Do Not Eat Imp
From the toe of your new sneakers, a silica gel packet falls to the floor.
“Oh damn. Sweet,” you say as you take the packet and tear the top open and go to dump it in your mouth.
Your friend grabs your arm. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, don’t worry. It’s cool. I’ll show you.” You start to lift the packet to your lips again.
Your friend stops you again. “It specifically says ‘Do Not Eat’ on there.”
“Oh, I know. Yeah, don’t eat this. It will kill you,” you say as you dump the packet in your mouth and swallow.
“It actually doesn’t taste awful, like you might expect.”
Your friend stares at you.
“Okay, here’s the deal. For the past… almost 20 year—well, closer to 18 I guess—I’ve been building up an immunity to silica gel. You see… if you can get past the toxic properties, it actually has some really interesting side effects.”
You then proceed to read their thoughts, levitate, or move an object with the power of your mind.
If you’re worried about your dumb friend actually believing you and maybe poisoning themselves, you don’t have to worry. Silica gel is non-toxic. It’s just a choking risk for little kids.
Thanks to Kyle O. for tipping me off to this product and suggesting its use as an Imp.
Does anyone know of a good locking drawer box? I have an idea for a trick with one. What I mean is something like this, but that locks so that it’s examinable/handleable by the audience.
Or maybe you’re someone who could make one?
That reminds me, I’m going to put out a call for any regular readers who are also craftsmen or artisans in some respect. It’s been a couple of years since I asked about this, but if you have a skill that might be useful in the production of props/gimmicks/etc., let me know. Now that I’ve started producing one-off tricks for supporters, I will have the opportunity to maybe take advantage of some of your skills in the future. You’ll have to be able to produce items at scale, but at a relatively small scale (more like 100-200 than 10,000). If you have an expertise or proficiency in anything you think might be useful and would want to partner up on something, let me know.
A couple good suggestions from Pete “Red-Red” McCabe inspired by yesterday’s post.
One thing I used to do to deal with my nerves was to open with a version Nick Brown’s Wonderland Dollar, because: you do not do anything secret. The audience sees everything you do. The result is not actually impossible but it really looks like it is.
You can not get caught.
I found this quite effective in getting me over the initial bump of nervousness. If I was going to do a few card tricks I would start with Gemini Twins for the same reason.
If you buy any new magic from the big magic retailers over the next couple of weeks, you’re a sucker. Wait for the black friday deals where you will undoubtedly get some bonuses for spending your money. The Jerx… saving you money. Just call me…
This is an interesting video by Lloyd Barnes.
And yet, it’s also sort of depressing that we’re now trying to expose a trick before it even fucking happens.
I’m going to up the ante. I’m going to expose a trick before it’s even conceived of.
Here’s how it’s done: A double lift and the spectator has an identical twin who was given up for adoption as an infant that he doesn’t know about.