Jerx Christmas - Patrick Redford - 11 PM

I finally got a chance to sit down and eat some food. It’s been crazy here. I was all alone in the kitchen when I heard some whimpering coming from inside the pantry. I walked in and saw someone huddled in the corner. I wasn’t sure at first but then I thought… That looks like… Patrick Redford!

And I was like, “Are you okay, man? Is something wrong?”

And he said, “It’s just this season, man. It really gets to me.”

And I go, “Oh, that’s okay. This season can be hard on a lot of people. Do you want to talk about it?”

And he goes, “The worst thing that ever happened to me was on Christmas. Oh, God. It was so horrible. It was Christmas Eve. I was 9 years old. Me and Mom were decorating the tree, waiting for Dad to come home from work. A couple hours went by. Dad wasn't home. So Mom called the office. No answer. Christmas Day came and went, and still nothing. So the police began a search. Four or five days went by. Neither one of us could eat or sleep. Everything was falling apart. It was snowing outside. The house was freezing, so I went to try to light up the fire. That's when I noticed the smell. The firemen came and broke through the chimney top. And me and Mom were expecting them to pull out a dead cat or a bird. And instead they pulled out my father. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit. He'd been climbing down the chimney... his arms loaded with presents. He was gonna surprise us. He slipped and broke his neck. He died instantly. And that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus.”

We just stood there for a moment and I said, “Patrick, I’m pretty sure that’s Phoebe’s Cates’ monologue from Gremlins.”

“What are you talking about?” he said, acting shocked. “It’s a true story of what happened to me. But thanks for reminding me of another awful incident in my past. The time my whole family got attacked by gremlins.”

After a while, I got him calmed down and he contributed this gift to you readers. He mentions a forthcoming book and you will undoubtedly find more information on that when it’s released here.

Patrick Redford here and before I pass you along to my doppelganger and closest collaborator, George Tait, I wanted to squelch some of your concerns before they arise. What I'm about to share is a piece of mentalism using playing cards. I'm of the school of thought that if something is good the medium in which it's performed need not matter.

I consider any deck of cards handed to me (no matter the order it comes in) to be a stacked deck. Knowing a system (regardless of the order that the cards are in) and knowing effects built into that system (such as the Redford stack and others) may yield countless possibilities. One only needs to stack a few cards into the few spaces that require it at any given time rather than stack a full system.  If this sort of material interest you, you'll love the material in the upcoming book Completely Out of Order due to release early this coming year. Completely Out of Order is the final installment of my "Out of Order" book series on stacked deck magic. The three volumes focus on stacked decks, only some of which use a memorized system and many effects that don't rely on any kind of memorized system at all.  While all of the effects are accessible quickly through the transformative properties of the Redford stack you don't need to use my stack at all; it simply makes things easier to perform on a whim.