Ye Olde Magick Blogge

Because of Michael Ammar’s contributions to magic in this regard, I’m going to be including both his routine and a review of his 2 DVD set on the subject, the Complete Cups and Balls. First, the routine. It’s got a lot of nice stuff going on in it, including that great open load, and the [...]

It’s a real shame to me that I wasn’t able to find a fuller version of this routine online. I could have sworn that such a clip existed, but alas, I was only able to find this edited version that made it onto the 50 Greatest Magic Tricks special. Despite that, it’s still easy to [...]

I’ve got a personal pet peeve — magicians who embrace the fallacy that just because we might be good with sleight-of-hand that we somehow can cash in on the intrigue and fascination that people have with cheaters. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had spectators ask if I can use what I do in Casinos, and [...]

If you’re still trying to think of ways of presenting the routine without ripping off Don Alan, well, file this one under the “You’ve got no excuses category.” Not only does he weave his usual metaphorical stylings into the presentation, but he does it with one hand. This is essentially the two-in-the-hand, one-in-the-pocket plot, only [...]

This video of David Roth performing the Buddha Cup is a follow-up to yesterday’s challenge about trying to find a different way to present the Chop Cup routine, if only to get the creative juices flowing. Here’s the deal. Why are you using a cup? What else could you be using? What about a dice [...]

Eugene Burger once said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that Don Alan is pretty much the type of magician that most other magicians are out there trying to emulate. I believe there’s a lot of truth to that — goodness knows that I’ve heard a few lines from other performers and thought that they were pretty [...]

This was unfortunately the only video of this performance I could find online, stuck in the middle of the Elvis Poultry show. I could have sworn this was a longer routine. You might want to skip ahead to the 1:45 mark and then stop watching afterwards, unless you’re in the mood for several WTF moments. [...]

Here’s Jason showing the chops that helped him storm through FISM in 2003. Michael Ammar once said of his coins through silk routine that making the silk see-through gave the routine inherent meaning, because it instantly set it apart from other, similar routines. I suspect that the cups and balls have been done before with [...]

Just another offbeat routine as we meander all over the place on the road to Vernon. I’m not quite sure just how gaffed Frye’s particular offering is, but I’m guessing a lot. That’s not to take away from the technical nature of the routine — I actually quite like much of his sleight of hand [...]

This one’s really off-beat, and presentationally, there’s a lot to be said for this routine. The effects are choreographed nicely to the music and the magic is really interesting with both the thematically relevant use of the props combined with the incongruous loads at the end. The first time I saw this, I totally wasn’t [...]