Ye Olde Magick Blogge

It’s “Cups and Balls Month” here on Ye Olde Magick Blogge, and if you’re going to start off a month, you might as well start with a bang. This is a very robust routine, and it’s pretty telling that Ricky Jay used this to close his 52 Assistants show, which was otherwise completely card-related. Magicians [...]

  Having magic on a daytime TV talk show isn’t new, but it appears that Ellen DeGeneres has shown more interest than most in getting magicians who aren’t necessarily considered A-list stars (in the magic community, anyway, seeing as how Neil Patrick Harris has done pretty well for himself as an actor). Granted, she has [...]

I lost it watching this. Patton Oswalt’s an excellent stand-up comedian when it comes to delving into nerdy/geeky topics, and I think we have to admit there’s nothing nerdier or geekier than magic. Here he is talking about a magician that followed him at a comedy gig once, from his DVD “My Weakness is Strong”. [...]

This is neat. Jon Racherbaumer did a small feature on Jay Ose, and included this video showing Jay Ose doing a gambling demonstration for Joan Blondell in a promotional film for “The Cinncinati Kid”, where he was a performer and consultant. Perhaps most interesting is the fact that, for that film, he actually was a [...]

I like card tricks, but I don’t like card tricks that feel like card tricks. I really don’t. If somebody’s going to pull out a deck of cards, then I want a clean “Travellers” as a minimum. Maybe a Sankey’s “Back in time” or a convincing All Backs or a full deck Oil and Water. [...]

My girlfriend loves this video, which vexes me somewhat, since it basically exposes certain principles in magic I’d rather her (and others) not know about. Still, it’s a very good bit.

What we’re gonna do right here is go back. Way back. I’ve been finding myself really curious about how the old school guys did it. There are a lot of blabberheads out there on the Magic Cafe and the Genii Forum proudly proclaiming their heritage (just my opinion) or else dropping name and name, thereby [...]

I’ve always liked this approach to a challenge effect. With just a little bit of thought it could be applied to the Invisible Deck, to Any Card At Any Number, etc.

Bill Malone called this one of the three strongest plots in magic. Here’s the venerable Doc Eason doing his in a hotel lobby. (Trying desperately to avoid the Bugs Bunny quote…)

Here is some seriously vintage footage of Ricky Jay doing Cards Across, from presumably a more bohemian phase of his life, before he cultivated that aura of majesty and gravitas that we now associate with him. Notice that even then, though, he didn’t take any crap.