Spitballin’ Your Magic Ideas! #213

They're guys. They do magic. They are the Magic Guys.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to episode 213 of the Magic Guys. Oh, yes. The Ace of Hearts is in the house and so is my boy Nick K. Welcome to the show, friends. Oh, yeah. Down below, he's back. He's magnificent. He is. Doug Kahn, ladies and gentlemen. This is the subliminal like button. Everyone should be hitting the like button right now for this wonderful extravaganza of magic we throw out every week. That's the heart symbol to show up.

I like it. That can be the new thing. Every time you see an Ace of Hearts, you've got to like the video. Every time you hear we're in a band, you've got to take a drink. And every time Nick... What else?

What's the third thing? every every time nick oh god i don't know every time nick says my my best friend in magic then you gotta buy our merch you gotta message your best friend hey man i miss you yeah that's an adorable little thing to do like our friends in the chat who we got scott link is in the house, i like how the comments show our friends faces now in the comments that's awesome gutbuster mike.

With no photo so that takes back what i just said tim askin hello all scotty p who we met in person again over the weekend look this is great to have you all here and uh doug's got a new setting there doug you were telling us that they gave you a that you got a day off now in in your shop so yeah we're working it out you know we figured out some shop hours so at trick supply we're open like the brick and mortar is open now so it's wednesday to saturday noon to six if you're

in las vegas come pick a card and uh yeah so now yeah it'll be great seeing you guys there for sure but i'm off sunday and monday so maybe sometimes i'll go into the shop and do the podcast from there for kicks or you know if we got a product promotion but this is not the new space this is the working space that will evolve into the new space over the next month or two. We are still unpacking. Look what I just unpacked. I unpacked this just for you. You know what?

You've seen it before if you're a Magic Guys fan. It is the algorithm appeasement generator. You're talking about arts. There we go. Now, if you're not hitting the like button now, I don't like you. So, there we go. I bet that slays on TikTok when you, especially that line. If you don't like the video, I don't like you. Oh, no, I just wrote that. I'll let you know about this thing. You know the name of this? You know what this prop is?

It's red, it's square, it's got windows, it's got this for the listeners at home. If I had to guess, for the listeners at home, it's basically a square box with three walls missing and looks like a little temple on top. I'm going to call it the love temple.

Whatever its name is that's its new name for sure it's the love temple the love temple or as i like to call it my apartment oh no i didn't mean to end that you need to hit that there we go jason was here we'd have the porn hub theme you have that one on yours, no he used to play that all the time yeah maybe that's why his roadcaster pro died because it got sticky. Anyway. It's the Chinese pagoda box for reference. That's what it is. The pagoda box. What's a pagoda?

I think it's this thing. I think it's like, I think this makes it a pagoda. Like this, this whole area is the pagoda. We should make an Australian version. That'd be like, oh, it's the veranda box. And you just have someone's veranda on. He knows it's a pagoda box yeah then we can make like a tiki box I'm still going to call it the love temple so it will never be referred to as a pagoda again in my universe. Excellently known as the Chinese building is a pagoda. Okay.

It's a much more marketable name is what we're saying.

Heck yeah. Well look guys I was going to say there was a time where like so many cool things in the magic realm were all based around it being like the mysterious Chinese something probably due to this cat here behind me the Fu Manchu and Chunling Su as well but like it was the, Chinese linking rings and the you know and the mystery of the Chinese whatever else and like especially of the Japanese influences with coin magic using the Aikido boxes as well so it's,

now you come into trick supply you look at the top shelf all around the shop it's nothing but wooden props with Chinese ornamental designs on them where do you think the fascination for the chinese realm of magic kind of came through that whole chungling su period yeah it makes sense right i mean it takes magicians 200 years to figure out that isn't even like topical when it was topical you know yeah it's just some chinese crap on

everything yeah it's some greasy guy from rhode island just come over and be like you know No, I'm Chinese. Yeah, I guess. You know, it's, I mean, you know, it's fine. We found tuxedos somewhere in the mid-50s, and then we did that for 800 years, and thank God we're out of the tuxedos, and back to Robert Houdou, where we can pretty much wear whatever we want, you know, a modern style of.

Of uh clothing as opposed to the robes with the dunce hat or something like that yeah well you know costume wise we've we've gone from like the wizards with the giant sleeves robert hudan which we've spoken about in in the previous podcast we did and that was one of my things to do actually as far as history lessons goes he was the first to go no no we're tucks we're high end we're like if it wasn't for him we'd probably still be looking like stupid wizards and and we'd all be performing

that we'd have the square circle with the fu manchu on it you know yeah yeah no indeed but like everyone would have the pagoda love temple yeah and look and nowadays bro like i've dressed up in so many different facets for magic you know like i most recently had to dress up as the mad hatter which kind of leads me into a question for you josh there is an amazing magician in town, your town of Brisbane, who lectured yesterday. That was an amazing segue. Let me just say. That was perfect.

I'm getting really good at this. Brisbane has the Cirque du Soleil show called Cirque Alice playing right now, the Alice in Wonderland themed, and it is emceed by none other than, well, the Mad Hatter character is being played by magic legend, Jeff Hobson.

Jeff. Yeah, Sean Piper, who runs Piper Magic in Australia, shout out to him, organized like a legend for Jeff on one of his nights off in Brisbane to come and lecture for the Brisbane magicians, which Jeff, they told us last night, Jeff has not lectured in Australia for 25 years. So this is the first time since then that he's ever like shared his goodness live in person.

So people flew from everywhere. we had people flying from there was one guy that flew from melbourne like just he flew from melbourne straight to the venue just to see the lecture and it's and is then getting like the first flight back like he literally just came for that and uh it brought all sorts of people out of the woodworks to listen to this great guy just you know i walked in i sat front row and i was like you know what he can talk about the price of apples for all I care.

I just want to like be around his good vibes and, you know, just enjoy this time with him pretty much. You know what I'm curious about? I mean, the guy is so well known for his egg bag. And if you've not seen his egg bag routine after the show, give it a quick Google YouTube lookup because you will see it is probably one of the most funny and entertaining displays of the egg bag.

There's got to be a bigger repertoire outside of that. I know it's what he's known for, but if I was to ask you guys, oh yeah, the Hobson egg bag and the Hobson, finish that sentence. I got one. I'm pretty sure it's his. It's the balloon dog routine. Oh, that's him. You're right. Yeah. That is killer. He walks through it last night as well. And gave tidbits. I didn't know that.

Yeah. For those that don't know what it is, he takes a twisty balloon makes a little dog does a whole bunch of jokes with it and then he does this whole bit where it's like lay down play dead and then he pops the balloon and always a kid or a lady on stage right so he's got this six-year-old just bang kills the dog and the kids like oh like they get kind of like there's this moment where i've seen it be done and like the kids almost about to cry because they wanted

that balloon but then what you do is you take the balloon that's been popped you put it in a bag and you give a cpr like you breathe into a bag like you were hyperventilating and then when you blow it up pop the bag the dogs come back to life you literally and then you give it to the child or or spectator and away they go just so good and it sounds you know it sounds it sounds weird when we're describing it but it's a thing it's so freaking hilarious when you watch it i look at this yeah i'm

looking the first time i saw him performed the balloon bag was when I went to see the illusionists as a very new magician. And I, that was my introduction to Jeff Hobson was walking into the QPAC theater and just seeing this happen. And it's so funny. And he performed it last night for magicians and it still brought the house down because he's like, look, yeah, you bring up kids, but this kills with adults too. Look, I'll show you. And he brought a guy up and just treated him like a kid.

Like he's like, now I need someone who's seven. You're seven, right? And he's pointing at like this 17-year-old. He's like, yeah, you'll do. And he kept throughout the routine just being like, and you're seven, right? He's like, yeah. And he just made it funny, him acting, treating him like a kid. My buddy, Dante does adult shows. He works for the burlesque environment, Sean Dawson, and he uses it there. He gets a nice attractive female on the stage and gives her the dog and,

you know, it kills for adults. It's no problem. Here's something I was impressed with. He doesn't use a balloon pump. He can straight up just blow up the balloon from his mouth. Bro, that's work. And he said, one of his tips was, if you do this routine, he's like, that's the way you got to do it. You can't be bringing out a pump as well and all this crap. It's like, it's way funnier when you can just go. And he said, the way you do it, because it looks like I just have a power set

of lungs. He said, the way you do it is you get your balloons and you get your balloons. And you pre-stretch them. He said you stretch them by actually stretching out. Like he stretched this balloon as wide as his arms would go outstretched to the side of him. And he said you do that and you hold it for at least like 10 seconds. And then do that like three times. And that will wear down the strength of the balloon so that you actually have a chance of blowing it up.

That was a hot take I'd never, ever been told. I'm just saying that's why you fly across Australia to listen to Jeff Hobson talk. Hell yeah. The real work. Talking about his repertoire, right? So he's known for his card-to-mouth comedy routine, his dog bag, and his egg bag, right? But I was watching his cruise ship show, which he has available for purchase on his Dobson Choice website. Is this performance only?

Performance, yeah. It's performance only. That's right. And you know what his opener is for a 45-minute show?

Fire eating this guy i had no idea he eats fire he you know he lights one the other one with his mouth like he'll grab the flame move it across he will use his hand to like grab fire put on the next one he has this whole one minute bit to music and eating fire it like blowing it out then like getting the fire and this whole shtick like talk about a visual opener like that is so unexpected from him and you know i remember paulie now he he did us he did a ensemble act

with kaylin and ginger the carnival of wonders where he was kind of the ringmaster or the leader i bet he did sideshow and that yeah yeah and that show man he's done so much work in his life like you know major theater shows in the states for sure long runs in vegas yeah is he still doing the watch seal in the egg bag that's the finale he did it last night yeah and he gave some caveats to that too and he said it's so funny apple you know apple

is such a you know trillion dollar company but they made apple watches to be so easily stealable he's like no doubt literally just flick it and the whole thing comes off so he's very grateful for that but he did say if you're going to do watch deals. That comes with knowing you will get caught 5% of the time and it won't feel good. And occasionally you will break a watch, like you will break a watch band or whatever.

And you have to know that going into it, that could happen if you're dealing with people's personal items. So he's like, so he like does this whole thing on how to steal watches and stuff. But then he explains that and says, so I don't recommend stealing watches anyway. And then moves on. It was quite funny. I feel the same. I don't, I wouldn't do that because I don't want that 5% on me, you know, much less actually damage someone's personal property.

Yeah. Yeah. And, um, he, he, he also does cigarette manipulation acts, which he probably doesn't need to do so much now, but I remember in the illusionists, they would open the show by doing a, you can't smoke in here thing. And it's while he's doing a manipulation act and then make, and like, he's like tonguing cigarettes and all this great stuff. He did a billiard ball act last night in the lecture. So he does like, he can, you know, manipulate billiard balls.

And, uh, he basically said he's done it all. Like in his time, he's actually done hypnosis shows. He's done illusion shows. He's done like manipulation acts. Like he said, he had a manipulation act, but what happened was, oh my God, what's the gentleman who had the, he's retired now, but had, you know, one of the greatest Vegas shows ever that's in his era with Matt King and Lance Burton.

So he said, I had a manipulation act, but every time we'd enter a competition, Lance Burton would come first I might come second he's like it kept happening so much I was like oh freaking hell all right but he had Yuho Jin's manipulation cards last night and was showing us a mini-pact and an ending which he does which is in his cruise ship show which I had not seen which is he's producing all the cards into a box and then at the end he

puts his hand through the box turns it over and shows that it's hollow there's no floor to it collapses to slice shows how to make it you know, very easy thing that's in his online lecture notes too. You can get this guy. That's a great finish for a nice card minute sequence. Yeah. Yeah. Like it was really eyeopening how much versatility this guy has and knowledge aside from the things that we know about him so much. Yeah.

Man. And one little tip he said, which I'm sure I can share with you guys because you can learn how to do it through his lecture notes. But at one point he just like he unzips his fly, reaches inside and then pulls out a lit match to light a prop. And like just talking about getting the most out of things. But he said he showed us a little way to rig just with a match box, but how to like rejig it and stuff to become a match pull.

So it lights when you pull it out. And he's like, you know, one thing I helped Lance with is he's like, I used to watch his act, you know, you're the greatest magician in the world, but then sometimes your match weren't light. And what the hell? If you're all this massive magic being, why the hell can't you light a match? So his tip was to always have four matchsticks tied together and that's what you pull.

So you're always guaranteed that one of them will light. therefore all of them will light you know every single time great tip another winner yeah and it looks like one match from the audience's view doesn't look like a weird chunky thing so that's something i do want to explore because you probably have two of those right just in case, probably if you rip and it doesn't go you want to be able to go back i've seen lance miss he does have a second one ready yeah yeah so if he goes it's ready

to go for number two absolutely oh and And that's what Jeff was explaining was by having four match sticks in the same pool, you're guaranteed that at least one of them. Oh, I see. They're coming out of a row. Oh, I see. So they're not all balled up. It's like. No. So he uses a match book, a match book, whereas all the match sticks are already connected. So all you're doing is taking off four of them that are already connected to each other and just sort of folding it over.

And therefore, every time you pull a group of four at once, that's what I was getting at. We can edit this out, I'm sure, is that it can strike at the one time. Yeah, it was tonight. Wait for the Theater of Magic clip where I actually use that. Maybe not out of my fly, because I'm sure the guys won't like me doing that at the Theater of Magic, but from somewhere. Your pubes will catch fire as well. That's right. That's true. We did talk about using the mirror.

Josh has no hair on his whole body, but this fulvering, growing in his pants, and it'll just be a fire hazard. This is actually Sharpie. This is not.

And then carrie runs into the theater and he's just got the the fire extinguisher on your nuts that'd be a fantastic yeah and the and the last thing he left with advice was he broke it down to the acronym it's stuff we've talked about but he the acronym of pdf which is every time you work with an agent be professional be dependable and be what's the f fabulous don't suck yeah hang on um professional adaptable and maybe it wasn't pdf it was something else professional adaptable and easy to

work with i think is basically what he said like wow god damn it jeff i'm sorry i'd be good if the threader was like have a good memory it was yeah i know this.

Yeah yeah yeah it was basically like yeah like be professional with what you do be able to work around what happens with the client and i think i mean look if anything those things yeah yeah that's right wow i was just listening to it on the car home uh his lecture anyway yeah do those things so yeah lecture was just fantastic to watch and be around and And if you're in Brisbane, he's doing the show for the next week. So Cirque Alice. It sounds like a fun show.

I didn't even know Cirque had an Alice in Wonderland deemed show. Yeah. But it's killer. It kind of sprung up for the school holidays is why it's playing here. They have so many. I mean, in Vegas, there's like six Cirque shows here or something like that. There's several, you know? Beatles, Michael Jackson, O, Mad Apple...

Ah mystere hey i'm at six already jesus that's yeah well well yeah like we say i mean like it's been it's been a really good learning experience for magic in the past two weeks we obviously had the assembly the week prior and then this week we had jeff hobson's thing and i think that one thing that i enjoy is sharing the knowledge of magic and i think one thing that you guys probably enjoy is learning a little bit of magic along the way which is why we wanted

your guys to to to send us through some spitball ideas in which is that if there's anything that you are working on guys in the chat if there's a chat even put out there's a challenge if you're like hey i had this idea for a thing i need help i want you to come up with a trick using matchsticks like whatever it might be so go ahead put that stuff into the chat and we will do everything we can to use our three bold brains together and come up with some good magic for you guys because

we do have one speak pipe right josh yeah we have one loaded up coming in from anonymous feel free to leave your name and where you're from when you send these in but if you do like being anonymous then absolutely do that as well and we have one it's a short one but we'll play it for you now hey guys love the podcast i've been thinking of a routine where you produce like each suit from the deck like one by one like heart, diamond, page. Clubs, but I haven't been able to figure out the method.

I hope you can give it a try. He produced the suits. So you're producing like 13 cards at a time? Like if we play around with this to make it something theatrical. If you have a deck of cards and you say, name a suit, and they're like clubs, a theatrical way to go, boom, all right, we got all the clubs out. Well, I used to do this very early in my career when I was studying the works of Leonard Green.

And Leonard Green has a wonderful blindfold act, which is part of a ted talk if you guys haven't seen it it's it's probably a decade old by now but it's worth having a look at and in this routine he basically has a pack of cards and he gets somebody in the audience to select a suit clubs heart spades or diamonds and then he and the spectators shuffle the pack together they shuffle everything and the cards are upside down and they're and and it's

an absolute mess and he pulls them all together puts a blindfold on after they've been scattered all over the table. And then he finds them starting from ace to king, fully blindfolded. And I love that. I love that routine. So I using a mixture of his methods, my own and so forth, I started coming with things together. So I like the idea of having a pack of cards seemingly mixed and somebody nominate a suit.

Then you've got a premise. You've kind of set something up and then there's something at stake there. So I feel as far as routining, I think that crescendos a lot better and the cool thing is that you've got 13 steps, meaning 13 reveals in order to be able to do something like that what do you guys think about that as an idea? Love starting with a named suit for sure. And yeah, I think the deck should be shuffled too, right? Maybe even spectator shuffled to make this optimal.

So that might make things a little more challenging. But if you're going to produce... I interpreted the challenges and eventually all of the suits. But that might have been my magician brain hearing the plot differently. I mean, you know... Yeah, sorry, go on, Doug. Yeah, I have a... My friend Steve Reynolds recently showed me his version of this plot, which is just producing one suit. And he has a great take on it where he gets to the queen and he misses.

But it happens to be the queen of a different color. And then all of the other cards change to match that one. So if there's the ace of diamonds, two of diamonds, ten of diamonds, jack of diamonds, and the queen of spades, oh man, oh well, we'll just make the rest spades and finish with the king of spades. And so now it's a magician in trouble, which really brings a plot that starts to get a little bit dry by the time you produce the 12th card and then hits him out of left field. So great.

Steve Reynolds and his most recent publication has that production in it. So, you know, if you're a serious student, go to Steve Reynolds, magic.com and you're welcome, Steve. I also, I think that, I think that the reason you should nominate a single suit and have it going along is that when you have four suits, there's going to be this notion that you can't quite remember or like, which one are you up to now?

Not everyone has in their brain that, oh, we'll just go bridge chase order, you know, clubs, hearts, spades, diamonds. Like, I feel like there's going to be this level of confusion, which will just take away from the entertainment might be impressive to go, oh, I shuffle the deck and we'll go clubs, hearts, spades, diamonds. And he just sort of makes a pile of Club Heart Spade's diamonds and produces all the aces first, then all the twos, then all the threes, and so on.

I just think that that... I mean, that's the cleanest way I can see visually representing it, but I just feel like it's not that entertaining.

So I actually did a version of this plot along those lines, and here's what I did. I shuffled the deck clearly. The deck is shuffled. I cut the deck into four piles. There's an ace at the face of each pile, and then you spread each pile, and it's the suits segregated into four different piles. So not only have I cut to the aces, but the deck is back in new deck order. Well, that's cool.

This accomplished was fall shuffles and basically different crimps, breather crimps on different portions of the quarters. You know, you can do basically two on the edges, two on the ends. So if you did want to cut and produce all four suits, there's an option. Cut to the aces and then below the aces are all the suits. Yeah, almost like an out of this world plot. When you think about it, it's like out of this world by four as opposed to just doing a red black separation.

That could be interesting plot as well but if I someone's. Yeah yeah definitely definitely but that's what I was sort of like that's like one way to present it I think so that it's more rapid fire but if I were going to out of this universe that's the credit out of this universe, I think it's Mark Calabrese has a really cool gimmick in which you can kind of openly over table wash stuff Yeah, he does. Yeah, I have that thing somewhere. Yeah, I don't know what it's called.

They give it the mix. They do this with the deck. Yeah, but it has this amazing ability. Like, this utility that you add to your deck effectively gives you this amazing ability to be able to.

Maintain a slug of cards i think 13 would would accommodate 13 doug designed for that if i'm not mistaken yeah so this this is if i was going to hand over the routine it's just how i would do it because i can only speak for my for me personally because i don't know this guy's character or so forth but for me personally i would have the deck mixed up and then scattered on the table and then i would equivocate down to that and i

would say we have the red cards the black cards which one are we going to we're going to choose you know and then lead them down the garden path to that equivocate thing square everything up after i've removed you know maintain that slug and i can move on that that's the way i would do it i would do it in exactly that way and because you've got that slug you can produce all 13 cards at once you could do it incrementally you can do all different

ways of revealing it but i think that if you wanted to make it entertaining i would take influences from my calabrese using that gimmick i would take influences from harry lorraine and i would also definitely take a good look at lennox green's blindfold routine and i feel like great that's a great suggestion that lennox green tip yeah so in another routine just to just add on top of here rz win in his original repertoire

book he has a routine called lucky 13 you can see a performance of it on his Instagram. Like if you scroll down in his reels, you'll find a live performance with a group of people. And essentially... You get the deck shuffled, then you have like, I think in the video, he has like four different people just grab out bunches of cards from different parts of the deck, and then they get stacked on top of each other. And then he has someone name a random suit.

And he said, would it be impressive if that suit, like one of the cards from that suit is on at the top of the shuffle deck that's still remaining after you took some out. Imagine if like the spade you just named is at the top of this stack, turn it over. It's a different suit. Then he goes, oh, maybe the bottom card. And it's a diamond. It's like, oh, damn it. And then he spreads that whole deck that's remaining and there's no spades in there at all.

And then you reveal after the deck was shuffled and those people pull that random cards and stack them, they're in numerical order with all of the suits that were just, that was just named. Oh, that's fascinating. And it's in this book, and it's kind of overlooked because it is like a tabled card piece, which I think may be why you don't see many people doing it. But it threw me. I couldn't predict the premise when I watched the video.

People were freaking out at a card trick, and it seemed like pretty damn impossible. And it was the same kind of idea from our spitball, like name a suit and you produce it, but it's like the audience has shuffled, pulled out all these cards, and somehow they've all pulled out the suit. We have an abundance of great ideas that have come through the chat. I'm going to start from the bottom up with these ones. So we can,

because we only have 30 minutes left before we press on. So I'm going to start with one here from Mark Brown. Mark says, I'm starting to play with an idea using DFB and the one ahead principle with tossed out paper balls to choose people. At the end, the three balls are opened up and contain the numbers and selection. I assume, Selection of a playing card, correct? I mean, this is sounding very much like the effect called?

Tossed Out Invisible Deck Thingy by Cody Fisher. That's it. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. So, Mark, if there is a routine by a gentleman called Cody Fisher, and somebody performed this, didn't they? At the gala. Martin Bracist did it, yeah. Combined with a blank deck revealing only one printed card, which is the throw-off card. Exactly. Oh, man. Look at what I brought home off the shelf this weekend.

All alone. It's exactly that. Any named card is face up in the deck, and the rest of the cards are blank. So, look, we're giving Trick Supply a plug here. I had a former employee in from Trick Supply, and he said, hey, Doug, see anything you like? He goes, you know what I always liked was All Alone by David Regal. I'd never heard of this trick, so I went and grabbed it off the back.

Wow, this is diabolical, this... thing allowing any card to be produced in the rest or blank the i don't know that i've seen a. A better fully crafted gimmick deck than this one like i've only opened it and toyed with it for a few minutes so i'm not going to embarrass myself by trying it but good one along those lines excuse me for the interruption yeah so if you integrate those two routines both available at trick supply i imagine you know yeah get that get that plug in

even though we're not there today yeah, so that's called All Alone by David Riegel yeah reference oh you know what I also brought home this we're getting two plugs in how about this one the jigsaw deck have y'all seen this is a good thing. Yeah, here, I'll crack it open and do it just for a minute. Y'all keep talking and people can see, you know, what's going on here. And then once Doug does it, let's spitball some ideas for you as well.

Yeah, just while you're doing that, Doug, there's been a further comment here from Mark where it says it's based on Cody Fishers. The selection ends up, sorry, let me rephrase that. The selection ends is, okay, good English. Here we go. The selection ends is from a list of periodic table elements. And I say, I'll make the selection appear, which ends up being oxygen for the joke. Okay.

Okay. Look, it sounds like an idea you're figuring out. Like it's good to branch out and try different reveals off of, instead of them, you know, the main routine you get with Cody Fishers. And if that fits your theme. Can I just say, okay, so if you, what you could have is if you're going to force the final outcome, you could have a selection, whether it be a playing card or something.

And then what happens is you can show the deck the deck has all different types of elements on the back of it and then the and then let's say that when they it's kind of like the what's it called like the fill deck you know the fill deck where it's like i got all these different names but then if you implement that idea where it's like we have carbon we have hydrogen we have whatever and then you go but if we look through we'll find the five of hearts which was,

over this way you guys and on the back of this card says oxygen that's nice yeah see there you go thanks mark that that's a great spitball we had one from dom he i think he was the first one i don't know if i'm jumping across too many but dom said and great magician dom thanks for being here my friend i'm trying to figure out i'm trying to figure out an effect where two spectators shuffle one deck each and then the 17th card in both decks is the same alright.

Does it have to be fully hands off, Because if it has to be fully hands-off, then that can be kind of difficult. Well, I guess you work on, yeah, what's possible, right? So if it was hands-off, then, you know, you're going to need either. All right, I got one. Here's one. Both cards are palmed before the shuffle begins. So you have them in your hand. They're replaced to the top, and then via the pinky count and pass are positioned at that location.

That's a start. And that's something Dom could definitely do that. Yeah. That's within his skill set. So there's a few ways that I would go about doing this because I do something out of this vein, if I may. But what I like to do is I like to bring multiple people, not just two people shuffling this. I think when you do it with just two people, I mean, it's cool, but a group of people, it's great.

Yeah. how about this had we just had christian grace talking about this idea yeah yeah here you shuffle these and you give this person 16 cards exactly well yeah and so so the what i would i would let's say that like you want to force an outcome all right you could have someone choose a card and put that to the far bottom we're going to do four piles when i explain it because this is the way i do it okay that selection goes to the bottom.

You give spectator number one, 17 or 16 cards. Okay. That's it. Everyone else, you give whatever. So two and three, just give them a bunch of stuff and then make sure that the small packet you give to the fourth person to my far right has that selection. Okay. They can then give it a mix. You take the cards back, put them back face up to show that they're mixed. And then, and then to buy some more time, you can ask spectators two and three. Shuffle your pack together now.

And then you can take the small packet to the person to your right so that you can give them your attention you show them the cards go yeah just make sure like all they're not separated like red and black and what you're doing in that moment is you're just restacking the deck with the selection that you forced to the very back of the pack so that you can just drop it face up and then and then that's now in the 17th position and that's something that i do for many different effects that

i do when i'm performing for large scale groups where i want everyone to feel like they've mixed it because they for some reason they think they're like if i mix it you're going to struggle i'm like i'm nick k it's not going to happen but it's a really fun way just get the card in the bottom quarter give someone 16 cards and position accordingly a call we'll get it there yeah yeah so mark yeah so one of the one of the things i've been doing

most recently out of this vein is that i actually spell the cards right so what i'll do is i'll i'll i'll do dribble peak and i'll turn my head as i show the card it goes in so i can see whereabouts it is i just give it shuffle i go i cut straight to the card put it to the bottom and then i spell the card to spectator one now so if it's nine of nine of diamonds i just go four two that's nine of and then eight cards which

spells diamonds so i go four two eight and then i just move on like and i just give people cards and i know that i've i've spelt their selection like it's just. Yeah, so it's super quick and easy to do. Because the reason I'm doing it is I hate spelling tricks. So I'm trying to create ones that I like. I think, yeah, look, that's the outcome. That's a great outcome for Spitzman today. Now, where I'm falling short of what Dom is asking for is that he wants it done with two decks.

So, yeah, the hiccup is getting both of those cards in the bottom quadrant of both decks. So doing it with two decks. How about this though? Okay. Why don't we just make it even more fun then? You know, Steve Cohen does the one Tamariz effect in his show where he's got two different decks and, you know, there's like four different times where the same card ends up even though they're making choices.

Well, at the very end of his effect, the red and blue decks get shuffled together and then there's still a coincidence. Is there a way to have two decks shuffled but then the last shuffles are happened together so so that you end up with two decks that are both mixed red and blue but somehow the 17th card is still the red and blue matching cards so like so now you're not having to only give the red deck to these four people then it can be like because if you know they both have six cards each.

You can go, alright, now shuffle those red and blue cards together and then, you know, maybe there's a way to play with it. I don't know what it would be if you had two stripper decks and then you reverse the selection and you do like your stack of 17 and then when you just put them together using...

There's a mathematical equation here, which I don't know off the top of my head, but you'd have to put that card in a certain position, give it a perfect farrow, and then when you strip, you just spread, and then you could actually have both cards in the 17th position of a different color. Yeah. Yeah, see, that's fun. Could one deck be shuffled by one spectator and the other shuffled by the rest of the audience?

I don't see why not. Let me think about that for a sec. i'm terrible with math okay that's i appreciate your honesty that's cool.

Just use one-way force decks and you're fine then you can just i would encourage like the cards that you wanted to position are physically locatable by either crimps or you know maybe they're short cards or long cards so then you can maneuver the cards easily in the position needed you know make the card a corner short and then after the deck shuffled you can cut it to the bottom fourth and just do what you just said nick you know everyone shuffles you get 16,

throw them their mix call the card as needed and you know that's so elegant yeah because i'm trying to figure out like when you have two decks i'm trying to figure out the synergy of it and where the strength comes from because the idea of having one deck and getting more people involved for me creates a beautiful synergy where we're all invested. And I'm trying to see if I can maintain that energy and that vibe for using two packs. I just feel like it doesn't.

Doesn't sort of connect with me as much okay how about how about this maybe this is just getting too wild now but like what if there's something else at play here where you've had them think of a number or it's the serial number on a bill or their phone number or their birthday or the date that it is today maybe and the.

First reveal is you've had red and blue deck shuffled then you've had some of the packs shuffled together and stuff you've made these two mismatched things but then the 17th card and each one is the matching cards but then you is there a way and maybe this is too convoluted you spread the deck out and like you're just.

Going by the reds because now they're going to be separated by more blue cards and then maybe the number of red cards each time is a number that adds up to like it there's two then there's three so it's the 23rd of february so like maybe the the randomness of the shuffle now becomes actually a bigger reveal and that that's a reason why you would have two decks in play because now it's that feels a bit like jeopardy remember the jeopardy routine oh right i thought

you're talking about the show uh no the routine you know the routine where it's like you're gonna have this many cards of that many cards it's gonna to be this of that like oh like a shuffleboard of of the black this many are going to have spades of this many are going to have i feel like jeopardy right right most points yeah in a much more direct way yeah you're right and like a shuffleboard right that's dominant called it simon aronson shuffleboard

yes yeah yeah yeah there you go maybe that can like shuffleboard correct yeah lots of things to play on with that yeah i'm not against using the two decks but i don't know why you would need them dom but my advice to try moving forward is to try it with the single deck. Like I made mention where you just control the packets because there's something really sexy about stacking stuff in front of spectators.

Like when you're doing it right in front of them, like it's by the way, when we were talking about producing cards in suit order, we didn't talk about blaze Sarah and what he's able to do with a spectator shuffle deck. There is a reason. There's a reason we don't talk about that because in order to perform blaze Sierra's routines, you must be blaze Sierra. Look, I'm starting to see people attempt what he's doing.

So he has reached the tipping point. He's starting to change the scales of what can be done with a deck of cards. You know, shuffle deck in the new deck order within one spread through of the deck.

Speaking of changing what we do with cards, can we see this jigsaw deck? Yeah, we can. And again, I brought a couple of things home.

I'm off Sunday and Monday, but then all I did was play tourist in my hometown and didn't really do my homework properly so this is the jigsaw deck by david regal and this might be the fourth time that i've ever handled this thing i think maybe david excuse the shaking again on my desk isn't set up yet i think david that's a spectator put this thing back together, and i don't know i guess this is wood so it's pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that

look like a deck of cards and i guess they go back in here i recall seeing the demo and i think he does a timing, on necessary times to see how fast he can get it done. Good thing I'm not doing that. I feel like this would be great for hecklers. Like, to give them a job, you know? You know what this, I think, is good for?

It could be good for formal performance, but if you keep it on your desk at home or, like, as a segue, you know, from a coffee table piece into performing, that's the jigsaw deck. Damn. That's real pretty. Yeah. Yeah, so it's, you know, it is probably what you think it is. It's like a dove pan for the jigsaw, and I think it's as deceptive as it could be to do what it's doing, and super easy to do, and well made. And maybe he's mad at me for exposing the obvious right now, but.

That's the david regal jigsaw deck i'm gonna give it a b plus just so we can leave room for improvement on version 2.0 i don't know what that would be but yeah look super practical as an opener like yeah like you were saying could be a good sobriety test kind of you know alluding i mean like sometimes you know you like to have like if you like to have have guests to your house and something like this is just sitting on the coffee table

and they're like what's that you go it's a puzzle i see if you can put it together and then they put it together and then bang those are the cards and now you're off to the races to do your magics you know it's a good social segue perhaps on your coffee table yeah and i like the idea of using cards in a sort of non-conventional way which kind of leads me into a comment here from scotty p if i may share this it says here from scotty painter i have mini canvases card size

and mini easels which i'm not sure how to use the idea was to leave the participant with an artwork souvenir okay i have some ideas because i imagine imagine a type of spirit slate type effect where you have blank canvas which you cover with a cloth and then you can do have a selection have them think of somewhere.

Just for the sake of explanation, let's go think of a location, right? And they go Paris and you go cool deal. And then the handkerchief maybe does a bit of movement, right? And then when you move it away, that canvas is drawn straight. On it, a Eiffel Tower, and then you can then let him keep that. Because if we're going to be using the canvas and the easel, it's probably going to be more of a parlor piece, and I feel like you could do something really cool with that.

And you could probably even do it laying down. And then, yeah, the way I would probably do it is to just have a shell-ish that would go over what looks like the blank canvas, and then by removing that shell, you'd have something pre-drawn underneath it. It wouldn't have to be a shell. It could just be something as simple as something that just covers it up, But then you would use the handkerchief to remove it as you do the reveal afterwards.

It'd be cool if there's a way to get them to sign it first as well while it's blank. Like maybe the shell only partially covers it and your hand, you know, covers the seam or something. So I'll sign the corner of it and then, you know, hold it face down. Maybe it's some sort of out to lunch principle in which you could probably keep that portion. Out to paint by Scott Painter.

Yeah i think that would be cool great i know that that guy from illusionist whose name escapes me it'll come back to me at some point he has that beautiful routine with the bottle cap that levitates adam ulber he he had some stuff using this magical appearing ink sort of thing i don't know how easy it would be to like give away because i imagine it'd be something.

Relatively gimmicked and and heat activated perhaps but yeah the the idea of just being able to remove something from a seemingly blank canvas and then give it to someone that would be cool there is the friction pin if you use friction pin ink on a piece of paper and apply heat to it it vanishes and you can combine that ink with regular ink and just the friction ink vanishes is leaving the regular ink behind. There's been a bit of exploration in that realm with that pen.

Yeah that's a great idea too with the friction yeah i wonder and obviously you know canvases are quite porous so you experiment how easily that ink can still disappear i think that's great yeah i know that i know there's like texture based stuff there's normally like friction pens but i do believe it's friction texters which i've used in the past and they're really so the friction pen is an ink that when heat is applied to it it just vanishes so you can write things and then by putting a lighter

underneath this piece of paper ever so it just vanishes in front of your eyes and it looks crazy crazy magical being able to give that out it would be semi gimmick which wouldn't be the worst thing i don't know if a switch would need to be implemented maybe in which you you go to your case and you grab a ziploc bag to keep it in or something like that i don't know if that would be very elegant to do or you know to give someone a canvas but ultimately

the worst case scenario is that you give somebody a gimmicked canvas and they're walking back to the car when it's cold and then the inquiry appears because that will happen like if you put that if you put that back in the fridge the whole canvas will go black you know what i mean i didn't think about that that's funny yeah that's funny i mean that's even as they get a second effect out of that you know yeah we also have mark brown

here he mentioned uh you could also use the principle of having what he's written is a dried out sharpie. Have them think they're sketching something with it face down. And then the predicted thing you mentioned is actually written or drawn into their scribble when you reveal. And this is a product that we talked about with our guest, Nicholas Lawrence, in a previous episode.

He brought out a sharpie that can be gimmicked in on the on the fly you can rig in to make it not work and then make it work so that there's nothing there's no heat on the actual sharpie itself but that obviously is another ploy you could you could go in once you've switched it you have them creating the scribble or the prediction, i like it a lot i like it.

These are great ideas. You know what? I should be bringing ideas from my show in and then spit-pulling it to make my own show better because I love the group hive of thinking that comes out of it. Yeah, I was – I think – have I mentioned this on the pod before about talking about an uncheatable deck? I don't think so. All right. So we've got a couple of minutes to wrap this episode up with. But I was – I've got a friend of mine. His name is Nathan Hickey, and he works for COS.

Uh love nathan actually he's a good good good guy good care love this guy immensely and he's he he's a magician but also a blackjack dealer and i thought there's a funny dichotomy there and when we're in vegas this is many years ago where we came up with this funny idea of like you know when people say things to you like oh i'd love to take you to the casino, this is the whole premise of the routine that i'm putting together now and i've

i've i'll share some ideas that i've got with it but it's very fun so here's what i've got so far the premise is people say that oh you know you'd be great to go to the casino with so we can like and i go but people don't know this like you can't cheat with the cards of the casino they're uncheatable decks.

Like what do you mean i'll give you an example then like you pull out like a like a jerry jerry nugs casino sort of thing and i'll give you a quick example let's say they say stop all right and you show to them the card which is the seven of hearts right but then when i look at it it changes to the nine of clubs because you can't cheat with this deck and every time you cheat, there's cameras you'll get busted look and then i want to have a camera go flash and take a photograph in that

moment like all these unsuspected photographs like every time because there's cameras and you can't cheat and then i was going to do examples like i tell you what so let's just put there like there's like five of us playing i'm going to take this card face up so you can see what i'm doing you put in the fifth position and you start dealing to everyone then when you get to that card you want to try cheat and deal to yourself so as you're dealing to so you're just doing second deals to yourself,

and you just can't, no matter how hard you try, you can't deal to yourself and then I want to use that split gimmick where you go like this and then it splits into like. Like a three splits into a ace and a two sort of thing, you know, like I just do all this really crazy stuff. And then I want to explain to them like, oh, with this branded deck, when you cheat so many times, it locks itself and you give someone just a block of cards that have been all glued together.

And you got to put it back in the deck to sort of reset. And now if you try to take the deck out and you just mime that the deck is stuck in there and then you bring it out about like about halfway like this, you know, like about that much. And you're like, yeah. And then if you tap the box this looks so cool watch this and you try to tap tap the just and they just go.

And and so and it's just really funny like what and so yeah so i've got about like 13 ideas which i've got individually created but i'm gonna routine them so i can try and crescendo them i don't the biggest problem for me is that as far as direction goes is i don't know what makes, this routine kicker i don't know what's going to make it a kicker i don't know if maybe like you gotta you gotta like reset the deck and then you do a thing in which like you spread

the deck and all the numbers all the pips are gone and it just says cheetah cheetah cheetah cheetah cheetah like i don't know what is going to be the ultimate crescendo for this plot because i think the plot's cool and i think it's a very unique and original idea of like you can't cheat with these decks and I feel like in anyone else's hands but mine it would be 50,000 times better but I got to sort of get this ball rolling on this plot in order to inspire at the very least.

But how it ends, how it ends. Maybe there's a sum of cash that vanishes at the end, insinuating that, you know, you win money, but don't get to keep it. It takes it away from just the cards, but, you know, it kind of is a. That's an interesting plot because I did play with the idea of implementing chips into the equation. And what I did with this was you have a dealer chip and the dealer chip knows who's dealing.

So if I have the dealer chip, I can't cheat. but if i give them the dealership i i can and then you have this whole idea where i've got this routine where we're playing blackjack which is it's okay but we're playing blackjack and i say who do you want to win and you go like i want you to win i go great but then you're the dealer and then they deal and i win every hand and then if they change their mind i just just without touching the deck and it's all in their

hands just by me changing the dealership.

Says who's going to win so like that's another cool premise but i think if i was gonna do stuff with the chips it might be the type of thing where like and then i win your chips and i just keep winning everyone's chips and then maybe i'll take all the chips into my hats and you know and i give them a juggle like this a little chink chink chink and then when i turn them upside down there's nothing in there and i maybe that you get a box like the jeff hobson box every time you

get chips you put them in it could be a dealer's toke or something like that and then you open it up and it's something like that yeah so maybe that's my kicker but i don't i don't know what the ultimate kicker is like i don't know you know other than having security guards come and take me away i can't really think of any entirely hilarious to to really end the routine with but i like this premise a lot and because it's so new i don't know where to take it but it's

effectively it's for me a fun way to show gambling demonstrations. That don't kind of work or work so well that you, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I love it. I love it. Actually. It's fun, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So let's read out just a couple of, just, just the comments of our fellow listeners. So Mark said you could do Franco Pascali's lay down move where you take the four aces out of the deck, but then they changed to four random cards.

Great move. We have the magic buzz. He sanded, he said, And the ending could be that you're handcuffed to the deck at the end. Okay, that's a good one. Scott Link says, what if at the end you need to replace the batteries and you reopen the card box and batteries fall out? That's also on my list. It's part of the dead cell routine by Danny Garcia. I've got that one on my list too. Yep, it's a beautiful idea. And then we have Ifuj says, it could be a lucky charm.

So maybe the dealer's token, every time the person with that charm always wins. That's another fun premise yeah and if you cheat the charm vanishes lots of fun things to play around with you know all the cards could turn into the faces could be the monopoly go to jail card you know like go to jail go directly to jail collect $200, don't collect $200 for god's sakes yeah yeah I look forward to seeing how you know where it ends up in your in your show when you consider the Chinese pagoda

boxes There's a big fan of the routine. Oh, that's it.

That's it. These are Trick Supplies new Sponge Bunnies, by the way. We're going to be releasing these. Probably shouldn't even be showing these right now. They look...

Familiar yeah they are not the amar bunnies but they are in the ballpark yeah i'll talk about that more soon you know what i have some of those but they're in my box over there but because i don't use them you know what's really interesting josh doesn't do the best magic i know yeah out of the period of the great caplan which we did also the great kreskin which we spoke about weeks prior it would be interesting to actually like bet the fortune of

the of what i'm getting paid for the event to do a real proper maverick moment where you know it's like one card one card ace of spades whoever gets it wins or if i get below your card you get to take my entire paycheck like to do something like that like and and just really and like it's just like give them my full Crestwood treatment and make and really build the tension of like, it goes in the table, you sit there and then you can kind of, like you nail it.

And then you just put that check back in your pocket. Like that could be interesting. I love it. Look, so many great thoughts. We, you know, I don't know why we don't do these speedball episodes more often because it genuinely helps my magic. But it's been great chatting to you all. Look, what a fun-filled episode.

Thank you all for joining us. Now, we normally do a final word where one of us reflects on something we talked about today, but because I went to the Jeff Hobson lecture last night, I asked if he would kindly give us the final word for this episode.

Now, it is quick because it was in amongst a lot of people trying to buy stuff from him, but please enjoy Jeff Hobson's final way so the word of wisdom or words of wisdom i think the real secret to success is finding out how other people the public perceive you as an entertainer so that you can then present yourself in the best light possible and know who you really are, thanks for listening it's time for us to disappear now But we'll see you again on the next episode of The Magic Guys.