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February 2015 | Volume 24 | Number 6

Justin Flom ? Make Magic, Share Joy

By Rory Johnston

For Justin Flom, sharing his magic videos on the Internet isn’t just a promotion for other projects; the videos are a goal in and of themselves. While he has had his own theater in Branson, performed for years on ships, and is being seen more and more on television, it is his online presence that has made Justin increasingly recognizable.

Piddington’s Secrets

By Martin T. Hart

In the late 1940s, Sydney and Lesley Piddington caused a sensation on BBC radio with their feats of telepathy, apparently receiving each other’s thoughts while miles apart. Now, some of their closely guarded secrets have been revealed.

Bill Cook’s Not Your Friend ? Yet

By Jaq Greenspon

You may have seen Bill Cook as one of the featured magicians in the documentary Make Believe, performing a stage act even though he is more comfortable with close-up. But this Chicago native loves all aspects of magic and excels at stepping out of his own comfort zone.

How’d They Meet

By Alan Howard

In this Valentine’s month, we queried some notable magic couples who stick together onstage and off, asking how they first became a team in their professions and their lives.

Plus Updates on…

• A magic course at a university in Sweden.
• David Ben onstage as The Conjuror.
• A look at The Illusionists 1903.
• A Moment With Wizard Wars creator Rick Lax.
• Congratulations to Alan Watson.
• Remembrances Amy Dawes, Jim Alfredson, and Steve Walker.

Bonus Digital Content for This Month…

(* Available for subscribers only at M360)

• Three performance videos from Justin Flom.
• Video tutorials on Justin Flom’s Pull My Finger and USS Sweet & Low tricks.
• An excerpt from Make Believe featuring Bill Cook, and a spotlight with Bill talking about the film.
• The Piddingtons’ 1949 BBC radio broadcast from the Tower of London, plus a video of them in a trailer for Piddington’s Secrets Revealed.
• Chris Mayhew’s sandwich card effect with a twist, Al Rorrinson’s relinking a key to a spectator’s key ring, Chris Korn’s production of a small bottle from a fire ball, Jeff Prace’s rigid-rope routine using an earbud ? all from Murphy’s At The Table Lecture Series.*
• Lennart Green teaches his 4 Aces Squared from this 2005 DVD, now rereleased by Meir Yedid.*
• First Look excerpts from DVDs: The Rings by Chris Capehart, and The ’80s Called and They Want Their Magic Book Back by Jonathan Friedman.*
• Fielding West’s 2013 talk about, and performance of, psychic surgery joins MAGIC Live presentations by Kevin Spencer, Tina Lenert, Wayne Dobson & Jeff McBride, Joanie Spina, Gene Anderson, Xavier Mortimer, and Master Payne.*
• “Martin Gardner’s Corner” ran intermittently in MAGIC Magazine from 1994 to 2004. Martin would have turned 100 years old on October 21, 2014. To celebrate, we’re posting 52 of his “Corners,” one per week for the next year. Each has been selected and annotated by Jason England and illustrated by Tom Jorgenson.*

Marketplace

Twenty-five products are reviewed this month by Michael Claxton, Peter Duffie, Gabe Fajuri, Jared Kopf, Francis Menotti, Peter Pitchford, John Wilson:

The Sense of Wonder by Robert E. Neale
Classic Correspondence from Egyptian Hall Museum II
?????by Mike Caveney
Don’t Fool Yourself: The Magical Life of Dell O’Dell
?????by Michael Claxton
C4 by Jonathan Levit
Phantom Deck by Joshua Jay
Cloth by Steve Valentine
Extortion by Patrick Kun and Sans Minds Magic
Cody’s Comedy Book Test by Cody Fisher
Conversation as Mentalism Volume 2 by Mark Elsdon
WaterWorks by Uday Jadugar
Betcha!: How to Win Free Drinks for Life
?????by Simon Lovell
MindSight by Andreu
Classifying Deck by Mago Granell
Dream Prediction Elite by Paul Romhany
Jacks in the Box by Aldo Colombini
Entertainer’s Handbook by Mike Stilwell
Rubber Bang by Sean Yang
Silent Mora: The Story of Louis J. McCord
?????by William V. Rauscher
Coin Thru Nose by Tyler Sutter and The Magic Estate
Stand Up Magic by Tom Wright
Magic Holetite Pencil
The Rings by Chris Capehart
Tie Shell by David Penn
Method Memorabilia by Steven Palmer
John Henry Anderson: The Great Wizard of the North
?????and His Magical Family
?????by Edwin and Michael Dawes

First Look

John Bannon

Destination Zero

In Destination Zero, John Bannon travels to a special province in the world of magic: Self-Working Card Magic. These are not your typical non-sleight-of-hand tricks. Bannon has thoroughly analyzed these effects and backed up subtle principles with the careful, layered construction he is known for. Anyone can cobble together a couple of principles and call it a trick. Bannon looks for synergies and he leverages the method as much as possible. His objective: “One plus one should equal three ? or more. Otherwise, why bother?” This month, we visit two stops in Destination Zero: Leverage, in which the magician makes a prediction about a selected card, and Mousetrap, a self-working sandwich trick.

The Monk’s Way

Steve Reynolds

Shift and Control

As a continued celebration of the New Year, I’d like to share two moves that follow the Monk’s Way approaches revealed in last year’s installments. These strategies accomplish much more than their brute-force counterparts and without “multiplying entities beyond necessity.” The first is a lovely multiple shift that uses the pre-trick shade and offbeat moment of a momentary mistake to get far ahead of your audience. The second item shows how a subtlety can be accomplished in reverse, increasing its utility.

Loving Mentalism

Ian Rowland

Pascal’s Swindle

You invite someone to just imagine any playing card ? purely mental selection, no cards used, no force, nothing written down. You then introduce what you claim is a mathematical formula for mindreading and you proceed to demonstrate, with the help of the spectator’s calculator, that a highly improbable series of calculations somehow enables you to name the spectator’s card. At first, this might look like a fairly trite “think of a number and double it” trick. However, there is more meat on the mystery than that. It is perfectly clear that the calculation process, though it provides plenty of opportunity for fun, produces a total that bears no relation whatsoever to the identity of the thought-of card. This is genuinely the case. Nonetheless, you can name the correct card every time ? a strange and perplexing mystery!

Bent on Deception

Mike Bent

Black and Blue and Gold

It’s February. And to the kid show and family performer, that means one thing: the dreaded Cub Scout Blue & Gold Banquet season is upon us. The mere mention of the event can trigger long-repressed traumas and make many a seasoned pro’s blood run cold. I actually perform at a lot of Blue & Gold Banquets ? and I enjoy them! Here are a few tips on taming packs of tigers, bobcats, wolves, bears, and the vicious webelo. In this month’s effect, you have a paper folder with a strip of paper inside that has all the Scout badges printed on it ? Bobcat, Tiger Cub, Wolf, Bear, and Webelo. A volunteer uses a pair of safety scissors to cut through the folder, cutting one of the badges in half. You then show a prediction that matches the very same badge.?

Classic Correspondence

Mike Caveney

Lewis Ganson to Charles Rosskam

This letter could be called the calm before the storm. Lewis Ganson was sitting in his home office in Portsmouth on the south coast of England, and as the new editor of The Gen magazine, he was catching up on some business-related correspondence. One letter he wrote was to Charles Rosskam, a subscriber who had recently moved from Warwick, Rhode Island, to Hollywood, Florida. He reminded Charles of the wonderful time he had shown Lewis and his wife during their visit to America and that he would like to return the favor someday. In the final couple of sentences, Lewis casually mentioned that he was awaiting the arrival of Dai Vernon, who would be spending considerable time at the Ganson home while they worked on a new book of card magic. Vernon’s visit to the UK would soon be followed by Slydini. A double tsunami of magic was heading directly toward the British Isles, and Lewis Ganson was right in its path.

For What It's Worth

Mark Kornhauser

High School Magical

Three months ago, I started a project with Sasha Mereu, a talented high school drama teacher with an impressive background in magic. Together we discussed an experiment for the upcoming semester. Instead of rehearsing a play, might the students be able to learn to perform a respectable magic show? We thought yes. Sasha is a caring, compassionate teacher who gently approaches the fragile psyche of the high school students and encourages them to naturally unfold their creativity. I generally look at high school students as kids with undeveloped brains who have diminished attention spans and feeble work ethics. We both agreed it was important to strike terror into their hearts by imposing a meaningful deadline. We booked the 320-seat Sparks High School theater for three days and announced an opening date for High School Magical.

Walkabout Soup

Simon Coronel

The Ethics of Reciprocity and “How Did You Do That?”

The Ethic of Reciprocity is one of the core concepts in nearly every moral system in human history. It appears in the Bible as “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Confucius phrased it as “never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself.” Essentially, when working out how to treat someone, imagine that the roles are reversed and then think about how you’d want to be treated. When someone asks me “How did you do that?” after a show, I don’t need to imagine the roles being reversed. I can clearly remember a time when they were. I became interested in learning magic at age eighteen, so I have some pretty clear memories of seeing magic and magicians through a layperson’s eyes.