Magic Tricks

This lecture's strength is in Josh's construction of his routines. All the little touches, and the thinking behind these effects, are the key takeaways here. Most of these items cannot be performed "out of the box," and the majority cannot be made yourself from everyday items. In case someone is most interested in this lecture for specific effects, I think it's useful to break down what is needed to perform the routines, as described.

1. Order From Chaos. The kicker components of the effect require two watches, a special handkerchief (fairly common prop that you may have, around $20 if you do not), and a special deck of cards that can't be made yourself (around $30). He uses a specific wine glass and describes where to get it, but any glass that fits a deck will work.

2. Multitasking. Impromptu from a borrowed, shuffled deck. No additional cost or gimmicks. This was my favorite effect on the lecture (cause I love the sneakiness), although I have a sense that it will play better for magicians than lay people because of one of the items he mentions in the interview about the psychological study he conducted about magic.

3. Out of Sight. This cannot be made up yourself. Josh has the gimmick specially made. He sells it on Vanishing Inc for $75. I could not find this in the Penguin catalog.

4. Triad Coins. This is another product demo. Gimmicks other than Josh's may be able to pull this off with a bit of handling variation. If you do coins and have gimmicks, you may have part of this in your collection but probably not the full set. While this version solves a specific limitation found in his previous version, I like the previous version better because it works with the more standard gimmicks that are machined into a variety of coins. You could not do this improved version, for example, with walking liberties or morgans. You're limited to the coins he has for sale - on Vanishing Inc or on here.

5. Signs. Pretty cool do as I do plot - similar look to Tap a Lack by Paul Cummings or The Epitome Location by Harry Lorayne - but without the math. This can be made up pretty easily, and you may have the one requirement laying around. If not, $5 here on Penguin will cover it.

6. Trojan Deck. This can be made up yourself but requires purchasing special cards (about $45 total) to perform this as explained.

7. Balance. Could be made yourself but would require sourcing the ingredients to the gimmicks and a lot of trial and error with the arts and crafts. This was just listed for sale on various dealers for $200 with all props included.

I normally come away from a Joshua Jay lecture excited about at least one routine that I will immediately workshop to see how it fits in with my repertoire of favorites, but this time I did not. I will give Multitasking a fair shake and test it for layman, but I think there are much stronger tricks to be done with cards. And since Josh explains that laymen tend to think of card tricks as all the same, it's important for the card effects you do choose to perform to be the strongest, most surprising effects possible.

The interview about the magic study was the most important part of this lecture for me.