Magic Tricks

Mark Elsdon is one of my favorite creators/mentalists. His first Penguin Live was fantastic, one of the best ever. I had high hopes for the sequel. Man, was I let down.

First, there are way too many card trick taking up the first half. Do we really need to see Mark do Out of this World based on someone else's handling? No. He also divines a card based on a *****. While the sleight is reasonably clever, it's just a nothing effect. Joshua Quinn did the same things using a ****** deck.

He also does a "calling the cards" effect that uses a ***** and a ****** deck. Yawn.

He does a prediction using a **** wallet. His sage advice was to not mention the word "wallet." Most of us who use a tricked-out wallet already know that you don't call attention to the heat. He spends a lot of time on this.

He does a magic trick with coffee shop punch cards that is based on an idea by Richard Kaufman and Derek Dingle, a card effect that I remember from back in the day. It's not mentalism.

He also spends a lot of time talking to Dan Harlan about a performance art piece that he did where he could only say 100 words over 10 tricks in 10 minutes. He tells us that mentalists talk too much and explain too much. How true. Snore.

Fortunately, he moves over to his forte, equivoque, and for a while, things pick up with his discussion of some new uses.

But when he moves to his coveted conversation as mentalism pieces, there is nothing new to behold. In fact, the last trick that he does is based on Al Mann's The Kolophon that he doesn't credit. Again, nothing new to see here.

Overall, I'm crushed. I hope that Mark gets that equivoque book done soon. This lecture was not up to his high standards.