So, last night at a bar I started doing magic for friends of friends. As we all do when we have too much to drink, but something interesting happened in the set.
I started doing more mind reading and risky magic. If you guys haven’t seen my lecture on TMC, you should check it out. I always end up doing this mind reading effect that is super easy but packs strong. It’s basically a simple riffle force of a card and reveal it in a special way. So after I did that, the natural thing the spectators wanted was me to do it again. So I did. I instant stooged one of his friends and had him read the person’s mind. They wanted more.
I was in a risky mood, since failure now would not be a nice way to end. I had the person think of a card and fanned the cards in front of his friends. I literally made them guess what card he was holding. Although now I was thinking that a 1 in 52 chance was basically 100% for some reason, the trick failed. I looked puzzled and started to think what the hell I can do as an out but still keep it in the mind reading context. I palmed out the card and asked one of their friends to see if his card was in the deck. Acting confused why they couldn’t guess the card. I kept asking what the card was (10 of clubs) and kept saying that I didn’t see it in the deck as the 2 were pulling out the card. The friends agreed. Having the named card palmed out, I just decided to put it into my wallet since I had a Card to Wallet in my back pocket. So the problem was to reveal it not in the context of magic. For example your card transported into my wallet.
So I kept acting confused and then in a moment of clarity, I told them that I think it’s not in the deck because I used it for a trick yesterday. Then realizing it, I tell them I left it in my wallet! Being excited (acting) I slowly pulled the wallet out and took the card out of the zippered compartment.
They freaked.
When we use “outs” or trying to come up with a good ending from something that went wrong, we always go to tried and true methods. This is totally fine, but sometimes they can be out of context. If I just pulled the card out of the wallet without the acting bit, it would seem as a magic trick. Where the card transported to the wallet. But in this case, they didn’t even think I used sleight of hand because in the context it seemed to make sense that I left a card in the wallet before. The acting sells the fact that it was a coincidence. It was also a great bit that the friends confirmed with my story of not seeing the 10 of clubs in the deck before.
It’s amazing what jazzing can end up.