Wayne Houchin Lecture

Greetings magic buds. Attended a great lecture in Tulsa last
Friday night. Wayne Houchin performed a number of his most
popular routines and how he performs them for real audiences. He
is a very nice guy. Young, but very talented, and extremely
creative. He puts a lot of thought into the development of his
routines and the psychology behind the words he uses and the
actions he takes. He is quite busy lecturing around the world
through next year and apparently recently relocated from
California to Hawaii.

The lecture included performances and explanations for Sinful,
Thread, a brief talk about success in magic, and finally the East
Indian Needle Trick with a twist. He displayed a cherry with 40
needles in it. He had a spectator withdraw them, place them in
shot glass and he drank them down with some water. Audience was
very surprised when he pulled them out threaded. Reminded me a
bit of Teller's Needles in Apple routine.

Anyway, one of the card effects he did fooled me badly so I
bought it it. The effect is called Influence and it uses a Monte
Cristo deck -- something I have never seen before. Came up with a
bunch of ideas for the deck and now just trying to figure out
where to go with it.

Saw the demo for David Regal's new Red Streamlined Convertible
which is an assembly of four red backed Kings and blue backed
indifferent cards. For those who know my effect, Card Marx, you
know I like effects where cards change color at the end. This is
different. A MacDonald's Aces like effect but the four cards that
assemble have red backs. Looks very good and there are no gaffs.
Looks like a winner. You can learn more at DavidRegal.com --
apparently Wayne Houchin is helping David with the video.

Well, it's time to trade magic. Look through your closets and let
me know if you want to trade anything from my list:

- 20th Century Bra
- Balloon Detective
- Branded
- CAPtivated
- Card Marx
- Cobra Deck
- Collapsible Beer Can
- Cruch
- Emergency Stop
- Flash Burst
- Gilligan's Prediction
- Head off Shoulders Illusion
- Magic Flask
- The Modifier Wallet
- No Gravity Cards
- Sand Frame
- Sudden Deck
- Super Sharpie
- Tagged
- Sprtizer
- Traveling Knot
- Vernet Multiplying Billiard Balls w/Climax Production
- Walk Around Silk to Egg
- Window
- Wonder Dog

More reviews coming soon.

All my best,

Steven

Mental Frisbee, Ghost Images, No Sleight Card to Wallet

Hope all is well on your side of the screen. Since my last
newsletter, I have been feverishly working on researching new
routines and material as well as developing an aggressive local
marketing budget for my target audiences.

I have a ton of new routines in development, many of which will
give me really good closers and some lengthier routines designed to
fill time. I want to have more spontaneous comedy and require
less in the way of props so I can simply walk on and walk off.
It's more elegant that way.

New items received include:

Nathan Kranzo's Mental Frisbee: This comes with five colored
collapsible Frisbees and a booklet with the routine and handling.
The general effect is you throw out the five Frisbees into the
audience and bring the spectators on stage. Then you do a humorous
reading for each spectator, explaining how the color they caught
says something about their character. Finally, you bring up a
sixth spectator and they read your mind and pick a color you are
thinking of. There is a ton of good ideas, funny moments and
great magic in this booklet. I love the way Nathan's mind works.
I am anxious to customize this to my needs and try it in
September at my next performance.

Andrew Mayne's Ghost Images: Cell phone magic effects are so good
because you can always perform them -- everyone has a cell phone.
The fact that you do the magic trick using their phone totally
removes any thoughts of secret preparation or trickery. It just
looks like magic. What Andrew has done here is to bring back the
old spiritualist's miracle of producing spirit photographs and
videos using a cell phone. You can create images of playing
cards, words, footprints, hand prints, ghoulish faces, and even a
shadow of a man walking across their screen. It looks bizarre and
the method is very simple. It will require some minor prep work
and some practice to get the angles and effect right, but it
kills.

No Sleight Card to Wallet: This is from Wayne Dobson and comes
with a finely crafted leather Z-Wallet that looks like a small
billfold and works like a Himber wallet. I found the design
fascinating and it looks great and totally natural. The
instructions, however, consisted of one sheet of text with no
diagrams or photos and frankly I had some questions that needed
to be answered. I later found a Z-Wallet book. Some dealers sell
this with the wallet and some without. I picked it up but this 12
pager had some pretty mundane routines -- including one that half
resembled the routine that came with the wallet -- also no photos
in this booklet. Shouldn't be called a book and shouldn't be sold
separately. It should come with the Z-Wallet and the No Sleight
Card to Wallet. While I love the wallet and found the included
routine for card to wallet to be easy to do, I was just annoyed
with the packaging. I recommend you buy the wallet with the
booklet. You can get it for around $20. The wallet is worth much
more in my opinion. Very clever and classy gimmick.

Brass Bill Tube: This will make the third one I owned. The first
was sold off on eBay years ago. The second actually broke -- the
brass outer tube cracked when a spectator tried pulling the lid
off prematurely -- the lock was still on. Somehow they cracked
the brass. Very strange and very embarrassing as they stood there
with the outer tube in one hand and the slide in the other. So I
ordered another one I found online for $15 at Madhatter Magic and
it is gorgeous. I don't know who makes it. It is about 1 1/2
times larger. The only problem is it did not come with a little
padlock so I had to go through my magic drawers looking for an
extra lock. No gimmicked hanky was included either but for the
money it was worth it.

I recently purchased a large Shrinking Head disc with stand on
eBay and am anxious to see how I might add this to my stand-up
act. I first saw this performed at an OK City magic convention
many years ago by Brad Henderson and was quite surprised by the
positive audience reaction to this simple optical illusion. It
was quite funny and a good way to open and pull an audience into
your crazy world.

You know they say one man's junk is another man's treasure, so
please look through your collection of things you don't use
anymore and send me a list to look over. I might take something
off your hands or have something to trade.

I am especially looking for the following:

- Eric Buss' Phoney Magnet (magnet catches cell phone)
- A Gag Rags (dirty hand prints appear on rag)
- Frame Fantastique (lucite frame allows silver dollars to appear)

One more thing: this metal bookmark makes for a cheap, killer
handcuff shim:

http://www.cardsandcraft.co.uk/jewellery/1021-gold-shepherds-hook-metal-bookmarks.html

Until next time,


Steven