Chris Kenworthey’s Precog Deck.

I purchased a Viking Any Card to Wallet andChis Kenworthey’s The Precognition Deck becauseI wanted to do what seemed to be impossible. I wanted a spectator to name think of a card, have that card vanish from the deck they were holding and appear in my wallet.

The Viking Any Card to Wallet is great. It is well-made and I’ll review it later. But, for my money, The Precognition Deck is the deal of the century. It has the impact of the impossible and is actually cleaner in presentation than the Viking effect.

But wait, I don’t want to give away the whole review on the front page.

Here’s the description that intrigued me: “The magician tosses a deck of cards to any volunteer in the audience and relates that earlier in the day he had a premonition.

“He asks the volunteer to simply name any card in the deck-he has a completely free choice. The magician continues to explain that after his premonition he removed one card from the pack and placed it in his pocket.”

So far so good, eh?

“The spectator himself then removes the cards from the case and counts them out, looking at each card’s face. He gets all the way through the deck and finds there are only 51 cards, none of which were his named selection! The performer reaches into his pocket and removes one card…the spectator’s selection!

“No pocket indexes, roughing fluid, adhesives, short cards, deck switches or sleight-of-hand, the ingenious deck does it all for you.

“The deck is in the spectator’s hands before the effect begins and the magician never touches the cards. Any of the 52 cards may be named.”

I’ve been doing the effect over and over since I received it. So I read the very brief instructions, and practiced and practiced. While the ad claims there is no sleight of hand, that’s not entirely true. You will need to do a top palm but the routine gives you plenty of cover for the actual palming moment.

(In fact, the phrase “palming moment” is a trade mark of thespecial massage therapy school started by an old girl friend of mine. She is currently in prison and won’t have access to the Internet for five to seven years so I have no fear using her phrase in this review).

It is well-known in the magic community, that palming moment aside, I have no guts. None. I am a complete wuss.

My assumption is that if the trick could go wrong, it will not only go wrong but somehow catch me on fire and ruin my credit history. I was thinking of writing a book on the subject, Four Hundred Outs for the Ball and Vase.

So, while you can perform the effect as described, and allow the spectator to take the cards out of the pack and do the counting, I don’t. This eliminates the only risk in the routine.

If you have more guts than me, I say go for it. But in all the times I have done it, the routine does not seem to be diminished in any way by me counting the cardsfrom the face-updeck on to the table. I invite them to count along.

When you show the the volunteer that there is only one card missing and that the card…
Read the rest of this entry

My Plate – Favorite Vacation Pictures

I have the same feeling I had when I discovered my first Las Vegas Buffet. How can this be? How can they make so many things available to me? How will I decide what to choose?

Logically, as with the buffet at Harrah’s, I picked up as much as I could carry on one plate.

So I had the shrimp next to the prime rib next to the potato au gratin and the Jell-O with mandarin oranges (which I had to pick out of the Jell-O because I hate mandarin oranges but I love lime Jello-O) and it was all next to the corner of the plate holding the horseradish for the prime rib, the cocktail sauce for the shrimp and the whipped cream for the Jell-O.

When I got back to my table, it was a mess or a “m?lange.” It was a mess. The waitress told me that I could go back to the buffet as much as I would like and that there was no need to “be a pig.”

I nodded like I had a clue what she was talking about ? I was too high on the wonderful cocktail sauce/horseradish potato dish I had accidentally prepared.

Lybrary.com is exactly like the Harrah’s buffet.

I Got This In 30 Seconds.

I was searching for information on a card index. I looked everywhere and someone suggested I check Annemann’s index system. Great, I thought, but where will I find Annemann on a second’s notice. There were plenty of sites that sold his Practical Mental Effects text but none could read it to me over the phone.

I am very much an “instant gratification” kind of guy. The microwave is not fast enough for me. I can’t stand refinancing my house because it takes too long so I’m still paying 12.234% interest (but I only have 22 years left). I threw out my Chia Pet because it didn’t sprout fast enough. (But it mutated, grew back and attacked my mail-person. It is now living in Vegas with the mail-person and they have two children: Fern and Daisy).

Lybrary.com,…
Read the rest of this entry

It is the practice of Inside Magic to immediately (within two months) correct any mistake or error or complete fabrication (unless it got us attention). If you believe we have made a mistake or libeled you, please let us know and we?ll do what we need to do to cover ourselves.

In the February 2^nd Edition of Inside Magic, we incorrectly announced the birth of a new type of practitioner called ?The Card Magician.? The article proclaimed that these ?Card Magicians? would be able to use decks of playing cards ? even the cheap ones with pictures of kitties eating pasta like you have in your kitchen junk drawer ? and perform miracles.

“Is it in this row?”

One of the tricks we predicted would eventually be developed was an ?Ace Assembly? where the four aces are lost in the deck and they are all found together in a motel room near the airport or on the top of the deck.

We did not, however, predict that your uncle would invent a trick where you endlessly deal seven cards in four neat rows, ask which row contained

your card, and then deal the rows again. We regret the error.

We also note it is so unfair that your uncle did not win FISM with his card trick. We attribute his loss to: 1) his nose hair; 2) his ear hair; 3) his breath; 4) the 20 minute time limit for performance of a single effect (he was still asking the Italian judge, ?which row now?!? when time ran out); 5 his inappropriate reference to the female judges as ?skirts? and the male judges as ?foreigners.? Prejudice is everywhere, even in magic.

…
Read the rest of this entry