Room for Creativity

Just watched Andrew Gerard’s “Stapled Warp” on True Astonishment. I’ve decided to make it more awesome. Instead of placing the prepped rip in the middle, I’ve decided to place it in the middle of one of the halves. The idea is that at the end when you rip the unit down the middle, you get to do it one more time with the ripped half that still contains the rip in the middle of the sandwiched half card. Not sure if that made sense.
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Update- Just asked around, and apparently Tyler Wilson does something similar. DAMN!

TC’s no movement handling on PK straw w/ pocket of energy presentation.

Use one of those foamy hand sanitizer dispensers and get some foamy sanitizer on the palm of your hand. Ask someone if they’ve ever seen someone unwash their hands. They say no. You proceed to rub the foamy sanitizer until they vaporize. Then you tell them you’re going to unwash your hands. You reverse the hand-washing motion and when you finish, you end up with the foamy sanitizer in your palm just as it was before.
Method – completely impromptu, just skim the top of the foam with right hand and turn left hand (the one with the foam) palm down as you rub the skimmed foam into the palm of right hand and back of left hand. (Basically do a hand-wash that doesn’t reveal the left hand palm). As long as the left hand stays palm down and not tilted too much, the foam will stick and stay in place. Then just “reverse” hand-washing action and end up with left palm face up and right hand covering the left palm. Then reveal that the unwashing procedure is done.
I think this could be pretty cool.

Big Penny – Use foil to make molding of silver dollar. Put it over big penny with a dime between the foil and big penny. Let spec examine real silver dollar, switch silver dollar for big penny with foil cover. Place big penny with foil in between their two hands. Ditch silver dollar. Go in between their hands, take out foil while stealing out the dime. Conceal dime, ball up the foil while removing it from their hand. Switch foil for dime and give dime for second spectator to hold (they think it’s the foil). Reveal big penny, reveal dime. Presentation- still working on it.

Center Deal Routine – Take out four aces, cut them to middle face up. Say you can’t do second deals, but you can deal as far as 5 cards down. Demo that by controlling fifth card to top (pinky count six cards, biddle count five, do double, place indifferent card fifth from top) and pretending to do shady deal. Cut to the face down card above the aces, and second deal first ace. Collect deck, keep break, recut and second deal second ace. Same for third except place bottom half on top. For the fourth ace, just second deal and say, “oh, I lied. I guess I can center deal.” Since aces were face up the entire demo, they can be different backs.
Extra idea for center deal routine- the first 5th deal card is a 10 of spades, leave that on the table. Perform the first three aces (ace of spades last), but switch out the three aces for the jack, queen, and king of spades. End with royal flush basically.

Ta-da.

After trying out smoke for my producer, he gave me some great feedback.
1. Don’t draw the lighter.
2. Take the pen out of play sooner.

So, now my sequence is:
1. Intro about pictionary/charades.
2. Mouth zipper gag.
3. Take out pen, cap in left hand.
4. Draw Square.
5. Place pen in mouth/drag.
6. Place paper on left hand palm.
7. Take pen from mouth, draw tobacco/drugs.
8. Put pen away.
9. Roll cigarette/joint.
10. Light cigarette/joint.
11. Take invisible lighter from pocket.
12. Light invisi-joint, release smoke.

I did some thinking one night, and realized I can actually do it twice. So, that’s 13- show mouth empty, 14- release second batch of smoke. Showed it to Tony, he dug it.

I only have one problem with this effect. You don’t get to speak. Not for that long. But long enough, I think, to make it a little awkward. And everyone uses the same presentations.
So, I thought to myself- what would be a good excuse to not speak? And two presentations I’ve always wanted to use popped into my mind. Pictionary and charades. I think this could be awesome.
First, start with pictionary by drawing tobacco, a pipe, and a lighter. Preferably for three people, and I tell them I’ll play with all three of them, drawing one image for each person. They’ll probably have a tough time guessing. So, I suggest charades- which also gives me another great opportunity to not talk. I will eventually take the pen from my mouth to pack the tobacco into the bowl of the pipe, which will give the pen some purpose before going into my pocket, instead of having it go straight from my mouth to the pocket- which I think is kind of awkward.
Anyways, good thing no one reads this blog. I will be keeping this to myself.

Just watched the trailer for Ben Seidman’s Alchemy. Immediately thought of a cleaner handling for coin to strawberry- with the strawberry in finger palm, simply use a quarter and shove the coin by it’s edges into the strawberry. Then take a bite after the transformation to prevent the spectators from wanting to check out the fruit. If they try, then eat the whole thing. If the quarter means that much to you, simply wait a couple of hours and retrieve it from the toilet.
This sounds funny, but I’m being completely serious. Not about the retrieval, but the method. It should work, no?