by Greg Webb
This is an item I’m trying to get manufactured but as yet no cigar. I’ll lay out the whole trick. This has been under wraps for many years. Jeff McBride wrote me he liked it when I sent him a prototype.
Effect: A lit candle is blown out and wrapped in tissue paper. A silk vanishes by disintegrating into confetti. Inside the tissue paper is found the silk, and the lit Candle emerges from under your coat and replaced in your candle holder on table.
Required: You’ll have to make some things. Not hard. I’ll go into exquisite detail – don’t worry. I’m not a high-tec guy. All do-able.
One item is a specialized pull.
The silk is attached to the pull. Drill a hole at the lip – sew it on. To wear the pull, it goes through a belt loop and around the small of back and pins on waistband at your right.
The pull will hang near left pocket and the silk is mainly in that pants pocket. This is to avoid fumbling when trying to find silk. Just grasp pull – pretend to take out silk from pocket. It comes automatically.
43
To vanish (disintegrate) silk, push into pull and use thumb to draw 1 inch square confetti made of tissue paper (same color as silk … about 10 pieces only) out of bobby pin clips and let these drop and flutter down in front of you as you release pull.
Not many seem to realize that there is a “tell” in many magi’s pull work and the confetti hides the zip. More important is that it adds a lot artistically. It can seem as if the silk dissolves away and gets applause all by itself. These large tissue squares are perfect.
Glitter is too small to show the way we’d like – as is regular confetti.
The Candle Vanish. The candle is a fake make of a short piece of hit candle in the end of a white paper tube. The dupe silk is inside and the candle is in a candle holder.
To transform the candle to a silk, light it, pick it up, and also pick up a piece of gift wrap paper (which are white on the inside and colorful on the outside) and as you go to put the candle in the wrap paper, hold the wrap paper so it screens the lower part of your face and as you bring the lit candle behind – blow it out and then wrap it up. Pause.
Then crumple up the paper hard and briskly (to break the paper shell of fake) and pause. Let this sink in as part of the effect. The paper wad is smaller than it should be … this begins to imply a vanish occurred. Then make a small tear in the paper ball. Draw out the dupe silk and keep your eyes on it as you drop the paper and crushed fake candle as one into your hat, bucket, or magic wastebasket without even looking because that is how to make it seem like a meaningless piece of scrap. Casual.
Producing the candle: I had a way worked out with a candle in a clip inside a coat … plus a BIC Lighter on a short string pinned inside coat .. but, you know what? The danger of setting a coat on fire accidentally is not worth it. So!!
Just have the candle in a pocket. Also have a BIC lighter (there is a small BIC lichger) in the pocket.
So just reach in pocket … palm the BIC a la a cigar and bring out the unlit candle … with palmed BIC.
Put the candle in a candle holder on table. Produce the BIC a la a cigar or cigarette … light the candle!!
44 End of story.
See you.
45 OCTOBER, Number 7
I was thinking of Jack Chanin who I knew quite well in the 1960's. The reason is that I ran into James Randi when he turned 100! I then remembered that James used a Chanin "move" when he vanished a girl's watch for a large room. As he acted out the
"vanish" itself with his right hand, after basically a French Drop (keeping the watch in left hand).
So leaning forward to concentrate attention on right hand's acting, the left, with cradled watch, is rested on left knee.
After vanish registers with right hand, the left with hidden watch comes off knee as posture changes and watch is produced from behind spectator's ear or wherever. The thing is ...Randi is a very good magician!
The "move" in question was from a Jack Chanin routine from his "Chinese Act". I wish I had thought to ask Randi if he knew Chanin ... (I'm sure he did ...conventions or shows or what-not.) ...or if he just got it from a Chanin book (I'm not sure it is in print ... part of the Chinese Act - the silk act [last part of Chinese Act - Chan Jack] is.) Anyway I'll describe the trick and must preface by saying Chanin excelled at using items borrowed from spectators in dangerous ways (knife through coat ... several methods).
Here goes: Burned & Restored hanky. He'd borrow a hanky from a lady spectator.
Wadded up in his other hand was a burned hanky. He also held a perfume bottle filled with lighter fluid in the hand holding the wadded burned hanky ... for cover.
Follow along. He'd sprinkle lighter fluid on the borrowed hanky and then light it!
Immediately he'd wad up the burning hanky in his huge hands and kill the flames ...
snuff them right out! Now, with the borrowed hanky balled up in his left hand ... he'd open out the pre-burned hanky with both hands, at first, then held it up with his right hand ... and here is the move! The left hand with its balled up borrowed hanky rests on the left knee as the body leans forward (to concentrate on the right hand ... supposedly).
46
Then ... the burned hank is balled up ... left comes off knee with its balled up borrowed hanky (still hidden) and hidden in right had as both hands now open out the original unhurt borrowed hanky!
There you have it. A memory of Chanin triggered by a memory of Randi.
Hey look ... I still have old newsletters to savage!
Jack Chanin was one of the truly great magicians and also very underrated. I would put him in with Vernon, Slydini, Al Flosso, and other names we equate with greatness.
Personally, until I saw David Roth in the early seventies, Jack had been the only magician who made everything seem like real magic and not "tricks". I was very lucky to have gotten to know him.
This, his handling of the Bluff Shift, is an example of his ability to understand what was lacking in a trick, from a spectator's possible point of view - and fix it.
What you do is proceed as with the normal Bluff Shift until you have one card in your right hand which the viewers take to be a half- deck. You might find it advantageous to hold a pinkie break under the top card from the start...then riffle down the left side of the deck with the left thumb until they yell "Stop"! Pick up the break under the top card with the right hand's ball of thumb which is already in place because of the position of the right hand in Biddle Grip arched above and slightly to the right of the deck for support during the riffling-down procedure of the left thumb.
Lift the top half-deck, with the break, for the selected card to be taken and noted. As they're looking at the card, kiss the halfdecks and let everything drop from your right except one card (the one above the break). The prior break allows there to be no fumbling or fidgeting during the dropoff.
Extend your left hand with 51 cards. Keep this hand low and angled so as to minimize the view of the edge of deck that is really too thick. Have the selection replaced and set the right hand's card, supposedly a half-deck, on the deck making 52.
Here's the Chanin Disarrange. As soon as the right's single card hits the deck, and while the right hand screens the deck momentarily, the left thumb nudges the entire top half of the deck to your right. Then the right hand is taken away and the left hand is extended to show the condition of the deck.
47
This position with the extended hand and the top half of deck stepped to your right must be allowed to sink in. Then, after you mention that their card is "about in the middle", you square the deck up in a deliberate manner. You've controlled their card and can go into any conclusion you wish depending on your plot.
The plot thickens! Stephen Minch just appeared in my lavalamp. Better than the crystal ball and it saves on phone bills. He realized-instantly-that the idea was good, and Stephen is also a Jack Chanin fan, but by working on this idea with deck in hand and having a "clear light" experience, found an improved handling.
Backtrack to the point in the procedure when the spectator just selected their card after your riffle-down and "Say Stop". While they memorize their card, and as you secretly drop off all but one card from the right hand group, onto the left half, keep a pinkie break there, between the two half-decks. Maintain that break while they replace their card on the left hand's 51. Lower the right hand's single and as soon as it lands on the deck, and while the right hand still screens but no longer touches anything, straighten in a relaxed way the entire left hand including the left pinkie, and the half deck above the pinkie break will ride to the right. This way there is no left thumb movement necessary and I agree that this is an improved handling on the Chanin Disarrange. Wait-Stephen just disappeared from my lava lamp!
-feen-
48