Damian Hoban was nice enough to allow us to republish his review of the Irish Magic Convention that was held last month in Limerick. Cheers Damien!

Just a quick note to thank everyone involved in the Irish convention on 27-29th March 2009. Next year’s gathering in Belfast will revert to the May bank holiday weekend.

Jon Allen is a World Close Up champion and Gold Star member of the Inner Magic Circle. Opening the Gala show, Jon performed his excellent new routine, The Pain Game. Have a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2IxiZeV1h0

Alexander De Cova and Dave Allen brought a mixture of creativity and slack-jawed wonder to the proceedings in Cabaret performance and lecture. Dave’s lecture included elements of Vent/puppetry and was well received by a few kids (yes, real kids – not magicians acting up!) in the audience. Alexander de Cova’s lecture contained some stunning rope and silk magic, in addition to demonstrating to Irish magicians his Beer Game. I’m sure some people, at least, tried to get to grips with this one in the bar afterwards. Especially for those of us from Limerick, he demonstrated his effect called “Stab in the Dark”.

Zane (Joe Swing) treated the audience to fabulous renditions of favourite Rat Pack numbers in addition to performing a few quick magical tricks between numbers. Zane (in addition to Kaymar, Pat Fallon & Paddy Clancy) also ran a dealers stall during the convention. Lecturers Dave Allen, Alexander de Cova, Trevor Lewis & Jon Allen also were selling effects/lecture notes.

John Kimmonds had ‘em rolling in the aisles with his award winning Ventiloquism act. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7ROWHn1OqA. As a finish, he commandeered Cathal Costelloe from the front row of the audience, stuck a half-face vent mask on him and had Cathal conversing in a falsetto voice reminiscent of the great Alan Ball.

Tom Moloney, dressed as a medical doctor (now ye all know why the A&E departments are short staffed) demonstrated his fantastic comedy juggling routine to much applause. Local talent Lorcan Russell (Harpist) and Kevin Prendergast (Irish Dancing) complimented the international flavour of the event with a touch of some traditional Irish arts.

Trevor Lewis, in his capacity as MC, was thoroughly professional and witty in his role and had to endure many references to Wales’ loss to Ireland in the Grand Slam over the course of the weekend.

Both Stage (Saturday night) and Close Up (Sunday afternoon) competitions were held this year. Congratulations to award winners Leon Andersen (Stage competition), Ruth Andrews (Most Promising Young Magician), Daragh McGrath (Gemini Trophy), Eamonn Murphy and Fred Corveneio (Close Up competition) and the Munster Society of Magicians for the team event

Damian Hoban

But that aside, James has recently released his newest set of lecture notes, with the less imaginitive title of ‘Stuff’. Luckilly the bland title belies the content, which is exactly the kind of material we have grown to expect by James. Boatloads of misdirection (You really do need balls to pull alot of this off), a fondness of the side steal (and this time the cull!), and very very workable.

My only complaint at this stage, is the combination of the white handwriting style font with the wood grain style background is quite difficult to read off a computer monitor, but James is certainly not the first magician to do something like this (Seriously folks! Pay a couple of quid to get someone who has a little bit of experience in these kind of things to do it for you! Hell, send us an e-mail and we will give you some tips on useability..

And now for a breakdown:

TOCTP

A psychologically deceptive, double hitting, thought of card to pocket.

Very nice, what is a genuinely thought of card by one spectator is shown to be the card you placed in there a few moments before. The patter covers all the dirty work and it is one of the easier technically effects.

Caught 3 Times

3 spectators cards appear one at a time between two face up cards within the deck. Each time the spectator is holding the cards and letting their imaginations run wild!

An awesome seeming sandwich effect. I haven’t got round to anything more than preliminary fiddling and it is quite knuckle busting. Lot of spread culling. If you are technically able to perform it, then it looks like the kind of effect you will get great reactions from!

Brainless Travelers

A reworking of the classic effect from Still Fancy a Pot of Jam? High impact magic for the confident performer.

Same effect as on his DVD, there may be some subtle changes to it but nothing jumped out at me. Still a lovely gimmick free travelers routine, nothing too technical and the ’sleight’ is a pleasure to do, brass balls optional but advised.

Ahead and Under

Four of a kind instantly vanish from the deck and reappear ANYWHERE!!

A nice magician fooling routine. As a performance for lay people it is unnecessary and far from the cleanest way to achieve a card under something effect. Essentially this is what you pull on magicians and those friends who just burn your hands. Basically this will drop kick them in the nuts as they will not have a clue.

Triple Whack

What Harris would have done if steroids were legal!

I like this a lot. Once again spread culling makes an appearance. I don’t want to say too much as it will hint at the method but there is so much misdirection at one point in this routine strippers could dance in and pick pocket everyone in the audience.

ITHwich

An in the hands sandwich with a hypnotic twist

Billing it as a hypnotic sandwich effect was in my opinion a little silly, it’s an awesome effect and my favourite in the notes. Personally as I do a lot of hypnosis I would lean towards doing the hypnotic presentation but it is very much an option. Do not skip this effect if you can’t hypnotize.

Card on Ceiling

Ever thrown the deck in the air only for the pack to split everywhere? This method not only makes Card on Ceiling flawless but also give a new level of impossibility!

I don’t perform a CTC effect for all the reasons above. This has convinced me it may be worth reconsidering. It improves the effect and makes it tidier.

Anyone who’s read any of my other reviews should know of my distaste for giving complex products a numerical value however this is once again an excellent purchase that I really cannot fault in any way, shape or form.

Stuff is available from James Brown’s website for £7.50 as an ebook.

Examine the Billfold, and you’ll discover various different compartments and small pockets for credit cards, documents and things. It also has a long money pocket plus a short zip compartment. On the outside is a flapped pocket, which cleverly hides the secret entrance and the pocket is usable too. The small outer flap serves another unique purpose, if your rear pocket is deep, it is very difficult to load a palmed card without much delay and fumbling, with this new Billfold, it is simple. Just lift wallet up prior to performance and hook the small outer pocket flap on pocket edge. It makes loading a dream, and ever so fast as the wallet is in exactly the same position every time.

I had been keeping my eyes open for a card-to-wallet to use as a closer for a while now, but not being much of a suit wearer, I was keen to keep away from the handbag sized wallets that most magicians seem to use in their routines. Eventually, on the recommendation of Mark Waddington I picked up this one from Top Secret Magic and it has quickly been integrated into my routine, and even become my day to day wallet too! Now, on with the review!

The Effect
This is a wallet for card-to-wallet type effects, it is a billfold style wallet, i.e. the type of wallet you probably have in your pocket right now rather than the giant handbag of a suit pocket wallet some magicians seem to prefer.

Cost
I paid £38 from  Top Secret Magic, they had it at my door without problem within a week. (I’m in Ireland)

Difficulty
Realistically this is probably a 2-3 (out of 5), you will need to be able to palm a card in some way shape or form to use this wallet. The method you use to palm it depends on what effect you are using it with. I just use a simple top palm when I am using it to finish my ACR.

Review
This is the first wallet I have purchased, and having used it in the wild for about two weeks at this stage I am very happy to recommend it to anyone who wants to preform this type of effect. I find the loading mechanism very easy, it requires no slides, can be just as easily kept in the back or side pocket (maybe not on tight jeans) and as I typically preform in Jeans and a T-Shirt, it is much more appropriate than any of the large style wallets you may have seen.
The product is made out of real leather, and looks just like a normal wallet, there is no reason why you can not use this as your every day wallet should you so desire. I don’t know about UK money, but Euros fit fine into the bill slot, even the large 50 euro note.

The wallet has the standard bill slot, which is described above, two areas in front of that that are suitable for credit cards, bank cards etc. Between the two is another flap that is playing card size. This might be suitable for a small packet trick or the like. Just above the bill slot is a small zippered compartment, this is where the card appears once it has been loaded, and on the other side is a small slot (Maybe to hold your drivers license or something).

On the outside of the wallet is a small pouch that is almost exactly the right size to hold a playing card. I personally keep Colour Monte in mine.

Due to the design of the wallet, the load is very easy, and a card can be easilly loaded as you reach into your pocket to get the wallet, I have yet to have the card catch or snag on anything when using it.

Overall
I can happilly give this 5/5, it was exactly what I was looking for, will not draw any attention amongst the people I typicially preform for (For example I have never seen anyone who is not a magician use one of the large style wallets, I think they look a bit too unusual to most people for them to not draw attention). It has one purpose (card to wallet) and it preforms this exactly as you would expect it to. The price is reasonable, the construction of the item is fantastic, I see no reason why this will not manage two or three years wear and tear being used as an every day wallet (even longer if it is just used for preformance).

This tome of 398 pages explains how you can make your magic transform into miracles.
Paul shares with you some of his best kept secrets from the world of Psychology, so that you never have to have a lackluster response ever again.

Over 50 Psychological methods are discussed in full detail. As well as the powerful Psychology included in the first 250 pages, you also receive a number of strong effects.

What I Say

When I wrote my Top Ten Purchases I merely placed The Alchemical Tools by Paul Brook in the ‘Honourable Mention’ category, this was because I was only 200 pages into it but already felt it worthy of featuring on the list! As it is this book is brilliant and is just as good as my best purchase of all time, Reality is Plastic. In fact if I was asked to choose which is better I would be utterly incapable, that’s how good this book is!

Anyone who expects this to be a book of tricks will be sorely disappointed, in fact anyone who just wants a book of tricks probably isn’t worthy of this book and should just feck off now!!! The first 247 pages are filled with Paul’s practical psychological advice from his years as a psychologist. He covers everything from how you should sit or stand to what you should say. There is a full chapter on just the power of certain words such as ‘now’ and ‘and’. Everything is focussed on building rapport with your spectators, if they like you they’ll like your magic!!!

Paul also focuses on how to move your magic from being seen as ‘tricks’ to being seen as powerful miracles by your spectators. He uses an interesting mantra that he ‘borrowed’ from Gordon Ramsey (I lost a tiny bit of respect for him when I found out he watched Gordon Ramsey but anyway…). The mantra is, “Make love to it; don’t fuck it!” It’s very apt and is something everyone should consider when performing. If you are gentle and handle your magic with care it’s a much more beautiful thing than a quick ACR behind the bike shed!

When Paul finally gets to the effects, they are worth waiting for. While the effects could never live up to the pure genius of the opening psychology sections, they make a damn good attempt at it.

At The Doors of Perception takes a principle that will be known to almost anyone who reads this and takes it to an entirely new level. Effects like this one (and to stroke my own ego, my Lie Detector) that take a simple well known principle and just go nuts with it! Even someone familiar with the principle at use could well be fooled by this effect.

Deuterium is one of Paul’s babies and it is indeed a great effect. I played around with something similar for a while but Paul’s version is far superior. Essentially you have a 1 in 6.5 chance of hitting a total miracle. The other 5.5 times it’s merely a miracle. Once again Paul takes something that is known to all of us and devises a brilliant performance for it. In fact, I have seen so many piss poor performances of this something that Deuterium is a nice breath of fresh air.

Insightful Sequence is an enjoyable business card effect. Essentially you produce a series of mini climaxes using priming (see Naked Mentalism I & II and Psychological Subtleties 1 & 2) and then using the answers the spectator gives you predict the arrangement they will sort ten numbered business cards into (generally 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 but you could do it with words or any other sequence you want).

Killer Hertz (kHz) is my favourite effect in the book. Without using a marked deck and while never looking at the spectators hands you are able to say what ESP card each of the spectators has, why they chose it and reveal a sealed envelope prediction of the simple you are left with. I love it, unfortunately the method is not practical in certain situations but I am trying to work out how to overcome that (Beyond ESP 2 Cards are my current idea if anyone’s interested).

Thus Spoke Zarathustra is not really an effect. It is a collection of six of Paul’s favourite cold reading phrases. These are great, a nice step away from the usual Barnum Statements you see magicians throw around. I never do enough cold reading in my acts to properly road test these but I would take Paul’s word on their effectiveness.

The book ends with an interesting collection of essays by Paul ranging from the ethics of talking to the dead to spotting left handed spectators. They are all well worth reading.

Once again I ran low on superlatives towards the end of the review, all I can say is this book is seriously brilliant and is essential reading for anyone interested in mentalism. The Alchemical Tools will turn your leaden tricks into bright, shining, golden miracles.

Also once again I hate giving numerical values, anyone else would give it ten but I refuse to number something as complex as the value of a book.

The Alchemical Tools is available from Paul Brook’s website for £25 (postage is free) and all books are signed by the author.

Honourable Mentions
Casanova Concept
The Alchemical Tools by Paul Brook
Decisions by Mozique

Extractor
An awesome utility gimmick. Essentially, a card is placed in a deck box, an impossible place for sleight of hand, and almost instantly the card appears somewhere miraculous like my… (skip the following silly sentence that Ian made me put in)
Available from Alakazam for £50.00

JOL Large Plus Wallet
My companion to the extractor. Has two separate loads, palm and no-palm, can be used to introduce a stack of cards, the same card can appear in your wallet, be removed, placed in the deck by the spectator and shuffled and then appear in your wallet again. It’s the best secret load wallet around as long as you are happy using a gentleman’s breast pocket wallet and not a hip wallet.
Available from Top Secret Magic for £75.00

Art of Astonishment by Paul Harris
A massive three volume set of tricks. They are mostly cards and there is some brilliant classics in her. Personally I love Las Vegas Leaper, Re-Set and Galaxy. I only got these recently and am loving just opening a random page and finding an effect nearby that I like!
Available from Alakazam for £80.00

Coinvexed
The best coinbending gimmik I have ever seen. The gimmik is… camoflaged. The spectator sees it but it just slips right under their radar. Dying to get my hands on the sharpie edition.
Available from World Magic Shop for £85.00

Still Fancy a Pot of Jam?
An excellent collection of misdirection based effects. The title trick is fecking hilarious, a spectator is convinced you have 11p in your hand when in fact you have… a pot of jam. WARNING: You need brass plated balls to attempt some of these.
Available from MagicBox for £24.99

Banachek’s Psi Series Volume 2
The best of the Psi Series DVDs. It contains some seriously strong effect. My favourite is the Drawing Duplication which leads nicely into a Q&A routine if you want. So good I performed it on TV!!!
Available from Alakazam for £24.99

Psychological Subtleties 1&2 by Banacheck
Excellent work on psychological forces or priming. The basis of the circle/triangle force.
Volume 1 is out of print (due a reprint soon) and Volume 2 is available from Alakazam for £37.50

Naked Mentalism 1 & 2 by Jon Thomson
More priming material. Jon, using a massive database, presents two books on a vast array of possible forces. A good follow up to Banchek’s work.
Both are available from lulu.com for £39.99

Get Nyman
Much of the creative work behind Derren Brown is done by Andy Nyman. The DVD is excellent with some seriously excellent and entertaining effects. WARNING: You need brass plated balls to attempt some of these.
Available from Alakazam for £34.99

And the winner is…

Reality is Plastic by Anthony Jacquin
See my review on the site, this book is brilliant!
Available direct of Anthony for £22.50

And the worst purchase…

The Raven
DO NOT BUY… It is a one trick pony, a pain to master, does nothing that can’t be done more easily with sleight of hand, is impractical and expensive.
Available from me, if anyone wants it, for €12.00

What They Say

Reality is Plastic: The Art of Impromptu Hypnosis

Is it possible to walk into a shop and leave with any goods you choose without paying?

Is it possible to become ‘invisible’?

Is it possible to pay people with blank paper rather than cash?

Is it possible to make people collapse with laughter on your command?

Can you get free drinks by convincing bar staff you are a superstar?

The answer to all of these questions and many more is YES. The techniques in this book will show you how.

What I Say

It’s true, buy it now!

Reality is Plastic by Anthony Jacquin is one of maybe three magic related products I have bought that the blurb isn’t either lying, lying by omission or just plain old making shit up. Everything Anthony claims is perfectly achievable, I have done three of the five and only haven’t done the other two cause I haven’t had the chance!

I will also add a couple of my favorite things to the list:
-Make someone do the funky chicken, for your entertainment.
-Make someone do the YMCA and then forget about it entirely, for your entertainment.
-Make someone do the funky chicken, so funny I mentioned it twice.

The teaching in the book is also excellent. Anthony explains everything concisely with all the relevant suggestions suitably phrased and highlighted. Obviously it’s better to adapt it to you rather than repeat it verbatim but it’s handy to have what a guideline to base your speech on.

The two largest focuses of ‘Reality is Plastic’ are Set Pieces and Inductions.

A Set Piece is a preliminary routine that is designed to convince people of your hypnotic power, they often have an underlying physiological cause which you assist with psychological suggestions. Set Pieces are done on fully conscious subjects and work on 90+% of people, in fact I’ve never had one fail. Ant spends a good deal of time emphasising the importance of set pieces, a utility device dismissed by many for their simplicity and high success with everyone and their grandmother. As a convincer they are excellent and can easily be used as an effect in their own right!

The chapter on inductions is also excellent listing a large number of inductions including the increasingly popular handshake induction (people no longer shake my hand or look my in the eye in my local). There really is a host of other inductions to suit all eventualities.

The, for lack of a better word, routines section of the book matches up to all the previous chapters genius and teaches you the blurb material. It’s all excellent.

While I have been focusing on the purely hypnosis side of things up to this point, I’ll now turn my attention to the two PDFs Anthony sends you if you coyly hint you are a magician.

Ant is also a magician and has written the two outstanding accompanying documents that deal with using hypnosis as a mentalism tool, both are excellent and each one contains an incredibly strong routine as well as a vast number of points and suggestions. All the info is being worked into my act at the moment!!!

And now, I have unfortunately run out of superlatives so I can’t say much more. Of all my purchases ever, this book is the best value for money, the best for content, the most useful and the book that has paid and will continue to pay for itself so many times over. I hate giving anything a numerical score as I feel a single integer value between one and ten is inadequate for explaining the intricacies of a products value, however ‘Reality is Plastic’ is as close to perfection as it comes and any less anal reviewer would give it a ten out of ten without hesitation. And while I’ve still got your attention, I’d like to publically thank Anthony for this awesomely insanely aggravatingly perfect book.

‘Reality is Plastic’ is currently available from Anthony Jacquin’s website for £22.50 + postage (£3.50 will get it here to Ireland)

Nick was very clear and a good laugh, and most importantly most of what he thought was entirely useable for a close up magician which is an added bonus, as I’m sure you will agree, a lot of lectures, like a lot of books or DVDs really only contain one or two things you can actually use. As this was one of the last visits on his current tour we also got to see a lot of new stuff that will be in the next tour, but more importantly we also got to see some effects that Nick will be releasing through out the year (And buy them).

The lecture started off with an item that is maybe more suited to stage or parlor than to close up, but it is of course adaptable. The routine involved borrowing 3 finger rings from the audience and went into a multi-phase routine that included vanishing one of the rings, linking the three rings together and then unlinking them. He also discussed a bit of byplay that can be used here including a great little moment where you take a ladies finger ring and make it much bigger. There were also plenty of warnings here about doing magic with peoples belongings.

Some other highlights included:

Nick’s new Coin in Bottle routine:

This was very clever and very entertaining. The routine begins with a production of a small mixer bottle (The bottles they give you mixers in at the bar) and it ends up with a 50p coin inside in the glass bottle (This can easily be done with any coin with just a little work). The routine then ends with the coin being removed and the bottle is vanished. This is a very clever routine, due to the handling and it’s nature, the props are examinable both before and after the effect. To the spectator it is quick, entertaining and astonishing which is what all good effects should be. This routine is not released yet, the DVD is not made yet / Instructions are not written up but I believe he mentioned that it was looking like September. If this goes for anything near the price he was selling the props for on Monday night then pick it up, it’s peanuts!

Nick’s version of Wayne Dobsons ‘Lethal Tender’:

I believe that is the name of the effect anyway, I have not seen the original effect. This is a clever little transposing coins routine involving a Chinese coin, a US half Dollar and a little black coin purse. There is a lot more that can be done with it too. This is also currently un-released so I have not seen the full routine in print, but I can verify that the props are of top notch quality and also useable for a few more effects. This also takes up minimal pocket space so there is no reason that it should not be on your person when table hopping. This was significantly more expensive than the CIB effect, but when you see the props you will know why. This is also brand new; Nick mentioned that he only received the props from the manufacturer at the end of last week.

Nick’s own book test ‘The Daughter of all Book tests’:

I’m not really in the mentalist camp myself, but I understand the workings of a number of book tests that are currently on the market. This one is foolproof. It can be done on any book, ideally pre-prepared but worse case scenario it really only takes you a couple of min to set up a book. It’s cheap as chips as well and very natural throughout. The book is handed to the Spectator while he looks for his word and he is actually given complete free choice of page. There is no reason why (Given the price) that you could not set up multiple books for this and even give a spec free choice of book! The nature of the device allows it to be used for other mind reading routines too.

Other items covered were a card at any number effect, a card production routine, a wonderful way to use a deck of cards for a lead in to a matrix routine (A deck is ribbon spread, turned over and swept up. 4 half dollars are left in it’s place.) a gimmicked (Martini) deck that Nick came up with and more.

In summery, the lecture was interesting, well thought, extremely accessible (Nothing knuckle busting) and completely useable. If you get a chance to check him out please do. You will not be disappointed.

I left with his lecture notes (What was covered in the lecture less the three highlights above which will be marketed separately, and an awful lot more.) and the props for the coin transpo routine. Anyone who picked up the coin transpo effect or the CIB effect were left with the promise that whenever the teaching materials are ready they will be sent on to us. Neither effect is complicated so it’s unlikely that we will completely forget how it works between then and now, and it’s nice to play with exclusive magic =P

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