I assume that he has enough ability to give her the card he has chosen to give her. All I’ve got from there is that when he straightens up the deck, after dropping the final cut onto it, he somehow pulls her card out or causes it to change color, but I can’t spot it.
I’m not a big fan of escape artists in general - they don’t generally hit the ‘how did that happen?’ feeling for me. Yeah, it takes skill and training - holding your breath for a long time takes long training, and picking/unlocking locks while restrained isn’t easy. But it doesn’t feel like magic, it feels like ‘this guy has trained to hold his breath and pick locks’. By comparison I liked the Penn and Teller trick they did with Teller ‘trapped’ in the tank and the woman calling out time, even though I think it actually took less skill to pull off. This presentation highlighted that lack of magic for me, the intro was too dry, and the bit with the bunch of ‘wrong’ keys, that could have seemed magical, was so badly pulled off that I thought the assistant putting the keys in the tank was misdirection aimed at Penn and Teller.
Yeah, he selects the card from his deck. How he does the switch in her deck I have no idea, whatever he did he did really well. It might be something a trained eye could pick up since he didn’t ask P&T to come up on stage to watch.
I particularly enjoyed the August 10th broadcast, because it was both entertaining and educational.
On the educational side, although I had no idea how the David Parr/Allyson Hannigan card trick was done. it seemed so straight-forward that I assumed it would turn out to be one of those routines that dated back to the days of Houdini. So it was a surprise to find out that something seemingly so basic had Penn and (especially) Teller completely perplexed.
I have one question about the Aiden Sinclair “haunted doll” routine. The props he used looked like they dated back to the late 1800s/early 1900s. My question is, was this just to give an “old timey” feel to a trick that used modern technology, or could this trick have been done 100 years ago? If this is something that a “medium” could have pulled off a century ago, I can see how it would be convincing in a spooky, dimly lit room.
I don’t know if was done in ye olde seances but the gimmick he may have used is quite old. Notice that the pearl ended up with the last person to draw a bead from the bag. The bag could have been partitioned inside so that the first three people drew from one partition containing only black beads, and the last person from another partition containing the pearl. But an even simpler method would be for the magician to be holding the pearl through the cloth so that only the last person could have drawn it, and examination of the bag would find nothing unusual. It is certainly a technique a ‘medium’ of yore might have used.
The pearl has metal inside and he has a magnetic ring.
Certainly possible since Penn mentioned his rings. But not the only way to do it.
Wow, what an amazing episode. Probably one of the best. Every act was really, really good and there was definitely a theme running through all the acts.
Dyno Staats : A steam-punk magician whose style fits really well. I’ve seen the steam-punk style before (see that saw in half guy from earlier) but this guy goes the full distance and I think it’s a perfect setting for a magic act. As for the trick, the second I saw the devices I knew there would be a switch. When he gives Penn the bill, he palms the signed bill in his left hand and then puts it in the top of Teller’s device. You can clearly see the bill fall from the top of Teller’s device. The punchline is amazing and is by far the best version of Mismade Bill I’ve seen. Most just do it and say “look at this trick” , here there is a completely logical reason for the bill to be messed up and it enhances the punchline so much.
Aiden Sinclair: neat back story here. Again I like the emphasis on this being a trick and not really being a seance. As for how he did the trick, there are numerous ways. What first came to mind is the pearl is magnetic and he his rings keep it close. An alternative way is the bag could be rigged,
Axel Adler: again a really nice act that is just pure skill and relatively simple tricks. If you watch in slow motion you can easily see how everything is done - just clever manipulation of the cloth so it folders over the ring - but the simplicity of the routine makes me love it.
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David Parr: I said on a previous thread on the discussion of the oreo cookie guy that I would love to see a magic trick where you play “simon says” and then do magic. Glad to see someone has done that. As for the trick. I have absolutely no idea on the first watch. However I have some guesses. When he does the second cut on top of his cards, watch his hand just before. He’s shaking a lot so I imagine he has a break held here to a certain card. But after that… I have absolutely no idea. I’m completely stumped.
P&T: I know the whole bit of the magic circle from Penn’s podcast. As for the trick. Again I have absolutely no idea. It could be a plant. It could be a camera below the stage, it could be something else I’m clueless here. It’s nice to see a P&T trick I’ve never ever seen them perform anywhere else. I’ve never seen their live show so does it date back a long time? Or is it new?
Dyno Staats (steampunk): I liked his theme/getup, but I think he needs to work a bit on his speech timing - it was really close to being really funny, but just not quite there. And I felt like he spent most of his time on the ‘main’ trick (transferring the bill) which is fairly easy to figure out (palms the bill from Penn, takes it over to Teller, puts it in a small trapdoor inside the top of the device) and that the most interesting part (the re-arranged bill) felt like an afterthought given the way it was presented. For the re-arranged bill, I’m guessing that he must’ve quickly cut or took apart Penn’s bill and attached it to a pre-made prop, but I don’t know if he had enough time behind the counter to do so.
Aiden Sinclair (seance): This guy’s presentation also seemed a bit off to me, but I’d bet it’s a lot better in his usual job. Also his story sounded a little too ‘perfect’. Anyways, the trick wasn’t that impressive to me - I figured there was something that gave away the pearl, likely a magnet, and Penn identified the ring as the culprit.
Axel Adler (ring/scarf): Okay, yeah, it’s ring and scarf, but pretty well done. I watched the last bit (goes through his arm) twice in real-time and still couldn’t make out the trick.
David Parr (card trick): Really good card trick. My first guess was some sort of double-backed card (and despite doing the ‘Simon Says’ routine, he does touch both decks) but P&T seemed to reject that. The whole concept felt fresh to me too, which is nice.
Aidan Sinclair might have spent some time in the joint, but mentioning it doesn’t add to his act at all - he doesn’t come across as some hard ex-con swindler (especially with that nonsense tuft growing from the top of his head…)
I’ve never seen them live, but I’ve watched every trick they have on YouTube at least.
I don’t think there’s much mystery to the trick.
The man calls out the number, Penn does a deck switch while pretending to shuffle, hands it back to the man, and Teller counts down to the correct card. Probably they split the deck into 2-4 sections so they can layer the block with the correct card on top, so that it’s not too far to dig, maybe with a minimum count that it should be. I’d guess 4, so probably if you watched the trick a dozen times, it would never be less than 13 cards deep.
Was he on the show before, but with an accent? The mentioned something about it. And, yes, my wife and I both thought his look was good enough that he could cut off that little tuft of hair and still be fine. It was distracting.
He was not on Fool Us before, however he was on America’s Got Talent.
I think it is done slightly differently.
Penn pretends to “split” a deck, but I believe his stack is just a duplicate of the other stack. The volunteer gives Penn his stack after they have been shuffled and Penn riffles through them, but ultimately just keeps his stack on top and in the same order (and he even references that fact in his patter). Teller has already memorized the order of cards, so when volunteer takes them over, he just counts down to the right one.
You can see this in the telecast if you focus on Penn during the shuffle. It isn’t very hidden.
I am still confused about the magnetic pearl and ring trick. Could someone explain exactly how it was done with a magnet?
I assumed it was a trick (divided) bag; one pocket for the black stones, one for the pearl.
mmm
Just caught up on everything. I agree, this latest episode (S04E05) was pretty solid and had an entertaining theme. The only act I didn’t really care for was the scarf routine, but I still can’t figure out how he passed it through his arm (even Teller mouths “oh wow”). The winning act definitely won it for me. That guy must have really been bored for three months.
Unless I’m mistaken, he’s referring to when he met Penn as a young man and decided to change his life around. Apparently Penn remembered that encounter and he used a fake accent at the time.
I’m no magician, but as I understand it, he was handling the bag while giving it out to the first three participants (and the ring magnet kept the pearl firmly attached to the bottom of the bag), meanwhile he hands the bag off to Alyson and gives the illusion of “free choice.”
All this chicken shit is fucking fascinating. Who knew they had so many tricks up their…er…feathers?
I wouldn’t be surprised if a proliferation of chicken acts show up on Fool Us.
Just looked those up. I had never seen the inflatable trick before but it was so much fun. What’s the key behind it? Is Teller in the Penn costume the whole time and Penn’s voice is being projected from elsewhere?
The backstage trick is yet another variation on cups and balls. I've seen this done so many times that all I do is look at Teller's hands now.