Sleightly Absurd by Charlie Frye Review

Hi my name is Steve Faulkner, welcome to Real Magic Review and if you want to be a good magician or you are a good magician and you want to get better, then you need to watch this review. Before we do this can you please like, subscribe, have a look at OnlineMagic.co that features so many video tutorials from me, many video tutorials from special guests, live sessions that we have most weeks that are recorded, there are 150 of them, so if you want to become an all-round knowledgeable skilled magician, cards, coins, ropes, mentalism, all manner of magic, more than that I can't remember, do have a look at OnlineMagic.co. Speaking of being an all-rounder, this is Charlie Fry's book Slightly Absurd, as you'll know by clicking on the title and watching the review. Now when Charlie announced he was releasing this book or the book was released there was stuff all over social media, the elite of magical with pictures of them holding the book saying I've got Charlie's book, it was a big buzz and if you don't know who Charlie is or you've seen a little bit of what he does you might be mistaken and going oh he's just all his mates just uh just helping to promote the book. But Charlie's one of those people, I'm so sorry there's an absolute storm outside so it's going to be a bit noisy probably, Charlie is one of those performers that a bit like David Williamson, a bit different from David Williamson that everybody loves. You see him lecture, you see him perform, I don't know anybody that's watched him and gone you know it's all right. He is a master and he's a master not only at cards or coins but everything. He is somebody that really you know breaks that thing of jack of all trades master of none. He's someone that shows you that with a lifetime of work and work that continues you can be an absolute master of sleight of hand, of juggling, of all the skill and mental and physical skill around the magic that we love so much. And he can do all of it and he can do all of it better than anybody that I can think of. So how did that come about? Well we see that in the biographical aspects of this book but also we see it in the material and we see it in his essays which there are many I think there are six, five or six essays throughout this. I cannot, I say this before every review, I cannot go through everything that's in the book and I'm genuinely not going to do that this time because I have 50 pages of notes and it's better actually to mention less and for you to find out more by looking into the material yourselves and that material can be found by watching Charlie's performances that are online on YouTube and Facebook. You'll be able to see so much good stuff on there and his previous releases Eccentrics which I think was his, that's what it's called isn't it, I know it's the name of his column but his DVD releases that are full of gold as well as is this. So when I was, when I first got into all this stuff, magic juggling which was my first thing, two years at circus school, the thing that really captured me was watching old videos. I'd learned to juggle and loved the skill of it but when I first saw, and this was pre-internet, first saw footage of proper jugglers from the 30s, 40s, 50s, these old vaudeville acts, I was completely captivated and and I just couldn't turn my eyes off it. I thought it was absolutely beautiful but it wasn't just the movement, it was the movement of the juggling balls, it was the performance and I saw this kind of Chaplin-esque, which was you know the physical comedy, the clowning of Chaplin and Buster Keaton and people like that in these jugglers and circus performers. So there was this mix of skill and character that wasn't kind of forced upon you, it wasn't, there wasn't too much kind of description of what they were doing, you just felt who they were and when I watch Charlie now and I've watched him a lot more recently, I've recaptured and it's reminded me why I've got into it but it isn't just for people like me who are you know circus performers and have that background and this is I think goes on a little bit to answer that question is why does everybody love this stuff and not only is it a skill like I said it's that feeling you get of someone that is just in control of the subtlety and the skill of what he does and I was really hoping to get that in this book and I was worried that that it wouldn't deliver on most of the secrets, it wouldn't give me enough of that stuff, it would be dumbed down too much for for some magicians that don't want to work on the skill and thank god it isn't. I love the way he's gone straight into the difficult stuff as he said and I'm sure this is a conscious decision because I'm sure for me you read that and go right this is going to take work but actually if I'm not prepared to work at this I don't really deserve to learn it because this is stuff that he does perform publicly he's done all this stuff online you'll be able to see it so for me to take that and do it I kind of have to do the work there's no shortcuts to this and you'll see that that's even though he's got loads of stuff in the book that is super super easy the skill that he shows in the presentation of these routines like there's forces in it that you can do straight away but the things he puts in it show that you're going to have to demonstrate some sort of skill in performance in the way you present it and in the way you make it convincing many of you would have seen the the dice assembly that he does which incorporates just the most brilliant gimmick that you'll be able to make with something in your draws in seconds and just makes the whole thing so convincing as does his thought of where the numbers end up on the dice so he thinks about kind of the the the what's that word consistency isn't the word I was thinking of there's a better one he's got lots in this book which you would read it's a real sort of juxtaposition a kind of mix of really really difficult stuff slight of hand and and forces and routines you'll read and go well that's a bit kind of simple and that's never going to play and he takes a force of a number basically you end up with three cards you use the dice and cards and you end up three cards that are basically the the presentation is that it ends up with the the person the spectator having three sixes and showing that they're the devil right that's the kind of thing and I've completely ruined that but don't take a read his version of that it makes sense then but you know you've got this kind of you know arguably simple idea that is a a gag and you know they won't know how it's done but then he kind of has this bit where he goes well you can make it better like I've done before where when you turn it over it in the last the next card is a devil joker or you can have it that the deck of cards smoke comes out the deck of cards or it catches on fire and you first read that and go well I wouldn't do that and you go well actually he does similar things because you've seen video of it but also it's not that much work and you've got this really powerful theatrical ending to something on first blush or if you read it on many magic books would just be a way to force a number and when we get onto his card work you know after the mentalism actually I felt the same way about the mentalism and the card work really when I got get to a mentalism bit even though I love mentalism in books like this I kind of go I don't see him as a mentalist is this going to be any good and straight away he's doing his usual thing of elevating you know classic ideas and much of this is that you know with egg bags with knives cups and balls he's taking classics and going look we don't have to do it the way it's always done and I'm guilty of that massively you know why do we all do the vernon routine why do we all the classic melina egg bag routine why do we all do this and you know mental epic is one of them where yes it's a really powerful thing we all do it a similar way but by adding this idea he has with colors and putting a keynote card at the end it becomes a whole different thing and we can take that even if we don't do that whole routine and go why didn't I think of that and the reason we didn't think of it mostly was because we didn't think of it think of it because we couldn't be bothered to think of it because we had a nice thing to work with so the mentalism has you know forces that are super easy ideas that are super easy it goes above and beyond you know when he's talking about um in the card bit this idea of forcing a bank of cards he gives you loads of different ideas different ways of doing it there is a force with a date the i think it's called year old 1664 i'm gonna get that year wrong um but i'm gonna have to do it now and it's got yo 55 no is that it i don't know but he's got then a chart of all different numbers that you can force with the same idea i might have mixed two tricks in my head there so sorry charlie if i've done that we've got the card bit and i get to a card chapter in any book like this and go have you just put a card chapter in because this is what we we should have because yes i've seen him do brilliant stuff with cars but is is it because we all you know you've got to put a card bit in straight away with his version oh actually i do a thing on stage where i i do a faro shuffle and do a giant fan of cards and kind of do this stupid gag if someone's taking a picture and there's a trick that he does with that where you just then do that and throw it in the air and do a a chosen card production which straight away i i showed my partner helen and it just feels so good it's so solid it gives you a reason to do that then we've got his warped and fried which is his card warp we all love a card warp many of us don't really feel that right with the ending of it it feels a bit weird he's added this thing finishes off with a with a restoration of the card that's been torn which gives you this banging finale to an already stunning trick and as he says in this and i'm sort of flying about a little bit you know he said this is a great you could do imagine if you did this with paul harris's um oh twist oh what is it called yeah twisting routine and with paul you've that you've got like a whole routine with two or three cards there that you can do which will give you five minutes and then you go there and go right i've got a look at that and it kind of springboards you into going and look at this stuff which as he says you know we're all buying the new stuff but we forget these classics and when you by the time you're at the card bit you kind of go with whatever charlie says goes because not only do you know he's he's uh he's experienced but he's demonstrated it by this time and i've read this book from beginning to end so by the time i'm here i go i'm going to check out anything that he tells me to check out even the mathematical tricks so he's got a bob hummer idea which forces a bank of cards as i mentioned before and it could be you know a load of cards or it could be a royal flush sorry about the noise outside there's a siren going off and yes there's a lot of process but you realize that the process means it's completely unbelievable when you end up with these five cards that you're forcing or whatever cards you're forcing which you'd have meaning for a spectator and i'm looking at this going this is just gold and he does that kind of thing that so many people do but he you kind of believe it when he does it and i didn't really want to share this but i was gutted when it was published in like a book for lay people so a lot of people are going to disregard it but all of these card tricks even though they're all based on you know mcdonald's aces but a way to get into mcdonald's aces that i'd never read before these classic ideas they all had that charlie fry touch and before i read this for me i thought that charlie fry touch was you know the character the skill that kind of juggling aesthetic which doesn't mean it was all juggly stuff but actually the charlie fry touch for me now is taking something elevating it and importantly making it meaningful and i don't mean adding meaning you know in that way that uh an audience member can connect to it and be blown away by it even though you might have to go through some process you've got this whole chapter on any card any number and this completely changed the way i think about this trick i've always loved it but i've always thought that people that say it's the best card trick are a bit like it isn't and as he says that's probably because i've seen people do it it's a bit tedious and i've seen it too much he this part of it i think is the best thing i've read well i know it's the best thing i've read and on a par i think with the burglars effect book it's nowhere near as big it's accessible and to me this is the real work for want of a better phrase of any card any number it's a it's a way of doing this that looks like you've done nothing as he said by the time you've done it all nothing's even started and it looks like you've done absolutely nothing hands off this has totally opened me back up to it has totally got me back into the idea of doing it and he says you know you're going to go on a torturous process or torturous journey you are for me you're not that's the joy of it you're going to go through a developmental journey and afterwards have a skill that you're going to be able to cross over to other things but also use for this miraculous routine it's you know i know it's a cliche but the price of this book is worth any of these chapters alone especially that one as i say you've got routines with the classics like an egg bag routine which is quick snappy has a lovely kind of the photos by the way are stunning they're all beautiful and it's got a lovely cut almost like animation of what the routine looks like before he goes into it you know it wastes no time it cuts out all the crap and just gives you a very strong egg bag routine which has a different feel to so many that you would have seen but sort of retains that classicness as all of his material does and i loved the i just thought i was just going to mention the ball and vase chapter it's not a chapter it's one thing you can do ball and vase that you know we all got as kids and he he does one little thing to that that makes it totally magical that makes it look like when you've got the gimmick in play the gimmick isn't in play and gives you a killer routine to do with either a really posh one if you've got one or one of the really you know cheap ones and i love that idea of taking the ones that we all recognize from our magic sets and doing something great with it the thing i just thought about he's got a bit of mentalism that uses a uh a multiplying ball and again it can be a really cheap one which i thought was just brilliant so uh there's a lot of uses of things of that you again will have in your drawer going to the color changing knives you know i shared his color changing knife routine on facebook as with a load of his stuff i have and the amount of non-magicians that just said that this is incredible made me again realize and reconnect with why the first time i saw this stuff i loved it and then i kind of my mind was changed by all the kind of as he says the armchair experts that say no it's no good you know who would have a color changing knife and again you know we have to be reminded that that's nonsense this stuff can be so magical in the right hands the essays are all brilliant and where when you're talking about things like likability creating character one of the best essays i've ever read on creating character with proper stuff you can you know put into play as with his creative process and practice he doesn't just tell you the importance of it like so many essays do he tells you why they're important and how you can access those things in a way that he does but also giving you different ideas the schmuck fact you know saying that it's easy to you know walk out of a close-up game girl that guy was an idiot but maybe the reason that guy was an idiot was because of the way we presented what we do and and why might that happen and how can we avoid that in the future his essay on skill and his belief that skill is completely fine and often required when performing was so refreshing to read because so many of us have been told you shouldn't show any skill with magic it kind of waters it down and again you know the proof is in the pudding with charlie and then around the world in 40 years which is the final but one-ish chapter before the epilogue is him saying this is where i came from these are my experiences again loads of anecdotes and there are great anecdotes through the whole book his early you know meetings with other performers and how some of them then became you know his mentors and friends and it was lovely to hear his kind of showbiz anecdotes but not coming from a place of you know oh no good i've met these people but hearing the joy in his stories he's so thankful that he's met these people and they've said things to him that have genuinely excited him like liza minnelli saying to him you know my mama would have loved your act how amazing and you can tell he doesn't take any of that stuff for granted he feels grateful to be where he is and then there's a lovely epilogue which i'm very very glad he he put in there and the end of the final chapter now he says i hope this isn't a bit schmaltzy it certainly isn't and you know it's genuine and it as as in with the whole bit you connect with charlie as a person uh reading this now as a magic book had this just had the tricks in it would have been great and most people pick this up and will not read it like i have because i felt like i had to from beginning to end i'm so glad i did this is written as a book for me with a beginning middle and an end even though he may not have written in that way that there are things that threads that run through it not only are the explanations funny none of the explanations are dry they are peppered and littered with little anecdotes histories there are bits in it that tell you the history of gambling and why if you do a gambling demonstration with 20 cards it makes sense because when gambling came into new orleans in the first place it was only played with 20 cards why did they then start paying it with 52 this is stuff you can put into your magic not just to kind of prove a point but add color to it as i've mentioned he has really lovely funny anecdotes chats he's had with bill malone about bottom dealing a great story of uh his wife sherry being put off a dinner um because the magic thing he was playing with which could sound very wrong i know um and the point is that loads of these tricks you know this trick came up when i was snowed in at lake tahoe and you know we were in the in the casinos and i had to you know find a i found a way of doing this thing and just brilliant you know why he came up with the idea of doing a what could be just a simple force of of casino chips when he mixes it with harlotry and gambling people that people things that people are genuinely interested in that again add color to it and callbacks there are callbacks in this where you read one gag that's very funny and then there's a photo of something that connects to that gag which just have me laughing out loud at a description of a magic trick there are you know the way he you can tell he doesn't take even though he takes the material incredibly seriously he can he can have a go at himself and other people in that really friendly way you know he says at one point you know this is going to take some bullshit but if you're a magician uh you're full of it he doesn't exactly say that but it's very close and uh and here's some what does he say i'm gonna i wrote it down um unless you if you're at a loss for such humbuggery here's a little drivel to get you get the ball rolling you know all that stuff of you know at this point i'm going to talk bollocks just to make it even more magical which i loved it was an absolute joy to read the some when you're at the beginning of your magic journey we can be lucky or unlucky i think we can be lucky that we read the things that are written by the people who know and only know from their perspective but have had that experience as he says in the introduction and that can propel us i was incredibly lucky that i saw those videos that i got that inspiration that i was with people who worked hard on their skill who didn't look for shortcuts to to make the thing look more magical or look more skilled or look more entertaining and i was then some people won't be as lucky some people will read something on the cafe from an armchair expert as he says that that will get in your head and you'll think oh yeah maybe i've got to follow those rules and there'll be dogma and there'll be rules don't do this do that don't show skill don't and that could have a profound effect on your life as a magician and you know if someone says i want to be a magician where do i start start there not with the skill but with the expertise that you will get that will sort of disregard a lot of these rules and regulations that we're given and i think if i've had this book at the beginning it would have stopped me getting stifled so often and locked into these certain things and at the age of 50 it may have had that effect now because i've already started thinking of different ways i can look at things if you're someone that has you know it does feel like i was vulnerable and listening to the wrong people which i have done in my life and taken that path and had to work hard to get back to it it's things like this that make it easier i hope that makes sense again read the book if you're serious about your magic and performance read it i would say a lot of people i mentioned it on facebook the other day there are non-magicians that are jugglers i would say read it i would love for charlie to write a juggling book not on really how to juggle but but on all the skills and with the whole chapter on eccentrics which is the the column he published in juggle and magic magazine it's full of all these little bits you know the bits you see that look so good when you see him do it you realize how good they are when you read them sometimes oh that's not gonna be very good but you know all of watch his videos watch the use of sound watch the little gags watch the little things that that elevate the magic not just a trick but add the comedy to it and it's real comedy it's not shoe-worn magician's comedy to make it a bit quirky it's genuinely funny here's a joy to watch and uh and a joy to read and this book is without doubt one of my very very favorite magic books there is everything in it and yes a lot of it isn't for beginners but if you're a beginner read it and read your classics along with it just to make sure that you know where you're going okay that is slightly absurd by charlie fry thank you to charlie fry fry for uh easy for me to say writing it thank you to squash publishing who have done a wonderful job as i said the color of the book is vivid it's right there but also in the writing as well as as the visuals and uh and i just i hope you write another one that's all i'll say please check out the podcast steve faulkner's magic show i've just recorded a lovely interview i'm doing another one tomorrow there is some really really good stuff coming up and check out online magic.co online magic.co is my membership uh hopefully i will help steer you in the correct direction uh and do things the way you want to do them too of course online magic.co have a look at it cheers like and subscribe bye