Always Be Ready To Perform

One of the strangest yet greatest things about being a magician is that unlike any other profession or hobby out there, when people find out that you're into magic, they immediately expect you to perform. I think this is awesome because I always want to perform magic, but I don't want to make it weird by just offering if people don't want to see it. And this is why as a magician, you have to always be prepared to perform cuz you never know when someone's going to ask. So, in this video, I'm going to go through the props that I always carry with me and the tricks that I'm ready to perform at all times. So, the first item is a pair of simple rubber bands. Now, what's great about rubber bands is that they're usually available wherever you are. But if they're not available, you can pull out your own rubber bands. Then I'll go into a routine called crazy man's handcuffs. Now, here's how it looks. You place one rubber band around your hand like this. You take the other one and you put it behind that first one. Essentially, you've locked your hands together in a way that you can't separate your hands without taking the rubber bands off your fingers. But if you just rub them together just like this, nice and slowly, you'll see that they just melt right through. Now, if you're a magician who's been performing for some time, you know this is an old trick. crazy man's handcuffs. And you may be hesitant to perform it because you think everybody knows it, but I promise you most people out in the world have never seen this trick and it blows their mind because it happens right in their face and it looks like real magic. Now, for those of you who don't know how this trick works, it is done with regular rubber bands and these could be borrowed. These rubber bands really are on your fingers and wrapped around just like this. The trick happens while you're explaining that you can't separate your hands. You'll notice I pull back like this. When I did that, I did the move so that I could separate. So, here's how it works. The right hand is going to pull back to the side. So, not straight back, but to the side. And at the same time, my middle finger is going to go on top of my index finger right here, just like this. So, that they're connected. I'm going to pull back to the side. And as I pull back, this part of the band is going to roll onto my middle finger. So, I'm just going to pull back and let that go onto my middle finger. Now, my index finger is free. And when I come back forward, I'm going to take my index finger and put it right into this slot right here. So, just below my thumb. There's that little hole right there. Now, as I come closer, I'm going to let my middle finger slip out of that band. And when I do that, it releases. Of course, if I just did it like that, it would be very obvious. So, we want to shield that move by pretending nothing happened at that point. I'll pull back. And when I make the move happen, I push the two bands together forward again. So, my fingers going in here. I'm pushing them together. And I rub them against each other still. Now, I'm already separated, but I'm acting like they're still stuck. And I'll explain that. I rub these two bands together and then slowly they melt apart. Regular motion. And the move looks like this. The next thing that I never leave home without is called loops. And loops are by far my favorite magic product that's ever been made. If you don't know what loops are, you probably don't realize that I'm actually wearing one right now. It's on my wrist and it's an invisible thread that's elastic. So, it can be on your hands or on your wrist at any time. No one would ever see it was there, but it's always ready for when you need it. Here are two things that I do with my loops. If somebody asks me to perform something, I'll ask them if they have a bill. They take their dollar bill out and I'll tell them sometimes I can get a bill to float. Now, it doesn't always work, but uh if the energy is right, I'll try to see if I can get it to to float. It's a little tough. Let me let me see if I can get it. I'm feeling it. I think it's going to Oh, there. There it goes. You see it? You see it? There it goes. It's floating. And there it goes. And then you can hand the bill right back to them and you're completely clean. Now, if I'm in a restaurant and somebody asks me to do magic, I'll grab a fork right off the table. I'll tell them to use my energy to make this fork move. Now, I'm not going to touch it. I'm going to place it on the table. So, I'm just going to just think and imagine and try to get the fork to move. You can almost see it. You can feel it. There it goes. It's moving. And they can hand the fork right back out. So, as I mentioned, both of these tricks are done with a product called loops. And they're invisible thread that's elastic. So, you'll have it on your wrist just like this. Now, I'm using a rubber band so you can see it, but obviously an actual loop you would never see. As soon as somebody starts talking about magic, I just get ready by putting my finger under here and I pull the loop up to this position. Now, they can't see that and I'm ready to go. Now, if they hand me a dollar bill, I'm going to fold it kind of in half long ways so it has a little bit of a a base to it. And I'll put it on my hand and I'm going to pretend like I'm trying to make it float. I'm not really doing anything right now. I'm purposely acting like it's not working. And then I'm gonna go back and when I when I move my hands over it, when I come forward, my middle finger is gonna go under the loop so that I can pull back and make like a table almost. And then I'll take the bill and I'll flip it over to my other hand, but now it's sitting on top of the loop. Now I can just take my time with it and slowly open my hands. You want to wiggle your fingers so that it looks like you're kind of moving and it's not just like, oh, I'm holding it up in the air, right? You wiggle your fingers and they see it floating. And then when you're done, you're going to pull back and let the loop snap back onto your wrist. hand them their bill back like that. And now I'm completely clean. They're going to look at my hands. They're not going to look at my wrist. And they'll look at the bill. There's absolutely nothing to be found. Now, making the fork move is even easier than that. All you have to do is while you're moving the fork around, just get one of the tines caught onto the loop like that. Now, when you place it on the table, and of course, the loop stretches a lot more than this rubber band will, but you can pull pretty far without the fork moving. And when you want it to move, you just stretch a little bit farther and the fork will go with the loop. Now, what's important about the fork movement is that you can't just do it with one hand or it's kind of obvious. So, you want to use both hands and act more like you're pushing with this hand than you're pulling with this hand. And when the fork moves, they're going to feel like you either blew on it or you did something else with your other hand. But obviously, that could never have been enough to move a fork. The next item that I always carry is two coins. You could use quarters or half dollars. I use silver dollars because I have large hands, so it just looks right in my hand. So, I start by pointing out that there's an invisible coin on the table. And I place that coin into my hand. You can't see it yet. And that's because I haven't put the magic dust on top of it yet. I keep this dust with me at all times. And when I spray it over the top, the coin becomes visible. You can see that coin. And if I place it into my pocket, it reappears. And if I place that coin into my pocket, I get another one. It's the never- ending coins. As you can see, I just keep finding more and more coins. Now, if I take that coin and I put a little dust on top of it, just as quickly as it appeared, it vanishes. There's two moves that are used in this routine. One of them is called a palm, and that's where you hold a coin inside the palm of your hand, and it stays there by pushing in, figuring out the size of your hand, where that coin should go, so that when you push your thumb in toward your pinky, the coin will stay there. So, if I flip my hand over, it doesn't fall out. Now, you don't want to stand too awkwardly like this, right? You want to make it feel pretty natural. So, I start with one coin palm. The other one is in my pocket, but I'll just put on my lap for now because I'm sitting down. You would be performing this one standing up. So, I'll point to the table and say, "There's a coin right here." And as I pick it up and I place it into my hand, I'm mimicking putting a coin in the palm of my hand. But what I'm actually doing is dropping the palmed coin onto the fingers of that hand. So when I move this hand away, I can close these fingers, putting the coin right into my hand. So in regular motion, it looks like you're placing the coin. And that's it. And you've got a coin here, but they don't know that yet. Now I'll reach into my pocket to get the magic dust or whatever you want to call it. And I'm just palming the other coin as I come out and I pretend to put dust over my fingers. And a coin appears. Now, as I pick this coin up, I'm doing the same exact move. I'm grabbing this coin, dropping the second one onto my fingers so that I can pick it up. And that one goes there. Now, if at this point, as you're picking the second coin up, it flashes and they see there was another coin in that hand. Don't worry about it. That's fine because you're making never- ending coins. They don't know when they're supposed to appear. So, now as you reach into your pocket, you're just going to under the table or in your pocket, palm this coin back, and then come back out. So, you're pretending you're putting a coin away, but you're really just repaloming it and bringing it back out. So, you're ready to make another coin appear. So now you'll place the coin, actually leave it in your pocket, grabbing the one last coin, and you'll do the other move, which is a French drop. And don't be afraid to use these basic moves out in the world. Go back to the basics, the things that are easy to do. You know they work, especially if you're performing for kids. The French drop, in case you don't know it, is where you'll take the coin, you're going to let it fall into your fingers as you pretend to grab the coin. Any books that teach the French drop will tell you to go with your thumb past it, pretend to pick it up, and drop it. But with a coin, you would never actually pick a coin up like that. It would look weird. So don't put your thumb past and do that whole thing with a coin. Do what you would normally do. So I was going to take this coin. I would use my fingertips and grab the coin. So I want it to look just like that as I grab the coin. Except now I took it over here. So it'll look something like that. You grab the coin. You go to reach into your pocket immediately. Now if you do these in sync and just as you grab the coin, you reach away with one hand and back with the other. It's not going to look weird. They're not going to be looking at this hand. As you reach in your pocket, you quickly drop that coin. Pretend you got other magic dust. And now you make both coins vanish. The next item that I always carry is the trusty old thumb tip. Now, I know you're probably thinking, "This guy's crazy. He's a professional magician. He's carrying around the most basic prop that was ever made. But I don't use this to do the standard silk vanish and reappear trick." I actually use it for a bill switch, which plays really well, especially when there's kids and you're performing, but their parents are also watching. I borrow bill from one of the parents in the audience. In this case, I got a $100 bill. And I explained to them that currency has these new features. So, there's a bunch of ways to find counterfeit bills. So, in the US currency, there's that line. There's a watermark here. But there's this new thing called the fold test. That's where you fold the bill a bunch of times. That's two folds. That's three folds. I'm starting to feel it now. I think it's the fourth fold. Yep, that's the one. The fourth fold starts to show the actual value of the bill. Now, when I unfold this bill, you'll see the actual true value. In this case, the bill was not worth $100. It was actually only worth $1. It's a $1 bill. You'll take a bill and you're going to fold it in half long ways like that and then fold up from the bottom and then fold across again leaving it so that it's not not a perfect square but you have a little extra lip on this side. And that's so when you're opening it later you can easily grip underneath that. And then you fold up from the bottom like this. And then you take the whole thing and just flip it over once so that the one is facing outward. And you'll take your thumb tip. You're going to slide that into the tip and then leave it in there and you're ready to go. Now, this is in your pocket. So, when you reach in your pocket, you're just going to put your thumb in there and you'll take it out. Now, don't worry if the bill's sticking out a little bit or whatever. No one's going to see this thumb tip because you're going to keep your hands in a natural way like this. Now, when somebody hands you the bill, you immediately pass over to the hand that has the thumb tip on it. So, now you're hidden from behind. The first fold goes across. You can do the exact same folds that you did to set the first bill up. The second one goes upward. For the third one, I'll show you from the view from my point of view. You're going to push this across and you're going to reach with your thumb, take the thumb tip off, and pull the bill behind. So, you're like this. Now, from the front view, they still can't see that. And even if they saw a little extra fold, it doesn't matter because you're folding the bill, they're going to lose track of what's what. Now, the next one is going to be the fold upward. Now, you're just keeping this thumb tip here as you fold up. And then what I'll do is I'll let this hand release so I can talk about it. I want to show that this hand is empty at this point because it's totally clean. They've already seen this hand clean earlier. And just without saying anything, I'm gonna show this hand. It was the fourth fold. And as I unfold it, I get my middle finger inside the little groove of that $1 bill. I flip both bills upward. So now the only thing they could see is the front of the $1 bill. I can easily get my fingers because of that lip in here. As I go to open that, I'm going to slide this bill across and into the thumb tip as I pull back to open the bill. Then I'll unfold that down this way. And I open it this way. And now they see the $1 bill. You could show both sides. Just keep your thumb in the back. You don't want to show it anyway. Right? So, you're not going to go like this. You'll just keep spinning it around like this. Now, pretty quickly, you're going to want to change this back. So, you do the exact same moves to change it back. You'll show them that their $100 bill has been restored. And just as you open it up, they're going to be happy to see their hundred. They're not going to be looking at your hands. You could even get bold and hand the bill back to them with the hand that's got the thumb tip. And as you pull back, you just keep your hand closed.