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Besides which, it's a really crappy thing to steal and I have a lot of really big friends
in magic who come after you in a flash, so you won't have to worry about the feds, bucko.
You'll be sorry you even thought about it.
I shouldn't have to bring this up to see if you steal.
They just think I won't.
No, they think it doesn't matter.
Of course it makes you go broke.
It makes you go broke, it makes you go broke.
It makes you go broke, it makes you go broke, it makes you go broke.
It makes you go broke, it makes you go broke.
Hi, my name is Sophie and this is a really exciting little trick with a piece of silk.
I think you could fool just about anybody.
Take a look at this.
You take the silk, you place it deep into your fist, just like that.
As soon as the color is completely out of vision, you're just going to wave your hand
over the top and squeeze and you'll notice it completely vanishes.
Isn't that great?
Thank you.
I guess since the videotape is called Rules of Thumb and you already know that it is thumbtip
magic, this is going to come as no big surprise.
This is how it works.
It's going to be a devilish endeavor, isn't it?
I think so, but you can still get caught with one of these if you don't use it properly.
I'm going to use the yellow thumbtip.
This one here, you'll see it throughout this thumbtip course.
This is going to make it easier to follow.
It's also going to make it harder for me to handle because it's a little big, but it works
great.
Now, this is the first thing I think most people learn when you're doing thumbtip magic
is how to vanish a silk or a cigarette and technique is important.
A lot of people will dump the thumbtip straight into the hand like this, then pick something
up.
That is not particularly natural.
This is a little more natural.
You can show the silk both sides just like this.
If you clip it here so your thumb's ready to come out, when you come up, you brush the
silk once.
The second time, just leave the tip behind, pull the silk through.
Go straight into the hand.
Don't go up like this and then come up and then wave it around a second.
Come straight up and straight in.
At this point, it's important to keep the thumb behind the whole time.
I'll show you why it's important.
If you're pushing like this and the thumb is up, there is what they call in the trade
a tell.
The tell is when your thumb drops back for some completely no reason whatsoever, absolutely
no reason.
If you come back through the whole time, then there's nothing to see.
The thumb is down here the whole time.
When you kick it back like this to steal it, the thumb is already back.
The thumb is already here, so there's no suspicious motions dipping backwards.
It's there where you push.
The stealing motion is after you push the silk in.
I do it with my nails, but you don't have to have a nail.
Just get behind the tip from this side.
Just push it down, then you can steal from here.
Give it a couple of extra pushes just because it looks more convincing, and that's how
to vanish the silk.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm Sophie, and these are pay envelopes.
Yes, ordinary everyday pay envelopes.
In three of them, we have completely worthless pieces of paper, kind of like my paycheck.
In this one, we have a $100 bill.
I'm going to mix them all up so not even I know where they go, behind my back, see I'm
not cheating.
Sure I'm not.
Okay, what I'm going to do is have somebody pick three of these.
Three of them.
Give me a chance of getting it, Laney, please, pick three, one, two, the other one, no,
the other one.
Are you sure you want those three?
Yes.
Positive.
I can't change your mind.
No, I like the one I've got.
Okay, you like the one you have.
That's fine.
Rip yours free open.
Check it out.
If there's a $100 bill in there, you get to keep it.
Paper, paper, and number three, okay, let's check mine out, shall we?
What is it?
Is it a $100 bill?
It's like a $100 bill.
Yes, it worked again.
Thank you.
That's bank night.
Okay, now I'm going to tell you how that trick works.
It's really very cool.
I lied to you.
I hate to tell you that, but I did.
I lied to you.
When I told you there was a $100 bill inside one of these, that was a lie.
A little white one, but it made the trick work.
Inside all four of these, all four of these are just folded up pieces of paper.
They're folded up about the same size as the bill that I had stashed in my thumb tip.
I tell you, it's terrible the way people lie.
You just fold it up the same way you would for a bill switch.
Just keep folding it.
I'm going to count this into eighths, so let me see.
Let's count.
Let us count.
It's one, two, three, four.
It's four folds.
Then it sits on the pad of the thumb.
You put that inside the thumb tip, just like that.
As I said, you have folded up pieces of paper, folded the same way inside all of these pieces,
all these pay envelopes.
You tell them they can choose.
Everyone, if there's four or five different people, have them all pick one, the different
one, or you can have one person pick all of them except for one, but you're left with
one.
They open all of theirs.
Inside, it's worthless.
Fold it up pieces of paper.
You open up yours.
You tear it open.
It's a little hard to do when you have a thumb tip on, because you don't have that grip,
but it's not hard.
It's just harder, which is different to hard.
You tear like this.
You drop the piece.
You open it up like that.
When you go inside to reach for the piece of paper, you leave the tip there.
You grab it from the outside, and you pull out the $100 bill.
It's very clean.
It's not even a move, and the cleanup is very good.
You just screw it up, put it in the pocket.
Thumb tip's gone.
You're clean.
You've got a $100 bill.
They've got pieces of paper, and everyone's happy, and you can all get some sleep.
Thank you.
Sophie, may I show you a coin trick?
Yes, please.
I have in this purse some coins.
Would you hold your hand out for me?
You'll note that we have three dimes and three pennies.
Is that correct?
Uh-huh.
Which is your favorite coin?
The dime.
You like the dimes.
All right.
I'll take them one at a time.
We'll place a dime in the hand, then we'll place a penny in the hand, a dime in the hand,
a penny in the hand, a dime in the hand, and a penny in the hand, okay?
Uh-huh.
Now, you selected the dimes.
Is that correct?
That's correct.
Look, all we have to do is just wave the hands over the coins like that, and the pennies
vanish just leaving the dimes.
That's cool.
And we'll place my 30 cents away.
I'm glad you took the dimes.
It cost me three cents to do that trick.
All right.
Your setup for this is very simple.
Any snap purse or any purse, actually, with any three coins, usually dimes and pennies
are the best because they're the smallest.
So 33 cents in a purse and a thumb tip.
The purse goes in the outside portion of the pocket, the thumb tip goes into the change
pocket.
If you don't have a change pocket, you can lay it right alongside the purse.
You ask someone that wants to see a coin trick, you reach in, you take out the purse, and
you pour the coins into the person's hand.
As you close the purse and put the purse away, you put the thumb tip on your finger, on your
thumb, of course.
As the hand comes out, you simply brush by the left hand and cop the tip in the left
hand.
Now, they, by this time, selected which coin they want to use.
As Sophie did, she selected the silver, which most people do.
So you drop the silver behind the tip into the palm of the hand.
In other words, here's the tip.
The dime goes behind the tip into the hand.
Of course, it's closed this way.
And then the penny goes in the tip.
A dime goes behind the tip.
A penny goes in the tip.
A dime behind the tip.
And as you reach and put this in, you gesture to them.
Again, you curl your finger behind the tip so that you can pop the tip out of the back
of your hand.
So you just come over and brush the hand like that and steal the tip on your thumb and pour
the coins they selected into their hand, the other coins having vanished.
You can gesture to them with a tip towards them.
Now, you reach in your pocket and get the purse and leave the tip, of course.
Bring out the purse and take your money and finish whatever else you're going to do to
talk to them.
Thank you very much for watching the trick.
Okay, hello, my name is Billy McComb and I expect you already know yours.
And this is done with two empty hands and matches, hacienda.
If you haven't seen the last part of the show, you should see it.
Then from this, you take one match.
I'll tear out a match because I'm exceptionally strong.
I'm a black belt in origami, which you may or may not know.
We strike it because they burn so much better than they're lit.
When I stick this in, this rather kills your fatter, but on the other hand, sort of, gone,
but the smoke still remains.
And that's it, simple as that.
Hi.
It's Billy McComb back again with the explanation.
This time, of course, we're using mirage because I think C.P. Roy are very good too.
Guess what occurs?
You have a thumbtip.
Now why on earth would I have, oh, of course, it's a thing about thumbtips, how stupid of
me.
Up to now, I thought it was a rope.
Here's what happens.
You have that there like that.
As you put that into your left hand, you just slide the thumbtip across into your left hand
like that.
And you show your left hand empty, first of all, and then your right hand like that.
Now all you do here is open the nice book, let the folks see you take one match.
You can take two if you want extra smoke, but why stick the place up?
And then you scratch this so that it lights.
You've got to reposition it because when you tear it out, you will tear it out so you're
actually holding the head like that.
That's the way you normally tear a thing out.
So you've got to position it so you've got it like that because you're going to stick
your thumb with it lit into the thumbtip.
This part I'm going to do without lighting it so that you can see what actually happens.
That's got to go in your mouth.
As I say, it cuts down your pattern, but hey, what the hell.
So that goes straight into the thumbtip, now it's lit.
And as that goes in, you follow the thumb and take it out like that, reach for this,
span the fist like that, and the burnt match is gone.
At that point, you come forward, bring the thumbtip into your hand like that, and if
you use a rubber thumbtip and press like that, though you can do it with an ordinary vernis,
you will get the smoke arriving out.
Let's do it this time where we actually light match.
You know, it's quite interesting.
I have a fur line one that was given to me by an Eskimo friend, and then I have a chromium
plate one, but of course that's very expensive and you wouldn't want to use that.
So that's it.
Hi, little magic with a piece of red silk.
You can tell it's red by the color.
I'm going to push it deeply within the folds of the flesh.
Boy, that sounds exciting.
A wave in the hand, the magic words, farfugnugen, suddenly it completely disappears.
The secret is I have a trap door built into the palm of the hand.
Now, if you'd like to press the button on the back of the fist, a little harder than
that.
Good.
Now, you see, when you did that, two things happened.
One, a bruise appeared on the back of the hand.
Secondly, the trap door flew open and the handkerchief came out.
Now, we'll do this under test conditions.
I need you to hold my wrist real tight.
That stops anything going up the sleeve.
There you go.
Bet you never thought we'd get this close, did you?
Take your finger, push the handkerchief into the fist yourself.
Go ahead.
Don't break a nail.
That's good.
A bit more.
All the way down.
Good.
Well, you've done that before.
A wave in the hand, the magic words, suddenly it's gone.
Let go.
People are watching.
The handkerchief vanished.
Oh, yeah, believe it or not, right here inside your novelty tie is what looks like to be
a little piece of red silk.
There it is.
Wow.
Isn't that amazing?
Thank you.
Hello, and we're back with The Explanation.
Yes, get your thumb tip, get your handkerchief, and get ready for action.
Now, in order to make this easier to follow, what we've done is we've put some yellow tape
around the thumb tip.
Although, I understand if you were a iPhone, then you wouldn't be able to see that, but
... Oh, this, of course, is something that will not be appreciated by our black and white
viewers, but never mind.
Okay, so you've got a yellow thumb tip.
This will make it a lot easier to follow.
A red silk.
You have your thumb tip in your right hand on your right thumb, and the handkerchief
is held between your left hand, between your left fingers like this.
Okay, now, what you're going to do is two things at the same time.
You're going to load the thumb tip from the right hand into the left hand, and you're
also going to load the handkerchief... Well, you're going to take the handkerchief from
the left hand into the right hand.
Now, when you're doing this, the biggest giveaway with thumb tip work is this move.
Hello, I'm using a thumb tip.
Okay, that's loading it into the hand and stealing it again.
Hello, I just stole a thumb tip.
Sometimes you'll even see people go like that, because they've got to make sure it's on there.
That's a dead giveaway.
You don't want to do anything like that, so you want to manipulate it just a little more.
This is what you do.
Thumb's on your right thumb.
Handkerchief is in your left hand.
From the front, it looks like this.
Here's your red handkerchief.
Here's your red handkerchief, okay?
And what you've done is you've transferred the thumb tip over here, and you've got the
attention here.
At no time does anyone see a thumb tip.
The thumbs are in full view the whole time, and it looks kind of neat.
So here's the move.
As you come across to take the handkerchief, you leave the thumb tip behind, but your left
thumb goes on top of the thumb tip, and you take the handkerchief away, like this.
Very simple.
Then your hand relaxes so that it holds the thumb tip in finger palm.
In fact, if you want at that point, you can use your left thumb to pivot it up a little
bit so it's in the right position for the vanish a little later on, okay?
So it's very simple.
Here's the handkerchief.
Come across, take the handkerchief, leave the thumb tip.
Take the handkerchief over here, okay?
Now, you're going to do the vanish.
Push the handkerchief deeply within the folds of the flesh.
It goes deep down inside the hand.
A lot of people like to steal it with the thumb.
Don't steal it like that.
You're going to steal it from the back of the hand.
Here's what it looks like from the front.
Wave of the hand, it's gone, okay?
The steal comes from the back rather than from here.
So your forefinger is pushing the handkerchief in.
At one point while you're pushing the handkerchief in, instead of actually going into the thumb
tip, you're going to go in front of the thumb tip right here and pivot the tip out of the
back of your hand.
You just need to pivot it out a little bit, like this, okay?
You can see that.
All right, so you push it in, you pivot it out, and as you're pushing down with your
forefinger, your thumb automatically just goes into the tip and steals it away.
The great thing about this is, first of all, it's the forefinger pushing the handkerchief
in, which is extremely natural.
And secondly, when you're taking the hand away, the tip is covered anyway.
It's covered with the fingers of the hand, okay?
So you push the handkerchief in, you steal it from the back, you wave your hand.
It's important to keep the hand in motion at all times.
This of course is a well-known thumb tip move where you have the tip of the thumb towards
the audience and you're waving the hand like this.
I like to steal it on the thumb, wave my hand and say the magic words and get someone else
to do it.
So it gives you an excuse for waving your hand, okay?
At this point, when you open your hand and you show that the handkerchief is gone, you
can just lift the hand up a little bit in front of your right hand so that you're covering
the thumb tip.
So just think of covering it in some way.
Not in an obvious fashion, but just in a natural movement.
So you wave your hand, you steal it, you wave your hand, you open your hand, the handkerchief
is gone, okay?
What is also nice at this point, because they will look at this hand even though they saw
the hand empty.
What is real nice, because you need to cover this still, because if they look at your hand
to see the red stuff, they might see something sticking on the end of your thumb.
So what you do is you steal it, you go, it's gone completely, open up your jacket, unless
you've got a topic, in which case you just open this side, but just kind of go like this,
okay?
And show that the handkerchief is gone.
So this covers your thumb tip as well.
It's kind of a natural kind of a, it's gone movement.
Okay, so the reproduction.
Once you vanish the silk, you explain about the trap door in your hand or whatever other
presentation you want to do, you reach inside and produce the silk.
Now you do two moves at once, you load it and you produce it at the same time.
You don't load it and then produce it.
You reach into the hand with your forefinger and thumb, and you draw out the silk in the
same movement, like that, okay?
So it goes, the handkerchief is in your thumb tip.
Without the fist, it looks like this.
Goes into the fist, thumb tip draws the silk out like this, okay?
It comes out like that.
Now if you're doing this routine, you don't have to take the handkerchief out the whole
way.
Just pull it out a little bit.
It's enough for the impact.
And also, you don't want to accidentally flash a tip in the hand.
You know, people are looking, they're watching close, so just leave it sticking out about
half way.
Now you do the bit where you do it under test conditions, okay?
You produce the handkerchief, you've shown both hands empty, you've reached into the
fist, you've left the thumb tip, you've pulled the handkerchief out about half way.
You ask someone to hold the wrist.
They're holding your wrist real tight.
You can get a lot of fun going, entertainment with the person holding your wrist.
Have them with their other hand or have somebody else do it, push the handkerchief into the
fist.
Believe it or not, they won't feel the thumb tip, providing that your forefinger is closed
to a circle just smaller than the opening of the thumb tip.
If it's not like that, they will feel the edge of the thumb tip when they're doing it.
And it's closed just smaller.
They can even look in the hand and they won't see anything.
They can push the handkerchief into the fist themselves.
This is a good convince for everybody else in the audience because people are thinking
if there was anything else inside the hand, that person must be able to feel it with their
finger.
But they don't feel anything.
All they feel is the silk.
So they're holding your wrist here.
You have them push the handkerchief in themselves and sometimes they'll only push in about
half way.
But whatever happens, you then say, wait, just a little bit further, I'll do it.
And then you just naturally push it down a little further as if you really need to get
it crushed down and they didn't push it down enough.
That's when you do the same steal from the back of the hand as you're pushing it down.
You steal it here.
You've got a lot of cover.
You've got this guy's arm here.
He won't see anything because your hand is here.
Steal the thumb tip.
Okay?
Wave your hand and hold his wrist like this.
So again, you're covering the tip behind the arm, all right?
And under test conditions, you squeeze, you open your hand, you show it's gone a second
time.
Now you're holding his arm, you're covering the thumb tip, you ask him to let go of your
wrist and then you say, you know where it went?
It went up your sleeve, across your chest and into your tie and now you do the production
from the tie.
Think of it two ways.
The first way is to do the same move we did before when we reproduced the silk.
That's straight in, pull it straight out or you can do it in two steps.
First thing you do is you come down, you pick up the tie and you hold the tie like this.
Why?
Because you're covering the thumb tip.
Again, you're just covering all the natural moves.
Thumb tip is behind the tie.
You open it up a little bit like that, okay?
And then you're going to reach inside and you say, it looks like there's a little piece
of silk in there.
You reach inside, you load the tip and you go, yeah, it really is.
And then you're holding the thumb tip.
Now you're holding actually the tip through the tie with the left hand.
Without the tie, this is the position that you're holding it at.
Just kind of between the little finger and the thumb.
Right on the very, very edge.
This is so you can make the load back in a moment a lot easier.
So you pick up the tie, yeah, it looks like there's something in there.
Load the thumb tip in there, come back again and you've got it again between these fingers.
You reach inside and you pull the silk out.
Looks like this.
Oh, it looks like there's something in your tie, yeah, there, okay?
Make sure you look and make sure you use the drama of it, use the acting, ah, it looks
like there's definitely something there.
You pull it out a little bit.
Now, you're going to do two things at once.
You're going to pull the handkerchief all the way out and you're going to reload the
tip onto your left thumb as quickly as you possibly can.
Most people, when they do this thumb tip stuff out of a tie or out of a sleeve, have an extra
move.
In order to get the tip back on their thumb, they pull out whatever it is that they produced
from their tie or their sleeve and then they go, is there anything else in there?
And they load it back on.
This is good if you've got the tie.
But from my experience, when you pull something out of somebody's sleeve, they're so surprised
they're going to do one or two things.
They're going to grab their sleeve to make sure there's nothing else in there or they're
just going to pull away in shock.
If you don't get your thumb tip on in time, you're going to have the incredible flying
thumb tip which looks bizarre but gives the whole thing away.
So here's what you do.
Your thumb tip is held inside the tie like this, okay, like that.
The sleeve is sticking about half way out and you pull the handkerchief out and as you
pull it out and the attention is coming up here, your left thumb just pivots the tip
like that.
Just pivots it onto the thumb.
It will go on upside down but it doesn't make any difference.
Nobody will notice the thumb tip, okay, so don't worry about that.
Just pivot it onto the thumb so you don't even have to push it all the way down.
In other words, don't go like this.
You don't need to do that.
You just need to get it on the thumb enough so it holds.
In full action, this is what it looks like.
You've loaded your thumb tip in, you've pulled the handkerchief out and as you pull it all
the way out, here's the tie right here, as you pull it all the way out, you load the
tip and you let the tie drop, okay.
The action of the tie dropping, you don't actually even have to lift the tip out of
the tie.
The tie dropping will pull the tip out for you, you know.
So it's just very, very easy, one more time with the load.
You vanish the handkerchief under test conditions, okay.
You've taken the tie, you said, look, it's right here inside the tie, little piece of
red silk.
There it is.
Now before they can do anything, you go, wow, that's it.
And that's the vanishing silk, the tie routine.
Thank you.
Hi we're back with some other ideas with the silk and the thumb tip.
In order to reduce the silk, you can use the thumb tip for that and there's a very nice
method which I don't know if somebody else will be explaining on this tape, I hope so,
where you produce it from a dollar bill.
What I want to do is to show you a different method I came across in a Bruce Elliott book
and it's with a purse frame.
We often use purse frames for sponge balls or coins or whatever.
It's a really nice idea to use it for a thumb tip and a silk.
I'll show you why.
I'll use a regular thumb tip just to start off with and then we'll go into the explanation.
All right.
Here is what it looks like.
You say, hey folks, I've got here a little purse frame.
You can do all your nice little purse frame gags that you've got ripped off from other
people.
Right, now you come across, you take the purse frame, you show it here, okay.
You open up the purse frame, you say, actually it's a purse made of silk.
It's a silk purse.
Look, there's a piece of silk right inside.
And you pull it out.
Kind of nice.
Nice thing about this also is that by doing this production, you've already loaded the
thumb tip into your left hand ready for the vanish later on.
Kind of neat.
Of course, it's exactly the same loading move except instead of taking the silk from hand
to hand, you're taking the purse frame from hand to hand.
Thumb tip, we'll use it with a yellow thumb tip so you can see.
Thumb tip is filled with the red silk, okay.
On your right thumb, here is your purse frame.
You come across to take the purse frame between your first and second finger.
And as you do that, you just leave the thumb tip in the left hand.
You show it over here.
And all the while you're just holding, you don't have to grip it.
Just hold it nice and loosely in a kind of a finger clip palm position in your left hand.
So you show the purse frame right here.
You open up the frame, reach inside, and of course you just take the handkerchief right
the way out of the thumb tip.
Close the purse frame, put it in your pocket, you're going to be coming back to that little
later on.
After you've done your routine, if you want to, it's kind of nice, it's kind of a good
continuity to take back out the frame, show the frame, and as you're talking casually,
you've done the trick.
Just push it all the way back.
You push the handkerchief all the way back inside the frame, actually pushing it inside
the thumb tip, but you push it inside, it looks like you push it inside the frame.
You close it up here, and again you've got this cover for the thumb tip.
You're holding it between your first two fingers in front, thumb tip behind as you close it,
and you talk as you put the frame away in your pocket.
It's really kind of nice, it's nice continuity.
If you think that you have someone in your audience who knows a little bit about thumb
tips, there is an extra thing you can do, and it gets rid of the thumb tip, and it looks
like this.
You've done your thing with the silk, okay, your purse frame is in your right jacket pocket,
you go to reach for your purse frame, ditch the thumb tip at this point, okay, right,
you got it right here, okay, you take the purse frame, you open up the purse frame,
and you push the handkerchief into the purse frame, just like this, and this is kind of
a nice thing to do.
You then open the hand, you show that the handkerchief is gone, it's in the purse frame,
you can throw the purse frame on the table, you have no thumb tips, you've got nothing
to worry about, you're clean, so if somebody is saying, hey, you've got a rubber thumb,
you can go, no, you've got a rubber head, nothing, okay, all right, let me explain this
to you, this is something you can use your old thumb tips with, it's a pull, but it's
very good for use in this routine, so we're going to stick it on the tape anyway.
I have, let me just stand up, you can keep the camera where it is, I'll just show you
here.
So I have rigged up some rubber bands, half a thumb tip, just big enough to hold the silk,
the rubber bands are attached to the point of the thumb tip like this, this is just hanging
underneath your jacket like that, ready for use in case you need it.
Okay, here's the routine, the purse frame is in your pocket, you've just produced, you've
done your wonderful routine, you've pulled the silk out of the tie or the purse or sleeve,
they might want to examine the silk, God knows why, they think there's something to do with
the silk.
Let them examine the silk.
So you reach into your pockets for your purse frame, you act as if you've just forgot where
you put it for a second, so both hands come back and you feel the purse frame, as you're
feeling for the purse frame, you just steal the thumb, the pull in your finger palm, in
your left finger palm.
So now you have the pull in your left finger palm, right here, okay, and you pull out your
purse frame, okay, and you open up the purse frame in the left hand, so this is the position
you're in.
You're just holding it in your hand with your ring finger, basically it's holding it there.
Now I will stand up, so this jacket is actually a little short, so you'll see where the pull
goes and how it goes.
You push the handkerchief all the way into the pull as you're talking casually with them.
As you close the pull, that's when you let the thumb tip go to cover any noise, that's
when you let the pull go to cover any noise.
You close it as you're looking them in the eyes, so you take attention away from the
hand a little bit, ask them a question or something, close the pull, let the pull fly
underneath your jacket, show both hands empty, very casually, you just have to talk about
it being inside the purse, toss it on the table and you're clean.
No thumb tips to get rid of.
Okay, one extra thing you can do with this pull, because it's made from a thumb tip,
and I think Pat Page was the first person to come up with the idea of having a thumb
tip on a pull, kind of a weird idea, huh?
It's hanging on your left hand hip, if you reach into your pocket like this, as if you're
searching for something, you can get the pull on your thumb, this makes the loading procedure
kind of nice.
If you've got the handkerchief in your left hand and you reach into your pocket here for
something and you can't find it, you load the thumb tip onto your right thumb and as
you come out, you do kind of a similar loading technique with the thumb tip, only you're
going to load the thumb tip pull into your left hand, in other words, you come out, it's
right there, so you're not coming out with something tight in your fist, it's coming
out on the end of your thumb, as you take the handkerchief here, you've loaded your
pull, it kind of makes you don't have to go like this, okay, you can use your, you can
just reach in, you've got the handkerchief here, you come out, ah look, there's the handkerchief,
okay, and you can push it inside, you don't even have to use the purse frame, you know,
it's entirely up to you, it's just an extra little thing to do in case you have somebody
in your audience who knows about thumb tips, this brings us to the subject of people who
know about thumb tips, unfortunately they're becoming as popular as how it's done look
like, so what you need to do is this, you need to check out if you're going to do close
up magic, check out if your audience knows about thumb tips, how do you do that, you
don't turn to them and go, do you know any tricks with a rubber thumb, and because you're,
this is what you do, you can use this to start off with if you want, it would be kind of
nice because as you're pushing it in, do this, you know, and if someone says you've got a
rubber thumb, you can make it vanish with the pull and you're ahead of the game, or
you can do a little sleight of hand version where you push the handkerchief, apparently
you push it into the fist, using all the moves of a bad thumb tip person, okay, just see
if you get any raised eyebrows or if anybody says anything, and you just, with your full
finger, you just kind of push the handkerchief back into the right hand as you're doing it,
so this is what you do, you go, I'm going to push the handkerchief into the fist, like
this, okay, and you steal the handkerchief back, all you do is your full finger hooks
it back into your right hand, all the way like this, okay, as you push it all the way
in, go like that, show it's gone, then you can just produce it from over here, if you
do the sleight of hand vanish of the handkerchief to begin with and someone says, oh, you've
got a rubber thumb, you can say, no I haven't, the hand is rubber, the thumb is real, or
anything like that, and you can give them the handkerchief, I'll examine your hands,
you don't have to get rid of a thumb tip if you get, you know, by getting caught by someone,
it's a nice way of checking out if your audience knows about thumb tips, and that's it, that's
it with the thumb tip and the silk, thank you.
Hi, I'm Wood Hayden, you know I've been trying to quit smoking, it's very tough, you know
why?
I inhale, it's not the trick though, this brand is hard to light, watch closely, it's
finished, actually, it usually ends up back over here, in my back pocket, it's a little
hard to quit, secret to the whole thing, I have this asbestos pocket, I'll do it one
more time, watch closely, years of training and self abuse went into this, sometimes it
doesn't show up, that's when I get nervous, it just kind of disappears, often times when
I'm working in a situation in a trade show or hospitality suite or in a restaurant, I
find that a lot of people are hip to the thumb tips, a lot of lay people have been to a magic
shop or some people were amateur magicians and if there's one person in the crowd that
says something out loud about the thumb tip, it can be really devastating to the performer,
so I find that especially if you're using a trick like the vanishing cigarette which
is often associated especially in the beginner's mind with the thumb tip, the best way around
it is to use another method to begin with, to fool the people that may be familiar with
the thumb tip and then bring the thumb tip in and out so quickly that they don't have
a chance to see it, so the routine I've developed for that is a very simple one, I take out
a cigarette and do a standard sleight of hand gag which most people are familiar with, get
their attention on the cigarette, now I reach for my lighter and in my back pocket is where
I keep my lighter, I like the cigarette, when I reach back here to put the lighter away
I have hanging behind my coat a pull, now this is a very special pull, it's available
in most magic shops where you have holes drilled all the way through the pull, there are two
or three wires in here that will hold the lit cigarette away from the sides of the pull
so it has air to breathe and it will stay lit in the pull, the elastic is attached to
the back of your jacket, one of the advantages of having it attached to your jacket is that
if some point at some time you have to take off your jacket or you want to relax after
the party or at another time you need to remove your jacket, it's very simple to take your
jacket off in such a way that it doesn't show and fold it up and lay it down and the pull
won't show and then you're clean, you don't have something hanging from your back or attached
to your belt, now this pull, the secret to a pull really is that when you put something
into the pull, like so, you don't want it to go fast, it's not the speed that makes
it happen, it's as if you have an arm reaching out of your jacket, a third hand that reaches
out, takes the thing softly from your hand and slips it under the jacket without them
seeing it, this is the effect that you want to have, so, when I put the lighter away,
the pull is hanging right by my pocket, it's easy to grab the pull, come back out here
straightening up my jacket like so and then you have the pull in place in a natural way
and everything is hidden, the line of the pull is hidden, since your hand rests comfortably
right in front of you like this, the line of the pull is hidden by your arm and by the
jacket so that there are very few, in fact, there don't have to be any bad angles, you
can actually hold it like so against you and there will be no bad angles, you can do this
surrounded.
Now when you place the cigarette into the pull halfway like that, you simply cover the
top part of the cigarette with his hand, as soon as it's covered, you let the pull slide
away.
Now before you put the cigarette in, you take a little bit of smoke into your mouth and
hold it, it's gone.
Now as soon as you let the smoke out and say it's gone, most of the spectators will assume
that somehow they'll get a laugh, but somehow they think that you've pushed it into your
mouth and they think it's there, so it's a big surprise to them when you open your hands
like this and show them, wiggle your thumbs to attract the attention of anyone that may
be hip to the thumb tip.
When you wiggle your thumbs, the first thing they're going to say is there's no thumb tip,
it must be in its mouth and now you've really got them because you're simply reaching your
back pocket and pull the cigarette out of the pull and show it's still lit.
So someone that's hip to the thumb tip will go, well that doesn't make sense, how could
he push it and squash it into a thumb tip, get it back there without me seeing it and
then pull it back out lit, they're completely non-pussed, they don't know how it's done.
Now you tell them the secret is, I have this asbestos pocket and as soon as you reach back
to show your pocket, you grab the thumb tip, which is hidden right beside your wallet,
right in this pocket where it's easy to grab, you grab the thumb tip onto your thumb like
that and come back out with it.
As you do, your hand comes, you see with a natural motion so that there's no chance for
them to really see the thumb tip or your hand, you come back out like this with a natural
motion right to the cigarette and grab it with these two fingers, leaving the thumb
tip right back here on your hand in the perfect position to take.
So these two fingers come in front of the left hand, the left hand grabs the thumb tip
and you come away with it this way, turning slightly to your right.
Take another drag, place it back into the thumb tip.
Now this time, you show your hand all the way around with your sleeves up, makes it
impossible for it to be a pull.
This really is convincing.
You push the cigarette into your hand with both finger and thumb at the same time and
come back out with your thumb, so the motion is like that.
Now you push your finger into the top of the hand like you're still pushing it down, the
thumb tip is hidden behind your hand like so and you turn this hand over and rub it
slightly like so.
Now this leaves this hand convincingly open but the thumb tip is still hidden behind the
hand.
You open the hand and show it, you turn around like this, flash both hands and immediately
open your jacket, look around for the cigarette, check your pockets, the thumb tip goes back
into your pocket and you're clean and it's vanished completely.
I never bring it back again.
I think it's much more exciting for the audience for it to disappear completely.
It's like a burr under the saddle, it keeps them awake and they worry about it.
I often have people come back after I finish several performances going around the room.
If I go back to that same group, the first thing they ask is what happened to the cigarette?
It worries them and it keeps them, helps them to remember you.
So I never bring it back.
I let it go the last time and keep it in limbo.
Hello, my name is Darryl and I have my magic string and my trusty Swiss Army Knife and
a lovely assistant from the audience.
Would you mind helping me out for just a moment?
Please cut the string right about the middle, ooh good job, a true professional.
How about again, right again, right there, excellent.
All I have to do is take the little pieces of string, put them inside the fist and say
the magic words, presto, that's it.
What happens is the spirits will join the four pieces of string together.
Now to make it even more amazing, if I blow on the knots, they'll slide right off.
A restoration, ladies and gentlemen, extraordinaire.
The secret is you have two pieces of string.
One you take like this and you tie three little pieces on it like that.
Just any old regular simple overhand knot will do.
It's good to have them fairly equally spaced so that it'll look to the untrained eye as
if they are four pieces of string tied together.
All you have to do with this is just bundle it up into a little ball, hide it in your
left hand and cover it with a thumb tip.
You want to put the thumb tip into the left hand in such a way that you can steal it out
quickly with your right hand.
Now you start off by showing this string, you have the spectator cut that right in half
like that.
Put the two strings together, cut it again.
Now it's a simple matter to take the little pieces, put them inside of the thumb tip and
as it goes inside, you secretly steal it out the back, you just sort of kick it a little
bit like this.
Put your thumb into the thumb tip, do your little magic, show this and then you can show
that they're all tied together.
Now for the super socco blockbuster finish, you can slide off the knots and show the restoration.
Another very simple mystery with just a bolt, a washer and a nut.
A bolt, a nut, a washer, they go on top of the fist like this, you blow a little wiggle
like this and as if by magic, ho, all together.
Once again everything can be examined completely.
Now the explanation is very simple.
The only reason for using the purse is to help hide the fact that in the left hand,
you have a duplicate bolt with a nut on it and the washer on the side like that.
You cover that up with the thumb tip, so actually you're holding both the bolt, the nut and
the washer and the thumb tip hidden in the left hand.
That's quite a load.
So let's try to help it out a little bit by holding the purse as well.
Now you open it up, you take out the washer, the nut, the bolt.
When you put the purse down, you immediately pick up the three, place them on top of the
fist, you open the fist, that makes them all go inside of the thumb tip, you do your little
magical gesture again and like before, you just sort of kick the thumb tip off the side
from the back, stick your thumb into it, you do your little magic, you wiggle the fingers
like this, you open it up, you show that they're all connected and hand it out for examination.
Most of you are probably aware of the fact that Larry Jennings is not a big thumb tip
worker.
No, his field of expertise is cards and coins and believe me, is he an expert, I tell you.
He's written a few books on the subject, one of which is a must for any magical library.
It's a terrific book called The Classic Magic of Larry Jennings.
There's a lot of great stuff in here.
If you have the book, great.
If you don't, you should get it.
It's terrific.
Most magic shops sell it and so do I.
So at the end of this, with this tape, you should have got an order form.
This will be on it.
It's a great book.
The other book he wrote is The Card Write.
This actually he's written in quite a few books, but these are the two that I am selling
for him.
This is just as good as that one.
So I think that says it all and thanks again, Larry, for doing the thumb tip trick for me.
Hi, I'm sure you saw T.C. Tahoe earlier on the tape.
I know his performance was great with the comedy tour, Miss Dawn Bell.
Comedy is T.C.'s thing, comedy and magic.
He has letter notes on both subjects, thoughts, which are very good notes, and second thoughts,
both comedy, magic-related.
Here he is in his lounge chair, his literary look, there, smoking a cigar.
Very good notes.
He also has a book.
T.C.'s big book of practical jokes, a lot of fun gags, jokes, bits you can do, both
of all of these are terrific things, should be read, though you'll learn a lot if you
read them.
I have read them and enjoyed them.
He also has the comedy Bending Spoon, which is very funny.
It's like a gag, you regal a bit with the Bending Spoon.
And it's all good value, as you can see the price is on the insert, thank you.
I have something very special here, these cards, they're very old, they're very rare,
very valuable.
Allow me to demonstrate what they do.
The faces, the ten of clubs, the ten of hearts, the ten of spades, and the ten of diamonds
are not the most important cards.
These are the important cards, blank faced cards.
Very difficult to find blank faced cards.
You need to know somebody who works at a playing card factory, preferably the night shift,
and they can sneak them out when nobody's looking.
Anyway, I've got four blank faced cards, what I'm going to do is print these for you one
at a time by magic, watch closely.
All you do is you place one card like this, a blank card on top, and squeeze, the upper
card will absorb the ink from the lower card to make an instant copy, and this card can
be handed out for examination.
Now it works just as well with a blank surface as it does with a printed surface, in fact
it's a good idea to leave one card blank at all times, this way you can transfer the blank
surface from one card to the other, and then you can use the same cards over and over again.
These can also be handed out for complete inspection.
Now it works just as well with red as it does with black, exactly the same way, you just
squeeze them together, the upper card makes an instant duplicate.
Now here's something I should mention, the playing cards don't know whether they're
face up or face down, so if by accident you place the face of one card onto the back of
another card, and then squeeze, of course you'll transfer a face onto the back.
Now that could get very confusing, I just thought I should mention that.
Well here's something else you can do, you can put two cards together like this, in fact
I discovered this by accident about a couple weeks ago, put another card like this, just
squeeze gently, and you'll get half of one and half of another.
Oh, let's see, it works with anything, anything at all, like Hark, even the card box.
All you do is you press it like this, wait a couple of moments, and it absorbs the printing,
just like that.
And you're limited only by your imagination, which means you're not limited at all.
This is something we call printing.
Oh, to the untrained eye, this probably looks like just an ordinary transparent bag.
Actually this bag is very special, and it is known among magicians as the bag of mystery.
It can be examined completely, in fact it's a good idea to hand it out for examination
before beginning the effect, and let a spectator look for trap doors or secret openings, that
kind of thing.
Anyway, after the bag has been examined, you can have a card selected from the pack, any
card at all, doesn't make any difference, just to make it easy I'll just choose one
at random, or say this one.
Anyway, any card can be selected, in this case it happens to be this, it can go any
place back into the pack, oh say for example here, and it goes in all the way.
Okay?
Now shuffle up the deck so that even I don't know exactly where it is, is anybody buying
any of this?
All right.
Lost in the pack.
Now you can actually let a spectator shuffle as well, but that's a whole different story.
Anyway, nothing up the sleeves, this is the genuine article, the deck goes into the bag
of mystery.
Watch closely.
All I have to do is massage the deck while it's in the bag, one card will pass right
through the plastic without leaving a hole, of course if it did leave a hole, it would
not be a mystery.
Watch closely, this is the only way in or out, and I will close that off.
Now there's no way I could cheat, even if I wanted to.
Watch very closely.
A little massage, one card will pass right through the plastic bag, in fact I can see
it starting right now, there's a little corner, not from the top or the bottom, but actually
from the middle of the deck, one card works its way through.
Only one, in fact that's the hard part, not getting the one card out, but keeping the
other 51 cards safely inside.
All the way through, once again the bag can be examined completely, there are no holes,
no trap doors, and for the first time in a loud, clear voice, the name of the card was
uh?
Ten of Clubs.
The Ten of Clubs, ladies and gentlemen, this is the bag of mystery.
Otherwise known as a hefty penetration.
Hello, my name is Darrell, and this is one of my favorite mysteries, in fact I do this
for myself at home in front of the mirror, and I laugh and laugh.
For about a year I used to do it with two pieces of white rope, but then I realized
nobody had any idea what I was doing.
So now I use different colors, it's a lot easier to follow, a lovely shade of red, so
that you won't confuse it with the white.
Now all you do is you take the white rope, that's this one, make a simple loop, pass
the end and through the loop and pull, this of course gives you a knot, but this is not
an ordinary knot, it's a very special knot, known as the jumping knot of Pakistan.
Watch closely.
All I have to do is twirl the ropes together, then I say the secret magic words, but I have
to say them silently to myself, that causes the knot to jump off the white rope, over
to the right.
Not only that, but sometimes when I do this, people think it's a phony fake trick knot,
the kind you can thread onto the rope and then slide off when nobody's looking.
Well to the people who think that, I simply say, yeah, it's easy to take the knot off,
the hard parts to hold the rope like this, the knot like that, and stick it back on.
And if you're lucky, you can take a little bit of magic dust, which I have with me, just
a little bit, sprinkle it on like this, and that fuse welds the rope and the knot together,
so now I can massage them, blending them as one, and that ladies and gentlemen is the mystery
of the jumping knot of Pakistan.
Did you ever come to a place in Iraq where you don't get the reaction you expected?
Maybe you did a great trick and the audience just sits there and looks at you.
Maybe you told 15 jokes in a row and they're still not laughing.
Well if that's your problem, I've got a solution for you.
Just say this, hey, I know why you're not laughing, you don't like the tie.
Hey, no problem.
Never fails, always gets a great laugh.
Believe me, I've done a lot of bad jokes in my time and I know what I'm talking about.
Hi, Rich Marotta here, I've got a great trick I want to show you, and actually this trick
comes in 40, 50 gags, but I'm not going to show them to you all, so let's just do this.
Let's just say, hey, say stop anywhere, yell out something like stop, okay?
Stop, thank you very much, right there, remember that card.
Now normally I'd let the spectator shuffle the cards, but since we don't have any, I'm
not going to do it.
But make believe that's what they're doing.
I reach in my pocket and I get a perfectly ordinary looking, everyday prop, a paper bag.
And I'll have the audience drop the cards into the bag and I ask them very simply, would
it be a great trick if I could reach into that bag and pull out their card?
Of course most people say no, it wouldn't be a great trick, and I agree with them and
I ask them if they'd like to see a great trick and then I take this hack.
Here's the way it works, get a piece of rope, you make a loop in the rope, you go like this,
one, two, three, hey, loop in the rope.
About four gags there, but I'm not going to tell them to you, anyway what we do is we
make a loop in the rope like this, again we say we're going to last to the card, ready?
One, two, three, hup, hup, hup, hup.
I got it.
That's a trick, what do you think?
Want to see?
Okay, really?
Loud voice, yell out the card.
Come on, you did it for the Copperfields.
Didn't you hear, look, thank you very much.
Okay, you saw Kevin James a little earlier on the tape as well, he is an award winning
performer at the Magic Castle, Parlor of the Year with these two effects in his act, Perrier
with a Twist, which is a wonderful coin in bottle routine using a Perrier bottle where
the bottom screws off, the top vanishes, the bottle vanishes, it's a very cool routine,
Perrier with a Twist, also the Animated Card Through Balloon of Death, now I've seen this
and it's very cool, he won Parlor of the Year, I told you, performing these two effects,
a few other effects as well, but these two were in it, and also he has a wonderful set
of letter notes, his first ever letter notes, there's a lot of stuff, lipstick stuff in
here, a lot of good information, thank you.
Hi this is a trick that a friend of mine, Tony Clark, put out recently and I found myself
using it quite a bit, I'd like to show it to you because I did a ribbon trick earlier
on the tape, and if you use ribbon the same colour, then you can do this trick as well,
you have two pieces of ribbon, a black piece, a white piece, you pinch them together like
so, fold them in half, like so, fold them in half again, like this, fold them in half
again, squeeze, and it completely blends, Z Ribbon, thank you.
Okay this was Z Ribbon is the name of this product, I think it's a very cool little trick,
sometimes you find that you need a reason to cause a magic to happen, whether it be
a lighter or whatever it is that you need, if you want something more instant, this is
the perfect thing, you can just reach in and pull out a lit match, isn't that cool?
This is an Omni Instalight, I find that they've never failed, they're very well made, and
they're easy to conceal, it's just a little gadget like this, Tony Clark makes them and
I am selling them for him as well as his zebra, his Z Ribbon, not Zebra Ribbon, different trick
completely, thank you.