#Brian brushwood book test word list professional#

I guess you could say, 'Well, Jeff is a professional magician. In magic, as in life, your goal should be to preserve or amplify people's positive feelings about themselves or their situation. And I did it better.' Does that feel win/win to you? Now, is that feeling intensified or diminished if the magician says, 'Hey, I did that too.

Really try and put yourself in that feeling. Imagine how unreal that would feel to you. Someone gives you half a deck which you shuffle and cut and then you discover you've found four of a kind. Imagine yourself at the age before you knew secrets. Try to forget everything you know about magic. But it really needs to be part of the process of creating a presentation.

I bet the hardest thing for someone who knows as much about magic as Jeff McBride does,В and performs as much magic as Jeff McBride has, is to get back in the layperson's head. I'm puzzled by how he could even come to that conclusion. You beating the spectator does not make it a win/win. They represent a fundamental misunderstanding of what an audience-certainly what the main spectator-would find amazing about the routine. He calls this the 'punch' and the 'second punch.' Those aren't punches. He starts with something impressive (the spectator finding four of a kind)В goes onto something less impressive (the magician finding four of a kind)В and caps it off with something not impressive at all (showing that together they have blackjack hands-the trick has nothing to do with blackjack! If you want that to be a 'moment' you have to establish blackjack as being relevant at some point early on in the trick (he doesn't)). The hell? There is no defending that structure. It's part 'shuffling lesson,' then he does this weird mirroring stuff. McBride's performance is a bit of a cluster-F. It's kind of similar to a sucker trick, but rather than them thinking you messed up and you showing you haven't, it's a situation where they think what has happened is only mildly impressive but it turns out to be very impressive. But when the spectator finds that they've located the aces with the cards in their hands, it's damn near a miracle. When you show you've found the kings, it's an okay moment, but not thatВ impressive as those cards were in your hands and it's not inconceivable that you could have controlled them in some way.

It's a great trick because not only is it easy to do, but it builds beautifully. 'Don't feel bad,' you say, 'I've been doing this for 20 years.' When the spectator turns over the top cards of his piles, he's found the four aces. You turn over the top card of each of your piles and they're all kings. At the end you've each shuffled and cut your cards into four piles. You give them a lesson in shuffling and cutting the deck. You and the spectator each take half of the deck. Now, Chad Long's trick is a modern classic. The dumbest thing I've ever seen is Jeff McBride's version of Chad Long's trick, The Shuffling Lesson. Your goddamn shadowВ makes that clear.Д«ut no, that's not the dumbest thing I've ever seen in magic. Honestly, you don't even need a mirror to realize this looks like shit. How you go about avoiding reflective surfaces for 10 years is beyond me.

Brian brushwood book test word list