This is Nick’s presentation for Simon Aronson’s Center Cut Location from Simon’s book Bound to Please. This effect is based on a simple concept, and is quite easy to do. It’s a most puzzling revelation of two selected cards.

            Nick presents this as mentalism. He points out that the selection process is designed to make it is impossible for him to have any knowledge of the selected cards. And, it’s impossible for him to have any influence over the selection of the cards.

            Nick is an executive at General Motors and works in the Corporate Strategy department. He frequently gives presentations to large groups of people, and is always looking for ways to incorporate a magic effect into his presentations. Any effect he uses needs to stand-alone well, and be strong. This routine certainly fits the bill.

            The routine is done as a stand up piece; to begin, get two spectators to come up to the podium/stage. While they are coming up to the stage, false-shuffle the deck, but pay no attention to the cards at all.  Nick uses Dan Garrett’s Underhanded Overhand Shuffle from Dan’s Video: “Cabaret Connivery.” (Available from Loomis Magic for $32.00 - www.loomismagic.com )

Turn your back and then ask spectator A to hold the deck horizontally, by the sides, and get spectator B to pull out a block of cards. Spectator A is asked to put the remaining cards back in the case, and to put them aside for the moment.  Reminds your audience of the completely random nature of what just happened. Then ask spectator B (who is holding the pulled out block of cards) to show the face card of the block to spectator A. A remembers this as “his card.” Instruct Spectator B to look at the top card of the packet and remember it as “his card.”  Then ask one of the volunteers to thoroughly shuffle the block of cards.

Now, turn back to face the audience. Take the block of cards, and hold them up and look at the face of the block. The spectators concentrate on their cards. The rest happens in silence: Run the cards from hand to hand, one by one, and look for the lowest value card (B's card) and the highest value card (A's card). As the cards move from hand to hand, certain cards can be eliminated from consideration, and are allowed to fall to the floor, one-by-one, and sometimes even a few at a time. This does not need to be done quickly. As a matter of fact, it plays well if you do it slowly at first, and then build up the speed throughout. There is no rush. At the end, you will be holding only two cards. Still in silence, both cards are turned to face the audience, putting you in perfect applause pose for the finale of your effect. If you like, you can give the final to cards to your helpers as souvenirs.

It's ok to go slow on the reveal, because it gives the audience a chance to think about how impossible it is for what is about to happen.

            Here’s what Nick says about his presentational:

I present Raining Revelations by describing a rare magic book I was able to get on
the Internet at a used bookstore in Argentina. The proprietor misspelled the
name of the book and author, and I ran across it quite by accident. I describe
it as a long lost book on mind reading, legendarily known by magicians as
having "real" mind reading secrets. I describe that as seriously as I can,
with a very slight twinkle in the eye. Later in the evening, I always get a
few people wanting to know more about the book, and wanting to know how mind
reading really works. That has been fun (and surprising) for me.
            Nick feels that the only bad thing about this trick is that cards are left on the floor. It’s undignified to have to bend down to retrieve them. I agree that it’s awkward to retrieve the cards, and I’d just leave the cards on the floor! The cost of a single deck is not much compared to your fee for a show. You can get two decks for a buck from “Dollar” stores. That’s only 50 cents per performance!

            There’s something intriguing about seeing cards discarded and allowed to flutter to the floor. I remember vividly the image of Clarke Crandall doing that in his Six Card Repeat Routine and I haven’t seen that in thirty years! (Or, I hadn’t until I saw him do it again recently on one of the Don Alan Magic Ranch DVD’s now available.)

            In his write up of the Center Cut Location in Bound to Please, Simon suggests some alternative ways to select the block of cards. You may wish to check his write up and see if one of them appeals to you. And, he also suggests that just one spectator can be used and a single card is selected. This would speed up the proceedings considerably. Simon suggests another procedure, which will shorten the time, needed to zero in on the single selection. He has the spectator deal or cut the packet into three piles and then looks at them and hands you only the packet that contains their card. This reduces the number of cards to about a third of the size of the original block. My own preference is to use two selections because it puts you in position to strike a great applause pose at the finale. And, I think that the time it takes to weed out the cards from the typical block of twenty or thirty cards is dramatically well spent in Nick’s version.

            You may wish to fan the packet of cards in front of you, rather than spreading them from hand to hand. You can then look over all of them, spotting the highest and lowest stack numbers. Remember that the most fascinating moment for your spectators may be when you drop the very first card to the floor. I’d play this up by making eye contact with one of the spectators, upjogging one card, making eye contact again, and then pulling the card from the fan. Your spectators will assume that it’s the chosen card. Then, without saying a thing, you let it fall! For drama, be sure to start eliminating cards slowly, dropping one at a time. Then gradually pick up the pace, occasionally dropping more than one card until you are down to the last two.

            Thanks to Nick for contributing this for our Smoke and Mirrors readers.

Incidentally, Nick has created a free software program called StackView for memorized deck work. It’s a remarkable tool.  In case you haven't seen it, check out www.stackview.com -- the recent new version (v 3.0) is now available.

Principal shooting has been done on the first Loomis Magic DVD. It will be the most comprehensive video assemblage of Magical Knots and Rope Flourishes ever produced. The backbone will be the Dennis Loomis Knot Routine. Each of the Knots in Dennis' routine will be performed and then explained. Following that, there will be a big collection of additional knots and rope flourishes performed and demonstrated by Dennis Loomis, Mary Mowder, Dick Oslund, and Bill Spooner. Also included will be brief clips of Will Rogers and James Dean. Editing is well over halfway completed as of September 24th, but much remains to be done. We hope to have the DVD's on the market in time for the WMS in Las Vegas in January of 2004. Perhaps they'll be ready before then.

 (This has been released, now, of course.) To read about it, click on the Discount DVD Page link below, and then on the letter "L"

            Work on these new releases, on top of my regular performing schedule, got in the way last month, and I didn’t get an article written for the September issue. I apologize to my regular readers and to Angelo for that.

             Allow me to remind you that Loomis Magic has some of the lowest prices around on magic books, tricks, and DVD’s. What you see on the website ( www.loomismagic.com ) is only a drop in the bucket compared to everything we handle. If you’re contemplating a magical purchase, please consider dropping us an email at deloomis@mindspring.com and letting us quote our prices. Hopefully we can save you a few bucks.