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Assorted commercial close-up magic.
The term 'commercial' is overused in magic. Every second trick is being marketed as 'commercial' simply because the author has perhaps performed it a few times to a lay audience. The routines in this compilation are truly commercial because Jim Sisti has performed and honed them over decades in hundreds perhaps even thousands of performances. These are the routines he has earned his reputation as a top-flight close-up performer. Every detail, from the presentation to the method, has been thought through.
Excerpt from the introduction:
The effects in these pages have been faithful companions throughout my career with some of them dating back almost 40 years. All of them, except for Comedy Card in Frame, have seen print in various places but this is the first time they've been collected together. In most cases, these are complete routines that also include my personal scripting. While there is not a lot here for the "move monkeys" (and, by the way, I am not using that term as invective as I've been part of many a late-night convention session myself), if you're a magician who works for real people, my expectation is that you'll find a few things of value here.
- Mixed Symbols: The performer hands five ESP cards, each bearing a different symbol, to a spectator and requests that he remember one. The spectator is then asked to shuffle the cards. The magician takes the cards back and, after an apparently fair mixing procedure, correctly divines the selected symbol without even looking at the faces.
- Jazzy Transposition 2: I first came up with Jazzy Transposition when I was noodling around with two effects. The first was a Larry West variant of Peter Kane's Jazz Aces that appeared in the August 1980 issue of The Linking Ring and the other was a Tom Ogden trick, High Jumper, a contribution to Frank Garcia's book Wild Card Miracles. It occurred to me that the idea that made Ogden's trick work, using a double-faced card as a "swing" card that could switch itself in and out as a visual convincer, could also be utilized in a very effective way in the Jazz Aces procedure and after some experimentation, Jazzy Transposition was born.
- Grandpa's Fruit Knives: A color-changing pocket knives routine.
- Working Professional's Ambitious Card: A five-phase ambitious card routine.
- Working Professional's Chop Cup: I had no interest in doing a Chop Cup routine that made the spectator the foil, i.e.: they always guess incorrectly where the ball is. Thus, I've included much of my scripting so that you can see how I've taken the "sting" out of the routine. Secondly, I refused to underestimate the intelligence of my audience and directly address their suspicions that there is more than one ball in play. In fact, in the spirit of Juan Tamariz, I exploit these suspicions halfway through the routine with a color change which actually aids in getting the audience to basically give up in their efforts to jump ahead in the trick. Thus, the final loads blow right past them.
- Working Professional's Card to Forehead: A routine that I've used for many, many years with great success for large parties is my own version of the Card on Forehead. In addition to playing big, it has the added attraction of drawing everyone into the fun, most often well before the person who actually selected the card knows what's going on.
- Comedy Card in Frame: Put a sand frame to good use.
