Winning the War

This was a post on the Penguin Magic forum that I thought deserved a broader audience. The mainstream media in this country tends to print the negative war coverage on page 1 and bury the positive stories on page 12. This is one of many positive stories that are not getting told. It is from a soldier in serving in Iraq that is using magic to change the world, one person at a time.

Thanks to Jeremy Clayton of Covington, TN for letting me reprint his post on my blog, and even more importantly, thanks for his service and sacrifice in the defense of our country.

OK, I know some of you are probably thinking that I must be insane, but if I may have a moment I would like to share some experiences. I do not post on here often but I have been a member for a few years. I am currently in the military and deployed to Iraq (for the 3rd time now). This time I noticed
something different, the people seemed more approachable. So here I am armed with my trusty sidearm, a scotch and soda, penny and dime, TT, invisible thread, and some sponge balls, I decide to set out to make some friends.

I first showed the vanishing hanky trick to a guy that I see almost everyday and he absolutely freaked out. He was genuinely scared and began backing away from me then he asked me something in Arabic which I totally did not understand. He asked again this time in broken English, "Do you have a ???" the last word was Arabic and I do not remember what it was. Then he said "I think in English it's called a jenny." I gave him a puzzled look as my brain kicked into overdrive to figure out what this guy was talking about. Then I realized it...he wanted to know if I had a Genie. It was at this moment that I realized this was going to be a good deployment.

I have gotten several reactions just like the one mentioned above and I must admit to them that no I don't have a genie that everything is done by slights, misdirection, lots of practice and a couple gimmicks. I deal with a great deal of locals everyday and now every morning when I go to pick up a bus load of about 20 local Iraqi citizens I am greeted by the shaking of hands, hugs and the affectionate term habibi...which means something like brother or family member. The others that know me more closely simply call me magic man and I still get the occasional question about a genie.

When I get the time I usually throw together a short 15 or 20 minute performance that everyone (including the coalition forces) crowd around to watch. Unfortunately there are no magic lamps or Genies here...just us penguins...trying to make changes in the world one friend at a time.

Learning the Pass - Part 1

I'm finally getting around to learning one of the oldest manuevers in the book; The Pass. I had not encountered many tricks that required a pass. It seems most tricks rely on double lifts, false cuts, false counts and false shuffles. To get a feel for the power of the pass, check out the following video of a brilliantly executed pass by Jonathan Kam.



The pass is a type of card control. Controls allow the mage to move about a specific card(s) within the deck without the spectator realizing the movement is occuring. Card controls date back at least as far as was published in Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft in 1584.

Royal Road to Card Magic (RRTCM) provides a short history of the pass, implying that for centuries the pass was the most important of all sleights. Early card workers were taught that all other sleights were not important until this very difficult move was mastered. However, RRTCM makes a strong case for not learning the pass until many other more basic sleights are perfected.

In my training as a cardician, I'm certainly going to agree that the pass has not been that important so far. However, I finally came across a really nice Ambitious Card Routine (ACR) sequence that relies on the pass. Instead of the typical ACR sequence of a face down card placed into the middle, with this sequence, a face-up card is placed into the deck. The pass is used to bring the card from the middle to the top. Time to learn the pass.

I found a forum post that catalogued over 100 methods of executing the pass. The grand daddy of them all is the Classic Pass. After many hours of practice, this method is very clumsy to me still. This is going to take months or even years to perfect...argg!

The ACR sequence that I want to learn is from Tommy Wonder's delightful ACR. He uses a rollover pass. I like the look of that pass so I set out to learn the turnover pass. Hmmm...a quick Google search and look around youtube.com and there is no consensus as to what a turnover pass looks like.

So basically I'm making up my own rollover pass, I'm taking a passing action that feels a little more natural to me than the classic pass and continuing with a rollover of the deck. This seems to be a good beginner pass because the motion of the turnover hides the motion of the pass. The rollover movement of the deck matches the patter of the sequence so it all fits nicely.

Unfortunately, this simplified pass looks like weeks of practice to pull off adequately. In the meantime, I'll keep working the classic pass and let you all know how it's going. Perhaps I will post a video of my beginner rollover pass at the early stages and you can tear it apart. Then we can compare it after a few months of practice.