Project 365 Backlog (187-188)

.:187/365: Cup O’ Change:.

One of David Blaine’s most popular routines involves him approaching a street beggar holding a mug of coffee, shaking the mug, and then producing a whole bunch of coins from it, much to the surprise and delight of the mendicant.

If there’s one feel-good routine magicians tend to perform, it’s money productions. Admittedly, this doesn’t bode well in the realm of counterfeiting and the obvious question of why a magician who can produce money can’t make himself rich is also an inevitably uncomfortable byproduct of such routines, but when used sparingly, these performances certainly amuse and delight more than most other performances, despite the lack of gigantic props or gargantuan preparations.

There really are few routines one can perform that grabs a person’s attention more than conjuring money from thin air, eh?

.:188/365: Prohibition:.

Without a doubt, Charlie Justice’s version of the coin/cap in bottle routine is flat out the best one ever. Prohibition is visual and without a doubt powerful, and can be done with a borrowed bottle and half of the time, even a borrowed coin, assuming the coin can fit into the bottle (Like, say, a mineral water bottle.).

Prohibition utilizes a very popular but not necessarily commonplace magician’s item that has so many infinite uses that if naming it didn’t cause problems in terms of exposure, I’d heartily write a full article about just to extol its virtues and its importance for the arsenal of a magician, especially those of the mentalist persuasion.

The routine one-ups the other coin-through bottle routines I talked about yesterday simply because Prohibition is done at a fast pace and any setup required can be done practically on the spot, and cleanup is extremely simple, for that matter. You borrow a bottle, you demonstrated to them how to put a cap into the bottle, you show them the cap, you have them hold the top of the bottle so that there’s no way you can slip the cap back in the hole, and then you visually tap through the glass of the bottle and visually push the cap into the bottle from the bottom. The fact that the magic practically happened in the hands of your spectator would not be lost on them, and really impress them suitably.

If you still don’t have the item that makes all this possible, you really ought to get it. There’s very little reason for a street magician not to have it if they ever intend to have a wide range of routines that involves very simple yet deceptive touches here and there.