My friend John Kennedy has done it again.
The last time I saw John he performed card through wendow for Chris Kenner and myself in the middle of a casino in vegas. We went to check to see if the corner matched. John snatched it from my hand and pushed IT TOO through the window next to the card. I was floored.
The time before that he was performing an effect with a sugar packet and a live cooked egg for a drunk hottie covered in blood at Denny’s at around 2am somewhere in Orange County, CA. This isn’t John’s usual place to hang. Chris Korn and I made him come with us.
John Kennedy is a genius. He has created another effect that looks like real magic. That man does not stop. I highly recommend you watch this.
Click HERE for more info about MOJOE!!!
OK, the Mac King version is in his “Howdy!I’m Mac King!” lecture notes; he credits the routine from the Harris book mentioned above, which it turns out originated with Gary Darwin (I’d forgotten that), and to a later version that Lance Burton had showed him after King had fooled Burton with Darwin’s original trick. King calls his version “King Burton’s Drink,” though it seems to be King’s routine. He provides two versions, including the steal-from-a-spectator’s-hand version, together with the psychology that makes that fly, which I’d forgotten about. I think I’ll try that sometime now.
Stone’s version with the appearing shoe follow-up is in “The Warpsmith Returns,” where he credits King’s version for having inspired his.
Anyway, in any form, this trick can stun people, with or without King’s daring steal from a spectator’s hand or the surprise shoe chaser.
Mojoe is a brilliant trick and obviously, based on the video, fools people totally. I’d never heard about it anywhere else, so I’m seriously very glad that Kranzo Magic chose to feature it.
A liquid trick that I’ve used a lot in all kinds of contexts is from one of the Paul Harris books (The Close-up Entertainer, I think) and is reprinted in the third volume of The Art of Astonishment series; it’s called “King Solomon’s Drink” and is about as impromptu as a drink-production can be, since it doesn’t even require a rubber cover (or any kind of cover) for the glass, just a napkin, handkerchief, silk, etc., the drink in a glass or bottle, and any coin.
Tom Stone has a variation of it where he follows up the drink production with the production of one of his shoes, which I think would kill but I’ve never tried it. And Mac King has a variation where, as I remember, he steals the glass he produces from a spectator’s hand! I’ve never tried that, either, though I can see it being pretty amazing, if you can pull it off, and I’m sure he can. (I can’t recall sources on the Stone and King versions, but I’ll look them up and post them later today.)