Friday, May 9, 2014

Deflect by Skulkor

Skulkor has releases Deflect. I saw the trailer. My initial thought: "What the hell is that thing? Bullshit!" and I thought I was done with it.



Turns out the WPR gives that a high rating. My second thought: "Well it's WPR, both guys are magicians who have no concept of good magic!" and I thought I was done with it.

At the Green Monster "This looks awesome.", "This has me curious."

Are you guys retarded or what? This is shit. Seriously! Try to follow my train of thought! So you have a card box and a marker. Alright, so write something on the box? Really? How the hell do these objects relate to one another? Not at all!

The effect (something written changes) is good in itself, as the effect could lend to meaningful magic. But no, it is yet another card thing. This has no reason to be. Why not write the gibberish on a business card and then change that to the correct prediction? Oh yeah, because of the method. That doesn't fucking matter. So let me give you the inner monologue the magician has to go through:

"So you picked a card, let me write down the name of your card. Let's see, what could I possibly use as a surface to write on? Oh yeah, this box of cards is great. How about writing it on the narrow side, so it is only visible for just a few people? Yeah that's great. It's not like I got the option of writing on the bigger side of the box, or on some cards, or business cards, or not at all."

Can you see it now? Probably not, because you are retarded. You got Skulkor-Syndrome. Let me explain. When you see a trick and you are fooled, you instantly think it is great and good and the second coming of Dai Vernon. If it uses props you already use you come instantly and spurt your magic sauce all over the Internet, by posting stuff like "I ordered it and it shipped". The cause for Skulkor-Syndrome is kinda unknown. Research suggests, that not being a worker will cause it.

Let me get serious for a moment: I don't see this going into the repertoire of working magicians. They can do stronger stuff and more logical stuff without even breaking a sweat. Since whatever the gibberish turns into is forced anyway, you can actually prepare some business cards and have them stacked in your stock of business cards.

So here is a possible trick, just to get this post a bit more on the constructive side. Draw animals on the back of some of your business cards. Common animals that are likely to be named. Have them in a known order on the bottom of the stock. The bottom card is a "general animal".

Get out business cards. Show the top few and don't make a big deal of it. Turn the stock around so the backside is towards yourself. Ask a few to think of an animal. Pretend to read their minds and pretend to draw. Put the business card with the "general animal" on the table or a spectators hand with the drawing side down. Have the animal named, and instantly cull the correct one to the bottom of the stack you are holding. Ask them to turn over the prediction. Let the gag play out and then take back the card "I'm not a great artist, but I am right, I swear!" place the card on the bottom of the stack and you are basically ready for any double lift based change. And you have a business card to hand out.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Agree with you that I thought that this was just another magicians toy.

Interesting though that Kyle, on his unwrapped show, came across as a bit "meh" about the whole thing but, because he does things properly, he went out and performed it and was very surprised, as was I , by the positive reactions.

In the right circumstances this one seems to play very well.