Week Eight will certainly go down as eventful. We had a plumbing disaster at the house and have had to move out for while well industrial fans and dehumidifiers dry everything out and at this point we are not sure how long we will be out of the house or the true extent of the damage, somethings will dry and be fine others not. It was clean water that was spraying for hours through the broken line and it didn’t ruin any thing of irreplaceable sentimental value and better that it happened now than when we have a newborn in the house. Look for the positive right.

My plan for this post was to tell how things finally fell apart for Milton Franklin Andrews but my notes are in the house and it sounds like there is an airplane engine in the hallway so that story will have to wait until next week.

My copy of Erdnase Unmasked arrived this week. It is a wonderful little volume put out by Magicana with a number of essays reprinted from Magicol. I’ve read through most of it and is very interesting and has a lot of info on old newspaper articles that I want to hunt down and read.

I have added the Diagonal Palm Shift into my practice sessions. I am starting to get the hang of it but it has also led to my first Edrnase injury. I am working on it exactly as described, which means in the opposite hands than I naturally would, and have done something quite painful to my left index finger. If you have ever been hit straight on with a basketball and jammed your finger it is a similar feeling. I also watched Jason England’s instructions on the shift and at one point he states that Erdnase says to curl your finger under the deck but this is not necessary. It is this curling actions that has mucked up my finger so I wished that I had taken Jason’s advice and not bothered.

I have brought my Mexican Turnover back to a passable level, it is a move to I learned years ago but it has been a long time since I have used it, and realize that I don’t think I have ever preformed a straight monte routine that people could actually ‘play’. I have done a number of ‘demonstration’ stye routines in the past, one of my all time favourite packet tricks was a set of cards with shells and peas and if I remember right an eight-ball kicker at the end and I have always loved Harry Anderson’s Wise Guys Monte but it is exciting to be working on a ‘fair’ game.

I have been in touch with Todd Karr of the Miracle Factory about his research into midwestern con-man E S Andrews being Erdnase and while I wasn’t about to convince him to send me his research it provided enough info to get me started on the E. S. path.I don’t think this will be as shocking to research as Milton but I haven’t gotten very far.

The Conjuring Arts Research Centre produced a free pdf of their ‘bible’ edition which I have printed out so I can have something lay flat in front of me instead of snapping the spine of my Dover edition. Also got a copy of Ghosts of Colorado Springs and Pikes Peak by Stephanie Waters which includes a story about the ghost of Bessie Bouton.

Practice, practice, practice. I have done a lot of it over the last week. I can now sit down at a table and deal out cards in a right handed manner well enough that people wouldn’t give it any thought but I certainly have a ways to go before being able to preform holding the deck this way. It has made me think about what it is we aim for when learning a new slight.

Any style of preforming art requires great amounts of practice if you want to be seen as great. It is often considered a compliment to say ‘they danced so beautifully that it seemed effortless’. Magic takes that an extra step, the point is not that the movement looks effortless but that it doesn’t ‘look’ at all. Being able to deal hands of cards should look smooth and effortless and I am getting close to achieving that right handed but doing any of the moves found in EATCT shouldn’t look effortless they should look exactly like not doing them at all.

The shuffles at the beginning of the book are not to far from being unseen. I haven’t filmed any of my practicing sessions yet because I don’t believe anyone would really want to watch ‘almost undetectable’ false shuffle. I tend to have a tick at the same spot each time and so am trying to spend time practicing while watching something else. It is a simple enough move that I don’t need to be worrying about dropping cards and if I am not watching I am building that muscle memory and not stalling due to the my brain thinking ‘okay here comes the move, pretend it isn’t happening’.

It is strange though, devoting all this time so that one day I can ‘Watch this’ and have the spectator see nothing at all.

Then there is the section on shifts that I am not sure how much time to devote. It is a strange category of moves. They are knacky, angle sensitive moves that have no place in the cheating end of things and many argue they don’t have a necessary place in the magic side of things either. It is a move that tends to be misunderstood by beginners – the advice that a larger action hides a smaller movement is often taken to extremes by beginners and I’ve seen videos on youtube where the performer comes dangerously close to punching themselves in the face. When done well it is an unnoticed move but rarely is it mastered to the point of really being invisible.

My introduction to downloadable magic instructions was actually a video that focused on a couple versions of the move and I believe there was a point in time where I could do a passable job but it always seemed like there were easier ways to control the cards. All that said I am still a ways off from the sections of Shifts so maybe by the time I get there I’ll be excited about working on them.