Comments On Comments 26: Trojan Deck, Eclipse, Q and A

Hello, welcome to Real Magic Review. My name is Steve Faulkner, which is not very relevant really, I don't think. But this is my review show. I think I just scripted, I've rehearsed that script for a very long time and I'm glad it came off and I hope you enjoyed it. I've, I'm just reading the things there, it's lovely. They're all coming up in front of me. Welcome to the live stream where I waffle on, as you've probably done a bit too much already. Dave just said something, I'll do that in a minute. So we're gonna talk about lots of nice things, Trojan deck and Eclipse in a minute, because there have been lots of things about them. On the forums, everybody's saying things, aren't they? Enjoying saying things about that. And people are having little arguments, that's what they're doing, which is always fun. So we're gonna do that and before that, everybody watching this is gonna like it, even if you're watching it afterwards, hit the like button and subscribe if you haven't done that and tell people to subscribe. Actually, maybe make people subscribe, force them to subscribe to it. And don't leave them alone until they do, because I think it's very important. Because maybe I will hit 10,000 subs, that'd be good. And then I get even more stuff to review and that'd be fantastic. Not doing bad for a niche channel, are we? What was it, 6,000 and something? So let's have a little hello. Hey Chris, I'm really good, thanks. I've gotta say this, because I still haven't reviewed it. He sent me a really nice coin bend, a visual coin bend, that looks great. I haven't set it up yet, but I've watched all the stuff and it looks really, really good. So check out Molly Mayhem. If you wanna put the link on there, mate, you can, I don't mind. Do that if you want, from where you're selling them. Hey Steve, your subs demand you drop the 10K to review those Tom Stone boxes. I don't know what the Tom Stone boxes are. Do you know, it's like I'm one of those people that knows loads about some things and absolutely nothing about most things. So I want explanations and things here, and links. Send me, put a link on here. Dave Annick, I saw him at the gym this morning. We did a crossover. We had a little chat, didn't we, Dave? We've been totally manly with our weights at the gym. I do, we just don't go at the same time. But I did a lovely little workout this morning and then left after about 40 minutes. Yeah, that's a good point, isn't it? I haven't even got up at home at the moment. I've been a bit lazy. I kind of put it off. It's a bit of a faff. My daughter said she'd help me with it this weekend. What a boring thing for me to say. Yeah, well, I suppose, I think you'll be absolutely fascinated, everybody, to hear that my daughter said that she's gonna, she's gonna help me with the Christmas decorations. My life, it's rock followed by roll. It really is. Yeah, it's kicking off in Faulkner Towers this weekend. We've put in up basically as little as I can to get away with it. Then I can get back to watching the Beatles documentary on Disney, which is good, isn't it? And Staff Let's Flats, that's my other new favorite thing. So, Meximex, how you doing? Live or pre-recorded is always waffles, absolutely. Good, Lewis. Good, man. Thanks very much. It's nice when you say hello to each other as well. Thanks for you. Molly Mame, I don't want it to become the, what's that book called that I took two years to review that I got given? Oh, God, I'm now insulting it by, oh, what is it? It's the one, the free will one. Oh, yeah, Totally Free Will, Mark Jandow. God, it took so long to get away with that. I could sleep better after I did that. How's your day going? It's really good. It's, I've been, I've ran, I was just about to tell you something. I was just about to tell you something even more boring than my daughter helping me put up Christmas decorations. God, dear me. You can tell I haven't seen anyone today. Oh, complain in three years. Right, yeah. I want a written complaint every day if it takes three years. Stream quality is so high because I've got a decent camera. I invested in that when I got my little grant from the government with COVID. So I bought that and then, oh no, I got it before that. Anyway, gets us bored of the other stuff. I was going to say it's good for insomnia, this. The nearly, the wrong thing nearly came out. I nearly said it's a good aphrodisiac. That's a different thing, isn't it? This, that is what this isn't, ladies and gentlemen, as is nothing magic related. Stream quality is so high, I use E-cam now, which makes it high quality and I've got a nice camera, really. So it's going through a thing, a Sony a7R III, which is a very nice camera, but not really required for such things, but I use it for other things, photography and filming. The Card Magic Course. Check out cardmagiccourse.com. Forgot about that. We've got Danny Goldsmith joining us for a live session. We had Phonique last time and it's just wonderful that he's here because I'm a bit of a Danny Goldsmith fan boy and he's coming in 55 minutes, going to be having a session there, free for Gold members. And I'm not talking about the movie or the other thing. Do I have a V-deck by, no, I don't, Benny Chickering. Oh, no, I've got the coin one, the CV, whatever it's called, by Benny Chickering, but not the V-deck. When will you review my device, Bodger? Do you know what? I don't get the, I want to review it all and most people don't send me stuff. Murphy's sent me stuff, Vanishing Inc. sent me stuff and independent people, like Molly Mayhem here, sent me stuff, but I don't get loads. I don't get stuff from Penguin, I don't get, maybe if we hit the 10, 10,000 subscribers, 10,000 subscribers, then people will take me seriously. You know what you do? Every social media post from every minute, I want you to post about my review show to all the magicians in the world. Come on, let's do it. Look forward to seeing Danny later, Steve Turnock, absolutely, as he should be. Nice to see you pop up. Right, what should we do now? Should I go on to, I better do the comments on comments because that's the whole gist of the thing, isn't it? If you've got any questions, put them up here and I'll go to them. Hey, Gary, how you doing? I'll get to them in a minute. Right, should we do the Trojan deck first? Yeah, let's do that. Now, well, I'll do this. There's quite a few on here. There's going to be some dead time where I decide what ones I'm going to, this one is Penguin Lecture, interestingly. Yeah, so you can get the Penguin Lecture and there's a version of it on there, apparently. Superb review, thank you very much, Brian Smith. And that's the magic of Devereux, that other one. Performing this trick is clearly a matter of confidence rather than skill. Yeah, I think it is. And what it's, the skill is in the practice and being able to do it without thinking about it. I think with the Trojan deck, it's like one of those tricks where, if you hesitate, you know, all that stuff. But I think that it is, yeah, you need to be able to handle a deck of cards. The boldness of the method is why I didn't buy it, but it's why I love it. Yeah, absolutely. It took me a couple of hours to see it, but I think I would be afraid to do it. I probably need bigger trousers. Yeah, we talked about the, oh, CVF deck. Yes, I have reviewed it. So it's on, it's, if you search it on the channel, you'll see the review of it. Yeah, so the big boy trousers, no, what do you call them? Just big trousers, didn't I, or something? I don't know. Put on your big trousers, not big boy trousers. That's gender specific, which isn't good in the current climate. So yeah, it is a bold thing. It's like the Cups and Balls final load. Actually, you know, it's getting that melon under the hat. The first couple of times you do it, you go, that's ridiculous. And then you realise you get away with it. Once you know you get away with it, I think confidence will be fine. And we know that you can get away with it because Josh did it in his show. Speaking of which, there's a lot of discussion about the trailer and about the decision to show the whole story presentation about his parents on the trailer. It's a little bit like you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't, aren't you? Because people would have complained if there wasn't enough on it. And now a lot of people are complaining about the trailer being boring because it's too long. I'd still rather that, you know, if it's too long and you find the presentation boring, because it is out of context, or you don't like the style, that's completely fine. But at least you're seeing a real performance in a real situation. And yeah, they might have set up the duet. I don't know. I think it was in his show. But regardless of that, and there is footage of him performing it. So it gives you that thing of he does do it and we know he does do it. And I think that's the important thing for me. And you can see everything about it. Now, if he'd have cut a bit out of it or shortened it, people would have been complaining. So, you know, for me, it's not a fast stretch to kind of go, all right, I don't like the presentation, but I can see what the trick is. And I don't think, I say you need a script for that trick because you need to know what you're gonna say when you do certain things, a bit like the cups and balls, but you don't need a story. I think you can do that trick and just go through it and just do the matching trick. I don't think every trick has to have a story. And I think that scripting is more about what you say when you do the misdirection bit. So you know what you're saying at that point. It's really important. So, yeah. And someone said on the forum, yeah, I wonder when people are gonna start doing this, telling the story about Josh's parents. I really hope people don't. But, you know, I wouldn't be surprised. I've bought it and watched instructions. Your review's very fair. It's an amazing effect and can't wait for it to arrive. Lovely. That's from Peter. That's pretty interesting to watch. Yeah, there's a different version of, without the story, I think, on Masters of Illusion, which is again on YouTube, I think. Surprised you didn't do this by Robert Ball. Check out Robert's channel, by the way, of course. Where he performs card tricks on that channel, which is great. I'm surprised he did not do this on Penn & Teller. May have fooled him. I don't think it would have fooled him. Because it's just one of those methods that their mind's gonna go that way, I suppose. But he might have. Mexi Mex. Mexi's watching now. I didn't like... This is an interesting one. I didn't like Balance, as it wasn't magic. It was a stunt. This is magic. Brave move calling it Trojan, though. Both tips the method and opens up... Sorry. Geocondom jokes. Great review. It saves me doing one on the People's... I always get it wrong, Mexi. I'm so sorry. People's Palace of Prestidigitation. Is that right? Which... Have a look at that. I've got a channel on there. And that's the Discord channel. And you'll find a link in the description of this. Yes, right. I disagree, respectfully. Balance is a stunt. Well, it's an impossible balance, isn't it? You're balancing things impossibly. It isn't a stunt because you're not... Those things cannot balance in that way. So I don't think... I think it has to be a trick because if you're balancing something that can't possibly balance that way, like something going up and something going across like that, it's unexplainable. Therefore, I think it's a magic trick. It's very contextual. I think you can do it in certain situations and you can do it. But it's not... People are going to know there's a way of doing it, aren't they? But I do think it is quite magical if you perform it well. And it's not an easy thing to do. What was the reply, by the way? Oh, you have done a review. Cool. More and more tricks need special decks. More money for the creator and dealer. However, I'm sure the audience, someone know or at least believe they're looking at gaff wonders. Then there is no magic. So learn good card magic with a regular deck. Give the deck away as a souvenir. Again, I very, very respectfully disagree with that. I don't think... When I talk to people about reviewing magic tricks, most people don't even know that there is this whole industry of selling magic tricks. I say, oh, I've got a YouTube channel review magic trick. And they kind of go, what? It doesn't compute. What do you mean review them? They think they're just tricks that magicians do. Honestly, it's a really... Most people don't know about gaff decks. Of a certain age group, I think probably magic was a bit of a craze. They look on illusionist and stuff like that and they know. But I think that actually most people don't. And they don't even go there. They think there's a way of doing it. They know about sleight of hand a little bit. But a lot of people don't know about gaff decks. Or they know that there's a long and short thing. But not to the level that we know. Which is really interesting. Because it is marketed to everybody, isn't it? I mean, you show that you're interested in magic. You even get the Facebook things all over your feed. But it's really interesting that people know about marked cards and things like that. So if you give someone, say, take your card and you name it, they'll start looking at the back of it. But I think that gaffs of this level are a little bit more hidden than we think. I've sat in on live chats. I've seen it performed twice in 30 minutes. It kills both times. From Tom. Best part of the trick is the ability to add the story of how your parents met. Strong story. Yeah, totally. My story is nearly identical to Miss Derek. Looking forward to it. Yeah, I mean, you can put your own story in it. Again, I would probably, if I was doing it in a show, in a one-man show that was open to the public, I'd just stay way away from it. But again, in your own way, if you think of a story that's similar. But, you know, that's a choice. But for me, because he's done that, you know, and it is on YouTube and stuff, I'd probably, if I was doing it in a public show, I'd probably just do the trick and not say much at all. Just say the word when I do the dodgy move. What could go wrong? A trailer and a review do not lend themselves to the inquiry. This is why everybody should sign up for Card Magic Course. Thanks. I didn't know he was going to say I read this. For a deeper dive, a place where the nuts meets the bolts. Thanks, Tom. Yes, it is. Thanks. Yeah, watched it again and saw the bold move. That's what I like about the trailer. It does kind of, you know, show you the move. Balance is just garbage by card capers. Even when Josh does it, the appearance of things sticking together. It's not a patch on the original variant, some of which can be done in the hands. Yeah, that's again a completely relevant thing to say. I disagree. I think it's quite cool. But I probably won't do it again. Well, I know I won't because it just doesn't fit me and all that. So comments about the pattern are usual for magicians. This is not who the trick is for. Yes, I can tell people really like it. Personal stories. Absolutely. Some people have compared it to other tricks. Order and Chaos by Will Houston. I don't know that. But I do know lots of people spoke about, what's it called? 26 by Caleb Wiles, which I'm really going to check out. Loads of people talking about this on the cafe and on the magician's forum. And I think that's something I really want to look at. Because there was a big comparison there and it doesn't use gaffes apparently. I love Caleb Wiles' stuff. You really do check his stuff out. He's great. Yeah, some people found the Josh's story a little bit cringeworthy. A lot of people said, not just on here but on the forums, that they don't like it. It's just a personal thing, isn't it? Again, it's not really my thing. But I can see why it could really work. Shame it's not for Walkaround. Now, I said it wasn't for Walkaround. Listen, you could do it in Walkaround. You could do it run out. I know people don't do this. But I'm constantly... I love people that you've got to reset stuff. I'm constantly leaving the room to reset stuff at a gig. Nobody notices. They're doing their own thing. They're having a drink and having a chat. They're not really noticing the magician walking out and walking in again. I could just be going to the loo or something. So I think you could. You could do it if you really wanted to work it in and you had a residency or something. I would do it. I did that with Venom Cube. It's not really for Walkaround. But I wanted to work it in. So I had a gig once and I just had the hassle of resetting it. But I did it loads because I really wanted to do it. So I found a way of kind of working it. Not ideal. Right. Let's just go back to this. I like your channel mix even though the accent didn't match your name. He did a review that the... Just say PPP. Cool. People's Palace of Prestidigitation. Oh, I need to practice. Oh, Trojan Deck is also taught for free on Joshua J's Real Magic lecture. If you're a member there. There you go. Lovely. Even if the angle was perfect for the camera, I couldn't stop staring at the packet on top of it. Even if I had a toddler pants on, I couldn't even try it. I'd put Josh's parents, Adam Wilber's pappy in the same trick. Okay. And Adam Wilber's pappy. Cool. How did you get the magic answer? Gary Ogden says, Hi Steve. Any more tips on struggling with nerves performing in the office? We'll do... By the way, we'll do Eclipse in a minute. For people, please. Agree on your comments on balance. Where's my parcel? Yeah, we get it. Oh, has it not come? Um, I'll have a look at the tracking in a minute. Um, right. So, um, struggling with nerves. I get this a lot. My, well, I struggle with nerves, right? I talk about it. If I'm doing a trick, especially to people I know, I get nervous about it. And it takes me a while to warm into it. If you think about how often you perform, you know, what most people don't perform every day, you know, and I think to practice getting good at something, you've got to practice every day. So if you're practicing getting good at performing without getting nervous, I think you've got to perform an awful lot. So people like most of us, like me at the moment, I don't do loads of gigs at the moment. I'm working on the card course and stuff in the background. So I think that, you know, now when I do a gig, I'm a bit like, oh, this is weird because I'm not doing them every day. I haven't got a run of gigs up to Christmas. It's not where I am at the moment. So if you don't, then it is going to take a while. So I would say, you know, in some way, if you try and perform as much as possible, every day is what you have to do to practice getting good at something. So, which is why I became a street performer in the long run, answering your question, how I got into magic. I got into it a bit in Australia when I was, before I was a performer, because I was a juggler and I ran a juggler in a magic shop and then gave up magic, got back into juggling, did a Covent Garden street performing. And then about five years into working at Covent Garden, I met a magician, Peter Wardell, who's been on the card course a couple of months ago. And he became a kind of mentor of mine. And I got really into magic and I added the cups and balls to my show and really got obsessed with it and went through the whole of card college, did all that stuff, got me L and L DVDs and I was off. But going back, the reason why I'm telling you that is because we were talking about practicing and, you know, I got to do my show every day in Covent Garden. So, and it still took a long time to get confident where I wasn't. Actually, I was always a bit nervous. I think it's natural to be a bit nervous. So I think sort of rather than trying to avoid the nerve, just sort of go into them, do a mindful thing, go, OK, I'm nervous, accept it, work with it, don't try and fight it. And just accept that that's going to happen until you've done a trick load. So if you're doing a trick, you know, do that thing of every time you see your mates, just try and practice, say, can I practice this thing and just get used to that dynamic of doing it for someone because it's totally different to doing it in the practice room. And just practice it until you feel physically sick of practicing it. And it's like when I was working on my show, I was so sick of it. I was just, it was more than boring. It was purgatory. But it all sort of, it comes to fruition. And the other thing I'll say about practice generally is that a lot of the time, you don't know how well you know something until you perform it. In practice, sometimes my dialogue is all over the place and I don't know until I get on stage. And I go, actually, I really know this. It kind of, sometimes you don't feel that. So I hope that's answered the question. Just keep trying, keep practicing, take your time, slow down and just accept that. And just don't, the other thing is you can move into it and accept that you're nervous. But at the same time, avoid that thing of thinking about what will happen if I go on. It's like juggling. The minute you're juggling, you think I've got to catch every one. You're done. You know, it's like when you do a top shot or something like that. The minute you go, I've got to catch it. Because if I don't, if that internal voice is saying, if I don't catch it, I'm going to look really sick. You know that, you've got to train your mind not to go there at all. And it's a difficult thing. And the way I do it is by really performing. I go on and try and be funny. I'm trying to do stuff. And that's what I'm concentrating on. So the magic kind of happens because I've trained it in. So I hope that was helpful. Wives are really good to practice and perform and practice. And they're really into it and love being asked to choose a fairy godmother today. Well, you know, I know you're being ironic, but my daughter's really good to practice on, which I talk about a lot because she sees everything. Because she knows when I do something, she'll just be brutal. And in a way, wives can be good to practice on when you're talking about things like angles. Not when, but awful, because at the same time, they will pick up on little nuances in your behavior that people that didn't know you so well wouldn't. So if you say something differently than you usually say it, someone you know really well will pick up on it, whereas somebody you don't won't. So it's bad for that, but actually good if you're just saying, can you see that? That's quite a nice, because they will be brutally honest with you. As friends, you know, friends will as well. Right, let's do Eclipse by 1914. These are the ESP cards, which I could read from the end of the room, which are just, I think they're great. It's the easiest read I've ever got. Magic Magic Man. This is something that I think would benefit from them explaining how the marketing system works on their website. I really believe it would help with sales. We all know how they're marked. We can't make them ourselves. So if we like them, we'd buy them. Knowing how clear and clever the markings are is the only unknown. Well, yeah, and I think they are usually pretty clear with their stuff. I suppose if you create something like that, you're going to be a little bit, just playing devil's advocate, you know, you're going to be a little bit protective of it. And for me, see part of me buying a trick is I kind of like not knowing. I like receiving tricks and I don't know the details and finding them out. Because let's face it, half the tricks I buy, even before getting review copies, half the tricks I bought, I never did. I just like getting them and having them. The same with books. And a lot, it's like I don't, if I get a PDF, if I know there's a PDF of a book, or like, you know, when you buy a book from Vanishing Inc, sometimes they'll send you a sample PDF. I don't look at it because I want to get it through and I want that feeling of opening it up and kind of discovering. And I think that's a big part of it for me. As is every time I get a parcel from Amazon, even if it's something boring like an electric toothbrush, I like opening it, it's exciting. Which is exactly what I got about two days ago. But I think, yeah, I get what you mean. And I think it's a valid point. I don't think we're doing much harm. But for me, for me personally, I like that thing of not knowing and finding out when I get the thing. Are those easy? A lot of people mentioned 10-year-olds ESP cards. I haven't looked at them, Rob. But if anybody on here knows it, either answer Rob's question in the Eclipse video. I haven't read the 10-year-olds ones. But if you've got the 10-year-olds ones, answer that question. If you can read them from a distance, great. I mean, if you can, then if you're happy with them, you know what I mean? I mean, I love these. I love the plain box, all that stuff. But if you've got ones you're happy with. Can you comment on what the cards are made of and their durability? They're often performed in bars, restaurants, and wonderful wet spots. Yeah, so yeah, they're plastic. So I did mention at the beginning, but like I said, I know you might have missed that bit. But they're plastic. So they're really, they're going to last you forever. Maxi said he was just about to do a review when I've done it. Lots of lovely people saying it was a nice review. Thank you very much. Nice review. Easier to read. I take a shower. Yeah, so easier to read in the DMCs. Yes, they can get wet. You can take them in the shower. Easier to read in the DMCs. DMCs are different. I think because there's more information on a DMC. You're only at one of five things here, aren't you? The symbols. So it's kind of easier in that way. But the DMCs are amazing because you've got one of 52. And you're getting them really quickly. You couldn't use this system if there was 52 of them. So they've kind of capitalized on that. As is, you know, me and Dave were talking about the Michael Murray ESP cars. And they're great as well. I think they're not quite as good from a distance. And they're not good if you're kind of blurred. But they did, the first version of them actually were really tough. But they're great as well because there's just nothing to see. Well, these have a pattern on the back. So you could arguably say, you know, there could be something in there if you were being super critical. But I think that actually for most people, they won't see these. But DMCs, again, great. Because you've seen one of 52 things. Or the letters as well, which are the alphas, which are great. So there you go. Blimey. The old wife disappeared. I've never had that with a magician, Chris. Are they easier than the DMCs to read? Yeah, you've got it. Can the Eclipse cards be used for slight routines? Or are they too rigid? Can they be, oh, I haven't got them on me. Can they be used for, have I? No, but I have got a magic coloring book. I've got that in my bag to review. I haven't got them. Yeah, no, I was going to try slight with them. I would say, no, you won't. I mean, you could do a few. But I wouldn't want to do loads of slights with them. But yeah, you could do, I think you could. I mean, definitely Steve Della's plastic cards. I could do loads of stuff with them. I'm not going to, I'm refusing to read the white things. Could you name a couple of mentalists who use YouTube? Well, I don't know. Well, Peter Antonio, because he's been on America's Got Talent. Peter's great. I really like his stuff. And a lovely person as well. Who else has got stuff on? Mark Spellman, I suppose. Just anybody who's been on the talent has got the talent. What do they call it that for? Britain's Got Talent or America's Got Talent. Who else? Somebody else come in, a mentalist who uses YouTube. Well, I don't know. There's got to be loads in there. I'm just, I'm on the spot, which is, you know. Oh, Spidey. There you go. Great. Spidey. I'm going to review his thing. I've got a review ready to go up. Very interesting from Spidey. There you go. Oz Spellman. There you go. See, that's why it's good to have a little community in it. You can answer each other when I haven't got a clue. So I think that's it. 26 minutes. That's long, isn't it? Right. So this is something very quick. I shall tie the live stream up. Thanks very much for coming. Like I said, do check out the live streams in the future. Every Thursday at 5. Make sure you hit the little bell icon for your notifications. If you're subscribed, which you should be, then you will know when I can't go live up to Christmas. There'll be a couple of Thursdays when I might get a gig and I can't go live. So keep an eye on that. Do check out Card Magic Course. If you're a member of that, whatever membership you have, you'll be able to watch the live stream. Danny Goldsmith is going to be there in half an hour to hang out with us. Phonique last time and got some great guests for the new year. You won't be able to watch them live if you're a silver member. But if you're a gold member, you'll be able to watch them live, but they get uploaded anyway. And it might all change soon because things are occurring. Developments are happening and we're all very, very excited. Thank you so much. It means an awful lot that you've taken the time to watch this live stream. Your job now, your homework is to share it with everybody you know, even your mum, and check out cardmagiccourse.com. Don't go on about it, Steve. Like and subscribe. Do all that stuff. Go on. You make me feel special. Thanks very much for your lovely comments. Take care. Cheers.