Illusion for the Week/Month or Whatever - Cups and Balls

This is not the Dai Vernon cups and balls illusion, which is what you'll get if you Google Cups and Balls.  It is the illusion I mentioned in Beyond Disbelief, and the version my son learned first (so for me, somehow, it is more "authentic" than the more popular version.)  The Dai Vernon version is harder for young magicians, because it requires you to repeat very smooth palming and placing of the balls, but if you watch it often enough you can probably see what is going on.

Set-up:  table or other flat surface, 3 cups (any size large enough to hold 3 balls), 4 balls (sponge or yarn, rubber will bounce and not work).  Stack the cups up (A-B-C), placing one ball in cup B so it won't show.  Place the 3 remaining balls in a row parallel to your body (left - center - right) in front of where you will place the cups.

Start of the Effect: Show the stack of cups, inside and out (nothing here).  Put cup A on your left, B (the one with the ball) in the middle, and C on your right.  Be careful that you move smoothly but quick enough that the ball does not drop out of the B cup (this is why bigger cups make the trick easier).  Now place the first ball on the top of the B cup.  Stack A and C on top of B, and say whatever patter you like about moving the ball through the cup.  Tap the stack, then pull it off as a unit, revealing the ball on the table.

Middle Part of the Effect:  Do not move the ball on the table.  Instead, take the cup stack and reset the three cups from left to right just like you did before.  That means the first cup (B) will go on your left, the second cup (A, with the second ball) will go in the middle, and the third cup (C) will go on your right.  Again, move smoothly to get the ball to drop without being seen.  Put a ball on the A cup in the middle, stack C then B on top, patter, tap, reveal 2 balls under A.

Final Part of the Effect:  Reset the cups again - A on the left, C (with the ball in it) in the middle, B on the right.  Repeat ball, stack, patter, tap, reveal 3 balls under C.

Not a particularly hard idea, but a solid trick for people just starting.  The key is being smooth with the cups, and that takes practice.  There are a ton of advanced variants on it, the most popular of which is the Dai Vernon version.  In that version, the balls are all placed on top of the cups at the start of the trick, and then through a series of drops and palms placed first under the three cups and then all three in the middle.  If you can do it smoothly this can look amazing - Penn & Teller have a great version.  Still, for beginners I think this version is superior.

Why I posted a hamster story

In my book, Beyond Disbelief, there is a section about hamsters.  I'm not going to go into it because it is would be a major spoiler, but I read the section to my daughter because she has hamsters and loves them.  This led, unsurprisingly, to a request/demand that I write something about her hamsters, Kiki and Marina.

While I find them hilarious just as they are, page after page of "Then the hamster ran on the wheel.  Then it fell off.  Then it ran again.  Then it fell off.  Then it ate some food . . . ." wasn't much of a plot.  So borrowing from any number of Disney influences from G-force to Phineas and Ferb, I made them secret agents on a mission.

I hope anyone who reads it likes it.  I just finished the draft and may or may not need a major re-write (my daughter can be a very discriminating audience).  But I thought I'd share it with the world.  If you like the style and writing, consider checking out my book on Amazon.

The Hamsters that Save the Day

Kiki and Marina were about the cutest rodents ever.  They were a pair of Robo dwarf hamsters, one of the smallest kinds in the world.  They were mainly white, but each had a broken pattern of darker fur on their back.  Marina’s was tan, while Kiki’s was darker but not quite black.  They both were incredibly soft and fun to pet, when they could be petted.  They had tiny pink noses that twitched ever so adorably, and fine little whiskers, and little black eyes that seemed to see all around them at once.  

Working on a side project

My daughter loves her hamsters.  She finds their antics hilarious (and really, so do I).  I spend a lot of time amusing her imitating them for her and making up stories about them.  So right now I'm working on a story in which the hamsters are the stars.

In a nod to a lot of recent media, the hamsters live a double life - they are secret agents, on a mission to a neighbor's house.  I'm trying to keep it simple and funny, but the message underneath it all is that heroes come in many sizes.  I should have a draft in a few days and I will probably post some or all of it here.