I like "The Magnetic Girl" which uses the laws of leverage in your favour, so that it is impossible to lift you off the ground.

Pendulums and business cards as billets are quite natural and readily involve the participant.

I second penomena

The Elephant trick. Impromptu and often accidental. Also, completely peurile and very funny. Indisputably a natural phenomenon.

What about when you and three of your friends lift your seated friend from thier chair only using two fingers.

I downloaded the magic messenger thing off of Steve Fearson's website and tried it out before reading the directions. The "wizard" in the computer asked me to take one random (it really was random) card from a deck and think about it. He named it right away! Very freaky. Little did I know that I accidentally pushed a button that happened to let it know what my card was. I still don't quite get it. but that seemed very real...too real

Decoy, Decoy, Decoy!

You gave away a priceless effect that I have been doing for years. (Groan) Talk about impromtu magic!! What could be more magical than beer caps? I can well believe that you made your reputation with this effect. Easy to carry, easy to do, always available and totally believable as an ungimmicked prop. What more could you ask for.

Prior to hitting upon the idea of using beer caps, I used rolled up balls of tin-foil and, sometimes, 1" superballs (are somewhat tacky and this helps in palming, wetting them ocassionally seems to help "restore" the tackiness).

I always carry a short piece of 3/8" nylon braided rope (approx. 15") with me. Sometimes, I will also carry a 24"-36" piece of rope also. You can do many effects (rope thru thumb/finger, ring off rope, (many variations) tie a know w/out letting go of the ends, cut and restored rope/Professor's Nightmare, etc.). Use a borrowed coffee cup, a borrowed finger ring.

I just bought John Pierce's excellent ring off rubberband effect called "The Joining". I'm going to work up a number of rubberband effects and start carrying a few rubberbands also. (I've got to be careful not to do similar rope and rubberband effects, however.)

Best regards,

Turk

YUP! rubberbands are very very good!

I'm sure this has been written up somewhere
but I've been doing this bar betcha for the past 20 yrs and I always win.

Take a shot glass and bet whoever, that you can put your straight flat palm on top of glass pick it straight up without using your fingers and shake your hand violently without the glass falling down.

Pour a little 151 rum in glass, light on fire and put fire out with palm. The vacumn from the extinguishing flame will suck the flesh from your palm and attach shot glass. You can then SHAKE.

GIVE IT A TRY.

Mr Secret I have to agree with you on the rubber trick. It's one of the first tricks I learned 30 yrs ago and I still use it daily. I've been buying the rubber buy the roll for years. ALWAYS a jaw dropper with a "Do that again".