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Doctor Zolar Regular user El Paso TX 151 Posts |
I have a Hobson egg bag and Hobson Eggs. (as well as a couple others. . . )
I've been reading many posts for egg bags and have multiple deliberations . . . . Any advantages of using a golf ball instead of an egg ? Im debating in my mind . . . . Egg -vs- Golf Ball. Big fight, between the WWF Egg and the Irish Golf Ball. This Sunday . .. echo::: echo::: Sunday, Sunday. I assume that everyone watching thinks its a fake egg. OK. That's fine. So it's actually . ."Fake Egg -vs- Irish Golf Ball". How did many of you get to the (mental) place of "Golf Ball" over Fake Egg ? Or Fake Egg . . over . . . Golf Ball ? 2nd thing: I know many of you suggest STOPPING / trick end/ with the spectator producing the final egg. OK. What happens mentally to the audience if you use the BAG later for another effect ? More changes/ productions, (other than eggs) etc. or Using the egg bag first for other effects: changes, productions, etc. And would bare hand PRODUCTIONs / and vanishes of multiple eggs, before or after, (without an egg bag) be detrimental to the regular egg bag routine ? |
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carbone1853 Loyal user RI USA 239 Posts |
Some people like to beat up the bag to prove it doesn't have an egg in it. The Hobson routine points out that the egg is fake and doesn't make use of the beating up proof, so for his routine I think you could use a golf ball. I used to use a large die in my egg bag rt, it tied in with some other stuff.
I think you could use the bag for other effects. You probably would not want to make use of the egg bag principle for multiple effects. |
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Bill Hegbli Eternal Order Fort Wayne, Indiana 22797 Posts |
One of the factors of a performer is maintain the interest of the audience. Using different props or methods helps at attaining that goal. If you use the same bag multiple times in one show or act, the audience will get tired of seeing the same prop, even though the effect may be different.
You don't want to look like a guy who bought a prop, and has to get the most use out of it. I once vanished did the color changing silk, then silk vanish, then vanished a silk in the next effect. I was poking the silk into my fist, for all the effects. An audience member yelled out, not stuffing the scarf in the hand again. That was a first, and I did not have a come back at the moment. Now I thought of one, to late. That made me rearrange the placement of effects in the show. YOu can use a Golf Ball as long as you have the patter for a story relating to Golf. That goes for all your props you use. Just using an egg, Golf Ball, Dice, etc, means little or adds little to the effect without relating it to something. |
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Dick Oslund Inner circle 8357 Posts |
In the "classic" egg bag routine, using a raw egg, the "slapping" and hitting the bag "helped" to "prove the bag was empty. Then, some comic magician introduced the wooden egg with the gag, "laid by a Plymouth Rock (breed of chicken) or Decoy Duck.
When I bought my first Sterling/Mardo bag, in '51, it came with a wooden egg. I never saw anyone, then, use a real egg. IMO, it depends on YOUR PRESENTATION!
SNEAKY, UNDERHANDED, DEVIOUS,& SURREPTITIOUS ITINERANT MOUNTEBANK
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Bill Hegbli Eternal Order Fort Wayne, Indiana 22797 Posts |
Good point, it does totally depend on your presentation and routine to use a Golf Ball or other object, then an egg. As a teenager, visiting the local magic shop, the owner frequently attempted to sell me the Egg Bag. He would demonstrate the an example of a routine. Years later I found out, he did not care for the Egg Bag, and never used it in any of his shows. Back to my point. Until the Ken Brooke Routine, I had never read or heard of a routine where the spectator became so involved in handling the bag or egg. Most all were more of a routine where the egg vanished and appeared using the bag. Don Lawton did get a child up to help, but they did not reach in the bag to remove anything. They did not handle the item in use as well.
I would think that is type of routine that may have to used when using a Golf Ball or other item. Simply do to weight and likeness of the item. Back in the vaudeville days, I never read of magician having an audience member on stage with the performer. They may be asked to come to the stage edge, but not on stage. Never really thought about it, but involving spectators on stage with the magician may be something new, compared to how it was originally presented. Something to consider when devising a routine, with the use of spectators. |
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jimgerrish Inner circle East Orange, NJ 3209 Posts |
This time of year, you might want to consider "There's an Egg in Your Hat" as described in Mini-Mysteries Book 4 at The Magic Nook Most kids will be wearing hats this time of year. 2. You have others in the audience examine his hat to make sure there is no egg inside it. 3. If you are a "real egg over fake egg" person, you can do the multiple egg production where you drop several real eggs (on purpose). 4. If dropping eggs for laughs is not your thing, you can still break the real egg at the end of the routine and THEN RESTORE IT! 5. Using someone's hat gets rid of the old "bag with a secret pocket" theory right from the start. 6. You can use any number of spectators in the routine, the more the merrier.
For those who prefer (for some odd reason of their own) to use a golf ball, billiard ball, a die, or something else entirely, you can still produce the chicken hat and claim it is laying all these things on purpose. It just makes it funnier.
Jim Gerrish
magicnook@yahoo.com https://www.magicnook.com Home of The Wizards' Journals: https://magicnook.com/wizardsTOC.htm |
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TXKEVIN New user 57 Posts |
I'm thinking about using a golf ball also (probably plastic to keep the weight down). I've developed some patter using a Senior Mardo bag (saying the bag is made of the same fabric used for kilts as I casually show the bag) and then producing an egg and saying it's a Scotch egg or for older audiences, asking if anyone knows what's under kilts...then producing a golf ball and saying..yep, a golf ball...not what you were thinking! The kilt joke might work by even saying, yep Scotch eggs. (Have to try it out but thinking the ball is a better fit for the joke). After a couple phases with the egg or golf ball, plan on using the surprise ending with the shot glass...after pocketing the egg or golf ball, saying if I could produce another egg/golf ball it would be magic. However, it would be a Scottish miracle if I could produce a shot of Scotch as I produce the shot glass.
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Bill Hegbli Eternal Order Fort Wayne, Indiana 22797 Posts |
I don't believe I mentioned this previously, but if you intend to use a golf ball, then it is best to actually be a golfer, or expose yourself to the game of golf. When I was a teenager, I actually was a golf caddie for several summers. Then I started playing golf with a friend in high school. This experience helped me to learn the jargon used in golf. I found that on stage, this helped me to develop patter and refer to some golfer's jokes, making it relate-able to the members of all audiences. This involves the audience because they have an interest, and some have experience in the game of golf.
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ed rhodes Inner circle Rhode Island 2885 Posts |
That might actually work for me, as I have a plaid bag and can make "Scottish" references. However, I have no background in golf. (I have pretty much no background in sports at all except one baseball game where I was in Right Field.)
"...and if you're too afraid of goin' astray, you won't go anywhere." - Granny Weatherwax
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Bill Hegbli Eternal Order Fort Wayne, Indiana 22797 Posts |
Ed rhodes, that makes two of us. If it wasn't for a way for a teenager to make a few dollars, I would have not experience in golf as well. I was never exposed to sports, and have not interest in it at all. Sitting on a hard bench for 4 hours or more, does not sound like fun to me either.
At least in golf, you get to participate and get all your frustrations out, then hit the 13th hole and relax. This is where a shot glass production works well. |
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Wravyn Inner circle 3482 Posts |
Hey Bill, relaxing at the 13th hole? It thought there were 18 of them and relaxation was done at the 19th. Then again, I don't golf either.
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Dick Oslund Inner circle 8357 Posts |
Quote:
On Feb 3, 2019, Bill Hegbli wrote: In the hey day of vaudeville, theater managers would post signs backstage: "MAGICIANS! NO EGG BAGS"! It was such a practical trick, that "everyone" was using it! I 'bought a Mardo/Sterling bag in '51. ($2.50:) My first one was a woolen bag that lasted for about 35 years. It had been "darned" MANY TIMES! At a Ring swap night, I picked up a Busby $50 Mardo Bag for $5. It was like new.
SNEAKY, UNDERHANDED, DEVIOUS,& SURREPTITIOUS ITINERANT MOUNTEBANK
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Harry Murphy Inner circle Maryland 5444 Posts |
Interesting thread. In the Music Halls in Great Britain and across Europe pre WWII the egg bag was indeed performed and Arnold De Biere is credited with creating the much-copied audience participation egg bag routine, here he is performing the effect in 1933:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=qfDJoosgQds Notice how he handles the bag when it is supposed to be empty. It oozes emptiness! Jeff Hobson' brilliant egg bag handling likewise oozes emptiness. Golf Ball or fake egg a key to the illusion being effective is convincing the audience that the bag is indeed empty. Back in the days of the Town fairs in Tudor England the egg found in the egg bag was real and its fragile nature helped sell the trick of it having vanished with the bag being slapped. I don't think that adding a wooden egg or todays plastic egg advances the trick at all. Johnny Thompson used to go out of his way explaining the fragile nature of the blown egg used. In fact more than once I watched him carry on using a piece of the egg shell after it had been broken by a carless spectator. It was that much more magical. If the egg is fake AND the audience knows it's fake (because of the lame jokes and/or telling them it's fake) then any object could be used. Golf Ball, Lemon, Bottle of Aspirin (Robert Baxt), and so forth. Then they mystery of the vanishing object is "proved" not by slapping the bag but by handling it as if it was indeed empty. I don't remember who the magician was but when I was young and in the service I saw a USO magician do a comedy bit with his egg bag. He produced his first egg magically and went to drop it back into the bag and missed. The egg fell to the floor and broke proving it was a real egg!! He then opened an egg carton and took another egg and completed the routine. We all assumed it was another real egg (it wasn't). His finale was that with the last vanish the egg reappeared back in the egg carton.
The artist formally known as Mumblepeas!
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foolsnobody Special user Buffalo, NY 843 Posts |
I read about DeBiere's egg bag in the wonderful pamphlet by Max Holden (? or just published by him), illustrations by Hahne, "Programmes of Famous Magicians," but I never saw him before. Wonderful!
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Scott Alexander V.I.P. 1471 Posts |
The whole point of an egg is that it is fragile and it can break and make a mess. Everyone knows what an egg is and what happens if it breaks. There is drama in using an egg. If you change the object to something non fragile you loose half the impact of the egg bag.
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Pop Haydn Inner circle Los Angeles 3691 Posts |
The witch woman who captured little Johnny made him do chores every day. One chore was to go to the chicken house and collect the eggs. But Johnny would always get distracted on the way home by a frog or something, and start running around, jumping and falling and end up breaking the eggs. So the witch woman gave Johnny a little bag to put the eggs in. He could put as many eggs in the bag as he wanted and it would still be completely empty.
He could scrunch it up in his pocket and sit on it. He could run and jump and slide in the mud as much as he wanted, and when he got back home to the witch woman she could reach in and take out all the eggs completely unharmed. Now I'm not saying that this is that same witch bag as in the story, but I did buy it from a real witch lady down in West Texas... |
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thomasR Inner circle 1189 Posts |
Quote:
On Apr 10, 2019, Pop Haydn wrote: "But I'm not saying it's not either... you'll just have to meet the witch lady herself and find out the same way I did" . :p Pop never fails to bring a smile! |
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thomasR Inner circle 1189 Posts |
One of the best lessons in magic I've ever gotten was seeing Penn & Teller perform the Egg Bag in their Vegas show last year. Vegas headliners... performing the egg bag. And it got a great reaction. They did Johnny Thompson's routine of course.
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robert_baxt New user Hollywood, CA. USA 87 Posts |
To each his own I say. Some people like vanilla, some people like chocolate, some people like pistachio ice cream. In my humble opinion (and it doesn't bother me in the least that yours may differ), the bag part was always what bothered me. What is this bag unlike any bag an audience has ever seen except in a magicians act? Even with a fanciful story to explain it, it was still a bag that served no purpose except to be able to do the trick. But I thought of what similar bags exist in real life and realized the purple cloth bags that come with Crown Royal Whiskey were close. And even if the audience doesn't drink at all, the bags are familiar sights that are seen in supermarket liquor aisles across the country. So now I had the right bag for me (and again it was for me, your opinion of the right bag will differ and that's okay!), but the egg did not organically go with the the Crown Royal Whiskey in my humble opinion. So I thought about what was similar in size and color and did make sense and realized that a bottle of pills/aspirin went with the concept of Crown Royal Whiskey bag. And then, to add one more element to it, I made the bottle a rattle/no rattle bottle to add sound to the vanishes and re-appearances. The routine works for me. See what I do with it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOmt46T2U-Y For school and educational shows I change the patter to be about how drinking and pills are bad for you because they mess with your perceptions and you can't follow where the pill bottle is.
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Bill Hegbli Eternal Order Fort Wayne, Indiana 22797 Posts |
Well, Robert, a bag like the classic Egg bag was very normal back in the 1950's and 1960's. Schools would send home a note to the parents, that they were to make a bag, for their children's Flash Cards to carry back and forth to school. a draw string was added, but it was the norm. I remember my mother making them after dinner.
Don't know where yo liver, but I once did a show in a small town for a local newspaper foe the paperboys. A mother came up to me before show when she seen my Multiplying Bottles, and as me to put them away. I refused, but in today's PC world, I am sure it was have been much worse. |
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