Hello fellow Magi, Hope this is a good forum for my "Chronicles."

As an amateur my performance venues are limited -- mostly to relatives at home and to the other Magi at our local fellowship. However, I have established a monthly magic effect with my hair dresser. She actually looks forward to them!

What I will do here is document the effects I perform and her reaction, along with my experience with the effects. I can't remember now all of the effects I have shown her in the past but I'll start with the one I performed today. I'll add others as I recall them. And I'll try to continue to document future performances... good and bad and describe the reactions. Hope everyone will enjoy the narratives.
Regards,
Phil

My July Haircut, 7/15/2021. No knuckle buster this time. I went back to Nick Trost's 8 card lie speller. I used George McBride's patter about the invention of the polygraph, and spun a yarn about some Walgreen's Studs decks were modified in a secret program with the FBI. I said the deck she was holding was, in fact, one such deck. I had her select 8 cards. Remember one and shuffle the packet. I turn my back and never see the cards face up until the one at the reveal, I programmed the packet and proceeded per the effect. At the end, after the reveal, she gave her usual "That's a good one!"
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8 card Lie Speller is an effect that I fall back on quite a bit. Impromptu, a good yarn, normal deck. It always gets good reactions for me. The fact that the Magi never see the cards until the reveal is a big part of the mystery, and the radnom length of the spelled values and suits is totally baffling.

I am also posting these installments so others can get some idea of the effect of these on laymen. Sort of like a "micro-review" of tricks in the bag of an amateur magiciaqn. Of course, these are just anecdotal, and as they say YMMV.

For this installment I recall a couple of effects that dumbfounded my hair dresser (perhaps a stylist???)

First is "Mental Yarn." I only discovered this within the last year and have performed it several times. My hair dresser's response was mouth agape astonishment. After a couple of seconds she exclaimed "How did you do that????" This is an easy to carry set of cards held in a plastic card wallet. Just stuff it in a shirt pocket and you are ready to astound your hair dresser too!

The second effect from the past was Jay Sankey's "Contained." I used the "thought condenser" line of patter. I showed the pill bottle with a dollar bill in it. The patter line was: "It used to be said: a penny for your thoughts. Since the dollar has been devalued; today, it is more like a dollar for your thoughts!" This pill bottle is a "thought condenser!" Pill container placed atop her head. She thinks of her chosen card. I say "It worked! Look at the pill container!" There is her card. Her response was "How did that happen!"

Phil