Simply put, a fabulous routine for formal close-up magic. Let’s talk venue before we get into the trick. If you find yourself in situations where you have to do something more formal than “gather round and pick a card,” and less formal than curtains and intros, you’re doing formal close-up. Perhaps you assemble friends at the office or you’re performing for a family gathering, or you’re doing a show for more than ten and less than 50 people. This is the PERFECT card trick.
Essentially, you offer to present “The World’s Greatest Card Trick” and remove a small instruction card with eight enumerated instructions. The spectator reads through these instructions one by one “Pick any card…ask a spectator to sign her card…” After all the instructions, the spectator discovers her signed card ON THE BACK OF THE INSTRUCTION CARD. It’s an unfathomable ending for laypeople.
Personal endorsement: some of you may know that I (Joshua Jay) to a one man show from time to time. It’s full of all original material with ONE exception: Side Swiped. I perform this piece on a small stage and it serves as a great interactive piece of magic.
More Info on "Side-Swiped":
Transform a signed card into an impossible object-that your spectator gets to keep!
You display both sides of a small printed Instruction Card for "The World's Greatest Card Trick" which you just received in today's mail and offer to try it out with the spectator's help. As you read off each step, the spectator follows the instruction. The instructions guide the spectator to select a playing card from a shuffled deck, sign its face, replace it in the deck and finally wrap the deck up in rubber bands, "magician-proofing" the pack. The spectator's signed selection remains in full view the entire time until it's cleanly buried in the deck. The spectator wraps the deck herself and then drops it into your jacket pocket.
The final instruction is then read, but it simply says "magically produce the card." Undaunted, you make a magical gestured over the Instruction Card-which you've been holding in plain view since the very beginning of the trick and when you turn it around, the other side is shown to have magically changed into the spectator's selected card, complete with their signature!
The Instruction Card is immediately given to the spectator to keep as a souvenir. It's an "impossible object" which she'll keep forever, a personalized memento of the time she witnessed "The World's Greatest Card Trick."
Memorable, humorous and totally baffling,
Easy to do (only one sleight required!),
Leaves the spectator with a permanent, personalized, impossible object
Side-Swiped comes with a detailed, 29-page booklet, fully illustrated by Tony Dunn which includes Simon's professional presentation and additional comments and variations along with enough cards specially printed by the US Playing Card Co. for 12 performances.
