Heirlooms - The Show
[A
large keepsake box is placed on the table and alongside it is a
cardboard card file box]
I've always been the family historian and a collector of family heirlooms. So let me start with a simple statement, my family has always, going back generations, been... well... a little strange. So tonight, I want to share my own personal collection of strange with you.
[Magician pulls out
green velvet box and puts it on the table]
I tell a story about an eerie armoire in the upstairs bedroom in my grandparent's house and perform a Haunted Key routine with the key to the armoire that my grandfather left me.
I then talk about my grandmother and bring out her teapot. I talk about the parties she would have during prohibition. I fill the teapot with a bottle of Coke and then pour out a drink for each person from the teapot that they select from a menu of 10 different drinks. Credit Jim Steinmeier
I bring four worry stones out of a velour bag and talk about the concepts of worry and prayer. After the handle the worry stones themselves, all of four them are put into one of the spectator's hands. Earlier in the routine I use an old Russian quote that "Praying is like asking God to make two plus two equal five." I talk about the Danish Soren Kierkegaard who said the purpose of prayer is not to change God but to change the person who prays. I also talk about my mother and how she taught me to pray. At the end, I turn to the spectator holding the four worry stones and tell them that maybe, just maybe if you pray the right way, two plus two might just equal five. They open their palm and are holding five worry stones. Credit Eugene Burger.
I tell a story about my cousins who were smokejumpers and the strange blocks of wood they found in a circle of unburned grass amidst the incinerated ashes of someone's hunting shack in the forest. I then demonstrate Less is More which has three blocks which get heaver when one of the blocks is removed and even heavier when the second block is removed.
I offer the spectators each a second drink from the teapot.
I then pull out a book of magic spells and a picture frame. In the picture frame is a dried rose. I explain that my grandmother on my father's side (not the one with the teapot), used to read everything she could about magic and witches. She even ended up with a book of spells that she wrote herself. I show the book and you can see that every page has handwritten magic spells. I explain that I've tried many of them and none of them work... except one. A spell to turn back time. At the end of the routine, the book is blank - just like it was before my grandmother wrote in it and the rose is blooming - just like it was before my grandmother dried it in the picture frame. And maybe, just maybe, the spectators feel a bit younger. Credit Jim Steinmeyer
I bring out what looks like a small brass pillbox and some old coins from a black silk bag and explain that this is what my uncle used to carry his coins instead of a coin purse. Performing an Okito Box routine, I demonstrate how he would use it with coins vanishing from the box, penetrating the box and appearing in the box. At the end, the box is passed out to the spectators to see if it would work for them... but when they take the lid off, unfortunately the box is now is solid and cannot contain any coins.
I then pull out a four inch square
glass vase with
eight blue marbles and nine white marbles that is wrapped in tissue paper. I explain how my father love to play marbles when he was young and had close to a hundred marbles. But he also had these seventeen marbles which were kept separate from the others. I divide the marbles evenly between the spectators, picking them up in pairs and giving each spectator one marble of each pair. The spectators decide who gets the last marble. I put it in the other person's hand and almost magically the marble travels from one spectator's hand to another. Credit Jim Steinmeyer.
I bring out the teapot again and, thinking that the spectators might not need another drink, pour them a hot cup of coffee with cream and sugar.
Finally, I bring forward the card box. I explain that I found this hidden in the ceiling above a closet in my grandparent's house. If you recall, my grandfather was a police officer. It contains the evidence from a police investigation of a murder. In a multiphase routine, the spectators play the part of the psychic who help the police solve what was known as the "silk stocking" murder that set a small community in Brooklyn on edge in 1935. At the end, the last item taken out of the box was a newspaper article that, when unfolded by the spectators, contains all of the actual psychic's choices that match the choices that were made by the spectators and the news of confession of the killer that both the real psychic and the spectators identified.