Total Stigmata Fail, but she was still freaked out.

Valhalla76 · May 9, 2009

I was with my friend of mine and his fiance and at bar. It was super dark and loud as hell. A few days ago, this dude was over at my house and I was showing him some card tricks. So we are talking and he keeps going, "show Michelle a magic trick," over and over. I didn't have cards or anything else so I pull one of my business cards out and start doing stigmata.

Well, this chick is Portuguese. She puts her grandmothers name down. It is really long and weird. Plus it is super dark. Normally, the business card part works itself. People put John, or Joe, or Sara, or something. I can see it in an instant. I look at at the name, and I'm like "what the ****?" I have to look at it three or four times. I thought it was super obvious. Anyway, I could tell the first letter was "S."

So I make an S appear and she is freaking out. I make some comments like. "It's a girl name. It has an i and an a in middle. It's a really unusual name." I finally tell her it is "Stephanie." She says no, but she is still really freaked out. This was the first time I did Stigmata in two years and by far my worst performance of it ever. She still thought it was cool.

My real screw up was, I went to go get another beer, and I left the business card on the table. My friend James saw me look at it over and over, examined the business card, and found out how I did it and told her.

So, I decided how to get revenge. lol. James gets really pissed when other girls give his fiancee a cigarette. She like's stuff like cloves and flavored cigarettes. I'm going to get those girly girl pink vanilla flavored cigarettes. Then do a magic trick with one and then give her the rest of the pack. lol!

Jot@PS · May 9, 2009

You were lucky man!

one question, were in the world did you perfomed that trick?

J.

Valhalla76 · May 9, 2009

Jot@PS said:
You were lucky man!

one question, were in the world did you perfomed that trick?

J.

Just a bar in downtown Charleston. The problem is James' dad apparently is into magic and card tricks and James has seen his dad do a lot of stuff. So he was watching me intently for any suspicious moves.

This is why I really only like doing magic tricks for girls and not guys. Girls make a much better audience.

praetoritevong · May 9, 2009

Ok.

So let me get this straight.

You screwed up, not once, but twice. So because you screwed up, you're gonna get revenge on your friend.

Valhalla76 · May 9, 2009

Relax dude, it's just a joke.

praetoritevong said:
Ok.

So let me get this straight.

You screwed up, not once, but twice. So because you screwed up, you're gonna get revenge on your friend.

Sinful07 · May 9, 2009

How did you manage to screw the first part out? hmm.

D ICE R · May 9, 2009

I have dropped into this thread a few times thinking about what to say.

Leaving the business card behind was your only mistake, and that was only because you treated the billet completely wrong. You spent too much attention to it which caused your friend to be suspicious towards it. Bob Cassidy has so much to say on this topic it is not funny, to paraphrase;
'magicians to tricks with pieces of paper, mentalists read minds.'
Because you focused so much on the billet your friend did aswell. Causing him to want to know the work on it and unfortunately acidus is incredibly easy to figure out because of the strange position of the writing area.

To his girlfriend you were doing the real thing, because mentalism is not meant to hit 100% the fact that you got close enough was good enough for her. You cannot just jump right into reading someones mind you need to warm up a little bit first if you are playing it as something more than a trick. And to her it was the real thing. She did not want to know how you did it but more importantly how did you KNOW it.

Cliff|Bumgardner · May 9, 2009

My only issue with your story, despite the pointless chapter on revenge, is that you knew that you couldn't see the name, she was already impressed and yet you decided to try and reveal it anyway? Why not end the effect on its highest note and be done with it?

C

Valhalla76 · May 10, 2009

The revenge thing was a joke. I actually told my friend James I was going to do that. But anyway, it was a learning experience. I should have stopped after the S appeared and I was ahead and then put the business card in my pocket or ripped it up or something.

I also should have waiting until I was in a better (well lit) environment to do the trick, but I let myself get pressured into it.

Cliff|Bumgardner said:
My only issue with your story, despite the pointless chapter on revenge, is that you knew that you couldn't see the name, she was already impressed and yet you decided to try and reveal it anyway? Why not end the effect on its highest note and be done with it?

C

Valhalla76 · May 10, 2009

In the past Acidus has worked very well for me, because people put names like Sara, Joe, Mark, Julie, ect. I can read the name in a split second. Apparently my friend James' dad does a lot of magic and so James knew what to look for.

D ICE R said:
I have dropped into this thread a few times thinking about what to say.

Leaving the business card behind was your only mistake, and that was only because you treated the billet completely wrong. You spent too much attention to it which caused your friend to be suspicious towards it. Bob Cassidy has so much to say on this topic it is not funny, to paraphrase;
'magicians to tricks with pieces of paper, mentalists read minds.'
Because you focused so much on the billet your friend did aswell. Causing him to want to know the work on it and unfortunately acidus is incredibly easy to figure out because of the strange position of the writing area.

To his girlfriend you were doing the real thing, because mentalism is not meant to hit 100% the fact that you got close enough was good enough for her. You cannot just jump right into reading someones mind you need to warm up a little bit first if you are playing it as something more than a trick. And to her it was the real thing. She did not want to know how you did it but more importantly how did you KNOW it.

D ICE R · May 10, 2009

The point I was trying to put forward is that you made (atleast to your friend) the billet the whole focus of the effect. Where in reality it should have been all in the spectators mind. You focused too much on the move and lost a lot of what billet work and to a lesser extent all magic is about being natural. For example when you hunch over like so many people do when you are about to do a pass the audience will know that something is happening and they can reverse engineer the mechanics (well not all of them but at least some of them). You focused to much on the billet and your friend picket up on that something was happening. That is how he played with it to figure out the method.