Joshua Jay - Cornered
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:11 It's gonna...
00:13 Alright.
00:14 Here we are. We're in Stockholm live with some of my best friends here.
00:19 Some great magicians in their own right.
00:21 Without looking, do you have like a dollar on you in your wallet?
00:25 Uh...
00:26 I'll just... let's see. I know what I'm looking for.
00:29 What are you pickpocketing now?
00:31 I'm openly pickpocketing your... I'll just borrow a dollar, alright?
00:34 Okay.
00:35 Here's what I'm gonna do. Yeah, you need both hands for this.
00:38 You've seen a lot of magicians do a great trick where they...
00:42 Let's see if I can do this.
00:44 Where they do a torn and restored bill. It looks a little like this.
00:47 That look fair?
00:48 I'm hearing it.
00:49 That's a rip.
00:50 You're hearing it there?
00:51 Yeah, now that's a rip.
00:52 You're gonna love the torn and restored.
00:53 Go ahead, take that corner. Put your finger on the corner.
00:55 Oh, sorry.
00:57 That's a receipt for you.
01:00 Torn and restored. Here we go, watch.
01:03 In your... I can't do that trick. That would be cool.
01:06 I'll try something even better.
01:07 That would be cool, man.
01:08 I'll try something even better.
01:10 I'll change your money into a higher denomination.
01:13 Looks good from this side, right?
01:15 I like the whole idea of a high denomination.
01:18 The high denomination. You're glad I used the dollar, right?
01:21 Watch carefully.
01:23 You watch it.
01:24 Goes into my hand.
01:28 Still a buck. That's not that good of a trick.
01:30 I'll try it again.
01:31 Look, hold onto my wrist.
01:34 Gone from here.
01:36 Wow.
01:37 Gone from here.
01:38 It's gone. Pretty cool, huh?
01:40 That's worth a quarter. You take that to the bank, they give you a quarter.
01:43 If not, you gotta pay it.
01:45 No, let's make it right. Let's make it right. Let's do it again.
01:47 Another bill. Another bill.
01:49 No, that's not fair. That's not...
01:50 I should give him a buck, right?
01:52 But check this out.
01:54 We folded it up, it disappeared. You've still got a little piece.
01:57 Hand the little piece to Rocco.
01:59 Hand the little piece to Rocco. You hold onto that.
02:01 Reach back into your wallet.
02:04 In your wallet, not my wallet, in his wallet, open it up.
02:09 Open it up. Look exactly at the place I took the bill from.
02:12 Is there a little folded up piece?
02:15 Now look at this.
02:16 Look at this.
02:17 No way, man.
02:19 In his wallet, a tiny little piece of a bill.
02:23 Not a whole bill. Almost a whole bill.
02:26 Still missing a quarter.
02:28 Still missing a quarter.
02:30 Now, I don't want to check this. I want you to match it up.
02:33 You check it out. You take it. You hold it up.
02:35 Absolutely, perfectly, a perfect match.
02:39 Whoa!
02:41 Thank you very much.
02:43 Thank you for watching.
02:44 Now I know why you're the best.
02:46 I didn't win an award at Fizzle, though.
02:49 You're the best. When are we going to hang out?
02:51 That's a hot trick.
02:53 That's one hot trick, man.
02:55 How would you like to perform a borrowed bill to anywhere?
03:06 Literally anywhere.
03:08 You can get as creative as you want
03:11 to borrow someone's bill and make it appear in that place.
03:17 Only thing you've got to do is preload a bill in that place.
03:22 If you can get to somebody's shirt pocket,
03:24 under their vest, under their sweater, whatever,
03:27 you can put it there.
03:29 If you want to load it on the ceiling
03:30 and you've got a ladder nearby, you can do that.
03:33 If you've got a basket of fruit
03:35 and you want it to appear inside the fruit,
03:37 you can do that anywhere you want to go.
03:42 Now it's been a standard in the magic industry for years
03:46 to use a corner switch method,
03:48 which is to say you borrow a bill,
03:51 you tear a corner off it,
03:52 you switch it, usually using a thumb tip,
03:56 you hand that corner out, that switch corner out,
04:00 you make this bill disappear,
04:02 you take another one out of a lemon
04:04 or anywhere you want, and it matches
04:08 because of course the bill you've preloaded in the lemon
04:11 matches the corner you've switched.
04:15 That's great, but it has two disadvantages.
04:18 The first one is you start the trick dirty.
04:20 You start the trick with something palmed,
04:23 a thumb tip, whatever.
04:25 So you borrow a bill you're not clean to show,
04:28 and you do the switch at that time.
04:31 The second disadvantage is you've got to know
04:34 in advance where you're going with that bill.
04:38 In other words, if you're going to do the bill to lemon trick,
04:41 you've got to take a pre-torn corner and matching bill
04:44 and load that bill in the lemon.
04:47 You've got to go to that specific lemon
04:49 at the end of the trick.
04:51 My idea is to switch the corners after the trick.
04:58 When the trick is almost completely over,
05:00 that's when you do the dirty work.
05:02 I think that it's a good moment, perhaps a better moment,
05:06 because here's the thing.
05:08 When a bill comes out of an impossible location,
05:11 a shoebox, someone's shoe, someone's pocket, someone's purse,
05:15 and it's missing a corner,
05:17 and you've handed out a corner to begin with,
05:19 at that point everybody relaxes, sits back,
05:22 "No way, no way."
05:24 There isn't a lot of heat to see if it's the right corner.
05:27 People assume that.
05:29 So I think it's a better moment to be dirty,
05:31 a better moment to be switching.
05:33 Second advantage.
05:35 Now, as you noticed, when I borrow a bill,
05:38 no thumb tips, I am clean.
05:42 Last advantage.
05:45 Think about this.
05:47 Since you're switching after,
05:49 you can have an array of objects,
05:52 a huge pool of objects,
05:55 and let the spectator choose where it goes.
05:58 I'll give you a scenario.
06:00 What if you had 100 pieces of candy
06:03 with 100 $1 bills in a big bowl,
06:06 loaded and prepared as I'm going to show you.
06:09 Now, you borrow a bill, you make it disappear.
06:12 They reach into a candy bowl,
06:14 take out any piece of candy they want,
06:16 and it's got their bill that matches their corner inside.
06:20 Or, basket of fruit, 10 pieces of fruit,
06:23 they choose the fruit goes inside.
06:28 All right.
06:30 With all those things aside,
06:31 let me take you through the preparation.
06:33 What's great about this is that every time you do it,
06:36 you set it up for next time.
06:38 So you only have to do this preparation along with me right now once,
06:42 and now you're set for life.
06:44 And this is the preparation.
06:46 You take a bill,
06:49 and you tear off this corner.
06:52 That is, when you're looking at the president or the king
06:54 or whoever is on your currency,
06:56 you tear off the upper left corner.
06:59 Now, specifically, when you tear it off,
07:01 you want it to be about this size,
07:03 a little smaller than a half dollar.
07:05 I use this size because this is big for a stage.
07:07 You can really see it.
07:09 And you'll notice I tear a little tail.
07:12 We're going to call this part the tail.
07:14 You're going to tear a little bit beyond the halfway point.
07:19 You want to tear a little bit beyond the halfway point,
07:22 and that's going to provide a locking mechanism in a second.
07:26 All right, that's your setup.
07:29 Once you've done that, fold the bill in half.
07:32 When you fold it in half,
07:34 that starts to produce a little bit of a pocket.
07:37 Take your tail
07:40 and tuck the tail,
07:43 tuck the tail beneath the halfway point
07:48 and fold the sides together.
07:51 Now, because that little tail protrudes into the fold,
07:56 you're locked in.
07:58 This piece is locked inside the bill itself.
08:02 Now fold it in half like so,
08:05 and in half one more time,
08:07 and you've got a very interesting object.
08:10 You've got your torn bill
08:13 ready to go for your borrowed bill routine,
08:15 but the matching corner is nested inside it.
08:18 So instead of palming,
08:20 it's going to ride along with you the whole time.
08:23 That's it.
08:25 This is the trick.
08:27 Let me show you how I used it in performance.
08:29 I started with this object palmed,
08:31 but we're not going to do a corner switch.
08:33 We're not going to do anything.
08:35 We're going to make a great--one of the all-time classic jokes--isn't mine.
08:38 It's usually used for stage items.
08:40 You say, "Excuse me, sir, without looking,
08:43 would you say you've got a dollar bill on you?"
08:45 "Yes." "Can I borrow it, please?"
08:47 And as they take out the wallet, you grab his wallet for a second,
08:50 and you say, "I know what I'm looking for."
08:52 You're going to be in and out in 2 seconds.
08:54 You go in with your bill, and you leave it there,
08:58 and you come out with his bill.
09:01 You close it up, you hand it back to him.
09:04 You had his bill--his wallet--
09:06 for less than about 2 seconds,
09:09 in and out, and you've loaded
09:11 your torn corner and torn bill in his wallet.
09:15 I hand it back to him, and I say, "You're going to need both hands for this,
09:18 because I don't want to be caught saying, 'Put this back in your pocket.'"
09:21 If I say, "You're going to need both hands for it," he puts it in his back pocket.
09:24 And later on, you get to show empty hands.
09:27 He reaches behind his back
09:30 to take out the wallet, and it's a more impossible trick.
09:33 All right, so what do you do?
09:35 You show now, with empty hands, nothing to switch in or out, his bill.
09:40 And you're, of course, going to tear the same corner
09:43 in approximately the same way that you tore your original one.
09:48 Be careful to make the tail, because guess what?
09:51 You can use this one for your next performance.
09:54 You tear off the corner, you can let him tear off the piece of the corner.
09:57 You hand the corner to him to borrow.
10:00 Now you're going to vanish the bill.
10:02 Use any way you want. Use a handkerchief. Use a flash bill.
10:05 Use anything you want. Let me show you the way I do it.
10:08 I fold the bill up exactly how the other one was folded.
10:11 And I make a couple jokes.
10:13 I'm going to turn it into a $100 bill.
10:16 That trick actually takes way too long.
10:18 So instead, I'm just going to restore your bill.
10:21 And what happens is I'm going to use the watch.
10:23 The watch to vanish.
10:25 So I hold the bill between the right thumb and first finger.
10:29 I place the bill at the base of the left fingers,
10:32 and as the left fingers close,
10:34 my thumb and first finger continues down the wrist,
10:38 and I tuck the bill under my watch.
10:44 I snap with my right hand, show the left hand empty.
10:47 As long as you keep an angle here, it won't flash.
10:52 Now I show the right hand empty, and it's gone.
10:57 Again, vanish the bill any way you want.
10:59 This is a great impromptu method as long as you've got a watch.
11:03 Now, bring it full circle.
11:05 Bring it back toward the spectator.
11:07 Ask him to take out the wallet,
11:09 and point out, because it's true, in fact,
11:12 that a bill has appeared exactly where one once was.
11:17 And he reaches in, and of course, he notices a foreign object in his wallet.
11:21 You can let him handle it.
11:23 Remember, that piece is locked into place,
11:26 so you can let him remove it from his own wallet.
11:29 Now you take it back, and now the dirty work begins.
11:32 You're very clean, no pieces palmed in, no thumb tips.
11:36 You begin to unfold the bill.
11:39 As you unfold it to this position in half,
11:43 you will be exposed to your pocket.
11:46 Use your pocket to pin the piece in place
11:52 and unfold the bill completely.
11:55 You'll be in this position.
11:57 I'm holding the piece pinned behind the bill in my left hand.
12:02 There's a very specific reason for this handling.
12:05 You take back the piece, which doesn't match.
12:08 It doesn't match at all with your right hand,
12:11 but look at the position you're in.
12:13 How could I match that up from this side?
12:17 I'm holding the objects in the wrong hand.
12:19 You've got the piece in your right hand,
12:21 the bill with the real piece pinned in your left hand.
12:24 You're going to switch hands.
12:26 The right hand puts the piece against the bill,
12:30 and the left thumb and fingers come out
12:33 with the other piece in this hand.
12:36 Now you can go up to the spectator
12:39 and show them a true matching piece,
12:44 which you can then give to the spectator.
12:47 You palm off the extra piece,
12:49 and they have their souvenir, their bill,
12:52 that went to their wallet.
12:54 This is true, and it truly does depend on circumstance.
12:57 This isn't hyperbole.
12:59 I would rather be palming an object off
13:01 at the end of the trick, when there's no heat,
13:03 when the bill has been passed back,
13:05 when there's applause, than come into the trick,
13:08 "Can I borrow a bill now, please?"
13:10 and you take the bill with a piece palmed in.
13:14 So not only does it make it easier,
13:16 but it changes the moment around,
13:18 and we've just touched the tip of the iceberg
13:21 of the bill to literally anywhere.
13:24 [music]
13:27 [music]
13:31 [music]
13:34 (thunder)