Jay Sankey is a professional magician that I had never heard of until I got interested in doing magic myself. He does magic card tricks, street magic, slight of hand magic, and close up magic. Being one of those people that feels he can master just about anything in a couple of hours, tops, Amazing Magic and Mentalism Anyone Can Do! sounded right up my alley. And it is. Volume 1 and 2 are filled with a number of really cool effects-don’t call them tricks, that’s one of the tips. This is easy magic as well as amazing magic.
Jay himself is a very unimposing looking fellow leaning toward total nerdom. He is bald, wears horn rim glasses and talks to you like your a complete moron that can’t be trusted to pour water out of a glass. And basically, he is right to talk this way. It’s an instructional DVD after all, he has to assume that you need him to go slow and explain it all in great detail. And for the most part he does. The effects are cool when he shows how to do them, jawdroppingly easy once he explains how to do them, and damn near impossible to actually do them the way that he does. I am not saying it is his fault, well, on one or two it is. There is a really cool magic trick with a slip knot that he zips right through how to make the slip knot so fast I could never figure out how he did it. But it looks way cool when he preforms it. So maybe it’s just me.
One of the tips that Sankey should have put on these discs, but didn’t, was don’t show them to your friends, as they are all a bunch of smart asses that will point and laugh and say, anyone can do that! Street magic with strangers takes a bit of nerve though, it still takes practice to do even the simplest of the magic tricks effectively. And there by hangs the tale. You still have to learn magic to preform magic.
When I was in the seventh grade and took up juggling. I bought a can of tennis balls and got a book from the school library. I spent three weeks chasing those damned tennis balls all over the place, but I did learn how to juggle. I still juggle just about every single day. But somewhere over the last thirty years or so I have lost the knack for spending endless hours learning something that is, well, basically useless. Doesn’t mean I will not still try once in a while.
The Sankey DVDs are very cool and fun to watch. You can either sit through the whole thing, just listen to his sage advice on preforming, or just watch one magic effect over and over until you have it down. The props for the effects are small and easy to come by. Decks of cards, napkins, rubber bands, stuff you can find anywhere, anytime. A couple of the effects are a bit odd, there is one where makes like Spiderman and crawls on the side of a wall, which just doesn’t look all that great and seems kind of silly. Still, it is not my DVD and most of the effects are way cool looking. As with most DVDs of this type, you end up wanting more magic to preform when you are done. Not to worry, Jay has a whole host of DVDs. He is no David Copperfield, but then, he isn’t showing you how to make the Statue of Liberty disappear either.
So I highly recommend Jay Sankey’s Magic Anyone Can Do, especially if your in the seventh grade and don’t have much to do for the next three weeks.
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Hi everybody, I am a college student and I love magic tricks, basically the tricks of fingers/hands. Sleight of hand is also known as prestidigitation (‘quick fingers’) or legerdemain. I’ve seen many books at libraries and such on stage magic but never anything focusing on sleight of hand. So what is the best way of learning these tricks? Any good references are welcome.
sudipta das
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magic card tricks