BOOK REVIEW BY DAVID SUTHERLAND TOP SECRET STUFF BY MICHAEL POWERS
A consistent lesson gleaned from almost every lecture I attend is: READ YOUR BOOKS.
I’ll return from these lectures, immediately begin searching through my library and invariably discover much of this great material was already in my possession!
We all know there’s good stuff hidden throughout the works of Hilliard, Stanyon and Tarbell. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some titles that aren’t always top of mind and have been sitting on my shelves for years without even a glance - to my disadvantage. Hopefully, we can all learn from my mistakes…
TOP SECRET STUFF BY MICHAEL POWERS
BOOK DETAILS: 172 pages (Hardcover), Publisher: Michael Powers, Published in 1990, Out of print. Written and Illustrated by Michael Powers.
The Foreward is by Jon Racherbaumer who needs no introduction if you’re into card magic.
Michael’s previous books include Powerful Magic, 1983; Power Plays: High Voltage Magic, 2006 and Tesseract, Magic - The Hidden Dimension, 2019; for many years he wrote the monthly Card Corner column in The Linking Ring.
“Cards” is the first section of Top Secret Stuff and there are thirty-one items.
Evolution is an All Backs/Wild Card/4 card transformation that reminded me of Darwin Ortiz’s Jumping Gemini. However, Michael credits Evolution as a version of Allan Ackerman’s Short All Backs Routine which was in Don England’s Technical Knock-Outs.
The Nightmare Card uses Ortiz’s Dream Card as a starting point, but in this variation a blue backed card is placed face down on the table and remains there throughout. Then, a red backed card is selected and signed and amazingly when the blue card is turned over it is the spectator’s signed selection! Michael credits this to Brother John Hamman’s Signed Card.
Flushing Out The Queen could very likely get you out of playing Poker. A card is selected and shuffled back in the deck. The deck is cut and the selection spins face up out of the face down deck. The two halves of the deck are cut and flipped over revealing four more face up cards. The selection and the other four cards make up a royal flush in spades! This is a simplified version of Bruce Cervon’s Fast Flush from Card Secrets of Bruce Cervon.
I liked the AT&T Trick (Ambitious Twist Transpo). A card is selected and could even be signed. This card is used for a brief Ambitious Card sequence and is then left protruding from the deck, face down. Next is a twisting sequence using an Ace, two, three, and four where the cards turn over in numerical order. As a finale, the final card to reverse itself in the small packet, changes places with the selected card that was protruding from the deck! This is based on Jon Racherbaumer’s Omni Twist.
Squeezing the Jacks is a streamlining of Steve Billers’s Mr. Billers Wild Ride from Paul Harris’s Close-Up Kinda Guy. It is a surprising routine wherein the face down Jacks turn face up one at a time as the packet is revolved, but then they become the four Aces and the Jacks appear in four different impossible locations. I can’t wait to try this one out.
Those are the first five effects to give you a taste. You’ll understand if I don’t describe the remaining twenty-six, but I will highlight a few that stood out.
Cardial Infraction is based on Martin A. Nash’s Fast Stack in Harry Lorayne’s Best of Friends Vol 1. Aces are put on the top of the deck and in one shuffle you make it so that when the hands are dealt you get the Aces. It is repeated a second time with two shuffles and this time you end up with a flush.
Unexpected Visitor was inspired by Paul Harris’s Grasshopper in SuperMagic and Larry Jennings’s The Visitor in The Classic Magic of Larry Jennings. There are three versions offered here. The first uses an extra card and the second uses only the five cards involved to cause the selection to travel from one pair to the other. The third, allows you to make the selection travel back to the first pair, thus simulating The Visitor.
Photo Surrealism is a printing-type effect. Two cards are selected and the magician takes out a packet of four cards with blank faces. The packet is touched to one of the selections and one of the cards now matches it, then all four cards match it. The other selection is touched to the packet and again all four cards take on the image of the second selection.
Card Case Collectors Plus reads as a stunning routine where the Aces go into the card box and three signed cards disappear and reappear between the Aces in the box! But wait, there’s more! Next, the spectator puts their finger on top the pile containing the Aces and selections, the deck is placed into the box and PIFF-PAFF-POOF the selections vanish and appear between the Jacks in the box! It may take a while to get used to the handling, but it deserves the practice (and scripting) to make it sing.
King Tut is a Totally Unbelievable Transposition of two signed cards. One starts in the middle of the deck sandwiched between the black Kings and the other signed card is held in your hand. In an instant, they change places. This is a great effect that will take some work.
In The Fly, four Queens are removed from the deck and a selected card is signed. The deck is split into halves and the two black Queens are banded together and placed in one pile. The selection is placed between the two red Queens, banded together and placed in the other pile. A card with a different back design (a stranger card) is now added to the pile containing the selection. The selected card travels from between the banded Queens in one half to between the banded Queens in the other half. As if that weren’t enough, the signed selection’s back now matches the back of the stranger card! It may seem like this trick violates the Keep It Simple rule, but Michael insists it’s a killer trick that gets great reactions. Give it the time it deserves and maybe start by asking people if they’ve seen the movie The Fly (which was indeed Michael’s inspiration).
FOURclosure is a quick, fun routine where the spectator selects a card, for example, the Queen of Hearts. Then, through a series of colour changes you find the other three Queens before finally transforming the card in your hand into their card.
Blowing Away the Aces is Michael’s handling of Collecting the Vanishing Aces which is Geoff Latta’s variation of Jim Swain’s Passing Along the Vanishing Aces which can be found in Richard Kaufman’s Cardworks.(Got that?) Three selections are lost in the deck. The performer then visibly makes the four Aces vanish one at a time. The deck is spread and the Aces are seen face up in the middle with three face down cards interlaced among them which turn out to be the selections. I learned the Faro Shuffle just so I could perform Paul Gertner’s Unshuffled. The trick just described is my current motivation for learning the Pass.
Speaking of the Faro Shuffle, the next item, Incomplete Four Way, uses Marlo’s Incomplete Faro Location principle to find four selected cards in four impossible ways.
Industrial Strength Aces is a very clean and visual trick. Each Ace is shown clearly, vanishes under impossible circumstances and then the four Aces appear out of nowhere. The appearance of the Aces was inspired by Larry Jennings’s The Jennings Revelation from The Classic Magic of Larry Jennings. I found the final production to be the toughest part of this trick so if you want to perform it, I suggest learning it backwards.
In Unexpected Development, the magician tries to show off his cutting skills, however, each card cut to is blank. One by one, the faces of the cards are made to appear.
Tornado Card involves a borrowed business card and part of a drinking straw. The straw is visibly pushed through the card and seen to extend on both sides of the card. It is then removed and both are handed out for examination.
The Impossible Travellers combines McDonald’s Aces and Open Travellers. This is the simplified handling of what was printed in a manuscript called “The Impossible Travellers and OLRAM’S Real Gone Aces” which was put out by Michael and Ed Marlo. Jon Racherbaumer’s fingerprints are also on this routine. Apparently the manuscript had a very limited distribution and this trick remained underground until the printing of Top Secret Stuff. Intrigued? Check it out.
In The Trap Door Card the magician introduces a small packet of cards which are seen to be blank on one side and have a trap door printed on the other. One of the trap door cards is placed in the centre of the close up pad. A card is selected and signed. The magician uses the trap door to cause the selection to penetrate through the table top. This is repeated, but on the third time, the card goes through the trap door but does not end up under the table. Upon examination, the selection is found stuck in the trap door card (i.e. the blank side of the trap door card is now the signed selection!) The trap door card can be handed out as a souvenir. You will want to try this one.
No Palm Corner in Glass is, as the name suggests, a palmless version of Matt Schulien’s Corner in the Glass popularized by Eugene Burger. Now we all know that eliminating moves is not necessarily the road to better magic and Michael admits that the Schulien/Burger method is the most direct and therefore the best. This is a simplified handling with no palming that can also be done surrounded. So learn both and you’ll be ready for all situations.
Twenty out of thirty-one isn’t bad. Let’s move on to the next section which is “Coins”.
The Alchemists’s Dream is a Spellbound effect where you start and end clean.
China Syndrome is a card through table that uses a gimmick that I recall seeing (and buying) at Browser’s Den in the late 80s (I’m almost over the hill). The card penetrates twice and the third time it falls directly into the spectator’s hands. Then, a coin passes through the table into their hands as well. Michael credits Paul Harris’s Dream Dazzler as inspiration and also credits Tom Gagnon and Don England as both having made contributions to this effect. I think you’ll definitely want to give this one a try. I’ll give you a hint as to the gimmick required: PK.
As part of my quest to learn impromptu tricks, I made a note to learn Fusion/Fission. Two quarters are borrowed, placed in one hand, squeezed and when the hand is opened, they have turned into a half-dollar. It is then transformed back into the quarters and they are returned.
In Ultra-Fast Coins Across, coins travel one at a time from your left hand to your right. The secret to this routine is The Gallo Pitch, which is not explained in the book but Michael does provide some sources for the move*.
Jumbo Finale is a method for taking a coin and, in the process of turning your hand over, having it change into a jumbo coin. This same move can also be used for changing a miniature card into a regular-sized card. If you do get your hands on a copy of Top Secret Stuff, go get the required items and watch how good this looks in the mirror.
In the original Twilight, you produce a coin from a reflection. In Michael’s Twilight Zone, when the mirror is tilted near the middle of the coin, it appears to bend and when the mirror is removed the coin is actually bent. The mirror is then used to straighten the bent coin and is finally used to shrink the coin until it vanishes.
Next is a very clean Matrix routine called International Matrix Reverse. A U.S. half-dollar, English penny, Mexican centavo and Chinese coin gather together as per the original Matrix. The coins are picked up and vanished one at a time then, they reappear under their original cards. Here’s a routine with potential political themes if ever there was one! (i.e. Globalization, De-Globalization, Isolationism, International Trade…etc. etc.).
The final section is “At the Table” and it contains four items staring with My Cup Runneth Over. Imagine you’re at a restaurant and you make a few paper balls with pieces of your napkin, then take a couple of creamers and perform an impromptu cups and balls routine. The balls gather under the creamers as you would expect, but at the end the cream containers are sealed!
Now, imagine tapping a toothpick with a straw and having it vanish and reappear inside the straw. If you want to know how to do this read the aptly named Toothpick into Straw.
Also at the table, you borrow a dime, flip it in the air and it visibly penetrates into a plastic jelly container. Then, you peel back the cover and remove the dime. This is Jelly Roll.
Depending how you feel about removing your shoelaces while at a restaurant, you could also perform Swinger. Michael includes this idea from Bret Young. It is his addition to In the Hand-Off from Peter Samelson’s Theatrical Close-Up where a ring penetrates a shoelace while it’s being held by a spectator. Bret’s idea allows you to swing the ring on the shoelace in the air after the secret move.
Top Secret Stuff is well written, but I prefer it when there is even a brief attempt to describe a move instead of being referred to another work altogether. However, if you have even a few books by Marlo, Harris, Jennings, and Lorayne you should be okay.
Some of the moves required but not explained include: the Elmsley Count (ok, you really should know that one already), Mechanical Reverse, Pop-Out Move, Kelly Bottom Placement, Braue Reversal, Kaps Subtlety and the Goshman Pinch. Ask your fellow club members where to find descriptions of these (or there’s always YouTube, I guess).
Two moves appear often enough that they are explained (thoroughly) at the end. In Appendix A is Marlo’s Palmless Card to Pocket and in Appendix B is the Christ-Annemann Alignment Move and Secret Double.
I would say this book is for intermediate to experienced card workers and coin workers. I’m not sure if there are levels of jelly workers.
Top Secret Stuff was reviewed in the January/February 1991 issue of The Magic Menu by Jim Sisti and in the June 1991 issue of Opus by Michael Austin. (Thanks Conjuring Archive! **)
When I went through the book last year (for the first time in many), the items I made a note to learn included: Fusion/Fission; Trap Door Card; Twilight Zone, Nightmare Card and The AT&T Trick. Having examined the book more closely, there are now quite a few more items on that list. I was going to write them here, but I’ve used enough space already.
In the book’s introduction, Michael said it was scary that his ideas would now come under scrutiny and that other magicians would, upon the book’s release, be deciding whether or not some of the items are worth performing.
He needn’t have worried; they’re all worth performing.
Until next time… read your books.
* Michael mentions that it is described in Richard’s Almanac, Vol. 1, No. 4 December 1982, and in Michael Ammar’s Encore III. It can also be found in Lou Gallo: The Underground Man by Kaufman and Phillips, 1996.
