Everything revolves around my upcom­ing MZvD lec­ture tour, where I’ll be present­ing my new lec­ture “60/​60 – Best of ARCANE CRUMBS.” Right now, the phones are ringing non-stop, and there’s a lot of nego­ti­at­ing over dates. A list of tour stops will fol­low as soon as possible!

From the Blog

Dive into my pub­lished articles.

• Har­bin’s Card In Bottle
  Robert Har­bin’s ‘Card in Bottle’ is a ter­rific trick. I abso­lutely love Mar­tin Lewis’ bril­liant adaption/​method for doing it. The only wee little draw­back is that it demands the use of a black­out table to get rid of the empty bottle. For a long …
• Bob Ostin’s Clip
  Recently, Bob Ostin’s ven­er­able switch­ing device received an update and was revamped by a prom­in­ent magic fact­ory. I am a big fan of Bob’s gim­mick and have been using it for a few dec­ades now, switch­ing in and out vari­ous items, from bil­lets to …
• About Cre­ation
  In the magic com­munity arrises from time to time the topic of ‘being a cre­ator’ or ‘cre­ations’. So – time to take a short look at what cre­ation, cre­at­ors or ‘being cre­at­ive’ could mean. If we look it up in the dic­tion­ary, the results …
• A Mech­an­ical Mat­rix
  Recently visu­al­ist Will Tsai per­formed his ver­sion of the Mat­rix effect on AGT. As it could be fore­seen, it got a tre­mend­ous reac­tion on the vari­ous social media and magic for­ums. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7wrfzpjf9U The main point of dis­cus­sion is without a doubt the ques­tion whether …
• Ascanio Float­ing Double Vari­ation
  This is a little extra for an ACR, that can be used before reveal­ing that the card rose up to the top. To begin with, the ambi­tious card is on top (without the spec­tat­ors know­ing this, of course). The per­former shows …
• Trib­ute To Len­nart Green
  When Len­nart Green put out his com­mer­cial routine called ‘Stolen Cards’, it proved to be an imme­di­ate hit in the card magic world. Like many, I imme­di­ately bought a set. Without his inven­tion and routine, this humble offer­ing would­n’t exist. The trick is a very …
• Spring Flowers Reloaded
  Spring flowers have been a topic in magic for more than 100 years. Ever since Buatier de Kolta inven­ted them, they have been a fixed com­pon­ent in magician’s rep­er­toires. It is sad that the flowers avail­able from deal­ers look just out­right crappy and cheap. One …
• Per­fec­tion Hurts
  Magi­cians tend to over-eval­­u­ate the import­ance of per­fec­tion. They try to achieve per­fec­tion in their tricks and moves, and most of the times some­thing other very import­ant (present­a­tion) falls behind. Ever since Dai Ver­non brought that ›per­fec­tion‹ to the attention …
• Ring And Rope
  Finally, I found a ring that is per­fectly suited for these count­less ring/​rope routines. Finally a ring the spec­tat­ors will recog­nize and know what it is! Onstage, I could ima­gine even using the lion’s head as a deco, remov­ing the ring, do the routine and …
• Obsessed Magi­cians
  Com­par­ing the past and the present times, it seems the magician’s scene is more and more dom­in­ated by trends. I see people get­ting heav­ily involved into pro­du­cing and pro­mot­ing busker’s pouches and com­plete ‘busk­ers’ out­fits (from table to pouch to cups to …
• Rubik’s Cube Magic
  In the past years there has been a revival of the ‘magic’ with a Rubik’s Cube. More and more clever meth­ods to do vari­ous effects with it. The craze once again star­ted … For me, the cube has always been a toy. A soph­ist­ic­ated one, but …
• The Slippy Tip
  This one really changed my life and atti­tude towards the work with a thumb tip and any fol­ded slips of paper or bills inside it. It is what I would call a clas­sical ‘hack’. The main prob­lem for me was that often I couldn’t retrieve …
• Bet­ter Than Erd­nase
  Daniel Madis­on’s video­clip makes the rounds and it seems that more and more card men dis­agree or laugh at it. I like Daniel Madison. He is him­self and unique. And I like the clips he puts out. Very enter­tain­ing. He is the …
• Don’t Please The Audi­ence
  Here is an inter­est­ing and thought-pro­­vok­ing art­icle you should read before going into my ram­blings: http://blog.simplease.at/2014/02/dont-please-your-clients/ Good thought, right? For a designer, this is simply a truth. The qual­ity of the rela­tion­ship customer/​designer depends on how good the designer is find­ing out what the …
• Love it, leave it or change it
  This is quite a good say­ing that someone reminded me of some time ago. I have been think­ing about it really hard. I’m talk­ing about what to do in magic in these times, and what to pub­lish and share with the magic com­munity and …
• The Same­ness of Magic
  In the past years I star­ted to watch care­fully other magi­cians’ selec­tions of tricks that they per­form in their shows. No mat­ter where I looked, again and again I saw the same tricks (at least here in Ger­many, Aus­tria and Switzer­land): Chop Cup (Paul …
• The Mighty TV
  Recently, I was watch­ing the You­Tube clip of David Roth’s per­form­ance on the Penn & Teller show. I was inter­ested in see­ing his hand­ling of the open ser­vante. A glance at the pic­ture will tell you that the dir­ect­ors of the show made my …
• Thank You, David Roth!
  I am reflect­ing on the mag­ni­fi­cent magi­cians and people who brought all that joy to my life. Without them, I would­n’t be what I am. Par­tic­u­larly, I would like to express my sin­cerest thanks to Mr. David Roth. When I was a young­ster, his coin work …
• Three Shell Game Addendum
  The clas­sic three shell game is a strong favour­ite of mine. All those years I was strug­gling to find a nice and prac­tical way to trans­port the props. No finally, I found it. The solu­tion is a simple leather pouch, which is used to carry pencils …
• Idi­ot’s Key Card
  The idiot is me, by the way. Because I repeatedly for­get in Ver­non’s great trick ‘Emo­tional Reac­tion’ with the key card (see Inner Secrets of Card Magic), whether the card on the left or the card on the right is the …
• Mini Illu­sion Appear­ance
  Some­times I like to chal­lenge myself (or, in fact, I am chal­lenged by someone) with a par­tic­u­lar prob­lem. How can I make the per­former appear in a close-up theater? This sounds easy, but it is not. I have found some inter­est­ing solu­tions, which I will explain even­tu­ally over …
• Scor­pio Omni Deck
  Just received Dia­mond Jim Tyler’s new Omni Deck from Wolfgang Wollet (thank you for the light­ing fast deliv­ery). Great thing! Scares me to death only look­ing at it, not to talk about hav­ing it in my hands! It looks so scary that …
• Take A Dif­fer­ent Path
  It was­n’t long after David Cop­per­field and Kevin James pop­ular­ized the ‘Snow’ effect that soon just about every­one was doing it. If your goal is to look like every other magi­cian, fol­low the herd. If your goal is to define …
• The Diary Trick
  The diary effect is a clas­sic for many reas­ons. I like it, but many of the exist­ing meth­ods are a bit com­plic­ated. This changed when Patrick Page showed me his Good Old Moore’s Diary trick. Here was the per­fect solu­tion for walk-around work. …

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