Lee sent us Part 2 of his Japanese journeys, which include a great magic store he visited, outstanding city scenery and some footage of the lectures he has been giving. The last minute or so rock — even with a translator, the Card Star is the man.

Hopefully he’ll send us some footage of an Arcane card being used to cut sushi. Hey, if the Masters can cut cheese…

• Window, the incredible card-through-window transposition by David Stone, Jean-Luc Bertrand and Mickeal Chatelain, is now $10 off. This effect has gotten incredible reviews from working professionals — it has the beauty of a David Copperfield effect, but is much more practical and affordable than other card-through-window effects. Watch the trailer again to remind yourself. You know you’ve been on the fence about this effect for a while, so now is the time to jump off and fry some eyeballs.



• Those of you who use white-pip Black Tigers, blue Masters or blue Vintage 1800s: This is your time to stock up. During this Black-and-Blue deck sale, those decks are discounted 25 percent. Don’t miss your chance to get this pasteboard hotness into your hands and stock up for all those holiday gigs you’re going to work.

Both of these sales are for a limited time, so order quickly.

• Attention, Asian viewers of the AXN Network: We are jealous of you. Cyril Takayama’s newest TV show, Simply Magic, is slated to premiere this Thursday. Set your DVRs and save it until we can crash on your couch and watch it with you… we’ll bring the roast beef and Baconnaise sandwiches on sourdough. AXN has a teaser vid you can watch.
• When we’re not pounding keys (Hey! Twice in one post for that phrase!), we’ve been getting wrapped up in ABC’s FlashForward. So we not only geeked out when Lloyd Simcoe managed to beat a four-of-a-kind in poker with, we suspect, some sleight of hand — we about jumped out of the couch and threw our practice Arcanes in the air when we saw Ricky Jay at the end.



• Speaking of Arcanes: Remember that video in the Artist Gallery featuring the redhead who perched a stack of cards on her wrist and gave them a spin? That’s Ekaterina Dobrokhotova, a magician and flourisher widely known in the flourishing community. She’s asking for help landing another job as a shopping consultant. Thecuso is helping her out with a contest; he has the details.
• We all know magicians have powers, but Ontario may be giving too much power to them, according to a skeptic’s blog. A member of the Canadian Skeptics United has a problem with an effort to grant the power of prescription to naturopaths, who practice natural healing. Not really magic related, but interesting nonetheless.

Warning: The music will get stuck in your head. And so will his move with the black Three of Hearts. You can see more of his work in the Ghost deck video.

As usual, you can buy your way into the special bracketed gifts, which include the elusive 1st edition Black Ghost decks. But if your order is chosen out of a drawing, you could win so much more, including uncut sheets, a year’s supply of Arcanes or a videoconference session with Brad Christian.

The grand prize: One lucky person will get to fill their shopping cart with whatever they can cram in five minutes. Get ready to mash play on that mouse button. The limit is $1,500 worth, but we don’t think you can get it all.

All the details are here. Enjoy, and happy holidays!

Hand Out 500 uses a slick gimmick that lets you visibly change bills and hand them out afterward. The gimmick is so solid that it lets you do the snap, sudden change either covered or out in the open (be sure to tell your spectators to refrain from blinking). The effect has so few vulnerable angles that it’s almost spectator proof.

The best part: Hayes presents an alternate use of the gimmick to present an unbelievable card to wallet effect. When we saw this, our brain cells lit up like wildfire with all the applications.

Hand Out 500 is the latest from the Paul Harris Presents line, and is available now from Ellusionist. Check out the trailer and details.

De’vo vom Schattenreich, he of the incredibly fast fingers, has been named as a guest on the next episode of the iTricks Clinic. The co-creator of Xtreme Card Manipulation (along with Jerry Cestkowski) will review videos sent in by you and give you pointers on how to improve. And it will be LIVE.

De’vo said in a post on the Handlordz forums that the live chat is a new venture: “This will be the very first time I’ll be doing something like this and not sure if I’ll ever do it again, so you probably don’t want to miss out on this one,” he wrote.

Those of you who perform XCM should get your videos ready and send them to iTricks at iTricksClinic@gmail.com. De’vo’s clinic will be next Monday (time to be announced). If you’ve never seen an iTricks Clinic, Justin Robert Young rocks. His live chats are so. Epic. That. Normal. Punctuation. Rules. Don’t. Apply. Past clinicians include Card Star Lee Asher and CelebraCadabra coaches Asi Wind and Simon Lovell, and each session was incredible.

Blaine and Angel drew Daniels’ ire, because of their use of technology:

“I can’t respect David Blaine, Chris (sic) Angel and particular others coming from America. There was a rule for us magicians when we were on television, and that was that if you can’t do it live then you don’t use technology to change the appearance. You have to be able to do it live, that’s the job of being a magician.”

Daniels also wasn’t impressed with how Blaine has moved into stunts, and his wife, Debbie McGee, said that it’s the same thing as the vaudevillian endurance acts of the Great Depression, only that TV companies are paying, not customers.

Seriously, whoever took the time to do this is all kinds of awesome. Was it you, Lee?