Ebook - Brain Food: Gourmet Edition by David Parr
Description & Effect
David Parr's critically acclaimed 'Brain Food' returns, reimagined and digitized as 'Brain Food: Gourmet Edition.' This essential ebook offers a meticulously revised and updated menu of charming, mysterious magic that has captivated audiences and fellow magicians for nearly two decades. Now, for the first time in a digital format, you can explore Parr's ingenious insights, methods, and theatrical presentations that elevate magic from mere tricks to unforgettable experiences.
A Full Course of Extraordinary Effects
Dive into eight distinct effects, each presented with Parr's unique flair and expert instruction:
- Power of the Mind: Witness a match vanish right from your hand with a method so clean, it's designed to fool even 'in-the-know' magicians.
- Swindle: David's celebrated take on the Grant bill transposition, perfectly restaged for parlor settings and featuring an updated gaff for modern currency.
- Psilocation: A volunteer freely selects and shuffles a card back into the deck, yet you, the blindfolded performer, effortlessly locate their chosen card.
- D.P. Card in Wallet: Explore David's clever enhancements to the Mullica Wallet, ensuring a truly startling and surprising finale for your audience.
- Future Shock: Present a baffling card prediction where a volunteer shuffles the deck, making your control seem impossible.
- Lucky Penny: Discover a truly proper and engaging presentation for the classic Lippincott Box, turning a vanishing lucky charm into a magical reappearance.
- Werewolf: A spooky and theatrical homage to Eugene Burger's Burned Card, building suspense to a terrifying scream-inducing climax.
- Dinner with the Borgias: Learn two innovative recipes for this theatrical Bank Night plot – one for stage, one for close-up – where guests mysteriously choose 'poisoned' goblets.
Beyond the Mechanics: The Art of Magic
'Brain Food: Gourmet Edition' offers much more than just tricks. It includes a 'smorgasbord of thought-provoking essays' that provide invaluable insights into making magic truly memorable and engaging. Explore topics like the masterful use of suspense and surprise, finding magic in everyday objects, the importance of fair play, and much more. These essays provide the intellectual ingredients necessary for any magician aiming to deepen their craft and connect with their audience on a profound level.
Digital Convenience with Bonus Material
This comprehensive ebook is delivered in a universal PDF format, ensuring it's viewable on any platform for immediate access to its wealth of knowledge. As a special bonus for the digital edition, 'Gourmet Edition' includes a section allowing you to print custom props for performing several of the featured effects. Feed your mind, feed your magic, and elevate your performances with the enduring wisdom and innovative effects contained within this essential guide. Esteemed magicians like Andrew Basso, Robert Neale, and Eugene Burger have praised its depth and thoughtfulness, confirming its status as a must-read for serious practitioners.
Original Specs
Brain Food: Gourmet Edition is David Parr’s classic menu of charming and mysterious magic — revised, updated and digitized! When Brain Food was first released, nearly twenty years ago, it met with great critical acclaim, and it continues to appear on lists of must-read magic books. The Gourmet Edition brings Brain Food to the digital realm for the first time, with updated methods, scripts and handlings for eight effects:
Power of the Mind. A lit match vanishes from the magician’s hand. David’s approach to this effect eliminates telltale moments, making it possible to fool people who are “in the know.”
Swindle. David’s popular handling for the Grant bill transposition, restaged for parlor performance and with an updated gaff that works with the new currency.
Psilocation. Someone from the audience selects a card and then shuffles it back into the deck. And yet the performer is able to find the chosen card — while blindfolded!
D.P. Card in Wallet. David’s devious additions to the Mullica Wallet make the ending of this effect a complete surprise to the audience.
Future Shock. A card prediction that really baffles audiences, because the cards are shuffled by a volunteer, and the magician seems to have no control over the deck.
Lucky Penny. Finally, a proper presentation for the Lippincott Box! A lucky charm is given to someone in the audience, only to have it vanish and then reappear in an unlikely place.
Werewolf. David’s take on Eugene Burger’s Burned Card is a spooky homage to the monster movies he loved when he was a kid. It begins with a volunteer discovering that she is marked to be the werewolf’s next victim, and it ends with a scream!
Dinner with the Borgias. David shares two recipes for this theatrical twist on the Bank Night plot, one for stage, and one for close-up. Three guests from the audience are offered a free choice from among four golden goblets. When everyone has chosen a cup, the guests discover that their cups are “poisoned,” and the cup left for the magician is the only one that is not!
Brain Food: Gourmet Edition also offers a smorgasbord of thought-provoking essays that contain the ingredients for making magic memorable and engaging to audiences. Topics include the usefulness of suspense and surprise, the magic that can be found in everyday objects, the importance of fair play, and much more. And now that Brain Food has gone digital, the Gourmet Edition includes a section that allows you to print special props for performing some of the effects in the book!
The ebook is in PDF format, viewable on any platform.
Feed your mind, feed your magic!
“Great advice, the kind that 95 percent of people don’t think about, but it contains the real secrets of magic as a successful art.” — Andrew Basso
“What I appreciate most is David’s thinking about our art. His book Brain Food has the qualities of what we can label a gourmet meal: good food, good drink, good company, and good conversation. I am quite taken with his style. His creations illustrate his engagement with the people in his audiences. So also do his conversations in this book. It is thoughtful, to be sure.” — Robert Neale
“Dinner with the Borgias is one of the most entertaining, theatrical, intelligent presentations for Just Chance that I’ve ever come across. I'd love to see more writing like this about stand-up performance material, but the sad honest truth is that most of it just doesn’t have this level of depth or thought behind it.” — Anthony Owen
“Mr. Parr writes clearly and intelligently, and what he has to say will make you think.” — Michael Close
“These are perfect lessons for all magicians in how careful thinking really can improve our magic.” — Eugene Burger
“Brain Food was one of my first and favorite tastes of modern bizarre and storytelling magic. This is a text that I have highly recommended to many, and even bought as a gift for a few magical friends. It is exciting to see this fresh take on some familiar recipes.” — Paul Draper
