"phone book prediction"(#108)

"PHONE BOOK PREDICTION" (#108)

Effect
The magician draws attention to a windowed envelope standing on a stand on stage. The audience can see a piece of paper inside the envelope. The magician explains this will come in to play later on. A spectator is invited to sit on a chair on stage. This person is given a phone book.
A beach ball is then thrown out in to the audience. The first person to catch it is asked to call out any page number in the phone book. The spectator on stage opens the phone book to that page. Again, the ball is thrown, and another person calls out a column number, our local phone book has four columns on a page. The spectator goes to that column in the phone book. Finally, another person calls out a line and spectator looks at the name on that line and circles it with a pen, he DOES NOT reveal the name yet. This really is a random name choice, absolutely NO force. The magician then draws attention to the envelope and the prediction that is inside. The envelope is turned upside down. The audience sees the prediction fall out. Spectator finally reveals the name he has circled and it matches EXACTLY the prediction that was inside the sealed envelope. I have also performed this where I also reveal the phone number as a kicker.

THE HOW
The strong point of this routine is that the spectator never reveals the name in the phone book until the very end, so how does the performer know the name to load it? All will be revealed.

I actually have two identical phone books, one is onstage, the other offstage with my wife. As people are calling out the numbers, columns and a line, my wife is offstage following along. As soon as she hears the line number, she finds the name and phone number and uses her cell phone to text message me the results. My cell phone is onstage in my case.

Without exposing the exact method for loading Dream Prediction, I use a white board to write down the answers as they are called out by the audience. This gives me the opportunity to load the final prediction without audience seeing it. Once the spectator starts looking at the name in the phone book, I go to my case to get a pen for them to circle it. All I have to do is glance at my phone and read the text message. The first thing I read is the name. I hand the spectator on stage the pen, asking them to circle the name they are looking at. This gives me time to do the ‘dirty´ work and as the envelope is opened and the final prediction falls out revealing my prediction. I can now follow this prediction routine by revelaing the phone number. As I put everything back in my case and the audience thinks it´s all over, I get a glimpse of my cell phone and look at the phone number on the text. It´s then a matter of asking the person to concentrate on the phone number. I then reveal the numbers as I write them in front of them on the white board. Of course, you could memorise both name and number to start and have both on the prediction. I am a huge fan of using technology to perform magic, and in this case, the cell phone replaces the need for a spectator to actually walk onstage and hand you the information. This makes this type of effect so much stronger. I am sure many of you will take this effect and using the cell phone idea come up with your own ways to reveal the final prediction.