Price$34.95
Media TypeBook
CategoryMentalism
Date AddedNov 17, 2015
Heads I Win Tails You Lose
Jheff
Jheff's Marketplace of the Mind
(Based on 1 review)
- Bob Cassidy
Using only your voice and no special apparatus, can you control participants to make the choices you want them to? Of course, you can! Magicians have always been aware of this powerful secret. Mentalists have always revered this technique and made it an essential part of their repertoire. But for many years, the keys to making this successful have been overlooked, or not taught properly, and many performers have developed a dislike for using this verbal weapon.
In this book, Jheff, a performer for over forty years and an award-winning high school English teacher, revisits this completely impromptu technique. He explores the strengths and weaknesses of standard methods and provides new insights and nuances which will clarify the process and make it easier to understand and use. All of these routines can be done impromptu and with a variety of items. Requires nothing more than your voice, a script, and some objects which can be borrowed. Includes "Celebrimental," a routine by Jheff created especially for this volume, and a look at some other classic routines that use verbal manipulation."No matter how experienced you may be, if you study this book you'll become a much better performer than you are now. Thank you, Jheff, for writing such a useful and informative book."
- from the forward by Neal Scryer
82 pages, 6" x 9", softcover
Reviews
(Top ▲)
Overview
80 pages, nearly 30 (very short) chapters, a whole bunch of ideas, a whole bunch of thoughts about equivoque, $35 bucks, and 1 Magic Review of Jheff's Heads I Win Tails You Lose. Is it Gem or is it Rubble. Stay tuned to find out.Effect
The book has a few effects, but mostly it's a treatise on equivoque. The subtitle of the book is The Art of Verbal Manipulation. The book appears to be trying to be a modern version of Max Maven's / Phil Goldstein's Verbal Control, and in some cases it succeeds, while in others it fails.Product Quality
Generally speaking, the book reads well. There a few typos, but nothing to detract from reading the book and learning from it. The front cover, however, is printed weird, and hard to read, and part of the text is cut off.The chapters are very short, easily digestible, and explains things well enough. However, in many cases, the material is overly repetitive. I really believe this book could have been about 20 pages (maybe more) shorter than it is.
Generally speaking, Jheff's thinking is good, but much of it feels not-new-at-all. In fact, some of it is actually a step backwards.
Throughout the book, Jheff offers scripts, and in some cases he offers a script that is "bad" or "wrong" then compares it to a script that is "good" or "right."
There was at least one case where I was reading the "good" script, and genuinely thought he was demonstrating a "bad" script. I had to re-read it about a half-dozen times, double check the context, etc. to make sure that I wasn't mis-understanding. I wasn't.
He was giving some very bad advice regarding equivoque. Without going into too much detail, he was advocating for (a version of) the following script.
"Pick one of these two items. You picked red. Great that leaves us with the blue to use for the trick."
I personally feel (and I'm right) that the phrase "that leaves" should be completely removed from the equivoque dictionary.
Other than a couple of other spots of this nature, the book is good, but mostly for equivocal virgins.
Ad Copy Integrity
The claims made in the ad copy are true in the sense that it doesn't really make any specific claims about the book. Rather it makes claims about equivoque in general and how powerful it can be.Final Thoughts
Although it's true that many folks who've used equivoque professionally do it not-correctly, I don't think that this book will "fix" them. It think it can lead the folks who've never used equivoque down the (mostly) right path, but I think some of the wrong-doers will continue to be wrong after reading this.Particularly because one of the biggest wrong-doings of the wrong-doers is the "that leaves" line which Jheff appears to be a proponent of.
That said, there are definitely a couple of ideas, thoughts, concepts that are clever, thought-provoking, and worthy of study, and even some of the wrong-doers (if they have an open mind) may learn from this.
On one hand, this book is sort of a decent compilation of ideas with some minor (yet important) scripting tweaks offered by Jheff. On the other hand, the book is mostly not revolutionary or new.
On the third hand (?), the effect Celebrimental is definitely a smart idea with pieces that I, likely, will use, and so will many others once they realize how clever the concept is. Yet even the clever idea part of this isn't new.
As you can see, my jury remains out. So let me ask you a question.
"Is this a 5 star product book? Whatever your answer is will be the answer."
[Insert your answer here]
"Ah. I see your answer is [Insert your answer here]. Thus, that leaves us with this book being okay and receiving a final rating of 3.5 stars with a Stone Status of gem (little g)."