I'm from Orlando, Florida and I'm a close-up card magician.
I didn't fool Penn and Teller the first time I was on the show,
but it was truly an incredible experience.
It was especially nerve racking because after I performed my trick,
I had to race home to get back in time for my own wedding. During the ceremony,
my wife did a magic trick and she fooled me.
She made our rings vanish from the box and appear mid-air in a ball of fire.
Now I have another great trick prepared for Penn and Teller.
But I'll have to race home again because this time my wife is about to make our
first baby magically appear. So if I dash out the door, you guys will know why.
Penn and Teller just sat down and realized
they have to deal with Jimmy Ichihana.
Thank you Alyson. Penn and Teller, it's a pleasure to be back.
I should tell you the trick that we're about to do is all about precision. Um,
more precisely. It's all about making
precise cuts and actually the first cut happens at the factory.
Cards are printed on a large sheet and then a blade strikes down with incredible
accuracy to punch out the cards.
And you can apply that same type of accuracy when you're cutting cards here at
the table. And we'll, we'll demonstrate, Alyson, in order to do that,
we need to have a card selected. So here as I go through the cards, just say,
stop for me, wherever you like. Anytime. Stop. Right here?
Wonderful. A minute later, something else. But this one will be yours.
So remember that. I don't want to see it. Okay, great.
And before I cut the cards,
I need to know what I'm actually looking for and where those cards are located.
And I, I can do that all at once simply by looking.
Done.
Alyson, we're missing one. Yes. Oh, so you know, we know better than that.
We're missing an ace. Actually, you know what? Even better than that,
I believe I saw the diamonds, the clubs, and the spades.
So you have to have the ace of hearts. The ace of hearts. Thank you!
But the more challenging part is to remember where
I saw those other aces. And so if I can remember correctly, that should be,
that should be positions 23,
34 and 46.
Remember 23. Remember 34. Remember 46. Okay?
And we can go ahead and we'll check here. That's a, that's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23
and that's an ace. 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33,
this would be 34 and that would be another ace.
35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, this would be
46 and that would be another ace.
And of course those are all aces. But you know what,
even if I know exactly where the cards are located,
I still need to be able to cut that precise number of cards and Alyson,
can you hold out your hand like this for me?
And if I place your card on your hand, you can feel that, right?
That weighs something. Not much. And it's not very thick.
But if you did this every day, week after week, month after month,
you could start to tell the difference between one and two, two and three,
three and four until you knew precisely how many cards you were holding.
And here we'll try this, with just your card.
We're going to attempt 10 exact cuts.
That's one and two. That's three. That's a four and five. That's six.
That's a seven. That's eight. That's nine. And that's 10. That's 10 exact cuts.
And I can show you that they're exact.
I can show you that they are exact because in the first pile,
there's just one card and well in the second pile there's only two cards.
The third pile,
you know it's an exact cut because there's just three cards and in the fourth
pile there's four. In the fifth pile, you can start to see the pattern.
That's five cards in the fifth pile. And in the sixth pile,
well three and three would be six. In the seventh pile, that's one, two, three,
four, five, six and seven. In the eighth pile, that's one, two, three, four,
five, six,
seven, eight. In the ninth pile, that's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight, nine and in the 10th pile...
While there's not enough cards to have 10 but we did cut 10.
We cut exactly
ten. And you know what? Not just any ten,
that's the ten of hearts because Alyson, you remember, you wanted the hearts?
And if we start with the ace and we end with the 10.
Well then in the pile with two, that would be the two of hearts.
The pile with three cards. That would be the
three of hearts. That's the four. That's the five. That's the six, the seven,
the eight, the nine and the 10! Thank you!
You know we cut to 10, we cut all the tens. That's 10 exact cuts.
Thank you. Of course. I mean, now you've seen me make exact cuts,
Aylson its time for you to make an exact cut.
I know...you don't, you don't have to do a full 10 exact cuts yourself. But, uh,
we will try at least one here and a, I don't want to,
we'll use all the cards and I don't want you to actually see exactly what you're
going for, so we'll add in the aces along with the,
the jokers and the advertising cards. And Alyson, if you would,
just for a moment,
if you would close your eyes and I'm going to show everyone else what,
you'll be aiming for. So we'll get a, this will be our target card.
Yeah.
Beautiful.
And we will place that right about here.
And Alyson, if you'd open your eyes for us please.
And now it's quite straight forward here. All you're going to do,
is you're going to cut for just above the middle.
So you think about right in the middle and go maybe one or two cards more. Yeah,
you've got this, you can do this! An exact cut. Yes. Yeah. This looks wonderful.
This looks wonderful. Yes, this is good. This is good.
And I don't even want to touch it.
Go ahead and pick up the card that you just cut to. Yeah, this is good.
And show it to Penn and Teller. Show it to Penn and Teller. How did we do?
Did we get the Queen of clubs?
That is an exact cut. You know what? It's better than that
because it's not just an exact cut. It's the only cut card. No, no, really.
It's the only cut card. Every other
card fuses together. Every other card, except for one!
Between the Jack and the King, we're missing the queen. That's an exact cut.
Thank you guys so much.
[inaudible] awww. Jimmy Ichihana
Do you think this is going to fool them? I mean you certainly,
we'll see it's a fun trick. It's a, it's based on a wonderful magician,
Henry Evans and it's got a few little tweaks and I'm hoping they haven't seen
before. So how long have you been working on it?
I started working on this right after the last season of Fool Us. So, uh, yeah,
two years ago started working on this and it's changed quite a bit over the last
two years. So happy to be able to share it with everyone.
So how's your magic career going? Yeah it's been incredible.
Having Fool Us is kind of the, the gold star credential, at least for me,
it's been wonderful.
That I've been able to travel out to Los Angeles to be at the Magic Castle and
then just recently in Chicago,
there's a wonderful new venue called the Chicago Magic Lounge.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wonderful. Yeah. These are all, all such fun places to visit,
and to perform at
and uh, it's really, for me,
it's been Fool Us that has been unlocking this for me, so. That's fantastic.
All right, it's time to see if Penn and Teller have figured it out. Penn,
Teller,
A Jimmy, this is exactly
the kind of routine, I love. It's just total jock stuff.
Totally hard stuff being done machine gun fast over and over again.
You also did something, you know, while magicians with their patter,
a love to do lousy writing.
They start something and then never pay it off.
The idea that you started talking about the way the cards were cut and that that
word goes all the way through and actually ends up foreshadowing the punch line
is terrific. No one bothers with that and it's so important. They really should.
What you do is a combination of, um, of techniques and shall we say,
organization, all of it laid out. Beautifully done. You're so skilled.
Your hands are so great that even the act of counting cards fairly, uh,
can help hold all sorts of tricky little things,
even though your sleeves aren't rolled down. Very tricky.
Very tricky things here. Um, some of the stuff, no kidding,
uh, fooled me,
but didn't fool Teller and some of stuff, no kidding,
fooled Teller, but didn't fool me. Um,
so what you did, we think was you wowed us and we loved it,
but you didn't fool us. Thank you guys.
[inaudible].
