Reading this forum I could see some urban myths making their way into a routine. Anyone ever do this? Or see it?

I think that's a great idea. I live in Louisiana and incorporate a lot of semi folk tales and legends from voodoo in some of my routines.

I do make up a lot of my story lines that change the history of the city I live just slightly. I would guess that that would be considered creating Urban Myths for my own devious ends. I have been known to duck historians after my 'Spirit Theatre' when some of the facts do not seem to exactly match up with the commonly known stories by adding an extra character or two or even an event that has not been recorded at the MN History Center. It gives me great delight to spoon feed baloney to a willing, eager and gullible spectator.

A Lawyer friend has referred to me as an embellisher of the truth and definitely NOT a credible witness.

There is a Sucker born every minute- P.T. Barnum

k

Have used a brief segment focused on & customized to the locality performed in. This bit is a play on words & places names (neighborhoods/streets/geographic features) with a fact regarding local history/urban legend heretofore unknown to the audience. A sleight of legend, if you will. The intent & audience effect is comedic.

Some venues lend themselves to working up this legend patter more readily than others. The down side: each legend bit can't be used in another locality. The up side: this is an enjoyable process creating a bit of business that is very site specific. Whilst the structuring from place to place remains similar, the real work is in the quality of the language used.

Hope you have fun working with urban legends. They represent a very large audience bullseye to aim at.

You can transplant many urban legends to almost any locale; in fact, that is part of the UL tradition. For example, my wife encountered the people-hiding-under-your-car-and-robbing-you story in Princeton, NJ. A week after she told me about it, we heard the same tale told in Clovis, California about a mall in neighboring Fresno. College ULs travel from university to university.
Urban legends usually acquire local identification to make them seem more realistic.
May all your urban legends be good ones!

Not sure if this qualifies or not. I made up a coin routine using the idea of a bogus "urban legend". I pattered that the real reason why the U.S. Mint started making bicentennial quarters in the 70's was that somehow counterfeit quarters were being circulated. One out of every three quarters dated pre-1971 were counterfeit--according to my bogus patter. So I asked to borrow three pre-1971 quarters. This rationale allowed me to switch my cig thru quarter for one of the borrowed ones very easily. I pattered that odds were that one of the three borrowed quarters was counterfeit, and I could tell which one because the metal it was made from was less dense than genuine quarters. I then tested the density with a metal ballpoint pen by tapping and listening for a tell-tale "false" sound. Sure enough, not only did the counterfeit quarter ring false--the pen went right through the inferior metal! I kept the "bogus" coin and gave back a bicentenniel quarter to replace it, explaining that the US Treasury Department had authorized me to test quarters and confiscate suspect ones.

----- Amado "Sonny" Narvaez

Except that Barnum didn't say that; David Hannum did. They were each displaying the fake remains of a a giant, in competition with each other. The difference is that Barnum knew that both were fake while Hannum--who had paid a pretty sum for his fake as part of a five person syndicate--thought his own was real. Hannum was referring to the customers who went to see Barnum's fake and not to the customers who came to see his own when he said "There's a sucker born every minute."

I believe that some mentalists say that, "People only use 10% of their brain." That's an urban legend that's a myth.

I do an entire act based on urban legends and things we believe that aren't actually so. I find it to be a great way talk about the way the world really works and the way we perceive it. It gets right into perception vs reality and... that's magic.
;-)

Oh, I like this.

I live in a little mining town, up in Montana. Oodles and oodles folklore and ghost stories. Now if I could get into the spooky side of things, I have some great ideas...

During the 1500's, wealthy Scottish Lairds employed Witch finders to rid their land of suspected witches. Payed around six times the average weekly wage, and around one years average wage per witch detected. Called Witch Prickers, their method of detecting genuine witches consisted of "pricking" their victims with a sharpened tool suck as a long needle. If the poor unsuspecting victim didn't bleed, this was proof they were involved in witchcraft... if they did they were set free. The Witch Prickers employed their excellent knowledge of anatomy to select areas where blood was less likely, thereby increasing their detection rate! I use this very true tale of Scottish history & perform the Needle Thu Arm routine - blood... or no blood!

Of course!!!

Many of my demonstratons revolve around myths and ledgends!

Tony "Doc" Shiels has been the biggest influence for my performances.

I have effects based around the Loch Ness Monster, alien abductions, the Bermuda Triangle, local folklore and countless other twists and tales.

Currently I am working on an act based around the life of Mother Shipton and her abilities of psychokinesis and prophesy.

Creative a mysterious and beautiful storyline around a routine can take your spectators on a whole new journey. isn't that what we should be giving then anyway? A journey?

I like to ensure my audiences go through a mental and physical journey when they see one of my performances. An experience that hey will never forget and will tell everyone they meet about.

Cheers,
Art.

Urban legends are a great source of inspiration for many presentation. People love these legends that seem to be real. Far more than our usual presentation. A simple self working card trick can be very entertaining as Eugene Burger demonstrated it with his Sole Survivor (cf. Magic & Meaning).

The very nature of Magic requires that we lie. Some of us are "professional liars".

Today I thought it would be funny to cite that statistic and then say, "but today for the very first time I will attempt to use 20 percent of my brain at the same time! I will use both hemispheres, right and left, the creative and the logical, as I perform complex mathematical calculations while singing "Surry With a Fringe on Top" from the musical, "Oklahoma".

As I sing and do a magic square, I abruptly stop in exaggerated pain as I press my hand to my forehead and maybe bleed out of my nose a bit. I don't know. Would that be funny? I think I could make it funny.

I should note that what many people believe about being left-brained or right-brained doesn't appear to be true, either. http://www.livescience.com/39373-left-br......yth.html

Memories all alone in the moonlight

All the while...


(The square root of 1769 is....)

Anybody heard of "Butch, Ringo, & the Sheep"?

I have now I've Googled it!

I work the GHOST impression tablet, and part of my routine is to talk about the once common belief that the last image seen stays embedded in the eyes. At this I remove my glasses, claiming that the impression cannot be seen while there is any impediment, and get a good peek at the impression while doing this.

Glasses are a brilliant accessory for magic, a bit like a magic wand, they can be a great distraction. A teacher I knew said that when he was asked a difficult question by a student he would take is glasses off and give them a polish while formulating an appropriate response.