There's An Egg In Your Hat

Discuss the art of Children's Entertainment with your fellow performers.
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Spellbinder
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There's An Egg In Your Hat

Postby Spellbinder » December 4th, 2014, 4:30 am

"There's An Egg In Your Hat" is the title of a new e-Book by Jim Gerrish in which he makes a case for getting rid of the "egg bag" and replacing it with a borrowed knit hat from a child in the audience. At the same time, he proposes doing away with the sucker part of the classic egg bag routine, which seems to be the only reason why magicians still cling to the "classic" egg bag in any of its current forms. If you get rid of that routine, you also dump a lot of the standard jokes that go with it "hold out your hand - not that hand, the clean hand", "Nothing under the arm on this side and nothing under the arm on that side" to name just two.

The advantage gained is a whole new way of looking at an egg which seems to keep appearing and reappearing in a child's thoroughly examined hat and finding new jokes to explain how and why this happens, and what to do about it.
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Phineas Spellbinder
The Magic Nook

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Spellbinder
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Re: There's An Egg In Your Hat

Postby Spellbinder » December 30th, 2019, 10:03 am

This e-Book also contains a Bonus for those magicians who like to end an egg routine by cracking the egg open to show that it is real. It's Jim's "broken and restored" egg trick, never before revealed. The egg is broken and the contents dumped into a glass, along with the broken egg shells. Then the contents seem to visibly draw back together and reform into an egg again. You tear and restore paper, you tear and restore playing cards; why not break and restore an egg? Now you can!
Phineas Spellbinder
The Magic Nook

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Re: There's An Egg In Your Hat

Postby performer » December 30th, 2019, 3:52 pm

I love the egg bag although I know a lot of people don't. Eminent people too. I still remember Harry Stanley sniffing in great disdain at it.
I have two routines----one for kids and the other for grown ups. I am very happy with both. The one for the adults has a great finish which has been in print for donkey's years but I have never seen anyone use it. You produce 5 or (if your hand is big enough) 6 eggs. I produce 4 eggs and a little duck "that laid the eggs". This last notion comes from the late Peter Marucci. It gets a big laugh and is a great finish to the trick.

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Spellbinder
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Re: There's An Egg In Your Hat

Postby Spellbinder » October 19th, 2022, 4:26 pm

Jim's "Egg In Your Hat" can go beyond eggs to other objects that can be pulled out of a child's "watch hat" or "soft knit hat". Baseballs are fun, as are Shiny Christmas Bulbs, small live animals (mice, hamsters, guinea pigs) or their puppet duplicates, various fruits and vegetables, small bags of candies, light bulbs (especially if they light up), and so on. It starts with the egg bag routine and just changes what comes out and where it goes from there. Don't be a "stick in the mud" when it comes to thinking up new uses for old tricks.
Phineas Spellbinder
The Magic Nook


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