Rough Draft Week: Kettlecorn

If I was writing an advertisement for this it would say:

While at a restaurant you take the cap off the salt shaker and pour some of the salt into your closed fist. The audience can see the salt flowing into your hand. Instantly all the salt vanishes and your hand is seen to be completely empty.

You repeat the effect with sugar. Again, all the sugar crystals completely vanish. No thumbtip used.

It would be one of those ads that is sort of technically true, but would still annoy you.

In the first phase they do see the salt go into your hand, and in the second phase you don’t use a thumbtip.

So the idea is simply to do a traditional salt vanish (with a thumbtip) and then follow it up with Vanish 5000 by Gregory Wilson from the Art of Astonishment books.

I believe people will remember the image of the salt going into the hand in the first phase, and will remember the fairness of the slow, clean vanish with empty (no thumbtip) hands from the second phase, creating a sort of “best-of-both-worlds” illusion for the vanishing salt/sugar effect.

Now, why not just use sugar both times? You could, but switching from salt to sugar is part of the presentation that I’m going to go with.

It would go like this. I’d offer to show them something and then do the traditional salt vanish with a thumbtip.

“You wanna know how it’s done?” I’d ask.

“It’s simple science. Have you ever been so dehydrated that when you finally get to drink some water you’re able to down half a gallon in just a few seconds? Your body just immediately absorbs it. And then there’s other times, when you’re not dehydrated, that you can barely choke down 8 ounces of water

“This is based on a similar idea.

“About 6 days ago, when I knew we were meeting for lunch, I started starving my body of sodium/salt. I’ve just been consuming iceberg lettuce for the past week to put my body in a state of hyponatremia, which is severe sodium depletion. It’s not very safe, to be honest. I’ve been having intense headaches the past three days. But the cool thing is, when you put salt in contact with the body when it’s in that state, it just immediately gets absorbed into the skin, so it looks like it vanishes.”

They will probably be incredulous at this explanation. A faux-scientific explanation like this will often get a response like, “Okay, if that’s true, let’s see it again.” Ideally I’d get a response like that, but either way I’d continue on…

“I’d show you again but it won’t work now that I’ve upped my sodium levels.

“Oh, actually though, I could do it with sugar. With nothing but iceberg lettuce in my system, I’m running dangerously low on carbs as well.”

Then I’d do Vanish 5000 and lean in close so the other person can clearly see nothing suspicious happens, yet the sugar somehow vanishes too.

Reading this back now, I realize it’s a fairly well fleshed out routine. Not so much a “rough draft.” It’s just that I’ve never actually performed it, so it still feels “rough” to me, although I think it’s structurally sound.

The idea was spurred from an email conversation with supporter Irenee M, who wrote in an email to me:

"Right now, my preferred way to do vanish 5000 is to absorb the sugar through the flesh of my hand after a long day spent walking with a friend, as “I can only d this when I’m really tired.” It’s a, “quicker way to get the sugar directly into my veins.”

So thank to Irenee for the main presentational concept.

I think this combination of methods—when done in this order—is particularly strong. Most people, when seeing a salt(or sugar) vanish, will assume they weren’t paying close enough attention because they didn’t know what was about to happen and that you somehow ditched the salt at some point (you’ll often catch people looking on the ground as if you just tossed the salt away when they were distracted). You must have done something with the salt after it was in your hand because they clearly remember the slow trickle of salt going into your fist. So, when you repeat the effect, where is their suspicion? It’s on what happens after the salt(sugar) is put in your hand. The beauty of Vanish 5000 is that the dirty work happens long before that point. So using it as a follow-up to a traditional salt vanish allows them to burn you as much as they want and they’ll be putting their focus exactly where you want it to be for them to be fooled as much as possible.