Tricks with Your Head: Hilarious Magic Tricks and Stunts to Disgust and Delight (Paperback)

~ Mac King (Author), (Author) "While Kipling's poetic counsel may have inspired many a lad to a life of noble achievement, such austere advice is deadly at a party..." (more)
Key Phrases: third tap, selected card, rubber cement, Dog Jaw, Paul Harris

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Magic and Megacheese"Cat Chiropractor," "Funnel in Pants," "Fingertip Eyeballs" and "A Trick with Ben Franklin's Head" are just a few of the Tricks with Your Head: Hilarious Magic Tricks to Disgust and Delight offered by Las Vegas magician Mac King, who performs on NBC's annual World's Greatest Magic, and book wholesaler Mark Levy (Magic for Dummies). With clear (and joke-filled) instructions and 68 line-drawings, even the most inept should find something to amaze the experts and tyros alike.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

“Mac King is a god.” —Penn and Teller

Tricks with Your Head is the world’s greatest (and only) collection of hilarious, mystifying, and sometimes repulsive magic tricks that you can perform with your very own head.

If you’ve only thought of your head as a receptacle for so-called higher learning, or as a structure for keeping your haircut from falling into your body cavity, rejoice! Now you can use that ten-pound meatball between your shoulders as a source of ribald entertainment. Best of all, when you learn to perform a head trick, you can never be caught without your prop.

Mac King and Mark Levy have perfected the ultimate mix of head games (literally) in this clever illustrated volume that teaches you how to:
* Make your head disappear
* Penetrate your skull with a drinking straw
* Make a french fry vanish up your nose
* Read someone’s mind
* Jab a fork in your eye

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1 edition (February 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609805916
• ISBN-13: 978-0609805916
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #172,662 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #38 in

  Books > Entertainment > Puzzles & Games > Magic

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth a 10 year wait... mostly, January 2, 2003

By	Steven Weidner (Dryden, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've been waiting for this book for about 10 years or so... that's how long it's been since Penn & Teller deified Mac in their book "How to Play With Your Food". The title changed slightly (originally, they said to look for "Playing With Your Head"), and in that time, I had the opportunity to see Mac perform on a few "World's greatest magicians" type specials. Thus, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. And for the most part, I was right.

The star rating I used above is an average of ratings... if you've never read a book on goofy tricks like these, add a star. The originality will make you snort beverages through your nose when you think about poking your eyeball out with a fork. Gruesome as it sounds, I've done it before, and it's a great gag. Mac even suggests two different outcomes for you to try, depending on how far you want to string the audience along. The novelty of it all will also make you a little more forgiving for certain tricks like sticking a french fry up your nose (to keep more beverages from coming out, of course).

On the downside, if you have read books like this before, deduct a star. There is enough original material here to make up for gags that seem like old chestnuts, and the writing is entertaining and instructive. Regardless, you'll still feel like you've seen a bunch of this already, and odds are you will have.

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Best Trick/Gag Here Is Getting Such a High Average Rating!, October 31, 2007

By	Scrutinizing Consumer (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

The "tricks" in this book are LAME. Pretending to jam a fork in your eye and using a ketchup packet to pretend to bleed - these are the kinds of tricks this book claims to be hilarious. How about making a coin appear by secretly placing it on top of your head, getting an audience member to hold out their hands, and simply looking down at the hands to let the coin fall off your head into their hands. Magic? Hilarious? To whom? A three year old?

The real trick here is that they somehow managed to get an average of 4.5 stars for this book. Not THAT'S a great illusion. Out of the 52 tricks and gags in here, I found 5 that I might try when the mood is absolutely goofball.

I recently became interested in doing magic tricks and was so very pleased with those I found in Mark Wilson's "Complete Course in Magic". I bought this, based on its high rating, to supplement the tricks I learned from Wilson's book. However, even the five I found in "Tricks with Your Head" are so weak compared to "standard" magic tricks that I won't even do any of these head tricks when I'm doing the "real" magic tricks. To do so, would only lesson the effect of the good tricks I learned elsewhere.

Save your money.

And I'm pissed at Penn and Teller for endorsing this book. Guys, is your reputation really worth the back-end you're obviously getting on this weak material?

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mostly Parlor Tricks with a Few Surprises., August 2, 2005

By	John A Lee III "jal3" (San Antonio, TX) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I like gags. I guess it's a sign of a sophomoric mind but I really like disgusting ones that gross people out without ever really doing anything "bad". I also like to teach young kids tricks to play at the dinner table when out at fancy restaurants. I usually repent and offer not to teach the trick if a parent offers a suitable bribe. So it is that I thought this book might generate some laughs and even some revenue.

There are a few tricks in here worthwhile. The popping eyeball and the exploding zit both have a satisfactory degree of "yuk" mixed with "he didn't really do that, did he?" but most of them require more setup than can be achieved in a spontaneous setting. Worse, from my point of view, they come across as "Magic Tricks" even when they're being done. If you hand somebody a deck of cards and tell them to pick one, they have an idea that a performance is involved even if they have no idea what the trick is. The gags I look for are ones in which no one realizes that a gag has occurred until after it is over. As I said, a few of these meet that criterion. The rest are parlor tricks.

This book does a good job of teaching those tricks. Anyone can learn them. If that is your goal, you could do much worse. For what I was seeking, though, it did not have much. Still, it is written well and in an entertaining fashion.