David Parr – Brain Food: Gourmet Edition (official pdf)

Brain Food: Gourmet Edition is David Parr’s classic menu of charming and mysterious magic — revised, updated and digitized! When Brain Food was first released, nearly twenty years ago, it met with great critical acclaim, and it continues to appear on lists of must-read magic books. The Gourmet Edition brings Brain Food to the digital realm for the first time, with updated methods, scripts and handlings for eight effects:

Power of the Mind. A lit match vanishes from the magician’s hand. David’s approach to this effect eliminates telltale moments, making it possible to fool people who are “in the know.”

Swindle. David’s popular handling for the Grant bill transposition, restaged for parlor performance and with an updated gaff that works with the new currency.

Psilocation. Someone from the audience selects a card and then shuffles it back into the deck. And yet the performer is able to find the chosen card — while blindfolded!

D.P. Card in Wallet. David’s devious additions to the Mullica Wallet make the ending of this effect a complete surprise to the audience.

Future Shock. A card prediction that really baffles audiences, because the cards are shuffled by a volunteer, and the magician seems to have no control over the deck.

Lucky Penny. Finally, a proper presentation for the Lippincott Box! A lucky charm is given to someone in the audience, only to have it vanish and then reappear in an unlikely place.

Werewolf. David’s take on Eugene Burger’s Burned Card is a spooky homage to the monster movies he loved when he was a kid. It begins with a volunteer discovering that she is marked to be the werewolf’s next victim, and it ends with a scream!

Dinner with the Borgias. David shares two recipes for this theatrical twist on the Bank Night plot, one for stage, and one for close-up. Three guests from the audience are offered a free choice from among four golden goblets. When everyone has chosen a cup, the guests discover that their cups are “poisoned,” and the cup left for the magician is the only one that is not!

Brain Food: Gourmet Edition also offers a smorgasbord of thought-provoking essays that contain the ingredients for making magic memorable and engaging to audiences. Topics include the usefulness of suspense and surprise, the magic that can be found in everyday objects, the importance of fair play, and much more. And now that Brain Food has gone digital, the Gourmet Edition includes a section that allows you to print special props for performing some of the effects in the book!

The ebook is in PDF format, viewable on any platform.

Feed your mind, feed your magic!

“Great advice, the kind that 95 percent of people don’t think about, but it contains the real secrets of magic as a successful art.” — Andrew Basso

“What I appreciate most is David’s thinking about our art. His book Brain Food has the qualities of what we can label a gourmet meal: good food, good drink, good company, and good conversation. I am quite taken with his style. His creations illustrate his engagement with the people in his audiences. So also do his conversations in this book. It is thoughtful, to be sure.” — Robert Neale

“Dinner with the Borgias is one of the most entertaining, theatrical, intelligent presentations for Just Chance that I’ve ever come across. I’d love to see more writing like this about stand-up performance material, but the sad honest truth is that most of it just doesn’t have this level of depth or thought behind it.” — Anthony Owen

“Mr. Parr writes clearly and intelligently, and what he has to say will make you think.” — Michael Close

“These are perfect lessons for all magicians in how careful thinking really can improve our magic.” — Eugene Burger

“Brain Food was one of my first and favorite tastes of modern bizarre and storytelling magic. This is a text that I have highly recommended to many, and even bought as a gift for a few magical friends. It is exciting to see this fresh take on some familiar recipes.” — Paul Draper