John Given: Hi! I'm Astonishing John; I am a professional magician from San Diego, California and I am here to show you how to do fun magic tricks. That's the whole idea of this series of videos. And right now I am going to show you the stir stick mystery. Now all you need for this is a stir stick. This one happens to be from McDonald's. Just a regular little black stir stick and is black on both sides. All I have to do is reach out, take something and rub it on the stir stick and actually what happens is a white dot gets on the stir stick and it's on both sides. Now the amazing thing is all I have to do is blow and the stir stick goes back to black. Here is the secret to the stir stick mystery. What you do is you get some of these stir sticks, white or black. I use the ones from McDonald's. You can get them from Burger King or any fast food restaurant. You want to get the ones with a paddle end on it. And the reason why is it makes it more visible. And what I do with a stir stick is I put a little white dot on it. Now you can use paint or you can use liquid paper, just a little dabble do ya and you get a little dot on it. Now the idea is that you can make it appear and disappear at will. And this is a little move called the paddle move that magicians know how to do and have been practicing for lots and lots of years. It works like this. Alright, we start off showing the back side and the move is this. It's just rubbing your fingers together. It's a small move, a big move is moving it from side to side to show the other side of the paddle. If I show it this side or this side or this side or this side, this is how it's done. Alright, you do a little move. So if I want to show the white piece, I move forward. If I want to show the black side, I move back and that's as simple as that. And when you do the big move, you can't see it move. You can't see the small move but each time I move it, I move the small move. So what you do is this, you start with a black. You say you are going to take a little something from the air and put a dot. When you reach over to put that dot on, all you are really doing is just trying with a black. Soon as your hand covers it, you turn it like this. So I go like that, put a little dot on it. Actually, I have done nothing but move it from one side to the other. And it looks like magic. I said now the dot is on both sides. I show you both sides of the stir stick, the dot is still on both sides. And to make it disappear, you blow on it, and when you blow on it, just give it a little half turn and it disappears. So here to there, as simple as that. And if you lift it up and down like that when you do it, it looks a little bit better when it disappears from being there to being gone. That's the stir stick mystery, practice a little bit, it's a little bit of a twist and it works really well. This will really fool them. Now I want to let you know, stay tuned for the next trick, because it's called the straw and string cut and restore trick. And it's a good one too. It's very easy to do.