38. Static Shot
class: tweener | impressiveness: 5/5 | factors: acting skill, practice | requires: sugar packets | watch full episode
This effect has everything: it’s fun to do, it looks impressive, it makes you feel like you’ve got superpowers, and most importantly… it lets you make someone else look like an idiot.
The Scam: Tear off the edges of a sweetener packet and dump out the contents. This should leave you with a sheet of thin paper with a crease down the middle. This will be your “target.” Set up your target a foot or so away from your outstretched arm, making sure to keep it as precariously balanced as you’re able (the easier it is to knock over, the better it works).
Next, put on a show of slapping your face and rubbing your cheeks to “build up a static charge,” and finally, after rubbing your left cheek with your right hand, keep your hand wide and flat as you swing it in a wide arc from your face, eventually ending up pointing at the target.
Pause for just a second or two, make a finger gun, and pull the trigger. As if shot, the packet will fall over.
Watch Demonstration (External link)
If you do the move correctly, as you swing your hand out, you will generate a gust of air that will take a couple of seconds to reach the target. Once you have your timing down, it will appear that you simply point and “fire” your finger gun to knock over the target.
It’ll take some practice to get it down, but once you’ve got it, it’s a blast.
Be warned though: your friends will be suspicious. First they’ll think you’re just blowing to knock it over, so let them keep a hand in front of your face as you perform it. In fact, you can prove that there’s no way wind can be involved by placing a bottle or pint glass between you and the paper. Unbelievably, that gust of wind you generate will roll right around the glass and still knock over the paper.
Watch Demonstration (External)
Here’s the best part: your friends will want to know how it’s done. Explain that it’s all about the static electricity generated by rubbing and slapping their face. Demonstrate the moves for them, really rubbing and slapping your face. But when you demonstrate the moves for them, move your right hand from your right cheek.
When you do the moves this way, you don’t generate that gust of wind, but they won’t notice the difference in moves. They’ll think they’re doing the exact same thing, but for some reason it just won’t work for them. The harder they try, the funnier it gets.
The first time I saw this performed was by Daniel Garcia, and it utterly floored me. I later found out it’s published in the works of our Scam School friend Diamond Jim Tyler. Thanks again to both of them for making me feel dumb.