THE GOODS : Learning the ABCs of Abracadabra

If you have been searching for a way to lose all credibility and self-respect, follow these three simple steps:

Walk into the newsroom of a big city newspaper. Approach the morning assignment editor. Tell him/her you want to demonstrate a card trick.

Sam, the editor, looked at me as if I had said I had just told him I was about to sing a Barry Manilow medley. It was work-related, I explained. I needed to see if I had successfully learned anything from a new CD-ROM, “Learn the Art of Magic.”

Taking a normal, Bicycle brand deck of cards in hand, I rifled through them, telling Sam to say stop at any point. When he did, I held out the deck so that he could take the very next card.

I put the cards to my forehead, concentrated as if the deck was “talking” to me and said, “Seven of diamonds.”

Sam flinched. “That’s amazing,” he said. Then he got back on the phone.

But for a split second I was a hero, and I owed it all to this highly entertaining CD-ROM hosted by close-up magician Jay Alexander and his able assistant, Rocky.

The disk, retailing at $39 and scheduled to be released later this month in both Windows and Macintosh formats, demonstrates and then teaches you 26 magic tricks, including the “Talking Deck” feat.

One of the most magical attributes of the CD-ROM is that it works at all, as entertainment. Magic and video are not often good companions--when a magician does a trick on television, there is always a suspicion that carefully chosen camera angles or video effects played a part in pulling off the stunt. To be entertaining on television, a magician usually has to have some value-added component to the act, such as the cerebral weirdness of Penn and Teller or the glossy show-biz largess of David Copperfield.

But a CD-ROM works just fine in this genre, because it approximates the close-up magic experience. You can watch short videos of the high-energy Alexander doing the tricks, repeatedly. And when he demonstrates how to do the tricks, it makes you appreciate them all the more.

It doesn’t hurt that “Learn the Art of Magic” is also beautifully designed (the art director on the project, which is being distributed by Broderbund, was David Curtis) with antique magic-show posters as backdrops.

To learn a trick, you can choose among several categories, including cards, ropes and table magic. Click on a trick, and two windows come up, one marked “Watch” and the other “Learn.”

Click on “Watch,” and a video of Alexander pops up on the screen, showing you the trick, sometimes with the help of the deadpanned Rocky, a kid who is adorable but thankfully without a trace of cutesyness.

A few of the tricks are duds, and by that I mean even I could figure out how they were done. But most are wonderful, and Alexander is so spectacularly good at sleight of hand that unless you’re prestidigitation-savvy, you can’t tell how he pulls them off, even on the repeated viewings.

Click on “Learn,” and he shows you the secrets behind the trick, step by step. In some cases, the tricks are so complex they require a good deal of practice before you dare try them in public. Others, such as the “Talking Deck,” can be learned to an acceptable degree in about a half-hour.

Additional features of “Learn the Art of Magic” are not as successful. For example, Alexander’s brief, affectionate chats on “Famous Magicians” in history are informative, but it would have been nice to see him also demonstrate a few of the tricks that made them famous.

Overall, however, “Learn the Art of Magic” is a lovely, witty piece of work that would make a great present for any kid or adult interested in beginning-level magic tricks. Maybe they will heed one of Alexander’s pieces of advice better than I did.

Feeling flush with my introductory performance, I then showed the “Talking Deck” trick to Hugo, a reporter, with Sam sitting nearby. This time, both of them figured out how it was done even before I was finished.

“Once is entertainment,” Alexander explains in the CD-ROM’s section on how magicians should present tricks. “Twice is education.”

* Cyburbia’s Internet address is Colker@news.latimes.com.