Mailbag #9

One of the most common easy answers [Ed: See this post] you didn’t address is “He’s in on it” (stooges, plants, etc.).

After seeing shows at the Magic Castle, I listen to a lot of audience members as they’re filing out the door and or wandering around the Castle, and “Plants” is the most common answer, EVEN WHEN THAT WOULDN'T EXPLAIN WHAT HAPPENED. —John Lovick

Yeah, great point. This is something I never give much thought to because I’m never performing for more than a few people at a time.

This is another reason why one-on-one magic can be so powerful. It eliminates this possibility. No one can ever think, “He’s in on it!” They would have to think, “He’s in on it! Wait… I’m ‘he.’ And I’m definitely not in on it.”

I find, even when performing for a larger group, that you seldom get, “He’s in on it,” in social situations. In fact, even when I am being a stooge or a plant for someone else, I can’t remember a time when people suggested I was in on it, even when they knew me as someone who did magic.

I think the stereotypical neediness of magicians actually helps us here. It’s not hard to imagine that a professional magician might pay someone to help him look good—and that person will keep their mouth shut because they’re being paid. But in a casual situation, the idea that someone might be secretly assisting (for free) in a trick in a way that only makes someone else look good is a less obvious conclusion. (This is something I take advantage of in the trick Any Man Behind Any Curtain from The JAMM #5. Where you act as your own stooge, but no one ever questions it because it doesn’t seem like it’s a trick designed to make you look better.)

That’s why it can be so beneficial to find some wingmen to work with. You can really do some miracles together if you find a few people who are willing to set their ego aside and help each other out. I find that sort of thing is just unexpected in the area of amateur magic.

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I might be misremembering, but I think I read something you wrote where you were looking for a good psychological card force. Did you ever find one? —AM

I don’t think that was me. But to answer your question, no, I have never found a good psychological card force. The reason for that is because they don’t exist. Now, to be clear, there are many good card forces that use some psychology to make them stronger. What I’m saying doesn’t exist is a psychological force where you theoretically use some powerful combination of words and gestures to get someone to name a specific card in the deck. That’s like a mentalism urban legend. It can’t be done in a way that is A) reliable, and B) not obvious to the person.

But doesn’t Derren Brown have some in his books?

Sure. But I think you might be misremembering exactly how those forces work. Re-read those descriptions and ask yourself if you’re secretly implanting a card in their mind or subtly imploring them to engage in a mini-game of charades with you.

I’m sure you can get people to play along and pick up on the signals you send them, or you can “psychologically force” a common card like the QH or AS. Those might be fine in some circumstances. But for my purposes, I would need something reliable that left the spectator with no clue as to what was going on, and I haven’t seen or read any type of psychological force that meets those criteria.

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I thought about a presentation premise I call the sorcerers apprentice. Basically you tell (or insinuate) to the spectator what you are going to do and the you screw it up, but the end result is still magical, even though you play it as a failure.

I’m on a coin magic high so I’m thinking about the “classic” coin through hand, which I hate. I would set the idea and then perform a “psychic surgery” style mojo on my hand, chicken guts included, with out the coin actual coming out. Most likely freaking out and leaving. —DRM

Yeah, this kind of structure is good. It’s similar to some ideas I’ve posted here before. The one that immediately comes to mind is where you say you’re going to vanish a coin but you only end up shrinking it a little. So you “fail,” and you blow it off, but in a way that is still magical.

I would probably do the coin through hand once successfully at first. Because it’s such a quick trick and one that people often ask to see again (because they—rightfully—think they can probably figure it out if they see it again), I’d have it get stuck the second time. I’d spend the next twenty minutes trying to carry on like everything is normal, but rubbing my palm a lot. Sort of like when you’re talking to someone who has something in their eye and they’re trying not to let it distract them from the interaction, but it clearly is.

Eventually I’d leave and later that night I’d post a picture of myself on my instagram at the ER with my hand bandaged up. Caption: “Looks like I’ll be pleasuring myself left-handed for a while. Had to have surgery to remove a coin stuck in my hand.”

This is an example of a concept I call Reps (Repercussions) where you do something afterwards to extend a trick past the initial presentation. It may seem like a lot of work, but it would really just amount to a short detour to the hospital and taking a picture. It would be great if you could talk them into letting you take a picture in one of the rooms there, but they might not buy your “magic trick” excuse. They’ll probably think it’s part of some insurance fraud. So you might have to take the pic in the waiting room or even outside with the hospital in the background. It would still work. Reps are one of the more powerful ways of messing with someone’s mind with a magic trick.

The Bat Coin Conundrum

Most magicians are familiar with Paul Curry’s Unsolved Card Problem, also known as the Open Prediction.

There’s another story from magic history that is less well known, but along similar lines, and it’s one of my favorite pieces of magic lore. In the 40s and early 50s there was a magic periodical called The Bat, which was given away free with every order over a dollar from Magic Limited. It was, essentially, the Penguin Magic Monthly of its day.

In 1948, they published something called, The Bat Coin Conundrum. It was, essentially, a “challenge” to magicians (similar to the Open Prediction, but actually pre-dating it). The goal was to create a routine where three silver coins would change to three copper coins. That doesn’t sound that unique, I know. But the rules of the challenge were that only three coins could be used and they had to be examinable at the end. There were more rules than that, but those were the big ones.

So, how do you do a fully-examinable three coin transformation with no extra coins? Well, you don’t, of course. That would be real magic. And that’s probably why the publishers of The Bat were comfortable offering a $5000 prize ($50,000 in today’s money) for anyone who could present a solution.

So that’s printed up in the magazine and maybe it caused a little buzz, I don’t really know. Anyway, cut to three years later, and a guy named Carl Manley, who lives in the town of Brocton, NY, writes to The Bat publishers and is like, “Hey, I solved it. Show me the money, bitches.” Or whatever words to that effect someone would use in 1951.

The people at The Bat are like, “Well, we need to see you do it. Our judges need to make sure all the rules are followed, blah, blah, blah.” It’s 1951. There’s no internet, you can’t send a DVD. So they agree to meet up at a magic convention in Pittsburgh later that year where he’ll perform the trick and—if he has met the requirements—he’ll be presented with a check for $5,000. I’m assuming it would be a big novelty check.

So the magic convention rolls around and it’s the day he’s supposed to perform the effect and The Bat people are there (presumably with the big check, or perhaps they went the other way and had prepared a novelty teeny-tiny check—that would be cute), but Carl doesn’t show. People are pissed because this was intended to be a big moment at this convention. You can imagine if MAGIC Live was promoting the possibility that someone had solved a seemingly impossible magical problem, and the solution was going to be demonstrated live for the first time with the potential of someone walking away with $50,000, that would be a pretty exciting thing to witness.

But he doesn’t show and The Bat people and the convention organizers are assuming this was all a hoax the whole time. They’ve only corresponded with the guy through letters. He probably never had a solution. “Carl Manley” probably never even existed.

But that turned out not to be the case. 15 miles outside of the city, in a crappy motel room off the highway, Carl Manley’s body is found. It looks to be a robbery gone incredibly bad. His money and wedding ring were taken. And he was choked to death in a manner so violent that his neck was completely broken in the process. Nobody is ever charged for the murder.

In the early 60s, Carl’s now-grown daughter is going through his possessions that the police returned to them after the investigation. And she going through her dad’s magic notebook where he described tricks and routines he was working on. And she notices, for the first time, that two pages were ripped out of the notebook. By the dates on the pages surrounding the missing pages, it’s clear that the missing entries would have been written right around the time that he had, apparently, stumbled across the solution to the Bat Coin Conundrum.

So his daughter gets a new theory that this wasn’t some random robbery gone wrong, but that he was, in fact, killed by someone who either wanted this secret for themselves, or wanted to prevent the secret from being released. She believed it was the publishers of The Bat not wanting to pay up. But that seems a bit extreme, and nothing ever came from that theory.

This whole story pretty much faded into obscurity for 50+ years. Then, in 2015, there was a murder of a 22 year old named Gerry Parker in Gainesville, FL. Gerry was strangled to death so violently that his neck was completely broken. Gerry was also an amateur magician.

These were his last two tweets…

The cops, of course, looked into his social media and tried to make sense of these tweets, but they got nowhere. In fact, it wasn’t until almost a year later that anyone figured out what the tweets were driving at. There was a thread on The Magic Cafe about the murder and they mentioned the tweets and someone began to put it all together. You have a guy who was killed in exactly the same manner as the guy who supposedly solved the Bat Coin Conundrum and he’s a magician, and he tweets right before he dies with an image of a bat, money (coins), and he mentions 5 Gs, aka five thousand dollars.

But here’s the thing that makes it super messed up. Whoever killed Carl Manley in 1951 would be at least 85 now. An 85-year old is not going to be breaking a 20-something guy’s neck. So it had to be two murderers. But the weirder thing is this… Gerry had under 30 followers on Twitter. He wasn’t well known. Nobody knew he was working on this trick. And yet hours after apparently “figuring out” how to do this trick—and posting about it vaguely on Twitter—he’s murdered in the exact same way someone was 65 years prior? That’s crazy.

Anyway, I’ve been working on the Bat Coin Conundrum myself. And I think I actually had a bit of breakthrough. That’s why I asked you to come over tonight. I want you to record this. I want a witness who can verify that I really did this in case something happens to me.

Look, I have three silver coins…

The Unsolved Problem Universal Presentation

Yes, as I’m sure you quickly realized while reading that, it’s all just nonsense I made up.

The Open Prediction is something that has captivated magicians for a long time. And in recent years I’ve seen a few different people suggest presenting it by talking about the history of the effect and the “challenge” nature of Paul Curry’s “unsolved problem.”

I think that’s a fine idea, but here’s the thing… you’re not limited to using that presentation with an Open Prediction and talking about Paul Curry. You can make up magicians, make up challenges, make up rewards, make up situation, make up complete histories of a trick and capitalize on the potential intrigue that is generated by saying, “Here’s this challenge that no one was ever able to solve.” And giving people a peek into a fascinating (albeit fake) history of magic.

You don’t need to get as dramatic as I did in the story above, I was just doing that for your benefit.

The thing about the Open Prediction is, it doesn’t really need much of a hook. It’s a pretty simple, clear effect. So it’s maybe a better use of the “Unsolved Problem” presentation to save it for a trick that isn’t so clean-cut. Thus you’re justifying the procedure as part of the presentation (because that procedure can be laid out as part of the challenge).

For example, think of an ace assembly. Sometimes people will put such a trick in a gambling presentation to attempt to make it make some sense, but that doesn’t always work so great. So, frequently, the trick is just presented as, “I’m going to do this and you’re going to watch me do it.”

Apply the “Unsolved Problem” presentation to it and you can talk about this “classic” challenge in magic that people haven’t been able to solve for 75 years, where you put the aces into four different packets and make them all gather into one. You can build the story up if you want. Add sex and intrigue and death. Or it can just be some long-standing challenge that you think you’ve finally cracked and you want their help to see if it works.

You could separate the presentation out over time. Show them a standard ace assembly. Then mention there’s this long-running “impossible challenge” amongst magicians of doing the same trick but with aces that have different back colors. “I think it’s legitimately impossible,” you say. Then a couple weeks later you’re like, “Remember that thing I told you about? Well, I think I might have actually figured it out.” So now instead of a “meaningless” trick, you’re creating a story that unfolds over time.

As a “Hook” you could have a list of conditions for an effect written on a sheet of paper laying on a table in your house. When someone notices it, you could explain the “history” of the trick to them. Maybe you perform it then or maybe at some other date.

So you create a challenge for a trick you can already do, and then you create impossible conditions for it. The nice thing is, you don’t actually have to meet those conditions. You just say you do. For example, in the coin trick described in the first part of this post, you could just say you’re not using extra coins or gimmicks. You’re not actually performing this for a board of magician judges. So you should be able to get away claiming some conditions you’re not actually meeting.

I always like to put in a condition like, “No sleight-of-hand, and no gimmicks may be used.” If you’re—apparently—ruling those things out, it can be very fascinating to people to consider what you are using.

Now, it doesn’t matter if people believe the story. It’s not there to be believed. It’s there to entertain and add some context to a trick.

Even though it’s not intended to be believed, it’s nice to wrap up the story in some way that puts a bow on it. If you claim you’ve solved some long-standing impossible challenge, then that should play out in some way. For example, in the story at the top of this post, I would text the person the next day and say, “Did you share that video with anyone?” When they say they haven’t, I’d ask them to erase it from their phone. “I’m feeling sketched out. I got a text from a blocked number with the image of a broken neck and the word ‘you’ written underneath it. I’ve literally not told anyone about this but you, so I don’t know who could have sent it to me. Let’s not talk about this again.”

Or, here’s a good “brush off” you can use to conclude any trick with this presentation. Maybe you’ve been telling someone you’ve been working on this trick for weeks. It’s an impossible challenge that you’ve somehow solved. That’s not inherently unbelievable, so they might think what you were saying is true. At some point in the future they might say, “Whatever happened with that trick you figured out?” Maybe you told them there was a prize for solving it, or that you’d get inducted into some secret magi society.

“Oh,” you say, “that didn’t pan out.” You bring up the list of conditions. “You see this one?” you say, and you point at one of the conditions (which is the opposite of one of the actual conditions in Paul Curry’s Open Prediction).

Condition #17: The method must not be something that could be used for criminal purposes.

“I think they thought the method I came up with was too dangerous to release. Because it definitely could have been used for criminal purposes. Definitely.”

Now you leave them with another little mystery wondering what that could possibly mean.

Dustings of Woofle #10

I was in my hometown the other day and ran into someone I hadn’t seen in about 25 years and she mentioned a trick I did in the lunch room in high school that I (apparently) called the Time Traveling Chicken Sandwich. I don’t remember the details about it, but I do remember I used the torn corn principle, except instead of a playing card I used a breaded chicken patty. I took a bite out of it and spit it out onto a napkin and gave it to someone to hold. In actuality I swapped the bite I had just taken for a bite from another chicken patty already in my mouth. I quickly devoured the rest of the chicken patty (including the extra piece I had just bitten off).

Then I did something, although I don’t remember what, and demonstrated that we travelled back in time and I revealed a restored chicken sandwich missing one bite—a perfect match for the one I spit on the napkin from the chicken I apparently ate earlier.

She remembered that shit 25 years later! That’s now officially the longest time gap between performance and spectator recollection in my magic history.

A testament, indeed, to the awe-inspiring power of such a beautiful routine and my magic genius.

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Speaking of… for those who have inquired about consulting, you can now find details on that in the menu at the top of the site.

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Tom Frame sent me the PDF for his Hypercase. The Hypercase is inspired by the Hypercard, which is this classic “impossible object” which is made from a single playing card:

Unfortunately, I’ve been familiar with the Hypercard for so long, that I can no longer see the “impossibility” of it. The topology of the object is too apparent to my eyes and I can’t get back my “spectator brain” about this thing as I can with most other things in magic.

Here is Tom’s Hypercase.

Similar to the Hypercard, I don’t have the ability to comprehend how a spectator’s mind would perceive this “impossible object.” What I mean is I don’t know how “impossible” it would seem. I think for it to be really strong you’d need to, apparently, construct it in the moment with the person you’re performing in a partially open/partially secretive manner, to give their imagination something to chew on.

Here’s how I’d do it one-on-one/jerx-style/extended presentation.

I would construct the case and have it in my pocket along with cellophane from a deck and an extra card. I'd buy a deck when I'm out with someone. When we get back to their place I'd ask if they had scissors. When they go to get the scissors I'd put the normal deck away somewhere. I’d pull out the Hypercase with the additional card held against it and the cellophane.

When they return I’d act as if I'm pulling the cellophane off the deck and toss the cellophane on the table. Maybe I'd even put a seal on the Hypercase so they could see me remove that too. Not too much attention is being paid at this point. I’d remove the cards, take the scissors and say, "I can't show you exactly what I'm doing just yet," and somewhat hide the procedure from them behind the case/my hands.

They’d hear me cutting the case, but really I'm just cutting the extra card. I’d set the scissors down. Fold the extra card behind the case and steal it away and ditch it at some point as I'm fussing around with things. Then I’d pick up the scissors again and trim a little bit off the actual tabs on the case. Just to reinforce that yes, I'm actually cutting up the case in this moment.

I’d set the scissors back down and mutter something like, “Well… here goes nothing." And I'd grunt/groan really loudly, "Gaaahhhh!!!!" as if I'm straining in some way—doing something requiring great effort on the back of the case (reaching into another dimension). Then I'd toss it on the table and be like, "There you go."

Tom doesn’t have a site, but you can get his PDF on this for $7. Find the details in this Genii forum post.

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A couple people wrote me about these glasses, which Mike Close recently mentioned in his newsletter.

They’re pretty interesting looking and fairly inexpensive.

You can get them with dice, poker chips, bullets, guitar picks, etc. I’d get the one with a poker chip. I wouldn’t use it directly in a trick, I’d just leave it out somewhere. When someone commented on it I’d say. “Oh, that was a trick gone wrong. Something I’m working on. Actually… let me give that another shot, hold on.” And I’d grab some coins and a glass and do some sort of coins through glass effect.

Now, when they’re mind starts going to sleight-of-hand and ways to sneak the coin into the glass, they have this strange object in their line of of sight that’s going to counteract that “easy answer.”

You could, of course, make the glass your finale for a coins through glass routine, and switch it in for a normal glass. “I’m going to pause the trick half way.” That sort of thing.

But I think I prefer a subtler use of it. Since everyone just assumes magicians are lying all the time, I think the less of a big deal you make about the glass, the more likely they are to believe that just maybe there is some way to pass items through glass and this glass represents a botched early attempt. Or at least their mind will be tempted with that notion.

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Look, no one is a bigger fan of long, extended tricks than I am. I’ve mentioned before I think it’s pretty pathetic that people do Out of This World with half a deck because they can’t keep people engaged for the minute it takes to deal through a a full deck.

That being said, I think this version of OOTW by Michael Ammar is really swinging too far the opposite direction.

I feel it starts to drag after the sixth deck. You do get something of a “second wind” around deck 10. But when he brings out deck 12 and is like. “Okay, for real this time. This will be the last one. I just want to be 100% sure it’s not a fluke. David…David! Wake the fuck up, and deal the 12th deck!” It feels borderline abusive.

Also, I question this line in the explanation, “It’s completely impromptu, as long as you run into someone with 12 decks of cards on them, or 12 people who each have one deck.” I mean… yeah, I guess.

Stream of Consciousness: The Loyalty Card

Starting Point

I was watching Kyle Purnell’s At the Table lecture and he mentioned that when working a restaurant or bar, he’ll tell people to hang onto a signed card and bring it back the next time they come and he’ll do something special with it.

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This gave me an idea for something I would do if I did professional restaurant or bar magic. Instead of just giving them a card, I would pull out a hole-punch and punch a hole in the card like it was a loyalty card.

Then, if they brought the card back, I would do something with the hole in the card. Move the hold around the card, transfer the hole to my business card, restore the hole, thread the card on a ribbon and magically remove it or whatever. The ideas is just that you’re planting the seed for a trick in the initial meeting in a way that has some sort of logic to it. You’re setting them up in a non-obvious way. Moving a hole (for example) on this card that they had in their purse for a month has a different feeling than moving a hole you just punched in a card for the sole purpose of moving it.

And I’m sure you could make this a good business strategy too. Give them a 4 of Diamonds and punch one of the pips. Tell them once the other three are punched on return visits you’ll teach them a trick or they’ll get a free appetizer (or whatever you think would motivate them to return). Maybe you say the manager has to initial the card each time, or whatever. Then you have people approaching the manager for a quick initial of the card suggesting not only did they come to see you but they intend to come back to see you, which could only make you look more valuable to the restaurant.

But take that idea with a grain of salt because I don’t know shit about doing magic in restaurants.

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Thinking of loyalty cards reminded me of the one that’s used at one of the cafes I go to regularly. They punch a hole in the card with a star-shaped hole punch. “That’s certainly not some custom made hole-punch. I bet I can buy one of those,” I thought. And, sure enough, I could.

So I bought one. And I snagged a couple loyalty cards off the counter when no one was looking so I could prep them for some potential effects.

So far the only thing I’ve done for an actual person is to slide the “just punched” star from the first box to one of the boxes mid-way down the card.

I have another thing I’m working on where multiple star-holes move with a flick. And another trick where the star hole changes shape. I thought changing the stars to moons would make some sense, you know, celestially. But I’m currently changing them into hearts because—for god knows what reason—the crescent moon hole punch is almost $100 with shipping.

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Kyle’s initial idea also sort of reminded me of a concept I wrote about here for the amateur performer where—instead of doing a five phase Ambitious Card routine, for example—you would do a one phase Ambitious Card routine over the course of five interactions with someone. That way, instead of doing a few okay phases and a big climax (which makes those “okay” phases sort of forgettable) all at once, you could do a different Ambitious Card climax each time you see them: the bent card, Ultimate Ambition, etc. So rather than three minutes of magic they may struggle to remember a month later, you have this trick that you can keep going for weeks, making it a more indelible experience.

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Here’s something I’ve been doing along the same lines the past couple of years. If I’m performing at someone’s house and doing something with a signed card, I’ll stick it to their fridge with a magnet when I’m done.

Then the next time I’m there I’ll pull it off and do something else with it, then I’ll put it back on the refrigerator. And so on, each time I visit.

Each time I’m there, they draw some new mark on the card. So it’s an evolving memento.

It becomes their “permanent signed card.” And while, generally, I don’t feel a signed card makes for a very interesting or meaningful souvenir, when it has been used in half a dozen different tricks over the course of a year, it takes on a different sort of meaning. It’s not just a reminder of a card trick, it’s an object that has been a part of a number of different interactions between me and a friend over an extended period of time. In that way, it’s a keepsake not just of some magic tricks, but of our relationship.

My intention, at some point, is to “retire” the card and have a little ceremony where we burn it, then come back in the house only to find it back on the refrigerator or perhaps hanging on the wall in a picture frame.

Mailbag #8

Hi Andy! Just rereading the books and I had an idea regarding the Donny Ackerman time stop presentation. My idea is to use a doublecross gimmick to print the x in their hand as an added convincer you actually stopped time and opened their hand. — DRM

I think that’s a really good idea. You’re making me want to re-purchase Double Cross (I gave mine away). Usually that trick amounts to, “I’m going to make an X appear on your hand,” which is a fine impossibility, but not all that interesting.

For those unfamiliar, in the Donny Ackerman trick you claim to stop time and—while the world is frozen—you open your spectator’s hand that holds a secretly written name on a piece of paper.

What DRM is suggesting is you do something like this… You tell the story, you reveal the name, then you say, “It’s unfortunate. No one ever believes I really paused time. So while I had your palm open I drew a little X in there to prove I was there.”

I like it. You’d have to figure out the choreography for getting them to hold the paper without exposing the X. But that seems pretty doable.

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I was just wondering if you could give some extra nuanced insight to your view in regards to the "Reverse Disclaimer" that you've talked about in the past and your old post, "The Sealed Room with the Little Door."

I don't think these two posts are contradictory with one another, but if you could provide a little more clarification to how these two concepts connect seamlessly with each other, and with your presentation-style in general that would be great. —YR

Sure. They are both connected by the idea of the “unbelievable premise.” In social magic, it can be awkward when it seems that perhaps you believe your own claims. “Is he suggesting he’s actually reading my mind?” “Does he want me to believe he’s really a bond-language expert?” The Reverse Disclaimer is about making your claim about what’s happening so unbelievable that it goes without saying that it’s intended as fiction, so no disclaimer is needed.

For example, looking at the Donny Ackerman trick mentioned above, the claim that you’re stopping time is so unbelievable that it acts as it’s own disclaimer that you’re not suggesting what you’re doing is real.

The idea behind The Sealed Room With the Little Door is this… You’ve established an unbelievable claim/premise. It’s not intended to be believed. But if your trick is strong enough, and there is no other “easy answer” for the spectator to consider, then you can get them to momentarily get caught up in the idea and almost consider the unbelievable premise as real because it’s the only thing they’ve been given that makes sense.

You can see it on people’s faces or hear it as they talk out what they just saw.

Let’s say I tell you to come outside and we look up in the sky and you see Santa Clause being pulled in his sleigh against the full moon. You see it clearly. Now, you know I’m a magician, so you’re looking for trickery. But there are no easy answers. It wasn’t a projection. It wasn’t a 2-dimensional Santa against a fake-moon hanging from a tree. Again, you know I’m a magician, and you know it must be some sort of a trick. But still, I think at some point this thought crosses your mind: “I wonder what he was doing here? It’s not even Christmas!” Like just for half a second before you’re like, “What the hell am I thinking?”

That’s your mind probing the “little door” even when the premise is 100% fantastical. If you have a premise that’s just slightly more believable—let’s say 98% fantastical (stopping time, ghosts, spells that induce good luck)—and a trick that’s really strong, you’ll find you can get even the most rational people’s minds drifting towards unbelievable ideas for a few seconds here or there before they snap out of it and question their sanity.

I’m curious what you think of these tweets by Brian Brushwood. —DD

Hmmm….well, seeing them out of context I assumed he was joking because it’s such a poorly thought out and obviously manipulative attempt at making a point. But apparently he’s serious?

If someone has an issue with magic tutorials on youtube, and your response to them is, “Oh, I see. You’re in favor of the systematic butt-fucking of pre-teens!!” That suggests that maybe you don’t quite have the confidence in your position that you’re pretending to.

You can easily make the opposite argument in an equally stupid way. “Oh, you think kids should learn magic online rather than in the public library? Online? Where children are susceptible to grooming from perverts and pedophiles all over the world? Wow, that’s pretty fucked up.”

No one has been more anti-magic-perv than me. Hell, the foundation of the magic society I started is that we kick out creeps. But his argument is desperate and nonsensical. He’s acting as if the debate is: Should people be teaching magic online or should you be forced to learn it from your rapist? Like… those aren’t the only options, dude.

To get to the actual substance of the discussion—whether the easy availability of magic secrets online is good or bad for the art—my feelings are these:

1. I think the internet has advanced the science of magic immensely: the technologies and methodologies behind magic have exploded in scope and dimension. If you look at the growth in magic methods between 1950 and 1970, for example, it’s pretty modest. If you look at the growth in the last 20 years it’s insane.

2. I think the internet has had little to no effect on the art of magic. I think you probably still have the same percent of magicians who suck and the same percent who are good.

3. I think the internet has been detrimental to the spectator’s experience of magic.

To expand on that last point, I don’t think exposure or “online tutorials” hurt magicians. I think they take away from the experience of a magic trick for non-magicians. If you saw someone penetrate one rubber-band through another in 1989 and it really captured your imagination, you might think about it for years to come. And maybe you stumble across the secret on your own. Or maybe you spend years wondering if there is actually some unknown way to really make one rubber band melt through another.

In 2019, if you see someone penetrate one rubber band through another and it really captures your imagination, you google rubber band magic and you can immediately find a video explanation for what you saw. That’s the end of it.

Some people are saying, “Andy, you don’t get it. Secrets aren’t important.” No, I get that. I’m making the exact same point. I don’t think secrets are important. I think the important thing is the experience and creating a pleasurable sense of mystery in someone’s life. But when secrets are so readily accessible, you undermine the experience and the mystery. You’re taking all the potential romance out of the situation.

I’m not against online magic tutorials. I definitely see the benefit of them (beyond just making it harder to diddle the kiddies). But I also see the benefits of there being some barriers to entry for some magic secrets as well. There are people who teach magic online because they want to grow the art, and some who do it because they’re grade-A dullards and know that no one would pay attention to them if they weren’t offering secrets. It’s not a black and white issue, there are shades of grey here. (“And also shades of brown and red on the underpants of the abused children!” Yes, yes. Okay. You’ve made your point, Brian.)

I used to be more in the “who gives a shit” camp. “Who cares if they google it and figure it out after the trick is over, as long as they enjoyed it while it happened. Either way they know it’s a trick, so what difference does it make? And, in fact, learning how it’s done may give them a greater appreciation for the cleverness of the effect or the skill of the performer.” But I don’t really buy that anymore. I’ve had too many experiences in the past few years where people have come up to me and spoken in wonder, awe, or bewilderment about some trick I did weeks, months, or even years before that was still a mystery to them. I’ve never had anyone come up to me and speak with any reverence about a trick I did that they figured out.

But whatever. I don’t really get too worked up about what’s taught/what’s not taught, what’s exposed/what’s not exposed. I always just feel like—with enough thought—I can stay a step ahead of all that, or even use it to my advantage.

Dustings of Woofle #9

Next week is Summer Break here at the Jerx. There won’t be any posting as I’ll be too busy having beach fun, baby!

At the end of next week, the Summer 2019 issue of the X-Comm newsletter will be hitting supporters email boxes. If you think you should be receiving one and you don’t see it by Monday the 22nd, send me an email and we’ll sort it out.

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I receive a number of requests to consult for people, including many people I respect in the magic industry. I generally turn them down because I’m not sure consulting for professional magicians is a great match for my skillset.

I tell people this and they say, “Oh, that doesn’t matter. I still want to hire you.”

I tell them that it won’t be cheap and they say, “That’s fine. I’ve worked with consultants before. I know they’re not cheap.”

I tell them my ideas tend to be a little idiosyncratic and probably won’t be useful to them. They say, “I understand, but let’s give it a shot.”

For the past few months I’ve been telling the people who asked me that I would soon be offering a short-term consulting service and would put details on the site. Well, I’m committing myself here to finally do that. When Summer Break ends there will be a post with the details of that service linking to a new page on the site where interested people can find out the details. (And I will probably try and continue to talk you out of the idea.)

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I have a new policy in regards to using people’s names on this site. With professional magicians, I’ll generally use your full name. With non-pros, I’ll probably use your first name-last initial, or just initials (unless you tell me otherwise).

This isn’t to keep your identity secret from the readers. It’s to keep this site from showing up when someone googles your name. My friend Andrew, whose work I’ve featured here and in the books/magazine, was someone I used to refer to by his full name. But someone searched for his name and “magic” after seeing something he did and found this site. Of course, no one without an interest in magic would bother reading this site (most people with an interest in magic don’t bother reading the site), but I can understand not wanting your name and your performances coming back to a magic blog.

So that’s the policy going forward.

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In Magic For Young Lovers there is a trick called CardLibs where you walk your spectator through a “fun new game” that you’ve created that turns out to be incredibly dull in a magical way.

Friend of the site, Max T. (Look guys, I’m using the new policy!) is a game developer and one of the creators of Cards Against Humanity. He went and printed the CardLibs prompts on official (official? whatever) Cards Against Humanity cards and sent me some.

So now I can introduce it as a CAH variant that I’ve been chosen to beta-test. “It’s aimed at a younger audience, and it’s a game you can play by yourself or with a partner. It’s not a competitive game, really. It’s just a way to have some good clean silly fun!” Then you play the game and it turns out to be no fun at all.

Not only does this add a different level of credibility to the start of the effect (if that’s what you want). But because the prompts are on cards, and not sheets of paper, you could change up the handling so the spectator can “mix” the prompts in some way, or match them up with the playing cards or something like that.

I have a few sets of these to give away. [UPDATE: All gone.]

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Did the original Jumping Stool fail to get you the acclaim you expected? Well check out the Jumping Stool 2.0.

Can you imagine just how powerful a trick this must be?

Imagine bringing this out on stage.

“Here I have a completely ordinary stool.”

Then you step on it making it go flat and it jumps into your hand!

Standing ovation. People carrying you out on their shoulders. Panties being shotgunned into your face by aroused females.

Sorry, Christ! There’s a new miracle worker in town! And his name is… I don’t know his name…but it’s this guy with the little stool!

Audience reaction: “He took that perfectly normal, everyday stool—the one that’s too weak for anyone to sit on and too low for you to rest anything on—and he made it jump up in the air!”

Oh, Andy, quit with the snark. This isn’t supposed to be some AMAZING magic trick. It’s supposed to be a comedy prop.

Alright, let me revise my sarcasm then.

Can you imagine how fucking funny this must be?

“Hahahaha…. oh my god… you’ll never believe the funniest thing I saw! This guy came out on stage with a mini stool. Your standard, non-functional, obviously a prop, mini stool. Then he stepped on it and… you won’t believe this… it’s too funny… wait let me calm down so I can say it.”

14 minutes later.

“Okay… he stepped down on the stool and it jumped in the air!!! It was so funny! You know, like in the way a spring is funny? Well, this was a stool that was funny like springs are.”

“Everyone was laughing so hard and pissing their pants and gasping for air, all because of the great humor he brought to the event with his hilarious jumping stool. What’s that? Can I take you to see his show? Unfortunately no. He left town. Hollywood came calling. He signed a six-picture deal for him and the hilarious stool.”

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This may be a standard tactic others have used, but I don’t think I’ve read it before. I wouldn’t want to do it with most people I perform for, because it’s somewhat confrontational, but maybe it would work with someone who’s being a bit of a dick.

The Dick: Hey, can you read my mind?

You: Yeah.

Dick: Prove it.

You: Okay. Think of something. LIke an object you can picture in your mind, I mean.

Dick: Okay. Got it.

You: Okay. This is something you’d find outdoors, isn’t it.

Dick: No.

You: Uhm… think of it again. [Concentrating] I was right the first time. You’d find it outdoors. On a farm, yes?

Dick: Nope. Still wrong.

You: Look, I know what I’m seeing. If you’re not going to be honest about it, there’s no point.

Dick: Hahah. Whatever. You can’t do it.

You: You’re right. I can’t do it if you’re going to lie or change your mind. Obviously.

Dick: Sure.

You: Here. Think of something else, but write it down this time, so we can prove whether I’m doing it or not.

That’s all it is. Just a way to justify the need for them to write something down when reading someone’s mind. I don’t actually think it’s an act that needs that much justification, although some people feel it does. In this instance, you only need to write it down because he’s apparently actively trying to sabotage you. And the fact you do get it right the second time suggests that maybe he was messing with you the first time.

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Excited to see—assuming I’m interpreting this product artwork correctly—that Wayne Fox is releasing his version of that classic trick where you take a crap on one side of a scale and weigh it down with a feather, then squeal, “My magical feces are lighter than air!”

My favorite version is the one David Copperfield did on his final special where he followed up the first phase by floating his big dookie with a zombie gimmick to R. Kelly’s, “I Believe I Can Fly.” And people still say magic can’t be emotionally resonant? Well I guess they didn’t see The Magic of David Copperfield XVII: Vortex of Shit. Powerful stuff.

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Okay, see you back here on the 22nd. I’m off for some summer fun.

What's the BFD about DFB?

Digital Force Bag is an app that I’ve been writing about for some time here and in the X-Comm newsletter. It’s a simple concept that allows you to force any item in a list in the Notes app on your phone. It was created by Nick Einhorn and Craig Squires and developed by Marc Kerstein, and it does what it does perfectly.

Perhaps too perfectly, actually. With typical magician’s grace, people are using it to force everything. Even fucking playing cards! As they say, “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” And I guess to magicians, everything looks like a card trick. But perhaps it’s inevitable that something that works this well will get overused and eventually overexposed. I don’t know.

Just because the app works so well, that doesn’t make it the ideal force for everything. Forcing tools are the most powerful, and the least likely to be questioned, when they’re used in contexts where they would be expected, not arbitrary. What might you have a list of on your phone? Use that with DFB. What might you fill up a pad with? Use that with Svengali pads. What might you have written down on slips and collected? Use that with a clear forcing bag/Amazebox.

Well, I’m not here to lecture you. You do whatever the hell you want. If this app gets F’d out, I’ll adapt.

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We used DFB a few times in our focus-group testing back in February. It wasn’t the main thing we were testing, so we only performed it when we had extra time with some people. We didn’t perform it dozens of times, so I can’t say these results are definitive in any way, but they may be interesting to some of you.

We performed a fairly dull and basic DFB effect for 10 people (individually, not as a group).

Group 1 - Five of the people saw this trick: They name a number between 1 and 100. That number is used to identify a celebrity on a list of celebrities. A picture on the table is turned over, and it’s that celebrity.

Group 2 - Five of the people saw this trick: They name a number between 1 and 100. That number is used to identify a celebrity on a list of celebrities. They name another number between 1 and 100. That number is used to identify an item of food from a list of food. A picture on the table is turned over, and it’s that celebrity eating that food.

Which trick was stronger?

From my perspective, Group 2 had a slightly bigger response initially.

But…

When we asked them to suggest their best explanation for the effect, no one in Group 1 questioned the phone or the use of an app or anything like that. But four out of the five in Group 2 did.

Not scientific. Not a big enough sample size. Could just have been a coincidence. I get that.

But I doubt it.

Going back to the 7 part series from the last couple weeks, I think forcing multiple objects gets you a bigger pop of Surprise—Tom Hanks eating a pineapple is inherently more funny/surprising than just Tom Hanks, because it’s more specific—but it also puts more focus on the method, so the long-term, secondary reaction (contrecoup astonishment) is diminished.

This is a trade-off some might be willing to make. For amateurs, the initial response doesn’t carry much weight. You’re more concerned about fooling them long-term. For a professional you may value that initial outward reaction more even if it gives a potential explanation for the trick. Just something to think about.

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I have a friend who gets pulled over a lot because he drives like a maniac. He has a “bucket list” on his phone and the force item is “Charm my way out of a speeding ticket.”

He says it works about half the time.

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An email from reader, DT:

You could use the list of 100 presentations from Part IV along with the Digital Force Bag app. You could say it was a list of subjects you found interesting and have been looking into and then have them select one at random (wink-wink) and then you could offer to “show them some research” or “give them a demonstration” of their freely (nudge-nudge) chosen subject. —DT

I really like this idea. Not using the DFB app as part of a trick itself, but to add an air of spontaneity to your interaction.

Making things feel more unplanned is almost always a positive thing for the amateur performer. “Oh, you picked ‘Ghosts’… Uhm…Okay, I can show you something. but we’re going to have to take a 15 minute drive. Is that okay?” A mini field-trip is always a good way to get people intrigued, but when it seems unplanned that adds another layer to it.

Spontaneity can also increase the impossibility of what they saw. For example, say you had “elemental manipulation” on the list, and then you do a trick where you change water to ice in your hands or something. The “obvious” answer is that you must have had that ice on you to start with. But if you seemingly didn’t know you were going to be addressing that subject, how could you know to have it on you?

And it’s something you could continue on with the person for as long as you want. Every time you meet up she gets to pick something at random from the list of weird phenomenon you’ve been studying. Just the existence of the list itself is going to be a good talking point and a Hook for future interactions.

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I have a new favorite use for DFB that will be in the next issue of X-Communication. It’s so good. In actuality, the trick itself isn’t spectacular. But every detail has been worked out, and done in the context I suggest, it’s truly a thing of beauty. It’s a great “special occasion” trick as you’ll see, and it leaves people with a perfect memento. I have pretty specific rules of what I think is “souvenir worthy” but this one is as good as anything you’ll find in magic. The last time I performed it I was told, “If my house was burning down and I could save three things. This would be one of them.” And she wasn’t kidding.

That’s coming in 10 days or so in the newsletter for supporters.