UPDATED: Somebody Figure This Shit Out For Me

Follow me here.

I've been having some ideas for effects where the climax doesn't happen at the end. Or, at least where the most surprising moment of the effect isn't the last part of it. I don't know if this makes any sense. But it doesn't need to for the purposes of this post.

So I had this idea. I would call up a friend and ask if I could show them something and let them know it would require some very specific items so it might be a little annoying but I think the trick is pretty good. Then when I get to their house I sit on their couch and pull out my phone. I turn on my phone to look at the list of stuff I'm going to need for the effect. I read off the list.

"Okay, I need a pair of sunglasses, a quarter, a magazine, a remote control, a spoon, a pair of scissors, a pen, and a DVD case."

My friend says, "Wait... what do you need?"

I turn my phone to my friend to show them the instructions for the trick where it says:

Required Items:

• a pair of sunglasses
• a quarter
• a magazine
• a remote control
• a spoon
• a pair of scissors
• a pen
• a dvd case

She looks from the phone to me and says, "Are you kidding me?"

"What do you mean?" I ask.

She points to her coffee table.

I thought this would be a cool, surprising way to get into an effect. As if I just so happened to need whatever items she had immediately on hand. What effect would I go into? Probably some kind of equivoque routine. I have a pretty well honed version I do and I could just say that they recommend these particular items because, in concert, one of them is particularly psychologically attractive and the others are psychologically repellant.

And I thought it would be easy to do as well. Just have a set of instructions on my phone with nothing under the "Required Items" heading. Then, when I go to read out the list of items, I just hit the voice transcription button on my iphone and list off whatever I see on the table in front of me. 

But, as some of you probably know, when you do voice transcription there is a noise when you start and stop it (even if you have your phone on silent and the volume all the way off). And you can't hit enter to create a list because the keyboard vanishes. Does anyone know a way around either of these issues? Is there some kind of setting I can adjust to remove the noise? Or a different app altogether? Probably not. 

Oh well. I'm going to continue to work on this type of idea and so should some of you. I like the idea of having a very particular set of needs for a trick, and then -- by luck or fate -- those needs are exactly what you have before you.

UPDATE 12:00 PM, July 23rd - As I slept, Jerx: Europe got to work on this problem and I woke up to a few emails that had a solution -- at least in part -- to this. And that's simply to do the effect with my headphones plugged in. Which now seems obvious, of course. My mind had been thinking in the direction of some kind of setting to turn off the noise, but this will work just as well, especially given the fact I would have my headphones plugged in in the first place. So thanks to Marc K., Rob S., and Rob D. for writing in with that suggestion.

Guys, I'm Totally a Spencer!

I was emailed a link to this quiz which let's you know which member of Criss Angel's Supernaturalists you are. I know you've been itching to find out. 

It seems like it wouldn't be that difficult to figure out which member you are.

Do you have a vagina? You're Krystyn Lambert!

Are you talented? You're Banachek!

Do you have wildly low self-esteem? You're Criss Angel!

Are you some bland hanger-on who secretly can't stand Criss? You're everyone else!

I took the quiz and got this result.

Yes!! This is convenient because I had already come up with the title for this post.

They got me pegged so good! I'm such a Spencer. We have the same taste in shirts. And I have the identical leather shawl to keep me warm when it's chilly outside. My lipstick is a shade darker, but it's pretty close. 

The Supernaturalists is, of course, Criss Angel's Crissangelfied version of the show The Illusionists.

Before:

After:

It asks the magical question, "What would happen if The Illusionists had a gift certificate to Hot Topic in 1999?" They genuinely look like they were being chased through a garage sale at the pickup artist Mystery's house and that is the stuff that just fell on them in the mayhem. Seriously, at this point making fun of Criss Angel's corny style is itself outdated. I was doing that shit 10 years ago on my old site. But please, you guys, stand up to him. Tell him this shit is hokey. For fuck's sake, Banachek looked better when James Randi was dressing him.

I'm not going to talk any more shit about them. I know they feel embarrassed enough already. 

I'm thinking of doing my own rip-off of The Illusionists. Just trying to get the funding to make it happen. It's going to star the Magic Cafe staff. The Delusionists. Anyone know where I can get leather pants in Steve Brooks' size?

Here's a fun quiz to figure out which member of the Cafe staff you are.

Words With Friends

One time I was showing someone a trick and I was revealing her card to her and I said, "It's a picture card." And she wrinkled her face at me. So I said, "Is it a picture card?" And she said, "They all have pictures on them." And she's right. All cards have pictures on them. 

I no longer say picture cards, spot cards, court cards. If I have to differentiate them I talk about cards with numbers and cards with letters. This may make me sound stupid to someone who knows cards. That's fine. I just don't want to trip up people who don't play cards or handle them regularly. And nobody has any trouble understanding the difference between numbers and letters.

When giving directions, my goal is to constantly streamline things. If two spectators misunderstand the same thing in a trick I perform on two separate occasions, I will rewrite it. I don't care. I'm not precious about the words I use, only about being understood.

I think everyone agrees that saying "riffle" is dumb. "As I riffle through the cards..." No. "As I flip through the cards..." Yes. But I think the reason people are willing to give up on riffle is because it's a stupid sounding word. So is dribble. Unless you're doing a trick with basketballs or where you fix someone's faulty prostate, I wouldn't use the word dribble.

It's easy to forget that people aren't familiar with the names of shuffles, even if they do them. "Can you give these a riffle shuffle?" "Can you give them an overhand shuffle?" Whenever I hear someone say that in a performance I know that they either only perform for other magicians or never perform for anybody. If you perform for real people it becomes immediately clear that if you want them to do a specific type of shuffle you need to mime it. 

Half the time I see a demo of a trick and the performer says, "Sign the face of the card," the person points with the marker and says, "This side?" Yeah, I know "face" should be obvious, but apparently it's not. Just say "front" or "back."

Bob Cassidy suggests that "only magicians" think it's strange to use the word "billets" to describe those little pieces of paper used in mentalism when talking with laymen. Certainly spectators should be familiar with the "billet reading seances" of the mid-19th century? Well, first of all, I don't think that's quite as common a phrase as Mr. Cassidy imagines it to be. So yeah, it is strange to call them billets. Even the dictionary describes that use of the word as "archaic." Now, to be fair, I might introduce that term to an audience, and discuss the etymology of it coming from the French word for "love letters," because that could be interesting. But just to say, "Write a word on this billet," would be dopey as hell.

These aren't just esthetic points. Yes, most spectator's can figure out what you're saying from context, but there's no reason to not make things as straightforward as possible. And the less people have to do any interpreting the easier it is to connect with them/mess with their minds.

I once heard a magician friend tell his spectator to find her card in the deck and then "outjog" it. The person was like, "What the fuck are you talking about?" but he was already on to his next point. His spectator had no idea what to do and it completely stalled the trick. Afterwards I said to him, "Just tell her to pull the card out an inch or so." He argued that "outjog" is a normal word that means "to pull something out a little." I was almost convinced that maybe it was, I've been stuck in this magic world too long myself. So we googled it and all the results in the first few pages were magic related except one that said one of the Jonas brothers could outjog them and they wouldn't mind because then they could look at his butt. So that's the public understanding of the term "outjog."

Have you heard worse or are you guilty of anything similar?

The Greatest Trick You Should Never Do

Never do this trick.

This is for entertainment purposes only. If you try and do this and something goes wrong, you're on your own. This is a piece of fiction written up as if it's instructions for a magic trick. Yes, it's probably one of the top 5 magic ideas ever created and yes, it's actually do-able. But don't do it!

Effect

A dollar bill is borrowed. A corner is torn off. The bill is vanished.

It reappears in your spectator's vagina without you ever touching her or even getting near her.

Imagine

Your friend Meg is coming over for the evening. After getting dinner together and watching a movie she asks if there's anything new you're working on magic-wise.

You: Oh, don't even mention it. It's just going to put me in a bad mood.

Meg: Why?

You: There's this convention coming up next week where a bunch of magicians get together. And there's this one woman named Esmerelda who will be there. I'm not even sure if that's her real name. We've had this kind of back-and-forth thing going for a few years.... You know how some people will get in a prank war? Where each person tries to one-up the other with a more devious prank? Well magicians have a similar thing with this trick called "Bill to Impossible Location." The idea is you vanish a bill and make it appear somewhere that seems impossible. And they'll go back and forth over the course of years sometimes, each trying to top the other person, trying to get the bill to reappear in a more impossible location until one of them finally gives up.

Meg: This is the strangest hobby...

You: So maybe you'll have the bill reappear taped to the ceiling. Or in someone's salad at dinner. Or in the cash register at the next store you walk into. These are all the sorts of things we would do. But last time we got together she really blew my mind. She borrowed a bill from me. Made it vanish. And it reappeared back in my wallet. 

Meg: That was the most impossible location?

You: Well, for me it felt that way. Your wallet is so personal, you know? And it's something I had on my body. So it seems unfathomable that she could breach that personal space. And now I'm racking my brain trying to come up with some place that would be even more impossible.

Meg: Hmm...

You: What do you think? I mean....

Meg: What if you had it appear in an egg? That would be impossible.

You: Hmmm... yeah, I guess... I'm trying to think of someplace more personal. Because she kind of raised the stakes when she had it go to my wallet. Can you think of a place on her that would feel like a real violation of her personal space like that? I don't know... maybe in her sock or something?

Meg: Oh, I know.

You: What?

Meg: [laughing]

You: What?!

Meg: Her vagina!

You: haha. Yeah, perfect! "Uhm, excuse me madam, could you please remove your panties? Now, I haven't touched your pussy, have I? I've never met your pussy before? I didn't speak with your pussy before the show? Your pussy isn't a stooge, correct?" Can you imagine? 

[Silence]

You: But you know.... I wonder if.... It could be possible. Do you have a dollar on you? Can I try something?

Meg: No way. What are you thinking?

You: Can I try it with you?

Meg THAT?!? Uhm, I'm not sure this is the best time. You know... time of the month, I mean.

You: What am I? 14? You think I'm scared of your period? It doesn't matter. I don't even need to touch you.

Meg: Aggghhhh... Okay... how can I refuse this. 

You borrow a dollar from her and ask her if she has a pen or marker. When she says no, you say it's not necessary and you rip a corner off the dollar for her to keep. You place the dollar between your hands and close your eyes for about 10 seconds. When you open your eyes you look and the dollar it is still there. You say cryptically, "Hmm... it must be too big to pass," and you fold it up into a smaller package, hold it in your hand, and when you open your hand it's gone.

Meg: No way.

You motion for her to remain still and your eyes look up and dart around like you're trying to sense something in the distance. "I think it might have worked," you say. A look of disappointment crosses your face. "Actually, it might have just gone to your back pocket. Can you check?" She checks and there's nothing there. "Damn, this might actually have worked. Go see. You might have to dig around in there a bit." 

She leaves for the bathroom. A moment later you hear a scream. She comes back in the room holding her tampon string in one hand with a bloody dollar bill dangling from the end. 

You grab the bill and unfold it. "Does the corner match?" you ask. Of course it does.

Method

You're going to gimmick a tampon so your wife/girlfriend/hook-up/close friend ends up loading the bill inside herself without knowing it. 

Being magicians, I know a lot of you are completely unfamiliar with a woman's anatomy. For you a pussy really is an impossible location. You couldn't find the clit with a geocaching app. So you sure as hell aren't familiar with how a tampon works. Here's a quick lesson. The tampon is just a piece of tightly pressed cotton with a string attached. It often comes in a cardboard applicator which is a small tube inside a slightly larger tube. The tampon is inside this and when the small tube gets pressed into the larger tube, the tampon goes inside the woman. 

When the tampon is in the applicator the only part of it that can be seen is the very tip, like the tobacco in a cigarette. What you're going to do is pop the tampon out of the applicator, remove 80% of the cotton, and replace it with a dollar bill set up with the torn corner. Then you're going to reinsert the tampon into the applicator and put it back in its original wrapper and seal it up. The details vary from brand to brand and you're just going to want to pick whatever brand your spectator uses (and "spectator" was never a more inadequate word to use than in this trick.). The ones I have spread all over my coffee table at the moment are Tampax. These are easy to work with and come in a paper wrapper that is easy to secretly open and reseal.

I'm not going to get into more specifics because you're not really going to do this.

Now you just have to get this tampon in play somehow. I think the easiest way to do that would be to invite your friend over, swap this with the tampon in her purse without her knowing, and then just spend enough time together until she needs to make a change down there. Or if you live with the person you could mark the wrapper in some way and put it in her box of tampons and just pay attention until it gets used. Or you could set up a whole box with Joshua Jay's torn corner technique. And then no matter which one she chooses, you'd be ready to go and you don't need to track which is the right corner to have on you. (You can find Joshua Jay's torn corner method in a number of places including at least one of his online lectures and DVDs. You don't have to buy it individually. It's really good. And I'm sure he's super happy I'm mentioning it in association with this atrocity of an effect.)

Of course this all is predicated on a certain level of intimacy because you would need to know when this person is on her period. But if you're not close enough to figure that information out, you shouldn't be contemplating an effect where something goes into someone's vagina. This is not a tablehopping effect.

You might wonder if the bill can be felt. I think the answer is "probably not." I had a willing friend test this for me. I gave her one of the gimmicked ones and she thought she could feel it at first. But then we did a double-blind, russian roulette style test where 1 of 3 tampons that I gave her were gimmicked. She tried each one in turn and she decided that she couldn't really tell which was which. Of course, some women may be more sensitive down there than others. If she notices it before the trick -- if she comes out the bathroom saying "There was a dollar in my tampon." --you just play dumb. Say something like, "That's a strange way to give a rebate."

The rest is just a traditional torn-corner bill effect. ("Traditional" other than the whole vagina part.) Your spectator will do the loading of the bill herself. See below:

And now you're set for a bloody miracle!

Sundry Drive No. 3

It feels like TV magic is bigger than ever in the US. No, there's not really a Copperfield or Blaine who is doing one of those big annual specials. And that's unfortunate. But what's kind of amazing to me is that there's a bunch of smaller shows that are bringing in an audience to watch magic on a weekly basis. And from my understanding, show likes Penn and Teller's Fool Us, The Carbonaro Effect, and Wizard Wars have all been successes ratings-wise. One thing to note is that, inherent in the premise of all of those shows is the notion that these are tricks. In one way or another they're all celebrating the idea that it's not real. Those of you still holding onto the idea that a magician has to convince people that there is "real magic" are being left in the dust in regards to what an audience considers artistry in modern magic.

---

A lot of people say they don't like doing Out of This World with the full deck because it takes too long for the spectator to deal through the whole deck. If you can't keep people interested for the length of time it takes for someone to deal through a deck of cards, then perhaps entertaining people with magic isn't in your future. You might be better suited to a different hobby like... oh... say, crushing cardboard boxes to get them ready for recycling.

---

I wanted to thank Andy Martin for letting me steal the picture of the $14 card from Color Monte off his site. Well, I mean, I asked him after I had already done it, but he was cool with it. I follow the maxim: It's easier to ask forgiveness than ask for permission. (But beware that I did not find that to be an adequate defense in my sexual assault case.)

---

An easy way to fuck with people's heads is to have one of those cheap plastic money printers in your house and then, without saying anything, print out some $20s in front of someone before you go out to dinner or order food in. When you're done just say, "Don't tell anyone you saw that." To make the charade complete you need to pay for dinner.

By the way, the reviews for this on Amazon are outstanding.

Look at This Adorable Knucklehead

It's Saturday so I'm taking it easy, but don't worry, I've uncovered a goldmine of comedy/magic writing. Back in the waning days of my Magic Circle Jerk blog, somebody got a wild hair that they were going to take me down a peg or two by creating a... well... I don't really know what to call it. Like a satirical version of my site?

But Andy your site was already a comedy site. That doesn't really lend itself to parody.

Yeah, I know that, and you know that, but this guy hadn't quite figured that out. So in the spirit of someone doing a spoof version of The Onion or parodying a Weird Al song, he created a blog called The Magic Circle Jerk and for one morning in November of 2005 he fumbled his way through three posts dedicated to me. His angle was, "This guy jerks off!" A "critique" that would perhaps work better if his target audience weren't magicians, a group whose dicks are rubbed so raw they could lay them across rice and technically consider it sushi by FDA standards. I mean "Best Masturbator" is a FISM award. Producers of The Magic of David Copperfield VI had to inform a shocked Copperfield he couldn't lazily stroke his cock to Turning Japanese by The Vapors as he floated over the Grand Canyon. That's just how accepted self-pleasure is in the magic community.

But still, I give him credit. If I wasn't intelligent or funny and had nothing to say, I would never have the gumption to start up a site -- even if only for five hours. So, to whoever that anonymous goofball is, I salute you. I'm sorry it took me 10 years to even stumble upon your scathing critique, but I'm here now to give it a wider audience. It was a giant swing and a miss, but at least you tried. Here is THE Magic Circle Jerk.

Practical Magic Week Part 5: Youtube Magic in the Real World

One of the first things that showed to me that the online magic community was full of shit was when you would hear people -- mainly on The Magic Cafe -- say, "It doesn't matter that this can't be examined. If you're a good magician the audience won't be interested in the props." You hear this a little less now, but back in the early days of the Cafe this wasn't even debated really, it was just taken as a fact. You would hear it from well established names in magic. And I kind of believed it at first myself, but then I noticed something. The more interested and captivated the person I performed for was, the more they wanted to see the props. It was only when someone was indifferent to what I was doing that they would give a polite, "Oh, cool," and then move on. 

And the better I got at performing, the more I experienced this problem, not less. On the Cafe people continued to beat the drum that if you're talented enough, people won't be interested in the props. And I can see that being true in some circumstances. If you're doing something with a gimmicked clipboard then the audience shouldn't be clamoring to see the clipboard. But if you're doing something where the effect is a state change in an object (it changes color, grows in size, links to something, etc.) then isn't wanting to see that object the most natural, positive reaction for a spectator to have? Even if Jesus himself came to earth and picked up a green leaf and changed it to red, my inclination would be to want to see the leaf. Not because I question if he really did it, but because the human response is to want to see something that has undergone some kind of transformation. And if I reached for the leaf and he immediately put it in his pocket and said, "Let me show you something else." I wouldn't think that was good audience management, in fact I'd go from thinking he was the son of god to thinking, "This asshole has a trick leaf!"

That's when it dawned on me: These people are all shitty performers and they're trying to reframe the lack of interest by their spectators as something positive. "I'm such a good magician my audience couldn't give a fuck about what I show them!" That is some grade-A rationalization.

I love a really beautiful, visual trick. But so many of them can't be examined and/or require your audience to be at a very particular angle. These tricks are often derided as "youtube magic," because a lot of people think they're only good for putting up on youtube. But that's not really the case, you just need to create a situation where you can naturally control a person's viewing angle and remove the notion of an immediate examination of the props. 

Here are three ways I do that.

Skype

Okay, this one is perhaps too obvious, but it bears mentioning. Performing for people live over skype is a great way to perform your visual/non-examinable magic. Skype and Facetime are normal methods of communication these days. There's nothing gimmicky about it. Step into the Now, grandpa. 

My favorite thing to do is to text someone late in the evening and ask if they're free to stop over. Because it's late the answer is usually "no," which is what I wanted in the first place. I didn't want them coming over and eating my chips. When they say they can't I act disappointed and ask if they can hop on Skype for a few minutes because I have something I want to show them. I then show them a trick taking advantage of all the benefits of performing magic to a webcam: the static angle, the ability to drop stuff off screen, switching things out of frame, secret assistants just out of view. I take advantage of ALL of this. My friends are less likely to think of these methods because the implication is that I wanted to show them this effect live and have only settled for doing it over Skype.

One of my favorite Skype performances involved calling up my friend on her birthday and talking to her from my bedroom. Behind me was an easel with a covered painting on it. I told her it was her gift but I wasn't sure if she'd like it and before I gave it to her I wanted to ask her some questions about gifts. So I asked her what the best thing she got this year was. I asked her what the best gift she'd received in the past. And I asked her what would be the best gift she could ever imagine receiving in the future. When we were done I said that I thought she actually might like what I made for her. I brought my laptop over to the easel, uncovered it, and it was a funky, impressionistic painting of her and the three gifts she mentioned in our conversation. How? I had a friend laying behind my bed painting the picture as we talked (it was done with paint markers, actually). He painted my other friend before the Skype call even started so there was plenty of time to do her, but he still did it in a somewhat simple style to match the rest of the painting. As I talked with her he would paint each thing she mentioned, and I would just keep her talking about each gift until he gave me the sign to move on. A good artist can paint something that is at least representational of, say, a toy stuffed elephant, in a minute or so. When he was done he just slid the painting up under the sheet that was covering "the canvas" and hung below the frame of the video. (There actually was nothing under the sheet except a rod to give it the shape of something being there.)

Through the Looking Glass

As is true in a lot of cities these days, you can't smoke in bars in NYC. I don't smoke myself but I always step outside with my friends when they do because I like being outdoors. My one semi-regular hangout is a bar populated by mostly by actors and comedians. The front of the bar is head to toe windows. One chilly fall night I was outside with some friends and while they were smoking I was looking through the window at some other friend who were still inside. I had my messenger bag on me and inside was a trick I'd just received in the mail earlier that day. I'd been playing with it as I rode the subway into Manhattan. The trick was The Poker Test. A trick that looks great but pretty much demands to be examined when it's over or else the obvious explanation is "tricky cards." I pulled the cards out of my bag and tapped on the window to get the attention of my friends who were inside the bar. When they turned towards me I performed the trick. They were definitely into the performance and fooled bad by the trick. Had I planned for this I would have had a duplicate set of cards to have in my hand when I walked back in, but instead I just put the cards back in my bag as I went in. Because they weren't seeing me in the immediate aftermath of the trick, the impulse to examine the cards had blown over.

In the time since then I've performed dozens of tricks this way. I actually find it very esthetically pleasing to perform magic outside, through a window, to a group of people inside. It's also interesting visually to be outside -- possibly in the rain or snow -- lit by a street lamp and doing something impossible. It's a different thing for me because I'm performing silently, which is obviously a big change from the verbose presentations I usually have. I like to incorporate the window itself when I can. For instance I'll draw a circle on it in dry-erase marker and have objects in my hand change in some way as they're seen through the circle, then change back as I pull them outside the circle.

This might not be the most practical suggestion but it works for me and some of you might find value in it.

Camera Obscura

This, on the other hand, is a very practical suggestion for any time you want to perform something one-on-one that is particularly angle sensitive and might have issues.

It's a very simple idea but I use it all the time. It gives your spectator a sense of getting an insider's peek at your process (which, as I've mentioned before, is something I find people really enjoy), it gives them a different context to view an effect, it anchors their perspective, it creates a potential souvenir of the moment, and it gives you a natural offbeat to switch or ditch gimmicks. It's simply this: I just ask them to use my phone (or theirs) to record the trick. You tell them it's something your working on and you'd like to get it on film. When you perform they generally watch the screen of the phone and aren't trying to get in potentially bad angles. At the conclusion of the trick you get a moment to relax and ask, "How did that look? Did you get everything?" etc. And in that moment you can switch out your gimmick (if possible) or at least defuse their inclination to immediately examine something in a way that seems natural because you've given them something else to think about without rushing them on to another thing entirely. And if the trick looks great on video you can send them a copy as a souvenir. At the very least you have a copy for the purposes of self-critique. It's like a win-win-win-win-win-win.