Sundry Drive No. 7

Dear Murphy's Magic,

In your At The Table lectures, instead of saying, "Let's take a skype call," you should say, "Let's bring everything to a screeching halt." Because that tends to be what happens. I don't need to see more ugly magicians try to manage the 2-second delay. If we need video questions (we don't) then have them cram that shit into a Vine.

---

Well I can only see one possible explanation. The trick is just too powerful! Do we just expect humanity to watch that and then be able to...what, exactly?... just go to work the next morning as if nothing has changed? Don't be naive. That footage is going to end up in a vault somewhere with the alien autopsy video, the Steve Brooks sex-tape, and other things the world just isn't ready for yet.

---

The Ogma cards by Skulkor are pretty trippy to begin with. I've been combining them with Greg Wilson's Revolution to hopefully either get someone to vomit or assassinate a senator or something.

---

Jack Shalom wrote an all too kind post on his blog about this site yesterday. I want to thank him for that. I also want thank Intensely Magic and Bizzaro for their posts about the site as well. And to those of you who post about it on twitter, message boards, reddit, and facebook. I don't know who is writing about me on facebook, but someone sends crazy amounts of traffic this way. Also, Bizzaro deserves special commendation for keeping that damn blog of his going since 2003. That's like me keeping this site going until 2027. That's when Children of Men takes place. I can't see me writing this site during Children of Men time.

---

The only way to improve the Repeat Bill in Lemon is to do the trick two less times.

Guys, we're living in a post-Bill to Vagina world, surely you can come up with something better than putting a bill in a lemon.

Seriously, I know you all love bill in lemon, but trust me, we will one day look back upon this meaningless effect the way we look back on the historical treatment of African-Americans, or the practice of chaining the mentally handicapped to a radiator in the basement for their entire lives. We'll be looking in the mirrors, lips-trembling, saying, "I can't believe I used to do that. I can't believe I was that monster."

That tricks sucks.

---

Field Report: The Talent Swap

While thinking of Project 8X (my secret Halloween project I wrote about earlier this week), I was reminded of another trick I performed once. The two tricks have a lot in common. They are both holiday-related tricks. They both require a lot of preparation. And they both involve a jaw-dropping moment of magic with a method that may ultimately be obvious. That last thing probably seems like a big negative and usually it would be. But in the case of these two tricks, the method is almost as awe-inspiring as the trick itself, so I don't mind the audience figuring it out.

Let me set the stage.

It was December of 2013. I was at a Christmas party that one of my friend's hosts every year. I have a lot of friends who are struggling comedians, actors, musicians etc., here in NYC. So it's a lot of extroverts who are always looking for a chance to perform. In keeping with that, my friend who hosts the party always incorporates a talent show into the proceedings. So, of the maybe 60 guests at the party, 30 of them will be involved in the talent show in some way. Since I am not an extrovert -- or if I am, I'm a lazy one who doesn't love performing -- I usually just do something quick and Christmas-y. The year before I had done a trick based on David Acer's routine, Holiday Miracle. In my version, a "freely chosen" colored lightbulb is plucked from a string of Christmas lights on the tree. I hold it in my cupped hands and it lights up when the climactic scene from A Very Brady Christmas is played. (You know the one. Where Mike is inspired to free himself from the collapsed building he's trapped in when he hears Carol singing O Come, All Ye Faithful.)

So I'm standing on the "stage" section, which is in the corner of my friend's cleared-out living room. The audience is gathered 270 degrees around me. I ask for two volunteers who have already performed in the talent show who don't know each other (outside of maybe chatting at one of these christmas parties). I was joined by Craig, a banjo player, and Kerry, a dancer (ballet and hip-hop). I ask Craig if he can dance and he says, "No." I ask his wife if he can dance, and she says, "He most certainly can not dance." I ask Kerry if she plays any musical instruments and she says, "No." I ask her sister/roommate if Kerry plays any musical instruments, she mentions a two-year stint with a clarinet 15 years ago when they were in school, but other than that, no. I ask anyone else in the room if they know anything about Craig's dancing ability or Kerry's musical ability. All the people who know one or the other of them admit that neither has any talent in the other person's field. 

"Perfect," I say, "So we have two talented people, but their talents don't overlap." I had them sit back-to-back with their heads almost touching. I gave Kerry the banjo and said, "If you feel inspired, feel free to play something." Then I stood behind them, dramatically, with my right hand 6 inches over their heads. After a few moments I looked at Kerry and said, "Nothing?" And she just kind of shrugged. Then I moved my right hand down so it was touching both of their heads. After another few moments still nothing happened. "What the hell...," I said, mostly to myself. I pushed my right shirt-sleeve up and revealed my iphone was strapped to my wrist. I removed it from my wrist and started intently scrolling around on it. "Sorry," I said, distractedly, "This app was 40 bucks. I expected a little more from it. Let's start over." I messed around a little more on the phone, then placed it so they were essentially holding it between their heads. "That should work. Let's just give this a moment." After about 10 second, Kerry started plucking a couple of strings on the banjo. As the seconds passed she started playing a little faster and a little faster until a melody began to arise. Craig starts tapping his toe to the melody. I remove my phone from between their heads and say, "Okay, it looks like it worked." Over the course of a few more seconds, Kerry goes from playing one note at a time to a blazing fast, full-on performance of Cripple Creek, and as she plays Craig jumps up and performs a spot-on hip-hop dance to the song. I stand back with my arms spread out as if I'm satisfied with my experiment. The audience -- specifically the 70% or so who know at least one of the participants on stage -- are going crazy. Craig's wife and Kerry's sister are standing with their mouths wide open. 

Eventually Craig's feet get tied up and he falls down and Kerry's fingers just become a mass of confusion on the banjo and the song falls apart. "It only lasts a little while," I say. "Thank you."

How did I do it? Well, the previous year at the party I was out on the fire escape with a couple of people after the talent show. They had enjoyed my magic trick and were asking about learning magic. Did I give lessons or what books would I recommend, things like that. An idea came to me and I said, "You know what would be cool? If next year at this party I did a trick where I made your talents swap." They were both very intrigued by this idea and wondered what it would entail. "Well," I said, "you'd have to learn banjo and you'd have to learn to dance." I think they were hoping for something more clever, but they were both immediately on board. So on that fire escape we made our plan. We would go back into the party and not be seen speaking to each other the rest of the night. We didn't want anyone there to have any memory of us ever being seen together (not that they would, but it's just fun to be covert.)

The next day I emailed them both and asked if they were still into the idea. Surprisingly, they both said yes. I'm used to people getting all excited about something in the late hours of the night, but once the strong, sober light of the morning rolls around, they're like, "Ah, fuck that idea." So I put the plan in motion. Every other week, throughout 2013, we would meet up at a rehearsal studio for an hour on our lunch breaks. And in that time Craig would teach Kerry the banjo, and she would teach Craig how to dance. Well, kind of. After the first lesson, where they both introduced each other to the basics of their skills and virtually no progress was made, I knew we had to change things up. I mean we had dedicated an hour to learn two skills, so half an hour a piece, every two weeks for a year. So about 13 hours of teaching time per skill. How much can you really learn in 13 hours of teaching time? So I changed the idea. Instead of teaching each other how to actually do their talents, they would just teach them how to look like they had mastery of those skills over the course of a 50 second performance. So I had Kerry choreograph an intense 50 second routine, and every time we got together she would teach Craig 2 seconds of it. So the learning curve was minimal each week, but it built up to a super-impressive routine. He looked like a great dancer. But he wasn't. He was just great at this one 50 second routine. 

Similarly, Kerry would learn things in even smaller snippets (because Cripple Creek repeats the same parts over and over, essentially). I told Craig to write out all the notes and divide them by 20 and each time we met up he would teach her 1/20th of the song -- like a second or two of music. She didn't know the names for notes or the plucking technique, she never learned to read music. She was just mimicking the movements. She was learning the banjo like she would a dancing routine.

We met up every two weeks over the course of the year. One of us would grab lunch on the way and we'd eat in the rehearsal studio. They would teach each other their 2-second fragments, run through what they had learned up until that point, and then we'd go our separate ways. I wasn't even needed, I just liked hanging out with them, and watching these talents build week after week -- like a time-lapse video of a skyscraper being built. 

As the months passed it got more and more exciting. This dumb thing was really going to happen. It may seem like a huge investment of time and energy, but really it wasn't. It was just 26 hours. And most of that was just eating lunch and hanging out with people who had become relatively good friends. Trust me, you've wasted more time on things that were even less consequential than this. The time is going to pass anyway. 

The big night came, and the performance happened and people were flipping out. The idea that there is an iphone app that allows people to swap talents is ridiculous. But the alternative, that they had somehow become experts in these fields (and the performance did make them seem like experts) without anyone ever knowing seemed almost as ridiculous. Everyone at the party enjoyed the trick. Those who knew them personally were really amazed by it. But those closest to them were struck dumb by it. Can you imagine if your spouse or the sibling that you live with all of a sudden had this crazy talent? And you knew for a fact they weren't practicing hours a day, as it seems they would have needed to. That would be so confusing. 

Craig and Kerry played dumb for about an hour or so after the performance. They acted as amazed as everyone else. But after a while they were anxious to let people in on the secret, especially their loved ones and I was completely cool with that. So while everyone sat around we told them about these clandestine meet-ups we had all year where we would all arrive separately and leave separately, like we were spies or something. Craig told how he would practice the routine every time his wife took a bath by going down to the basement, which was the only place he could do all the jumping around it required without it shaking the house. Kerry told how she never once held a banjo in her hand outside of our bi-weekly meetups. She would go home and practice the fingering on a non-working fake banjo whose body was made of a cat-food tin. Everyone loved hearing about the process.

To this day whenever Craig is at a party where some hip-hop is playing, he'll bust out this routine and people will be really impressed. But then he'll kind of wave them off as if to say, "That's all for now." But really, that's all for ever because he doesn't know how to dance other than that particular routine.

The Takeaway: As I mentioned previously, field reports are not intended to be tricks you'll end up doing, just interesting magic-related stories. But there are some takeaways to be had. In this case I would point to the notion of the false-explanation being "exposed" rather than just explained to the audience. In this performance I acted like there was some phone app making this happen and that I was trying to hide the fact that the phone was involved but the trick wasn't working until I just said, "Ah, fuck it, just put the phone directly between your heads." You can do this with all your pseudo explanations and I think it makes things a lot more interesting. For example, a lot of people have changed from "I'm reading your mind" to something like "I'm able to read your slight eye movement in order to  sense what you're thinking." If, instead of saying this to people you act as if you get caught doing it, it adds another layer to everything. So maybe you say, "I'm going to read your mind, " but then it becomes clear your trying to subtly look into their eyes out of of the corners of yours. After a bit you switch positions so you can look more precisely at their eyes. And after that fails you act like, "Shit, sorry, I need to move you into better light for this to work." Your attitude is as if you're conceding to them, i.e., "Okay, you got me. I'm not really reading your mind." You don't say that, you just act like you're deflated a little. I wouldn't do this all the time, but it can be fun to let the audience bust you on something only to convince themselves of something else that is equally untrue. 

Dear Jerxy: Suspending Their Disbelief

Dear Jerxy: A lot of your effects/presentations seem to involve the spectator being very willing to go along for the ride. I find people want to bust me when I perform. How do you get an audience to play along/suspend their disbelief/not question everything you do?

Tom in Austin

Dear Tom: "Tom in Austin" is not a good advice column letter-writer name. We need some alliteration or something. I'm going to call you Wondering in Wichita. And no, I don't care that you're not in Wichita.

Dear Wondering: That's better. 

I have a few thoughts on this. 

The one thing that will get you 90% of the way to having people suspend their disbelief and being a participant rather than a combatant is to have an entertaining presentation. People don't want to pull the rug out from under an entertaining presentation. They don't gain anything from that. But if your presentation amounts to: "Look at this incredible thing that I can do that you can't," then it's more fun for the audience to bust your ass rather than to play along. And of course it is. What would you rather do? Listen to someone bore you while he tells you how great he is, or point out what a buffoon he is and mock him for his attempt to get one over on you?

There are those who believe the magician's job is to fool people. But that's not what it is. Fooling people is essentially a neutral act that is part of the process. The magician's job is to entertain people through the medium of deception. ("Entertain," in the broadest sense. It could mean to move them to tears, intrigue them, scare them, enrage them.) To think otherwise is to believe that the photographer's job is to press the shutter button. No, the photographer's job is to capture images that move people in some way.

When people get busted a lot they often think, "I need better tricks." But what I'm saying is that better presentation will negate the impulse to call you on your shit for most people. There's very little in it for them to put the brakes on a fun, entertaining time in order to fight you on something. As the greatest magical mind of our generation once said, "The world wants to be charmed."

There will definitely still be a small percentage who will always see a magic performance as a battle of wits. And to a certain extent I want that trait in the people I perform for. When your audience is somewhat critical then your effects will have a bigger impact. But if it's only a battle for them, they will question every last little thing you do, and you will never get any momentum behind your performance. Here are the things I would suggest for dealing with those types of people in the following categories.

1. If you think you can reason with them. If I think the person is reasonable I sometimes suggest an analogy that gives them an idea of how they might want to try and perceive these effects. There's the classic Paul Harris line of telling them that astonishment is a gift and it brings them back to their child-like state of wonder, but I never got any traction with that line. Instead I use a much more prosaic, and I think relatable, analogy and that is comparing a magic trick to a movie with a twist ending. If you're a fan of thrillers or suspense films then you're probably familiar with the concept of turning off your brain a little and letting the move just play out without questioning everything. I will sometimes suggest this is a good way to look at a magic trick as well. Not for my benefit, but for them. "The end of a magic trick is kind of like the twist at the end of a suspense film." I'll say. "If you're up in your head the whole time, questioning everything, you can learn to anticipate even the most clever twists. But you're kind of denying yourself the enjoyment of experiencing the movie, or in this case, the trick, to the fullest." 

2. If you don't think you can reason with them. Walk away. That's what I do. If someone is paying you to perform, and you can't just walk away without doing anything, then lay your most bulletproof effect on the person and then walk away. (By bulletproof effect, I mean something that doesn't have many sleights for you to get caught doing, and has a method that is not something a layperson would even know to consider. Like the Gilbreath principle or some other impenetrable shit like that.)

3. If you don't think you can reason with them and you want to make them feel like a moron. I've never done this when I was performing, but I did do it when a friend was performing for a small group of people, including myself, and one guy was calling him out on everything he tried to do. I turned to the antagonist's girlfriend and I was like, "Is he [pointing to her boyfriend] kind of... dumb?" He turned at me and said, "Oh, I'm dumb because I can figure out all his tricks? Yeah, I guess I'm real dumb."

To which I spun this yarn...

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by it. It was just... did you see that article on reddit sometime last week? I was just going over it earlier today so it was in my mind and it just seemed to go along with that stuff you were saying. Oh... you didn't see it? Well, I guess at Harvard or one of those schools they actually just did a study on magic. And they tested IQ against people's abilities to figure out magic tricks. And I guess they thought it would be a pretty straight line but they were shocked to find that it was actually the people in the "well below average" category who did the best at figuring out tricks. And at first they thought maybe these people had made up for their lack of intelligence with some other type of intellectual gift. But as it turns out it's just that people with at least average intelligence feel like there is nothing to be gained by trying to figure out magic tricks, so they just watch them for pleasure, not as something that needs to be debunked. For a smart person, being hyper critical of a magic trick is like going to The Avengers movie and sitting there saying, 'This is so fake.' It's something only a moron would do. And I guess what was borne out in their research is that people who feel a desperate need to figure out magic tricks are similarly... you know... dumb. Just to be clear, I'm not saying you fall into the lowest category. It's not the lowest category at all. You wouldn't be labelled retarded. I think technically your category is considered 'feeble-minded.'"

Some Rambling Thoughts About Presentation and I Put That Know-It-All Tamariz in His Place

Over on the Conjure Nation forum there is a thread that started way back in 2005 when I shut-down the Magic Circle Jerk blog. The thread was revived when I started this site. In general I don't tend to read what people have to say about my site, unless they're saying it directly to me via email. Other than that I really don't think it's my business. Plus I like to let people live with their misconceptions. When I first launched this site I saw a message somewhere that was commenting on one of my first posts saying how bad it was and that it didn't live up to the stuff I was writing on MCJ. Which may have made me doubt myself -- have I lost my mojo? -- except for the fact that the post he was commenting on was conceived and mostly written 10 years ago for my old site, I just hadn't gotten around to posting it yet. My other favorite criticism of this site that I read in a few places early on was that while some of my ideas were good they didn't like the site because I'm a lazy writer who uses dirty words to shock people. I hate to break it to you ding-dong, but I never think, "I'm really going to shock these guys when I say 'fuck' and 'dicklicker.'" There is nothing shocking about those words to me. That's how I talk, and that's how many of the people in my social circle talk. And because we're not 5 years old, we don't place value judgments on "bad words." I think in a blog situation you want people to write like they talk, because it feels more personal that way. That's the only thing that dictates how I write on the site. And for those who want to label that as "lazy writing," you've got a big problem, because I'm 10 times more interesting a writer than you. And that's when I'm being fucking LAZY. But I don't need your readership, so stop fanning yourself on the fainting couch and hit the bricks, you fucking dicklicker. Oh wait, I mean, "you abhorrent ignoramus!" Look at me! I'm such a hard-working writer now for avoiding curse words. Thanks for the lesson in self-expression.

Annnyyyywhooooooooo.... where was I? Oh yeah, about a week ago, over on the Conjure Nation forum, in the memorial thread for my old site, which turned into the baby shower for my new site, there were a few posts about the relative importance of method, effect, and presentation. One person (and I'm not naming names only because it's a private forum and it really doesn't matter) suggested he subscribed to the Juan Tamariz school of thought that method is the most important, followed by effect, then presentation. And he mentioned Tamariz's analogy that compared method to the skeleton, effect to the flesh, and presentation to the makeup or clothing.

Juan Tamariz is a genius (which we sometimes forget because we think he's just another pretty face) but the more I thought about this, the more I disagreed with it. First off, it's not really an analogy at all. It's just an assignment of value based on his personal belief of what's most important. And second, the fact that we treat presentation as simply "makeup" is magic's failing, not something that should be championed. It's true that most presentations in magic seem superficial and slapped-on at the end -- yes, like makeup -- but that's not the way it has to be. In fact, it shouldn't be that way (in my opinion).

You might wonder how I rank method, effect, and presentation in importance, but the truth is, I don't think it's a useful or meaningful question. It's almost like saying-

Okay, when playing the trumpet, what's more important: 1. The song the audience hears, or 2. The process of blowing air through the horn?

You can't really rank those two things in order of importance. 

When we look at method, effect, and presentation, it seems like method is the foundation of a trick, but it doesn't have to be. You could build a trick from the presentation. I do it all the time. And I guarantee you'd rather watch someone with great presentations for uninspired methods, rather than someone with clever methods for dull presentations. Well, maybe you wouldn't, as a lover tricks and their methods, but a normal audience would. 

Of course, this is all pretty much semantics, as the people on Conjure Nation seemed to agree. You can't really separate these things, and if you ignore any one of them you're going to end up with a bad final product. But I do think there is something of value in assessing two of these three elements when working on effects. 

First, let's get rid of method. Method is essentially binary. Since my preferred performing scenario is one-on-one, the method either fools the person, or it doesn't. I don't care if the method is clever or unique. Magic, by definition, has a method that fools people. If it doesn't, then it's not magic. It's just some kind of boring exhibition. 

So we're left with effect and presentation. And I think the issue is that we treat these as two different things. But I find the strongest tricks are the ones where the effect and presentation are the same.

Let's look at a trick where effect and presentation are somewhat disparate things.

Effect: A card keeps rising to the top of the deck.

Presentation: One of the cards in the deck is ambitious, so it rises above all the other cards.

or

Effect: The aces vanish from packets of four cards and reappear in another packet.

Presentation: The Ace of Spades is the "leader" ace, and the other aces are drawn to it. 

These presentations could all be considered "makeup" They're just slapped on at the end. They're mostly nonsense and boring, but they're not too egregious because they are at least in the same ballpark as the effect.

When there is a big gap between effect and presentation, then you have stuff that comes off as hokey or condescending. The biggest offender is probably gospel magic.

Effect: A sponge ball changes color.

Presentation: Jesus Christ is our all-powerful lord and savior

Maybe it's just meant to be effective on kids, but I have a feeling even stupid kids are like, "Hey c'mon, I'm not that stupid."

On the other hand there are tricks where effect and presentation are the same.

Effect: Cards are absorbed into the performers hand in an "Invisible Palm."

Presentation: Cards are absorbed into the performers hand in an "Invisible Palm."

I find people tend to be the more engaged in these types of presentations. 

An effect that can be differentiated from its presentation will come off as a performance. Which is fine if that's what you're going for. But when your presentation becomes the effect to the spectator then you are performing the most affecting type of magic. I'm not sure if I'm making this clear... Okay, so presentation is the story that accompanies the trick. If you make that "story" something that is happening in the present tense then you not only immerse your spectator in the effect, but you also make the presentation and effect the same thing.

Let me think of an example...

Okay, let's say you have a trick where you can make a ball disappear and reappear. That would seem to be the effect: a ball disappears and reappears. But that's not necessarily the effect. Let's imagine two performers who can both perform this trick perfectly.

Performer One has a presentation about how when he was a kid he used to lose his favorite ball all the time, but if he wished hard enough he could make it come back. He makes the ball vanish and reappear a few times as he tells this story. This is kind of a standard presentation that's tacked onto a trick. What Tamariz would consider "makeup."

If you asked the spectator after the performance what the effect was, she would say, "He made a ball disappear and reappear." 

Performer Two has a presentation where he sits the spectator down and draws a square in the air with his finger. Then he goes through a brief "hypnotic induction" and says that after he snaps his fingers, for the rest of the performance whenever he says the word "square" her mind will latch onto that concept and the notion of "squareness" so tightly that it will cancel out the visual image of the round ball in her brain for a few moments. He snaps his fingers and says the word "square" and the ball seems to disappear. This wears off after a few moments and the ball reappears. Then he does it again and it disappears again.

By making the "story" of the presentation the story of that moment in time he has made the effect and presentation the same. 

If you asked the spectator after the performance what the effect was she is likely to say, "He hypnotized me to not be able to see the ball." In fact, she's likely to say that even if she knows it's not true. 

And the trick will almost certainly be more powerful to her because she is central to the presentation and the effect, rather than just a witness to it. This is the locus of audience-centric magic. Bring them an experience that happens to them, in real time, and would not be the same without them there. "Magic is the only art form that doesn't exist without an audience," magicians are fond of saying. And then they perform for people the same way they would for a tree stump. 

80 More Days 'til Halloween

80 More Days 'til Halloween
Halloween
Halloween
80 More Days 'til Halloween
Silver Shamrock

Where my Halloween III peeps at? You know what's up. Fuck that Michael Meyers noise. It's all about The Season of the Witch.

There isn't much to today's post, I'm sorry to say. It's really just a place-holder, or maybe a mile-marker. You see, there are 80 more days until Halloween and I just realized what my Halloween costume is going to be AND I thought of a way to use it in a truly awe-inspiring magic trick. The whole thing is going to take me much of these next 80 days to pull off, in fact it might not even be possible to pull it off in 80 days. But we'll see. 

So this post is just a little bit of foreshadowing. Hopefully --assuming this blog is still around come Halloween, and assuming you don't get hit by a bus in the meantime-- you'll be able to read about this crazy thing I did. And you'll think "Wow. I can't believe he did that. I remember the post where he mentioned first having that idea." Sorry this is so cryptic. But trust me, if it works like I hope it does, when you read about it you will think it's one of the greatest things you've ever heard, and you will never forget it. I'm being 100% serious. You see, you're actually in the position a lot of my friends are often in, where they know I'm up to something but they don't know what it is and they're just putting their faith in me and following along knowing it will be good. Follow along, because this will definitely be good. 

I'm not trying to be a cocktease. I'm trying to give you the gift of anticipation. If I knew someone whose output I appreciated had something really exciting in the works, I think it would be cool to know the day that idea first came to him.

A few days ago I wrote about suspense and surprise. Now we have the suspense. In a few months we'll have the surprise. See you then.

I have to go record 3 hours of video (you'll see).

For Those of You at MAGIC Live

Or anyone at any magic convention at anytime in the future. 

The next time you're in line for something at the convention, or waiting in a hotel lobby, or stuck in an elevator -- or anytime when you're surrounded by people you don't really know, I want you to start singing quietly to yourself, "Do You Know the Way To San Jose." Just those first couple of lines. You don't need to memorize the song. In fact you can just hum it.

Why?

Well, mainly because I just think it would be funny if multiple people were singing this song over the course of the convention. And maybe some guy would end up hearing 3 or 4 different people singing it and wonder what the hell was going on -- why this 45-year old song was experiencing such a revival at this magic convention. 

Also, if you hear anyone humming this song, you know they're part of our secret society. Anyone who sings this song will also answer "Jack of Diamonds" if you ask them to "think of any card in the deck." So just remember that. Jack of Diamonds is the official force card of the Jerx. Here is a handy mnemonic.

So let's say you're hanging around with a friend who doesn't read this site, because he's like a moron or something, and he doesn't recognize genius. But whatever. Okay, so he doesn't read this site. And you're waiting around for something. Then you hear someone humming Do You Know the Way To San Jose. You turn to your friend and say, "Hey, have I shown you my new psychological force?" You pull a card out of your deck and tap the hummer on the shoulder. You ask if you can try something with him, and he agrees. 

"Great. I want you to listen to my words carefully. You're going to think of any card in the deck. And you're not going to know what it's FOR (four). But despite not knowing what it's FOR, you're going to know what the right card is in your HEART."

Your friend will think this is the shittiest psychological force for the Four of Hearts.

"Go ahead," you say, "name any card."

"Jack of Diamonds," this "stranger" says.

You turn over the Jack of Diamonds in your hand and turn to your friend and say, "It's 100%. It never fails."

Remember, if you're the hummer in this situation you need to act surprised too. I recommend the "What? What?! No" method of fake surprise, along with the "confused baboon" expression. As popularized by Craig Petty in this clip.

Why did I choose Do You Know the Way to San Jose? Well, I hate the song, for one. I'm not a Dionne Warwick fan. "That's What Friends are For" was playing in a store the other day, and as soon as that harmonica started playing at the beginning I felt nauseous. I was like, "Uhm, was I molested to this song or something?" Like that's how visceral my negative reaction to it was. But I thought I would take back my power over Dionne Warwick and recast Do You Know the Way To San Jose as our own secret code. It works well because It's recognizable by many generations, it's very hummable or whistle-able (unlike my first choice, Butterfly by Crazy Town), and it was popular enough worldwide to be known in our satellite locations Jerx: Europe and Jerx: Australia. 

This isn't just for MAGIC Live, it's for any magic convention you attend in the near future. It's our audible secret-handshake. But we don't talk about it. If anyone ever says, "Why are you singing that song? you play dumb. They're not one of us. It's an unspoken code, so if they're asking about it, they're not in on it. Plus it will help drive them crazy if they hear it in multiple places and people deny singing it. I recommend this type of response.

Them: Why are you humming that?

You: Humming what?

Them: That song?

You: What song?

Them: Do You Know the Way To San Jose?

You: Hmmm... from here? Well that's at least a few hundred miles west.

Them: No, that's the name of the song you were humming and I was wondering why.

You: Oh, no. I don't hum. Father never allowed. If we hummed we would get "The Oar." 

Them: The oar?... You were spanked with an oar or something?

You: No, no. Not spanked. He didn't use the flat end on our little bottoms. He used... the other end.

Them: ...Wait... are you saying-

You: Gotta go!

Will You Let Me Into Your Dream?

As Ed Marlo would say, the following trick is dope as fuck.

A friend asked me to come up with a routine for a new gimmick he had purchased. I thought about it for a while and came up with the effect below. It's something of a meta-trick that happens over the course of four meetings with your friend and includes a couple other tricks within it (Including one with a shitty presentation but it serves a purpose). I think it would work best on someone you don't live with but still see relatively frequently. My friend ended up performing it for a girl he works with on the weekends at a cafe and he had a lot of fun with it. I wish I could have seen it. The performance description below is based on his recollection of events and how I imagine it would likely go. The only real performing condition is that days 3 and 4 should be in the same place. You'll see why (and you'll also see that you could probably get around this requirement if you really wanted to.)

Will You Let Me Into Your Dream

Effect

Your dreams about someone keep coming true in increasingly bizarre ways.

Imagine

Day One: You meet up with your friend. We'll call her Nicole. At one point you say, "I think I had a dream about you last night."

"Oh yeah?" she says. "What happened in it?" 

"I don't know," you say. "I think just pretty much this. We were here at work. It wasn't much of a dream I guess."

Day Two: "Good morning," Nicole says as she comes into the coffee shop.

"Whaaaat theeeee shhhhhhiiiittt....," you say.

"What? What's wrong?" she asks.

"Nothing. Nothing," you say. "I just had another dream about you last night and you were wearing that exact outfit: red bandana, purple t-shirt, blue jeans, grey Converse. This is crazy. I mean... you know me, right? I'm pretty rational. So this is fucking with my mind."

Day Three: "Guess what?" you say.

"You had another dream."

"That's right. But this time I knew it was a dream and I paid closer attention and I took notes."

"What happened in the dream?" she asks.

"We were playing a card game. Actually we were playing Uno. So you know what we're going to do now? We're going to play a little Uno. Indulge me. I need to know what's going on here." You pull out a deck of Uno cards and have her shuffle. As she does you remove a piece of notebook paper that has been folded over a few times. Then you say, "I know this is stupid, but I just have to see what happens. I mean look, I had a dream we were playing Uno and now we're about to play Uno, so clearly there's something to it."

"Yeah, but we're only playing Uno because you had the dream," she says.

You look her dead in the eyes for a moment. "That... is...exactly what you said in my dream."

When she's done shuffling you hand her the folded up piece of paper to hold onto. Then you tell her to deal you both a hand of uno (7 cards).

When she's done you say, "Okay, freeze." You push away your cards and the rest of the deck. "In the dream I looked over your shoulder at your hand. Pick up your cards and take a look at them. Now set them on them on the table. This is exactly what I saw in my dream. And when I woke up this morning I wrote something down. Open up that paper."

She does and sees that it's a perfect match.

Day Four: You don't say anything about any dream. Eventually Nicole says, "So, any dreams last night?"

You: "Ahh... haha... I think the dream thing has come to an end. I actually did have a dream about you last night but it was just fucking insane. Like one of those dreams that is just a random jumble of neurons firing off in your subconscious creating a bunch of nonsense."

She asks if you remember any of it.

"Uhm... let's see. I'm not sure where we were. I remember you were shouting something in German, I think. Then I was really excited and waving a sign or a sheet of paper or something that said "Boners" on it, and I was saying, "Boners! Boners! Boners!" And then the Golden Girls theme song was playing and you were holding a clear box of my pee in your hands, your eyes were bright purple, and I was wearing a clown nose. What do you think it means? Yelling in german? A sign that says "Boners"? The Golden Girls theme? A box of pee? Purple eyes? A clown nose? Strangely my dream interpretation book didn't have anything to say on the subject."

Later that day.

"Can I show you a card trick?" you ask. "I'm working on one where cards will come to the sound of your voice when you call them by name. But it's depends on how loud you speak and the distance they have to travel. I'll show you."

She picks a card, a four, and you put it between two other cards. "Now this card doesn't have far to go. It's just between two cards. So you can just whisper its name to it." You hold up the packet near here face. "Just whisper the word 'four' a few times." She whispers, "four, four, four." You turn over the top card of the packet and it's the four.

"Now let's try it again with a few more cards." You have her pick another card. This time it's the jack of clubs. You take about half the deck and bury the jack in the middle and hand the cards to her. "Okay, first just whisper the word 'jack.'" She does, and you turn over the top card to show it's not there. "Because it has so many more cards to come through, you need to speak louder. So now say Jack a few times in a normal speaking voice."

"Jack," she says, "Jack." Now she turns over the top card herself and it has risen to the top of the deck.

"Pretty crazy, right?" You start to put your cards away. "Actually, let's try it with the full deck." You turn over the top card, the nine of diamonds. You bury it in the middle of the pack and hand it to her and ask her to hold everything between her two hands. You first have her whisper "Nine." You reach into her hands and pull off the top card to show her it didn't work. Then she says it a few times in a normal voice, again you reach in and it's not her card. "Now, really yell it a few times."

She starts saying loudly, "Nine. Nine. Nine."

You freeze up. "Wait!... No, keep going." She keeps saying "Nine. Nine. Nine."

"That's it!" you say. And then in a German accent you repeat, "Nein! Nein! Nein!"

You start looking around frantically and pick up a piece of paper. "Boners!" you say. "Boners! Boners!" You wave the paper then show it to Nicole. It's the prediction paper from yesterday. You show it to her and then turn it upside down.

Your phone starts vibrating. And then from the speakers blares, "THANK YOU FOR BEING A FRIEND! TRAVELED DOWN THE ROAD AND BACK AGAIN..." Your head whips from the paper to the phone then to Nicole. Your eyes are big. You gesture for her to open her hands, when she does she finds she's holding a small plastic box filled with urine. She looks up at you and sees a red clown nose on your face. You jump back, "Ah! Your eyes! Those damned purple eyes!"

And... scene.

Day Five: "Any dreams?" she asks.

"Yup. We were at work, then left work and went back to my place and fucked until the boxspring broke. I'm not going to question it. Clearly I have precognitive dreams and that's that."

Method

So my friend was purchasing the trick Aquarium, which is a "Solid Deception" style ending to an ambitious card routine where the deck turns into a little aquarium in the spectator's hands. Cute. I like it. My friend started feeling bad for the fish and wondered what else he could do with this 60 dollar box he had just bought. I told him I don't think fish had the cognitive abilities to think, "Hey, this is too small for me." But he wasn't feeling that argument.

Then I said, "Why don't you just bet someone 20 bucks that before the night is over they'll be holding a box of your pee in their hands?" That would have been a good enough presentation for me, but then I began to think about it more and realized it really could be part of some surreal presentation. Of course the box doesn't have to be filled with something that looks like urine. It could be filled with milk, or chocolate pudding, or fake blood, whatever. Urine just happened to be the first thing that came to my mind.

So lets break this all down.

Day One and Day Two are just you setting the stage. 

Day Three

When I first came up with the presentation, Day Three was just any prediction effect in the guise of having come to you in a dream. So you could do a Shuffle-bored type trick, a spectator cuts to the aces (but using random cards instead of aces) trick, a nail-writer effect -- anything where you could bring out something you supposedly wrote down after your dream. Originally day three was simply meant to up the intensity of what your predictive dreams are. And to provide actual evidence this time rather than you just saying, "Yup, I dreamed this."

But then I thought, wouldn't it be cool if the unrelated Day Three trick could be part of the surreal happenings on Day Four. And that's when I thought of the Uno-Boners trick. I use Uno cards a lot. I'll write up the reasons why in a future post. All you have to do is force that hand on someone: 5-1-2-3-4-0-8. There are a couple of ways I'd consider doing this, but I feel like the most straightforward way to do it is to have those seven cards in that order, then put an X card above each one. You now have a 14-card stack. Hide it under your prediction. It's a lot of cards but it's still very easy to hide. As she finishes shuffling, take the deck and put your prediction on top of the deck to free up your hand for something else. Extend the deck and prediction to your friend to take the prediction from you. That leaves your set-up on top. Give the deck a false cut (as if cutting the cards is standard procedure in an Uno game) and give her back the deck. She will deal back and forth leaving herself with the seven cards on your prediction.

When you're done, take the prediction back and put it in your pocket. You don't want her to take it or for it to get thrown out (if you're doing this in a workspace, for example). 

Day Four

You need a deck of cards; the Aquarium gimmick filled with something pee-like and two cards on top: a nine, and an indifferent card; the Uno prediction; a foam clown nose; and an alarm set on your phone to play the Golden Girls theme at a specific time. For the purposes of timing, a visible clock with a second hand that is synced with your phone's clock is extra helpful, but not necessary.

When you get to where you're going to be that day, put the Uno prediction out somewhere near where the climax of the effect will be. You want it to seem like it was left there from the other day(that's why Day Three and Day Four should be in the same place). 

About three minutes before your alarm is set to go off, introduce the card trick to your friend.

Now it's time for the dull trick within the good trick, and the method within a method.

Come When I Call

Effect

The cards come when called.

Method

Phase 1. Your spectator selects any card from the deck. You place it between two cards. When she whispers to it you push off the top two cards as one to show it on top and a do a KM move to clean up. 

Phase 2. You have your spectator select another card. This time you take half of the deck and pretend to bury the card in the middle. In actuality you do Marlo's tilt, placing the card second from the top. Hand her the 1/2 deck to hold.

Have her whisper the second card's name. Turn over the top card to show the whisper didn't work because the card is buried deeper this time. Toss that card to the side. Have her say the name louder now and after she does, allow her to turn over the card that is now on top, which will be the card she selected.

Openly removing the cover card used for tilt as part of the presentation is fun to do. You also openly remove the cover cards used for phase 3 of this effect which is really the beginning of the climax of the real effect, so let's pop out of this method and back into the other.

You start to put the deck away after Phase 2 of Come When I Call. In that action you switch it for the Aquarium deck with it's two loose cards on top. You should have under a minute until your alarm sounds at this point. (Your phone, by the way, should be out of your pocket on some nearby surface with the volume cranked.)

Turn over the top card, it's a nine. Use tilt to place the card in the middle of the deck and then put the deck between the spectator's hands. Have her whisper "nine." Reach between her hands and pull the top card off the deck to show it didn't work. Then have her say "nine" in a normal voice. Reach in again, this time you're actually removing the nine, but you're just going to look at it yourself, not show it, and say it didn't work again. There is no heat on this whatsoever. Your friend is in no way expecting there to now be no cards between her hands and instead a plastic box filled with urine. Now have her say "nine" very loud. Tell her to do it over and over. 

Freeze up like you've just been brought back to that dream. Say, "That's it!" and start saying "Nein! Nein!" with a german accent. Then start looking around. You're looking for other parts of your dream to have come true. You notice your prediction from yesterday. Start yelling, "Boners! Boners!" Pick it up and then turn it over so she sees it says "Boners" upside down. At this point your alarm should be going off. Put your right hand in your pocket to retrieve the clown nose and with your left hand, point to or tap her closed hands and give her a gesture to suggest she open her hands. As she does you have a good moment of misdirection to put on the clown nose. She will react to the box of pee, look up and react to your clown nose, in turn you jump back and shout something about her purple eyes.

I was curious how this would actually go over with someone, so I asked my friend to describe her reaction to the whole thing. His response is below:

When I started saying "nein, nein" and showing her the "boners" paper, she was laughing, and when the song was playing too. I think up to that point it seems like the punchline of a joke. But when she opens her hands and finds the deck has transformed into the little pee box THAT was actually the big powerful magic moment. I had just lumped all these bits together in my head before I performed everything and wasn't really thinking about how strong that part would be. As far as she's concerned she's holding a deck that she's been using for a trick one minute, and the next it's something else entirely and all the cards are completely gone. I think the strength of that moment makes all those little bits like the clown nose and all of that even stronger. I'm not sure. But she loved the whole thing. I could tell she was thinking about it long after it ended and putting the pieces together. Even later that night she texted me and said "You put a lot of thought into that. That was the highlight of my week. Thank you."