Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time

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Here are some ideas I wasted my time working on this week. 

Shadow Coins Done Vertically on a Refrigerator with Magnets - It works, but the refrigerator needs to be completely smooth. It can't have any texture to it or the sliding makes too much noise. Because it's so easy to make marble magnets with any image you want, I figured it would be pretty simple to come up with some interesting presentation angles. And it's certainly more natural to arrange magnets on a refrigerator than coins on a floor. But I got bored after playing around with it for a little while and I think it has the disadvantage that it's less impressive that objects come together when those objects are magnets, because, well, that's what magnets do.

Altered Expectation Paint By Numbers - So, when you have a paint-by-numbers board and you look at it, you pretty much know what the final image will be.

But if you made it up of somewhat small segments you could then do a bolder outline around a picture that isn't really in the final image. So then when someone paints it (which obliterates the lines) they end up with an image they weren't expecting. Not only that, but if two numbers referred to the same color paint, things that are demarcated in the unpainted image would be part of a whole in the final image.  Does this make sense? Imagine a large grid and each number has a color it's supposed to be painted. And in the grid I've kind of used bold lines to outline an apple. So you would assume when you color it in you'll have a pixelated picture of an apple. But the color designations for each square are such that when they're filled in they actually produce a picture of a banana, but you don't know that until you color in the squares (covering up the bold lines which implied an apple.) Well, you could do a similar thing with the random shapes in a paint -by-number. 

So you could have a paint by numbers board that looks like the last supper, in its unpainted state, but when you paint it in it could be a gay orgy.

And that's actually the best idea I had for that concept, so I'm done with it for now. 

Rolled-up Sleeving - I know very little about coin magic -- at least in comparison with things I've studied extensively like card magic or mentalism. There is a coin vanish I do that I assume is standard, but I don't know what it's called. You have the coin in your right hand and pretend to take it in your left, but you actually use your thumb to slide it around your index finger and on the back of your hand where it slides into your sleeve. It looks like this from the front.

This week I was seeing how far I could roll up my sleeves and still do the vanish. I can go most of the way to my elbow now. 

My plan was to use it for the last coin in Joshua Jay's 3-coin routine, but it may be wasted effort because I don't really know how to get out of the position once the coin is there. I suppose I could brush my hands together and pull my sleeves back up, but I'd kind of like to avoid the sleeves altogether if I could. We'll see.

The "We Throw Parties, You Throw Cards" Change - I wanted a single-card color change that looked like the card changed with just the wave of a hand. And so I was playing around with the idea of having a double in your left hand, stealing the back card off in the process of showing your hands empty, and then just throwing the stolen-off-card from your right hand on top of the card in your left as your right hand passed over it. You literally just throw the card. I got it looking okay on a consistent basis but I don't have much of a use for it as I don't really do much that falls into the category of obvious sleight-of-hand like this. But it was fun to mess around with. Now I'm trying to do the Erdnase color change with my feet. 

Book Report - 2/16

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  • Revised and updated the headline prediction (aka Preemptive Headline Prediction or Eerily Edition or I Wrote the News Today, Oh Boy), including a variation which flips the given presentation around in a way that strikes me as funny.
  • Worked on the handling for Talisman aka The Shadow of the Shallow End. Part of the challenge of writing the book is to come up with handlings that are strong and will work in any given situation. This is in contrast to a lot of the methods I use in casual performances which are like, "Drop it behind the couch when no one is looking."
  • Reached out to the publishing company to talk about some different options in regards to materials used for the book itself and for some formatting assistance. It's funny the way that -- when they're unformatted -- the contents can look like a high school book report. But then when you get the proper size and fonts and margins and all that, it looks like On the Origin of the Species or some legit book. A legit book with a dollar bill to vagina trick in it (now with illustrations).

The Contents of the Empty Purse

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I was sent a video of Max Maven performing on television in Taiwan by someone who wants to remain anonymous. Apparently there is a bit of a cult following surrounding this video, and I can understand why. First, the Taiwanese people are a trip. Their reactions to things -- even things that aren't magical in the slightest -- are fantastic. I'm not quite smart enough to understand the relationship between Taiwan and China, but there definitely seems to be a noticeable difference in the spirit of the two countries. Perhaps I'm just being overly influenced by Western views of the Chinese government which is often seen as oppressively cruel and brutally Orwellian. Which is in distinct contrast with the Taiwanese magic audience which is aggressively cool and practically L&L'ian

I went a long way for that one. I'm going to enjoy it for a moment.

Okay, but that's not what I'm here to talk about.

I'm here to talk about screwing up. Let's watch Max screw up (part of) a trick and see what we can learn from it. (I've cued it up to the start of the trick for you.)

Let's take a real detailed look at this web of bullshit that Max weaves.

Maven: At this moment... this purse is empty. I know this purse is empty. Can you open that purse please? Is it empty?

Woman: No, it’s not empty.

Maven: Because inside is one piece of evidence. But do you know why it feels empty? Because nobody knows what’s inside. Only you do, right? So for everyone else and for me also, it’s nothing. It’s a mystery.

Seriously, that is an amazing pivot by Max. His original statement was about whether a piece of paper was in the purse, and when that didn't work out he turned it into a proclamation on the nature of existence and the persistence of object permanence and some type of Schrodinger's Doodle or something.

And at worst it comes across as a hiccup, but nothing much more than that. He just keeps rolling. There isn't time for the audience to really consider if he screwed up or not. 

This should be empowering to you. Your fear of screwing up is directly related to the derision you feel you might incur from it. But the truth is, everyone is taking their cues from you to see how much your mistake should matter, and no one will care about your screw-up any more than you care about it. (This is as much a life lesson as it is a magic lesson.)

The Valentine's Day Mailbag

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Happy Valentine's Day, my lovers. I can't wait to spend an evening with you filled with sexual d'lites. (By that I mean I'm going to stick my thumb in you until you turn red.)

Joe Mckay wrote in to suggest this idea regarding headline predictions and the potential of delivering one on a day when something tragic happens.

If your pre-set prediction is that there will NOT be a terrible terrorist attack today. And there is - you can say "I guess I really am terrible at this".

This leaves the spectator thinking you kinda' did predict it. Since predicting there won't be a terrible terrorist attack would ordinarily be a prediction that would not very impressive.

That gave me a good idea for a good, ungimmicked, self-working headline prediction. You just mail your spectator an envelope and inside the envelope is your prediction which says, "There were no massive terrorist attacks today." But what if there is one, you might ask. Don't worry, because on the back of the prediction it says, "Off by one," a la Kolossal Killer.

Noel Qualter wrote in to direct me to this hard-hitting piece on the "15 Hottest Female Magicians In the World." I'm sorry, the "15 Hottest Female Magicians in the World (with pictures)." Lest you thought that would make a good text-only article. 

I may have made some different choices but it's hard to argue too much with the author's selections. Those are females. And they're hot. And they're magicians. Clearly his google search worked. 

It's actually nice that there are enough women in magic that a whole article (with pictures) can be devoted to objectifying and marginalizing 15 of them.

In my day if you wanted to masturbate to a female magician you were stuck with Eusapia Palladino. And we didn't complain. We shot endless ropes of ejaculate across her image because that's all we had and we liked it. 

We've come a long way. Sure, when I was getting into magic in the 90s, you'd go to a magic convention and be surrounded by ample, heaving, beautifully round breasts, but none of them were attached to women.

Noel also sent along this video. It's a few years old, but I hadn't seen it.

If you like that type of raw, take-no-prisoners, street-wise, hard-core, gritty, gangsta shit like I do, then you might like a couple of my other favorite rappings.  

Did You Hear About the Corduroy Pillows?

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They're making headlines.

In one of my earliest posts I wrote about my version of the headline prediction. In my version your prediction is only half-accurate and the implication is that you did something to make the other half of your prediction (some awful event) not occur. This is, of course, exactly what you would do if you had the ability to predict future headlines and you were at all a decent human being. 

My suggestion of what you should do if some truly horrendous thing happened (a huge terror attack or something) was this:

If that happened I wouldn't switch the prediction at all. I'd let her open the envelope and reveal the actual prediction I wrote and sealed in the envelope which says:

Pony rescues puppy from river.

Then I would look at her and say, "Fuck. I'm terrible at this."

A couple people wrote me at the time to say that approach doesn't really solve the problem. But I think it precisely solves the problem. No, it might not solve the problem of how it appears in your fake world of magical powers. But it solves the problem of how to approach the issue in the real world that you're inhabiting with your spectator. 

It's such a magician/mentalist thing to think, "What if a dirty bomb kills 40,000 people in downtown Seattle... how is this going to affect me." I think you'll manage. I don't think your target audience is going to mind. They're not going to be like, "What a day! First my aunt and uncle get crushed under the Space Needle. And now it turns out Pete can't really predict the future!"

I'm mentioning this now for two reasons. The first is because I have some posts coming up about failure and screwing up tricks. The second is because I've come across another perfect headline to start with in your prediction envelope in case you can't switch it out.