The Time Traveler's Toilet

This is sort of a bookend piece to go along with my last post. That post dealt with a trick that occurred on the edge of the majestic ocean. It's a conceptually beautiful trick, but one most of you will never do. I know my audience. I think this dumb little trick at the other end of the sewage system might be more your speed.

Imagine

Your friend is over to watch a movie or something. You excuse yourself to go to the bathroom. You come back a few minutes later nonchalantly eating a soaking wet cupcake, your eyes on the tv. Your friend stares at you gnawing on this sloppy cupcake. You notice him looking, give him a head nod, say, "Whattup?" and take a big bite as cupcake juice drips down your chin.

"What the fuck is that?" your friend asks.

"Huh? Oh this? Cupcake. Wait... didn't I tell you about my toilet? I thought... hmm.... no... maybe that was Toby. Here I'll show you."

You take him into the bathroom and lift up the cover of the toilet tank. "Looks normal, right?" He agrees. "Yeah, but check this out. Hmm... do you have to take a shit or anything? Actually, I know what will work." 

You go get a deck of cards, he chooses one, you give him the chance to change his mind. You have him fold the card in half and tear it, then in quarters, then in eighths. Then you have him drop the pieces in the toilet. "Wait," you say as you plunge your hand in the toilet, "hold onto this piece." Your friend goes full-on Steve Harvey, but you just ignore it, jab the piece in his pocket and press on.

You flush the torn card away.

"Check it out. A couple weeks ago I drop a deuce in this toilet, and when I go to flush it, I notice it doesn't flush properly; the water keeps running. So I look in the toilet tank and what do I see in there? A cupcake is preventing the flap from closing. But not just any cupcake. The exact same cupcake that I had eaten the day before. So I'm all, 'Sweet, free cupcake.' And scarf that thing down, the next day the same thing happens. The cupcake's back. And it's happened every day for like two weeks. I'll be honest, it's a little less good each time it goes through the cycle. Like a copy of a copy of a copy of a VHS tape. But it's definitely still edible. And it doesn't just happen with the cupcake. Everything I flush down this toilet goes back in time like 24 hours and appears in the tank. I swear on my child's life this is true."

"I'll show you. You chose a card. I gave you the chance to change your mind. You ripped it up. We flushed everything down except for one piece. Look in the tank."

And when he does, there is a mostly restored card floating there. It matches his selection and the missing piece fits perfectly.

Now it's time for you to go full Steve Harvey.

A little while later you ask him if he wants to order dinner. "If not, I'm brewing up a little eggplant parm from last night which should be ready in 45 minutes or so," you say and pat your belly.

Method

This is the type of trick that screams force unless you have a perfect force, which I happen to have with the Reverse Psychology Force.

Go into your bathroom with a Hostess cupcake and a duplicate of the card you're going to force. Take the card and rip off an eighth of the card; an index corner works best. Place the rest of the card so it's pinched between the toilet tank and the toilet lid. The picture below shows a slightly exposed view.

With the card in this position, you can lift off the cover and show the tank empty by holding the card up against the lid. And when you put it back you can let the card drop off into the tank, secretly loading it for the restoration/appearance.

Keep the torn corner in your pocket.

Take your Hostess cupcake and run it under the faucet until it soaks up a bunch of water. You're going to eat this. It's disgusting? Yes, I know it's disgusting. But it's just a wet cupcake, don't get all bent out of shape about it. Suffer for your art, for once.

Walk back into the other room eating your soggy cupcake. Wait for your friend to comment on it. Bring him into the bathroom to explain your amazing toilet. Lift the lid and show him the normal toilet tank. Replace the lid, letting the duplicate fall into the tank in the process. Go get a deck of cards. Force the matching card. Allow him to fold and tear up the card while you get the duplicate corner in finger palm. Let him dump the pieces in the toilet. Reach in and grab at the pieces, secretly bringing out the finger-palmed piece. If you're grossed out by this, clean your toilet bowl you fucking scumbag. Your fingers briefly touching clean water in a spotless toilet bowl shouldn't freak you out so much, Howie Mandel. Make your spectator take the piece you apparently plucked from the bowl. Flush the toilet. Allow your friend to lift the tank cover and discover the restored card and match up the missing piece. The End.

The Sweetness In Water

This trick was pulled from the forthcoming book for reasons of space. I didn't pull it because it was the weakest effect -- in fact it has one of the strongest visuals of anything I've ever done -- I pulled it because it has the biggest performing requirements: you have to be at the ocean and have something very specific with you to perform it.

I performed this last summer at my friend's beach house for about a dozen people who absolutely flipped their shit over it. It's a truly amazing effect that could not feel more organic, and it utilizes a secret that almost no one outside of magic knows about. 

Imagine

I'm at the beach with a group of friends. It's around 7pm, there are still a couple more hours of daylight and we're getting ready to eat some dinner. In reality I was probably wearing swim trunks and a t-shirt, but to emphasize how clean this trick is, and to feed your sick jerk-off fantasy-file, let's say I'm in a Speedo -- my thick manhood pulling the fabric taut against my buttocks. Does that do it for you, you creep?

Seriously though, this is a trick that legitimately can be done naked.

I asked a friend to grab me one of the kid's sand pails. She brought one over to me. I told the people that were around that I'd be right back, I just needed to rinse out the sand pail and get some ocean water for dinner. I walked out to the end of the dock, laid on my stomach, dipped the bucket in the water a few times to rinse it out and returned with a bucket full of water. 

At this point everyone was gathered around. I walked with the bucket and grabbed a red disposable cup off the picnic table. I poured some of the water from the bucket into the cup and then handed it to one of my friends. I told her she could keep take a sip of it if she wanted or just keep it for the moment. Unsurprisingly, she didn't want to drink any ocean water.

I was asked what I was doing. "Going to make Kool-Aid," I said.

I held the bucket out to another friend and asked him to swirl the water around and feel if there was anything in the bucket. There wasn't. It was just a bucket of water.

"You can't make Kool-Aid with saltwater; that's disgusting," someone said. 

"No," I said. "I'm going to take the salt out." Then, with 100% empty hands and no sleeves, I reach my right hand into the bucket, swirl the water a little, then pull my hand out in a fist. I extend both of my arms out, the bucket in my left hand, and out of my right hand begins to flow pure white salt.

I brush my hand off on my hip and say, "Hmm... that should do it."

I bring the pail back and hand it to my friend and ask him to take a sip. He does. It's fresh water.

My other friend who is holding the cup I filled from the bucket before I removed the salt takes a sip of her water and spits it out -- it's salty ocean water.

I then use the water from the bucket to make Kool-Aid. 

Method

Take Sands of the Desert. Remove everything Doug Henning about it. Take it off the stage. Do it with a borrowed vessel that's natural to the environment -- an ungimmicked bucket. Allow everything to be examined every step of the way. And do something that makes perfectly logical sense. Something you might actually do if you had these abilities.

The bucket isn't switched. The water isn't switched. You end completely clean. You don't need anyone other than yourself to pull it off. And it fools multiple senses, not just the eyes.

I love Sands of the Desert. It doesn't make any sense, really. You make a mess and then clean it up. It's only good in a theatrical context where you're free to do stuff that doesn't make any sense. But that moment where your empty hand reaches into liquid and pulls out bone-dry sand is perfect and fascinating to me. And that's why I developed this trick.

As per many versions of Sands of the Desert you will need waxed sand. But in this version you need it to be pure white. Waxed sand is sand that's coated in paraffin. You can clump it together into a ball and put it in water and it doesn't get wet. It's not the same a hydrophobic sand, which I don't believe clumps together in its dry state. I'm not sure where you can get it. I had someone make it for me. You might try here.

You also need a large plastic bag that you can put a gallon or so of water in. I used a couple plastic bags from the grocery store that you put produce in. I doubled them up to make them a little stronger.

As close to your performance as possible you fill the bag up with water, drop a large egg sized clump of the white waxed sand in there, then knot the top of the bag. 

There's one difficult part to this trick, but the difficult part is during the set-up, not the performance. You need to find somewhere out in the ocean where you can stash this load bag. I nailed the bag to the bottom of the dock (going through the top of the bag above the knot). Then when I went out to get the water I, loaded and unloaded the bucket a few times from the ocean water, and the last time I reached over the dock I pulled the bag off into the bucket, tore it open, and tossed the bag into the sea. [Edit: Some people are concerned about putting a produce bag in the ocean. Well, the good news is, in my case the ocean was a bro about this and secreted the bag away until later in the evening when it spit it back on the beach with perfect timing for me to dispose of. If you're concerned that might not happen, then you can shove the bag in your Speedo if -- unlike me-- you've got room.] My body and the dock covered these actions. But they were also covered by the fact that nothing had happened yet so people weren't overly suspicious. You go out towards the ocean with an empty bucket and come back with one filled with water and you don't have anything on you -- it makes sense that you got the water from the ocean.

So look for a place to stash the bag, at the end of a dock, behind a jetski, on a buoy, or wherever. When I first considered the idea I thought of attaching it to the ocean floor with a tent stake, but I didn't know if that would work. I think it might if you could keep track of where you put it. (You attach the bag in water about waist deep. You scoop the bucket in the water and pull up the stake releasing the bag into the bucket. You dump out any ocean water that's in the bucket, then break the bag releasing the fresh water and waxed sand load. Dispose of the bag. Do it all with your back towards the people on the beach. If that would work you could seemingly get a bucket of water from the ocean with nothing else around.)

You come back to the beach with a bucket of water. 

On the table is an opaque cup with a bunch of popcorn salt in the bottom of it. (Popcorn salt is very fine and dissolves quickly.) You poor some water from the bucket into the cup and give it to someone to hold onto. They are now holding salt water poured from the bucket. 

Then you swirl the water in the bucket with your right hand while your left hand supports it from the bottom. As you pull your right hand out, you slide the waxed sand ball up and against the side of the bucket. So now you're holding the bucket at the rim with your right hand and your right fingers are covering the sand ball, so the bucket looks empty other than the water and someone can reach into and feel around. Once they do you just go to swirl the water again and leave the sand ball back inside. You might think this is over-proving, and you may be right. It's a judgment call. I think at the very least you have to show the bucket only contains water at this point.

Look where we are. You got water from the ocean. You set some of it aside which anyone is free to taste. Someone has reached into the bucket and found nothing but water. And now you're in that same beautiful position from the original Sands of the Desert routine. With an absolutely empty hand you reach into the bucket. (Tip it towards them so they can really see your hand enter and exit the water). You come out with a handful of clearly dry "salt" that spills from your fingers. It's perfect. 

They can taste the water to see that it's now fresh. If someone wants they can taste the sample that was set aside and find that it really is saltwater. And then you make some Kool-Aid. (I actually came up with a way to de-Kool-Aid the water too, but it's overkill.) 

Book Update

I haven't been providing daily updates on the book status recently not because I've fallen off the pace, but because I've actually been very much on top of things and haven't needed the procedure of making daily updates to keep me on track. 

The illustrations are rolling in and look amazing; a couple of the included props are being created as I write this; the iphone app is on schedule; I've received permission from Simon Aronson and John Bannon to explain some of their concepts that I've built on in the book. There are 10-12 brand new effects, including some of my most practical impromptu routines I've done 100s of times, as well as some more unusual effects -- like one that takes all night to perform (most of it happening while your spectator is asleep), and one where a thought of meal appears in your oven. The book itself is used as a prop in a couple of effects, including one where you hand the book to someone, they read a few pages that guide them along a mental procedure until they're imagining something, and then that idea in their mind, an illustration in the book, and reality all overlap in this weird way for what I think will be a pretty amazing climax. 

When will it be ready? As originally proposed, it should be somewhere around the year anniversary of this site (in May), give or take a little bit. I'm taking my time with it to make it the best magic book you own. So I'm not rushing it, but it's on track. It will be released -- like everything I do -- when I can answer yes to these questions:

Those are the questions that guide my life.

The Wizard's Staff

It's the 1980s.

Michael Jackson is the King of Pop.

The nation is enthralled with a show called Alf.

Girls everywhere are using Get In Shape Girl so their T-Shirt Clips aren't too tight.

Everyone is trading their Garbage Pail Kids for a Gremlin's themed Rubik's Cube that came free with the purchase of a Mc.D.L.T., so they can keep their brains sharp for their appearance on Double Dare.

And the world is buzzing about a "totally tubular" new disease called AIDS.

I'm a little kid at the time and one of the magic tricks I really think is cool is called Mr. Wizard. It's a telephone trick where your spectator chooses a card and then you call a third party and that person names the card. This seems wildly clever to me.

They way it worked is that you would have a person select a card openly (so you know what it is too). Then you'd call your friend who was playing the role of Mr. Wizard. It's the 80s so this is on a landline phone. Your friend answers the phone and you say, "Hello, can I speak to Mr. Wizard?" And your friend, knowing that the trick is on, starts counting off the values of playing cards, "Ace... two... three...." When he gets to the value of the chosen card you interrupt and say something like, "Yes, I'll hold," or whatever. Now your friend knows the value so he starts going through the suits, "Clubs... hearts...." and again you interrupt after he says the suit of the chosen card. So you say something like, "Hi, Mr. Wizard, my friend would like to talk to you." Now you hand the phone to your spectator and Mr. Wizard can tell them the card they're thinking of.

Here's another write-up of the effect that might be clearer if you're unfamiliar with it.

And here's a write-up by an imbecile who completely doesn't get it. He forces a card on the spectator and then still codes it to the Wizard. Dingbat.

I would run through this code with a friend of mine and think it was so great that now we could just call each other whenever we wanted and perform this trick for someone. Inevitably, this is how it would go:

Me: [into the phone] Yes, could I speak with Mr. Wizard please?
My Friend: Huh? You have the wrong numb- oh wait... now... what do I do? Clubs... no... ace... is it suits or values first?
Me: Oh, he's not home? Thanks anyway. [hang up]

As time passed I eventually found a small group of people I could pull this off with fairly regularly. Although, most often, I was in the role of Mr. Wizard, just because I'm competent and could quickly transition into it instead of fucking it up like most of my friends did.

As an adult I would screw around with my friends when they'd call. I'd ask the person they were performing it for to concentrate as hard as they could and send me the image of what they were thinking of and then I'd say that I was just getting an image of large cock and that's all I was receiving. I enjoyed this because I'm a child and the thought of a mindreader trying to read anyone's mind (man or woman, straight or gay) and just being bombarded with images of dicks is funny to me.

Eventually this joke version transitioned into a new way of performing the trick.

The Wizard's Staff

This version is done all on speakerphone, so your audience hears both sides of the conversation. In fact, they place the call and do all the talking. You yourself only have to say one half-sentence to code any one of 52 playing cards. And even though the code is done in the open it only takes 30 seconds to learn.

I think the trick is much better with a marked deck. When you have a card freely-chosen and you apparently don't know what it is -- the fact that card can be named by someone on the other end of the phone is genuinely amazing. Even when it's performed as stupidly as I'm about to suggest. 

Here's how it goes...

You put a folded piece of paper on the table and say you'll get to that later.

You show a deck of cards to your spectator, have them shuffle it as much as they want and slide out a card and take a peek at it while you turn away. If they want they can change their mind for a different card.

Once they've settled on a card you say, "I don't even want to know what it is. I want you to take that piece of paper, open it up, and dial the phone number that's on there and put your phone on speaker. It's my friend, Mr. Wizard's number." Or make up a less stupid sounding name. "I want you to call him, tell him you're here with me and your thinking of something. Don't give him any more clues. Then just concentrate on your card."

Your friend calls Mr. Wizard, explains what's going on. Mr. Wizard attempts to read their mind, is besieged with mental images of penises, and then you interrupt and he eventually names the card. 

Here's how the code works. Mr. Wizard will make, potentially, four statements about how he's getting nothing but wang from this person's mind. So those statements might be:

Statement 1:
"Yes, my child, please concentrate on your secret thought and send it to me now. It's... uhm... hmmm.... okay, I'm getting something very prominently. I'm not sure if this is what I'm supposed to be getting, but your mind is totally focused on it to the exclusion of all other thoughts. Are you thinking of penises? I'm just getting an endless parade of dangling dongs. Just on and on."

Statement 2:
"No. There must be something else. Let me concentrate. It's black. It's a ten. It's a ten inch black cock? That's all I'm getting. But I'm getting it so intensely. It's like it's there in the room with you."

Statement 3:
"I'm sorry. This is very difficult for me. Let me try again. Let's try to get on the same page. Think of an apple? Ok, good, I got that. Now think of a lemon. Ok, that's coming through. Now a banana. Perfect, I got that... oh no... come on now. Bananas don't have big pendulous testicles attached to them. This is unbelievable."

Statement 4:
"Okay, last time. Let's really try and connect here. Send me what you're thinking about. Okay... I think I see something. Yes.... yes... keep sending it. It's coming. Yes, it's coming... coming cables of pearly white jizz. It's a goddamn sticky mess. You truly have a one track mind."

Those are just examples. The idea is that Mr. Wizard will make up to four statements. And depending on when you interrupt him, that will signal the suit. It's in CHaSeD order. So if you interrupt his first statement, it's a club -- second statement, it's a heart and so on.

What you say when you interrupt will code the value.

The code is this:

"uhmmmmm" = 1
"okay" = 2
"enough" = 8

Very easy to remember. Uhm is 1 syllable. Okay is 2 syllables. And "Eight is Enough" is a shitty old tv show.

So if you wanted to code the 3 of hearts. You would interrupt Mr. Wizard's second penis-related ramble with an annoyed, "Uhmmm, okay."

Other examples. All of these are said in a dismissive and exasperated tone as if to say, "Stop, this is going too far."

Ace: "uhmmmm..." (then I would gesture to my spectator to say something.)
Two: Okay
Three: "Uhmmm okay"
Four: "Okay, okay."
Five: "Uhmm, okay, okay."
Six: "Okay, okay, okay."
Seven: "Uhmm, okay, okay, okay"
Eight: "Enough"
Nine: "Uhmm... enough."
Ten: "Okay. Enough."
Jack: "Uhmm, okay. Enough."
Queen: "Okay, okay. Enough."
King: "Uhmm, okay, okay. enough"

These things don't have to be memorized. You just make them up on the fly once you know what the card is. You can include other words in what you say, but your "Wizard" friend is only listening for the code words. So if you interrupt his third statement by saying, "Uhm, that's quite enough." He knows that it's a spade (third statement) and a nine (uhm + enough).

At this point, Mr. Wizard will say something like, "I'm sorry. That's my fault. Sometimes, when someone loves something more than anything else in the world, like you do cock, it prevents me from seeing what's in your mind because I'm so overwhelmed by what's in your heart. Let's try one last time. Yes... I think I see it now... you're thinking of the nine of spades. Yes, I think it's the nine of spade. Or.... that could be a really weird looking dick. I just don't know."

You can make the trick less filthy by having Mr. Wizard ramble on about something else. He could just start going on about different episodes of Saved by the Bell or his obsession with the WNBA. The only essential idea here is the code which can be done with any motivated interruption on your part. 

Or you can go the other way and make it seem like the person whose mind is being read has much sicker, more deviant, thoughts going on in there than just a gaggle of dicks. 

WWJD?

One of the most pervasive and most annoying lies in magic is that if you're a good magician, spectators won't want to look at your props. Or that if they do, you can somehow remove that inclination with proper "audience management." I'm not sure where this idea originated. It probably came from one of those crusty old magic theory books which are great as historical documents, but, sadly, less and less relevant about performing for actual people in the modern world. 

People selling magic tricks have long proposed this idea as well. "No, the restored card can't be examined, but your audience won't want to examine it." This is their way of getting around selling half of a trick. If a restored object, for example, can't be handled by the spectator then the trick you have isn't, "I can tear a card and restore it." The trick you have is, "I can tear a card and make it look restored." Audiences know the difference. 

Now, because you had a lot of magic marketers repeating this claim, it got picked up by the rejects on the Magic Cafe and other message boards as well and it just rattled around that retard echo-chamber until it became not just an opinion, but almost an accepted rule of magic: If people want to examine your props, you're not a good magician. 

I will concede that an audience shouldn't want to examine the objects that are tangential to the effect. They shouldn't want to examine your pen in a drawing duplication. And they shouldn't want to examine the card case if it's not used in an overt manner during an effect. If they do, that may suggest a flaw in your performance. (But it's also possible they just might be hyper-analytical and there is no amount of skill you could possess or presentation you could put together that they wouldn't dismiss and immediately just want to scrutinize everything that's in play. Some people are like that.)

But if you change one object to another, or tear and restore something, or harmlessly penetrate something, or change the color of something -- and if you do these things in a close-up situation -- then I would argue that the trick is not complete until the audience has examined the object of the effect at the end. 

"But they should believe the magic is coming from you, not the props, so why would they want to examine them?"

For the sake of argument, let's pretend a modern audience is really going to be convinced that you have some sort of supernatural powers. Does that mean they don't want to look at an object that you affected with your magic? Why would that be? I would think it would be just the opposite.

We need to stop seeing spectator examination as some sort of challenge. We only see it as a challenge because we're not prepared for it in many cases so it is a challenge to us. But for the spectator, wanting to look at the object is often just a natural reaction to being shown something amazing with that object. It's not about "figuring it out" or debunking you, it's about taking interest in what you just showed them.

If you're having a hard time understanding this, imagine you are Jesus. You're Jesus and you're showing a miracle to one of your believers. "I changed this water into wine," you say. 

What would be the reasonable response you would expect here?

• The disciple says, "Amazing," turns around and walks away.
• The disciple says, "Amazing. Can I have a sip?" And Jesus says, "Uhm, no, maybe later. First let me show you how I multiply these loaves and fishes."
• The disciple says, "Amazing!" And Jesus holds out the glass for him to drink from.

The first option is the bizarre way magicians want their spectators to react. They want them to be impressed but simultaneously take zero interest in what they've shown them after the trick is done from the magician's point of view.

The second option is how magicians suggest you handle a "difficult" spectator. Move on to something else. 

The third option is the normal and natural response of both the miracle worker and the audience. 

Notice that we've removed the notion of believability and skepticism. This is someone performing real miracles for a believer. 

So when you consider a new trick, put yourself in the role of Jesus showing it to one of his disciples. The deck changes color. Does Jesus immediately put it in his robe? No. Does Jesus move on to another effect? No. He would hand them deck so they can look at this miraculous object. He is not giving them the deck to convince them. He's giving them the deck because that would be part of the natural action when demonstrating something like this.

Neuropathy

Here's a guy who does NeuroMagic. It combines magic and illusion with neuroscience and psychology. Here he is doing a coin trick.

[Update: So, he's removed the video. You snooze, you lose, people. That's why you need to visit this site every hour on the hour. (No, please don't.) You're not missing much if you didn't see it. It was just someone performing a coin trick somewhat poorly.]

Wow! That was some stunning magic. Was it me or did those coins just seem to melt in and out of existence in a flash of fire?! I really need to do some research to understand the neuroscience of how this fooled my brain. brb

...

Exciting news! I worked with some doctors and scientists and they did some neuroimaging and they were able to figure out how this trick fooled me. Apparently I have a brain-eating parasite.

---

Now look, I'm not interested in pointing out bad magic just for the hell of it. I have plenty of other things to write about. I'm not trying to make fun of this guy. I'm trying to help him. And not in that bullshit way that people are cruel to other people and then imply they're doing it for that person's own good. "I called you a fat cunt because I want you to get healthy!" 

Check out some other videos by this guy. They're really not good. 

So what? Some guy with some shitty videos on youtube? 

Ok, yes, big deal. But apparently no one has told this guy he's not good and now he's planning on a U.S. tour. 

Magic, as a whole, does a shitty job of telling people when they're bad. I'm not quite sure what the reason is. I think, in part, it's because it's filled with such delicate egos that no one wants to risk sending someone over the edge with an honest critique. And I also think if you are a decent magician you look at a bad magician and think, "Let this idiot fumble around some more. It makes me look better."

And so we clap them on the back and say, "good job" and they continue to believe they're on the right track and then they're on stage at FISM getting booed and they must be like, "What in the fuck?" (My favorite part of every FISM recap is when we hear about how awful a bunch of the acts were and the performers that get booed off the stage. In a healthy art form, the shitty performers don't get to the biggest stage only to find out they're not good. But magic is filled with such pussies that only when surrounded by 1000 other cretins do magicians feel comfortable voicing a negative opinion.)

And it's really incumbent on magicians to give each other honest feedback. The audience won't. In fact, the more nervous and unsettled you seem to be, the less likely the audience is to point out you're awful. "Hey, that was great, thanks," is often the worst thing an audience will say to you. 

So, Matthew, the "neuromagician" behind these videos, take this in the spirit in which it's intended: Your magic needs a lot of work. In fact, much of it is actively bad. Your sleights are super rough and your presentation is just this side of comatose. Look at that coin trick. Your hands never appear empty in the slightest. The coins are clearly visible when they shouldn't be. And when your "invisible" coins turn visible, it's clear you're just reaching for the coin in your palm. There's no magic to it other than what is accomplished by the gimmicks. And that's with a static webcam and no audience to deal with. Your other videos have different, but also significant, performance issues. You need to be aware of these things. I'm not trying to bash you. I just want you to not turn a blind eye to these things for your sake.

You know the best thing to ever happen to my sex-life? It was when I was 18 and in college and I was dating a girl who refused to let me think I was satisfying her when I wasn't. She wasn't rude about it, she would just make sure I was where I needed to be and would take the lead on dictating pace and pressure and the sorts of things guys don't think about because why would they when they can get off by sticking their dick between the mattress and the boxspring? So many women are hesitant to give that type of direction because so many men are too fragile to accept it. So instead they lay back and say, "Hey, that was great, thanks." And the guy walks away thinking he's a tremendous lover. But this girl was having none of that. And I didn't flip out about it. I wasn't like, "How dare you suggest I'm anything other than perfect." I accepted her critique and instruction and happily learned from it. It was only a positive thing. The result was that when I was a young man I was able to interact with women sexually as a much more experienced man would. And now that I am much more experienced, it's like I'm some government-created cyborg designed to distribute orgasms and sent back from the future to quell the 2018 uprising of dissatisfied females. "Come with me if you want to... come...with me." Has this analogy gone off the rails yet? My point is only that for the sake of ourselves as performers and the art as a whole, we need to be better at giving and accepting criticism. It only serves to make you better and stronger.  

Shush

Now look, I don't know if this video suggests a lack of originality or if these people all thought they were just doing their version of a classic pose. I actually don't care about that either way.

What is funny/interesting/telling to me about this is that the subtext of one of the most common poses in modern magic is that the magician got caught -- the one thing a magician can't do -- and he's silently pleading with the person not to say anything about it.  "I'm terrible at this... please don't tell!" And this is the image they've chosen to represent their work. They thought it was a good idea. This is definitely a magic-only phenomenon. You don't see ads for housekeepers where it's a woman on her hands and knees smearing shit into a shag carpet, looking back and shushing you. Or a doctor with a woman on his table bleeding out after a botched abortion, coyly peeking over his shoulder, "Shhhh..."