Pre-emptive Tangents: The Best Coin Vanish

I've decided that when I have a post that contains a long tangent that could stand on its own I will pop that baby out like a tonsil stone (don't click that link) and use it as something of a teaser for the upcoming post. 

In my next post I'll be writing about a small experiment that I recruited some readers to help out with about a month and a half ago. It took a little longer to complete than expected and it's by no means scientific, but I think it's somewhat interesting nonetheless.

One subject that came up in preparation for this experiment was what the best coin vanish is (in our case we were using it as part of a transformation). This is something I've thought about for a while now. I'm lazy and I generally just want to know one vanish, one double-lift, one pass, one color change. Of course I know more than one of all these, and there are different performance conditions that prevent you from using only one, but in my utopia I would just have one in my arsenal; I'd Eternal Sunshine those other methods out of my brain. 

After years of keeping track of these things in my own performances, I determined that -- for my style -- the most deceptive vanish (not the most amazing necessarily, but the most deceptive) the one I never got busted on, and one of the easiest vanishes to perform was also one of the first ones I ever learned.

Yes, all of you know what's going on there (or should). And presented so straightforwardly in a 6-second gif, it's not the world's greatest mystery. But in the real-world --perhaps with an added delay of placing the coin in the other hand, or using it as a transformation-- it always flies. I think the reason why is this: put a coin on the table and ask someone to take it and hand it to you. The overwhelming majority of the time they will do the identical actions of that vanish, just without the vanish. 

This can't be said for any other vanish.

If I said, "Hand me that coin," and you did this:

I'd be like, "What a nutjob."

If I said, "Hand me that coin," and you did this:

I'd be like, "Uhm... is there such a thing as instantaneous adult-onset cerebral palsy? What just happened to you?"

If I said, "Hand me that coin," and you did this:

I'd be like, "Goddammit, you told me you were going to stop drinking! It's like you love that bottle more than you do me."

You might say I'm doing intentionally bad faux-vanishes to make a point, but it doesn't matter how good your moves are or how smoothly you execute them if they seem affected in any way. Go ahead and record yourself doing the moves of your favorite vanish, but don't vanish the coin. Instead hand it to someone from the hand it's "supposed" to be in. If anything rings false about the action, it's going to be suspect. You may still fool the person, but it's going to feel magic-y rather than magical

One caveat I haven't mentioned recently is that I'm speaking just from my perspective and in relation to my performance style. If, unlike me, you want to be recognized for your skill, then doing something in a manner that is unnatural but smooth is perfectly fine. If, however, you want to reduce or eliminate your presence and influence in the moment you're creating, you must use moves that draw no attention to themselves.

That goes for that goofball double-lift you've been doing too, with all that flippy and flappy action. Just turn over the card like a human for once!

In the next post we'll use this methodology and examine a simple trick performed three ways and attempt to quantify the magical resonance of different performing styles. 

ooh fancy.  

My Two Cents: Voodoo Card and Stegosaurus

Here are a some thoughts on recent releases that were discussed in past issues of X-Communication. I didn't want to limit the audience for these ideas to those who get that newsletter, but I also didn't want to post them publicly here as they hint at or discuss methods to effects that aren't mine to discuss. So they're on password protected pages that can be accessed by people who own the things being talked about.

In X-Communication #6 I gave some thoughts on Chris Ramsay's At The Table lecture. For me, the strongest effect in the lecture was his handling for the Voodoo Card effect. It's essentially the same effect as Guy Hollingworth's original, but the card can be signed. Tomas Blomberg has evolved the handling further, incorporating a justification I mention in my review that really solidifies the effect and a switch with a retention of vision aspect that makes it pretty much invisible. His handling also allows for the multi-stage reveal in the Hollingworth original, which I think is a more satisfying structure.

You can see Tomas' handling and read the relevant section of my review on this page. The password is the word that Chris Oberle uses about 20 seconds into the lecture during his introduction. It follows this phrase, "He has a big ______" -- just the first word after "big," lowercase.

---

In the Christmas issue of X-Communication I gave a positive review to Stegosaurus by Phill Smith. I particularly like the structure of the trick. It starts off with a couple of phases that seem like a word puzzle. And while we often say, "This is a puzzle, not magic," as a critique of something, I think these first two phases will capture the interest of intelligent spectators. And those phases will lull them into a false sense that they know what's going on. And that only makes the final phase that much stronger.

While I like and recommend the effect, it's not something that I would ever plan to perform ahead of time. It's more the type of effect I would get into when I'm with a group of people and we unexpectedly have some time to kill. So I've made some personalizations to the effect that allow me to perform it in a more impromptu manner. I've also come up with a presentation for it that I think helps justify the somewhat odd procedure of the trick. At least it does so to my satisfaction.

You can read those ideas on this page. The password is the word that appears at position number 10 of the list on page 10 of the Stegosaurus pdf.

The ICUMMT - The Invisible Close-Up Magic Multi-Tool

As first mentioned in the last post, if you want to be rigged up to perform all sorts of magic effects with seemingly nothing on you, then I think this is one of the most versatile set-ups you can use. 

Required items:

• a rubber thumbtip
• a 1/4" neodymium disc magnet
• some type of pull apparatus. For the purpose of this explanation will just assume it's a piece of elastic cord that is safety-pinned up the sleeve of your jacket.
• a strong monofilament (fishing line)
• PK Ring

Glue the magnet inside the tip of the thumbtip (I used this stuff.)

Take about 8 inches of monofilament. Tie one end to the PK ring. Tie the other end to a length of elastic cord which is attached to a safety pin. This gets pinned up the sleeve of your jacket in typical pull fashion. When the elastic is not extended the ring should hang to about the middle of your forearm. 

When I used this regularly it was set up in a particular jacket that worked well for an up-the-sleeve type of pull (stiff, wide sleeves). I just pinned the apparatus inside and would have it on me any time I went out in that jacket. The thumbtip would be in the watch-pocket of my jeans.

Whenever I saw an opportunity to perform something, or, more frequently, when I sensed someone was going to ask me to show them something, I would push up my left sleeve slightly, grab the pk ring that was dangling there, and put it on my left ring finger or pinky finger. I now had half of a universal pull in position. But we'll get to that in a moment.

What can you do with this set-up? A better question is, what can't you do with this set-up. No... wait... that's a much worse question. There's a lot of things you can't do with this. Here are some of the types of effects you are prepared to go into from this set-up.

1. Unlike with Annemann's Invisible Pull, you can use the thumbtip as you would a normal thumbtip. So you're set for any thumbtip magic just by dipping your thumb in your watch pocket.

2. You're set-up for any pk ring based effects.

3. You're set-up for a watch stop from either hand via the pk ring or the magnet in your thumbtip.

4. You have the cleanest ring vanish imaginable. Just take your ring off (let the pull take it), apparently squeeze it, and it dissolves away. 

5. And the main purpose of this set-up is that it allows you to build a universal pull from seemingly empty hands as you perform.

Here's a basic example of that. Let's say you're at a bar and you decide to show someone a quick trick. Slide the ring off your finger and hold it in essentially a left finger palm. Get the thumbtip on your right thumb. This is all done before you "start" the effect. You pick up a bar napkin and let it unfold. You run it through your left-hand in standard thumbtip silk vanish technique and steal the thumbtip away. The magnet in the tip of the thumbtip connects with the pk ring, essentially creating a universal pull. The napkin is stuffed into the left fist and vanishes via the pull. You're completely clean at the end unless your spectator starts undressing you, which is entirely possible when she's so turned on by your napkin vanish.

What I did with this most frequently is I would be standing around outside a bar with some friends while they smoked. I don't smoke but I like being outside. Someone would light a cigarette and I'd ask for a drag. I'd give it a long inhale, then I'd put the lit cigarette in my left fist (it would get snuffed out on the magnet inside the thumbtip) then I'd take the lighter and push it in my fist as well (the thumbtip I used gripped a standard Bic lighter pretty well). Then I'd exhale the smoke and vanish the cigarette and lighter in the puff of smoke. 

Another nice thing about this set-up is that it can vanish things that aren't actually stuffed into the thumbtip. For example, with the ring part of the pull in finger palm and the thumbtip on your right thumb, you can take a napkin or a folded-in-half dollar bill with your right hand and place it in your left, pulling off the thumbtip as you take the item. The bill or napkin get's pinched between the two magnets and can be pulled away from there (In this case the vanish is very jacket-dependent. Make sure you have the sleeve space to accept something like that.)

I never played around with using it as an under-the-coat style pull, although I think you probably could.

I think there's a lot more that could be done with this, actually. I don't use the ICUMMT any more due to a shift in my philosophy on preparedness, but there are definitely times when I wish I had it on me. 

ALL MANUFACTURING RIGHTS RESERVED BY THE JER-- aw, fuck it, I'm never going to take the idea any further. If someone else wants to, knock yourself out.

Magician Foolers Part Two: The Vanishing Vanishing Silk

This is one of the first tricks I ever created. I'm sure I couldn't have been the first to do this effect using this method. I was 13 or so when I came up with it, and I don't consider myself that precocious. 

There was a magic shop in my town. It was a real shit-show of a shop and I'm glad it's gone. But that's another story for another day. 

I had attended my first lecture there and afterwards, while people were eating stale popcorn from a large tin bucket, a few people were encouraging me to join the local branch of one of the magic organizations. I don't remember if it was the IBM or the SAM and the difference is too inconsequential for me to google it. I asked what it entailed to join and I was told that I would need to perform a routine. (I'm sure there were some other requirements too. Pay some dues? Fill out some forms? Kill a runaway?)

I was stymied by the idea of performing a trick for people who were likely to already know the secret. As a beginner magician, that's all magic was for me, the secret. There was one other young guy at the lecture. He was 17 and considered himself a bit of a hot-shot on the magic scene. For the purposes of this blog post we'll call him Jason, because... well... I'm pretty sure that was his name. I pulled him aside and asked him what type of thing I could perform for this group that would impress them. The average age there was "almost dead." What could I, as a kid, perform that would fool these wisened, wizened, wizards?

He told me there was a group of effects that people considered "magician foolers" and he would help me find some. I was enthralled by this notion. Magic that was so incredible and impossible it would fool magicians! And I spent a few weeks trying to come up with my own effect that would qualify as a magician fooler. I eventually stumbled across an idea that utilized some of the rudimentary knowledge that I possessed at that time that I thought might be able to fool some magicians. But certainly, I thought, this effect is not up to the mighty standards of a true "magician fooler" effect. 

At the next gathering I attended at the shop I cornered Jason again. I told him I'd come up with a trick and asked him for any help he could give me with it and if he could show me some other tricks that might fool these magicians. We sat down at a table and he pulled out a deck of cards. A few other guys joined us. Then he performed three "magician foolers" for me. After each trick the crowd around us grew. And all these guys were really enthusiastic about the magic. I was just sitting there, surrounded by heavyset, older, white guys, and I wish I could play that moment back for you, and you could see my expression, and hear my thoughts like I was Kevin Arnold in The Wonder Years. I think it would be funny to see the forced smile on my face, and watch my eyes dart side to side, and  hear the confusion and disbelief in my voice as I thought, What...in...the...fuck...is going on here?

They were the shittiest tricks I'd ever seen. And I looked around at these braying idiots with the dawning horror you would read in a novel where someone realizes, "Oh my god, this is a party for vampires!" or something like that.  Except my realization was, "Oh, these people are all terribly dull. And this hobby that I thought was about dazzling people can be wildly boring." I have since found dozens maybe 100s of magicians I admire and enjoy being around, but in that moment I was just like, "Ugh. These people suck." And I just wanted to be out of there.

"Magician foolers" weren't some ultra-impressive tricks. They were just tricks that were so convoluted and uninteresting that they only appealed to people whose sole criteria for a successful effect was: do I know how this is accomplished? They hadn't raised the bar. They'd lowered it to the point where no one other than magicians would care about the trick. 

Jason passed the deck over to me and suggested I show everyone the trick I was working on. "It's not a card trick," I said, and pulled out the little silk that came with the Klutz Book of Magic. 

It seemed my nerves had gotten the best of me because I was flashing the thumbtip on my right thumb wildly, forgetting to point it at the correct angle to make it invisble. (And yes, I use "thumbtip," one word, to describe the gimmick and differentiate it from your actual thumb tip. This should be standard in magic. Okay? Thanks, bye!!!!)

I stole the thumbtip with my left hand somewhat clumsily, then I poked the silk into my left fist with my right forefinger and then my thumb. I drew my right hand away. It was, perhaps, unnaturally tensed and awkwardly positioned, but at least I remembered to keep the tip of my right thumb pointing at the audience. I opened up my left hand to show the silk had disappeared. 

"I've just started working on it," I began.  

"You need to practice in front of a mirror," someone interrupted. "You flashed the thumbtip multiple times. We can see it," he said and gestured towards my right hand.

"I what?" I said, letting my right hand relax and open. 

There was no silk. There was no thumbtip. My hands were truly empty.  

My "magician fooler" was not a silk vanish, but a thumbtip vanish. And I'd fooled them badly.

I promised to show them how I'd done it at the next meet-up at the shop. And then I just never, ever, ever went back when people were meeting up there. For a second time I'd fooled them with a disappearance.

I still like to use this trick when I'm meeting a group of magicians for the first time. Or, even better, when dealing with some dude who knows a little about magic and feels the need to pontificate on everything when I'm messing around at a party or something. This is a good trick to shut him the fuck up. 

Its a very satisfying structure to lower expectations and then destroy those expectations. I do it with women too. "For someone who was so excited about trying a Quesalupa," they say, "I never expected you to be such a vigorous lover." 

How did I do it? Simple. I had the silk and the thumbtip, but I also had a universal pull in my left hand and just used that to vanish the whole shebang.

(Can we take a moment to admire that ad for the universal pull? First, I like when it says, "This is not another pull," when, yes, that's exactly what it is. I'm also amazed by this line: "Its excusive [sic] design made it get the Inventions First Prize during the Second Argentinean National Congress, in 1981." Okay, that sounds perfectly reasona-- wait... what? I have no idea what the Second Argentinean National Congress is. The only reference I can find to it is in regards to this gimmick. Maybe it's just some cruddy Argentine magic conference. I don't know. But it sounds like something much more significant. And that only makes the idea that a pull won the "Inventions First Prize" there sound all that much more ridiculous. It would be like if you said, "And then he won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his slush powder." Or, "And then he won the pulitzer for his magic blog."

I have a big affinity for pulls. You can do such visually astonishing magic with them. But it can be a pain in the ass to pin them into your coat and stuff. I'm lazy. It's strange. I'll spend 6 months preparing for some effects, but then bristle against setting up a pull. "I can't be opening and closing safety-pins all day! Jeez louise! I'm not a tailor for god's sake." But I'm going to get back into them I think. Well, when fall rolls around and we're back in jacket weather. (I did once use a pull that went up the leg of my shorts that I could use when sitting. I tried it once in real life and it whacked me in the balls hard as hell. That's another thing I wish we could go back and watch. Me being like, "And with just a blow your ring is gone- FUUUCCCCCKKKKKKKKK.")

Many years after I first performed this effect I read an idea in the Jinx, called the Invisible Pull, where Annemann combined a pull with a thumbtip. Alas, you can't really use it to vanish the thumbtip itself, as in the effect above, but it still seemed like a very versatile idea to me for other effects. I never really got accustomed to the handling for it, and I'm guessing not many other people did either, as it seems to not have caught on. But in experimenting with it I came up with a whole new set-up that I think a lot of you will find interesting. It's not just a pull or thumbtip. It's kind of an invisible close-up magic multi-tool. In fact, that's what I'll call it, The Invisible Close-Up Magic Multi-Tool (ICUMMT).

At the end of his write-up for the Invisible Pull, Annemann says:

And while I have had some things to say about that gimmick, he has been completely ignoring my emails. So instead I will be posting my evolution of the Invisible Pull, the ICUMMT, on this site next week. 

Magician Foolers Part One: No Glove, No Love

These days when I hear the term "magician fooler" I tend to think about things like this card to condom trick  on Ellusionist. This is the sort of trick that looks like it was put together by some concerned Jerx readers who were worried I didn't have enough to talk shit about. Thanks guys, but I don't need you to set the ball on the tee for me to that extent. I'm all set content-wise. 

The effect itself is neither here nor there. I could get away with performing it and I even have some interesting ideas for it presentationally, but I would never use it because it says Magix on the packaging. So even in the best of circumstances where you could pull the trick off in a clever, perhaps mildly risqué way, it ends with the spectator's "souvenir" being a direct link to the name of the magic product. I don't know who is responsible for that dipshittery, but it's completely fucking boneheaded. "Let's make a card vanish and reappear in an ordinary object." Okay, good idea. "But then let's make it clear via our branding that it's NOT an ordinary object. In fact, let's put the name of the trick itself on the trick." Oooohhh... savvy marketing!

In an ideal world you shouldn't carry anything with you that's obviously a magic prop. But if you have to, just go all out and carry around some plastic Tenyo prop before this thing. Here is the hierarchy of pathetic-ness in regards to what you can be caught carrying with you as a magician:

1. Non-magic props - Not pathetic
2. Deck of cards and/or Silver Dollars - Mildly pathetic
3. Obvious magic props - Pathetic, but potentially charming in a sad-nerd way
4. A fake non-magic prop that is clearly a magic prop - Embarrassing for you and everyone around you who either has to be a jerk and call you out on it or play along with your transparent bullshit
5. A fake non-magic prop that is clearly a magic prop that is meant to look like a condom - Heartbreakingly pathetic. If I had a son and I walked into his room one day to find him dead from auto-erotic asphyxiation, wearing his mother's panties on his face like a bandit's bandana, holding a picture of a bull terrier's butthole in his hand and he had one of these fake condom's in his pocket, the first bit of scene staging I would do would be to get rid of this fake condom magic trick. He just can't be remembered that way.

I call the trick a "magician fooler" because it's really trying to take advantage of 13-17 year-old boys, and older awkward virgins, who think that if they do a trick with something that's related to sex it will make them seem like sexual entities. Sorry, boys, it's not going to work. A condom is maybe mildly racy, because your dick goes in it, but by that logic you could try and woo women with a color-changing Depends diaper. Condoms may be "sexy" in a very abstract, "this guy is looking out for my health and safety" kind of way. But removed from the act itself they're just going to be weird and off-putting to those girls in your earth science class. "Here's the little rubber tube I put my ding-dong in so when I squirt my jiz I don't give you gonorrhea " Oooo, daddy, so sexy! Trying to seduce a woman (as the ad suggests) with this type of trick would be like adding this song to your fuck-mix.

And finally, Ellusionist, don't hesitate to put me on your payroll. I could have fixed this for you. "Let's come up with a presentation that justifies the usage of a condom," I would have said. "Let's not put the name the trick is marketed under on the trick itself," I would have suggested. Then I would have offered you a new name for this effect. The perfect triple entendre of a name that would invoke conjuring, dick-slang, and a safe-sex cautionary tale. What would that name be? Simple. Two words: Magic Johnson.

The Jerx App

Hey guys, if you ordered the book and you have an iPhone then the Jerx app is available for you.

Some things to note:

1. This is free for the people who bought the book. You'll probably eventually be able to find it in the iTunes store as well, but it's going to have some absurd price on it.

2. Rather than try to hide the app behind some phony financial app or something, it's hidden behind itself. If someone tries to go into the app or asks you what it is, you can open it and it will show L'il Jerxy and his magic trick or tip of the day. These are just going to be stupid bits of "advice" or tricks. The real app is hidden behind this opening screen.

3. The app has one main purpose  (Codename: Chocolate & Vanilla) that is not currently listed on it. I'm waiting to release that functionality until the book comes out because it goes along with one of the effects in the book. But it's much bigger than that too. In a sense it's a utility gimmick. It does one very simple thing, but the simple thing it does can be used for a variety of different effects: close-up, stage, magic, and mentalism.

4. While the purpose of the app is the Chocolate & Vanilla capability, there are going to be other mini-tricks on it as well for you to screw around with. The first mini-trick that's loaded on the app right now is Wish List. Wish List is a version of this idea that I mentioned last summer. It's a way to get into a five item equivoque. You go to your friend's house and tell them you want to try this psychological test but it requires 5 very specific items. "You might not even have all these things," you say. You open your phone to get the instructions for the test and then rattle off the items you need. You and your friend then notice those are the exact 5 things sitting on your friend's kitchen table. "What a coincidence," you say. She doesn't believe you but you can immediately show her the directions you copied earlier into your phone that have those as the required items and those five things are listed throughout the brief instructions. You tell her you don't want her to read the whole thing because you don't want it to affect the test. So you send a screenshot of the instructions to her phone to check later. She selects an item through "process of elimination" (wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink) and when she opens the the photo of the instructions you sent her it states that item is the one that will be selected when those group of items are laid out in that particular order. 

It's a weird trick because the magic moment doesn't come at the end, but the beginning. And then everything that happens after that is meant to legitimize that moment including the "trick" itself.

5. Eventually everyone who buys the book and who has an iPhone or iPod touch will get the app. But be patient because we're limited by how many we can give away at one time before we update it and things like that. "Why not just make it a free app?" I don't want it to be free. I want it to be free for the people who support the site by buying the book. Everyone else can go screw.

6. Have an idea for a magic app? Hire Marc Kerstein to build it. I don't even know if he's looking for those types of gigs. But if he is and you could use his services, definitely check him out. He can probably do non-magic apps too. That one to track your period, for instance. But again, I don't really know. He didn't ask me to say any of this, I'm just saying it because he's handled the creation of the Jerx app for me. And I'll say, "Hey, can you make it do this?" And then 13 minutes later there is a new build of the app with that feature. 

Catch you on the flippety-flappety, Flappy-pants-pappy.

The Look of Love

Imagine

I'm out getting a late-night meal with a group of friends. It's a pretty low-key affair. There are maybe 8 of us. A few different conversations are going on. I'm just screwing around on my phone waiting for my loaded potato skins. One of my friends who also does magic is trying to make a move on one of the girls there that he just met that night.

"Did you ever do the soulmate test?" he asks.

"I don't think so," she says. "What's that?"

"My grandfather told me about it," he begins. "Apparently it was big in the 50s. Guys would carry a picture in their wallets of a random object, then when they'd meet a girl they'd ask her to name any object in the world. The closer the girl got to the object, the better suited they were for each other. Supposedly. It was created by some psychologist back in the day. It's probably horse-shit but I guess it got popular because there was some 1950s dating show called The Look of Love where people were paired up, in part, based on a similar type of matching pictures thing. It was apparently a big deal because it was like the first dating show ever and it was maybe a little scandalous at the time. Do you want to try it?"

"Sure," she says. But the positive kind of "sure" not the dismissive kind.

"Okay," he says. "Think of any object in the world. Something in your home. Something in your school. Something at work. Or just anything out in the world at all. Got one?"

"Uhmm.... okay... a basketball."

"Really? Now... okay... wait. Uhm... just for the sake of... of... getting a clear mental picture, I want you to imagine the basketball is a particular color. It doesn't have to be basketball-color. What color is it?"

"Green," she says.

"A green basketball." He sits there quietly for a moment, nonplussed. "I mean... I've asked maybe 50 girls to do this and none of them even said anything sports related in any way. Much less a ball. Much less a basketball. This is just.... And green! I mean, I only made it green so it could be definitive and not ever just be a lucky guess. But I never thought it would actually work. Oh... sorry," he says, stopping his rambling.

He reaches into his wallet and pulls out an envelope that says "Soulmate Test" on it. He rips off the end and dumps out a photo onto the table.

A photo of a green basketball.

Method

Look, I'm not saying telling people which hand holds a coin is a bad trick. I have dozens of types of interesting little moments in my repertoire. I love those things. But sometimes you don't want to make someone scratch their head, you want to make them drop their jaw. You want to make their heart skip a beat. 

When I was originally going through my unpublished effects for inclusion in the Jerx Book, I thought I would put a bunch of my most practical routines in there. Borrowed deck stuff, impromptu stuff, because I figured that would be what people wanted: things they could perform a lot. But after talking with some magic friends I decided that the only criteria I would use is what gets me the best reactions. You guys have more than enough resources for hyper-practical routines if that's what you need. Buy John Bannon's books and you'll be set for life. Hell, buy Easy To Master Card Miracles and you'll have more than enough routines to do entertaining magic. We're not lacking in practical magic effects.

I think there is something of a dearth of breathtaking magic effects. Effects that really rattle spectators in a personal and overwhelming way. You can't perform these effects one after another for someone. It's just too much. It would be like if you did some staggeringly romantic gesture every night for your wife. The first few nights she would be swooning, but then it just becomes standard. Much better to just be a low-key romantic guy on a day-to-day basis, and then do something over-the-top every few months. You'll get more credit. 

Here is, I think, why magicians sometimes seem to neglect or overlook the need for powerful effects in their repertoire. Let's say you're 12 and you start seriously pursuing magic. And you have all these ideas in your head for the type of bold effects you want to do. "I'm going to make a dozen roses appear for this girl." "I'm going to levitate in front of the school." "I'm going to make Tony disappear." Your brain at this point in time is mostly layperson-brain. So the effects you want to do are big and powerful. But as you grow in magic, you grow your magician brain, and your magician brain knows that everything is fake and is more interested in the process of fakery than the outcome of the fakery. It's just as interesting to fake doing something dull as it is to fake doing something spectacular, because the process is often very similar.

It's like if you were an artist capable of creating photo-realistic drawings. And for you, the process is fairly similar whether you're drawing an apple or drawing Aubrey Plaza 69'ing Alison Brie. They're both just exercises in light and shadow and color. But for an audience, one is a nice picture of an apple and the other is going to move them (to jack off).

This goes back to the audience-centric approach to magic. You need to fall out of love with methods and back in love with effects, like you were when you first started magic. Especially now that you have the knowledge to pull off some harder-hitting effects. 

Quit dicking us around. The method?

Okay, this is an effect I love, but it didn't make the book because it requires a couple things not everyone is going to have access to. The first is something I just mentioned the other day, the Polaroid Zip printer. The second thing you need is me, hanging out with you, pretending to play Candy Crush, but secretly listening in to the conversation and sending a picture to the printer that's in your lap. (The printer, if it's not clear, is the size of a cell phone.) Or if not me, some other competent person you trust.

Your confidant listens in, does a google image search for whatever is named, sends that picture to the printer. Maybe 30 seconds after the object is named, a perfectly-palmable photo of it is being silently printed right into your hand. And you just load it into your card-to-wallet wallet.

And yes, you can add any color to any object in the world and google images will have a picture of it. 

Brown rose
Yellow dolphin
Green stapler

You can't stump it, so don't worry about that.

This effect has multiple layers of deception: the secret use of a non-standard technology, a secret accomplice, and the card-to-wallet technique. And while any trick using only one of those layers might be easy to unravel, together they present a fairly impenetrable mystery. The spectator doesn't know to break up the trick into the component parts. She just sees the end result, so it's very deceptive. You know the elements of the trick. You know that you need to get a real photo printed mid-trick, you know you need to have someone else to send it to the printer, you know you need a way to load it into an envelope in a wallet. Spectators don't break down tricks like this.

On top of the deceptive methodology, it's couched in a kind of gentle presentation that doesn't encourage someone to "debunk" you. It's not, "I was graced with the power to predict the future. Earlier today I put a photo in my wallet...." They'll fight that presentation. Here you let them choose the narrative. Maybe it's just a crazy coincidence. Maybe there is some kind of connection between you two. Or maybe it was just a cool magic trick. 

Even if you don't use this effect, you can still reference the old tv show, The Look of Love, in a drawing duplication presentation or something like that. They really did used to pair people up on that show based on similarities in random drawings and things like that. 

Ok, no, that's not true. No such show ever existed. But you can picture it can't you? Young people being put through the paces and subjected to tests and games to be paired off on innocent 1950s dates? "Calgon presents, The Look of Love, with your host, Bud Collyer [orchestra swells]" 

Postscript:

I could probably write a book just on effects I've used that little printer for. But I won't because that would make a dull book. But here are two more quick ideas.

1. Want to do the above effect in the context of your stage show or your ABC hour long special? You could rig the printer up inside your jacket so it hangs down and the photo falls right into your CTW wallet. Imagine, any person or item named, you reach into your pocket with empty hands and remove your wallet, remove a sealed envelope from your wallet, and inside is a picture of that person or thing. Your offstage assistant just needs to send the photo to the printer. Easy. 

This is one of those ideas that no one will do because I'm giving it away for free. if I had packaged the printer with a CTW wallet and sold it for $750 it would be used in every Magic Castle parlor performance until California falls off into the sea.

2. This also requires a secret helper, but they don't have to do much.

Effect: You ask your wife to get your photo printer from upstairs. While she's gone you take a picture of your friend Dave. When your wife returns she hands you the printer and you print out the photo of Dave. Then you burn it or cut it up (you can't tear the photo really) and restore it. 

Method: So your wife goes to the other room to get the printer You take a picture of Dave and immediately send it to the printer. Once it prints out she places the photo under the printer, and that's where it is when she hands it to you. Dave gets the sense that he's watching you print out a one-of-a-kind photo of a moment that just occurred and then destroying it. But you have a duplicate to swap in as the restored photo.