Paco

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One of the things I've been considering a lot lately is trying to perform more magic outside the confines of sitting with someone at a table. What can I do when I'm cooking dinner with someone? What can i do when I'm on a walk with someone? What can I do when I'm in a kayak with someone?

This is not just because I think it's more interesting for the other person if something takes place in this type of setting (although I do think that). It's also because different settings afford us different opportunities. In certain settings we can pull off a miracle that wouldn't be possible in other settings. So if your mindset is always only "What can I do seated at a table" then you're overlooking opportunities for some real miracles elsewhere.

I want to talk about a trick I performed just earlier this evening (and this post will be late because of that). This is weird for me because usually these posts marinate for a long time. But in this instance I want to write this up soon after it happened, Tuesday night, the 13th of June, 2017.

I've been seeing someone new recently and we're in that stage where laying around in bed together is a perfectly reasonable activity to schedule a full night around. 

At one point tonight we were doing the thing where you write or draw something on someone's back and they have to guess what it is. I'm just assuming that's a common thing. Is this not a common thing? I'm just going to assume it is.

You might be saying:

"Andy aren't you fucking 40 or something? You're rolling around in bed with people and drawing on their back?" 

That's right, bitch. Don't be jealous.

So we're talking, listening to music, and aimlessly writing on each other's skin. 

"Try to guess what I'm drawing," I said, and I drew a fire hydrant (so romantic). She didn't get it. 

We flipped around and she told me to guess what she drew on my back. I didn't get it either.

"It's a teddy bear," she said.

"Did you have a teddy bear as a kid?" I asked. "What was its name? Draw it on my back in cursive and I'll see if I can get it."

She scribbled something on my back. I genuinely had no clue what it was. 

"Paco," she said.

I froze. Then I propped myself up on my elbows.

"You had a teddy bear named Paco?" I said.

"Uhm... yeah...?" she said, wondering why this should be such an issue.

"Turn on the light and open the nightstand drawer."

She did, and I told her to pull out a little plastic box that was in there, under a bunch of other stuff. The box is the kind that has a clear plastic top with a little hinge on one side and snaps shut. You might see safety pins or something like that sold in a box like this. This one had a blank piece of stiff card, about the size of a business card inside.

"I found this box when I moved in here," I told her. "I thought what was in it was weird, but I also thought maybe it was important to someone because they had kept it in this box, so I held onto it."

I took the box, opened it, and dumped the folded card in her hand. 

She opened it and found this:

The method is, in part, Mark Southworth's, The Box. This is a favorite utility item of mine. I don't know if it ever got hyped as much as other similar items but I like it a lot. First of all, I like that it's small. And secondly, I like that it's examinable. Not that I've ever had anyone express much interest in the box itself, but just for my peace of mind and feeling no need to hide it away, I like that aspect. Some could argue that the box itself is a little different than what such a box would normally look like. And that's true. But the great thing about doing magic in the real world and not taking credit for it is you don't need to justify everything. "I found this box," covers all sorts of sins. If I said that at the beginning of a magic trick, you might still be suspicious. But if I say that at the climax of a trick that you didn't even know was occurring, you don't have time to question the box. When you perform magic like this, there is no beginning of the trick, because it's integrated into their normal life.

The other part of the method is taking advantage of the situation. I recognized that there were times when we were in bed together where her back was towards me or mine was towards her (no, not when she was wearing a strap-on, you sicko). My back is towards her, and it's mostly dark, and yet we're still engaged in a close interaction, I thought. There's almost no other situation where you get that set of circumstances, so that means it offers opportunities no other situation does.

So I put The Box in the nightstand on her side of the bed, and I had a folded piece of card and a little pencil on my side of the bed. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do, but I knew I had a rare opportunity to write a "prediction" in real time with my "audience" right next to me and not have her ever know it. This is something you don't get when you're sitting at a table together. 

And the drawing on each other's back was, serendipitously, just the perfect moment for it. I didn't have to ask her to think of something random or think of something personal in the context of a trick. It's something that came up naturally in the situation we were in. She drew the teddy bear and I immediately knew what it was (but pretended I didn't) and drew it along with her, almost simultaneously, on the card. Then I asked for the name of the bear and I didn't know what she wrote but it only took a second to add the name after she told me what it was. 

How did she react? Well, how do you think you'd react if a message from your old teddy bear popped into your life 20 years later? She flipped out. Her eyes got big, she opened her mouth as if to say something, then covered it with her hands. She looked back and forth between me and the card. Said, "What... is... going... on...." And then threw her head back and laughed.

Did she think of it as a trick or something else? Well, fundamentally I guess she probably knew it was a magic trick. She knows I do magic. But—and this is a thing I have a hard time explaining here—you can do magic that is so interesting/fun/entertaining, magic that feels relevant and perfect to the moment, that people just want to live with the experience, not break it down and search for a method or whatever. The question of "is it a trick or not" is not really a thing people concern themselves with after this type of effect. 

If I had said, "And I predicted that you would draw a bear and say the word Paco!" then the whole thing has a different feeling to it. And then trying to "figure it out" becomes a priority.

This is the—perhaps counterintuitive—truth about performing magic in this style. You might think, "Oh, if you do something really personal or powerful it's going to face greater scrutiny." But I've found just the opposite. It's the meaningless, magician-centric, tricks that people tear apart. Because what else are they supposed to do with them?

Summer Nights

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Coming in JAMM #6

Magic for a Summer's Night

I love, love, love magic that takes place outdoors. I perform more of it than I'm able to write up here because a lot of what I do is often location specific, that is, I'm taking advantage of some particular quirk of the area I'm in.

But in the July issue of the JAMM there will be a couple of outdoor effects that can be done anywhere.

Can they be done indoors?

No, you wise-ass. 

If you read this site regularly, you know I'm someone who seeks out uniquely powerful effects. And in all of the material I've performed I would put the two effects in the JAMM #6 in the 99th percentile as far as the intensity of the experience for the spectator. They're genuinely almost too strong. 

That's not hype, it's a warning.

You can subscribe to The Jamm here.

Show Notes: Secret by Derren Brown

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From The Magic Circle Jerk, June 2005

About a month ago I was watching Derren Brown's Russian Roulette special with a friend of mine. At the climax of the show, where Derren is purportedly playing Russian Roulette with a real gun on live tv, (well, on the night it originally aired it was live, not on the night we were watching it) my friend turned to me and said, "This is terrifying." Now, my friend has zero interest in magic, but she was really enthralled with the whole show and I was happy that she enjoyed it so much, and I was impressed that Derren was able to evoke that type of reaction because I think it's a difficult thing to do. When David Copperfield suspended himself over that pit of fire or whatever he called it and escaped from a straight-jacket, I think some people were probably interested, but I doubt many people were actually frightened for him. (Probably because the whole thing was too "show-biz." Note to performers: If you want people to really believe you're putting your life on the line, tone down the theatrics. Someone in a real life and death situation would have a hard time remembering the choreography to whatever soft-rock, Peter Gabriel, bullshit they're supposed to be dancing to.)

I've been an unabashed Derren Brown fanboy since he arrived on the scene. I've read all his books and I've illegally downloaded every special of his I could for the past 15 years. His TV series are great, but his specials are some of the most fascinating things I've ever watched and are, I think, such a brilliant evolution of the Derren Brown "character." I'm completely on board for anything he ever does. 

So when I heard he was bringing a show to NYC I knew I had to find my way back there to see it. I was the ultimate fan so there was no chance I was missing this.

And while I'm thrilled I finally got a chance to see him live, the truth is that being the "ultimate fan" probably diminished the potential impact this show could have had on me. I wish I could have come to the show with no knowledge and no expectations, it would possibly have been the best magic show I'd ever seen. But since this show was Derren's first show in America, it served more as an introduction and a "best of" so much of it felt very familiar, of course. 

I'm not complaining about that. I'm not a moron. "Why didn't Derren workshop a full show of new material for his first show in America! I demand an answer!" I'm just putting it into perspective that it's difficult for me to give an objective view of the show due to the nature of my fandom, and the nature of the show that was put together.

There were still a few moments that caught me off-guard. The end of the first "Act" leading into intermission was great and totally new to me. It also fooled me with a classic stage-magic technique that I don't think I've been fooled with in 25 years. 

But by and large, what I enjoyed most was watching the enjoyment of others as they watched the show.

I can't count the positive things I heard from the audience during and after the show. Overwhelmingly people were truly blown away by what they saw. 

The only thing that didn't come off that well to me was the Q&A part of the performance. It was interesting to see this classic effect performed, but I think it might not hold up to the scrutiny of a modern audience. It didn't seem to resonate like it should. I think the effect might not be completely clear. Are you reading people's minds? Are you reading the contents of a sealed envelope? Is it psychometry? Are you telling the future? I guess you're doing all that, but when the effect is a little murky I think some things that are clear stand out more to the audience. And one thing that was clear in this Q&A routine was that they wanted a lot of information from us on our cards. As I heard one audience member say outside the theater after the show, "They had our first name, and last name, and seat number, and our date of birth, and our secret questions... I could have found out a lot about anyone with that much information."

And while it's true there are layers of deception to the effect, I think when you're writing down your full name and date of birth you just assume that much of your life is an open book to whoever has that information (or an open facebook, at least) and it kind of chips away at those layers of deception. If I ask you to write down your social security number and seal it in an envelope and later I tell you where you were born, you're unlikely to think, "Wow, he determined where I was born and he had no way of knowing that because my social security number was sealed in that envelope!" You're more likely to think, "Well, he must have gotten in that envelope somehow." As I said, my feelings on this only come from watching the audience and, at least on this night, the audience wasn't buying it.

The only other somewhat negative thing I heard was during intermission and it came from a woman a row or two behind me who was apparently not really impressed with the show to that point. "Of course he can know what you're thinking," she said, "because he can make you think things." That is, I think, the danger of Derren's style. It's almost too believable at times. I mean take a look at the Magic Cafe's mentalism section from 2003-2008 or so. Those dingbats were trying to create material where the methods were based on Derren's presentations. They didn't get that he was goofing around. Those fucking dipshits. 

Outside of that one woman's comments though, I think Derren does a good job of presenting things that are somewhat believable mixed with things that are unbelievable and magical. And I doubt there is another performer alive who cold put on a 2 hour 40 minute show of material I had mostly seen before and still have it fly by.

 

The Describe or Die Maxim

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This is our JAMM Muse for June, Karla, doing her best Annemann, minus the mustache. (Oh, we considered the mustache.)

When we shoot with the Muses, we like to perform the effect for them, if possible, so they have some idea of the context in which their photos will appear. With Karla it wasn't possible because we were shooting during the day and Good St. Anthony, the effect in the June issue that her picture goes along with, requires performing in a very dark room. So you either need a windowless room or to perform at night when you can get a room pretty dark.

So instead, my friend Andrew who was doing the photography, just described the trick to her. And as he was walking her through it, he was showing her the cards that were used in an earlier performance of the trick (the "guitar" ones that were used in the actual performance that was written up in the magazine, and used for illustration purposes). So he was just talking her through what a performance would be like, beat by beat. And he gets to the end and does the final reveal with the cards and Karla goes, "What! No way!" And covers her mouth with her hands.

To be clear (for those of you who don't subscribe and might not follow what I'm saying), she didn't actually see any magic or anything unusual. Her reaction was solely based on the description of how the effect would look if it was performed for her.

It wasn't as strong as if she'd actually seen the trick, of course (it's a crazy strong trick), but it was bigger than a lot of reactions you see online for people watching a "meaningless" card trick.

For a long time I've felt there is value in just describing tricks to laypeople, and it's something I do pretty frequently. The three main benefits I've received from this are:

1. They often interject with ideas that make the trick stronger or take it in a more interesting direction.

2. It's the easiest way to "test" a trick and to test the deceptiveness of a method. You don't need to actually perform the floating bill to know that one of the first thoughts people will have is that it's suspended from some kind of string that's hard to see. You can just describe a trick you're "working on" and then ask them how they think it might be done. 

So, with the floating bill, the conversation might go something like this. (I'm paraphrasing this from an actual conversation I did have on this effect many years ago.)

Me: I'm working on this new trick where I borrow a dollar, crumple it into a ball and make it float in the air.

Friend: Sounds cool.

Me: Do you have any idea how it could be done?

Friend: Not at all. Maybe you float it on a column of air or something. Like a hair dryer hidden somewhere.

Me: No, it's not like that. I could do it right here or on the street somewhere. If you saw me take a bill and make it float right in front of you, what would your first thought be on how I did it?

Friend: I don't know... I guess maybe that it's suspended from something I couldn't see, like fishing line or something? Unless it was really flying around like a bird.

Me: Oh, okay. No, it's not suspended from anything. But I can't really make it fly like a bird either. How could I convince you it's not suspended from something?

Friend: I guess If I could wave my hand over it. Or pull it out of the air myself.

So now I know—especially if I hear that from multiple people—that a good way to eliminate the idea of thread is to let them wave their hand over it. And maybe that's obvious, but perhaps if I hadn't asked I would have spent a bunch of time coming up with a way to pass a small hoop around the bill, when that's not the easiest way to show them something isn't suspended.

3. The third benefit I get from describing tricks to people is that it builds up anticipation. It can be interesting to people in a "peek backstage" sort of way, to hear about a trick and then a few months later actually see it come to fruition. Obviously you don't want to do this with a trick that has a particularly "surprising" climax, but for more direct tricks I think it's a good idea. And it can help disguise the method in some ways. If the bill is just hanging from a string, why did it take him 4 months to work out how to do it? There must be something more interesting going on.

Describing a trick is one step removed from performing it. But after the experience with describing the Good St. Anthony trick to Karla, I think there is possibly a benefit to being two steps removed from performing a trick. That is, I think it might be helpful to some of you to just think about describing tricks to people.

I've cured myself about 90% of "magician-centrism." I'm pretty good at not getting wrapped up in a clever method or an interesting sleight. But for a lot of magicians this is kind of a big issue. Well, actually, most magicians don't really care. They're in this hobby to entertain themselves, first and foremost. It's like collecting stamps or something. Sure, you might think, "I'm going to show people my stamps!" But that's not the reason you collect them. It's just your personal interest. And that's fine. If you just want to entertain yourself with this stuff, I don't have an issue with it.

But there are those of you who suffer from magician-centrism who want to redirect that energy towards the audience. And sometimes you'll have a trick that you really like and you might wonder, "Do I really like this trick because I think it will strongly affect people? Or do I like it because I like the structure and it feels good to perform and it's kind of clever?" I think a good way to strip a trick of its magician-centric elements is to just imagine describing the trick to someone as if it was performed for you.

"This guy showed me a trick where I cut some cards and then I counted the number of cards I cut. Then he showed me cards and I thought of a card at the number I cut. Then he dealt through the cards and stopped on the card I was thinking."

Yeah, I'd never bother describing that trick to people. It's just not interesting. You might think.

And yet thousands and thousands of magicians will perform this trick for people.

The Jerx Describe or Die Maxim: If it's not interesting enough to describe, it's not interesting enough to perform.

Don't you want to leave people with a memory they would want to tell others? Well, if you can't imagine yourself describing it, it's not the sort of thing that they would share with anyone else either.

It doesn't mean you need to throw out the whole trick. You can address this presentationally. The Engagement Ceremony style, for example, takes procedural tricks and puts the emphasis on the background of that procedure. You probably can't imagine describing a trick like, "I dealt cards and counted cards," etc., but you might describe an old fortune telling ritual you partook in (that involved dealing and counting cards), that had some eerie or coincidental outcome.

Thanks to Karla and her gleeful reaction to the description of Good St. Anthony in JAMM #5 for inspiring this post, as a good Muse should.

Schedule Note

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Just an FYI that tomorrow's post will be showing up a little later in the day. I don't believe I ever specifically stated new posts will always be up at 3am New York time, but I've gotten into that habit, so I want to keep my precious babies clued in when I break that pattern.

I know for a lot of you—if not most of you—this site is all you have in your life. Sure, you have some fat wife and rotten kids, but this is the only thing that brings you true joy. I don't want you to not find a post here tomorrow, figure I got hit by a bus, and then swallow a bunch of slush powder or something.

I'll be back. I swear. Daddy's just going to get some cigarettes.

The Freaks and Geeks Technique

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I've mentioned before about the focus group testing I was involved with in regards to magic. A lot of the results of that testing are lost to time. The people I conducted the tests with and I weren't doing things with an eye towards the future. We were just curious about answering specific questions we had. "Are people really suspicious of a deck that's not a Bicycle deck?" No. "How many phases is ideal for the ambitious card?" Based on people rating their "enjoyment" of a routine on a scale of 1-10, the ideal number of phases for an Ambitious Card routine is either four or one (That is, do it once without repeating it. But this requires a lot of focus being placed on that one moment.)

I recently recovered a lot of our notes and participant questionnaires which were buried deep in my storage space and I've been reminded of a number of questions we tackled (and, to be honest, a lot of it is straight gibberish to me, I have no idea what our notes refer to).

This weekend I got an email asking me if I had a routine for the WOW gimmick. I do have such a routine, but it was developed with other people so I want to get their okay before I release it anywhere.

But that request reminded of one thing we tested that I think had interesting results and has informed a lot of my material in the years since. 

This was a year or so after WOW 2.0 came out (The original WOW gimmick came out over 10 years ago, guys). I was at a coffee shop with a friend and we were talking about how to justify the gimmick. Is it a luggage tag holder? Does it protect expensive baseball cards from UV rays? Do you keep a credit card in it so people can't scan it and steal your data while it's in your purse? A bunch of ideas that were about a 3 or 4 on a scale of 1-10. But seemingly better than just bringing out this weird sleeve and saying nothing about what it was. 

Then another friend joined us and asked what we were talking about. We clued him in and his response was that we were doing the exact opposite of what we should be doing. And he explained his theory, which I'll get to in a moment.

We decided to test both theories in front of people, to see which performance they enjoyed more and which engendered the least amount of suspicion towards the gimmick. (Via an app my friend had developed that I've mentioned on here before. It measured the position of someones finger on a phone screen over time. People would swipe up when something happened that drew their suspicion, then back down after the moment passed.)

In both versions we had the ungimmicked sleeve (which they sell) examined and switched for the gimmick before the trick starts.

In Version 1 the gimmick was introduced as a sleeve that is designed to protect valuable sports cards in some rounds, and as part of a luggage tag holder in other rounds. 

My other friend's theory was that we shouldn't be trying to normalize the gimmick. We should instead suggest that it's something incredible. So in Version 2 the gimmick was introduced as a prototype of a time-traveling device that could send "nearly" two-dimensional items back and forth through time. "Like a fax machine, but through time instead of space," is one of the lines I remember being used.

At that time I'm sure my money was on Version 1 getting the better reactions. "People like magic with ordinary objects," I had been told. So present it as an ordinary object, of course.

In actuality, the results of the testing showed something else. The people enjoyed Version 2 about 25% more than Version 1. And people registered their suspicion four times higher on Version 1 than on Version 2.

I was sure something was off about the results. How could people be four times more suspicious of a luggage tag holder then a "two dimensional time traveling machine"? Well, in part the answer is because it's NOT a luggage tag holder. It doesn't look like any luggage tag holder anyone has seen before. 

But that's not the total answer.

And I know it's not the total answer because later we tried the same test, except this time we used a trick that did use an actual luggage tag holder (a variation of John Guastaferro's Lost and Found). And they were still more suspicious of us referring to a luggage tag holder as what it was than referring to it is a mini fax-machine that sends items through time. The differences weren't as dramatic, but they were still there. 

Here's my theory about why this is. When you're performing as a magician, people are inclined to not believe what you say. If you introduce something as a common object, people will think, "That's not a common object. There's something more going on with that. I'm suspicious of it." But if you introduce something as some kind of fantastic object they think, "That's not some fantastic object, it's something much more mundane." This is jiu jitsu. You're using people's momentum against them. In this case, their natural distrust for what you're saying as the magician. You're using that to make them think the object is more ordinary rather than thinking there's something special about it.

If you pull out a luggage tag holder and call it a luggage tag holder, people will think, "Who's he kidding? There's no way that's a normal luggage tag holder." But if you pull out a luggage tag holder and call it a 2D time-traveling case, they think, "Who's he kidding? That's just a luggage tag holder."

In the first case they think your primary motivation to lie is to deceive them, so it makes them suspicious. In the second case they think your primary motivation to lie is to entertain them, so they essentially ignore it.

I'm not suggesting this is the right move in all situations. I'm saying it's the right move when dealing with props that are unusual or out of place ("unusual" and "out of place," like you in high school, that's why it's called the Freaks and Geeks Technique). In those situations you've already abandoned the notion that what you're doing is off the cuff or organic. So in that case you might as well use the cover of theatricality to justify the prop rather than being all like, "No, no, I swear. This is just a normal thing."

When something is out of place it's not a normal thing even if it's a normal thing. If you perform magic at a restaurant you can do effects with items on the table or with cards or coins (or other items strongly associated with a magician), or with your phone or keys or other items people carry regularly. That all works. That's all magic with "everyday objects." But if you pull out a Q-tip, then it's suspect because people don't bring Q-tips to restaurants. An object's everyday-ness is location specific.

This technique is similar to what I wrote about in the post "The Hidden Benefit of the Unbelievable Premise." When you give something a dramatic purpose it becomes less suspicious methodologically. And, as we saw in our testing, if you have something unusual or out of place, people are more interested in it if you give it a fantastic (unbelievable) story then if you go out of your way to justify it as normal.

Summary: Freaks and Geeks Technique - If you are using an unusual object, or an object that wouldn't normally be found in the environment, implying that it's some "ordinary" object will generate push-back and cause people to think there's something extraordinary about it. But if you imply there's something extraordinary about it, they will push back in the direction of assuming it's something common.