Jonathan Royle vs The Magic Circle

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[NOTE: The dispute this post refers to may be over. I don't know. The blog post it references has been deleted. You might say, Andy, why are you posting this if the issue has passed? Well... because I had already written the post and it's not like I was actually trying to make some incisive commentary on the situation. I was just goofing around. (If you think I genuinely give a shit about any of your meaningless magic feuds, you're out of your mind. I don't even give a shit about the ones that involve me.)]

It's been a while since I've posted about a good magic feud. It's not because these things aren't happening, but I don't have a facebook account and I rarely go on the message boards so I miss out on them. Thankfully, reader MK, clued me in to this one. 

And what's nice about it is that one of the people involved in the dispute had a webpage devoted to it written in the style of internet ad copy circa 2002. It asked the timeless question that's on everybody's mind:

I don't want to spoil it for you, but the answer to the question (from this guy's perspective) is that yes, it was due to Paul Zenon (and others) Defamatory Comments & Lies.

If you have a job or a life you undoubtedly don't have time to read that full webpage, so I'll summarize it. The Magic Circle asked this guy Jonathan Royle to do a lecture for them. Apparently enough people complained about it or expressed a concern about it due to real or perceived issues with his character that the Magic Circle cancelled the lecture. So this guy wanted a few hundred bucks back that he had already spent for travel and accommodations. And the Magic Circle gave him the money back. Problem solved, yes? Well, apparently not because he still felt compelled to write up this site and tell his side of the story and I'm happy to pass it along to you.

I should start by saying I know nobody involved in this conflict. I've heard the name Paul Zenon, but, as an American, have never had a chance to see any of his work. 

I don't think I've heard the name Jonathan Royle, but given that he's someone who seems to identify primarily as a hypnotist, I may have heard about him and then immediately forgot him as I tend to do with anything related to hypnotism. Hypnotism holds very little interest for me. The only reason anyone watches it is because they truly believe these people are being compelled to act in a way that they're not inclined to by some mysterious psychological technique. Unlike magic, where knowing it's not real doesn't ruin the show (in fact, I'd say it enhances it), with hypnotism, once an audience member understands the nature of what's happening (that the people acting out are doing so because they are attention whores, are drunk, or feel bullied into it) there's essentially nothing interesting going on. Unless you find people clucking like a chicken or faking orgasms interesting (and, let's be honest, you've seen enough people faking orgasms offstage that it's kind of lost its novelty).

It seems there are three primary issues people have with Royle. The first is Paul Zenon's claim that he stole material. I haven't seen the evidence for this (and it's kind of a boring claim) so I don't have a comment on it.

The second is a conviction he had for... something... I'm not 100% sure. He explains it on this site but it's a very long read and he's not the world's most compelling writer. I will maybe have a chance to tackle it fully sometime when I'm on a long flight (like to Mars or something).

The third—more easily understandable issue—is that there is a lingering backlash regarding this book he wrote...

Apparently he's going to teach you how to get laid 365+ times a year.

This guy

This guy

This guy

Is going to teach you how to get laid. 

You get it, don't you? You don't want to be good looking or have any sense of style if you're releasing a book about using hypnotism to get laid. People will just assume you utilized those attributes to obtain sex and not some secret hypnosis techniques. 

On the other hand, people will believe your success with women is due to mesmerism if you look like this:

When you can say, "Hey, look at me. Do I look like George Clooney? No. I look more like a penis with progeria. And yet I'm still getting laid." Then maybe, just maybe, you can Svengali a woman into bed.

(Hey, speaking of Svengali, here's something I didn't understand from his site. 

What does he mean by the "equivalent" of over 400 Svengali decks? Is a "Svengali Deck" not a constant standard? Did he sell 10,400 individual pairs of short and long cards? Or one 20,000 card deck? What is he suggesting here?)

Now, of course the book is bullshit. This guy hasn't been within 6 feet of a pussy in his entire life, I would guess. And, anyway, his defense of this product now is that the book really isn't about hypnotizing women to have sex with you. That was just a provocative title for the book. In fact, he says, hypnotism doesn't exist (no shit) and it's "[M]erely a Dating advice guide and book of relationship Psychology... The book mainly concentrates on helping people to develop more self-confidence and to take more positive actions in the dating game." See? It was merely a book designed to appeal to sexual predators, not actually help them.

So whose side am I on in all this? Well, nobody's, really. To me this worked out like it should have. The Magic Circle booked him, they got complaints from enough people that they decided to cancel the event, they reimbursed him for the expenses he accrued. That should be the end of it. At this point, Royle isn't trying to remedy any wrong, he's just trying to use this as a marketing opportunity. And I have no problem with that. I have affection for that type of schemer.

That's not to say I don't feel bad for anyone in this situation, I do. But it's not any of the parties above. You know who I feel bad for? The poor rapists who bought Jonathan Royle's sex hypnotism book! Can you imagine? You buy that book and you're like, "Finally, I'll get to coerce women into having sex with me without having to beat them about the head with my fists." And then you get the book and crack it open. You're expecting to find all these secrets of mind control so you can FINALLY rape someone in peace, without constantly worrying about your eyes getting scratched out or her biting down on your cock. And then what do you get? A book about saying affirmations in the mirror before you go out and how long you should wait to call her after the first date? What the fuck!!!!????? How are you going to rape someone with that information!? Well, you're not, quite frankly. Let that be an important lesson to you. There are no rape shortcuts. It takes a lot of hard work and a little elbow grease.

Smearing the Queer

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I had planned to talk about a concept I call "Reps" today, but that will wait until next week, probably Monday, because I want to build on Wednesday's post with an example from an early post in this blog's history. This concept of smearing the magic into their life is something that is interesting me a lot lately. And I think it's something that may come off as either too abstract or too obvious to some people, and I don't think it's either of those things, so I don't want to move onto other things just yet. 

I feel like I'm coming to this backwards, in a way. I've been creating material with these elements for a while now—and recognizing these elements in the work of other people—but it wasn't until recently that I've really begun to be able to break it down conceptually.

The Smear Technique is something that you can really only employ in non-professional performing situations. If you're performing in a theater or in a club then your "performance" has a beginning and an end that is clear to everyone watching. While you certainly want to perform magic that stays with people, that's not what I mean when I talk about smearing the magic into their lives.

So, let's look at an actual example.

Effect: I turn over the top card of the deck, it's the Ace of Spades. I turn it face down, snap my fingers, and it changes into the Ace of Hearts.

That was the trick I started with. Now, if you haven't read it yet, or haven't read it in a while, go read Multiple Universe Selection.

That trick started with me wanting to do the strongest card change I could. How do we make a card change stronger? I think traditionally you would say that it should be more visual, done away from the deck, maybe faster, things like this. But all of those concerns are adjustments to the effect only. They only change what goes on in that original black box from Wednesday's post.

What I've found is that the difference in reactions that are generated by messing around within that black box are minimal. If you have, for example, a Collector's routine that fools people already, working on another Collector's routine that you think will fool people a little more is almost always a poor investment of time. But changing things in a way that affects the edges of the black box can have a profound effect. The difference in reaction you get with a normal card change and with the Multiple Universe Selection is hardly even comparable. It's the difference between a peck on the cheek and getting fucked on the beach in front of everyone at your family reunion. It's a completely different experience. And that's before the denouement happens days later. I'm just talking about the card change itself, even though that change is less visual, slower, and generally veers away from what we think a card change should be.

Let's look at some of the ways we smear the effect out from the black box in Multiple Universe Selection.

The Imp - The card doesn't change from the snap of a finger, the card changes based on a visualization process (a visualization process that rockets you into a parallel universe). This is a process that you are introducing that isn't really about the "effect" at all. It's the impetus that generates the effect, but it has nothing to do with playing cards. And you tell them this is a visualization process they can use in their life outside of this moment. So this smears the beginning of the effect, blurring where it begins and has the potential to carry on past the end of the effect. 

The Buy-In - There is a "time buy-in" to this effect. "Come with me and let's go drop a letter in the mailbox." This requires an expenditure of energy on the part of the person you're performing for. Buy-Ins are almost always part of the smearing the effect and this one is a clear example of that. Mailing the letter isn't part of the trick (at least not part of the trick that happens that night) and it's not even part of the Impetus for the effect. It's just an activity that you are having them partake in to broaden the experience. This smears the effect vertically. It gives the effect a greater depth. And sets us up for something that will smear the effect well past the end of the card transposition.

The Coda - There is something of a twist ending that happens with this effect a couple days later. This is a literal re-emerging of the effect itself. It lays their dormant for a few days, like the herpes virus, and then your spectator is thrust back into the effect. It's an interesting moment. This is not, obviously, a trick I've performed hundreds of times, but I have performed it a handful of times, and when they get that letter it always generates a dumbfounded text or phone call from them. But the reaction is somewhat different than you might expect it to be. It's not about how they got that letter and what happened to the other one (which would be the rational response) instead they just seem thrilled that the effect echoed in their life again. It's a "Magical" moment, not a magic trick.

Think back to the card trick in its original form. Imagine yourself as the spectator. I take a card and change it into another card. This is an isolated event, disconnected from your life, and the world. It's just... neat. "Oh wow! Crazy.... So... should we order breadsticks too? Or is that too much carbs considering we're already getting pizza." Like, you have so little to grasp onto that you almost have to move on with your thinking. Most magic is designed to be a temporary amusement. And temporary amusements are great. So are pecks on the cheek. But sometimes you want to give people a more intense experience.

So how does Multiple Universe Selection take the same basic trick but make it mean something else? It's not the presentation, per se. If I change the presentation, but stay within the original box, the experience doesn't change and doesn't get any stronger. If I say, "Look, I turned over the Ace of Spades. When I snap my fingers, we'll jump to another universe in which this card is the Ace of Hearts" <SNAP> That's not going to mean anything to anyone even though the presentation is different.

It's only when you smear that presentation into their world that you change the nature of the trick into something formless and less definable. The blurred edges prevent them from knowing exactly when the trick started and ended. What they can dismiss as "just a trick" gets muddled. And when a trick gets enmeshed with someone's real life, that's when it becomes their experience as opposed to just your trick.

Multiple Universe Selection is obviously an extreme example of these techniques. I'm not suggesting this is a presentation you can pull off frequently, or would necessarily even want to. The more immersive an effect is, the more likely I am to want to save it for special people and special occasions. But I do think it serves as a good example of the "smearing" I mentioned in Wednesday's post. And I believe you can incorporate some of these ideas in the material you perform regularly on a smaller scale. More to come on that.

Glossy Looks

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I know Tuesdays/Thursdays are usually ad posts where I encourage you to subscribe to the JAMM monthly magazine if you like this site, but it's hard to write about that when we all only have one thing on our mind... the 13th year anniversary of the special T.H.E.M (Totally Hidden Extreme Magic) on NBC!

In honor of that momentous occasion, here is my review from the old site...

Prepare to Have Your Mind Blown

from The Magic Circle Jerk, June 24th 2004 

Check this shit out.

Think of any number between 1 and 100.

Add 7.

Subtract your original number.

Now concentrate on that new number in your head.

Is it 7?

How did I do that incredible feat? I'm one of T.H.E.M.


So, the show last night, I thought it was pretty sweet. I hope there is more to come.

The way every segment ended was kind of weak. I understand the idea of having a catchphrase, but the catchphrase seemed to go on for a minute every time. It was like the least funny Abbott and Costello bit ever:

How did you do that?

I'm one of THEM.

One of who?

One of THEM.

Them who?

You know, THEM.

What are you talking about?

I'm one of THEM.

Right, I know you said that but what do you mean?

I'm one of THEM.

Whatever, asshole. 

But besides that, I thought it was fun. The magic was cool and the magicians were not completely uncool. And there's certainly something to be said for giving magic a context (which Blaine did in many of his effects as well). 

Some people are up in arms because they feel the magicians dressed poorly and the show was full of "MTV editing," whatever the fuck that means. To them I say, listen, Grandpa, if you want to see some douche in tails pulling cards out of the air and tossing them in a top hat go to any magic convention, you'll have a blast.

Speaking of douches, my god, check out this site created by Brad Christian of Ellusionist. Now, it's certainly a wise business move for Christian to tie Ellusionist to this special (just as he piggy-backed on Blaine). But look at what a fucking lame-oid he is as he tries to use this site to hit on the girl, Lisa, from the show. He's a total tool. 

"the rest of the cast is excellent, but Lisa de la Vega outshines even...er...them."

"Lisa has charisma to burn and her glossy looks into the camera give the show a vital lift..." 

"She's the best female magician I've ever seen..."

"the vivacious Lisa de la Vega."

"Magicians around the world saying 'Why couldn't I have married her?'"

And so on. All the tricks have generic titles in his review, "Man Walking Through Window," etc. But her tricks are "Lisa Bends A Spoon," "Lisa Performs Hummer Card." What a homo.

(Here's a tip for the fellas from me. Being overly-complimentary makes you look A) disingenuous B) desperate and C) fucking stupid. Let's say you have a date for the evening, you go to her door to pick her up, she opens the door, you say hi, give her a quick glance up and down then say, "Wow. You look amazing." Boom. That's great, incredible. She'll be flattered. If you then spend the rest of the night saying things like, "I hope this restaurant is good enough for such a pretty girl," and "You're the best looking woman in this place," and "There's nothing I like more than Putt-Putt with a sexy woman." You look like a total ass. Compliment her sense of humor or intelligence or something substantial, but shelve the "you're so beautiful" shit. You got that out of the way at a meaningful and appropriate time (when you first laid eyes on her that evening). Then the next day when you call her or write her you can reiterate what a great time you had and how wonderful she looked, and so on. But again, don't overdo it.) The preceding paragraph is an excerpt from my new book "Using Wonder Words and a Breakaway Wand to get Mad Pussy."

The dumbest thing he writes is in the description of The Vanishing Lady, "...the piece is effective and we realize one thing we hadn't thought of before... women can do magic and it doesn't have to be the Egg on Fan or a freaking silk production." In attempting to flatter her, he ends up sounding like a total dipshit. Considering this trick has been done for a 100 years with a woman, I'm surprised he just came to this realization now. He might also be shocked to find out that women are also lawyers and scientists, and thanks to a recent act of Congress, a woman can even be a doctor now! 

In summation, I enjoyed the special quite a bit, and I'd like to see more, however it will be hard to watch further episodes and see Lisa and not think of Brad Christian involved in a session of Totally Heinous Extreme Masturbation.

Smear Campaign

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This is how an amateur magic performance often feels to me. You have this path or stream that is the audience member's life and then you have this object set right down in the middle of the stream.

The distinction between their life and the magic trick is completely clear. The trick is this totally well-defined, outside "thing" that's just been plopped in the middle there. 

The person you're performing for is going through their day and then you say, "Hey, I'm going to show you the cups and balls." And you show them the cups and balls. And then they go on with their day.

As I've talked about before, I find the strongest performances are ones where the edges are blurred in regards to how this trick fits into their world. Where it doesn't feel like this arbitrary experience that you forcefully inserted. 

This is advice that, to a very minimal extent, has been offered previously in magic texts. "Bring the subject around to ESP," they say, "and then lead into this trick." I think this, most often, is completely transparent. "How about this Trump, right? You don't need ESP to see how that's going to turn out.... It's funny that we're talking about ESP. Do you guys believe in that? I happen to have some cards here that were created by JB Rhine at Duke university." The goal of this technique is to soften that edge between performance and real life, but done poorly it's pretty obvious, and potentially pathetic.

In this case, what you're trying to do is blur their life into your effect. You're trying to take something they were saying or doing and let it lead to the magic. You're trying to create an experience more like this.

You're smearing their life into the presentation. I think this is great when it works, and much of The Amateur at the Kitchen Table is about ways to put yourself in a position where you can make this happen more often. The idea behind the 100 trick repertoire is to allow you to give yourself a number of potential pathways to more seamlessly transition into effects from what is happening around you. 

But this "inward smear" is only one half of the equation. 

The other technique for creating performances that are more enmeshed in people's lives is to smear outward. That is, to push your presentation into their life, rather than to pull their life into your presentation.

How do you do this? Well, there are a bunch of ways. The ways I'm exploring are: Imps, Reps, and Hooks, among others. Only one of these (Imps) is something I've mentioned before, but I will get to the others in time.  

The nice thing about the outward smear is that you don't have to wait for the right moment to make something seem organic. Instead, you make something seem organic by giving it a greater context in the world. 

Let's use a comedy analogy. The image at the top, the plain black box, which is the way magic is so often presented, is like telling a joke from a joke-book. It might be funny, but it's kind of impersonal and devoid of any connection to the listener or the world around them.

The inward smear is like being someone who always has a funny response to what someone has to say or things that are happening. You're not directing the conversation, you're just sliding in where you can.

The outward smear is like saying, "I have such a funny story for you." And then giving them something that is personal and feels relevant and like it's connected to the world they live in.

You can see this a lot in some of my previous ideas, although I wan't really thinking of them in this way. The Peek Backstage, The Engagement Ceremony, The Distracted Artist, pretty much every trick I've ever written up here or in the JAMM, they're all about finding meaning and context in a trick beyond just that moment of inexplicable surprise and pushing outwards on the boundaries of the trick.

On Friday I'll introduce a concept called Reps which is kind of the opposite of Imps. Imps are a way of blurring the start of a trick, Reps are a way of blurring the end. 

Gardyloo #26

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Congratulations to my pal Toby and his new bride Annell, who were married in Dallas this weekend. It was a beautiful ceremony that I may or may not have attended disguised as a caterer.

Toby is a friend I made through this site. He's a filmmaker now but was once the theremin player for The Polyphonic Spree. That detail sounds like a specific that would come out of a writer's meeting as they define the background of some ne'er-do-well loafer.

Writer A: Let's put him in a band... you know... typical slacker gig.
Writer B: Yeah, but one of those bands with, like, 20 people in it, so it's not like he even carries much of a burden of being in a band.
Writer C: Yeah, and his instrument is one you play just by being in the general vicinity of it.

Actually it sounds like a yiddish curse. It's like the opposite of being a doctor or lawyer. "What do you mean you're not going to pay for the damage your tree limb did to my fence?! Ah... may your son be the theremin player for the Polyphonic Spree!" 

At any rate, my sincere best wishes to the new couple. I hope you have many happy years ahead of you.

And I'd like to say, straight from my heart (and from this website of "funny wedding toasts"):

May your marriage be so solid it could last through being on a reality show.

hahahahahahahahahhaha... I mean... right?!?!?!...good one, weddings.lovetoknow.com, good one!

I've had some people interact with me over email and tell me that I put too much emphasis on presentation. That magic tricks themselves are inherently entertaining because of the impossibility of the trick. 

If you believe that, I would point out that there is a not insignificant audience that watches card magic videos so they can fall asleep.

To put that in perspective, this guy uploaded this video a few weeks ago and it's been watched almost 600,000 times. On the other hand, if you look at something like Murray Sawchuck's youtube channel, the videos he uploaded three weeks ago have about 10,000 views. And Murray is trying to entertain people with magic. More people would rather fall asleep to it than watch what Murray is doing.

But this ASMR guy is whispering and soothing and trying to make people fall asleep, that doesn't mean magic is inherently boring. 

I didn't say it was. You're making my point. And by "you" I mean "me, pretending to be you."

Presentation trumps effect, 99 times out of 100.

In this post, in 2015, I discussed my organization habit for keeping track of tricks I'm working on. At that time I mentioned Vesper, as the app I used for note taking on my iphone. And that was true, up until recently when friend-of-the-site, David Kaplan, wrote to tell me it wasn't being supported any longer. He mentioned the Bear app and I've been using that recently and I like it, so if you need a note-taking app, there you go. That's the only significant change to my organizational structure since that post was made.

This tiny little picture is my favorite ad of all time. It's true Don Draper-level genius. It's been halfway down on the Cafe's homepage for years. 

It goes to a now defunct link on Diamond Jim Tyler's website [Update: They fixed it]. I like his work, but there are certain words I probably wouldn't use to describe him.

"Cool."

Micro-Sites

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Here's are a couple niche magic sites which you may enjoy.

The first is called Magic Transcribed, and it's a twitter account where the person behind the account transcribes moments of "magic."

You may think it's cruel to document every stutter, stammer, and moronic utterance by people who were potentially drawn to this hobby because they're not great at talking in the first place... and yeah, you're probably right. I think that's the point.

Another site is You're Thinking of My Prediction which documents these cases (as per the Tumblr description):

Magicians often seem to read a spectator's mind before showing that they predicted the outcome from the very beginning.

Given they predicted what was going to be thought of from the start, clearly the "mind-reading" process was fake and unnecessary; the magician proved that he already knew the information.

Here's a compilation of magicians making (or getting close to) this mistake.

This is one of those things that magicians/mentalists don't really think about. Then someone points it out to them and they think, "Oh, right. That doesn't make much sense.... aw fuck it, who gives a shit." Which is kind of the prevailing way of handling any issues that arise in magic.

I like narrowly focused micro-sites like these and I encourage you all to start one.

If you need some ideas, here are ones I'd like to see:

I Have Two of These - One of my favorite things is in the Magic Cafe's for sale section, where someone buys something and they don't want it so they decide to sell it. The problem is, selling a magic trick suggests it's not very good, so people come up with these fun stories to justify why they actually have two of these products, and they're just selling the extra one they have. Sometimes it's like, "I bought one to have as a backup, but it's so well made I won't need it!" Oh really? You just bought a backup without judging the quality of the first one? Ok. Sometimes they lost one, bought a second, then found the original. One guy bought a lot, sight unseen, at a magic auction and that lot just happened to have some new trick that he already has so... yeah... do you want the extra one? You can collect these stories and put them in a Tumblr.

I Don't Know Why You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello - This used to happen a lot on the Magic Cafe, sadly I think many of the threads where it happened were subsequently edited or deleted altogether. I remember it happening with Richard Osterlind, Devin Knight and others. There would be some argument about something, they would be on the wrong side of it, and then they would write some final mawkish post about how they won't be coming back to the Cafe anymore. "This was supposed to be a place for magicians to help magicians. But apparently it's now a place to berate those who offer their help. I won't be back." Then, three months later, they have a product to sell so they slink back onto the site. I'd like a site devoted to their "last post" and their return post.

Abracabadboys - I'd like a blog that collects examples of those badass boys of magic. Magicians don't have magical powers, but they like to pretend they do. In fact, most magicians don't have any power—they're genuine frail little pussies—that's why I like it so much when they pretend, "No, actually, I'm a bad ass tough guy!" The greatest example of this ever—and quite possibly the greatest story ever told (sorry Bible)— is this post by Jaxon at the Magic Cafe.

Here I am. Performing for a private party of about 50 people. There is one guy there who's being a jerk to everyone. 

Of course, during my show the guy tries to heckle me. He comes up with an attitude like "I dare you to use me" when I ask for a volunteer". Normally I handle hecklers by kind of winning them over. To make them laugh. 

Anyway, during my performance he grabs one of the decks of cards I had on the table. Throws it across the room and it hits an old white haired lady right in the face. Then he's actually laughing about it. he's sitting on a chair a few feet from me. 

When I saw what he did. The deck hitting the lady in the face and him laughing. I just exploded. I punched him right in the jaw and knocked him out. 

Being the "entertainers" mode. I just looked at him on the floor. looked at the audience and said, "Anyway. on with the show" and went into my next trick with him laying on the ground. 

How should I feel about this? I hate to get in a fight. Especially when I'm performing because that's very unprofessional. I regret it happened but I have to admit. After seeing that poor lady being hit in the face by a full, boxed deck and the guy laughing. I can't help but be glad I did it. When it happened it actually got an applaud too. 

Just wanted to share this unfortunate experience and see what you all think. 

Fire Non-Starter - I'd like to see a website of people whose fire wallets don't ignite immediately. This may be my favorite thing in the world. It's certainly something I cherish more than my family and friends or anything like that. Usually people have some "funny" line right before they open the wallet so it really doubles the sense of failure when it doesn't light. "Hey, this money is really burning a hole in my pocket!" they say. Then they open the wallet. *flick* *flick* *flick* The 100% distinctive sound of one of those lighter wheels turning. Literally nothing magical about the moment at all. That's my favorite. *flick* *flick*