As mentioned earlier in the week, I've come up with a presentation for Blake Vogt and Dan White's Phone Vanish that has been generating really strong reactions.
It's just a small idea, but one I'm very happy with.
You can download a pdf of this presentation here. The password is the last word on page 10 of JAMM #6.
A couple weeks ago I made a sojourn to central New York to visit some friends and see something I was having a hard time imagining: a David Blaine stage show.
I've been a big fan of David Blaine since his earliest specials and was a defender of his back in the day on my old blog. This is back when it was cool to bash Blaine. "I'm sorry," people would say, "there's just nothing magical about standing in a block of ice for three days." Then they'd show you their 1 in 4 multiple out trick because they're such astute arbiters of what is magical.
More recently I got to exchange some emails and phone calls with him when he was working on one of my effects for potential inclusion in his most recent tv special.
Other than that, the only other time our paths (somewhat) crossed was in 2008 at some concert when he performed Daniel Garcia's Fraud for the girl I was dating at the time. Then he hit on her and asked for her phone number. I wasn't there but her friend was texting me a play-by-play with pictures the whole time. This is a true story. Sorry Blaine, I'd already spoiled her with a bunch of dumb tricks so yours had little effect on her. You got turned down by a magic blogger's girlfriend. Deal with it. (Somehow I think you're over it and have dried your tears on some supermodel's labia in the meantime.)
The show took place on a rainy night in Syracuse, New York. I got drenched because I don't like using an umbrella because I feel like we should have a better way of keeping water off of us in the year 2017. Seriously? This is the best we have? A little tarp on a stick you hold over your head? We don't have something that uses lasers or some shit? No thanks, world, I won't play your dumb umbrella game. So yeah, I got soaked.
The first part of the show was a mish-mash of effects with no real theme to them. There was a PK touches effect, card to mouth (with his mouth sewn shut), a russian roulette effect, and an effect where a girl from the audience chose the one missing piece from a puzzle out of 100s of potential choices.
There was a large woman of color behind me who was very engaged in the show and commenting on everything and she busted him on the equivoque in the puzzle routine. "What does he mean, 'hand me a piece'? He just gonna do with that piece what he like." I'm telling you, that technique is more transparent than you think unless done in the third-wave style (where the outcome is given to the person before their selection). But I'll stop beating that drum.
Asi Wind then took the stage for about 20 minutes and performed a number of strong mental effects. I think his energy and presentation style is different enough from Blaine's that it does feel like a change of pace in the show even though I feel like any one of his tricks would have fit in with Blaine's material in the first chunk of the show. So it wasn't like, "I'm the magician and now I'm going to bring out the juggler," or even, "I'm the illusionist and now I'm going to bring out the close-up guy." It was, "I've been performing a lot of parlor-style magic/mentalism and now here's another guy to perform some parlor-style magic/mentalism." But, as I said, it still worked.
When David returned we got into the "stunts" part of the show. This, to me, was the most interesting part of the evening because it was so unlike anything I'd ever seen in a theater. It really felt like what I imagine it would be like seeing Houdini or an act of that style in the late 1800s, early 1900s. You know how you'll read those books about Houdini and it will say, "He was put in the handcuffs and sat behind a screen with only his head exposed as he attempted to escape for the next 25 minutes while the orchestra played." And you think what a bunch of goons everyone used to be. Just sitting there watching nothing happen. But there I was on that night as a captivated theater watched Blaine drink water for 3 minutes. Or hold his breath for 10 minutes.
The first stunt was the one where he swallows gallons of water into his stomach and then shoots it all out in a stream to put out a fire. Projectile vomiting as art might be hard to wrap your head around but it really was pretty fascinating. Fascinating on two levels for me. Seeing the act itself was interesting, but watching a full theater audience watch the act was even more so.
Blaine then did the stunt where he turns his body into a "living aquarium." Except... on this night... living was not really the best description. After what seemed to be a genuinely difficult attempt at regurgitation, Blaine finally did bring a frog up out of his stomach where its lifeless corpse plopped out of his lips into a wine glass.
"Oh," the woman behind me said, "he dead."
That frog was not moving. David poked at it a little bit, but there was no response. The trick kind of ended abruptly. And for the rest of the night, "He dead," would be a bit of a running gag between myself and my date for the evening.
"If, as the book says, Frog and Toad Are Friends, then Toad has a funeral to go to, because his friend... he dead."
"It's not easy being green. You know what else isn't easy? Staying alive in someone's stomach, apparently. Because that frog... he dead."
Blaine would return to the stage a little bit later and tell us the frog was "just tired." ("Yeah, tired of living," my date said. "He dead.")
Following this was the climax of the show where David held his breath for 10 minutes underwater. What was interesting to me about this was how little they did to fill the "dead time" of a guy sitting underwater. I figured they'd play a video or something to entertain us dumb apes in the audience, but they didn't. There was some music (I think) and some voice-over and a clock ticking the time, but that was about all. And it worked. Everyone seemed pretty enthralled with it.
After the breath-holding stunt there was about 20-30 minutes of Q&A. I've always found Blaine to be an interesting public speaker and I enjoyed hearing him answer questions off the cuff.
The show was a good time. A little strange because Blaine isn't what you think of when you think of someone presenting a theatrical magic show, and he didn't really try to become that either. There was seemingly little, if any, scripting. There was essentially no difference between him performing on stage or on a street corner or in the Dallas Cowboys locker room.
I think there's at least another couple weeks of live performances around the country. And from what he was saying, this entire tour was sort of a test run for a tour in bigger cities or perhaps an extended run in NYC or some place. If you get a chance I definitely recommend it. It may not be the best magic show you ever attend, but it will definitely be unlike anything you've ever seen. (Unless you're some big Hadji Ali, the Human Camel, fan and you've been following him all over the country.)
JAMM #6 was the BIG issue, tackling effects of grandiose proportions.
JAMM #7 is the little issue. It will contain a half dozen ideas, some from myself but most from friends who have generously given them to the JAMM. These are small ideas, but ones that charmed me or fooled me or had a big impact on people I saw them performed for.
This site exists because people support it by subscribing to the JAMM. If you like the site and want to see it continue, do your part. I don't want no scrubs. A scrub is a guy that think he's fine and is also known as a buster. Always talkin' about what he wants and just sits on his broke ass. But a scrub is checkin' me but his game is kinda weak and I know that he cannot approach me 'cause I'm lookin' like class and he's lookin' like trash. Can't get wit' no deadbeat ass. If you don't have a car and you're walking, oh yea son I'm talking to you. If you live at home wit' your momma, oh yes son I'm talking to you. If you have a shorty but you don't show love, oh yes son I'm talking to you. Wanna get with me with no money, oh no I don't want no scrub. See, if you can't spatially expand my horizons, then that leaves you in a class with scrubs never risin'. I don't find it surprisin' if you don't have the g's to please me and bounce from here to the coast of overseas. So, let me give you somethin' to think about. Inundate your mind with intentions to turn you out. Can't forget the focus on the picture in front of me. You as clear as DVD on digital TV screen. Satisfy my appetite with something spectacular, check your vernacular and then I get back to ya. With diamond like precision, insatiable is what I envision. Can't detect acquisition from your friend's expedition. Mr. Big Willy if you really wanna know, ask Chilli, could I be a silly ho. Not really, T-Boz and all my señoritas, is steppin' on your Filas but you don't hear me though. A scrub is a guy that can't get no love from me. Hanging out the passenger side of his best friend's ride, trying to holler at me.
The JAMM #6 has been generating a lot of feedback over email and some kind praise online. And it won the award for excellence in independent magic magazine writing by the president's new council on magic periodical oversight—part of the Commission for the Study of Magical Issues and Magical Issues. (They study both "issues" in general, as well as issues of magazines, hence the repetitive name.) What... did you think House Resolution 642 to officially recognize magic as an art would have no repercussions? Hardly. Now everything is being closely regulated. You asked for it, dummies! Thankfully I'm on the right side of the new magic tribunals this time around, but who knows when they'll turn on me. You know they're monitoring all of this now, right? YOU gave them that power.
At any rate, I wanted to thank those of you who wrote in to compliment the issue as a whole, and thank Tomas Blomberg for his contributions to that effect.
I should apologize for referring to the effects that appear in The JAMM #6 as two of the most powerful in the history of magic. The fact is, at the time I wrote that, I hadn't seen the following effect which reader Michal Kociolek recently sent along to me. It's called the Appearing Aquarium. Imagine if you could make an aquarium swarming with goldfish magically appear. Whatever that image is in your head, does it live up to the reality of this incredible effect?
Can you imagine the joy and wonder your audiences will feel when you tell them, "No, no. That was the effect."
And the best part is... it's only $150! (Silks not included.)
In the JAMM #6 I reviewed Phone Vanish by Blake Vogt and Dan White and gave it a fairly positive review. Since that review was written I've come up with a little presentation for it ("presentation" might not be the right word, it's just a couple of sentences) that has been generating significantly stronger reactions to the effect for me. It solves the main issue I was having with the original effect (getting people to pay attention without them having their guard up for a magic trick) and it has a very satisfying absurdist logic as to why the phone disappears that people seem to really like. In fact, the new presentation has made this one of my new favorite impromptu pieces. It's a simple idea but I think some of you will really like it.
I'll be sending the idea out to subscribers soon (or maybe making it available here for people who own issue #6).
A few different people have asked what I think of the $2000 Drone card stab. I guess because I put a drone trick on the site once (which was a variation on another drone trick created by a GLOMM elite member and given to myself and two other GLOMM elites picked at random). And probably also because a lot of people think it's stupid and they want me to comment on stuff they think is stupid.
My thoughts are these:
1. Drone Strike: Classified is a much better trick than this. Even Drone Strike: Public Record, which was a free trick, is a trick I believe I would get a better reaction with, based on my own personal style. (Although neither of those are card stabs.) So no, I won't be spending $2000 on this.
2. Pricing magic is hard. There are incredible magic books released every year that have people's life work in them for $60. You can get classics of magic for $8. By that metric, this is a horrible investment. It's one trick, and I'm honestly not sure it's that great of a trick. But I'm also of the belief that whatever someone chooses to charge is fair as long as they don't misrepresent what they're selling. I have no idea what goes into producing this trick. And if you see it and you like the effect and you have the money to spend and the demo is an accurate representation of what it looks like in real life, then I'm not too concerned with the high price tag.
3. The trick would look much better if the drone was flying through the spray of cards. Throwing cards at an essentially stationary drone seems... almost dumb. If this trick can't be done with the drone flying through the cards, then you might as well be throwing the cards at a hat rack. If you can do it with the drone in motion that's how it should have been demo'd. And if you don't trust a spectator to toss the cards in the air then put them in some card fountain thing or something.
4. Even then... here's the thing, drones aren't known for stabbing things, so it's kind of a weird trick to begin with. It seems a little forced. It would be like saying... oh... I don't know... "I want you to mentally select one of these different color fidget spinners!!!!" Like, I get it, you want to be timely but I'm not sure you should just marry an arbitrary trick with an arbitrary modern item. With the Drone Strike effect mentioned above, we're taking advantage of something a drone is known for (being removed and disconnected from anything else in the vicinity). So doing a card to impossible location with that seems logical in a way. It's an extra-impossible location. I'm not sure a card stab with a drone makes much sense (unless it got "stabbed" in one of the spinning blades.)
BTW, I just assume everyone has already done this, but you can make a fidget spinner spin on the end of someone's finger using "your mind" (and a loop... actually it's primarily the loop).
JAMM #6, the outdoor issue, Magic for a Summer's Night comes out later tonight. Any subscriptions that are in by today will start with this issue.
A few minutes later she comes out back and finds me there holding a helium balloon.
“What’s this?” she asks.
“It’s a test of faith,” I say. “Would you say you have faith in me?”
“I suppose so….”
“I want you to take off your ring.” She does. “And I want you to tie it to the end of the ribbon on the balloon.”
“An-dy!” she growls.
“I promise I won’t let go of this balloon unless you have the ring firmly in your control. Have faith in me.”
“I know you won’t let go,” she says. She takes the ribbon and starts tying it around her ring. “You better not. You won’t. You’re not a psychopath. You better not. This was my grandmother’s ring.”
“Make sure it’s tied on there tight,” I say. She loops around another knot and pulls it tight.
I tell her to slide the ring on her finger and that I’m going to let go of the balloon. She is now wearing a ring with a helium balloon tied to it.
“I told you I wouldn’t let it go,” I say
“I knew you wouldn’t,” she says.
“But here’s the thing,” I say, “I want you to let it go.”
“Oh god,” she whines. “What are you doing to me?”
“I want you to slide your ring off. And then let it go.” I mime the actions and lift my head like I’m watching something float away.
“It will be alright,” I say. “Look, you just said I’m not a psychopath. If you believe I’m not the type of person who would have let your ring go and fly off into the air. Then I must also be the type of person who wouldn’t encourage you to do that unless I knew everything would be okay. Right?”
She stares at me and slides the ring off her finger.
“Faith, Lisette. Let it go.”
She continues to glower at me, and holds the ring tightly.
“Come onnnnnn….” Now I’m whining. “Look, it’s your grandma’s ring. I get that. You loved your grandma. I get that. And if you let that ring go and it floats off into the air and is gone forever, you’ll always regret that. But on the plus side, you will have found out I’m a latent maniac who convinced you to do that and you never have to spend another minute with me. Bullet dodged. But if instead we cut that ribbon off the ring and you put the ring back on your finger and you walk away, you’re going to have a bigger regret because every time you look at that ring you’ll think: What would have happened if I had let it go? I’m telling you it will be okay. Exercise your faith in me. Everything is so much more interesting if you do.”
She looks at her ring again, then stares me dead in the eyes and—without flinching—let’s it go.
“Oh fuck, what are you doing? I was kidding,” I say, and jump for the ring, but it’s too far gone.
“No, no,” I say. “I wasn’t kidding. It’s going to be fine.”
We watch the balloon as it rises, the ring being pulled into the summer evening’s air. Eventually the balloon is just a small black dot passing against the night’s grey clouds until it’s gone completely.
What happens next? Find out in The JAMM #6.
Tomorrow night, the JAMM #6 will be sent to all subscribers.
Our JAMM muse for July is Eliza. We recently had a sleepover where we watched Gilmore Girls and she explained to us how the Gilbreath Principle works.
I've talked in recent weeks about the smearing of magic outside the confines of the trick itself.
Reps are a way of smearing the magic past the conclusion of an effect.
Before I explain what it is and what it means, I'll start with an example. This is something my friend and JAMM/Jerx AV-guy AC used to do a long time ago when we were in our teens and he has continued to do for twenty years. The first time I saw it was at a card game in the high school lunchroom. But he says he's done it "probably 50 times" over the years at family functions, with friends, co-workers, even with strangers on Amtrak trains. There is a deck of cards on the table. The deck is not AC's, but he asks if people would like to see a card trick before they get to whatever game the cards had been brought out to play. People pretty much always agree to that.
So AC has someone pick a card and show everyone except himself. Let's say it's the six of diamonds. The cards is shuffled back into the deck and he says he's going to find the card. He looks through the cards and pulls out the card he thinks it is. It's the four of clubs. He's wrong. "Oh, what card was it?" he asks. They say the six of diamonds. "Watch," he says, "with a wave of my hand I'll turn the four into the six of diamonds." And with the wave of his hand, the four of clubs changes into the six of diamonds. Nice trick, nicely done. Nothing earth shattering.
Everyone settles around the table to play the game.
"Oh, wait," AC says. "Do you have a permanent marker or something?" They ask what he needs it for. "So we can write on this six of diamonds that it's actually the four of clubs." Everyone tries to understand what he's saying. "Remember? I turned the four of clubs into the six of diamonds. So now we have two of those." He spreads the deck and pulls out the other six of diamonds. There is no four of clubs.
Those of you who actually interact with people will not be surprised to learn that this moment actually gets a more profound reaction than the trick itself did. Not in the "wow" sense, but in the lingering "magical" sense. The trick itself was just "a magic trick." It lived in that black box. But this was... what was this? Now we have two 6 of diamonds, no 4 of clubs, and for the rest of the night whenever they see that jacked-up 6D/4C they're reminded of the trick. Actually, this little idea is even more devious than that. Because it's not only for the rest of the night, but whenever that deck is used in the future that story is remembered and often retold.
You might think, "But certainly it's obvious that he just brought a dupe that matched the deck he knew they used, he introduced it into the deck, and then he stole out the other card after the effect when people's guards were down." You'd think that might be obvious, but having seen this play out, and having done it myself a few times, I can tell you it's not. I can't say 100% why not. I'd have to really break it down with people to figure it out. I'm guessing it's because people aren't inclined to scrutinize stuff that happens outside the box of the trick.
This is why I'm so focused recently on obscuring the edges of that box. I think it makes the magic trick a slightly different type of experience. And thus it can generate different types of reactions beyond the canned responses people have prepared for a trick.
In the example above all he's doing is treating the effect as if it had some repercussions. If you were to really magically change one card to another (and not magically exchange the cards) then what you would have is two of one card and none of the other. And going forward you'd have to deal with that minor inconvenience. (If someone says, "just change it back" then you say. "That's not how it works. I could change the card into your selected card, but not backwards. The butcher can change the pig into bacon, but not the bacon into a pig.")
To extend the magic past the climax of the trick, give a trick some repercussions.
That's what Reps are (repercussions) and, like Imps, I have a document with dozens of them that I've been testing out.
Think of how magic is normally presented. "I have five 1 dollar bills. Now I've changed them into five 100 dollar bills. Now I'll put them in my pocket. See you later." So often it's presented as if someone had challenged you to do so in the least compelling way possible. We present things as if we want them to be dismissed. "I'm going to do this really quick and then go into another effect." That's maybe appropriate if you're table-hopping, but if you're performing in social situations you can do so in a way that makes the experience much richer for people.
Reps are a way of letting that bell ring and resonate past the conclusion of a trick.
Often Reps will be trick-specific. But I'll finish this post with some broad categories that you may be able to use in a general way. And then in the future I'll explore the concept in more depth.
Physical repercussions: Maybe you perform a trick and you're completely drained of energy for the rest of the night. "I can break this lightbulb with my mind, but if I do I won't be able to go bowling with you guys. I'll probably just crash in bed for the rest of the evening."
Or perhaps it's the opposite, maybe you need to absorb a lot of energy to do a trick so the repercussion is that you're bouncing off the walls after. "Hell yeah! I'm all charged up now. Let's go do something. Let's go bowling."
Don't torture yourself. Let the Rep be based on what you actually want to do (for example, if you want to go bowling or not). You can use the reps as an excuse for what you're inclined to do anyways. "Sure, future mother-in-law, I'll read your mind. But then I'm going to have to go in my room and play video games for a while away from all of you here. Once you open up that channel of communication it remains open for a while. And it would be like hearing 6 radios playing different things all at once if I were to stay out here with all of you and participate in the wedding planning."
There are innumerable other physical Reps you could consider. Put a little fake blood in a tissue and stash it in the bathroom. Then, after some mental exhibition, start doing a couple heavy sniffs through your nose. Then hustle off to the bathroom where you get a tissue (your prepped one) and come out faking a nose bleed. "No big deal. This happens."
Or get some of these and some blood capsules and spit a bloody tooth into the kitchen sink after a trick. Collect some of your hair and make it seem like a clump of it fell out after you perform something. Who knows how some mental effect might affect someone?
I haven't done the full tooth thing, but I do have a chipped tooth in the back of my mouth (tragic Sugar Babies incident) and I have spit out a piece of "enamel" (a chip off a piece of Dentyne ice gum) after some trick of the mind. "Aw shit," I say. Then I explain, "it requires a lot of energy to do that and it can reverberate in weird ways in your skull. Eh... that sucks. It could be worse. I know a guy who did that trick and his jaw broke in three places. Like you really have to struggle to keep the energy contained sometimes."
Financial repercussions: If you magically produce something of value and then let your spectator keep it, then that trick has a repercussion for both you and the spectator. You're losing something of value and she's gaining it; that goes past the trick itself. If you do the $100 Bill Switch and then let them keep the new, higher value bill, that's a much more intense effect than changing a bill and changing it back and putting it in your pocket (no repercussions for anyone).
Again, you can use this Rep to justify something you wanted to do anyway. Want to help someone out financially, but don't want them to feel indebted to you? Well, maybe you try out this Tibetan Blessings ritual you read about. (Perhaps a variation on Blomberg's Konami Code. You shuffle up a series of cards that direct you around your back yard and you dig a hole wherever you land. When you try it, nothing happens. When they try it, they find, buried in the ground, a small ratty bundle of cash. You see how, presented this way, they might still suspect you orchestrated it all, but you can deny it forever so they can never 100% know what really happened. This is a combination of a lot of ideas presented on this site (Imps, buy-ins, engagement ceremonies, Reps, smear technique) all of which demolish traditional "trick" structure. This transforms "magic tricks" into magical moments and experiences.)
I'm not suggesting it's feasible to give away 100s of dollars on a regular basis. But on certain occasions you may want to do something like that. And you can get a similar reactions with smaller investments. Change a $1 to a $5 or $20 and let them keep it. "Yeah, sure. You can have it. I mean, I wouldn't take it to the bank... that might get you in trouble. But you can spend it at a store or a fast food place or something. I can almost guarantee they won't find anything weird about it." You may find it's worth $4 or $19 to mess with people like that.
Mental Repercussions: Perhaps mind reading and other mental feats aren't a zero sum game. Maybe there are repercussions for taxing your mind in that way. Perhaps it manifests as a very subtle, low-level dementia or amnesia throughout the night. Maybe you just keep forgetting your friend's name. Or some kind of aphasia where you start using the wrong words. You warn the people you're with that this can happen and not to freak out. And perhaps it doesn't even happen, perhaps just the expectation of this Rep is enough to extend the experience of the effect.
If someone was performing a demonstration of great physical strength, we would expect him to be worn down and in recovery for some period afterwards. The idea that a mental demonstration might slow you down mentally to some degree afterwards is perfectly understandable.
Environmental Repercussions: I haven't played with these much yet, but I definitely think about them. An environmental Rep would be any sort of thing that doesn't affect you or your participant, but it affects the world around you. Maybe you summon a spirit and then afterwards a bunch of mirrors in that room are cracked, or your dog refuses to go in the room, or the flowers on the table are dead. These are things that aren't done as part of the trick, they're just noticed sometime after. So you have some leeway methodologically.
Maybe when something is restored something else in room has to break (to balance the energy in the world). Similarly, maybe restoring order to a mixed-up deck requires there to be a minor explosion of entropy in some other area of the house.
I have a friend who wants to do a Telekinetic Timber effect where everyone in the room concentrates and causes a block of wood to tip over. And then moments later the repercussion of all this concentrated energy is a hyper-localized earthquake, shaking the house. We have no idea how this could be accomplished (other than maybe doing it in a trailer-house or something and having people outside literally shake the trailer around). While we may never come up with a workable method for this, it's the sort of thing where thinking big usually generates more interesting ideas than thinking "workable."
With Imps and Reps we are essentially fleshing out the story of a trick's cause and effect. This may seem like mere ornamentation for a trick, but what I've found, and what other people I know who are exploring similar ideas have found, is that it's these things that spectators remember. So I don't think these things are inconsequential. In fact it's pretty clear to me that the actual mechanics of an effect are somewhat irrelevant once you get past the level of basic deceptiveness. What people remember aren't all the trick details. They remember being creeped out by going to the cemetery to see something strange, or how you were slurring your words after the mind-reading demonstration, or the peculiarity of following some weird instructions you found in faded pencil in the back of this old book you bought at a garage sale. Of course, having a strong trick is important to justify all this extra stuff. But it's the extra stuff that stays with people the most.
I've never had someone come up to me two years later and say, "Aw man, you know what trick I remember? The one where you made four piles and you placed the ace of clubs on the bottom of one pile and it rose to the top. Then you placed the ace of diamonds on the top of the next pile and it sank to the bottom. Then you placed the ace of hearts on the third pile and it reversed itself. Then you shuffled the ace of diamonds into the fourth pile and found it by spelling to it. That really affected me deeply. It reminded me of the times my grandpa would make four piles and place the ace of clubs on the bottom of one pile and make it rise to the top. Then he'd place the ace of diamonds on the top of the next pile and it would sink to the bottom. Then he'd place the ace of hearts on the third pile and it would reverse itself. Then he'd shuffle the ace of diamonds into the fourth pile and find it by spelling to it."
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