Remaining Year Two Schedule

There will be posts Wednesday (The final day of Hanukkah) and Friday (Christmas Eve Eve Eve), then I'm off next week for the holidays.

I will return on the 1st (New Year's Day) with a few final posts for Jerx Year 2(.5). The final post of for Year 2 will be on the 9th (National Apricot Day). 

After that? We'll see. An email will go out to Year 2 supporters with the details of potential Year 3 rewards. If there is interest in doing another year, then we'll start up again a few weeks after that. 

A Reminder in Three Well-Worn Analogies

I tend to assume that what I'm about to say is so ingrained in the fabric of this site that it doesn't bear repeating, but maybe that's not the case. Some people have only recently come to this site, some have never read the old posts, and some have merely forgotten. So as we come to the end of this second season, with a potential third season on the horizon, maybe it's a good time to reiterate my perspective on things (with some analogies I've made before) for those who are new or confused.

This site is written from the perspective of someone who only performs amateur magic. That is, casual, conversational, interactive magic for a handful of people, at most. My preferred performing situation is one-on-one because that allows you to create the most personalized experience for the people you perform for.

Analogy #1: If you cook for one person, you can really create a meal that will appeal to their tastes. If you cook for a bigger group you need to take into account a number of other factors in regards to preferences and dietary restrictions, and you'll end up with something a little less personalized for any one particular individual. And if you have to cook for a few hundred people, then you operate a Denny's, and your menu is designed for broad appeal. The food is going to be relatively bland and inexpensive. It's not awful food, but it's not, generally, great food either. 

To continue the analogy, I find that a lot of people are interested in how to go about creating a warm, intimate dinner for two, and they're seeking out advice on how to do this in books written by people who own and operate a Denny's. 

I realize the analogy has an implied value judgment. Like, "intimate dinners are good" and "Denny's is shit." But that's not the point I'm making. I'm not shitting on professional shows. I'm saying the two things are not designed to provide the same benefits/experience. A professional show can offer a communal experience with a large group of people you may or may not know. It can shine a spotlight on the performer and her skills. And it can be a strength of the formal magic show that it is totally removed from your day to day life, and allows you to put everything on pause for a moment.

I think those can be great things in that context, but I also think they're the opposite of what amateur magic can provide at its best.

In my opinion, most of the issues with amateur magic can be traced back to people using advice and techniques designed for professionals in non-professional circumstances. If you think these two activities (professional and amateur magic) operate under the same rules, well, I'm not surprised, because that's how it's sort of been written about for 100+ years.

Analogy #2: Imagine if you wanted to add some levity to your conversations and brighten the day of your friends, family, and co-workers. You look up some books on "how to be funny." And instead of teaching you how to add humor to your day-to-day life, they instead told you how to perform stand-up comedy. They have you doing the rule of three and "act outs" and crowd work. If you actually try and incorporate that into your regular life you'll come off as a grade-A weirdo, because professional comedy is a different thing than being funny in social, amateur situations.

Similarly, professional and amateur magic are two different things. One is a "show" and the other is an interactive experience (or, at least, it probably should be). A professional might say, "my show is an interactive experience too." Maybe so, but it's an interactive experience of a show. That's what the experience is for people. Whereas, for the amateur, the experience doesn't have to feel like show or a presentation. It can feel like a game or an experiment or a moment of synchronicity or a strange happening or a field trip or a bit of interactive fiction or a conversation or a weird coincidence or some supernatural phenomenon or 100s of other things. 

You might say, "Oh, don't be so naive, Andy. People see amateur magic performances as 'shows' too." But that's really only true if your amateur performances are caught up in the trappings of a show (heavily scripted patter, obviously planned out 'routines,' etc.) 

Analogy #3: If you sit someone down and make them listen to you play the french horn and you properly introduce each song and take a bow afterwards, that will feel like a "show." But if you're whistling while you clean the house, or if you ask someone their opinion on a song you made in GarageBand, or if there are wind-chimes tinkling melodically on the porch, none of those things are going to feel like a "concert" to the person who experiences them.

What this site has largely been about is finding alternate contexts for magic tricks so that they don't feel like a presentation that's delivered for a particular response. Can we take this moment that might come off as a "show" if presented in a traditional manner and make it come off more like the tinkling of a wind-chime? Or can it be the mix-tape we're making-out to on the couch? Or can it be the music that is the result of a jam session we're both having? 

These may sound like chimerical notions. But, you know, that is kind of the business in which we're involved. And, ultimately, I think this is the power of a magic performance that's not done on a stage in a spotlight. It can be done in such a way that it feels like it's woven into other people's lives.

But I've found that to do so will generally take different tactics. And what we've grown to think of as "good technique" might not be great in this context. For example, on Wednesday I'll have some more thoughts on misdirection for the amateur magician. Some of these thoughts may seem to contradict some conventional wisdom, but I'm just talking about what I've found to work from an amateur perspective. Don't get your dick in a twist about it.

Gardyloo #44

In a previous post I mentioned my friend Andrew's “Board Room.” That is, the Wonder Room concept but built into a display of cards and board games. 

He recently added a new game to the mix that I thought was worthy of note.

What Shall I Be - The Exciting Game of Career Girls

The game is a little over 50 years old and comes from a time when girls had, essentially, one of six options for a career.

Model, Actress, Ballet Dancer, Nurse, Airline Hostess, and Teacher.

That seems about right. I mean, what else would a female be capable of being? I mean, I suppose prostitute goes without saying, but that might be weird in a game like this. I guess they could work in a science lab or something… you know, holding the beakers for the men, maybe? 

At any rate, Andrew is trying to figure out some ways to utilize this game in a magic context. There are a few different options. The nice thing is, since it’s a game no one knows how to play, you can make up any sort of rules you like. Rules that just happen to fall in line with the process for some trick. Or you can play the game for real and then screw around with the pieces in an “unplanned” way after the game.

Because the game comes with dice and game pieces, I told him it would be perfect for Phill Smith’s Quinta.

Have the person roll two dice and combine them in any way to make a number, then count their way back and forth along the game cards. They don’t land on any of these.

Instead, they land on this one. 

Or, you know, the reverse of that sort of thing.

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Reader, MK, emailed this picture he and his sister created as a a lo-fi finale for the Red Pinetree Gift Lottery from the JAMM #11, which he’ll be performing at a Hanukkah dinner soon.

Love it. And RPGL is one of my new favorite things to perform. It doesn't feel like a trick until that very last moment (if even then).

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I don’t perform for other magicians a ton. I used to. In fact I used to pretty much only perform for other people who had an interest in magic. It’s a safety net, because you don’t have to try that hard. 

On the rare occasions I do perform for other magicians, here’s something I like to do. I’ll do a trick with a gimmicked deck or some gaffed cards or whatever, and when I’m done I’ll push the cards towards them and, as a final exclamation point to the effect, I’ll say two words: “Completely examinable.” 

About 30% of the time they’ll pick up the deck and give it a thorough look and realize it’s totally gimmicked. Then they’ll be like, “What do you mean it’s examinable?” And I’ll just say something like, “Hmmm. Yeah... I guess you're right," like an idiot. 

Now, since I was probably going to discuss method with them anyways, I haven't really lost anything here.

But about 70% of the time they’ll either only give the deck a cursory look (and miss the secret) or they won’t look at it at all because they take me at my word. 

On some occasions I'll come clean and say, “No. I’m just messing with you,” and get into the method with them. But often I'll just box up the deck, put it in my pocket and say, "I think I'll keep that one to myself." This drives people crazy. Especially if they were playing it cool and the reason they didn't pounce on the deck is because they assumed you were going to explain it to them.

It's fun to screw with magicians.

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The French Twins, have recently released a new effect called Cigarettes (real creative name, guys). 

I've always thought card in cigarette could be pretty powerful, but I'm too lazy to be rolling up cards and putting hem in cigarettes. So I'll probably pick up some of these to play around with.

You may remember the French Twins from a previous effect, Card to Condom (or Magix). Of that trick I said:

"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."

And after busting on that trick for a full blog entry, the twins wrote me to tell me how funny they thought the post was. And that they realized the demo video had a "nouvelle vague cheap softcore porno" feel to it (their words). So they seem like good guys.

Although I'm not quite sure what their brand is exactly. "We create tricks to be done immediately pre- and immediately post-coitus." That seems a little limited. But I look forward to seeing their forthcoming effect, "The Light and Heavy Jizz Towel."

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This isn't magic, but they're friends of mine and it was making me laugh a lot tonight, and this blog is nothing if not a moment by moment record of my whims, so here it is...

Ethan died, and his friends and family can't stop wondering what they could have done to stop it.

Happy Hanukkah to All My Fine Boys and Sweet Girls

The Green Grass Test

This video was promoted everywhere today. It's for a trick called Offworld by JP Vallarino.

It's a variation on Out of this World where the spectator guesses the colors of the cards one by one as they're revealed by the performer. It looks very clean and I was really taken with it when I first saw it and I planned to pre-order it. But then I applied the Green Grass Test to it.

I think, as magicians, it's easy to get caught up in the new thing. At least it is for me. And when I see the "new" thing it's very easy to fall into the trap that this new thing is better than whatever dumb old thing it's replacing.

One day I realized that was a very magician-centric style of thought. I was purchasing variations on effects just because they tickled my fancy (as opposed to my spectator's collective fancies). 

So then I came up with the Green Grass Test to prevent myself from falling into the "newness" trap. The test is simply this: When a new trick is released that is a variation on an older trick—or that creates a similar effect as an old trick—I imagine that the new trick is the old trick, and the old trick is the new trick. And then I determine which one I would be drawn to. Don't worry, I'll explain that. The purpose of this is to try and figure out if I'm drawn to this new version because it's new, or because it's genuinely better.

So, for example, let's pretend Offworld was the effect we had all been doing for the past 75 years. Then, one day, a young upstart named Paul Curry fired up his webcam and began to tell us about this variation on Offworld he'd created called Out of this World. 

"The effect is kind of like Offworld. But it doesn't use rough and smooth. In fact, it uses a normal deck of cards. The deck can actually be borrowed and shuffled by the spectator. And get this, they do all the dealing themselves. It's fully examinable."

Our minds would be blown and our jeans would be creamed and we would gladly be tossing away this gimmicked deck we had used for 75 years in favor of what would certainly be seen as a huge evolution in the trick. Wouldn't we?

Well, there is no "we" answer. I can only answer for myself. For myself and my performing considerations, the Green Grass Test helped me come to the conclusion that this is a significant step backwards from a traditional OOTW. 

With a traditional OOTW I can borrow a deck, have them shuffle it, spread through the cards rapidly to have them subliminally "absorb" the order (and for me to cull the cards), give them the deck to deal, and have them reveal (at least some) of the cards at the end. And I can do all of this at any time without having to run off to get my special deck.

Again, I'm not suggesting Offworld is a bad trick. I just realized that what attracted me to it was that it looked easy and new and not that it would ultimately be a better trick for my audience. Your performance considerations might be different. Maybe you only perform at restaurants and you'd never be in a position to do a full OOTW and you still want to do a trick where the audience guesses the colors. Well, then this would likely be a good option for you.

Here's one final thing to consider... I was out tonight with my friends Mark and Andrew working on the details for some upcoming focus-group testing we're doing in early 2018. 

The subject of this trick came up and Mark said that he got an early preview version of the effect and that it was pretty good. He went out to his car and came back with the deck a few minutes later. We waved the bartender over and Mark performed the trick for him. He asked him to guess what color the next card would be and he got it right like 10 times in a row. He did it face up like Greg does in the demo. It looked really good.

When he was done I took the deck to examine the construction and I was really impressed. It felt like it was legitimately just single cards and I couldn't tell where the rough/smooth element had been applied. 

As I was about to ask if it used thin cards or something like that, Mark called me a dipshit and said it was just a regular deck. He didn't get any "early preview" version of the effect. He was just messing around. When he went to his car he stacked the deck he already had in his pocket so it alternated Red-Black throughout. When he returned he held the deck face-up and asked the bartended to guess what color the next card was. If he guessed the opposite color of what was on the face, Mark would just push off the top card and put it to the rear of the deck. If the bartender guessed the same color as was on the face, Mark would do a double push off and put it to the rear of the pack. The R/B configuration never changes. He could have done it all night.

The little prick was screwing with me! And it worked. In fact, I remember thinking that it looked much better to just push off the top card normally rather than drag it off the back of the pack as Greg did in the demo. 

It's definitely more difficult to do it with normal cards, and you almost certainly can't do the full Offworld routine, but if a double push-off is in your arsenal, it might be worth considering. 

[The Green Grass Test can be used in other contexts. It originated when I was at a film festival for a week with a friend of mine and he was contemplating a dalliance with a woman there even though he was married. I wasn't really trying to talk him out of it, per se, just give him some perspective. I told him to imagine he had been married to this new woman for the past 5 years and not his actual wife. Would she still hold the same allure? If he imagined his wife as the new woman, wouldn't he probably be more drawn to her? Then I famously said, "When you think about it, this new woman is more of a dumpy broad than your wife!" I really have a way with words. Well, it worked out and he didn't cheat. I don't think I saved their marriage by making him fall back in love with his wife or anything like that. It was more a matter of me poisoning this picture he had in his mind of this new woman by recasting her as some old nag that he was sick of.]

Coming in The JAMM #12

The final issue of the JAMM (for now, I may pick it up at some point in the future) is the New Year, New You issue, and it will feature three effects to (perhaps) empower your spectator to affect a positive change in their life. That may seem a little ambitious for a magic trick, but that's why I started writing my own magic magazine. So I'd have a place to put ambitious ideas. 

And in this case, it's true. While one trick is a pretty recent creation, and is something of a positive magical joke, the other two tricks are ones I've used over the past couple years with friends facing challenging situations. And a handful of times, these tricks have served as a tiny spark that blew up and led to life-changing actions by the spectator. No kidding.

You'll read all about it January, 6th.

A Critical Examination of Ellusionist's 2017 Holiday Gift Guide

I'm a big Ellusionist fan. It may not seem that way because I always have some comment to make about their latest mis-steps. But the reason I always have a comment to make is the same reason I'm a fan: they try. If you launched an online magic store in the early 2000s and you watched as Ellusionist and Penguin ate your lunch and you sat there wondering why you couldn't get any traction, it's likely because you just transplanted the brick and mortar magic shop model to an online presence. 

We like to romanticize the past, but let's face it, a lot of real world magic stores sucked shit. Many merely survived because they were the only magic store within a three hour's drive. That's not a business model that translates online. 

What Penguin and Ellusionist realized was that, in a crowded marketplace, you stand out with innovation and marketing. Did that lead to a lot of failed ideas? Sure, but it also brought on a ton of success as well.

Well, I don't know about that, Andy. Ellusionist just seems pretty ridiculous to me.

Let me ask you this, do you have pubic hair? You do? Okay, well then you're not their target audience.

You see, much like the producer behind the band Menudo

Or serial child molester Earl Bradley

Ellusionist isn't really interested in you once you reach the age of, like, 14.

Not that they don't want you as a customer, they'll definitely still take your money, you're just not in the demo they're targeting.

This is evidenced in their giveaway this holiday season. Ellusionist wristbands.

For every $50 you spend, you get one of these wristbands and, depending on which wristband you get, you get a specific prize as well. 

Andy, who would wear that garbage?

Read this ad copy. That will tell you.

It's for kids. In fact, it almost sounds like they transcribed the ramblings of that kid you went to school with who was a pathological liar.

So don't feel like you're out of the loop if Ellusionist's marketing schemes don't connect with you. They're not intended to, if you're an adult. 

In fact, I'd feel sorry for you if you're of voting age and you're like, "I can't wait to get my Ellusionist wristband!" I feel like the next stage in that thought process is you calling up their customer support and saying, "Yes, I was wondering if you make something with the same pattern, but in a noose size?" Because if you're a grown adult that's excited about wearing the Ellusionist logo and Daniel Madison's face on your wrist. Your future is pretty bleak.

Let's look at a few of the other things Ellusionist has on their holiday gift guide. 

Abyss

I mentioned this trick in a previous post. I'll reiterate what I said there which is, I don't think it's a very good trick, but if you like what you see in the trailer, then I'm sure you'll be happy with the product. 

One thing you need to consider is this: does it make any sense to alter an object magically and the change it back to its normal condition? In this trick you "remove" an angel from one end of a playing card and then... you put it back exactly where it was. This is a wildly unsatisfying structure for a trick. It's almost the definition of pointless. 

I'm reminded of tricks where you, for example, link two rings torn out of playing card. Then you say, "In fact, the only way to get them apart is to tear one of the rings." And you tear one of the rings to separate them. Or Osterlind's coin in bottle where he magically puts a coin in a bottle and then says, "In fact, the only way to get the coin out is for me to break the bottle." And then he breaks the bottle!

This sort of structure suggests a misunderstanding of what it is that captures the imagination with these types of routines. If you're going to alter something "magically" so that it's somehow a unique or impossible object, don't go and undo that. "But I have to for the sake of the method," you say. Well, then it's not a good trick. 

Imagine a story where a guy finds a magic fairy in a field who's willing to grant him one wish. "I wish for true love," he says. The fairy makes a beautiful woman appear and she immediately falls madly in love with the man. "In fact," the fairy says, "this love is so true and powerful that the only way for me to end it is to kill her." And she pulls out a gun and blows the woman's fucking head off.

That is, essentially, the same sort of story you're telling when you change something in a magic way, and then change it back so that it's a normal object.

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Venom Levitation System

This produces some of the most amazingly magical looking levitations and animations that I've ever seen. I definitely considered picking this up, even though the set-up sounds fairly convoluted (it's two thread reels instead of one). The only thing that kept me from getting this were the reviews on the Cafe that suggested the thread is really visible and you need to get a completely different thread for this to be useable. For $150 I don't want to have to re-jigger these things to get them to work properly. If anyone has had experience with this and can let me know if the supplied thread is good or if swapping out the thread is less horrendous than it sounds like it would be, let me know, because I do like how good this looks.

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The Villain System

From what I can tell, this is pretty much Harry Robson's Roughing Sticks, but perhaps a different formulation and it comes with a download with a few effects on it. 

My question is, did Daniel Madison forget his phony backstory? He was supposed to be an underground gambling phenom who left the "biz" because he got busted for cheating and then had the shit kicked out of him by some toughs in the world of underground gambling. And now he's shilling roughing sticks? That seems a little off brand. Unless maybe he tried to ring in a Mental Photography Deck into one of his illegal games. Maybe that's why he got his ass beat. 

For reference, here's Harry Robson, the other big name in roughing sticks. From looking at him, it might be a stretch to associate such a product with general badassery.

As I said. Roughing sticks don't really seem on brand for Madison's character. What's next? Daniel Madison for Card-toon? "One of my proudest moments in the dingy world of high-stakes illegal gambling was when I was down 250 thousand dollars to Saudi Prince Majed bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. As he was gathering his stack of cash to leave, I said, 'Double or nothing. Would you believe me if I said I have a stickman on the back of this deck who can find your chosen card?'"

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Chess Guess by Chris Ramsay

This is a "which hand" style of effect but with a chess piece rather than with a coin or something. I'm kind of worn out on the "which hand" stuff, and I don't want to carry around chess pieces, so it's not really my scene. But it looks like it should be good if that's what you're into.

I find this bit of the trailer a little odd. I'm pretty sure he says, "See, because you're a chess player, you think with your mind, right?"

"Hey... this guy's good! I do think with my mind!" 

That's some classic Chris Ramsay cold reading.

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Madison Kitten Deck

I love the idea behind this deck. I think the execution could have been a little bit better, but I'll definitely be picking one up.

The idea is to make a gimmicked deck that looks like something that would be found at your grandma's house. 

When I first read about it, I was hoping for something like these.

That's what I think of when I think of an old cat deck. And I think I had been hoping it would be this kind of one-way back design. Maybe bridge size.

So when I saw the design they settled on and it didn't really capture the same spirit, I was a little bummed. But it's growing on me.

The box seems a little anachronistic. Like something you'd find at Spencer's Gifts, not in a grandmas junk drawer.

When I get my deck I'll probably ditch the box and wrap a few rubber bands around it instead. 

It's a marked deck and there are a couple of other gimmicks included as well. And it's just $9. So that seems like a pretty good deal. 

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There you go. There are a few other items in the holiday guide. Some new decks that I have no comment on. A variation on Bob Farmer's Little Hand trick, but with a cat's paw. Not sure that's such a great idea, but I'll reserve judgment until it's actually released. And Clone which allows you to copy a spectator's signature on bills or cards. Obviously that could be an invaluable tool. I'm just waiting to hear if it's any good or not before shelling out $150.

So, all in all a kind of mixed bag. Definitely some interesting stuff, and some stuff that didn't do it for me. 

The preceding was a paid advertisement for Ellusionist.com.

No, I'm just messing with you. If Ellusionist had paid me to write this, I think there probably would have been a couple more positive reactions to the products released, and certainly one less reference comparing them to America's most prolific pedophile.