Inexpert Card Technique

Every time I write a post I think, "I'm going to be so clear and precise with my wording no one is going to possibly misinterpret what I'm trying to say with this post." And then, after every post, I get emails that are like, "I think this is wrong!" and they go on to argue with me about something I never said. There seems to be no getting around this. You might say, "You need to be a better writer." Maybe, but 99% of the people who read it seem to get what I'm saying.

So if you're new to this site, let me reiterate something I've mentioned before: This blog is not about giving advice. It is, in part, about my journey with magic and developing a more audience-centric/experience-centric style of performing magic (as opposed to the traditional magician-centric style). But I'm not trying to convince anyone else to adopt this style. 

In regards to last Monday's post, I wasn't suggesting anyone else needs to, or should want to, do a double turnover as a non-card-handler would. I was just wondering how such a person would—and after getting a sampling of that—I decided to use that technique in certain situations. 

In general, I like to keep my overt card handling at the same level as that of the person for whom I'm performing. Why? Well, because in close-up magic that involves cards, the easiest "non-explanation" for a person to use to deflect the impact of the effect is to say, "Ah, it was just sleight-of-hand." Sometimes you'll even get people who say, "I know how you did that... sleight-of-hand," as if that's a full explanation. 

However, if nothing in your handling strikes them consciously or subconsciously as something they couldn't (or wouldn't) do, then that undercuts the idea that the explanation behind what just happened was you manually handling the deck in a way they can't. 

To give you another example, if I'm with someone who can't do a riffle shuffle, then I generally won't do a riffle shuffle around them during a trick. On some level (and again, this might not be consciously) I believe they think, "Well, he can do that thing with a deck of cards that I can't do, so he can probably do other things with a deck of cards I can't do either." 

Perceived skill undermines that intangible "magic" quality. I'll prove it to you. If you went to a magic convention and a famous close-up magician showed you a really hard-hitting trick and you didn't know how it was done, you might be impressed, but you wouldn't be, like, "enchanted" by the experience. However, if your wife or your 8-year-old nephew (or someone else who you know has no skill with a deck of cards) showed you the same trick, it would create genuine awe.

I'm not saying anything controversial here. We all know that if you're going to handle cards like the Buck Twins, then people are going to very easily attribute most anything you do with cards to manual dexterity. Recognizing this, a lot of magicians choose to not do anything too flourishy with a deck of cards. All I'm saying is that I personally choose to dial it back even further and (ideally) I don't do anything outside of their own abilities.

Obviously, if the people you regularly perform for already know you're proficient with a deck of cards, you can't really use this technique unless you pretend you had a coconut dropped on your head and forgot how to handle cards. However, if you end up meeting and performing for new people regularly, this can be very powerful.

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Here's one of the most disarming ways I use this technique. I meet someone new and we get to talking. It comes out that one of my interests is reading up on these bizarre old card games and rituals. Later I offer to "show them something interesting" and take out a deck and give it a real basic overhand shuffle. "Can you shuffle?" I ask. They take the deck and give it a good riffle-shuffle with a bridge. And I'm all like, "Damn... look at you!" With suitable admiration of their technique. Or maybe I'll playfully act with mock annoyance towards them for showing me up and I'll be like:

I don't make a big deal about it, it's just a brief moment where I'm acknowledging their skill. Now, during the course of whatever transpires next, in the back of their mind, their understanding of the situation is that while I have an interest in cards games/tricks/experiments, they are actually the one who is more adept at handling a deck of cards. So they are unlikely to think that anything that happens is due to my skill with cards. And the idea that maybe I pretended to not be good with cards to implant that idea in their mind so what happened after would be more impressive... that's just not a conclusion they're going to jump to. It's too many steps removed from the types of solutions people gravitate towards. So they see this amazing thing and I've given them no easy answers.

So yes, sometimes I'll even act less skillful than my audience. 

But Andy, aren't you afraid that's going to reflect poorly on you? Like you have this interest in cards and these little games you can do with them... but you can't even do a riffle shuffle?

No. I could not possibly give less of a fuck about that. In fact, if they truly believe that, then I have them exactly where I want them.

So going back to last Monday's post... handling a double turnover like a non-card-handler, is a very small—potentially imperceptible—gesture, but it's part of an overall approach of mine to keep my handling within the boundaries of their abilities (whenever possible). I've never isolated this "dumbing down" of handing in any testing to determine how much of an effect it may have on people's reactions to the tricks I show them. However, it's definitely been one of the techniques I've employed in recent years that I think has helped transform the response to the things I do from "that's impressive" to "that's impossible."

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Let me be clear: This is just my personal preference in regards to the approach I take to performing magic. I'm not saying it's the "right" approach. In fact, it's probably the wrong approach given that it's the opposite of the approach taken by 99% of magicians. I want to remove "skill" as being a potential explanation for the weird thing that's going to take place. (Not just skill with cards, but skill in general.) When skill is demonstrated implicitly (being very smooth with a deck of cards, rolling coins down your knuckles) or proclaimed explicitly ("I can memorize this deck in under 10 seconds," "I can read your micro-expressions to know what word you're thinking of," "I can deal from the center of the deck") it provides at least a partial explanation for what occurred. And whatever weight the audience gives to skill gets pulled away from "the mystery." It's a zero sum game.

The tricks I find the most fun to perform, and the ones that I get the most intense reactions from, are the ones that are unrelentingly mysterious. I don't want to hear, "You're good!" or, "That's very clever." I want to hear, "Wait... hold on...what in the fuck is going on?"

Do I really think they have no idea I'm behind what's happening? It all depends on the person I'm performing for, the time and place, the trick I'm performing, and a bunch of other variables. My goal is to have it feel that way in the moment. To do that, I want to emphasize the weirdness, the unknown, and the mystery. And I want to de-emphasize skill and technique and my role in the process. I don't want the story of what happens to be about me.

More mystery, less "me story."

Fuck, I have a way with words!

Gardyloo #68

I got an email from reader, M.Y. that read:

"I liked very much Cup of George. I was thinking that it could be possibly performed impromptu without a wingman. When you are in a restaurant/bar/store, look around and pick the funniest/weirdest looking person. Just pay attention there is no visible sign that that person may soon leave (ie they are asking for the check). Then it is not difficult to draw your own bill (bathroom, etc whatever). Then you ask to “select anyone in this room... someone funny, someone weird”. Now I believe you should choose a person that’s not too obvious, someone in the middle. It’s a psychological force of a person, in some way."

I think this is a good instinct. A borrowed dollar that becomes magically altered to look similar to a "random" person in the room is a fun trick, even if it's not a profound mystery. Being able to do it without a secret assistant is a worthwhile goal.

The problem with trying to base the method off a "psychological force of a person" is the same problem you have with all psychological forces: it's either reliable and obvious or inconspicuous and unreliable. 

What you could do is have your spectator take out a dollar bill, crumple it up, and you cover it with a cup, as in the original write-up. Then say, "That's going to be the prize money. Now we need to find out who the winner of the prize will be. Pick someone here." If they pick your target person, then you're set. 

If they don't choose your target person you say, "Okay, the guy in the Modest Mouse t-shirt. And who is he going to fight? We're going to do a round-robin, fighting competition thing. Mortal Kombat style." And then you do the PATEO force with everyone in the room. You can probably keep this moving pretty quickly with up to 20 or so people as long as you're mildly interesting. 

Once you get down to the last two "contestants" I would probably have the winner chosen via a controlled coin flip or coin spin or something seemingly random. ("If the coin lands heads-side up, the baby wins. If it lands tails-side up, the guy in the Yankees hat wins... Oh, tails! Yankees hat takes the baby and piledrives the shit out of him and kicks his lifeless body out through the front window. Beat it, baby. Go cry to your mama."

Then of course you recap, "Before we started—before you chose who to eliminate—you took a dollar bill from your wallet, balled it up, and it has been under that cup the whole time," blah, blah, blah. She unrolls it and it says "Winner" with an arrow pointing to George Washington in a Yankees cap.

That's definitely a trick I'll use. I think it would be pretty fun and relatively baffling. And if you get a hit on your target person immediately then it's a total mindblower.

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Sometimes people send me stuff in the hopes that I'll write about it on the site. It's pretty unlikely that I will, though. Not because I don't appreciate the gesture, but just because if I wrote about everything people sent me, then, ultimately, no one would know if I was really into something, or if I was just saying something nice about it because I got it for free. So, while I appreciate free shit, don't send me anything with expectations that you'll see it written about here for my millions (estimated) of fans.

One way you can get me to mention your trick or book here is if you fool me with something. In fact, I'd rather be fooled by a trick than get a copy of it for free. (Well, ideally you'd fool me with it and then give me a copy for free.) 

So if you have a trick you can do for me over the phone or over skype, or if you don't need my interaction and you just want to send me a video clip of something, get in touch. I may not have my camera on if we use skype, or maybe I'll wear a mask, or I'll have you perform it for a friend. I'm not sure about that yet. We'll see how it goes.

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This week I noticed that the first time I did a Dear Jerxy post, it was with an (obviously) made up letter. But then in future posts I switched over to real emails. Did I originally intend to respond to fake letters as a jumping off point to write about certain topics? I have no clue.

I only bring this up now for the sake of the magic historians who will pore over these posts, paying great attention to everything I write here as being the starting point for an era that redefined magic. "Was this just a mistake?" they'll ask. "Or did he expect us to believe that first post was an actual letter from the guy on the Cafe, like the future posts were?"

It was just a mistake. Chill out.

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I figure if there are people in the world whose spirits are lifted by a generic compliment written by someone they probably don't know personally, that is addressed to anyone that happens to read it, then I wanted to get in on that action.

Summer Jams

[Tuesdays and Thursdays I occasionally post non-magic content.]

As someone who grew up in the northeast U.S., and who finds himself there for much of the year, I subscribe to Kurt Vonnegut's theory that in this part of the world we have six seasons, not four.

One sort of optional thing you might do is to realize that there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are so depressed so much of the time. I mean, spring doesn't feel like spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for autumn, and so on.

Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June. What could be springier than May and June? Summer is July and August. Really hot, right? Autumn is September and October. See the pumpkins? Smell those burning leaves? Next comes the season called Locking. November and December aren't winter. They're Locking. Next comes winter, January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold!

What comes next? Not spring. 'Unlocking' comes next. What else could cruel March and only slightly less cruel April be? March and April are not spring. They're Unlocking. -- Kurt Vonnegut

Whether you're someone who gets six seasons or four seasons or you live in one of those climates that's the same all year round (you're missing out, seasons are the best) we are pretty much right in the middle of summer. It will be over before you know it.

Take time to appreciate it while it's here. Even if you don't like summer. I used to not like summer too. And I would just suffer through it until autumn came. Then one day I decided that when it came to my life I would just ignore the aspects of things I didn't like and embrace the parts I do. I'm of the belief you can just choose to do that. So I don't get all worked up about the aspects of summer I dislike: humidity, sweating, annoying kids who should be in school. Instead I just focus on the stuff I like: cooling off in the pool, outdoor grilling, and babes in bikinis. 

This summer I've hiked to over a dozen waterfalls in the northeast and visited half-a-dozen drive-in movie theaters. It's been a good summer.

Here's some summer-esque music that I like. When I say "summer" music, I mean songs that give me the feeling of this time of year, not like big summer hits like "Blurred Lines" or "Fancy" or some shit. And not really "beach" music either. That's a different sort of thing. My idea of summer music is something that's lively and carefree and evocative of lazy days and hot nights. 

(60% of this list would also be on my Crush-Worthy Keyboard Player list.)

No One's Better Sake by Little Joy - Breezy with a tropical polyrhythm. This is a modern classic for me. Their whole self-titled album (which is now 10 years old) is great.

Heart to Tell by The Love Languages - I was at the shoot for this video. It was hot and sweaty and raucous, and that experience has implanted this song in my mind as a great summer song.

Swimsuit by Oregon Bike Trails - Tropicalia, folk, retro-pop? Something like that. Sounds summery to me. The band re-named itself Cayucas and re-recorded this song. It's not as good.

Boardwalk by Tijuana Panthers - A perfect two minute romantic surf-rock song. I like the live version below but the album version is flawless. (The live version you miss out a little on the "yup-yup!" backing vocals.) 

Sedona by Houndmouth - This song was actually a minor hit, but if you missed it when it first came around a few years ago, here's your second chance. This sounds like the end of summer to me. The girl left the band a couple years ago and these guys are still carrying on. My advice, dudes? Blow up the band and start over. She made the group. Well, her harmonies make this song, at least.

Dear Jerxy: F'ing Up

Dear Jerxy: I don't recall you ever writing about the following:

In your style of performing, what do you do if you mess up?

In regular non-Jerx style of magic, for example a card trick, if you mess up, you always can fall back on the "...wait. uh... six of HEARTS you said?...uh, there's no six of hearts in the deck.... its in my pocket..." Or whatever mediocre "save" you can come up with.

But in Jerx- style, when your whole experience is based on a premise, I don't really see how you could save a mistake. [Offhand, I can think of numerous Jerx tricks where if something messes up, the ending is gone and there's nowhere to turn.] You're kind of at the point of no return.

I assume in all your thousands of times, you must've messed up here and there. What do you do?

Signed,
Eventually Failure Finds Even Demigods

Dear Effed:

The answer to the question is in the question itself. You ask about how I handle screwing up in my style of performing. The answer is to have a style of performing that handles failure well. 

The style of performing that deals with failure the worst is the magician-centric style, where you are the all-powerful prime-mover making it all happen. If you fully embrace this style, then messing up is going to reflect directly on you. 

In the styles I embrace, with the power shifted off you, you're generally not taking credit for the success, so you don't have to take credit for the failures either. This is another instance where your Performance Style can solve a lot of potential issues.

Let's go through the Styles and see how they handle failure. (Further info on Performance Styles can be found linked in their glossary entry.) 

Peek Backstage: If I have a trick that is anything less than 95% certain, I almost always perform it in this style. And that's because this style is designed to be "something I'm working on." So the possibility of failure is built into the style. And, in fact, I often purposely screw something up to make the eventual success more interesting. So something not working is completely covered by this style.

Of course you messing up, or the spectator messing up, or a gimmick malfunctioning and a trick "not working" is only one type of failure. Another type of failure—and one that's harder to recover from—is when the method gets fully exposed. I find this type of failure to happen pretty rarely. Even if something messes up bad I can usually hide the method itself.

But with the Peek Backstage, you can deftly brush off even a blown method. Let's say someone busts you on a double lift. "There's two cards there," they say. 

Here's what you do: "Okay, yes! Thank you. I knew it. So I'm on this secret magic message board and this guy was posting this stuff about this new technique he came up with where you hold two cards like they're one. And everyone was like, 'Uhm, I think that's going to be a little obvious.' But this guy—who is a total blowhard—was like, 'No it works. People are stupid, they can't tell, blah blah blah. Just try it out.' I knew he was full of shit."

Distracted Artist: This is a style of magic that happens on the offbeat with no prologue. It's very hard to mess this up because people don't know a trick is coming, so if it doesn't work, you just don't draw attention to it.

Example: Let's say you want to do Karate Coin. But instead of making it a "trick" you're just going to flip a coin and jab it with your finger and then be like, "HOLY SHIT!" 

But what if you mess up? What if you miss the normal coin and it goes flying across the room and the gimmick flips out of your hand into your friend's drink. Even a catastrophic failure such as that doesn't matter because as far as they know you were just screwing around with some coins. When they pull the gimmick out of their glass and they're like, "What is this?" You just say, "I don't know. I found it on the street. I thought it looked interesting."

It's difficult for a trick to truly fail if nobody knows a trick was happening.

Engagement Ceremony: With the Engagement Ceremony style, the power is shifted to the ritual. If the trick doesn't work, then the ritual didn't work. That's not your fault.

Wonder Room: With the Wonder Room style, the power is shifted to the object. If the trick doesn't work, then the object doesn't apparently possess the power you thought it had. That's not your fault.

The only Performance Style I use regularly that doesn't process failure well is The Romantic Adventure. This is built around an immersive presentation that is usually a more long-form experience for the spectator, so if something messes up, the build-up to the effect is pretty much wasted. So when doing an effect in that style I want to have something that's basically foolproof and have a back-up for it. 

On top of that, I only engage in this style with a person when I know they're the type who isn't going to fight the presentation in any way (this style is no fun for someone who isn't 100% on board). So if I know they're the type of person who is going to grab a gimmicked deck out of my hands, I wouldn't build a long-form experience around a trick with a gimmicked deck for them. 

Ultimately, this is all a matter of risk assessment. If a trick has a significant chance of messing up, I just don't do it. If it has a measurable chance, then I use a performance style that will account for a mess up. If, despite my planning, something fucks up spectacularly in a way I hadn't anticipated and I have no way to recover from it, I have the ultimate back-up plan: the fact that I don't give a shit. I have no ego wrapped up in my performances. Everyone involved knows they're just meant to be a good time. Maybe once a year I'll mess something up totally in a way there is no turning back from and no covering up and no rebounding from at a future date. In that case I say, "Aw, damn," and we all move on with our lives. Everyone else will only put as much emphasis on it as you do, so if you blow it off, so will they.

This is true of everything in your life that you mess up. Don't dwell, move on, and it will be forgotten.

Double Date

A couple years ago I was talking to someone about double turnovers. Apparently we had exhausted every potentially interesting subject of conversation. The conversation centered around the question of what type of double lift/turnover looked the most "normal."

For the most part, I think the majority of double turnovers seem fairly above-board as long as they're performed well. However, I sometimes think magicians shoot themselves in the foot when they do anything more than turn the card over. Sometimes they do this weird flexion thing with the double that no one has ever done with a single card.

(That's not me. That from someone's video teaching the DL.)

Or sometimes they'll do a flourishy double where it's held between the corners and rotates around multiple times or swivels out of the deck or something like that. I think they believe they are emphasizing the singularity of the card with these moves, but in my opinion they are just bringing attention to a moment that should have passed by without note. If a spectator is suspicious of how many cards you turned over, then your technique is bad, or you're performing for someone who knows about double lifts, in which case your flourishy doubles aren't fooling anyone.

We often hear when learning sleights that we should do the action as if we were doing it for real. That is to say, when you pretend to take the coin or pretend to pick up the object, it should look like when you really take the coin or really pick up the object. So when you do a double turnover, it should look like when you do a single turnover. But there isn't really such a thing as a "single turnover." I mean it doesn't have an analogue in the real world. Holding a deck and turning the top card face up and placing it back on top of the deck isn't something that's really done outside of magic. (Perhaps there is a card game where this is done, but I can't think of it.)

So that left me with the question: If I wanted to handle cards in the way a non-card-handler would, what should my double turnover look like? Not that I was going to mimic them exactly. I don't want to look clumsy with cards. But just as a starting point, I wondered how a person who hadn't practiced this 10,000 times would naturally turn a card over on the deck.

I decided to find out. And so, in the intervening months and years, whenever I was with someone who wasn't proficient with a deck of cards—and whenever I remembered to do it—I would take a video of them turning the top card face up on top of the deck. I didn't want them to think too much about that action, so I built it into a trick. That way I could take my phone out to record "something I want to try out," and at a certain point during the trick I'd say, "Take the top card, turn it over, and put it back on top." And thus I had a bunch of "real" people doing the action with a single card that we pretend to do with a double.

The video below collects those clips.

So what did I take away from this? Well, the main thing I noticed is that only two of those people do anything close to what I do with my standard double turnover. That is to say, only two people took the card off the side of the deck and turned it over sideways. (I should note that those were two of the only people in this video who "occasionally" play cards.) 

It seems the most "natural" way to do a turnover for non-card-handlers is to slide the card from the back (or front) and turn it over end-for-end. When I noticed this trend as I began to collect the clips I thought, "Well, I'm not going to start doing a double turnover like that, of course." But then I started playing around with it, and it began to feel very natural and innocent to me (when I could make myself forget everything I knew about what a double turnover is "supposed" to look like). So now that is the double I use when I'm performing for non-card-handlers (and it actually flew by a number of magicians I tried it on as well—presumably because they were thinking, "No one would do a double like that.")

(When I perform for people who do play cards regularly, I do a more traditional push off double, because I have a feeling that would look the most normal to them.)

Is this meaningless fine-tuning of a sleight? Possibly. I don't think it's something people notice. I don't think they say, "That looks like a very fair, natural way to turn over the top card." They're non-card-handlers, so they don't have a baseline of what looks "natural." However, since I am doing the move in a way that is probably similar to how they would too—since I'm "mirroring" their instinctive actions without them ever even doing it—then I think it will inherently feel fair to them. It will draw no attention to itself in the way a more dextrous handling of the cards might.

Again, this is all personal preference. My goal is to seem as "normal" with a deck of cards as possible. If you're performing professionally or you want to come off as a master card handler, this is not a concern of yours. While my interest in magic is clear to my friends and family, I try to never come off as someone who is practicing moves and working on standard sleight-of-hand skills. Generally, I want to imply my interest manifests itself in doing research into arcane ideas and trying stuff out with real people, not locking myself away and assiduously rehearsing moves in front of the mirror. So, for me, a double turnover that mimics the way a regular person would do that action without thinking is a good thing to have.

Gardyloo #67

Back in the day, The Magic Cafe was my source for some of the most compelling literature available. A lot of people see it as a place to get information about new products or complain about jack-shit. But at its best, its a place to watch stories unfold in real time. I feel this used to happen much more frequently (or it may be the fact that I used to spend more time there so I noticed it more). You would have these 40-page threads where, say, a new product would be announced. And time would pass and there would be all sorts of speculation about the product; and the creator would make wild claims about what it could do; and there would be all sorts of delays and issues with the manufacturers; and people would start questioning whether it even existed; then a bunch of new, obviously fake, accounts would pop up to say, like, "No, I saw this, and it's very real"; then the creator would disappear and stop commenting. And back and forth it would go for months. 

I find it a very interesting way to consume a story: in little bits over time. It's like reading The Pickwick Papers or some other Charles Dickens serialized novel in the 1800s. In fact, I don't think any serious authority on literature would deny the probability that, in the future, our greatest works will probably be released one post at a time on The Magic Cafe.

Another good story was released their recently. It's called Compromised/Breached. I don't want to spoil it for you, but the basic plot is that some guy released a trick that allows you to know stuff that was done on someone's phone (who they text and what they text them) without you seeing anything. And all it requires is 30-60 seconds of fiddling with their phone beforehand and a total invasion of their privacy. 

Lots of good characters, twists and turns, sketchy justifications, and at least one totally obvious sock-puppet account. Check it out.  It's the beach read of the summer!

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Some quick thoughts on the Compromised/Breached thread.

1. If someone asks you to pay via the friends and family option on paypal, their intention is to rip you off. It's the only reason to do that. But, Andy, he just wants to avoid paypal fees. Well then he should raise his asking price the amount to cover the paypal fees and let people retain the buyer protection that paypal offers. Problem solved.

2. You will be a much happier person if you stick to the zillion other tricks in magic and mentalism without methods that aren't, at best, ethically ambiguous. You don't have to wonder, "Hey, I think I might be a total creep who will do anything as long as it potentially gains me the attention and validation I crave," when you do a center tear.

3. My favorite part of the thread is when people are like, "You only need to mess with their phone for 30 seconds to a minute." Oh gee, is that all? You mean you only need to hide what you're doing on their unlocked phone from them for a minute? Why, that's hardly any time at all for a friend or stranger to have access to all their personal conversations, private photos and videos, emails, contacts, search history, financial information, and personal notes. Let's be honest, one minute is certainly not enough time to look through all of that, so what's the issue?

4. I don't want to be seen as a naysayer. So let me offer another trick for people who like this method. You walk up to someone on the street and ask her to think about what color underwear she's wearing, then you're able to name it with no fishing. The secret? Drill a hole into her bedroom wall and watch her get dressed in the morning. You have to promise not to watch her naked, though, because that would be wrong. You promise, right? Okay, well as long as you promise.

5. The people who defend this trick will say, "But if you just temporarily hack into their phone and the delete the access you have on your phone after the fact, and if you only use it to get the information that you told them you would get, then there's nothing ethically wrong about it." I'm not quite sure that's the case.

First, even with the best of intentions, you may stumble on something personal.

Second, someone giving you "consent" to try and use your mental powers to determine who they texted and what they texted is not the same as someone giving you consent to gain access to all their private text conversations. If I go up to someone and ask them if I can use my psychic powers to tell them what they did yesterday and the say, "Ok," that's not consent for me to break into their house and read their diary. Even if I only stick to the last page, the information they "consented" for me to have.

And finally I feel like the people who look at this method and don't see it as at least invasive (if not illegal) are the same people who would just keep access to the spectator's texts on their phone and look through their private messages and pictures. Like I don't think that's a Venn diagram. I just think it's a circle.

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Most optical illusions I will become immune to after a period of time, but this one still blows my mind every time I look at it. The chess pieces on the top and bottom are exactly the same color. Exactly the same goddamn color!

It gets me every time. Maybe i'm just particularly susceptible to this illusion for some reason. I still have to prove it to myself from time to time by taking the picture apart in photoshop.

The temptation is to build a trick around this optical illusion, but I think the reality is probably more interesting than a trick using this as a method would be.

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There are lots of tiny details in the show we hope you notice but here’s one that’s just for me. This thing is never seen—it just holds a prop the Other Brothers crafted for me. It sits in darkness backstage, but they printed it with the show’s logo. I’m reminded of when someone snapped at Steve Jobs for being particular about how the inside of an early computer looked. “Nobody will even know it’s there,” they told him. His reply: “But I will.” #joshuajay #siximpossiblethingsshow #stevejobs

A post shared by Joshua Jay (@joshuajaymagician) on Jul 23, 2018 at 10:03am PDT

JJ bragging about his attention to detail. Even the custom butt-plug that he sits on between tricks in his new show has the show's logo on it. "Nobody will even know it's there," people tell him. "But I will," Josh says with a smile. What a weirdo.

Some Junk I Saw On Facebook

I don't have a facebook profile. I don't have a "Jerx" account and I don't have a personal one. 

I'm not anti-social media or anti-technology.  I'm not on facebook anymore because when I did have an account I found it far too easy to waste a bunch of time there, yet I was receiving no joy from it. It wasn't a type of interaction that was valuable to me. And I've tried to eliminate those types of time sinks from my life. I try to limit myself to activities that are productive or make me happy (ideally both). And facebook was neither of those things (yet it was seductive enough to occupy a not-insignificant chunk of time). So I got rid of it.

Getting rid of facebook has been overwhelming positive for me, but there are a couple downsides.

The first is that I'll be having a conversation with someone and they'll be like, "Did you hear Karen had her baby?" And I'll be like, "Karen was pregnant?" Facebook is an easy way to keep up-to-date on those people who are more than acquaintances, but less than close friends. And I've definitely fallen out of the loop with some people. I justify this by telling myself that if I really wanted to know everything about these people, I would have a closer relationship where we saw each other (or texted, called, or emailed) regularly.

The other issue is that now a lot of magic products have facebook pages that contain further ideas, updated handlings, bonus content and stuff like that. And I've kind of cut myself off from that sort of thing. 

However, I've been staying with a magician friend of mine the past few days who does have a facebook account and access to some of the pages I would want to visit. So finally the world of facebook magic has been revealed to me. It's like that old Houdini tome...

Here are a few thoughts on some of the things I saw when I infiltrated a couple of these groups.

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Digital Force Bag Group

This is the page I was most excited about checking out. The Digital Force Bag is an app I gave a positive review to in the Spring X-Communication. The app is very generic (and I mean that in a good way) so there are all sorts of different types of tricks you can create with it. And I was looking forward to checking out the ideas people had. While there were a few interesting ideas, the vast majority of them were pretty underwhelming.

A lot of the ideas were like, "I'm going to force something from one list, then force something from another, then force something from a third list. Then I'll show I predicted all of them." 

Eh...

Honestly, it's fine, but it's also about the blandest use of the app you can come up with. Not only that, but the more times you use the app to have someone pick something from a list, the more your trick becomes about picking things from a list. That's not a hyper compelling premise. 

I'm going to give you the #1 tip I have for getting the most out of the DFB app in social magic situations. Keep your DFB list an everyday object. The strength of the DFB app is that it's something you can casually get into on your phone. Your phone is an "everyday object" which makes it good for social magic. But guess what, a list of 100 superheroes on your phone is not an everyday object. It's a prop for a magic trick. It's as "normal" as a brightly painted box with Chinese symbols on it. If you're performing as a professional, that's fine, you're expected to use props. But if you want to seamlessly weave a trick into a natural interaction, you need to keep your list an "everyday object" itself.

The strongest reactions I've received with DFB happen when I use it with a list that I might conceivably have on my phone. Grocery lists, vocabulary lists, a wishlist of things I want to buy, a bucket list, places I want to visit, a list of things relating to something I'm researching, movies I watched this year (or want to watch), books I've read (or want to read), a hit-list, a to-do list, a budget, a list of my sexual conquests (don't tell me two items don't constitute a list), etc.

Make the list personal and you give it a reason for existing. This takes the heat off the list and the selection process because it's not a list that was created FOR the purposes of a magic trick. And it helps with the Smear Technique, where you blur the edges of a presentation. You don't have to say, "Want to see a trick? I have a list of superheroes. I want you to name a number and we'll use that to choose a superhero." Instead it can be something considerably more casual where someone is talking about a superhero movie, or you're talking about what you've been reading, or something and you say, "Actually, my 2018 resolution was to read as many superhero origin stories as I could. I've been keeping track. [You remove your phone, turn it on and go to the notes.] I'm up to... sixty-three so far this year. It's been a fun project, but I think it may be rotting my brain, like those anti-comics people used to say in the 1930s. It's kind of all I can think about. Want to see something weird...?"

Again, if you're a professional using this tablehopping, then maybe it's not a concern. But if you want to do the strongest social magic, part of that is predicated on it feeling somewhat spontaneous. And having "a list of 100 random celebrities" on your phone is the opposite of that.

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M.C. (I never know when to use people's full name's here or not. I'll often just use initials if I think there's a chance they'd like me to. Or if there's a chance that someone googling their name could be brought here and find something that person wouldn't want them to find.) mentioned on the Digital Force Bag group about using the app in conjunction with some specially made bills that you can get here.

(Check out Impeached by Josh Janousky which is his commercially available release of an effect using the celebrity bills.)

I haven't used the celebrity bills, but In the past, I've done some things with the custom bills they make where they put anyone's face on a real bill. 

I still haven't found the best use for this yet. The bill always gets a strong reaction but in a way that seems to undermine the strength of the trick itself.

However, one thing to keep in mind is you can use this company to custom print a bill that is slightly different than a normal bill. I have a couple ideas in that regard that I may write up, but that's for another post. Just putting the idea out there for now.

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Of course, one thing you can always count on facebook for is super funny jokes! Do yourself a favor, get yourself a change of underwear before reading this sick and twisted slam on Ellusionist.

Ah-ha-ha-ha. Time to close up shop, Ellusionist. Ya been burned. Eek-llusionist? That's some searing satire, the likes of which I haven't seen since MAD Magazine took down the Partridge Family with their piece called the Putrid Family.

Funniest meme ever aside, M.H., who brought this to my attention, has a good point that something like this could make an intriguing presentational hook for a trick.

Imagine you strap something like this on your spectator and ask her to cut the deck into four piles with the hand that has this gizmo on it. You turn over the top cards and there's nothing of note there. Then maybe you tighten up a screw or you apparently make some adjustment to an app on your phone. Then you have her cut the deck in four again and this time she's found the four aces. 

You don't show too much excitement. "Okay, okay..." you say, apparently deep in thought. "Oh, thanks for your help. This is just a prototype we're working on. Ultimately it needs to be small enough to be implanted under the skin or a casino will never let you in wearing one of these."

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Cryptext User Group

I love Cryptext and use it a lot. If you don't know what it is, it's a way of doing a reveal in an effect where a number that has been on view is turned over and shown to be a word when upside-down, or vice versa.

However, there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about how to use this tool by the members of the facebook group. 

Here's Lior Suchard botching it on a recent performance for Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest. You only really need to see one still image from the video to make the point.

That's supposed to be Lior revealing his prediction of a number, 38079. But, of course, it doesn't look like a number. It looks like an upside-down word. And that is, in fact, what Kelly is pointing at right there. Lior has to cover up the number partially and then quickly do the final reveal because it's so obvious what is about to happen. 

"But it gets a good reaction." Well, Kelly and Ryan give a good "tv presenter" reaction as they are paid to do.  But if you look at that video and it looks like a strong human reaction, then you may have a disorder that prevents you from understanding human emotions. (Similarly, pay attention to how much of a dud the pre-show stuff is too. He suggests he's able to get the image of her making-out with a plastic head of Farrah Fawcett and her reaction is, "Hmm... yup.")

Cryptext will always get a good reaction, because it's a fun reveal. But it's a much stronger reveal when the audience doesn't see it coming. 

With that in mind, you want your initial word or number to look as genuine as possible. You need to prioritize the look of the first display. Yes, you want the reveal to be as easy to "see" as possible, but not to the extent that they're ahead of you and the ending is blown.

The entire Cryptext Facebook groups is filled with examples where the initial display word or number looks like no word or number a human has ever written.

For example, what is this:

If you said it's the number 5010016, you're right. You're also out of your goddamn mind because it doesn't look anything like that.

I sent that picture to a friend and asked him what he thought it said and his response was: "S, Six, 1, Backwards C, Six, Lambda, Six."

The truth is, not every word or phrase is suitable for Cryptext. If there's no way to make the reveal somewhat legible other than making the initial word/number a bunch of jumbled gobbledygook, then you need to come up with a different reveal. 

I can understand why the professional magician would want to have the final reveal hit immediately (although I don't think you should sacrifice the surprise for that). And for the social magician, it's not needed at all. It's actually okay if the final reveal takes a moment to see. Your instinct is that you need to immediately hit them over the head with it, but you don't. Think of the best twists in movies. They're the sort of thing that dawns on the full audience gradually. It's not Bruce Willis coming out and saying, "Actually, I was dead the whole time." 

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To be clear, there were ideas I liked in the groups I visited on facebook too, but I'm going to assume they want those idea kept private (since they're private facebook groups). My thoughts above on DFB and Cryptext are things of a more general nature.

Will I be getting a facebook account and taking part in discussions there after my recent visit? I doubt it.

If I do sign up it's so I can be a part of one particular group (and I hesitate to mention it here because it's kind of a tight-knit group of guys and I don't want membership to blow up). It's the group, WE can teach u a awesome joke and magician!!! There's some pretty powerful ideas being thrown around there. Admittedly the posting there has been a touch light since 2010, but I'm thinking it will pick up soon. I suspect Arfa is going to get us the punchline to the "vampire's favorite ice cream" joke sometime in the next few years and then things will really get moving.