Gardyloo #69

heh-heh-heh. sixty-nine.

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Since the beginning of this site, I've talked about shifting the focus of the effect off yourself as the performer.  I want to talk about some of the benefits of that when dealing with different types of spectators.

Let's use a simple example with a floating bill trick:

Magician takes credit: "I can float this bill with my magic powers."

vs.

Magician deflects credit: "I have an invisible leprechaun on my coffee table who loves picking up dollar bills."

I'm purposely not using a good presentation here, because the point still holds true even with a shitty one.

Here's how a presentation that deflects credit plays with different types of spectators:

People who want to give you credit for the trick will still do so.

People who want to indulge themselves in the fantasy get to play along with an idea that's something other than, "Let's all pretend I have supernatural powers."

People who want to deny you credit, or who want to undermine your presentation are in an awkward position, because you're already not taking credit for it. So it's like playing handball against the drapes for them. There's no resistance. What are they going to do? Argue that there isn't an invisible leprechaun? That just makes them look like an idiot that they're denying something that is obviously fiction.

But what if your presentation isn't obviously fiction— what if it's a more ambiguous sort of thing? Well, here's what I do when I have a presentation that blurs the lines and I have someone trying to undermine it. This is something that happens very rarely for me, but I have a very standard technique for dealing with it: I turn their critique into a compliment.

So if they say, for example, "She didn't really separate those cards into red and black based on some subliminal message. You did something."

 "I did something?" I'll say. "How do you mean? Like I can somehow control where she deals cards with my mind power or something? That's kind of you to say. I wish I had that power. Thank you. That means a lot that you think I'd be capable of something like that." I don't say it facetiously, I say it as genuinely as I can, as if that's truly the way I interpreted their remark.  If someone is trying to bash you, the last thing they want is for you to take that as compliment, so this shuts them down very quickly. "Seriously though," I say to them under my breath, "that's very flattering." This drives them crazy.

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One of my favorite characters in magic is Harry Lorayne. That's not to say he's one of my favorite magicians. I like some of his material, but much of it is a standard sort of card magic that isn't really my style (although his magazine, Apocalypse, is a great read). 

What I like about him is that he's 93 years old and he spends his time on the Magic Cafe telling everyone what a bunch of shit-heads they are for deigning to learn card magic from someone other than him or perform a version of a trick that he's worked on that is not his version. 

You can go on the Cafe and search his name to see his posts, but you have to be quick because what often happens is he'll get into a back and forth with someone there and soon he's calling them a homosexual and then things get even nastier and the thread gets shut-down by the Cafe. (The Cafe staff then goes in and edits out all his comments and re-posts the threads without them.)

This happened just a few days ago with a thread on Sixten Beme's card linking effect. Harry came in and openly questioned the taste and heterosexuality of anyone who would do that version rather than his linking card routine. Not long after, half the posts in that thread are gone, including all of the ones by Harry.

I want Mr. Lorayne to know that if he wants to get his message out unedited, I will be happy to post it here (where it will get many more views than buried in a Cafe thread.) I don't care. I think it's funny. He can call out all you "homos" who don't appreciate him enough.

Fortunately, one of Harry's greatest blow-ups is saved for history on the Internet Archive. It started when magician Euan Bingham wrote this review of a classic Harry Lorayne book.

Harry was... displeased.

Which lead to this delightful exchange. (Scroll down to the post: Harry Lorayne? Blog entry by E. Bingham on 2004-10-17) Harry didn't agree with Euan's assessment of the book, and, unsurprisingly, he figured Euan must have been a total mincing queer to even have an issue with the book in the first place.  (To be fair, he only calls him a "cocksucker" six times.) 

It's totally fucking bonkers and builds to one of the most classic lines in the history of magic where Harry declares:

"YOUR MIDDLE FINGER IS BETWEEN YOUR FIRST AND THIRD FINGERS, AND YOU CAN STICK IT UP YOUR ASS. I’M SURE YOU’LL ENJOY THAT, YOU FUCKING FAGGOT."

All this over a review of a 50 year old magic book. 

My hope is that Harry—now in his 90s—is a happy person. If he's not, I have a book recommendation for him.

It's called Harry Lorayne's Secrets Of Mind Power. 

According to the inside flap, some of the subjects covered in the book are, "How to handle your emotions," "How to think without emotional bias about people you hate," "How to speak to people so they invariably like you," and "How to overcome the suspicion that people are out to get you." It's never too late to brush up on these skills, Harry.

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How awesome was MAGIC Live? So great. 

The new ad for next year's convention really captures the electricity of this kind of event. I'm already signed up.

Dirty App Magic

From time to time, I like to do magic with... adult themes. And no, I don't mean sophisticated, mature subject matter, like... I don't know...referring to Forgetful Freddy as Forgetful Frederick and using him to tell a sober tale about early onset dementia. (Although that is the subject of my submission for the Sundance Film Festival.)

I'm talking about sex, baby!

Now, statistics would tell us that if you're reading this, you're probably a magician, and if you're a magician, you're likely a creep. You're probably one of those weird dudes who is so timid and shy around women that you can't put your arm around them in a friendly manner...

But this doesn't come across as someone who is being respectful of boundaries. It comes across as someone who is so uncomfortable and awkward around other people that they can't differentiate between a casual, friendly gesture and an act of deep intimacy. And this is why women avoid you because they know if they are affable towards you in any way you'll interpret that as a declaration of undying love and then you'll bury a fucking hatchet in their skull for "leading you on" when they don't return your affection. "She wished me a happy birthday on facebook and then two days later she goes on a date with Troy? That manipulative bitch!" No. You're a creepy spazz.

The good news is that while that describes a lot of the dudes I've met in the magic world, I've weeded most of them out of the reader pool for this site by championing a style of performing where you shun credit. "This guy's an idiot," they think, "I got into magic for credit and validation, why would I give that up?" So they're likely long gone from this site.

I'm mentioning this because the two ideas that follow involve a "sexual" presentation. I can get away with them because of my confidence and boyish charms. But if you're not 100% sure you can pull off such a presentation without weirding people out, I would avoid these ideas.

Also, if you're someone who flips out because I use dirty words sometimes, beat it. 

Both of the ideas use magic apps that have found a permanent spot on my phone. The methods are obvious if you own the apps.

Call Me By Your Name (for the Xeno app)

"That reminds me," I say, "I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but back in junior high, I was practicing auto-erotic asphyxiation and the shower rod I was hanging from broke and I smashed my head against the tile wall. Ever since then I've had an unusual type of sexual ESP. I'll show you."

On Monday I said that I don't like presentations of "skill" whether real (card flourishes) or just presentational ("I can memorize the deck in 10 seconds."). But if the skill itself is wholly fantastical, then I have no issue with that, because it doesn't give the audience any potential answers.

Also, when I say, "that reminds me," I will do that after they say anything. The less related to the subject, the better.

I have them go to a site with the 100 most popular boy or girl names, depending on what they're into. They scroll through the site and think of any name there. 

I tell them I'm going to have them imagine a romantic encounter with a person with this name, and I will be able to intuit what the name is.

I have them create an image of this person in their mind (for the sake of this description, they're thinking of a guy) and I ask them a couple questions. "About how tall would you say he is?" "What kind of job do you think he'd have?" "What's his most attractive physical feature?" 

"Hmmm... okay, okay, okay," I say, as if my mind is processing this information. "I'm beginning to get the picture."

"Okay, so imagine you've had a few dates with this person, and at the end of one of those dates he takes you home and you invite him in. You have a couple of drinks and things are getting pretty romantic. You head off to your bedroom."

I then paint a portrait with words of their sexual rendezvous that—depending on the person I'm doing this for—will be somewhere between a "PG-13 romantic encounter" and a "XXX Justice Potter Stewart 'I know it when I see it' hardcore pornography fuck-fest."

As I wrap it up my description of this encounter I'll say, "I can see it," and stare off into the distance, and reach out with my hands like a psychic in a bad movie. "Yes, yes. There you are. He's on top of you. Pounding away like a jackhammer. And you're saying...  you're saying...I can just barely hear it over the sound of slapping skin... you're saying... 'Harder... faster... Charles!'"

Of course there I say the name they're merely thinking of.

I look at them as if the power of this vision has overwhelmed me. "You're insatiable!" I say.

The Fuck-It List (for the DFB App)

I'm out with some friends and I turn to one of them, Amanda, and I say, "I've been making a list of things I'd like to do with you."

"Huh?" she says.

"I made a list of 100 things we should do together. Pick a number between 1 and 100."

"Uh, okay. Twelve." 

I turn on my phone and give it to my friend Justin and ask him to open up the notes app for me. "There's a list on there called Activities for Me and Amanda, can you tell me what number 12 is?"

He goes to the list and scrolls down to number 12.

"A friendly hug," he says.

"Oh," I say, obviously disappointed. "Oh... well that's... fun. Sure." I get up and give Amanda a hug. "Maybe we can do that again sometime," I say. "I mean, you can pick a different number. Not another hug." Meanwhile, Justin has started cracking up.

"What is it?" Amanda asks and grabs the phone. She looks at the list. Yes, at #12 it says, "A friendly hug," but the other 99 items on the list are all sexual acts ranging from the mildly filthy to the downright deviant (if not criminal).

I shyly mumble, "Or we could do it again now if you want... pick another number or whatever." 

She laughs looking over the list, "Ooh... number #42 definitely," she says, eyeing me seductively. 

I jump across the table, knocking shit over, in order to get a peek at what she's suggesting.

"Oral sex while shitting!? You filthy slut!"

This is, as many of you will recognize, a variation on Andy Nyman's Dice Man trick, but without the need for dice and cards. And it's a billion times dirtier and not appropriate for some audiences.

If you have to ask, "I wonder if [Person X] would be okay with this trick?" The answer is probably "no." 

I'm fortunate enough that the people I hang out with don't get all bothered by something that's obviously done in fun, no matter how dirty it is. But your audiences may differ.

I've never done it one-on-one with someone. Only in a small group so the other people's reaction to the list builds up and then my target spectator gets to see the list. 

Here's the list of 100 activities I came up with for this. Some of them aren't fully described because then you have the fun of explaining what it means when someone says, "What's an 'Angry Dragon'?" or whatever.

Titty-Fuck
Sixty-Nine
Cowgirl
Reverse Cowgirl
Bestiality (general)
Necrophilia (general)
Gang-bang
Bukkake party
Genitals in Boiling Oil
Ass Paddling
Cuckolding
Dry Anal
Fist-fuck (to the wrist)
Fist-fuck (to the elbow)
Fist-fuck (to the shoulder)
Double fist-fuck
Sandpaper Condom
Threesome
Foursome
Threesome with Dog
Toothy Oral
HIV Roulette
Donkey Punch
Genital Chomping
Genital Stomping
Clothespins on Nipples
Jumper Cables on Nipples
Curb-Stomp at Orgasm
The Double Cosby
Poke in Eye with Dick
Golden Shower (give)
Golden Shower (receive)
Shit in Mouth
Paddling
Staple Ass-cheeks Together
Nipple Removal
Strap-on Play
Baseball Bat to the Groin
Female Genital Mutilation
Genital Binding
Roleplay (Teacher and Student)
Roleplay (Grandma and Grandson)
Roleplay (Mick Jagger and David Bowie)
Trumpet Mouthpiece in Anus
Face Slapping
Oral Sex While Shitting
Cum Swapping
Make a Baby and Raise it to Age 18
Teabagging
Oral Teabagging
Anal Teabagging
Fart in Face
Ass to Ass
Felching
Dirty Sanchez
Set Pubes on Fire
Cunnilingus
Analingus
Hot Karl
Dual Autofellatio
Pearl Necklace
Foot Job
Deepthroat
Face Fucking
Fecal Freaking
Stump Play
Naked Jello Wrestling
Naked Mud Wrestling
Double Penetration
All Holes
Anal Bead Ripcord
Creampie
Total Body Hair Removal
Ass to Mouth
Ass Fingering
Tease and Denial
Bondage
Rimjob
Domination
Submission
Caning
Nude Lapdance
Mutual Masturbation
Enema Play
Face Sitting
Facial
Sex Swing
Fucking Machine
Spanking
Visit Swinger's Club
Make Amateur Porno
Make Snuff Film
Duo Erotic Asphyxation
Titty Twister
An Erotic Hug
Full Body Nude Massage
Snort Coke Off Tits
Scat Play
Angry Dragon

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.