Mindwipe

Three weeks ago, I went to the homes of three different friends and left each of them with a roll of the softest, fluffiest toilet paper I could find. None of that single-ply nonsense. This stuff was a real treat for your bunghole. 

I had them place the roll of toilet paper on the toilet paper holder (or whatever that's called). And I put a bright pink post-it note on the wall next to it that said, "Contact me the moment you finish this roll of toilet paper." (I added a piece of tape to secure the post-it, as I wasn't sure it would stay up with the steam from a shower.)

In addition to the note, I told them what I wanted them to do: Use the toilet paper as they normally would. No more or less than usual. And when they got to the end, leave the tube on the spool and call or text me immediately. Any time, day or night. 

This took a little convincing, of course. You can be the most trustworthy guy in the world, but saying, "Here, I want you to rub this particular roll of toilet paper against your orifices for the next few days," is kind of sketchy. It smacks of some weird fetish. So I did this with people who know me pretty well.

My friend Nicole was the second person to finish her roll about eight days later. This is the story of her roll.

Imagine

Around 9:30 pm on August 27th, Nicole texts me to tell me she was finished with her roll of toilet paper. 

"I'll be right over," I reply.

Twenty minutes later I enter her apartment. We go into the bathroom together. I give her a Sharpie and aske her to sign the cardboard tube. She does, and I then have her take it off the holder. I begin to tear one side of the TP tube along it's length (in other words, tear it so I could open it flat). I pause after I have put just a small notch in it.

"Wait," I say, "How long after you finished this roll did you text me?"

She thinks for a moment and says, "Maybe two minutes."

"Okay... and do you know what time it was when you texted me?" I ask. I set the TP tube down and pull out my phone. I open it up to my texts and see that her text came in at 9:28. 

"So you would have finished the roll around 9:26, yes? August 27th at 9:26 pm."

She agrees. 

I reach for the roll again, but then stop myself. "Actually, I should explain this first," I say. "A week ago I had this weird premonition. And I went out and bought this roll of toilet paper for you. And then I took a pencil and wrote something down on the inside of the roll." 

I mime the awkwardness of trying to write something with a pencil on the inside of a toilet paper roll. 

"I actually had a few other premonitions and left rolls with a few other people around town. I don't remember yours precisely, but I think it's kind of close." 

I tell her to take the tube and tear it open. She does, and written on the inside is:

"What!?" she says, looking rattled.

"Don't shit yourself," I say. "You're out of toilet paper."

Method

Okay, it's just a thumb-writer. 

But in a way this is the perfect use for that tool. I'll explain in a second. 

This idea is based on an email that Noel Qualter sent me:

The effect is you go to a friend's house and a few days later said friend is in the bathroom. They go to pull off the last piece of toilet paper and written on the tube is a message - ‘Hi Sharon, I reckon it’s 12.22pm on Wednesday 3rd. All the best."

All methods rely on you waiting till there’s only a few sheets left and guessing but that’s terrible.

I thought that was a great trick, but I knew there was no real, workable method to it. You can't force people to shit/piss and wipe themselves on a set schedule with a set number of pieces of toilet paper. So your prediction has to be done after the fact. Which means it can't be done without you there.

But I thought I could do something less perfect, but similar, and I dropped off three rolls of toilet paper with three friends so I could try it out.

I dropped those rolls off on August 19th, with only a vague idea of how I was going to finish the trick. If the idea didn't crystalize in a few days, there would be no trick. I would have just gifted some friends toilet paper for no reason.

My original method was to have the time the roll was finished written backwards on a thumbtip in dry-erase marker. And I thought I'd be able to just handle the roll briefly and stamp the time on the inside. This came nowhere near working. 

Then I thought I needed something more like an actual stamp. So I spent hours and hours working on turning a thumbtip into something you could use to stamp the time on the inside of a TP roll. It involved little numbers that I formed out of rolled clay, which were then adhered to the thumbtip (barely). It was a huge waste of time. I spent days on this, trying to create this thumbtip stamp thing. And I got a super delicate version of something working right before my friend Chris contacted me to tell me he had finished his roll. 

Before I go over his place I create the thumbtip stamp to match the time he contacted me. I have a little ink pad in my pocket so I can ink it up right before it's needed. It's kind of an awkward mess. But I go over to his place, just briefly handle the tube while I'm taking it off the holder, stamp in the time, and hand it to my friend. He tears open the tube and is momentarily flummoxed but then says, "Was this stamped?" While the numbers of the stamp were "hand-made" and imperfect, they didn't look like they were drawn with marker. They looked stamped. And then he kind of unravelled the whole method, realizing I must have stamped it in quickly post facto. Then he said, "If it had been written in there, I would have lost my shit."

Then it hit me: what am I thinking? We already have a tool to write with that attaches to the thumb. Why was I avoiding it in hopes of something more clever? This trick is actually perfect to use with a thumb-writer. 

• Your thumb is completely covered from all angles.

• Messy writing is 10,000% justified. Writing with a full-size pencil on the inside of small tube would be messy.

• Unless your spectator specifically knows about thumb-writers, there's no possible explanation for how the writing could have got inside there in the brief moment you held the roll. What I mean is, if you're using a thumb-writer with a post-it pad, it's possible they could hit on the idea that maybe you wrote your prediction later than they thought with a small pencil. But even with a tiny piece of lead it would be so awkward to put two fingers inside the tube to hold it and write something. It would be way too obvious.

So here's the choreography. I'm pretty happy with it.

1. I have a Sharpie in my shirt pocket and my thumb-writer is in the watch pocket of my jeans. And in my head I have the exact time I got their text (or phone call).

2. With otherwise empty hands, I hand the Sharpie to the person to sign the TP roll.

- Why do this? Because the only explanation will be that I somehow switched the roll. And the only way around that explanation is to make it unswitchable (have it signed), or to draw extra close attention to the roll during the whole procedure, which is not something I want to do when I'm going to be thumb-writing in it. 

Plus, when the writing implement in play is a Sharpie, and the prediction is in pencil, I think that subtly suggests the prediction was not done just recently.

3. While she does this, I slip on the thumb-writer.

4. I have her remove the roll from the holder and I take it as if I'm going to tear it. Notice my thumb (and the secret writer) are naturally hidden in the tube exactly as it would be if I was doing this action for real.

5. I pause here as if to shift gears, because I want to clarify something before we go further. Remember at this point they have no idea where this is going. Both hands rest on the tube in preparation for the writing to come. You can also do it just holding the tube in the hand with the thumb-writer on it, but this feels more natural to me to pause with both hands on it.

6. I'm going to write the two pieces of information (date and time) under the cover of two completely logical—not just logical, but necessary—questions.

7. "Wait... how long after you finished this roll did you text me?" During the time I ask, they think, and they answer, I write the date with the thumb-writer.

8. "Okay, so do you know exactly when you texted me?" Again, during the time I ask, they think, and they reply (or they go to their phone to figure out). I have plenty of time to write the time I know they texted, minus the number of minutes they just said. 

The truth is both of these secret writings will likely be done as you ask the questions, but you have much more time than that if you need it. 

9. I set the tube down and remove my phone, or I shift over to look at my spectator's phone to see the time of the text. I walk through the math with them. "Okay, so you texted at 9:28. And you said that was, like, two minutes after you finished the roll? So you would have finished it around 9:26." Here it feels like I'm just putting this all together now. But actually, that time is already written in the roll that I am no longer holding and don't need to touch again. As I do this, I slip the thumb-writer into my pocket.

10. I talk about my premonition and mime awkwardly writing inside a roll of toilet paper with a full sized pencil. This has them anticipating messy writing.

11. I reach for the tube but stop myself. I have the other person take it and continue the tear I started to reveal the prediction.

Done!

I really like this effect. It's super personal and fun to do. I like that nobody really knows when it's going to end, so it feels very spontaneous. (You don't have to immediately go over the person's house when they call, you can stop by the next day or whenever.) It almost has a headline prediction feel. Like when you leave an envelope with a person for a week and say, "I'll be back to open this with you." That sort of thing, where you establish a little anticipation early on and let it build over the course of a few days.

Thanks again to Noel Qualter for the idea.

Gardyloo #72

In this post I mentioned the idea of some kind of robotic thing you strap on to a spectator's hand and then you insinuate that you can program it to allow the spectator to accomplish some feat of magic.

Well, friend of the site, Simon Graf, rolled with the idea and made a mechanized glove.

He uses it with a spectator-cuts-the-aces routine, as mentioned in the post linked above.

(BTW, Simon, in your email to me you asked if I thought you should make the glove look more complex and "believable," and I forgot to answer. My answer is: I don't think it matters too much either way. I think it looks good as is, but it wouldn't be a mistake to add more to it. People are going to be dubious of it regardless of what it looks like. This is one of those sorts of presentations that I like a lot. The kind that people will immediately think is almost certainly bullshit, but if you pull it off successfully and they have no other good explanation as far as how the effect was accomplished, they'll find themselves seriously considering the bullshit despite themselves.)

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A few people have asked what I think of Banachek's appearance on the Joe Rogan show.

If you haven't seen it, it's an hour and 45 minute interview followed by 20 minutes of tricks that pretty much completely fail to land. It's a little hard to watch, honestly. 

The interview is fine and interesting enough. Banachek goes into a lot of stories about fooling the scientists who were investigating the paranormal back in the early 80s. The funny thing is, you imagine it was a bunch of clever ruses carried out by Banachek under the guidance of Randi, but most of his stories were like, "When the scientists left the room we bent a bunch of stuff then they came back and their minds were blown." It's like, really? It seems science doesn't devote their best and brightest to see if you can bend spoons with your mind. Let's hope these aren't the scientists we have on curing cancer now.

As far as the tricks go, I don't see it as Joe being too harsh. I just see it as him saying the things that most spectators wouldn't. I've said this since the beginning of the site, but most adult spectators are overly forgiving of magicians. And I think it's a huge detriment to magic. They let magicians off easy, and in turn magicians think they've gotten away with something they haven't. It's a bad cycle because most magicians don't really want honest feedback anyway. And often spectator's think you have to go easy on the magician. They haven't seen high-quality close-up magic. And that's why they're not into magic because they don't want to play the game of "let's pretend you have super powers because it's too awkward for me to point out the obvious."

I've learned through our testing that you have to beg (pay) people to give you honest feedback. But it's really the only way to hone an effect to the point where it's bulletproof. Do I think this was a bad outing for Banachek? No, I think it was an average outing with an honest spectator. (But for fuck's sake, don't use a Mind Power deck for something that's recorded on video.)

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The problem isn't that Banachek bombed. The problem is that even if he had done well it wouldn't have mattered. Magic on the internet is kind of anti-wonder. If you do something really great on facebook, youtube or instagram, it will be met with people exposing it in the comments, or people saying it's fake. It's not a flaw of the performers (at least not always), it's the nature of the medium. The internet is great for dissecting magic, but terrible at generating true amazement. I can fuck with someone's head for a weekend with a simple trick in real life. But if I put that same trick online, in five minutes someone would say, "Oh, he turned over two cards as one." 

I know this sounds like some crotchety old man shit. "Bleh! The internet is bad for magic!" But it has nothing to do with fear of new technology, because you know what other mediums aren't good for transmitting the power of magic? Fucking books. The gramophone. Or those pictures of people doing the cups and balls on Egyptian tombs. 

Magic, like sex, is most powerful as an in-person experience. Everything else is a cheap substitute. And anyone who would argue otherwise has probably never experienced the real thing (done well) in person.

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I have a few credits related to the AdBlock control in Monday's post.

Caleb Wiles mentioned David Regal's Sticky Transpo to me, where Regal uses double-sided tape on the back of a joker to steal out a signed selection. In this case, the removal of the joker is done by the performer overtly as part of the trick.

Curtis Kam steered me towards John Scarne's Western Union trick where a waxed joker is removed by the magician and tossed off stage, along with a spectator's selection. 

And Simon Aronson mentioned a card idea that was in his first book (appropriately called Card Ideas) that also involved using a waxed ad card as a method to steal out a selection.

While none of these uses were about doing this in the spectator's hands, they're definitely similar precursors. Thanks to those who wrote in with a credit. 

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Okay, I know I've written too much about the Digital Force Bag app, but it's one of those nice tools that is very much a blank slate, and I have about a dozen other ideas with the app that I've tried out and had some fun with. This one is particularly stupid.

I start talking about numbers and how I'm a big "number freak" and how "math is my jam" and how I'm always just "Beautiful Mind'ing" the word around me which I see in numbers. Some numbers I love and some I hate. Numbers were my friends when I was growing up! (I say this as if it makes me a quirky fun guy and not a total loser.)

I write something on a business card and toss it writing side down on the table. "Name any number," I say.

They say 59.

I tell them to turn over the business card. It says 23.

"You're good at this too. You must have my love of numbers as well. Yes, we're a special breed."

They're like, huh?

"You said 59," I say. 

"This says 23," they say.

"Yeah, exactly. You somehow sensed that 23 was my 59th favorite number."

I then have them go into my phone and in my notes app they find a list, "Top 100 Favorite Numbers Between 1 and 100." And, sure enough, my 59th favorite number is 23.

As I said, it's stupid, but it makes people laugh. And the more they think of it, the stronger it gets.

And occasionally (once so far, for me) they name the number you tossed on the table. And you, of course, just milk that for all you can.

Causes and Effect

What a magic presentation comes down to, essentially, is cause and effect, i.e., what is the cause of the magical effect?

Cause and Effect = The Narrative = Your Presentation

These are all the same thing.

Here are what I consider to be the five varieties of cause and effect in magic.

No Cause and Effect

No Cause and Effect is exactly what it sounds like. There is no cause given, we just see the effect. The rope is cut into three pieces and then it's whole again. The rubber bands are linked and now they're unlinked. There's no dove in the pan and then...well, F me... there's a dove in the pan!

"No Cause" also includes things like snapping your fingers, waving a wand, "concentrating," or any other supposed cause that a modern audience will just ignore.

Lip Service Cause and Effect

For my non-English speaking readers, "lip service" is when you say something, but you don't really back it up with your actions. Lip Service Cause and Effect is when you just toss out a cause, but it's not really the focus of your presentation.

There are two types of lip service cause and effect.

Lip Service C&E Type 1 - The Non-Sequitur Cause and Effect

In Pit Hartling's trick, Unforgettable, from his book, Card Fictions, he states that drinking orange juice will give him a super powered memory. He doesn't say why it does, he just says it does. It's just a goof that gets him into the trick. It's "lip service" because there's no real narrative connection between cause and effect. It's arbitrary. And that's why I wouldn't really consider it a strong presentation. Which is fine because you're not meant to invest much in such a presentation. (You know it's not a strong presentation because you could come up with 200 similar examples in an hour. "When I wear red my memory is supercharged." "On Tuesdays my memory is supercharged." "When I part my hair on the left my memory is supercharged.") 

Lip Service C&E Type 2 (Adult Onset) - The Unfulfilled Cause and Effect

In this demo for Ben Earl's The Answer, the "cause" he gives for what's about to happen is "influence." But then he does nothing to demonstrate how this influence is manifested. This happens a lot in mentalism. "I influenced you to say the time 6:45." Okay... how? In what way? You might say, Ah, but that's the point. His influencing is so subtle you don't even see any remnant of it. Okay, but that doesn't make for a compelling presentation. Again, it would be lovely if a good presentation was that simple—just take any mentalism effect and say it's done with "influence"—but it's not that easy.

By "unfulfilled" I mean you haven't fulfilled the promise of the Cause you establish. You just toss it out there and then move on. (To be fair, I wouldn't waste a good presentation on Andi Gladwin either.)

Believable Cause and Effect

This is pretty straightforward.

"I will tell what hand holds the coin by reading your body language." 

"I'll figure out the first letter in the word you're thinking by having you recite the alphabet while I judge your micro-expressions." 

"I will use sleight-of-hand to stack this deck for a winning poker hand in three shuffles."

These are all examples of believable cause and effect. This is not my preferred style, but it's one of the more popular types of "causes" to suggest.

A believable cause and effect will generally put the focus on the performer.

Unbelievable Cause and Effect

This is the sort of presentation I like the most. I like the theatricality of it. I like that it shifts focus off me (at least in the fiction of the narrative). And it's the sort of thing the people I perform for tend to enjoy.

One thing to keep in mind is that unbelievable does not mean illogical. It just means something that your audience is unlikely to believe: time travel, mass psychosis, anti-gravity pills, invisibility cloaks, or whatever. 

Read the post, "The Sealed Room With the Little Door," for more detail on why I like unbelievable premises. 

Mysterious Cause and Effect

This is something I've been exploring a lot in the last couple of years. The idea is to hint at the cause but not fully explain it. I first talked about this idea in this post where I mentioned the phrase "Mystery Imps." (Imps being another word I use for "cause.") With the Mysterious Cause and Effect you are going to hint at the narrative but never quite spell it out. 

If you burn a billet and then form the ashes into some kind of symbol before blowing them away, you're hinting that the symbol is important in some way, but you're not saying how. You're creating a mystery. 

If you ask someone to repeat an incantation in an unknown language before an effect, that is also a mystery cause and effect.

If you say you found some notes in a shoebox when you were cleaning out your grandfather's house after he passed and one note had directions for some weird card game or something, and something weird happens when you follow this procedure, that's a mystery.

From the spectator's perspective, there is a Cause, but either the performer is keeping it secret, or the performer doesn't fully understand it either.

✿✿✿

Okay, so what's the point here? 

The point is you can take a big step towards achieving whatever the goal of your performance is by choosing the correct Cause for your effects. 

Is the presentation there as an excuse to show the trick? Or is the trick there as an excuse to weave a story? Or are the trick and presentation there to put the focus on you?

If you want to put the focus on the trick, go with No Cause or Lip Service Cause. If you want to put the focus on yourself, go with a Believable Cause. If you want to put the focus on the presentation, go with an Unbelievable Cause or a Mystery Cause.

But can't I do something that puts the focus on the trick and the presentation and myself? Yes, sometimes you can have a perfect confluence of these things, but more often than not if you don't focus on one aspect you'll just have something bland that doesn't make an impact in any particular area.

Here is my personal pecking order. Ideally I want to use a trick to create a compelling interactive fiction. I would much rather say, "Uh-oh, guys... I think we're stuck in a mini time-loop," than, "When I snap my fingers, the card jumps to the top." So my first choice is an Unbelievable Cause.

If I can't think of a good, coherent Unbelievable Cause for a particular effect, then I will go for a Mystery Cause.

If it's a quick, visual effect that doesn't lend itself to a Mystery Cause, then I'll do No Cause (in the Peek Backstage style). 

Again, this is just personal preference. I prefer the presentation-focused causes, because I find a strong presentation is more enduring than a strong trick. The presentation can be a whole journey. 

But you may find that sort of thing silly. You may just want to perform the strongest visual eye-candy you can, in which case focusing too much on a presentation-focused cause may distract from that goal.

I'll expand on this idea in a post next week where I'll look at one effect through the lens of the five different causes.

The AdBlock Control

Here's something I've been playing around with. You might be able to help me refine it (or direct me to anything similar in the literature).

There is this effect I've been doing that may or may not appear in the upcoming book that requires a card control and then stealing that card out of the deck. And for the effect to be as strong as possible, this needs to be done with the least amount of handling on my part. What I had been using was a short card. This would be on top of the deck. The selected card would be placed on top of this and cut into the deck and the spectator could give the deck a quick overhand shuffle (which would be unlikely to separate the short card from the selection). I would take the deck, give it a quick cut (bringing the short card to the top and the selection to the bottom) then, in the process of reaching for the card case, I would let the selection drop into my lap. 

This worked well enough. Yes, it required me to handle the deck, but it was done in a very casual way. It was only in my hands for a few seconds after the spectator had shuffled it, and the trick was getting amazing reactions. 

But I've since stumbled onto an even sneakier control. One that allows me to flat-out say that I'm not going to touch the deck and I don't. Yes, this allows you to control a card and remove it from the deck without touching the deck yourself. Sounds crazy, yes? Am I leaving some details out? Somewhat. But the statement is still true. A spectator has a free choice of any card. It is lost in the deck and shuffled as much as they want. And, without you touching the deck, the card is controlled and removed from the deck. It just uses a normal deck (kind of).

It started with the Misdirection Pass by UF Grant. Basically this involves having a reversed card on the bottom of the deck. A selection is made and cut into the deck (so it ends up below the reversed card), and you overhand shuffle (taking a larger block in the middle that contains the selection and reversed card). You spread the deck between your hands saying, "You could have had any of these cards." Here you notice the reversed card and you suggest that it got turned over during the shuffle. In the process of correcting the reversed card the selection is cut to the top. 

While this is easy and somewhat clever, I don't think it offers any advantages over other types of controls that are, essentially, invisible.

Joe Mckay suggested using one of the double-sided advertising cards that comes in a deck instead of a reversed card. I think this is a better idea because if you spread through a deck and noticed an advertising card, you can remove it without much justification. So you don't need to say, "Oh, this must have gotten turned over when I was shuffling," or whatever.

While I liked the idea, there still weren't any advantages that were unique to this control that would make me use it.

But these ideas were the foundation for a technique that did have a unique quality (a card control where you don't touch the deck). I've only done it a few times (I just thought of it a week ago). I haven't done it enough to really find the potential flaws in it, so it may require some additional refining. But so far it's worked each time and I've fooled a couple knowledgeable magicians with it, so I think it's structurally a sound idea. 

This is done at a table.

The deck is given to the spectator and you state that you will not touch the deck again. They are asked to hold it under the table. You have them reach into the deck and remove any card. While you turn away you ask them to peek at the card. As soon as they have a good image of it locked in their mind, they are to put it on top of the deck and cut it into the middle of the deck. Then, almost as an afterthought, you say, "Actually, shuffle up the cards a bit so you don't have any idea where it is." You indicate that they should mix up the cards under the table. Because this all happens in their hands, it feels very fair.

But it's not. It's decidedly unfair. Because on the bottom of the deck you gave to the spectator was an advertising card, and the bottom side of that advertising card was treated with a roughing stick. So now their freely chosen card, which they shuffled into the deck is actually stuck to the underside of the advertising card. 

Now they bring out the deck and set it on the table. You have them spread it, as best they can, across the table. You hold your hands out as if you're trying to sense some information. "Only you know what card you picked. But even you don't know where it is. It could be any of these 52 cards." Here you notice the advertising card. You go to grab it, but stop yourself. "Could you slide that out? I don't want it to get in the way."

The ad card is slid off to the side and the selection along with it. You immediately get back into the presentation, hopefully leaving the ad card to be soon forgotten.

What do you do after? Well, that's up to you. I'll write-up the trick I use this with at some point in the future.

Potential Issues

As I said, this is a new technique for me and while it's worked the few times I've done it, there may still be some issues to get ironed out. Here are the potential issues as I see them.

1. Alignment - You want to make sure the ad card and the selection are not just stuck together, but aligned as close together as possible. Here is what I do. I have them place their selection on top and cut the deck. Then I say, "And square up the deck so we know your card isn't sticking out anywhere [wait a beat for them to do that]. Actually, go ahead and mix up the deck too, so you have no idea where the card is."

When they bring the deck up from under the table I turn away and tell them to place the deck on the table, square it up, and cover it with their hands. This seems like I'm being extra fair before I turn around, but again I'm just looking to make sure the alignment is right on. 

2. Thickness - You want your spectator looking down on the cards. Use the same judgment you would any other time you have a double on the table that's supposed to be a single.

3. Sticky Stuff - I've only done this with a roughing stick. I don't know if roughing spray or Science Friction or something would be any better. I considered double-stick tape, but I think there's too much of a chance of someone feeling that or of the cards being permanently misaligned. 

4. Erasing the Moment - My initial concern was that the moment where you ask them to slide out the advertising card would draw attention to itself. That hasn't been my experience, but I think it's something to be aware of. It may actually be better to slide it out yourself. That might be a more casual and "invisible" gesture. I'm not sure.

I've come to the conclusion that it probably doesn't generate much suspicion. And the reason I don't think it does is because removing an ad card is something most of us have done for real numerous times in the course of a trick, and no one ever yells, "Hey! What are you doing!?" In addition, I think there are too many other techniques involved that even if they do remember the ad card, there's no easy straight line solution between the removal of that card and the disappearance of a card they freely selected and freely shuffled back into the deck.

That being said, I don't remove the ad card and immediately say, "And your card is gone." In the trick I do, they case the deck and it's brought to another location. So there's some time misdirection. By the time they realize the card they thought they saw in the deck is no longer there, some time has passed and I think the ad card is forgotten.

Gardyloo #71

For a long time now, there's been a great concern in our art that magic is not homogenized enough. There are just too many great magicians coming up with too much original material and couching it in really compelling, unique presentations. Yes this is clearly magic's biggest problem.

But don't worry, Ellusionist is here to combat that issue. 

Ellusionist has determined the tricks for you to do and fully scripted an hour-long show for you too.

This presupposes a world where someone wants to perform an hour-long professional magic show for people, but doesn't want to, you know, figure out what tricks to do and come up with the words to say and all that junk. And the fact is, Ellusionist is going to sell a million of these things. They know their audience. Hell, most people got started in magic to take credit for something they can't really do. You think those people are going to have any issue with going up on stage and presenting someone else's routines and using someone else's jokes and passing it all off as their own? No! That's the whole reason they got into magic.

Trust me, the "Just Add Personality" box will remain unchecked.

And the worst thing is, I just heard Derek Delgaudio's next Broadway show is going to just be him going through this set. So it's going to be way overexposed.

But don't worry, my loves. I have something for you. It's an entire magic show that fits in a single-serving box of Stouffer's spaghetti with meatballs. Fully scripted and fully routined. It's $179. 

It's a DVD copy of Tom Mullica's An Evening at the Tom-Foolery. All you need to do is get a projection system set up to broadcast it to the crowd. No need to make any decisions on your own. You don't have to pick the tricks, routine them together, or write a word of patter. Ellusionist's Show-To-Go only allows you to sleepwalk through the performance. But mine allows you to actually sleep through it.

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Here's an email I got from Justin Flom in regards to last Friday's post, The Magic "Magic Bucket List" List.

Thank you! Thank you for such a simple premise with a wonderful surprise ending.

My wife couldn’t stop giggling after the surprise of seeing her name in print. She hasn’t responded to a trick like that in a year! She’s jaded enough and well versed in method so that she was only fooled for a minute, but even after assuming the method, she was still laughing so hard her side hurt.

Yeah, the MMBLL is a good one. In my opinion it's just about the ideal quick and fun trick to have ready to go at any time.

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Speaking of magic guys named Justin that you're constantly confusing in your head, Justin Willman has a show on Netflix called Magic for Humans. I have not seen it, but based on the number of emails I've gotten asking: "Did you work on this show?" "Did you see they stole this idea from you?" "Are you Justin Willman?" It leads me to believe that people who like this site might find the show interesting. 

Do I think he—or someone working with him—was influenced by this site? Sure, probably. This site is the best thing going on in magic these days. Only a knucklehead wouldn't be influenced by it. It doesn't bother me. I'm never going to pursue a tv show. I believe in any professional performing situation (tv show, theater show, table-hopping, whatever) there is a ceiling to the impact a magic effect can have that isn't there when the trick is a more organic moment in someone's life. That's the thing that interests me and what I want to write about here. To whatever extent people performing professionally can get value from these ideas too, I'm cool with that.

Also, I just saw the trailer for Magic for Humans Season 2 and it was pretty disappointing. It's just Justin doing Ellusionist's Show-To-Go for people.

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What is this thing?

At first I thought it was a thumbtip with a vagina on it. But, after indulging in all the erotic fantasies that would imply, I realized it's a thumbtip with lips on it. I guess so maybe you can stamp lips on someone without them knowing? I have no idea how I acquired this thing. If you know what trick it's from, let me know.

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I will never not post someone destroying a copy of Expert at the Card Table. Here is Chris Combs attempting to destroy an "indestructible Erdnase." And, I've got to hand it to Conjuring Arts who made the book, the thing actually holds together pretty well. Thank god. Now people can be bored to tears by this book for centuries to come.

The Neolift

The Neolift (Neophyte Double Lift) is the name I've given to the double lift/turnover that was inspired by asking a bunch of non-magicians to turn over the top card of a deck of cards. 

I've received a few questions about the technique itself, so I wanted to go over that here. 

First, let me explain what I see as the benefits of the Neolift.

1. The technique is natural and doesn't draw attention to itself. (This is true of most doubles, but not all.)
2. No get ready is needed.
3. It's easy.
4. The nature of the movement of the card helps keep the cards together, hides the edges, and covers any potential misalignment.
 

The technique is natural and doesn't draw attention to itself

I received a couple emails that said essentially "Okay, maybe that's the way someone with no training would turn a card over on the deck, but it doesn't look natural." 

Here's the thing, I'm not encouraging anyone who isn't interested in this technique to adopt it. I think there are some advantages to it, but nothing so dramatic that it demands you change from whatever you've done in the past. But if you think it looks "unnatural" that's only because of your understanding of what a double lift should look like. 

If you had never seen a deck of cards in your life and someone introduced one to you and said to hold it something like this:

Then they asked you to turn the top card over onto the deck, you would first slide it off to separate it from the other cards, and then you'd turn it over. And since the back end of the deck is the only "open" end (the only end without fingers in the way), it probably makes the most sense to slide it off that way. Q.E.D., it's natural.

No get ready is needed

Pick up a deck, give it a slight bevel towards yourself, and you're good to go.

It's easy

Here's my friend doing a passable single, double, triple, and quadruple turnover using the Neolift after about 30 minutes of practice (and he's no genius).

The nature of the movement of the card helps keep the cards together, hides the edges, and covers any potential misalignment.

If there's a particular strength to this double, this is it. Here's what I mean...

1. As the card (multiple cards) is drawn back, it's held fairly square on the sides by the left fingers and the heel of your palm. So the cards can't really shift from side to side.

2. At the same time, the front edge is riding along the top of the deck, which keeps things in alignment on the short edges.

3. When the card is flipped inward, that's the point where the cards could separate. But right at that moment, the back of your hand is in the way. By the time the edges are visible again, the card is back on top of the deck.

This may seem like more control than necessary for double lifts, and it probably is. But the nice thing is that it allows you to do turnovers of many more cards in a more casual way. If you're doing a quadruple-lift, for instance, you have a lot of edges exposed with a book style turnover. And you have to move at a decent clip to make sure that thickness or any potential misalignment isn't exposed. But with the Neolift, the natural movement hides that.

If you use your fingers to block the back edge (which is actually how I normally do it) you can get away with turning over large blocks. Here's a single followed by a nonuple (9 card) turnover. You probably don't have much use for a 9-card turnover (unless you have an 8 phase Ambitious Card routine) but I'm showing this more as a proof of concept. Any 9-card turnover will be a little clunky, but the edges are still hidden here, and If 9 cards can be hidden in the natural motion of the turnover, then 3 or 4 won't be a problem

The Technique

It's pretty much what you expect. You bevel the deck slightly towards you. Your thumb approaches from the back and contacts however many cards you want (2, 3, 4, etc). This is, obviously, the part that takes practice: being able to feel the right number of cards with your thumb tip. The desired number of cards are then pinched between your fingers and thumb. Everything else is very straightforward and there is really no "technique" behind it other than what you would actually do with a single card (pull it back, flip it inward, and replace it back on the deck).

Why Bother?

Well, I'm not suggesting you should. (Again, you'll enjoy this site more if you don't see it as me giving advice. I'm just talking about my path and what has worked for me. Take what you want. Leave what you don't.) If you see no benefit to it, then you shouldn't bother. I happen to like the feel of it, and the versatility of it, so it's the double I use in most circumstances now (except when I'm performing for people who play cards regularly). 

Since my style of performance is to downplay my role in what's happening, it makes sense to use the most unassuming type of handling, and for me, this is it. 

Astonishment and Mystery

If I could go back in time I would make this one of the first posts on this site because I think it would help people understand what my intentions are with some of the ideas I post here. But I couldn't have written this post at that time because it took examining all the ideas in concert to see the bigger picture. 

In his seminal (and—quite frankly, given how much I loved those books—semenal) trilogy, The Art of Astonishment, Paul Harris wrote about astonishment being our "natural state of mind." 

"Here’s basically how it works, give or take a few metaphors.
You come into the world a blank slate. No ideas about who you
are or what anything is. You’re just being. And it all feels great...
because there are no options, or opinions or judgments. There is
no right or wrong. Everything is everything. That’s what you see
in a baby’s eyes. Pure child’s mind. Then, very quickly, we learn
stuff. The names of ten thousand things, who we are, what we’re
supposed to be, what’s good and bad according to the current
rules of the game. And you organize all of this information into
little boxes. And when any new information comes along you
file it in the appropriate box.

...

And then along comes a focused piece of strange in the form of
a magical effect. Let’s say this book vanishes from your hands.
“Poof,” no book. Your trained mind races into action and tries
to put the piece of strange into one of its rational boxes. But no
box will hold it. At that moment of trying to box the unboxable
your world-view breaks up. The boxes are gone. And what’s
left? Simply what was always there. Your natural state of mind.
That’s the moment of astonishment. The sudden experience of
going from boxes to no boxes. If you can keep the fear-response
from arising you have the experience of going from a cluttered
adult mind to the original clear space. Gee, it almost makes you
feel like a kid again."

And he talked about the moment of astonishment, and ways to enhance that moment and even how to discuss it with your spectators so they can get the most out of that brief moment.

I think a lot of people gravitated to this idea, first because it makes some sense, but also because it makes magic seem important in some way. We're not just showing people tricks to get our jollies. We can do it to give them a moment they haven't experienced since childhood.

I think there's some truth here, but I think it's an incomplete way to look at the outcome of a magic performance.

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Let me explain by way of analogy.

It would be very easy to re-write Paul's essay on magic and astonishment and make it so it's about horror movies and the startled fear you feel after a jump scare. 

(I assume "jump scare" is a somewhat universally understood term. But if not, watch the video below.)

You could say that moment of fear after a jump scare is a moment of pure disconnect between what we had heretofore experienced and new information that was abruptly presented to us. And that being startled like that is similar to a child's mind being faced with brand new stimuli. And in that moment of fear our mind becomes like that of a child dealing with the completely unexpected. Or something like that. I'm not saying it perfectly maps onto what Paul was saying, but I think you see where I'm coming from.

If someone had written that essay and it was put out to other horror movie producers, they might think, "Ah, yes! The jump scare is a truly powerful technique that does something important for the spectator." And they might find ways to make that scare stronger and more focused.

But, if we take a step back, it becomes clear we're only talking about one definition of what makes a good horror movie.

Some horror movies make you jump in your seat, and some horror movies keep you up at night.

Looking at magic tricks strictly through the metric of Astonishment is like looking at horror films as being only about scaring people in the moment.

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The moment of astonishment, as Paul defines it, is brief. He writes:

For most people the moment lasts under ten seconds. Then
because we crave the security of our missing world-view, we
quickly build a new box. The “it-went-up-his-sleeve” box or the
“it-was-all-done-with-mirrors box” or even the “I-don’t-know-
what-happened-but-l-know-it-was-a-trick” box. And that’s all it
takes. One thought, one guess, even a wrong one, and the boxes
all come back, natural mind gets covered up, and the moment
of astonishment is over.

This is why I think Paul's essay is incomplete. Yes, magic is about that brief moment of astonishment (just as horror movies are about that brief moment of primal fear), but it's also about the long-term feeling of mystery that you leave people with. Astonishment and Mystery are the two "dimensions" of someone's reaction to a trick and you need to consider both of them because they're both equally valid reactions to shoot for.

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Are you an Astonisher or a Mystifier? 

You don't have to be one or the other, but you do have to know if you want to be one or the other, or some combination of both. And you have to recognize that being some combination of both may take away from your success at being one or the other. 

I'm going to clarify this if it's getting murky. And when I do, I'm going to be talking as if these are two completely distinct things. They're not, but to establish the idea, I need to talk about them that way.

Let's say you're performing for some friends. Would you rather:

A) Perform a trick that gets a profoundly strong, visceral reaction—a 95 out of 100—but that is never mentioned again by your friends.
or
B) Perform a trick that gets an okay reaction—a 40 out of 100—but weeks or months later your friends are still mentioning it to you and asking questions about it.

If you chose A, you probably tend towards being an Astonisher. If you chose B, you probably tend towards being a Mystifier. If you had trouble answering, you're probably more in the middle. If you chose both, you're one of those assholes who can't answer hypothetical questions properly. 

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In general, Astonishment is heightened by simplification of the effect. You want to give people something easy to focus on and then do something clearly impossible. You want that "moment" to be uncluttered and not require much interpretation by the audience. 

Mystery is created via complexity in presentation, where the nature of what they experienced is called into question. That's what a mystery is. It's unanswered questions. It's not knowing what is the truth and what isn't.

Astonishment is created by a simple plot executed well. Mystery is created by adding layers to the presentation, creating a somewhat un-navigable labyrinth with no wholly obvious direction to go.

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Yes, in an "astonishing" trick there is an unanswered question: How did you do that? But as Paul Harris says, after a few seconds, people will "box" that feeling in the "I-don’t-know- what-happened-but-l-know-it-was-a-trick” box. This is what I've referred to as the "Non-Explanation." And it's enough to satisfy most people, because while the trick may be this un-boxable moment of weirdness, the experience itself is completely boxable. It goes in the "It's a magic trick" box. And that larger "box" effectively contains the smaller mystery.

So to amp up the mystery we need to give them an experience that can't be boxed. Or at least one that can't be boxed cleanly. So we create layers to what the person has seen. That was a trick. But was the whole thing a trick, or just the one part? Did he say something that wasn't a trick was to hide something from me? Did he really not know how that happened? Did he really get a headache? Was he really surprised by this? Could that have really happened by accident? Who was that other person? Were they in on it? Was I hypnotized? Did he really need to film that to send to a secret club? Did he really not know I was paying attention? Is there really something strange about that object? Is there something to that ritual we did? If it was a trick, why didn't it work the first two times? Why did we have to go to that part of the woods? What was in that pill? Who called him on the phone? Why did we have to wait until exactly 12:54 AM?

These types of questions won't increase the Astonishment, but they'll broaden the Mystery.

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When I perform, I probably lean 70% Mystifier to 30% Astonisher. Although the types of ideas I put forth on this site, specifically in regards to presentational styles and ploys, lean heavily towards the Mystifier side of things, just because I find that more interesting to write about.

If you like this site, then you're probably somewhere on the Mystifier spectrum. And the people who think the stuff I write is nonsense are probably hardcore Astonishers. The Jerx-style, as it is, is to present tricks with unanswered questions beyond just "how did you do that." That's a foundational element of a mystifying presentation, but it doesn't help with astonishment.

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Here's another example if you need help self-identifying as primarily an Astonisher or primarily a Mystifier.

Which would you rather do:

A) You borrow a quarter from someone. Place it cleanly in your hand. Close your fingers. Wait a beat. Open your hand slowly. And the quarter is gone.

B) You borrow a quarter from someone. Place it cleanly in your hand. Say, "I read this new technique to vanish a coin but I'm not having much luck with it. It might be bullshit." You squeeze the coin for 20 seconds. "Nah, it's not working," you say, and toss the coin back on the table. "Does this place have good calzones or do you-." Your friend interrupts you. He's holding the quarter. What did you do? he asks. "What do you mean?" you reply. The quarter is smaller, he says. He compares it to another quarter and it's about 75% of the size of a normal quarter. "Holy crap," you say, "I can't believe that was working! I thought I felt something, but I wasn't sure." 

I would want to do both of these effects, of course. I think a super-clean coin vanish is about as pure and beautiful a moment of astonishment as there is.

But if I really wanted to intrigue someone, I'd go with the second option. The astonishment factor is lowered because the other person has to first recognize what happened, and then put that in some kind of context (that this is a coin part-way on its way to vanishing). Then they have to consider: "Wait was that the trick? Making it smaller?  Or is it really possible there's some process that I don't understand where a coin could get smaller.  Well...maybe... but to the point that it could vanish? That seems unlikely. Okay, it must be a trick... but why isn't he taking credit for it? That's what magicians do. Why didn't he just call it the Shrinking Coin Trick, and then he could take the credit for it? I mean... unless that really was unintentional." And it's considering these factors that makes the experience itself more of a mystery.

(I've looked into it. Getting fake quarters that are 75% the size of real quarters is expensive and potentially illegal, sadly.)

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One of the valuable things about recognizing this distinction between Astonishing effects and Mystifying effects is that it helped me understand why some people like or dislike certain tricks and now I can tailor what I choose to show them more towards their likes. Some people love all magic. And some people hate all magic. But what I've found is that some people who I thought didn't like magic, just didn't like a particular type. Some people don't like an ambiguous mystery, but they're fine with an astonishing trick because—by it's nature—it's a transient feeling. It's not something they need to continue to process after the fact. Some people, on the other hand, find a trick that is just "astonishing" to be almost childish in a way. Like there's no meaning to it and they're looking for a more substantial mystery to get caught up in.

I like performing both styles, so I'm happy to oblige them. I'll put on my Astonisher cap for those who just want to see something cool and unbelievable. And I'll put on my Mystifier hat for those want to see something that hints at more complex mysteries. Everyone else will get some mix of the two.

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I want to be clear about what I'm saying (and what I'm not saying).

I'm saying magic tricks can be used to create astonishment and to create mystery and that, while related, these are very different outcomes. Neither is better or worse. It's just about what you prefer and what you're going for. And I think it's helpful to keep in mind that pursuing one can be to the detriment of the other (given that one benefits from simplicity and the other complexity). 

Astonishment, as Paul Harris says, is fleeting. That's not to say people won't remember an astonishing trick long after it's over. They will. But the feeling of astonishment is fleeting. Mystery is a less intensely concentrated feeling, but it's one that can linger for a person's entire life. If you want to give people the richest experience when you perform, it should probably be with some effects that are primarily astonishing, and some that are primarily mysterious. 

Here's another way to think of it. Suppose you're a man who wants to be the world's greatest lover (magician). For some of you, that might mean giving women the most intense orgasms of their lives (moments of astonishment). For others, it might mean finding a woman and instilling in her intense feelings of passion and romance (mystery). Ultimately, you'll probably want both techniques in your arsenal, because while there are some women who just want to be wooed and charmed, and others who just want you to ball their brains out, most are probably looking for some combination of the two.