Justification in Social Magic

[UPDATE TO FRIDAY’S POST: Apparently what people were waiting for was for me to offer some imperfect copies of AATKT. The Aw Crud! The Print Shop Guy is Drunk Edition of that book is now sold out. They will be shipped out later this week. But don't worry, I've heard your cries, in the future I will bend the covers on all of my releases.]

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Last month I wrote about the Hoy book test and some of the different ways that I use it. After that post I received an email asking how I justify using the second book to pick a page number.

I’ll get into that, but first I want you to close your eyes and imagine the following situation. Oh… wait… you’re reading. Don’t close your eyes then. Just picture the following scenario.

You and I have been dating for two years. The relationship is really strong. We get along great and have a lot of fun together. We’ve been living together for a few months and even that hasn’t tested our bond in any real way.

One night you’re watching TV in the living room and I come to you and say, “Hey, I have something I want to give you. It’s a surprise.” I take your hand and bring you upstairs. I sit you in a chair in our bedroom. I go to the closet and pull out a box that’s about eight inches squares. “Here, open it,” I say.

“What is this?” you ask, a little smile on your face. “It’s not my birthday.”

You open the box and inside you find… garbage.

You furrow your brow. “I don’t get it,” you say. I tell you to take a closer look.

You start poking through the bits of trash in the box and you begin to realize that it’s not what you initially thought. Yes, the box is full of stuff that is technically “garbage,” but all of it has some meaning. There are ticket stubs to every movie we ever attended. Receipts from restaurants we visited. The condom wrapper from our first time together. The peanut bag from our first date at the baseball game. Pieces of wrapping paper from our first Christmas together. And on and on.

At the bottom of the box you find a couple bottle caps. “Are these from that weird Ukrainian bar on the Lower East Side? From your office party? The night we met?” I nod yes.

“But…,” you say, “that was six months before we got together. We were both still in other relationships. Why would you keep these?”

“I just knew,” I say. “I knew it the moment I met you that there was something special about you and that one day we’d be together. I’ve kept all this stuff so I can remember all those little moments leading to this big moment.”

I take the condom wrapper and reach inside and pull out an engagement ring. “Will you marry me?” I ask.

What do you say?

Well, maybe you say yes, maybe you say no. But you know what you definitely don’t say?

You don’t say, “Why did you bring me upstairs?”

Why did I? Why didn’t I just bring the box down to you in the living room?

The reason you don’t question it is because at the time you didn’t know what was about to happen, and at the end of the interaction, it’s some insignificant barely memorable thing that is overshadowed by what just occurred.

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This is my preferred method of “justification” when it comes to magic. The justification is no justification, but instead, pacing the interaction in such a way that a justification is probably not needed.

Actions need to be justified when they don’t match up with expectations. If people don’t know whats about to happen, then they don’t have expectations, and your actions don’t need to be justified (at least not initially, if at all.) If all you know is I want to show you “something interesting,” or “something strange,” or “this thing I’m working on,” then you don’t know to question a specific action, because you don’t have expectations yet.

(Now, this again is more of a social/amateur technique. It wouldn’t work as well in a professional situation. I’ll explain why near the end of this post.)

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Let’s imagine this in action, around a table with a group of people.

“I’m going to read your mind. Here, write down a word on this business card. Now let’s put it in my wallet.” In this case, I do need justification, because their expectation is I’m going to read their mind. So why do I need to have something written down? Why do I have to put it in a wallet? That’s not how they imagine mind reading works. That’s not to say they’ll immediately call me out on it, but they may make a mental note of it.

But if I say, “Hey, I want to try something. Let me see… here, take this business card and write something down on it. Don’t let me see it. I’ll keep it here in my wallet for later.” Same exact handling. But only now do I introduce mind reading. “Okay. Now you’re committed to a word that I don’t know and no one else at this table knows. That word is locked in your mind. I want you to sit up straight and breathe deep and I’m going to try and read your mind, [blah, blah, blah].”

Okay, so now they know what to expect so you have to go back and justify the writing and the wallet, right?

No. We’re on the train now and the train is moving. Their focus is now on what’s about to happen. Not what has already happened. It’s the same thing as me bringing you upstairs to give you a gift. Your focus is on what’s in the box, not why I brought you upstairs rather than bringing the box downstairs.

Alright, that makes sense. They might not be seeking a justification in the moment. But at the end of the effect surely they’re going to question why you had them write something down, or why you used one book to select a page in the other.

Yes, this will occasionally happen—and you should have a justification you can pull out when it does—but I’ve found it to happen significantly less frequently when you introduce questionable elements before the audience knows they’re questionable.

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Of course, some things require a justification. A center tear is one of those things. Writing something down only to immediately tear it up is an inherently nonsensical act. So, in that case, whether they know where it’s going or not, you need to preface that with some rationale.

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Going back to the Hoy book test, my attitude is, “Let’s try something. Here, I’ll flip through the pages, just say stop at any point as I do. Okay, page 193.” They don’t know where this is leading. So while these actions might be out of the norm, they don’t defy expectations so they don’t really stick out that much. In fact, in preparation for writing this post, I asked a couple of friends who have seen some version I’ve done of the Hoy book test to describe what they remember. Both of them just remembered flipping to a random page in their book. They didn’t remember another book in play. I have a feeling that would be true for a lot of people—if not most of the people—who have seen me perform that trick.

But I suspect they’d be much less likely to forget that moment if I justified it beforehand. “We’re going to use my book to choose a random page in your book. This is the fairest way to do it, because there’s no way I could know where you will say stop. Sometimes books have a little break in the spine so they open to the same page over and over, and I don’t want you to think I knew what page or area of the book you’d end up at. So by using a second book we eliminate that possibility.” Etc., etc.

When you give a justification, you’re also giving them an opportunity to call bullshit.

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I mentioned that this doesn’t really work for professionals and that’s because the audience has established expectations in that situation. If you’re Pete the Mentalist then they’re going in expecting you to read their mind, and your actions should align with that or they’ll be questioned. (Also, change your stage name. It sucks.)

But, for the social magician, you’re performing for people either you’ve just met (so they have no assumptions regarding what you’re going to show them) or you’re performing for people who have seen you do a bunch of different types of things (hopefully), so they’re not sure what to expect.

When I say to someone, “Hey, can I try something with you?” They don’t know what’s to come. Is it a straight magic trick, or a mind-reading thing, or a game, or an experiment, or a joke, or an optical illusion, or something related to gambling, or body language, or fortune telling, or a psychological test, or 100 other things. They may have seen me perform dozens of times before, but they don’t know quite what direction the interaction is going to take. And that uncertainty leads them to have an unfocused critical eye, which can allow me to get away with some things.

But, Andy, I only perform mentalism. So when I show people something, they do have expectations from the very start.

Okay, well, that’s a problem of your own making. I can understand the professional mentalist who says, “I only do mentalism with a psychological presentation.” I think it’s a completely unnecessary limitation, and is driven by a creepy desire for people to think they’re “the real thing,” but I understand why people do it. I don’t understand limiting yourself in that way as an amateur/social magician. You’re performing for people who are going to be seeing you do many things, potentially, over the course of years. Why not use these skills to give them a wide variety of experiences, not just to “read their mind” 1000 times. But that’s a conversation for another day.

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This post may make it sound like I’m anti-justification. I’m not. I think too little, and too much justification are both problems in magic. But if you’re reading this site then you’re probably someone who gives some thought to your performances, and over-justification is a problem of the thoughtful performer.

It’s very much a balancing act. Do I justify this thing, or not? Do I bring attention to this moment, or not? It’s all depends on the trick and presentation, so there are no hard and fast rules.

Some effects rely on the spectator being hyper aware of the conditions of the trick in order for it to be really strong. In emphasizing the conditions, you will often create expectations (“Oh, he’s pointing out the glass is empty, that must mean something is going to appear there.”) And once you create expectations, then you need to justify your actions. It’s all connected.

The purpose of this post is to highlight that relationship between expectations and justification. Certainly I think it’s smart to always have a good justification in your back pocket. But if you can maintain the strength of the trick, and get the dirty work done, while keeping them in the dark in regards to what’s about to happen, then I think it’s best to use that justification only if someone asks. Otherwise you might be shining a spotlight on a moment that may have slipped by completely unnoticed or have been forgotten entirely had you not drawn attention to it.

AATKT:ACTPSGIDE

The Amateur at the Kitchen Table booklet is going out of print. I don’t know if this will be forever, but I have no plans for a reprint any time soon. A couple people have suggested doing a limited, expanded, hardbound version in the future, and I may do something like that. But if so, that’s years away.

I have 30 copies of the book remaining, but they’re a little… special.

Here’s the deal. You know how there’s this subset of junk food products that are marketed as if they’re some sort of factory mishap?

You have your classic Oops! All Berries version of Cap’n Crunch.

Then you have Uh-Oh Oreos

Also in the cookie aisle you have Whoopsy! Fudge Stripe Cookies (and the disgusting hashtag, #FullyFudged)

And, of course, there’s “Sweet Christ! Terry Took A Shit In the Dough! Pop Tarts”

In keeping with this fine tradition, I will be offering the last remaining copies of The Amateur at the Kitchen Table in a special Aw Crud! The Print Shop Guy is Drunk Edition.

When printing the AATKT, the print shop jammed too many copies into a box, causing them to bend and press in on themselves creating a permanent crease or bend in some of the covers. There also seemed to be some issue with some small splotches of yellow ink appearing on the covers (like when your printer is acting up and some ink gets speckled along the page). Other than that, everything is like new. The binding is tight and the pages are fine. It’s just the covers that are a little whack.

If you order one of the remaining copies, you will receive a numbered certificate of authenticity proving you own one of the highly limited Aw Crud! The Print Shop Guy is Drunk Edition copies of The Amateur at the Kitchen Table. They will also be the only ones signed by the author, S.W. Erdnase III, the great-great-grandson of the author of The Expert at the Card Table.

If you’re interested in a copy, they are $22 and can be ordered below. [Updated: This is now sold out.]

Interaction Mathematics

I’ve always felt about magic the way that George Michael felt about sex in his 1987 hit, “I Want Your Sex.” (I’ve substituted “magic” for “sex” in the lyrics below.)

There's things that you guess
And things that you know
There's boys you can trust
And girls that you don't
There's little things you hide
And little things that you show
Sometimes you think you're gonna get it
But you don't and that's just the way it goes

Okay, well not all the lyrics from the song apply…

It's natural
It's chemical (let's do it)
It's logical
Habitual (can we do it?)
It's sensual
But most of all
Magic is something that we should do
Magic is something for me and you

Again, I should have clarified at the start that it’s really just one part of the song that’s applicable.

Magic is natural, magic is good
Not everybody does it
But everybody should
Magic is natural, magic is fun
Magic is best when it's one on one

Okay, there you go. That’s the spot. I guess it’s really just that one line, now that I think about it.

Magic is best when it’s one-on-one.

Let me qualify that some.

I perform one-on-one probably about 50% of the time I perform.

However, if you asked me to make a list of the 100 strongest reactions I’ve ever received from magic, I would estimate that probably 95 of them would come from a one-on-one performance.

I think there are three primary reasons for this.

First, as I’ve mentioned before, you can really craft an effect/experience to a particular person when you’re performing one-on-one. There are a number of ways this can manifest itself.

• You can work with their own interests to create a more immediately intriguing presentation.

• You can capitalize on their particular blindspots to use methods you know they’d never conceive of.

• Logistically you only have one set of eyes to concern yourself with in regards to angles.

• 100% of the audience (One person) get’s the complete experience.  If you’re doing some mind-reading, for example, nobody is watching you read someone’s mind (which is almost always going to be a “lesser” experience than having their own mind read).

Second, when you’re a lone spectator, you don’t have to worry about what anyone else thinks of your reaction.  You don’t have to think, “Should I play it cool? Will these other people think I’m dumb if I’m fooled by this?” I find that as long as someone trusts you, they’re more willing to become vulnerable to the experience when no one else is around.

The third reason I think you get powerful reactions in one-on-one situations is in regards to the math of social/amateur interactions.

If you agree that social magic is more powerful when it feels like an interaction rather than a performance or a show, then here’s how to think about the math of it all. If we sit down and have a conversation, we might have something like a 50/50 split in regards to our input into the interaction.

With a magic trick, you’re unlikely to get a real 50/50 split. You might be able to get close. For example, if you’re my spectator and I sit down with you and I’m like, “Check out this interesting [whatever] that I found.” We may be able to explore this object or game or fortune telling protocol or whatever in a way that feels close to 50/50.

But you don’t have to get to 50/50. Even if you have a trick that requires you to contribute 80% to the interaction and the spectator to contribute just 20%, that’s still pretty good. You’ve been involved in many legitimate interactions in your life where someone else is doing 80% of the work and you’ve still felt involved and like an important element to the interaction.

So any 80/20 split of involvement in the interaction is still fine for social magic, in a one-on-one situation.

But when the audience grows, your 80% doesn’t diminish. Instead, their 20% gets split up between all of them.  If you’re performing for 10 people, and they’re all equally involved in the interaction, then they’re contributing 2% each, compared to your 80%. So what felt like a 4:1 split to a spectator in a one-on-one performance, feels like a 40:1 split to that spectator in an an audience of ten.

And that’s how you take something that could be seen as an interaction, a conversation, or a shared experience between two people and turn it into a “performance” or a “demonstration” for a group. A performance or demonstration may still be very impressive and amazing, but it’s very difficult for it to capture people in the same way as an experience that makes them feel like they’re a critical element of the proceedings.

I occasionally get emails from professional magicians who are very complimentary about the site and they ask if I think there’s a way to incorporate the ideas from this site into a professional show. While I certainly think some of the tricks and concepts I talk about here would work fine in a proper show (and I know of people who do use them professionally), the “audience-centric” approach that works so well in amateur/social magic, is probably just not possible in a professional situation. You can have elements of it, but you can’t have it completely. Why not? Well, because the notion of magic as “an interaction, a conversation, or a shared experience” is accomplished, in part, by emphasizing your actual relationship with the person. “I’m your [friend/brother/lover/co-worker/seat partner on this bus trip] do you want to see something interesting?” That can feel like a real interaction, even if they know it’s a set-up for a trick. But if your only relationship to your spectators is a magician-to-audience relationship, you can’t really make that feel like anything other than a performance because “performance” is how the magician/audience relationship is defined.

This is another reason why performing one-on-one can be so powerful: you get to maintain the nature of your relationship with your spectator. If I’m showing a trick to my girlfriend, then she is experiencing me (her boyfriend) showing her a trick. If I’m showing a trick to ten people, one of whom is my girlfriend, then she is experiencing me as I would relate to ten people at a time. It’s just not the same level of connection.

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy performing for groups of friends. I do. I’m just pointing out that the mathematics of the interaction allow for some very intimate and powerful performances in one-on-one situations.

I’ve had some people tell me they’re uncomfortable performing one-on-one. Perhaps part of the reason they got into magic was to hide themselves a little behind the role of the “performer.” That’s understandable. But if you can push past that, I recommend it, because the majority of the truly profound reactions I’ve had to my magic have been with one other person.

If you don’t know how to approach someone as an individual to see some magic, I recommend just saying this:

What's your definition of dirty baby?
What do you consider pornography?
Don't you know I love you till it hurts me baby?
Don't you think it's time you took part in a magic trick with me?

Dirty Laundry

You bring a bag of your laundry to a friend’s house. The laundry is a mix of whites and colors. You reassure her that nothing in there is too gross.

You have her go into the laundry room without you. Following a random procedure, you direct her to place some of the clothes into the washing machine and some of the clothes into the dryer. You legitimately have no idea what clothes are where.

She starts up the dryer.

You enter the room and conclude the effect in one of two ways:

If the dryer has a glass door, you are able to take a half-second glance at the spinning laundry and tell her the breakdown between whites and colors in the dryer.

If the dryer has no glass door, then you push yourself up and sit on top of it and—via the vibrations to your anus—you are able to tell the breakdown between whites and colors.

Method

Miraskill with laundry.

(If you don’t know Miraskill, look it up. There are plenty of places to learn it.)

Instead of predicting red/black, you’re predicting whites/colors. You’ll want a variety of different types of clothing in each group. (In other words, don’t just have all white socks, and then shirts and pants of color.)

Your spectator will remove two items, blindly, at a time. If they’re one of each (one white/one color) she’ll throw them in the washing machine. If they match (both white or both colors), she’ll throw them in the dryer. You’ll want to walk her through the process a couple times from the other room.

Don’t use your actual disgusting dirty laundry. Wash it first and then put it back in the laundry bag.

The first time I tried this, the person suggested I had a camera in the laundry room. That’s why I recommend doing it at someone else’s house.

The only other time I did this, I did it with my friend’s clothes, instead of mine. We raided her underwear drawer and I asked her to remove a bunch of patterned underwear, and then a bunch of solid color ones, and I just kept track of the number of each that we removed from her drawer so I could figure out what the Miraskill result would be.

(I told her I wanted to improve my pervert skills by enhancing my psychic powers. “When you go to the laundromat to steal panties, you don’t want to be digging around in a bunch of different washers and dryers to find the right pair. So many times I’ve ended up pulling out some children’s underwear. I’m not that kind of creep! Or I’ll pull out some large, floppy granny-panties. What am I supposed to do with that? They’re too bulky. How am I supposed to tie that around my scrotum sack in order to get myself off?” I then introduce the Miraskill process as a procedure I’m using to develop my pervert intuition to be able to hone in on what machine holds the perfect pair for me. I’m still at the early stages, and I can just pick up on some basic traits of the garments. This is, admittedly, not a presentation suitable for many audiences (or performers)).

You can wrap this up a few different ways:

You could predict the outcome.

If the dryer has a glass door you can act like this is a feat of lightning perception.

I like the idea of sitting on the dryer and picking up something based on the way it’s spinning. If you don’t want to sit on it, then you could just place your hand on the dryer. Maybe pull out a dry erase marker and start writing down calculations on top of the machine.

Or you could have an odd number of garments in the bag. This would leave one left at the end (and whether it’s white or colored would change your final revelation). You could ask for the final item of clothing and rub and stretch the fabric between your hands as you furrow your brow and act like—based on this final item—you are able to reconstruct exactly how the other items were removed, and what the net result in the dryer will be, like a useless Sherlock Holmes.

No Post Today

No post today.

April Fools! There is a post. You’re reading it, dummy!

Yes! Another classic Jerx April Fools joke. And you totally fell for it. Hahaha. Your stupid face! “Huh, wait. what?” That’s you!

I’m actually not a big April Fools Day guy, myself. The thing where we’re like, “Okay, everyone, here’s this special day where it’s officially sanctioned and okay for us to mess with each other, got it?” feels a little corny to me. I think we should be fucking with each other all year round. In good natured ways, at least. There is an element of that in my style of performance. Except it’s kind of a sideways practical joke. With a practical joke, you want them to think something is real, up until the point where you reveal it’s fake. What I want to do is give people a premise and a situation they know is fake, but then give them a couple of moments within that fantasy that feel very real.

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If you’re concerned about someone pranking you today, here’s what i recommend…

Well, first, if it’s someone you like, then just have fun with it.

But maybe you think some asshole you work with is going to try and get you and you want to have some way to reverse the narrative. Here’s something that might work. Let’s say some guy in your office, Tad, pokes his head in your cubicle and says, “Enjoying that coffee? Heh-heh….I put a laxative in it when you weren’t looking! April fools, bitch!”

You look at your watch, “Yep… right on time.” Then, in a very lifeless, dry, monotone voice you say, “Gee… Oh no. You totally got me. Darn.”

He’ll be confused by your reaction.

“Take a look at the time” you say. He checks his phone, it’s 10:45.

You reach into your pocket and unfold a business card, read it to yourself. “Mmhmm. As I suspected,” and you toss the card on the table. It reads:

Tad’s “big” April Fool’s Day joke will come together at 10:45

“You’re such a predictable little bitch,” you say. “I didn’t even drink that coffee. I switched it for another cup, dipshit.”

Actually, you did drink the coffee. You’ll be shitting your brains out all day. But don’t tell Tad that.

Method: Just write up the card in advance, minus the time. And have a nail writer in your pocket, ready to go. This is the one I use.

April Fools! I got your ass so good.

(I use the Vernet Band Writer, btw.)

Mailbag #2

When you use the Peek Backstage, do you add another presentation on top of it? —JC

Very rarely. Here’s why. I save the “Peek Backstage” style for when I don’t have a particularly good presentation for something. Instead, my presentation is, “Hey, I have something I’m working on. Can I get your feedback on it?”

So, if I did have a good presentation, then I’d just use that instead.

To layer on a mediocre presentation on top of that is going to have them thinking about the dull presentation because I’ve asked them for feedback. But I don’t really want them concerning themselves with that. So I’ll generally perform it in a very straightforward way.

Sometimes I’ll layer in another presentation under a pretense like this:

“Hey, I’m going to show a trick at my nephew’s birthday party this weekend. Can I try it out on you first?” This is kind of a meta-meta-presentation. So it may, in fact, be a really strong trick, but I’ve dressed it up in a way that makes it seem like it’s something for children. Then I perform as I would if I was performing for a kid with, like, rhyming patter or lots of audience participation. And the person I’m performing it for will play along as the kid, but end up with their mind totally messed with because it actually wasn’t a trick intended for kids. (Sometimes they pick up on this, sometimes they don’t. It’s fun either way.)

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If someone who got kicked out of the GLOMM had created a really good trick, would you still perform it? I ask because I just watched the documentary on the Michael Jackson accusers and a lot of people say they can’t listen to his music anymore since seeing that. —GM

I would still do the trick, but that’s because I have no problem disassociating the two things.

If you look at the world as a battle between good and evil—is you listening to Michael Jackson’s music a win for good or for evil? I say it’s a win for good because you’re celebrating the good he put into the world.

But only do it if you want to. If listening to MJ’s music makes you sick, then don’t. But if you want to listen to it and you’re making yourself not do so because you feel you shouldn’t because you’re supporting a bad person, then I think you are needlessly punishing yourself.

Hell, if Hitler had recorded a banging dance-hall track, or had created a really mind-blowing card trick, I’d have no problem listening to that track or doing that trick. In fact, I’d probably lean in real close to the person I was performing and say, “I have a trick I want to show you. And do you know who created it?… Hitler!’

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Re: A Small Equivoque Revelation

So when I'm not annoying friends and family with magic I'm a bartender and when I first had the job of menu creation I did a lot of reading in that area. And one of the concepts that came up repeatedly was not giving guest too many options. Guest are less satisfied with their choice if you give them to many things to choose from. The magic number touted was seven items. This seems in line with your conclusion that anymore and it's harder for people see them as individual items and not as a group above seven items —PDB

Yeah, I researched similar things. There were two concepts I was looking at specifically.

The first is called “working memory” and that’s the number of distinct objects the mind can pay attention to and manipulate cognitively. That’s about four items at a time.

Then I looked at the subject of “overchoice,” which suggests that more options can lead to a sense of being overwhelmed. The actual number of options that this kicks in varies. But much of what I read suggested that it kicks in after 6-8 items.

With equivoque, we initially want to overwhelm their choice and working memory. This is what justifies the process. With just a few objects, a direct selection would make the most sense. The idea is to use equivoque in a context where it feels justified or else it sticks out too much.

It feels natural with two objects, because it’s just a single choice. It feels natural with many objects, because it makes sense to narrow down a large group. In the 3-6 range, I feel it stands out as particularly convoluted.

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Re: Monday’s Post - The Three Highlights

Thank you for the non-magic posts. They’ve also influenced the way I look at life. "Slowing Time" and the post today really resonate with me.

You’ve got an amazing system and don’t need another one, but I thought you might like to hear about mine which is similar in how it highlights the little things but also takes almost no time. Because I don’t carry a notebook everywhere I use Day One app to record one sentence about every notable activity I do during the day. Important life moments/gigs/adventures get special tags and the app automatically records GPS and time/date info to search whenever. I’ve been collecting data for the last 6 years and the app will remind me of anniversaries of experiences over that time.— JF

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What you wrote reminded me of something I read very recently, a book called “Storyworthy” by Matthew Dicks (actual name). The whole book is about crafting stories from your day to day life, and in it he features something called “Homework for Life”. I’ll probably bastardise the recounting of it, so here’s a YouTube clip of him talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7p329Z8MD0 — DI

Thanks guys. I like hearing about this sort of stuff.

Some related thoughts on this…

Regarding the digital/physical tracking, I do both. For the “highlights” of media I consume (as described in that post), I record that digitally. For the highlights of experiences, I record that in a little notebook at the end of the day. I’ve flirted with doing it digitally, and even using that same app JF mentioned. There are a lot of benefits to that, but in the end I decided I enjoyed the aspect of having the actual pages to flip through and being able to see the expression in the handwriting and all of that.

As for the Homework for Life video, that guy’s premise is that every day you should write down one incident that would make for the best story from that day. I can understand why that works for him, but for my purposes it’s putting the emphasis in the wrong location. I don’t really care about how other people would react to my “highlights.” They’re just for my own benefit. That way they can be stupid or prurient or inconsequential and it doesn’t matter.

The idea of the Three Highlights is that you’re not capturing everything, good and bad, about whatever experience or time period you’re looking at. It’s that you’re just capturing the three things you enjoyed most about it.

You could say that it’s easy for me to look at things that way because that’s my natural mindset, and that’s fairly accurate. I’m very fortunate to not have any issues with anxiety or depression. I pretty much strolled out of my mom’s vagina like…

But I still think it’s a something that could be useful for a lot of people. It’s a technique I also use in bad or unpleasant situations to break the cycle of just stewing in the negative emotions. (“What are the three highlights of this shitty hotel room?” “What are the three highlights of this boring meeting?” “What are the three highlights of my friend’s funeral?”) So maybe it could have a small curative effect for people if they’re constantly focused on the negative because this trains you to do just the opposite.

Equivoque — Biggie Sized

A classic joke from my high school days, after a trip to Wendy’s, would be to hold your Biggie drink in one hand and grab your genitals with the other and say, “I’ve got my Biggie in one hand and my drink in the other.” Good times.

In regards to yesterday’s post, a few people wrote in asking, “How do you do equivoque with 25 items?”

Well, I don’t exactly. It’s just part of the selection procedure. I’ll explain. Let’s say I want to force one coin among many. Here’s what it might look like:

I have everyone at the table toss any change they have into a pile in the middle of the table. I ask them to mix up the change, swirl it around the table, or whatever. Then I ask one person to divide the change into a few small piles. “We’re going to eliminate three of the four piles.” I have people select piles to be eliminated and they’re pushed off to the side. The coins from the final pile are laid out in a row on the table and they are eliminated until we’re down to one coin: the force coin.

The basic idea is just to introduce the force item into the procedure after a number of free choices have been made.

So they make the pile of change and mix it up. They make a number of small piles from that change and I tell them they’re going to eliminate all but one of the piles. The choose piles one-by-one for elimination. There is nothing unusual or suspicious about this, because it’s legitimately fair.

Once we get down to one pile, that’s when I introduce the force object. So if it’s a coin, then the coin is in palm and I’ll either push the pile towards them and drop off the palmed coin OR I’ll introduce the coin in the process of transition the coins from a pile into a row. No one ever notices the added coin.

At this point I’m down to 6-8 coins and I’ll use a combination of 2nd and 3rd wave equivoque to narrow it down to one coin. (The exact wording will depend on the objects I’m using. My “generic” equivoque script is likely to be in TOY, the next book for supporters of the site.)

When I first started doing this procedure, it was with folded pieces of paper with something drawn or written inside, and during the procedure I would introduce the force piece of paper that was folded in a slightly off-kilter manner which I could recognize easily. At first I didn’t know how it would be received. There were two ways this could play out.

1. Because of the free choices at the start, the spectator’s guard would be down for the less free equivoque choices later on.

2. Because of the free choices at the start, the equivoque portion would—in comparison—feel even more awkward or unfair than it might otherwise.

In my experience, it’s definitely been option #1.

There is something so casual and uncontrolled about this procedure that it seems to quell their suspicion. Think of it in terms of a card force (another way I’ve used it). I ask you to shuffle the deck and cut it into a bunch of different piles. How many? However many you want. It doesn’t really matter. 7 or 10 or whatever feels right. Then you have a totally free choice to discard the packets one by one until we’re down to a lone packet.

This feels so free and easy. I’m barely paying attention. Clearly I’m not trying to force a card on you. We’re just going through a process to narrow down the full deck to one card. .

Once we get to one pile, I spread them in front of you (adding in a palmed card). You then narrow down those cards to one (via equivoque). And yes, it’s not as free from then on, but I think good-will you generate during the clearly fair opening choices helps camouflage the equivoque later. At least that’s been my experience.