The Magic Negativity Index

Earlier this year, I had a friend who objected to something I said about magicians being perceived as misfits and weirdos by the general public. “That might have been true as recently as five or ten years ago, but I don’t think it’s true anymore,” was his general position. His evidence was the popularity of magicians on talk-shows and talent-shows.

While I can’t deny that magicians are appearing on tv more frequently than ever, I’m not 100% sure that translates into any individual person coming off any better when saying, “Hi! I’m a magician!” than he/she would have 20 years ago. I mean, I understand that people enjoy the magic of Shin Lim, but I don’t necessarily know if he comes off like the type of person you’d want to spend two hours in a car with.

Now, I like the fact that there is frequently a negative stereotype that follows magicians. I hope that never goes away, because I enjoy playing off that. It lowers the bar. And when people find out you’re into magic and you’re a not a creepy oddball, you tend to get bonus points just for being normal. I’ll take those points.

But maybe because I like that portrayal, I have a confirmation bias which causes me to interpret things that way. I’m always up for debunking my own biases, so I decided I needed some way to monitor the magic zeitgeist.

I think a good way to track this sort of thing is by observing the depiction of fictional magicians in the media. It’s great that more magicians are performing on tv, but all that says is that people find magic entertaining. I believe by looking at how magicians are portrayed in fiction, we can get a sense for what people think about magicians as people (not performers).

Historically, someone on a TV show or in a film who was interested in magic was either an idiot or a psychopath (or both). When a character was introduced as a magician you would think, “Oh, I wonder what will happen next. Will a bunch of feather flowers fall out of his sleeve? Or is he going to rape that woman with the business-end of a snow shovel?”

If the perception of magicians is shifting, we should see a change in how magicians are portrayed in tv and film. Will we start seeing charming, charismatic characters…. who also happen to be amateur magicians or children’s party performers? Maybe.

That’s what I intend to track. So a few months ago I decided I would take note of any show or movie I watched that included an adult character who performed magic as a hobby or job, and I’d assess the traits of that character and the show’s disposition towards magic and give it a score on the Magic Negativity Index. The Magic Negativity Index is a 1-10 scale applied to shows and movies where magicians appear. A score of 5 is a neutral score, where the “magician” character isn’t portrayed positively or negatively, and their interest in magic isn’t portrayed positively or negatively.

Here is the first batch of fictional portrayals of magicians that I saw in the past few months.

Magic Negativity Index

Modern Family: Season 10 Episode 16, "Red Alert"

Synopsis: Phil can’t find his cellphone. He hears it ringing and realizes it’s coming from inside a melon. He accidentally made the phone go in the melon while he was doing magic in his sleep.

The magician is: A hapless doofus.

Verdict: Phil on Modern Family is one of the most visible portrayals of an amateur magician in current day film/tv. While he is a likable character in general, his interest in magic and the subject of magic is always played for a laugh.

A conversation from a different episode…

Phil: Do you know what happens to magicians who reveal their secrets, Claire? They're shunned.

Claire: Doesn’t that happen already?

Magic Negativity Index Score: 5.8

I Think You Should Leave: Season 1, Episode 3 "It's The Cigars You Smoke That Are Going to Give You Cancer"

Synopsis: I Think You Should Leave is a sketch comedy show on Netflix. I like it. In the third episode, a couple is at a magic show. The man is picked as a volunteer in a sponge ball routine. During the routine he is peppered with hacky jokes by the magician. Later that night, his wife berates him and decides she’s going to leave him for not sticking up for himself when the magician "embarrassed" him. "That fat piece of shit made you look like a fool, Charlie. He basically pulled your little dick out in front of everyone and jerked you off until nothing came out because you are a boy."

The sketch ends with the guy returning to the magic show another night and volunteering himself, leading to this interaction.

The magician is: A mildly-abusive, moderately talented, hack.

Verdict: While the sketch ends with a graphic saying “Magicians Suck,” the magician—while not likable—is actually the least crazy person in the sketch.

Magic Negativity Index Score: 6.1

Note: The "fat piece of shit" magician is played by Jerx reader, Gerry Katzman.

Law and Order SVU: Season 20 Episode 16 "Facing Demons"

Synopsis: A man is found dead from suicide. He is surrounded by a bunch of polaroids of a naked boy. The police find that the boy in the pictures is, in fact, the dead man. They are pictures that were taken by his abuser. The dead man has killed himself after suffering depression from being molested by a magician when he was a kid.

“Yo, you ever vanish your wand in this boy right here?”

The magician is: A pedophile, active for the last 30 years.

Verdict: Hmmmm….yeah, it’s going to be hard to spin this one. When the best defense of the magician character is, “Hey, at least he wasn’t molesting kids for forty years,” you know it’s going to rate high on the MNI.

Magic Negativity Index Score: 9.9

There you go. I’m not actively tracking these down; they’re just the ones I stumble over. Feel free to direct me to the appearance of any magician characters in any new media for future installments. Perhaps we’ll notice a shift in the Magic Negativity Index to some “below 5” scores as time passes. (In which case, I guess I’ll change the name to the Magic Positivity Index.)

Examination Judo Part Two: Munchausen

This builds off the technique I talked about yesterday. It allows you to perform an essentially invisible switch of a gimmicked object using psychology. This is very satisfying to perform.

We’ve all seen magicians do a trick with an object, then put it in their pocket at the end, and then pull it out again to be examined. This is a switch that fools, literally, 0% of the population. Once the audience has established a locus of suspicion, you can’t remove that object from their sight without ratcheting up that suspicion to its maximum degree. This is human nature.

The following technique allows you to do the same type of in-the-pocket switch (or any other sort of switch) in a way that draws no suspicion.

Munchausen

The basic concept is this: I show you a trick with a gimmicked object. Before the trick, I tell you it’s a gimmicked object and that it can’t be examined. Then, when the trick is over, I switch the object for a non-gimmicked version of the object.

Here’s what it might look like in practice.

We’re hanging out at my place. You tell me you want to go out on my balcony for a smoke. I say, “No problem. Actually… I’m going to grab something while you have your cigarettes out. Hold on.”

I meet you on the balcony and I pull out a quarter in a plastic case. “I got this from the magic store. It’s a trick coin. I can’t let you look at it closely, but I’ll still show you what it does. It’s pretty cool.”

I remove the coin and put the plastic case away. I borrow your cigarette and push it through the quarter. Then I put the quarter back in the case and set it on the handrail of the balcony.

Maybe we talk a little more about the trick and the magic store from which I got it. “I like the trick a lot, but it’s sort of expensive to do. The coins are $8 and they’re one-time use only. Actually, I can bring this back to the shop and get a $2 deposit back. So they’re really only $6 each, but still….”

You ask me what I mean that it’s “one-time use.”

“They don’t…like…the quarter won’t…you know…accept another cigarette. Look…,” I say. I cleanly open up the container with the trick quarter in it and press the cigarette against it. Nothing happens. “You just can’t push it through a second time.” I give you the cigarette and quarter to try yourself. You look at the quarter and as far as you can tell it’s a normal quarter.

The method here is that I switched the quarter in my pocket as I reached my hands in to get the plastic case at the end of the trick. That’s it. But there’s zero suspicion on this switch because… well… why would I switch the coin? I told you it’s a trick coin. I told you that you can’t look at it at the end. There would be no point in switching it. So even if you make note of the hand with the quarter going into my pocket, when it comes back out with a quarter and I put it back in the “trick coin” case, that moment is forgotten. There’s no “suspicion” that the quarter might not be legit, because suspicion denotes uncertainty. There’s no uncertainty here. You’re positive that the quarter is gimmicked.

The way I actually use this technique with cigarette through quarter is even more bold. What I do is I’ll perform the trick, put the coin back in the box [switch] and then say, “I can’t show you how that one works. But I can show you how they used to do it. Hold on.” I now go to get something, leaving them alone with the “trick” coin, which they may or may not try to sneak a look at while I’m gone. When I come back I’m holding… a cigarette through quarter gimmick. And I just show it to them. “See… it’s like a little door in the coin. But obviously you can’t show the person both sides like I did with that one.” I didn’t show them both sides the other time either, of course, but they don’t remember either way. “This version,” I say, pointing to the coin in the plastic case, “is pretty new. It’s only been around 8 or 10 years. I have no clue how they make these ones. It’s pretty baffling.” I then act like, “what the hell, I’ll show you the new version too,” and I let them open the case and all they see is a seemingly normal quarter.

I can understand if you feel uncomfortable exposing the cig thru quarter gimmick. but the truth is, this is a trick where the secret is so easily discoverable online (there’s no question what you would google to find the secret), that exposing the “old way” of doing it may be the best way to really fool them in the long-term.

Of course this technique doesn’t need to just be used with Cigarette Thru Quarter. Any gimmicked object that you can switch for an ungimmicked version would work.

Munchausen By Proxy

This is a combination of the ideas presented yesterday and today. It came to me via reader Derek D., who had independently come up with this combination of ideas that I was using separately.

It involves pairing two tricks together. One that can be examined, and one that can’t be (without a switch).

You do the trick that can be examined, but claim it can’t. For example, Paul Harris’ Reset. When you’re done you place the cards on the table. “Let me show you something similar I’m working on,” you say, and go into the trick that can’t be examined. In this case, let’s assume you’re doing NFW.

You now bring the attention back to the cards on the table. “I’m not supposed to let you look at those cards, because they’re trick cards. But honestly, I’d be curious if you have any insight on how they work. I can’t figure it out.” Or, if you don’t want to play dumb you can say, “The truth is, you can look at those cards [indicating the Reset cards]. You’ll never figure out how they’re gimmicked. It’s so cleverly done.”

Now, with their attention on the first set of “trick” cards, you can do a very clean, unhurried switch of the actual gimmicked cards you now hold for some ungimmicked cards, and set them on the table as you help the person look though the Reset cards. Then you can turn your attention to the NFW cards (the switched in ungimmicked ones) and be like, “These ones are the similar. I can’t for the life of me tell what’s unusual about them. But obviously something is or they couldn’t change like that.”

Now, in a sense, this is just a switch done under some misdirection. But you’re directing them towards the exact same thing you’re misdirecting them from, i.e., “gimmicked” cards. So I think it would be especially effective.

It’s easy for a spectator to think, “When he shot the confetti from the wand, that’s when he switched the cards.” That might be “obvious.” But here’s what’s not an obvious thought: “I think when he showed me the first trick with gimmicked cards, they were actually normal cards. Then when he showed me the second trick with gimmicked cards, they were gimmicked cards. And when he asked me to look at the first gimmicked cards which were actually ungimmicked, he then switched the real gimmicked cards for ungimmicked ones before he asked me to look at those ones too.” That’s not the sort of construction they’re just going to stumble their way into.

Both yesterday and today’s post are about extending the presentation beyond the effect itself. Traditionally, talking with the audience about the concepts of secrets, gimmicks, magic shops, trick-cards, exposure, etc., might have been seen as undermining the magic. But in the world we live in now—where almost all magic secrets can be found on a device in everyone’s pocket—messing with their understanding of secrets and gimmicks and those sorts of things, can be one of the strongest ways to fool them.

Examination Judo Part One: Malingering

Building on last Friday’s post about the examination of gimmicked objects, I have a couple techniques that use a spectator’s suspicion of an object, or their inclination to examine it, as a tool to further fool them. The techniques are related, but today I’m just going to discuss the first one…

Malingering

This is a technique you can use with many different effects. It’s similar to some other ideas I’ve discussed in the past. The basic concept is that you’re going to state outright, or suggest with your actions, that something isn’t examinable, when really it is. I’m sure you can see how this might play out. You do a coin trick and someone says, “Hey, can I see that coin?” And you say, somewhat sheepishly, “Uhmmm… noooo…that would be a bad idea.” You give a little smile to suggest that yes, they busted you, they can’t look at the coin. They obviously think, “Ah, it’s a trick coin.” Now if you set the coin aside and they get a chance to sneak a look at it later “without you knowing” and all they find is a perfectly normal coin, this sort of doubly screws with their mind.

That’s the general idea. Below is a broader description and the way I’ve used it most often.

I’ll frequently do it with Joshua Jay’s Prism Deck or Paul Harris’, Son of Stunner effect from the True Astonishments DVDs. These are both color changing deck effects and they’re both examinable at the end. But for the purposes of messing with people, I’m going to suggest the deck is not examinable. I’ll do this by stating it flat out from the beginning.

“I have something I want to show you, but don’t bother asking me to look at the deck at the end. I’ll just be upfront with you, you can’t. It’s a trick a deck. But regardless, it’s still kind of a cool effect. Check it out….”

The nice thing about this is that no one will ever question it. People can’t conceive of a magician taking less credit for a trick than he deserves (this is something I try to capitalize on a lot in my presentations). And saying, “I’m using a trick deck,” is about the least amount of credit you can take, so it’s very believable.

So I’ll perform the trick and at the end I’ll set the cards somewhere in my personal space, but still within their sight. So, for example, on the coffee table in front of me, if I’m performing in someone’s home. And I will also bevel the deck slightly. Then, a short while later, I’ll excuse myself to take a shit or, even better, go get something from my car or even take a quick trip to the store. I want them to know they have a few minutes of freedom.

In my experience, about 40% of the time, when I come back they’ll say something about the cards, (“I thought this was a trick deck,” or, “Sorry, I had to look. I don’t see how this is a trick deck,” or something along those lines) or they may still have the cards in their hands looking through them, if they have no shame.

Another 40% of the time they won’t say anything, but the slight bevel is gone, so I know they’ve looked through the deck.

The final 20% of the time it’s clear they haven’t looked at the deck. (Although this “20%” for me has been shrinking as I now choose to use this technique only on handsy and/or overly-curious “need to know” type people. It’s not as fun with someone who is respectful of your stuff.)

If the deck hasn’t been moved, or if they’re pretending they didn’t look at the deck while I was gone, I’ll bring the deck back into play and start talking about it, but not in regards to the trick. Since I use a rainbow deck (all different backs) for both these effects, I can spread through them and make some comments on some of my favorite backs. If I wasn’t using a rainbow deck, I’d use some other rationale to bring the cards back. Maybe that old “a deck of cards is like a calendar” horseshit. So now I’m spreading through the cards, giving some to the other person to look at and talking about something boring like my favorite backs or how there are four seasons and four suits. And they’re looking at the cards wondering how this is a gimmicked deck, and eventually they’ll say that.

So, one way or the other, we are at the point where the spectator is questioning how exactly this is a trick deck.

Then we have a conversation along these lines with me playing dumb the whole time.

Them: I thought this was a trick deck?

Me: It is.

Them: How? I don’t see anything. How does it work?

Me:  Oh, I’m not sure. Do you know? I mean, do you know the sort of things to look for?

Them: What? I’m confused. You’re the one who said it was a trick deck.

Me: Right. Remember when it changed color?

Them: Yes.

Me: Yeah. So… it’s gotta be some kind of trick deck or something, right? I mean, normal decks don’t do that.

Them: Wait… what? Why did you tell me not to look at it?

Me: Oh, that’s like a rule of magic. You’re not supposed to let people look at trick decks.

I can understand there are people who won’t “get” this approach. Why do this when you could just hit them with the effect and then immediately show them it’s an examinable deck? Often I will do it that way. Especially if it’s someone I’m seeing once and won’t be seeing again. But if this is someone who is part of my long-term audience—someone who will be seeing tricks for potentially years to come—then I’m more interested in using this effect to not just fool them, but also mess with them a little and chisel away at their desire to just know “how it works.” 

I’m always interested in less linear ways of fooling people. If I show you a deck and it changes color and I give it to you to examine, that’s a very “straight line” effect. And it can be a very strong one. But if I show you a deck and it changes color and you don’t get to see it, you are at first fooled by the visual nature of the effect. But within a few seconds your mind will cling to this idea, “Okay… I don’t know how that happened. But I’m sure if I got a look at that deck I would know.” And I’m encouraging you to put stock in this idea by implicitly or explicitly stating that it’s true. So you will come to the point where you have 100% faith in the notion that if you could just see the deck, you’d have a good idea how it all worked. So you end up getting fooled twice with the same trick.

First Time

You think: That seems to be a blue-backed deck of cards
Revelation: The cards now have all different colored backs.

Second Time

You think: I’m positive that’s a gimmicked deck of cards.
Revelation: It’s not.

And you’re fooled in two “dimensions.” The first time you’re fooled, you feel that brief moment of astonishment. The second time you’re fooled, you get the slow building, lasting feeling of mystery. (See this post for discussion on Astonishment vs Mystery.)

Now, I think it’s important not to play this like a sucker trick. There’s no joy in that. That’s why I play it the way I do at the end. It’s not that I lied to them about it being a “trick deck” to fool them. It’s that we had different notions of what a “trick deck” is. Playing dumb (even when the audience knows you’re just “playing”) is incredibly disarming. I’ll tackle this more in an upcoming post on that subject.

Tomorrow I’ll post the second half of this series which is a related technique you can use with genuinely gimmicked items in a post called, Examination Judo Part Two: Munchausen.

The Put It In Your Pocket Technique

One thing magicians have never really come up with is a good solution to deal with people asking to examine a prop that is unexaminable. The most common advice I used to hear was this:

“Put the item in your pocket and redirect their attention to another trick.”

This is, quite possibly, the dumbest advice that has ever been concocted on any subject ever. If I asked, “How do I un-jam a garbage disposal?” And you replied, “Dangle your testicles in it.” That advice would be no worse than, “When someone wants to examine something they can’t, you should put the item away and move on to something else.”

Like much of the traditional magic “wisdom,” it’s based on a complete unfamiliarity with the way a normal human’s mind works. Hiding something away doesn’t decrease the suspicion on it.

And the idea of moving on to Trick B to lessen the focus on Trick A is profoundly imbecilic. It presupposes a situation where the beginning of Trick B is somehow more interesting to people than the climax of Trick A. If this is true, then Trick A sucks shit. You shouldn’t be doing it.

But let’s take a look at what this type of “audience management” looks like in action. Here is “Celebrity Magician,” Matthew Furman, performing for some people in lab-coats. Watch the first 30 seconds of the video. He does Hundy 500 (or something similar) to change 1 dollar bills to 100s. This will always get a good initial reaction, because it’s very visual. After the trick, the male reaches out for the bills in a somewhat joking manner. Knowing he can’t actually give the bills out, Matthew doesn’t dawdle. He quickly puts them in his pocket and says, “I got a card trick. Comin’ atcha. Happy to see you guys. Figure’d we come and do some tricks. Check it out.”

He has successfully executed the, “I’ll put that in my pocket and move on to something else” technique to assuage people’s inclination to look at the bills. And it seems that many magicians would consider this a success. They didn’t get to look at the bills. That’s a win, right? That’s how braindead traditional magic thinking is. “They didn’t get to examine the object, so they don’t know it’s gimmicked, so they probably just assume it’s magic.”

No.

When it comes to the examinability of any magically altered object, I have a theory that probably no one else will agree with, and it’s this: If you’re not going to let the object be examined, you might as well just expose the trick. You end up in the same place either way.

For example, if you expose the bill trick in the above video, the audience will think: “Oh, he’s got a tricky stack of bills.”

If you put the bills in your pocket and don’t let them be examined, the audience will think: “Oh, he’s got a tricky stack of bills.”

It’s the exact same outcome!

So what’s the solution? Just don’t do a trick if it can’t be examined?

Yeah, that’s exactly the solution. For the amateur magician especially, the idea that you can “manage” your way past the spectator’s interest in a magically altered object is moronic. I’ve made the point before: In a casual, close-up situation where something is magically changed in some manner, the trick isn’t really over until the spectator can look at the object. Not only does whisking the object away not fool anyone, it also makes you look like a complete spazz. “Here… pay attention to this thing I’m showing you. Oh… your interest is at its peak? Okay, this is the point where I’ll put it away.” That not a normal human thing to do.

There are, of course, ways to choreograph your routine/interaction in order to build in switches or vanishes so that an object can be examined (or is no longer there to be examined) at the end. It’s worthwhile to think along those lines. But we undermine the need to do the work in this area when we suggest it’s enough to just put something in your pocket and move on to something else.

Mailbag #6

I bought Thor’s Hammer and plan to use it with Electric Touch+ by Yigal Mesika. Would love your feedback on how to make it better presentationally, methodically, and in terms of effect. —EB

What the hell is thor's hammer? — Me

It’s literally Thor (from Marvel)’s Hammer! I bought a replica. —EB

Ah, okay. I thought it was the name of a trick or something. I'll think on it. If I have any good ideas I'll let you know (or post them in a mailbag post). — Me

Okay, first, don’t write me looking for a way to justify every dumb purchase you make. You bought a replica of Thor’s hammer? That’s your problem now, not mine.

But I did think of a somewhat fun presentational possibility here.

EB mentions using the hammer with Yigal Mesika’s, Electric Touch which is a trick that allows you to give someone a mild electric shock. The idea of using this big hammer which—according to lore—has the abilities to level mountains, and using it to give someone a tiny Bzz of a shock is funny to me. So I would make that the presentation. You have it on a shelf in your house and someone mentions it and you’re like, “Yeah, I found this guy who makes these replicas. Or maybe he buys them and puts them through some process, I’m not sure. It’s kind of silly, but he actually gives them some power. Not a lot. Like .1% or .01%, I forget of the actual power the object is supposed to have.”

Then you harness the “power” of the hammer to give them a little shock.

Now, in and of itself, that’s not really a trick. They will think, “Oh, he’s got a hammer that somehow delivers a little shock.” The strength of Electric Touch as an effect is that you’re empty-handed. As soon as you have something in your hands that could conceivably house some sort of electronics or something that could create a spark, you’ve kind of removed the magic element from it.

So, by itself, it’s not a great idea. But the idea of knowing “some guy” who makes these replicas that have a tiny sliver of the real power is something you could exploit, either for the purposes of a mini “show” or just as a long-term presentational hook.

So maybe you have a shelf of replica items from different super heroes. For example, a Superman cape that you wear and allows you to “fly” a couple inches in the air (Balducci Levitation). Or a replica Aquaman staff that allows your goldfish to communicate to you an image that you never saw (impression pad).

ESP, pyrokinesis, manipulating time, changing objects… pretty much every trick can be recast as a very mild super-power. And having a collection of rings, and amulets, and capes and other replica items that give you these abilities is the sort of thing that could be a fun way to frame your magic if you’re into that sort of thing. I don’t have a deep interest in, or knowledge of, super-heroes/comics, so it’s probably not something I would pursue long-term. But I’m sure for some people it could be a framing tool—a “presentational style”—that they could utilize for years, and have an ever growing display of items in their house that they could use to lead into various effects.

---

How do you deal with people that insists on you actually having magical powers?

And no, I am not talking about kids, I am talking about  adults who even after you tell them it IS just a trick...they still keep insisting that you must have "powers".

This has happened to me 4 or 5 times over the past year, mainly after either showing some coin tricks or silk magic...and no, I am not one of those that pretend I do have some secret power […] —H

This sounds like it may be a cultural thing, as I don’t know anyone who could see a coin or silk trick—no matter how proficiently performed—and think, “Well…so much for my understanding of physics.”

There’s a few things that might be going on here.

1 - A couple times in my life I’ve had people try to suggest that what I was doing was “real” in some way. “There’s no way to fake that,” they would say. Now… would they really bet their annual salary that it was real? Would they even bet $20 that it was real? Probably not. What they were actually doing was trying to get some hints as to how it was done, essentially they were trying to pressure me into exposing the trick because they knew I was uncomfortable with them thinking anything was “real” about it.

2 - They may just feel like they’re playing along. “He’s pretending to do magic, so I’ll play along as if he’s doing magic.” To know if they’re doing this, make your presentation about something else other than yourself. If your presentation is about a flower with hallucinogenic properties and they play along with the idea that the tricks you’re doing are a result of them smelling this flower, then you know they’re just taking part in the theatricality of it all. But if they say, “You’re lying. That’s not a hallucinogenic flower. You have real magic powers.” Then you know it’s the third option.

3 - They’re dumb.

If they’re dumb, and they’re going to believe a trick is evidence of real magic power, it’s not your duty to educate them. What I would do, in that case, is probably lean into the idea. For example, you make a coin disappear and they start suggesting you possess supernatural powers. You say, “Yes. It’s true. I’m an all-powerful wizard. I’m a very special human. You’ve heard of Christ, right? Total amateur. Please don’t tell anyone about me! The world-government is trying to find people with awesome powers like I have, and lock us away forever. They’re scared of us.”

Don’t try to dissuade them. Just push the idea as far as possible. That should make them second-guess their thinking.

---

Your post - the OOTW with jizz - I had a similar idea a few years ago, but the premise was that I collected playing cards which were found at crime scenes. Seriously, you can buy these things online - people go into the houses after the police are finished or whatever and pick up innocuous stuff where horrific crimes have happened, and you can buy them online. (i've no idea if this is true).

And then the cards can be different backs, it doesn't need to to be a 26 split, etc, and you shine the light and done.—RD

If, for some weird reason I can’t conceive of, you don’t want people to think you’ve cum all over your playing cards, this could be a good alternate presentation for the black-light OOTW.

However, if you use cards with different backs, you do run the risk of them remembering putting certain cards in the same pile, only for them to end up in different piles (or vice versa). it’s a relatively low risk, but something to keep in mind.

Magicians In Motor-Vehicles Making Magic

You may remember when Rick Lax ripped off the show Chopped to make his show, Wizard Wars.

Well, now he’s ripped off Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee to make a new facebook show called “Making Magic.”

Similar to “Comedians in Cars,” each episode features Rick driving around with a magician and stopping places to do magic. I’ve watched the first couple episodes. They’re pretty easy to sit through if you have 10-15 minutes to kill. Some of it is a little too “staged” for me to appreciate. But that’s probably unavoidable. In a perfect world, I’m sure Rick would prefer if everything could somehow be spontaneous and unplanned. Magic certainly can be that way, but then he’d have to shoot 150 hours for 10 minutes of footage.

The second episode features Jibrizy, who bills himself as, “The One and Only Hip-Hop Illusionist.” Oh… really? Hmmm…how quickly we forget…

Jibrizy, learn your history, bitch! I guess you just look at that video and see a “thug” or “ghetto trash.” Someone a little too easy for you to dismiss. But that “thug” paved the way for you to do what you do, so show some goddamn respect.

Anyway, in that episode Jibrizy says that he wants people to believe he really has magic powers. Rick offers a little push-back on this, but Jibrizy is unfazed. “I’m committed,” he says, to keeping the act up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Uh-huh. Look, you do whatever you want, but if your goal is to have people believe you have real powers, then you’re limiting your target audience to: fucking morons. Yes, maybe you can get a reasonably intelligent person to perhaps believe you achieved something for real with some effects—perhaps using a psychological presentation. But when you’re sticking a pen through a bill…

it will take a very “special” audience member to pause, remove his dunce cap, scratch his head and say, “You know what? I think he can really do that! Now… where was I? Ah yes, I was smearing my feces into pleasing swirls on the kitchen floor.”

Meanwhile, you’re alienating normal adults who just want to have some fun, not be coerced into praising you for powers you don’t really possess.

But whatever, everyone can do as they please.

My biggest question is… what reality show will Rick Las rip off for his next magic show? Something with little people? Or “hot wives” of magicians? Some type of dating show like “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire,” but with a magician, so it would be, like, “Who Wants to Financially Support a Guy Chasing His Dream and Making $28,000 a Year?” I would recommend just doing a magician-centric version of this show because you would save money on marketing/branding because you wouldn’t have to change the name.

Dustings of Woofle #6

When I first looked at the thumbnail for this image, I thought it was a kid holding his big girthy penis out for all to see. Then I clicked on it and saw that it was actually a kid holding a high-heeled shoe. Which makes about as much sense as flashing his genitals for a fourth birthday card.

Actually, by the way he’s sitting and that look on his face, I still think it’s likely that the original image was him displaying his engorged member, and then the card company was like, “What the fuck is this, Carl? We asked for an image for a fourth birthday card.” So Carl touched it up and added the shoe. Look, you don’t sit like that when you’re polishing a shoe. He was polishing something else.

This is my roundabout way of saying: Grab your brush, grab your dong—The Jerx turns four years old today.

---

If you’ve got the cash to spend, I have a hot tip for you. Real Secrets was a magic subscription “trick of the month” service that ran for three years starting in 2012. I didn’t subscribe, but I had a couple friends who did and I saw a lot of the releases through them. I think my favorite was a set of cards that would allow you to do a “feng shui assessment” of your spectator’s home. You lay out the cards indicating different rooms in the spectator’s house. They would move their finger around the cards, making free choices in accordance with some pre-written instructions. At the end, their finger would be on one room, indicating there was a feng shui disturbance there. Let’s say it’s the bathroom. You then go with them to the bathroom and find, for example, a desk chair in their shower. “Ah yes. That’s bad feng shui,” you say.

The Real Secrets tricks tended to be smaller, more casual pieces. The type of thing you could keep in your wallet and have on you to bring out during a lull in a social situation. They weren’t the types of things you would build a show around. But that was the allure of them for me. They had a different feel to them. For the most part they weren’t card or coin tricks. They were tricks with some junk you had on you.

At any rate, I recently got an email from Michael Weber that said:

Tim [Trono] went through storage and found three complete sets of all three years of Real Secrets props and instructions (72+ items in all)

He assembled them in special binders with separate holders for each month of props and materials and archival page holders.

They will be $600 + $50 postage worldwide.

If they don’t get snatched up I’m going to get one myself, even though I’m familiar with a lot of the material already. This isn’t an ad. Just a “heads-up” for anyone who might be interested. [Update: You can’t get one of these anymore. They’re gone.]

---

Alakazam is selling a download to use Alexa as part of a card reveal.

If you’re interested in that sort of thing, I did a few posts early last year about using Google Home (and by extension things like Alexa and Siri) in magic tricks. Those posts are:

Google-Home Word Reveal
Another GH Idea
The Connor-Combs-Jerx Code

I’m sure the Alakazam product is fine. If it simplifies the set-up then it will be worth the asking price for anyone who wants to do this. But as someone who spent a few months playing around with different revelations with Google Home and Siri, I can tell you that playing cards generally got me the weakest reactions when using these devices. Most likely because it feels just like a card trick with the technology bit added to the end. Whereas—if you’re using the ideas in the first and second posts linked above—you can ease people into the trick before they know what’s happening. So they have this experience:

1. We’re talking about the technology.

2. He’s going to show me something weird about the technology.

3. Wait… what?! That’s impossible. That must be a trick.

As opposed to this experience.

1. He’s asking me to pick a card. This is a card trick.

2. Oh, I guess the technology is going to name my card.

3. Yup. That was a card trick.

If you’re interested in this plot I would also recommend checking out Marc Kerstein’s book on iphone tricks which allows you to do this effect and a bunch of better stuff.

---

Regarding the previous post on building Transgressive Anagrams, Pete McCabe has built a spreadsheet that parses the words you’re using for the letters they contain. So you don’t have to do that first step manually like I do.

Below are two versions of the spreadsheet. It currently has the top 16 money-making films at the box office, but you can replace those items on the left for whatever it is you want to create an anagram for. And you can add or remove rows as necessary, assuming you have some basic spreadsheet knowledge.

Excel/Google Sheets spreadsheet

Apple Numbers spreadsheet

UPDATE: Here’s a modified version of Pete’s Excel spreadsheet from Casey Edwards. (You don’t need Excel, it works fine in Google Sheets which is free.) It adds a row for filters, which makes manipulating the spreadsheet and trying out different combinations super easy. You can essentially follow my same process as laid out in Wednesday’s post, but just create a bunch of copies of the initial tab in your spreadsheet. Then, instead of doing a lot of copying and pasting, you just apply the necessary filters in each tab and re-name the tab so you can keep track of everything. This is probably the ideal combination of both automation and control when it comes to creating anagrams.

Excel sheet with filters.

Thanks, Pete and Casey.

---

Dai Vernon said, “Confusion is not magic.”

Emerson & West said, “Except… what if it is?”

I think at the end of this trick, when the card says “Hole” on the back, you’re supposed to get that surprise that you get when you see the $14 card in Color Monte. But I have a hard time believing it ever generated that kind of reaction. The trick is way too fucking convoluted. I honestly felt like I had early onset dementia watching this trick. I have no clue what is supposed to be happening. I guess some might say that it’s supposed to be confusing. Okay… well… mission accomplished, I guess.

Actually the best part about this trick is when the guy acts like he’s grabbing a horse’s balls at 28 seconds in.

For you younger readers, Emerson & West produced magic effects, starting in the 70s. They were most famous for their packet tricks, in particular, Color Monte. Is the concept of “packet tricks” even well known to younger magicians these days? If it is, they probably think of tricks done with a small “packet” of normal cards. Whereas, when I was growing up, I usually thought of packet tricks as being comprised of specially printed cards like this:

And they came in a little plastic wallet, and you’d have a trick where you’d do, like, 40 Elmsley counts with them, and at the end there was a mild surprise or shitty pun or something. Then your spectator would say, “Can I see your fun little magic cards?” And you’d have to knock over a bookcase between the two of you and sprint away because frequently they weren’t examinable.

Very few of these tricks stood the test of time.

Why am I watching packet trick videos on youtube? Well, I recently stumbled into a way of presenting Color Monte that went over shockingly well and I was wondering if I could find other packet tricks I could apply a similar presentation to. I didn’t really find any, but I’ve done the Color Monte version a few more times recently and it continues to get absurdly strong reactions. I’ll write that up sometime in the next few weeks.

---

As I mentioned, this site turns four years old today. Thanks, in advance, for all the gifts, cake, and birthday spankings coming my way.

Will this site see another four years? No, probably not. I might let it go until six and then kill it (like JonBenét Ramsey). But who knows. I never saw it going this long. The only reason it has is because of the people who support the site. So thanks to those of you who do; whether you just found the site recently or whether you’ve been here since the beginning. I couldn’t write the greatest site on the internet without you.