Mailbag #16

In yesterday’s post you mentioned tricks that don’t have scripted jokes, but are still funny. What are some examples that you could give of that? Or do you have any general tips for being funny in “social magic”? —CC

Sure. But let me clarify what I was saying first. When you see a comedy magician, he is likely doing a standard trick with a bunch of jokes in it. There is nothing funny about cutting and restoring a rope, but it can be a funny routine if you add jokes to it. To do that professionally is one thing, but to do it in a casual situation is kind of awkward (in my opinion).

When I lived in NYC, I would occasionally find myself out at a bar with some local magicians and they’d use canned lines on people. “Do you believe in coincidence? Me too. What a coincidence!” “Clear your mind. That was quick!” “Show the card to your friends. What… I’m not your friend?” I’m probably overly-sensitive to corniness, but from my perspective these lines added nothing to the interaction and just made the performer look lame.

If you want to do a “funny” trick socially, then I think you’re better off doing a trick that has a premise which is funny in some way.

Take a trick like Cryptophasia. The premise is that your spectator is your long-lost twin. There are no jokes in the effect but there is a lot of humor that naturally comes from engaging with the presentation.

I’ll Be My Mirror is another funny premise that doesn’t really have any jokes in it.

I can’t say how well such tricks would play in a professional situation, where people are expecting scripted patter and jokes. But when you’re just hanging out with someone, premise-based humor will feel much more natural. You’re not “cracking jokes.” You don’t have to take on a new personality. You can just insert your normal personality into the weird situation. If you’re naturally funny, that can boost the inherent humor in a funny premise. But even if you’re not, it can be funny how seriously you take it. Think of the Time Traveler’s Toilet. If your attitude is, “Isn’t this funny?” It’s not funny at all. But if you’re very serious about it, and your attitude is, “Isn’t this fascinating?” or, “Isn’t this concerning? A toilet should not do this, right?” Then it can be very funny.

You’re not going to get spikes of concentrated laughter like you would if you were performing in a comedy club. But that’s okay because you’re not performing in a comedy club.

When presenting magic casually, I don’t think you should ever attempt to be funnier or more clever than you are in real life. You want people to feel like they’re having this experience with the you they know. In social magic, I think the goal should be to make everything seem normal, except this one weird thing (the trick). If you start spouting out pre-planned quips then it’s going to feel like a performance, not an interaction.

If you’re naturally funny, then it makes sense to include that aspect of yourself in your material, but you don’t need to script the humor (because you’re naturally funny).

If you don’t think of yourself as funny, then strive for being fun. It’s just as good.

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The next three emails all reference my review/presentation/handling for Paul Harris’ Deep Clear which appeared in the Fall X-Communication newsletter.

I absolutely LOVE your handling and presentation for deep clear. Gave it the wife test and it fried her hard. The time delay the explanation gives you makes it virtually impossible to back track. Thanks for sharing! —MH

Just some unsolicited feedback. I am greatly enjoying these refinements on commercial tricks. You have a knack for improving/fixing presentations, which is something magicians are usually bad at. I'm voting for more of this in the next year. —GT

Your presentation for Deep Clear took that trick from the back of my “unused” drawer and made it possibly my favorite trick of the year. Please keep these updated handlings and presentations for other’s effects coming. I’m surprised none of the magic companies have hired you to do this. —DW

Aw, you sweeties. Look, no magic company has to hire me to do it because you have already hired me to. (“You” meaning the supporters of this site.)

It’s safe to say you will probably see more of that style of review in the future. When I first started writing reviews for the newsletter, I felt compelled to do timely looks at new releases, and that sort of butted against my desire to only review things I had actually tried out. What I’ve realized in the ensuing years is that nobody really needs me to say things like, “The roughing spray was unevenly applied,” or, “The stitching on the wallet is very nice.” There are dozens of youtube reviewers who can give you that type of basic information. In fact, because they’re all rushing to get their videos out, that’s about all the information they can give. You can tell a lot of them have never actually performed the trick they’re talking about.

So, rather than compete to be first, I will continue to save the reviews until I feel I have something worthwhile to say about an effect that’s borne out of performing it.

There will be shorter/quicker reviews when I don’t have much to say about an effect I like, or when an effect is unworkable for whatever reason, but I won’t force myself to be timely if I think there is some insight I might find a couple months down the line. In fact, the new version of the newsletter starting next year may include some reviews for stuff that is years old.

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Loved the coins across idea... and I was thinking it could be "fun" when it goes "wrong" and the coins fuse together... like Sean Fields "One". —DY

I think that would make a good phase to the routine as well.

You could also screw up in a much more subtle way: You try to transfer two borrowed coins and you end up with a double-headed coin and a double-tailed coin.

From the feedback I got, a lot of people were taken with the idea for that premise and had other ideas about where to take the trick. I think that’s one of the benefits of putting a trick in a Context. If a trick is just about coins going back and forth then more phases usually just means more coins going back and forth. But when you come up with the Context for why the coins are going between the hands, then it becomes much easier to find other effects that fit that context that aren’t just the same thing happening over and over.

Dustings of Woofle #18

Does anyone know if Houdini came back during the seance last night to prove the existence of life after death? I checked the news but didn’t see anything about it.

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I have a folder on my computer called TATITS (not to be confused with the folder on my computer called FAT TITS).

TATITS = There’s A Trick In There Somewhere

I have 1000s of pictures, articles, concepts, and quotes sitting around in the folder. I will start posting them from time to time. Below is a recent image I saved.

The sad thing about magic is we have 1000 tricks that tell the story of some boring encounter between a magician and a gambler, and not a single one that tells this story:

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SansMinds is releasing Will Tsai’s Visual Matrix aka The Rose Act which he performed on America’s Got Talent.

It’s $300. And if you could buy it and actually perform the effect live in front of real people, that price would be a steal.

But something about the ad copy for this effect suggests maybe we should temper our expectations. Specifically this part:

Who is this for?

• If you are serious about the art of magic.

• If you are serious about owning a piece of history.

• If you are serious about learning all the thinking that goes into the Rose Act.

• If you are serious about using this act to learn and inspire yourself to create a masterpiece for yourself.

Notice it doesn’t say, “Who is this for? Someone who wants to perform the effect.” It’s just for someone who wants to own a piece of history or “think” or be “inspired” by the act.

What if I’m someone who wants to perform the trick? Shouldn’t I be included in the the group the trick is for? I’m guessing the answer is “fuuuuuccckkk no,” because there’s no way the trick holds up in person. There’s a reason they crammed Tyra Banks 100 feet away in the wings of the theater rather than sitting table-side to witness the magic.

SansMinds has some stuff that looks great, but with rare exceptions, almost everything they’ve put out was made to be performed on magic demos, not in real life. It’s very strange. I’m not 100% sure why they exist as a magic company selling to magicians.

It would be as if one of those companies who stages food for commercial shoots—and uses motor oil for pancake syrup and Elmer’s glue for milk because it looks better on camera—said, “You know what? We should open a restaurant!”

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Honestly, I had never seen that trick from AGT before. Other than the odd episode of the Carbonaro Effect, I don’t think I’ve seen any magic on TV in the past couple of years. Not due to a lack of interest, necessarily. It’s just because I spend so many hours a week writing/performing/thinking about magic, that it’s not the thing I want to relax with at the end of the day.

I’m fairly out of the loop on any magic that doesn’t happen on my couch or over lunch.

For instance, I had never heard of this magician named Reza, who is famous enough to have his own theater show in Branson, Missouri.

If you’re not familiar with Reza, he looks like if Criss Angel was cast as the lead in the stage version of Dallas Buyer’s Club.

I stumbled across him a couple weeks ago and was watching some of his videos on youtube and he did one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen in this video.

He made a black guy not react to a magic trick.

This is incredible. If I showed you this and asked you what he was watching…

You’d say, “I don’t know… a leaf falling into a puddle?” That can’t possibly be a black guy—magic’s greatest spectator—seeing a magic trick. But it is.

I need to inform Aziz.

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The Cat's Meow 💋🐈🎃 Video by @playboy @officialplayboyplus Directed by @lizstewartproductions Happy Halloween!

A post shared by Alice Antoinette (@alice_antoinette_official) on Oct 31, 2019 at 4:51am PDT

That’s our friend Alice—who got her start posing for the JAMM—in her latest Playboy feature.

I like to acknowledge her from time to time on the site because I feel bad for her. It must totally eat her up inside that she peaked so early. It’s sad. Can you imagine the constant pressure she feels trying to get back to the point where she had achieved the portrayal of ultimate eroticism: Dan Harlan on the cover of Magic with Rubberbands, Volume 1?

Presentation vs Context: The Invisible Palm Aces

This is the final post I have planned on Presentation vs. Context. Although I’m sure the subject will come up in the future. Today I want to look at the exact same trick, presented with an identical premise, but in one case that premise is a Presentation and in the other it’s a Context.

Here is Paul Harris’ opening patter for the Invisible Palm trick:

“I’m going to show you how a professional gambler cheats at cards. Basically, it’s an advanced technique called PLAMING. That’s spelled P-L-A-M-I-N-G. It was invented by a famous gambler by the name of Bermuda Shwartz. This was the very same man who nicknamed his wife Houdini, because she had trouble escaping from his trunks, but that’s another story.

“Anyway, I”m going to demonstrate this wonderful technique he had for ‘plaming,’ and I’ll show you the very same way he showed me, by using these four Aces

“The first card starts in the standard V position, symbolic of the first letter of the word Venezuela…”

And on it goes. Most of Paul’s early work had these sort of silly, nonsensical, jokey, hokey presentations. It’s somewhat surprising, given that he would go on to be one of the people behind David Blaine and his virtually patter-less/Presentation-less performances. And the Bro Gilbert led performances on the True Astonishments box-set didn’t have any of this kind of weirdness. So I can only imagine there was some point where Paul was in the midst of this sort of performance where he stopped himself and said, “What the fuck am I talking about?”

If you watch his performance of this trick on The Magic Palace, you can see how this presentation goes over. You might say, “Well, he got a few laughs in there.” Okay, I guess, but what about the trick itself? This is a multi-phase effect that gets zero reaction from the audience until the polite applause at the end.

Now, let’s contrast that with Wayne Houchin’s performance of the same effect. It’s the same trick, same handling, and same premise that the cards are being absorbed into the performer’s hand. But where Paul delivers this as a loose Presentation in which to tell jokes, Wayne performs it as if he’s demonstrating a genuine technique.

Notice how each phase of the routine gets a strong reaction. It’s the same trick, but because he doesn’t need to steamroll on to the next joke, he can focus on each moment and let it breathe.

Presentations have jokes. Contexts do not. That doesn’t mean that both can’t be funny. But Contexts should not have scripted jokes (they should not feel like they have scripted anything).

With a context the humor should come from the premise, or from the natural interaction that comes from that premise.

With a Presentation you can add in jokes, like Paul does, but I don’t think it serves the magic particularly well. Since the humor isn’t inherent in the trick, you split the audience’s focus. “Who is this Bermuda Schwarz? What do you mean ‘V for Venezuela’? What is ‘plaming’ is that supposed to be funny somehow? Or is it important… is this something I need to remember?” You can watch the video of Paul Performing and see that there are some lines which no one has any clue how to react to. This can’t help but take focus off the power of the effect. And honestly, it feels kind of apologetic to me. Like you’re shucking and jiving to keep them entertained because you’re worried the trick itself isn’t interesting enough.

However, you may want to be the guy who tells jokey, whimsical stories with accompanying card tricks. Here’s a guy doing just that. He’s presenting that trick with Paul’s original patter. I’m not posting it to make fun of the guy. I just want to give you an outsider’s perspective of what this sort of thing looks like. Maybe you watch that and think, “I bet my friends would like that!” Well… god bless you. You’re a lucky man. I wish I had those sorts of friends. The minute I start saying, “This ace represents mud, blood, beer, and crud,” my friends would be like…

(I have friends all over the political spectrum.)

I’m not anti-humor, obviously. And I’m not anti-humor in magic. But if it’s not inherent in the premise, I think it pulls people out of the effect. Or, at the very least, it comes off as scripted. And scripted equals Presentation. And if you’re striving for an immersive Context, then Presentation is your enemy.

Introducing the Virtual Focus Group

Back when I was doing my old site, I would get my friends together and show them videos of magicians performing and then I’d write up their comments in a series of Zagat review style posts. These days I do a much more intense version of that sort of thing with the focus group testing I’ve been involved with in New York City.

For a while now, I’ve wanted to do something in between. As I mentioned in this post, this site is going to change going into the next season. The posts are going to be more casual, dumber, and shorter. The total amount of content will remain similar, but the stuff I feel has particular value will come in a monthly newsletter that will expand on the X-Comm newsletters that I’ve done for the past few years.

One of the features I’m planning on having in the new incarnation of the newsletter is a Virtual Focus Group (until I come up with a better name for it). Here’s how it will work. I’ll have a group of 20 laymen that we identify from short-term gig job sites. We’ll screen out anyone with knowledge/interest in magic. Once a month, we’ll send them a few short videos to watch and give their comments on. After three months they will be cycled out of the program (unless they prove to have some sort of incredible insight, then maybe I’ll keep them on in a different role). They’ll get $20/month for about a half an hour’s easy work. I think it’s a win-win for everyone.

“You’re going to pay $400 a month to have laypeople comment on magic videos?” Well, yes, I’m the one writing the check, but that money comes from the people who support the site (hence the reason it will be supporter-only content). I’m happy to reinvest that money and I think it’s the sort of thing supporters of this site are interested in too.

I love the unbiased, unvarnished responses we get in testing. What I think I’m better at than most magicians is maintaining a layperson’s sensibilities about things. But it’s impossible to be as good as an actual layperson. It’s one thing to listen to your audience, but they might be friends, or they might have paid good money to see you, that’s going to color their reaction. You can’t really trust reactions you see in demo videos. And listening to the feedback of other magicians is next to useless.

I’m still trying to figure out the details on how the Virtual Focus Group will work: what questions I will ask, how they’ll view the material, if I’ll do follow-ups, etc. But I ran a little test a couple days ago with five people I picked up off Craigslist. (No, not whores. They don’t even have that section on Craigslist anymore, sadly. Uhm.. I mean… good. It’s good they don’t have that section anymore.)

I sent them five demo videos of recently released effects. I had edited the videos so they just showed the trick, not any of the other promotional information. So even if they wanted to, it would be difficult for them to do further research on an effect.

I asked for three pieces of information about each effect:

• Describe the trick.

• Rate how impossible the trick seemed to you.

• What is your best explanation for how the trick was done?

For a few of the tricks, the response was about what I expected. But a couple received an interesting reaction.

The first comes from Penguin. It’s called Forgotten Princess. It’s a presentational variation on the Princess Card Trick where you—according to the ad copy—”Erase a memory, then bring it back.” So instead of the card just “vanishing” as in the original version, the conceit is that the spectator is forgetting the card. I didn’t really give it too much thought.

But then when I heard back from the respondents, in the area where I asked them to “describe the trick,” no one came back with anything related to “forgetting” or “memory.” A couple people said they weren’t clear on what the effect was. The remaining respondents said things like, “The magician knew the card she was thinking of.” And, “He made her card vanish and then come back.”

Now, I’m willing to concede that they might not have understood the trick because there is not a continuous performance of the trick in the demo. But I think there may be a bigger issue than that. As I watched the demo again I thought, “Well, I don’t think I really understand the trick either.”

From the primary spectator’s perspective what is supposed to be happening? Put yourself in their position. I show you five cards. You think of the King of Hearts. I pull one out and set it on the table. “I’m going to make you forget the card you chose.” I show you the remaining four cards, the King of Hearts isn’t in there. So you assume that’s the card I have removed. But then I put that card back in the fan and show you the cards and there still is no King of Hearts. Then I snap my fingers, re-spread the cards, and the King of Hearts is back. At what point along the way did you apparently “forget” anything?

You didn’t forget it when I showed you the four cards.

You didn’t forget it when I showed you the five cards. (If you had forgotten it, you wouldn’t be able to say if the card was there or not.)

You didn’t forget it when the card came back. The whole time you’re looking for the King of Hearts and that’s the card that came back. From your perspective the card is not there, then it is, but you knew what card you were looking for the whole time. So the idea that I “plucked the memory of that card from your head,” doesn’t really track.

Perhaps, this is intended as a dual reality trick. To the other observers it may seem like the person forgets the card? I’m not sure. It’s a close-up trick though, which is a fairly weak area for dual reality. And the laypeople I had watch the video didn’t “get” the memory thing regardless.

Conclusion: I’m not sure the Princess Card Trick works as a demonstration of a psychological illusion (any more than any vanish would—David Copperfield: “I made you forget the Statue of Liberty!”)

If you want to present the trick in a more psychological manner, I don’t know if “memory” is the right path to take. If I were doing it, I’d probably talk about “psychological scotomas” (blindspots). “Have you ever been searching all over for your keys, and you’re going crazy because you have somewhere you need to be, but you can’t find them anywhere? Then you look at the coffee table for the fifth time and there they are. They were right in front of your face but you couldn’t see them before. Your mind blocked them out. Well, there’s a way to induce this sort of sensation. Are you okay with that? I promise it’s temporary.”

So they think of a card. You do something (don’t just snap your fingers like a lazy all-powerful piece of shit). And when you spread the cards their thought-of card is gone. They see a blank face where the card should be (Or maybe you could have a card with a super blurry image on it.) Then you snap them out of it and their card is back. The idea being you’ve somehow generated a blindspot for them, making it so they can’t see the card they were thinking of.

I’m not sure if that’s any good. But I think there is a stronger logic to it than in the “memory” version.

The next trick that got an interesting response was Card Flex by Mario Tarasini and Ellusionist.

Watch it and ask yourself this question, “What is supposed to be going on here?” It’s something none of the five respondents could clearly answer.

I guess the answer is supposed to be, “The magician pushes a card through a bill. And while it’s through the bill, the card separates in two pieces and then is restored.”

That’s some straight gobbledygook right there. There’s a somewhat glaring issue with this trick. When you do a penetration effect (like card through bill) you want to make sure the audience believes these are two solid objects. You know what really takes away from that impression? When you then go and split one of the objects in two.

Of course, if you could hand out the card at the end, then maybe you could forgive the clusterfucky nature of the two tricks jammed together. But you can’t. So your best case is for someone to say, “That was sort of neat looking. I’m curious how the card is tricked up to allow you to do it.” That’s the best case scenario. (All five respondents said “trick card” or something along those lines for their guess as to the method.)

Conclusion: If you want to melt a card through a bill, use Matthew Johnson’s Melt 2.0. It looks great and everything is examinable.

If you want to do a close-up Zig-Zag, consider Blade by Nicholas Lawrence. I like the business card variation. Again, it’s examinable at the end.

If you want to melt a card through a bill and in the middle of that do a zig-zag trick, ask yourself what would possibly compel you to want to do that.

Dustings of Woofle #17

I found this screenshot on my desktop and it made me laugh so goddamn hard. I need to explain it first though.

A couple weeks ago I was writing about the Digital Force Bag app, and how corny it is to walk around with a list of random celebrities in your notes app. And as I was writing the post I thought, Well, what would be a good rationale for having a list of celebrities in my notes app? Then I thought it might be funny to have a list called “Celebrities I Fucked.” No hot young starlets, but just like:

• Billy Mays

• Ed Lover

• The Travelocity Roaming Gnome

• Zachery Ty Bryan

• Joy Behar

And so on.

And you’d wax nostalgic about your former lovers, but mention that one held a very special place in your heart because you had a child together.

You’d lay a photo on the table face-down. They’d name a number, you’d show the celebrity, and the picture would be one of those “what would your child look like” face morphs between you and the celebrity.

I could get some mileage out of something like that.

So I was going to explain this idea in the post and then I was going to show an example of such a photo. I wanted to choose a couple of people readers of this site would recognize, so I chose Joshua Jay and Elvis Presley.

So I went to this site and inserted pictures of Elvis and Josh, and… oh my god. The picture they gave me in return was so hilariously stupid that I decided to excise that part of the post because it would have derailed the whole thing. But I took a screenshot and just stumbled on it again and it made me laugh even harder.

So here it is….

The love child of Elvis Presley and Joshua Jay…

I’m going to put some space here to generate some tension as you scroll down…

here it comes…

hold on, let me quote from the site first…

“Have you tried something like this in the past, but have not been convinced by the results? BabyMaker is not just another face morphing program that stops transformation in the middle and calls it a baby.

Instead, BabyMaker is based on the newest facial recognition technologies. The program carefully analyzes the two faces, detects their facial features, and applies sophisticated mathematical transformations to these facial features to show a totally new face.”

okay, here it comes. A “sophisticated mathematical transformation” “based on the newest facial recognition technologies” showing what the child of Joshua Jay and Elvis Presley would look like…

Here is the lovely young lad…

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S.G. wrote in with some interesting additions to the Transporter presentation in the previous post…

The idea with The Transporter is great, especially with Halloween parties coming up, where I and a friend will go as Rick and Morty. An energy transporting wristband just sounds like an invention coming directly from Rick.

Here are some ideas I came up with:

• I will buy «electrode cream» (used to increase electrical connection between the Body and EEG machines) and apply it below the wristband. The idea being that there has to be an electrical connection between both hands. It would make the context more interesting and it’s a buy-in for the spectator.

• In the coin-phase of the trick I will tell them that I will not make one, but two coins at the same time travel from one hand to the other. Then I will close my fists, wait some seconds and suddenly smoke will come out of my fist. I will frantically ask the spectator to break the connection between my hands. When I open my hands, there is only one coin in my hand left (using a shell) and in the other hand there is a black mark (some ash I applied with my thumb). The idea being, that two coins was too much for the Transporter and one coin got pulverized. Then I will say that the Technology is still not ready but that we can try smaller amounts of energy and go into the second phase of the trick.

• Another idea I am considering is building a crazy sci-fi looking device where both wristbands are plugged into. Then I would screw in a small «light bulb» and it will start glowing when both wristbands are connected, increasing in brightness, culminating in a flash and then dying down. Each phase of the trick I would screw in a new light bulb, the idea being that it is used up during the Transportation.

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In case there was any doubt about what Jibrizy’s cell phone wallpaper is—it is, in fact, a picture of Jibrizy.

Presentation vs Context: The Transporter

Think of Coins Across. The coins go from one hand to the other.

If you just say, “I’m going to make the coins go from one hand to another,” you are presenting the trick without Presentation and without Context. There is no other layer beyond the impossibility.

Depending on the trick and depending on what your goal is, it sometimes makes sense to present a trick in this manner—just a pure impossibility.

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What might a Presentation for Coins Across look like? I wouldn’t be surprised to see a magician saying something along these lines:

“Have you seen Star Trek? Do you know the transporter? Well, in this trick, my hands are like the transporters and these three coins represent the Star Trek crew. I close my hands, and Spock goes across. I know what you’re thinking… Highly illogical, indeed!”

And it would continue on like that with symbolism and bad jokes, which are the two hallmarks of capital-P, Presentations.

A Presentation is something that is not essential to the effect, but it helps tie everything together. It relates the trick to something else people understand and can give some meaning to something that would otherwise seem arbitrary.

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What about a Context for Coins Across? That’s something I’ve been playing around with for some time now.

What I wanted to do was take the Presentation given above and just tweak it a little. Instead of the magic being a representative story of transportation, I wanted it to be in the Context of a demonstration of Transporter-like technology.

“Have you seen Star Trek? Do you know the transporter? Well, this is kind of like that. Imagine that technology in the super early stages, and you’ll have some idea what this is all about.”

Then I would introduce a couple of robotic looking wristbands. Something that clamped shut around the wrist, lit up, and made a whirring noise. I would slap on these two wristbands and then do coins across as an example of the type of thing you could do with them.

I searched for something that looked like what I had in my imagination. I couldn’t really find anything. Although these 7RON watches were something I considered.

But before I invested $300 bucks in this, I decided to use a more modest looking prop. And so I bought a couple of $8 anti-static bracelets.

They don’t look super sophisticated or technical. But that’s okay because I just wanted to play around with the idea. Most people have no clue what these are. If I ever ran into someone that did and she said, “Hey, that’s just an anti-static bracelet.” I’d say, “Yeah, that’s what I thought too. It does look quite similar.”

I’ve been having a surprisingly fun time with these and I’ll tell you about a few different phases I’ve been doing with them. But first I want to repeat something that I will hopefully not have to mention too many more times. The goal of a Context isn’t to be believed. The goal is to turn the trick from a story they’re watching to one they’re taking part in. A Presentation is 2D. A Context is 3D.

Here’s what I do. I have a quarter in finger palm and each wrist has one of these wristbands on it. I ask for a quarter and reach out my empty hand to receive it and at the same time I put the other quarter into Goshman pinch. So my hands are out flat with one quarter showing. I ask the person to connect the alligator clips from each wristband. As they do I switch so the visible coin is now in pinch and vice-versa. So when they look back the coin is in the opposite hand. About 50% of the time this is a big moment. The other 50% of the time they don’t notice because they weren’t really paying attention yet. Either way I’m now going to send the quarter back to the other hand. So this is either the first or second transposition they’ve witnessed depending on if they noticed the first one.

I could do more coin phases here, but as much as possible I want this to not feel like just a coin trick that’s done with these wristbands on. It’s not a coin trick, it’s a transportation trick.

So now I take off the wristbands and put them on my spectator and have her hold out her hands. “It takes a few months to master being able to transport physical objects. A coin is about as big as I can go. One woman I met could send a mouse. But I think she also ended up with a lot of dead mice before she got to that point.

“We’ll try to send something that’s only a very small amount of energy.” I take my friend’s hand and drag my finger across her palm very lightly, so it gives her a tickling sensation. I keep it up for 15 seconds or so (or until she orgasms, whichever comes first). I stop and step back. I tell her the sensation should transport and she should be able to feel it in her other palm soon. My hands are on opposite sides of her “receiving” hand, as if to focus her attention and energy on that hand. After a moment she feels a tickle along that palm. [If not obvious, this is done via a loop stretched between my hands.]

Now, a coin going from one hand to another—in the hands of someone you know who has an interest in magic—will probably come off as a magic trick regardless of the Context. But now we have a tickling sensation going from one hand to another. That’s much harder for them to say, “Oh, I know exactly what this experience is all about.”

They’re a little wobbly. At this point, I go in for the kill.

I take one of the wristbands off them and put it on me. So now I’m connected to the spectator. She closes her hand into a fist. I draw an X on my palm with a Sharpie. I close my hand. When I open it the X has vanished. When she opens her hand, the X has appeared on her palm. She flips her shit. [This is Double Cross.]

I’m sure you can imagine how strong that all is together and you can also probably see how I would never have gotten to that combination of effects and methods had I been focusing on a story (Presentation) to go along with Coins Across, rather than a situation (Context) in which to put the trick.

Other ideas:

• You could do a full Coins Across routine first, and then take off your jacket or hoodie and show the wires running from one wrist to another and then veer off from their to explain how you “really” did it, and follow it up with the other phases.

• You could clean up the extra coin situation by tangling up the cord a little and then when you open your hands the coin has duplicated rather than transposed. I kind of like the idea, but it feels somehow jokey to me, which is not what I’m going for here. I may try it in the future and see if it has any merit.

• I haven’t played around with the handling for this just yet but I had the idea for a final phase where I have the wristbands back on me. They give me a coin. I close my hands and have them unhook the alligator clips when I say, “Now.” They do and when I open my hands there is half a coin in each hand.

Mailbag #15

I’m thinking of starting a magic blog or something similar and I want to identify an angle to approach the site from. Did you start this site to write about amateur magic or was that just the direction things went as it progressed? —HP

I don’t think I ever thought, “I’m going to write a site about amateur magic.” It just turned out to be a through line in a lot of what I was writing about, because I’m not a professional performer. And most of the advice that I thought was bad was advice was obviously designed for professional magicians, but people just gave it as if it was general magic advice. “Script out your performances.” “Put your tricks together into strong routines.” “Make sure you clearly define your abilities.” “Don’t let them touch your props.” All of this stuff that—I guess—makes sense for someone performing magic professionally, makes you look like a real weirdo when you’re hanging out with someone and showing them a “casual trick.”

On the discussion forums, people were always asking about things like reset time, “can you do it surrounded,” and pocket management. It seemed weird that there was no one talking about things like, “What’s the best way to use your couch cushions to switch stuff when you’re hanging out with someone.” To my mind, it would seem like that would be something a lot more people could benefit from

Given the concerns of most people on the Magic Cafe, it seemed like everyone was either doing tablehopping, weddings, or trade-show magic. I found that strange. In my entire life I don’t think I’ve ever walked into a restaurant or a wedding and seen a magician performing there. And trade shows? I don’t even really understand that market. I get the sense that companies used to set aside a bunch of money for whores to woo potential clients and that has fallen out of fashion, so they’re like, “Uhm…. I guess we could get a magician?”

(When I see a trade-show magician lecture, I always find it highly suspect. It’s always stuff like, “And you can write the product’s name on the Ambitious Card to show that their product always rises to the top!” Like…the hell? Does that sort of thing really have any impact? If I ran a corporation, and I sent someone to a trade-show to scope out some new vacuums for my hotel chain, and he came back and said, “I was going to get the new Eurekas, because they gave us the best offer. But then the guy at the Hoover display made a big red sponge ‘dustball’ go from his hand to my hand, and he showed me a card trick that clearly demonstrated that Hoover ‘Makes dirt disappear like magic,’ so I went with them for multi-million dollar contract.” I’d be like, “It’s been nice working with you, but you’re fucking fired. Beat it.”)

So it always surprised me how little was written about performing from the amateur/social perspective. I didn’t really set out to write about it, I just wanted to write from experience, not theory. And all my experience was as an amateur. And writing about it made we want to try out new things and that caused me to perform more which brought on more ideas and on and on it went.

I think it’s probably helpful to have a POV when you’re going to start a blog or a youtube channel or something like that. But content trumps POV. If you have 100 ideas for posts, but no centralizing theme, just start putting out the content and your voice will emerge.

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Okay, so what’s the best way to use your couch to switch objects?

The item to be switched in should be behind the throw pillow on your side. The item to be switched out gets shoved down between the cushion and the couch.

Example

You have a loose blue deck behind the pillow. In your hands you have about 45 red cards with 7 blue cards on top. That deck is placed in a blue case. There is a Sharpie on the end-table on the spectator’s side.

You pull the deck out of the case and spread the top few blue cards. “Usually a magician will have you select one like this, so you don’t really know what you’re getting. It’s kind of sketchy.”

Turn the deck face-up and spread the cards wide across the cushion between you, leaving the top cards (the blue ones) somewhat bunched up. Have your spectator slide out any card towards themselves. Unbeknownst to them, the card will have a red black.

Scoop up the rest of the spread and take it in your outside hand (the one closest to the arm of the couch). Turn to the end-table near you. The deck is hidden from view by your body. Turn to your friend and say, “Hmm. Maybe it’s on your table. Is there a marker over there?” As they look and grab it, you jam your deck in the couch cushion and pull out the other deck behind the pillow.

They sign their card.

Now you have a freely-selected card with a different colored back and an examinable deck. Do something interesting with that set of circumstances.

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Hey Andy I really like the way you wrote up this version of Paul Harris’ Son of Stunner but there was something in It that seemed illogical. After you say you switched all the cards to face the same way, you then say you switched every card for one from another deck. The illogical step is that you switch their orientation, and then just get new cards when in fact getting new cards would be reason enough that they are all switched back.

Do you think that it would be better to combine this into one step. “While time was frozen I got a new deck, see they aren’t mixed up like the one we used, here I can prove it look at the backs” (something along those lines).

Or, would it be better to first freeze time, switch the orientation, and then freeze time a second time and switch the cards. I'm curious If this extra pause (freezing time for a second time) would add to or diminish the final effect.

Or, does this illogical step not really matter at all? —KO

You’re right. I never thought of it before and I’ve performed that quite a bit. I don’t think it matters that much, given that it’s such an absurd explanation to begin with, and it’s not the sort of thing most audiences would pick up on. But it’s always better to strive for a more logical impossibility.

I think freezing time twice is the way to go. Actually… maybe freeze it three times. That would be a good structure for the trick:

Freeze time.

“I knew what card you selected because I froze time and looked. You don’t believe me? Geez. Okay.”

You freeze time again.

“Okay, this time, while time was frozen, I reset the deck back to normal from the mixed up condition it was in. Proof positive I can really stop time. Wow… you’re still not believing this? Hmmm… I’m sure you think your skepticism is a strength but actually your inability to accept something I’ve pretty much proven beyond a shadow of a doubt suggests a profound weakness in your character. Okay. Whatever. I’ll try again.”

Freeze time. Then reveal the rainbow deck.

I like that. Thanks for pointing out the illogicality.