A Critical Examination of the How to Read Minds Kit Kickstarter

Big news…

Ellusionist is getting ready to do to mentalism what they did to magic!

Take a big, steamy shit on it?

How dare you. This is Ellusionist. Show some respect. Did you know David Blaine ripped off his entire schtick from Brad Christian? It’s true. I’ve done my research, now you do yours.

No, what they’re doing is releasing a beginners mentalism set, similar to their How to Be A Magician set that came out a few years ago. It includes things like a gimmicked book, a peek wallet, and an Add-a-No pad.

The kickstarter page is legitimately hysterical. They took every corny, sad, pathetic stereotype about the sort of people who are drawn to mentalism and then fed that to a bot or something who spit out this ad targeting the loneliest of the lonely.

“The ‘How To Read Minds’ kit is for EVERYONE who wants to be the life of ANY party or social situation. The normal, everyday person who wants to be anything but normal.”

“Here is the path the reaction almost always takes…..shock…. disbelief….. awe…. and finally….utter respect. We’re being honest when we say people want to buy your drinks for you, that’s not sales hyperbole. It happens time and again.”

Ah, yes… “utter respect.” That’s the reaction I associate with people who perform mentalism. And there is no question that’s the reaction you’ll get with this set. Well, either that or, “Look, everyone! This guy is carrying around a fake book with him so he can ‘read our minds.’ What a goon!”

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There’s a telling moment in the video where Brad is describing the reactions Peter Turner’s performance garnered. He’s clearly in awe of the response Peter got and he says, “And he does it just through everything in the box!” And his inflection says, “And he does it just through this box full of garbage!”

I’m convinced there is a mole in the Ellusionist offices who can’t stand Brad Christian. Certainly if everyone was working for the same team, someone would have said, “Hey… uhm, Brad? Do you think maybe we should cut this part where you’re clearly shocked that someone got a good reaction from the kit we’re selling? I mean, we’re trying to advertise this as if a 13-year-old will garner incredible reactions from it. Why would you be surprised that one of the biggest names in the mentalism community could make it work? If we were selling a can opener we wouldn’t include a clip of you implying you were surprised someone was actually able to open a can with the hunk of shit we were selling, would we? That doesn’t seem like a good look.”

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• Captivate ANY customer

• Be a stud, instead of a third wheel

• Boost your tips

• Make meeting people easier (especially dates)

• Get known as "the most interesting kid at school"

Okay… I’ve changed my mind. This ad isn’t hilarious. It’s wildly depressing.

Is this what it’s like to not have a personality? Is it just a constant search for a new hobby or outlet that will get people to pay some attention to you? I feel genuinely sad for someone who is like, “Oh, jeez, why doesn’t anyone like me? I know… I’ll learn magic. That will change things!” My advice to you is not to keep the Add-A-No pad in your breast pocket or it will fall into the toilet when one of the cool kids is giving you a swirlie.

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That being said, I’ll still probably buy this. I’m a sucker. I love this sort of thing. At the price that this sells for—$99—I can’t imagine the props being anything other than hot garbage. I think there’s probably a reason you don’t get a look at any of the props, and that reason is certainly not because it’s really high quality stuff. It’s kind of a no-win situation for Ellusionist. They put this together at a super fair price so you can’t really expect too much from the props. If they sold it for $300 with really well constructed props, we’d all be complaining about the price.

One of the few props that’s mentioned in the ad is a “Credit Card with 3 powerful secrets.” You get a brief look at this in the trailer. So the idea is you’ll be carrying around a credit card that doesn’t have your name on it? From HTRM Bank? (How To Read Minds Bank) Oof. And this is one of the few props they actually mention. So you can only imagine what the ones they don’t mention are.

But who cares! I’m sure I’ll get something from Peter Turner’s teaching. I always find him interesting to watch. And it will just be fun to get a magic kit around Christmas, sit on the floor like a kid, poke around in it, pull out every item one piece at a time and examine it.

Despite the fact I make fun of everything they do, I have a soft-spot for Ellusionist, so I’m happy to support them.

Is it going to help the art of mentalism to have a bunch of awkward virgins stumbling their way through these tricks and exposing classic methods through sheer incompetence? Probably not. But whatever. Burn it all down, I say. It’s time for something new.

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Okay, I do have one last comment…

The fuck are they talking about, “Hidden 2nd layer”?

You’ve made a box with two layers. The same way Russell Stovers does for chocolate. You’ve just stacked some stuff on other stuff. That’s not a “hidden 2nd layer.”

“Hidden” implies some kind of subterfuge. Maybe if the top layer was a chess set you could say the bottom layer was hidden in some way. But the top layer is fucking magic props, you goofballs! What are you hiding and who are you hiding it from? What is the benefit of this “hidden” layer?

“Heh, heh, heh. Look at all those unsuspecting people. All they see is an innocent little box with How to Read Minds on it and a single layer of magic props. Little do they know that hiding beneath this layer of magic props is… another layer of magic props. Oh, you poor naive fools! Blissfully unaware. ‘Oh, that’s just a box that holds 8 custom props,’ you think. None suspect the devious secret truth of the hidden layer !!!.”

Mailbag #17: Failure Edition

If you’ve emailed me recently and I’ve been slow to respond, it’s because we’re in the final week of preparation before sending the next book to the printers. Once that settles down, you’ll hear back from me.

Just read your post on testing near misses in a mentalist context. Interesting stuff, but Andy you guys missed a key variable I wish you had tested for: Order. In your descriptions the miss always came after a successful trick. That's misunderstanding the point of a miss. The miss highlights the difficulty of the *future* success. Think of the juggler who drops a ball the first two times and then succeeds on the third.

So what I wish you had tested was whether a miss *before* a given effect impacted positively the reception of a subsequent (or even the same) successful effect. My hypothesis would be in mentalism, yes, but in other magic, no. —JS

It’s definitely something that could be interesting to test—the extent to which a scripted failure might ratchet up the perceived difficulty of an effect—and maybe we’ll do so in the future. But due to the limited nature of the funds and the time the testing requires we tend to not test things we already know the general answer to.

What you’re suggesting is that we test the idea of a scripted failure that gets resolved in some way, but we already know that this works at generating dramatic tension. It works—as you said—in juggling, but it’s also the basis for all storytelling everywhere: in fiction or in real life. If this kid jumped on the stool the first time, that video would have 9 views. So we know that works. The actual extent to which it affects someone’s engagement with a mentalism/magic performance might be interesting to know, but that would fall a little further down our list of things to test.

What we wanted to look at were questions we didn’t know the answer to:

Is a near miss more or less impressive than a direct hit?

And

What types of failures, if any, do spectator’s find intriguing or off-putting?

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I had an interesting conversation with a layman friend recently. About near misses too. And the opinion was interesting

They think you should get it 100% right. Because... they KNOW that you’re not a mind reader. And so, you’re PRETENDING. Which means, in their logic, if you’re pretending and you still get it wrong, then you’re shit. You’re not even doing the real thing because it’s impossible.

I gave the example of a tight rope walker who almost falls. And probably pretends to almost fall.. They said well, it’s different. Because they’re REALLY tight rope walkers. And if they make a mistake it’s understandable. But you’re not even a REAL mind reader and if you can’t even get it right 100% when you’re pretending, WTF are you doing? —MB/NT

I don't think your friend's position holds up under scrutiny.

Almost no one is 100% rational, so for most people a near miss will either seem reasonable (if they believe mind reading itself is reasonable), or it will at least raise some questions in their minds in regards to what is or isn't happening.

But let's imagine a robot who IS 100% rational. If that robot saw a mind reader who was a little off, would it think, "This guy is shit”? No, it would realize that in order for the mind reader to be a little off, he must have known EXACTLY what the thought was and then CHOSE to be a little off as an artistic choice.

There is no real-world scenario where someone thinks you're shit if you're a little off unless they actually believe in mind reading and think a REAL mind reader should be perfect.

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Just wanted to add a little bit to the discussion about misses in mentalism.

I agree with everything you wrote and it mostly aligns with my experience. Near misses are powerful because they add to the logic disconnect (why would he say Jen if he had just read the paper that says Jane) and add a touch of perceived realism.

The big difference in results between a total miss and a missed connection is very interesting, and I'm not sure I would have guessed that.

However, with regards to a total miss, I do think that there is likely a difference between a testing situation where there are only two tricks, and a longer show (or a social situation where you've already established your 'abilities').

So for instance, if I'm doing my hour long show, and I've built up a rapport with the audience and I have a total miss sometime mid-show (not on purpose), very often I'll notice that the audience will actively try and make it fit as they want me to succeed. I think having already established your abilities and character really changes the way a total miss is perceived. —MP

There’s a couple things that could be going on here.

The first possibility—and the most likely— is that when you perform, you suggest that what you’re doing is based on psychology/body language/picking up on little clues. If that’s your character—or even if it’s part of your character—then I think a “total miss” makes sense in that context. In fact, it probably makes more sense than a “missed connection.” [See last Wednesday’s post if these terms aren’t making sense.]

If, however, you perform strictly as a genuine mind-reader, and you get a total miss, then what you might perceive as your audience “trying to make it fit,” may very well just be your audience feeling second-hand embarrassment. And they are trying to make it fit to ease that feeling.

Our performer during the testing was introduced as a mentalist who was going to do some mind-reading. In that situation, a Total Miss doesn’t make much sense to the audience. If he’s picking up on something, why isn’t that something the thing you’re thinking about, or at least close to it? There isn’t a very cohesive narrative that includes someone who really can read your thoughts, and ends up with something totally wrong.

But, if you’re saying your performance is based on psychology, then a total miss does fit in with that story.

This suggests a way of using failure to push your audience in the direction you want them to go.

If you want them to believe you’re using psychology or some other form of “educated guessing,” then use Near Misses and Total Misses and avoid Missed Connections.

If you want them to believe you’re “reading their mind,” then use Near Misses and Missed Connections and avoid Total Misses.

A big part of getting people to play along with a premise is simply to clear the path for them. Don’t make it so easy for them to deny the premise. If I want someone to entertain the notion that there is some psychic form of communication going on between our minds, then I’d want to avoid a Total Miss as that doesn’t support that story. If they’re thinking of a cat and you say they’re thinking of an airplane, it’s asking a lot of them to buy into a scenario where your minds were actually connected in any way.

But again, this is just my interpretation of the results of the testing as well as the impression I got being in the room and listening to people’s feedback. It’s certainly not intended as gospel, more as food for thought.

Food for thought. Get it? Like mentalism? Thoughts? Get it? Funny stuff, right? Like how thoughts are in your head, you know? But also food for thought. Like the saying.

A Magician’s Guide to Exploiting Failure Pt. 2

In the last post I wrote about Magical Failures. These were failures of effect that still maintained a magic element.

There is a second style of failure I use often that has no magic to it. At least not in the short-term.

Here is my thinking behind it. When I discuss magic with laypeople and ask them about potential methods and things like that, they always assume—correctly—that the methods in magic are mechanical in some way. That is, that there are gimmicks or sleights that work in some sort of way that—if explained to them—would make sense with their understanding of physics and the world around them.

They will often assume a method is more clever or complicated than it really is, but they will rarely assume it’s something more fantastical than it really is, which is the direction I often want to push them. And I’ve found the best way to do this is through a trick that fails.

Here are some examples

✿✿✿

I place a coin from my right hand into my left fist. I turn so we’re standing side by side and I place my right hand on your shoulder as we focus on my left hand. My left hand squeezes and slowly opens finger by finger. “And the coin… is… gone…,” I say.

But it’s not. You can see it right there.

“What are you talking about?” you say.

“Can you see it?” I ask. “Dammit.”

That’s the end of the trick. I don’t “fix” my failure. I don’t do another trick. You’re left thinking: Wait… what did he think was going to happen? What did he expect me to see, if not the coin?” You’re left to consider what methods might exist that would involve the coin still being in my hand, but me thinking you wouldn’t be able to see it.

If you follow up with me, maybe I’ll say, “Pressure points. I’ve had it work on me and I thought I had it figured out. If you press right here,” I say, and point to a location near your shoulder where I rested my hand during the trick, “it can affect your perception of certain metals and other materials. I have to work on hitting the right spot.”

✿✿✿

I sit with my friend and bring out some objects belonging to my great-uncle. A notebook and a ring. I also remove my own ring. We light some candles and I tell her about my old gypsy uncle and this notebook that has a bunch of different… well…”spells” for lack of a better term, written in Romani. I want to try something with her.

I put my ring and my uncle’s ring on her palm and cover it with my own hand.

I read from the book in a language neither of us understand. When I’m done I lift my hand. Nothing has changed. The rings still just sit there.

“Ah. Hmmm,” I say. and look at the rings closely for any type of difference. “I don’t think it worked.”

That’s it. There is no follow-up trick. That’s the end of it. We tried this thing and it didn’t work.

My friend is left thinking, “How could he have possibly expected anything to happen? He studies magic. He reads up on these things. What has he experienced that made him think it was even possible that reading a passage from a book might affect anything?”

Four months later. After the holidays. I tell her I spoke to my aunt about that ritual we tried from my great-uncle’s book. “I have an idea why it didn’t work,” I say. We sit down with the book and the rings and the candles again. “We need your ring too,” I say. We add her ring to the other two in her palm. I cover it with my hand. I read the passages from the notebook. When I’m done I lift my hand and poke the rings a little. “Holy shit, it worked,” I say. I lift her ring from her palm, and attached to it are my uncle’s ring and my ring, in a three ring chain. It doesn’t last too long. After a moment, they’re separated (and free for her to examine) but there was definitely a point where it was clear as day that the three rings were linked.

✿✿✿

One of the faux-techniques I’ll mention frequently when I perform is “sleight of energy.” So maybe I’ll attempt a card-across style demonstration but nothing will happen.

“Eh, that sucks,” I’ll say. “But I kind of expected it. There’s a way to do similar tricks with, like, sleight-of-hand or trick cards and things like that. But they don’t look so good. This version uses a sleight-of-energy technique. I don’t really have it down yet, but it’s not possible to practice on your own, so thanks for helping me with it.”

Sleight-of-energy? What does that mean? I have no idea. I’m just trying to paint a world that includes more wondrous sounding methodologies. I do this all the time. I’ll “explain” how tricks I’m working on are done and casually refer to “techniques” like sensory substitution, memory hijacking, dimension shifting, and so on.

✿✿✿

What I’ve found is that failure can actually be stronger than success when it comes to getting someone to consider more incredible ideas. This is what I think is going on… If I tell you that I want to try an old gypsy ritual and at the end of it something amazing happens, you are likely to look at that ritual as part of the “theater” of the trick. That’s what tricks are… moments of theater, moments of fiction. But if I try an old gypsy ritual with you and nothing happens, then you don’t really know how to categorize that experience. It’s not presentation for a trick, because there was no trick. But why would I bother doing it if nothing was going to happen, unless I believed maybe something would happen? And if I believed something might happen, does that mean that I really believe in this old ritual? Why would I—as someone who studies this stuff—believe in that (or in energy manipulation, or in pressure points that blind you metals, or whatever unbelievable thing I’ve suggested)?

This isn’t the sort of thing that works in a vacuum. This is a tactic I use on people who see me perform with some regularity. If I tried it on someone I just met they’d just think I was a lunatic. It’s only when you’ve seen some strong magic from me in the past, and you know I’m proficient, that you say, “Well, I don’t know what was going on, and it didn’t make sense to me. But he seemed to think it would work and I know he knows what he’s doing. So… maybe there’s something to it?”

I can’t make you, a reasonable 21st century adult, believe in the idea that I’m some sort of wizard. But I believe it is possible to get your mind twisted around itself to the point where I can at least get you to consider that the methods behind these trick are significantly more strange and mysterious than you would have ever assumed. And for me that’s a worthwhile pursuit

A Magician's Guide to Exploiting Failure Pt. 1

While the subject of failure in mentalism may be up for debate, in traditional magic, it’s not the sort of thing anyone really advocates for. It would seem there is little to be gained from failure in magic. If your double lift splits or your coin shell falls off your half-dollar into your spectator’s lap, it’s hard to paint that as being a good thing in any respect.

That’s true enough, as far as it goes, but there are ways to artfully use failure to add another layer to your performances.

Over the next couple of posts I’m going to talk about two of those ways. Today’s post is about…

The Magical Failure

“I’m going to make your card vanish,” you say. You place it on the table and rub it with your hand. You lift your hand and it’s still there. “Shit.”

“Is it smaller,” your friend asks?

“Is it?” you say, and pick it up and hold it next to another card. “Yeah, a little, I guess,” you say, unimpressed. “It’s supposed to completely vanish.”

This trick—which just requires a force, a top change, and a bridge-sized deck of Bicycle cards—is an example of a “Magical Failure.” You’ve failed, but something impossible has still happened.

Another example. In the past I’ve used the technique described in this post to perform this…

I force a four on someone, “With just a flick of my finger I will split the 4 into four aces,” I say. I hit the 4 and it splits into an Ace and a 3. “What the hell,” I say, and pick up the three and sort of scratch at the edge like I’m trying to figure out why it didn’t split into its component aces. “These things are $8 a piece. Stupid Ellusionist garbage. This is the third one that hasn’t worked right.”

Depending on the person you’re performing for, your reaction to the “failure,” and the nature of the trick itself, these Magical Failures may or may not come across as genuine failures. Your audience may be 98% sure that it was just a trick and you planned for that to happen. That’s okay. A 2% doubt is good enough to toy with their minds a little.

The more you use this technique on someone, the more likely they are to see as something you’ve planned. That’s fine. It’s still a fun presentational conceit. And if you’re like me, and you’re stubborn, and you never cop to it, they can never be completely sure.

In my experience, the keys to making a Magical Failure ring true are these:

1. Perform for someone who hasn’t see you do too much magic.

2. Prepare them for a something big, and then do something subtle. Ex: “I’m going to make this dollar bill levitate with my mind.” You strain for a while and eventually the bill shifts a little bit on the table.

3. Keep your reactions contained. Don’t go too big. Express minor frustration/disappointment/confusion. “Damn. Why is this so hard?” And then move on. They may say something like, “Hey, but the bill still moved. That was pretty crazy.” You completely dismiss this. “No… you see, it’s supposed to float up like three feet. The guy who taught me made it look so easy. But he also meditates like six hours a day.”

In the next post I’ll explore another type of failure that I use in my interactions. While Magical Failures give people some magic in the hopes of messing with their minds a little bit, what I’ll discuss on Monday gives people NO magic, but can screw with their head even more intensely.

Testing Failure

In mentalism there is the notion that getting something wrong can strengthen the overall impact of an effect. For example, if you’ve written down the name Jane and I “read your mind” and I’m getting “Jen… or Jan, maybe?” That, perhaps, gives some credence to the notion that I didn’t just read directly what you wrote down on that sheet of paper. If I had, then why would I be struggling? This is, I think, pretty sound reasoning.

Earlier this year we did some testing of this idea by performing a mentalism routine for people and having the performer nail the the thought of word directly or have him be slightly off. Later the effect was rated by the spectators based on impossibility and enjoyment and we got my least favorite sort of result when it comes to testing: there was essentially no difference in the ratings. Now, there are many people who would say that spending money to test magic is already the equivalent of setting cash on fire, but when you don’t get a definitive answer out of it, then it certainly feels like a giant waste of time and effort. (I guess technically we did get an answer, but the answer was “no difference,” so it felt like it wasn’t much of an answer.)

But we also did a smaller test that I do think produced some somewhat interesting results. What we wanted to test was get people’s responses to different types of failure.

Here’s what I mean by “type” of failure…

1. If you’re thinking of Jane and I say Jen, that’s one type of failure.

2. If you’re thinking of Jane and I say Patricia, that’s a very different type of failure.

3. If you’re thinking of Jane and I say, “Sorry, nothing is coming through,” that’s a third type of failure.

Let’s call these The Near Miss, The Total Miss, and The Missed Connection.

Here is what we did. We gathered people (25 in total) in groups of 2-4 to watch a short presentation from three performers. They were informed that they were seeing things in the early stages so there were still some rough edges, but we were just looking for their general feedback.

Each group saw some magic, some mentalism, and a a sleight-of-hand-gambling demonstration—each from a different performer.

The magician always did two coin tricks that worked.

The sleight-of-hand “expert” always did one demonstration that almost worked (he stacked four out of five cards in a royal flush, missing on one).

The mentalist’s performance was the only one that was different from group to group. This was the breakdown:

7 people saw a mind-reading card trick and a successful word reveal

6 people saw a mind-reading card trick, followed by a word reveal that was slightly wrong. (Near Miss)

6 people saw a mind-reading card trick, followed by a word reveal that was way off. (Total Miss)

6 people saw a mind-reading card trick, followed by an attempted word reveal where the mentalist never made a guess because he wasn’t picking up anything. (Missed Connection)

After each “show” there was a 10 minute conversation with the audience, the performers, and one of the people coordinating the testing. The conversation was very general, “What did you like, what didn’t you like. What did you find interesting. Etc.”. We didn’t have a real way to quantify what we were looking for at this point. I just wanted to get a feel for the response.

One thing that was very clear to me was that being wrong—like totally wrong, like saying, “You thought of a hammer,” when they thought of a sandwich—was not a positive in any regard. People were much less inclined to engage with that performer, or talk/ask questions about his performance when there was a total miss.

You might say, “Well, no one ever suggests getting things completely wrong in mentalism.” But that’s not quite true. I’ve seen people encourage performers to take risky guesses in hopes of getting something right. Or they’ll say it doesn’t matter if your psychological force doesn’t hit because being wrong can strengthen the effect. But in both those cases, you can end up being very wrong.

After the testing we did that day, my friend Mark, who was one of the performers, did come up with some data that was measurable from the post-performance conversations we had. He calculated the amount of time that was spent with each group interacting with the mentalist (as opposed to with the gambling expert or the magician) in the conversation after each performance.

The people who saw two successful tricks from the mentalist spent half of the discussion time (50%) talking/interacting with the mentalist.

The people who saw the successful trick and the Total Miss spent 19% of the time discussion time talking to the mentalist.

The people who saw the successful trick and the Near Miss spent 58% of the discussion time talking to the mentalist.

The people who saw the successful trick and the Missed Connection spent 56% of the discussion time talking to the mentalist.

If we extrapolate those numbers out (and I realize that requires a bit of a leap of faith when dealing with just a handful of people in each group) we can perhaps come to this conclusion:

A near miss (or even a failure to connect at all) in mentalism may not make a trick significantly more impressive or entertaining, but it has the potential to make a mentalism effect a little more intriguing. It perhaps gives the audience a little more to think about. There was slightly more conversation with the mentalist when their presentation included this kind of miss.

However a Total Miss tended to shut-down engagement significantly.

Here is my theory as to why…

When we present mind reading, it’s done as a type of communication between two people (generally). How does communication work?

• I send a message and you receive it.

  or

• I send a message but it’s not 100% clear.

  or

• I send a message but it doesn’t come through.

Everyone understands those situations. But what doesn’t happen in communication is: I send a message and you receive something completely different. So, in the example of a psychological force that doesn’t work, where I say you’re thinking of the 7 of Hearts, but you’re actually thinking of the 2 of Clubs, this doesn’t feel like failed communication—because that’s not how communication fails—it just feels like a failed trick or a wrong guess and there’s nothing in those two circumstances that will be perceived as interesting to anyone.

So what do I take from all of this? I would say that my interpretation of this is that in mentalism the occasional failure isn’t necessarily bad, and perhaps is even beneficial, so long as it feels like a genuine failure of communication. So if I’m ever going to script a failure, it would be of the “near miss” kind.

I will try to avoid “total miss” failure altogether. I don’t think there’s anything to be gained from it. The nice thing about mentalism is if you see yourself staring down the barrel of a “total miss,” you almost always have an out. You can say, “There’s something wrong. There’s a problem with the signal. Can we try again?” This “missed connection” type of failure doesn’t harm the story you’re telling and may, in fact, be beneficial. (Also, in amateur magic, you have the luxury of suggesting “trying again” an hour or a day or a week later. And creating this narrative that rolls on beyond a two-minute trick is always a positive in my book.)

In an upcoming post (maybe the next one) I want to discuss the use of failure in more traditional types of magic. I think it’s an under-explored idea and more powerful than you might initially imagine.

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?