Magic in the Time of Coronavirus: Part 3

If you haven’t done it before, now is the perfect time to connect with someone over video chat and show them a trick.

There’s never going to be a better excuse. “I have this trick I’m working on but I’ve run out of people to perform it on in person. Can you hop on Skype for a few minutes?”

This reasoning will actually make the trick stronger because of a subtle implication. The implication that you could do this in person, but it’s just this darn coronavirus that’s preventing you from doing so.

You should take advantage of this and not do something you could actually do in person. The window of the Skype frame makes switching and ditching and that sort of thing incredibly easy. You don’t need a pocket index, you can have stuff just sitting on your computer desk off frame. And it’s a good time to break out all your tricks that end up unexaminable.

Something I do pretty regularly over Skype—pandemic or not—is I have one of those small clear prediction boxes that were popular a few years ago (Clarity Box, Vision Box, Paragon 3d) sitting on a shelf behind me. I bring their attention to the box and the fact that there’s something inside. Then I can ask them to name anything, any word, shape, number, or whatever. I then cleanly grab the box and remove the prediction and it matches perfectly. This is very easy to do, of course, because as they’re naming their word, number, or picture, I’m just writing it on a card out of frame. As long as I’m looking at them and not in my lap or to the side, then they’re not going to suspect anything.

From their perspective, they see a clear box with a piece of folded paper in it sitting somewhere in the frame. I don’t go near it the entire time. At the end I remove the paper and unfold it revealing my prediction matches. I usually tell them to record the screen because they’re going to think I went near the box and did something funny and they’ll want to check again later. The truth is, the switch with these boxes can stand up to that sort of scrutiny. The only real sketchy part is what’s taking place out of frame.

This is a great trick to have your wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/kid or whoever help you out with. They can just sit down to the side of you without the person on the other end of the Skype call ever knowing they were there. Have that person think of any dream they’ve ever had that they can remember and have them describe it to you. As they do, your accomplice draws a simple image depicting the dream, then folds the card getting it ready to be switched in. Because you’re not doing the drawing yourself, whatever is drawn or written can be more complicated without you looking distracted in the least. And your hands can be in frame and seen empty until the point that your accomplice hands you the prediction off screen.

I find this to be a trick people particularly enjoy helping out with. This sort of sneakiness (hiding off screen, secretly drawing the picture, slipping it to you without being seen) is more fun than many of the other things we ask secret assistants to do (e.g., “Scratch your nose when I get to the object people decided on.). So with this trick you get to do something fun for someone over Skype, but you also get to bond with your quarantine partner.

Look, you go on Instagram and you see—in a lot of places—people sitting at home doing puzzles and shit. Despite the fact we have tv and internet, people are still starving for some entertainment and interaction. Reaching out and showing someone a trick is, in itself, a nice gesture. And if you know someone who might be holed up without having many family members or friends to engage with—someone who might be feeling isolated or lonely—it can be a good excuse to reach out to them and check in on them. You might not have the type of relationship where you’d say, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about you and I’m a little concerned and I want to see how you’re doing.” But you may feel comfortable saying, “Hey, I’ve got this thing I’ve been working on, can I try it out on you?” And the latter may serve the same purpose, and produce the same results, as the former.

Magic in the Time of Coronavirus: Part 2

I was talking to a guy I see frequently at one of my local coffee shops. He has seen me showing people tricks there in the past, but I’ve only ever done something specifically for him like once or twice.

We were mentioning the virus and the different ways it was affecting things, big and small.

“it’s funny,” I said, “because I had been working on this trick for like… forever… and just when I sort of had it figured out this thing hits and it has completely prevented me from being able to do the trick.”

I reached into my bag and pulled out a cased deck of cards.

“There’s a trick called the Inverted Card trick. It’s sort of famous in magic. It’s famously difficult, actually. It looks like this… I shuffle the cards. Then I’d spread them and have you select one. Then I’d have you hold it between your palms like this and concentrate on the card.” [During all this, I’m miming all the actions of the trick.] “Then, I’d take the card back and put it in the deck. Have you shuffle it. Then I’d take the pack back. Spread the cards briefly, then close the deck and hold it between my hands. You’d name the card and when I spread the deck you’d see your card was the only one facing the other way.

“There are two things that make it difficult. The first is the way I find your card. Since you held it between your palms it’s going to be warmer than the other cards in the deck. And with practice you can develop the sensitivity to feel that warmth as you spread through the deck. The second thing that makes it difficult is the misdirection and the sleights required to then flip that card over without anyone noticing.

“But anyways, I’ve worked on that trick for a long time and just really got it down about a week ago, and now i can’t even really do it. It requires too much passing of the deck back and forth. And holding the cards tight and all that. I think people would be a little weirded out by it

“So what I’ve been trying to do is come up with a way to do all that but without both people handling the physical deck. I think I’ve hit on something… can I try it with you? Okay… we’ll just imagine I’m holding a deck here.”

We go through the whole process of selecting and shuffling and holding the card… all while just miming it. At the end I ask him what card he chose. He names it. I pause, pull the real deck out of the case, and spread it to show that it’s the only “inverted card.”

It’s just a handling for the Invisible Deck, of course.

I’ve only done this twice now, but the reaction both times has been really, really good. Here’s why I think that is. Usually with the ID there’s a chance the audience will get ahead of you. That may lessen the punch of the climax. With this presentation, your spectator will definitely be ahead of you. You told them what’s going to happen. But you also told them how it normally happens: It happens with physical cards and sleights and misdirection. So when you then do it without those things you are reinforcing how clean the ID trick is. They will see just how straightforward and unsuspicious the handling is in a way they wouldn’t know to appreciate if you hadn’t established how the trick is “usually done.”

And there’s a very sound logic to the presentation. It feels like a trick that’s borne out of the genuine circumstances we’re in. Not just like a normal trick with some jokes about hoarding toilet paper thrown in.

I will continue using some sort of variation on this presentation—i.e., “Here’s how it’s usually done… and here’s this new version I’m working on.”—long after the virus situation has passed. It’s really strong.

Magic in the Time of Coronavirus: Part 1

I mentioned on Sunday that I would use a few posts this week to tell you ways I’ve built off the virus situation to get into a trick.

Before I give my first example, let me suggest a bad way to do this sort of thing: Patter.

“These [sponge balls] are actually coronavirus microbes. Watch as they go from my hand… to yours.”

This sort of thing—the sort of thing that smacks of “Look at me! I’m making my magic relevant!”—always sucks.

I don’t want to use patter (presentation), I want to use Context.

Here’s a very simple idea you could use with someone you’ve just met (assuming you’re in the position where you’re still coming in contact with new people).

This weekend I was in a waiting room at an automotive repair shop. There was one other person in the same room, waiting for the work to finish on her car.

We talked about all the weirdness that was going on. I asked her how her life was being affected by all this and what she was doing with her time now. After answering, she returned the question. “Well, a lot of my work obligations have been cancelled for a little while,” I said. “I’m trying to keep myself entertained, but you can only watch so much Netflix. Oh… you know what I’ve been doing? When I was a kid I was into magic and I started delving into that again as a way to pass the time. Want to see something?”

This is a pretty straightforward transition, but you can see how it feels very natural.

If I just sat down next to her and said, “Want to see a magic trick?” That would be weird.

If I sat down and talked to her about the coronavirus situation and then said, “Hey, want to see a magic trick?” That would still be weird.

Here I’m creating a natural transition in a way that would appeal to me. If someone said—“I used to draw in high school and then I stopped for some reason. It’s weird though because since the whole ‘self-quarantining’ thing started, I’ve found myself getting back into. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it feels productive? Or maybe it feels calming when things are uncertain. Maybe both.”— I’d think, That’s kind of interesting. And it would bring up questions: “What kind of stuff do you draw?” “Do you feel like your skills greatly diminished or is it something you held onto in the intervening years?” Things like that.

You might say, But Andy, you’re lying to her. You didn’t just get back into magic.

Okay, sweetie, thanks. I get it. This is an older woman at an auto-mechanics shop who I will likely not see again. My lie is just to lubricate the social interaction by allowing it to flow from a potentially unsettling subject to something fun, but in a way that makes sense. This is very much a white lie. And I have no problem with those when done for the greater good.

The nice thing about this particular transition is that it lowers expectations. I’ve “just gotten back into magi.,” She’s not expecting much. In fact, after I showed her the trick she literally said, “What?! I was not expecting that.” And this transition allows it to be “just a trick.” I don’t have to come up with some immersive story to go along with the effect. The story is already included in the broader presentation of how I’ve found myself drawn back to this old interest of mine due to the circumstance that are affecting everyone.

Tomorrow, a context for a trick you all own that fits perfectly in with our germy, gross, no-touching world.

Last 2019 Support Packages Available

In these uncertain times, you want to get your money out of the stock market and into something more stable. I recommend putting all your money in magic books.

I held onto a few 2019 support packages in case any got lost in the mail and replacements were needed. It looks like everything is accounted for so these final three packages are now being made available.

At noon Eastern Time today, a code phrase will appear in the blank below. [12:04 PM Update - These are all gone.] The first three people to send me an email with that code phrase in the subject line can claim one of the remaining packages.

The packages include the same rewards that people got for supporting at the $5/week level (book, pin, deck of cards, 2019 newsletters), so it’s not cheap, but it’s like you’re retroactively supporting that year at the same cost.

I will make a note here as soon as I can after the three copies are claimed.

Q&A Week: Bonus Coronavirus Post

This came in over email, not the Q&A form, but it seemed like a good time to address the situation.

Subject: Social Magic in the Time of COVID-19.

Just wondering if you’ve considered tackling the topic of social magic given the current reality that social distancing needs to be a thing. Any general or specific recommendations?

Well, the fact of the matter is, it’s the professional magicians who will be hardest hit by this. Vegas performers, table-hoppers, trade-show magicians… they may be the ones sitting at home with a lot of time on their hands for the first time in a while. Since I’ve started this site, I’ve heard from a number of professional magicians who say they like the site, but that they never perform socially. Perhaps after some downtime, they’ll get the itch to perform and decide to do something special for their friends and family.

For me, personally, the virus has upended some travel plans and consulting work I had coming up. It has also made me cancel an upcoming focus group testing session we had scheduled for the end of the month. But other than that, it hasn’t changed my performing too much. If anything, I find the people who are out in the real world are interacting more with each other than they were before. So while I wouldn’t do any tricks that involve touching or handing items back and forth for the time being, I have no problem doing other more “hands off” type effects for people.

The beauty of social magic is that it’s immune to the conditions of the outside world because it’s designed to work within those conditions in the first place. If you’re a professional magician and no one comes to your theater, you’re fucked. If you perform in a more traditional style and you have a gambling demonstration that requires a table and a close-up mat and five spectators, then you need to find a way to maneuver the outside conditions so you can get to that situation. But social magic is about conforming your magic to the situation, not the other way around, so it’s sort of indestructible. Social magic is great at a party with friends, but it also works in a Walking Dead scenario where we’re running from zombies and living in the forest. Humans are very adaptable but they will always need someone to entertain them or occupy their mind.

On Tuesday thru Thursday of this week, I’ll give three examples of ways I’ve used the current situation as a jumping off point for a performance of social magic in a way that I think feels natural and not like I was taking advantage of the situation or making light of it just to perform magic.

The goal of social magic is not to turn every interaction into a goddamn magic trick. But, when the moment is right, to be able to infuse magic into our lives in a way that is more seamless and ideally more affecting. This is a weird time, and there are certainly some people who find themselves or their loved ones dealing with something significant. But not you. You’re here reading a magic blog. So things are still going pretty well for you. Which will hopefully continue to be the case for all of us.

The Juxe: Backstory — Mirage People by The Capitol Years

I love a song with a good backstory.

I listened to this song for years before hearing where it originated. I wish you could do the same, because it probably makes the the whole thing more satisfying. But since that’s impractical, I’ll just go ahead and tell you the story.

The Capitol Years were one of my favorite indie-rock bands from Philadelphia in the early 2000s. In 2003 or so a Philly-centric blog called Philebrity named The Capitol Years the best band in the city. Then, a couple years later, some guy left a comment on the blog saying:

The Capitol Years are not a good band. Unchain yourselves, gang. I mean, I know the rock scene in Philly has reached a particularly low valley over the past few years, but that’s no reason to go slummin’ with these frauds. I assume they won by default. That’s the only way I can reckon them being named “Best of Philly” a few years back. Yes, It’s a shame The Burning Brides skipped town, but let’s hold ourselves to a higher standard than this. It’s a mirage, people. I’d love to know one substantial accolade these cats have on their resume (Disclaimer: Carson Daly does not count, now or ever).

(“Unchain yourselves, gang,” is a favorite saying of mine when I want to sound like a condescending douchebag. “Oh, you guys like The Mandalorian? Unchain yourselves, gang. It’s pandering tripe.”)

Anyway, by the next day The Capitol Years had recorded the following song whose lyrics consisted of lines from the guy’s message.

I was a fan of this song for a long time before hearing this story. Once I did, it made me like it even more. It reminded me of one of my life philosophies, (sort of) lifted from Oscar Wilde: Take everything that happens to you and make it good for you. Someone trashes your band on a popular local website? Turn that shit into a catchy, ethereal, banger.

The Capitol Years are in fact, a good band. Here are a few other favorites from their catalog.

Stones (Watch It Not End)

That song is for when your old lady dumps you for some other guy. You play it to remind her she’ll be back. “Watch it not end. You’re looking my way again.”

And just for the sake of completeness, here’s my favorite Burning Brides song (hard rock/garage rock). It’s a shame these guys skipped town.

Q&A Week: Day 4

What is your opinion where to draw a line to define mental magic and mentalism? Is such line base on premise / props / plot?

I don’t draw a line because I don’t really care. When I do mentalism I’m not trying to get anyone to walk away believing it’s a true skill I possess. So I can read someone’s mind and then do Color Monte. It’s all the same. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be a concern for you or for anyone else, just that it’s not a concern for me.

Why do you always pick on Joshua Jay?

Because I like talking shit about people but I don’t like dealing with people crying about me talking shit about them. I’ve been friendly with Josh for 15 years online and I know he’s not going to get worked up about anything I say about him. Josh knows well enough that I’m a big fan of his and therefore I can say that he sucks or that he’s corny or that he’s secretly gay, and all he’ll think is, “Secretly?”

Who is the guy holding the cards in the 2019 sponsor mailer box?

Seriously? Michael Ammar! The idea that someone might know about this site, but not know about Michael Ammar is unsettling to me.

Dont you think that Derren Brown does pass as real to his audience?

Yeah, probably, for much of his audience at least. His old disclaimer would say he uses: “magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection, and showmanship.” That true, but it’s also true for Silly Billy. It’s true for every magician. That’s the beauty of the disclaimer. People can kind of read into it however much they want. I don’t really know what his audience believes, but I’m sure they probably think there’s more “psychology and suggestion” in use than there actually is.

I like magic with cards Why are card magicians so boring in their shows? damn card magicians ruined the magic with cards!

This seems more like a rant than a question. And I don’t really buy the premise. Are card magicians more boring than coin magicians? Not that I’ve seen. What about guys who do cups and balls? I figure I’ve seen 200+ versions of the cups and balls in my life. I remember two. Penn and Teller’s version with the clear cups, and David Regal’s version that ends with the production of the red, yellow and blue plastic cups you’d find in a kid’s magic set. And mentalists? A lot of the most revered names in mentalism are dull as shit.

I think if you take a look at any branch of magic the majority of the performers you see will be boring and uninspiring. So I wouldn’t take a shit on just card magicians.

I use Spanish cards in my social magic. There are magicians who believe that these are not magic. Do you usually use cards other than poker?

I don’t know what Spanish cards are.

But you are doing magic for other normal people, not magicians. So it doesn’t matter what magicians think.

Did you grow up watching 80’s and early 90’s magic specials? Hate them? Love them? Understand them as a product of their time?

I grew up watching Copperfield’s specials and I looked forward to them for weeks. It was a similar thing with Penn and Teller’s appearances on David Letterman. It was such an exciting time to be a fan of magic.

I know everyone thinks the time in which they grew up was somehow superior to other eras, but you’re going to have a difficult time convincing me that the 80s and early 90s weren’t the perfect time to be a kid. First, you had all the freedom our parents had in the 50s and 60s—as a 7-year-old I was out of the house all day, only returning for meals and a quick drink from the garden hose. This was true of every kid in my neighborhood. All our parents would be reported to Child Protective Services if they were subjected to modern standards.

But in addition to that freedom we had something our parents didn’t have, we had access to the early days of video games, computers, and camcorders. So there was an influx of new technology to be excited about but it didn’t have a stranglehold on our lives. It really feels like it was the best of both worlds.

Why did I get off on this nostalgia kick? Right… 80s and 90s magic specials. They were great.

Have you tried the new Voodoo Needle Trick?

Yes. I have some thoughts on this. They will appear In the March edition of the newsletter coming in a couple weeks.

If you could have a superpower what would it be?

From my last book: “You know what ability I would like? I’ve thought about this for a long time. A lot of people will say ‘flight’ or ‘invisibility,’ or that kind of superhero stuff. But what I would want is the ability to transport myself to any moment in history. And not because I want to see Genghis Khan or whatever. I want to see, like, who killed Jon Benet Ramsay. What happened to Maura Murray. Mainly I just want to be able to figure out true crime mysteries.”

Just for fun, how would you present the linking rings in a social setting? (I'm thinking something like your Tenyo presentations)

I wouldn’t, for two reasons.

First, the linking ring effect suffers (in my opinion) from the fact that a ring routine is more or less the same sort of thing happening over and over again. In the effects I’ve published, you’ll see that almost none of them follow that structure. I just don’t think it makes for strong magic. Vanish a single coin and you can have a highly concentrated moment of magic. Do a one coin routine where the coin vanishes and reappears multiple times and it comes off as fancy coin juggling.

The other issue is—unlike the Tenyo stuff—the linking rings is a trick that people are already familiar with, so my presentation is boxed in by their knowledge that this is a trick that has existed for a long time—likely one that they have seen before. Therefore it would be quite difficult to create a new backstory for the trick.

If I HAD to, then I’d come up with some sort of routine that didn’t use a key ring. Then I could say, “If you look up this trick anywhere online, they’ll tell you it uses a ring with a slit in it. It doesn’t. There’s a magic organization that has been around for almost 100 years and their mission is to preserve magic secrets. And they found the best way to do that is to put fake secrets out into the world. So, obviously, a slit is the most basic idea, but people actually buy it. In fact I’ve never seen a site offering the real method. Here, check these rings out. No slit, right? Watch.”

That would be a pretty fucking fascinating premise. The idea that yes, you can look up this trick online and it will tell you that it uses a ring with a slit in it… but that’s just part of a massive disinformation campaign. Of course, that presentation would only work if you could follow it up with a version that somehow didn’t use a key ring, or completely disguised the use of a key ring in some way. I’ve heard some such routines exist, but I have a feeling they’re probably not any good.

[I’ve heard from a couple people that Penn and Teller expose the slit ring in their version. That makes sense. In fact, I can’t imagine a version designed to fool people that didn’t address this.]

Is The GOOD GLOMMKEEPING Seal of Approval still a thing? Had anyone used it?

It’s still a thing. But no one has ever taken me up on it. Maybe they thought it was a joke.

Do you still take "ads" (samples of the best stuff in a new product) for the newsletters?

Yes. More info on this next week.

What do you think of "Stargate" by Roddy McGee?

I think it looks cool. But it’s one of those tricks that I wouldn’t know how well it plays without trying it out. And I don’t own it, and probably won’t own it. So I don’t have much more to say on it than that.

Hi! Any advice for Mentalists to make our performance more audience-centric? Alot of what we do seems to emphasise "our" abilities . Thanks!

That was the subject of my last book. I can’t say too much here, but I will quote from the digital appendix to that book and that will hint at some paths you might want to take…

This book contains my approach to mentalism performed in casual situations, often one-on-one, and with the idea of shifting the focus off of the perfomer’s “powers.” This is difficult in mentalism because it’s a genre of magic which is solely about the performer’s powers. It would be like being a circus strongman and trying to make the act not about you. It’s kind of impossible.

So what you’ll find in this book is sometimes me putting the effects in different contexts (outside of mentalism), or me reducing the certainty of traditional mentalism and trying to cloud what I (as the performer) am saying is happening, or saying I’m capable of.

If the strongman comes out and bends a steel bar, then you think, “Yeah, I guess he’s strong.” But if a normal non-strongman (a Joshua Jay type) bends a steel bar and isn’t sure how he did it, or if you two bend a steel bar together, or if he gets you to bend the steel bar somehow and neither of you are completely sure how it happened; then that’s a more interesting story—in my opinion—than simply, “I worked out a lot and now I can bend steel bars.”

This book is my attempt at coming up with other ways to bend the steel bar.

Speaking of which, I have a couple copies of that book that were set aside in case supporter copies got lost in the mail. It seems like all supporters have received their copies so these will be made available on the site in Monday’s post which will go up at noon, New York City time. If you are interested in obtaining one of these copies, set an alarm or something and be here right around noon. They will be gone quickly.