New Organization Scheme: Part One

I wrote about how I keep track of the tricks in my repertoire back in the first year of this site. I haven’t made and dramatic changes to that system in years until recently, when I upgraded in a big way.

Today I’m going to describe the basic organizational structure I use, which I think many of you will find some value in. And tomorrow I will give a deeper dive into the advanced set-up I utilize. The advanced set-up is based on the basic set-up I’m describing today (you won’t be duplicating effort if you decide to “upgrade” to the advanced set-up). So you can create what I describe today and then see if the other elements I add tomorrow are something that would be helpful to you.

For years now, I’ve tracked my repertoire in a simple spreadsheet. It worked well enough for me, but I’ve been constantly on the lookout for something that has the simplicity of a spreadsheet but with the possibility of being more robust in regards to the the type of information it can hold.

Recently, I stumbled onto something that is very, very good. Something I am now using not only to track my magic repertoire, but a dozen other areas of my life as well.

It’s called Notion. “A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one.” What does that mean? Well, I’m not here to sell you on Notion. It can be utilized in a bunch of different of ways. I’m just going to describe this one particular usage. For our purposes, Notion is a program that allows us to create a spreadsheet that collects our repertoire of effects, but every item in that spreadsheet can then expand into its own page of information, video, pictures, etc.

The version of Notion that I’m currently using is free, and that will probably work well enough for you as well, although I’ll likely upgrade to the monthly payment plan ($4) to support the people behind it and take advantage of some of the upgrade features.

Now I’ll walk you through the basic version of my repertoire database. (You can skip this minutiae for now by jumping to the picture of Joshua Jay’s Magic Atlas).

Let’s say you’ve signed up for Notion.

On the left hand side you’ll see some sample pages already created for you.

Click, “Add a page.”

Where it says “Untitled,” write in Repertoire (or whatever you want to call it).

Then click where it says “Table.”

You’ll have something that looks like this:

Click on Name and rename that column Trick

Then click where it says “Insert Right” to insert a column to the right.

Click on Trick and click “Insert Right” again to create another column.

Click on the column heading Files and click Delete.

Click the Property 1 column and rename it Creator.

Click the Property column and rename it Source.

You now have something that looks like this.

Click the + next to Tags to create another column. Name it Notes and make sure the “Property Type” is “Text.”

If you click on Creator or Source, you’ll see that the “Property Type” is “Text” there as well. If you click on Tags, the “Property Type” should be “Mult-Select.”

So you click in the Trick column, and write the name of a trick in your repertoire. Then you tab over to Creator and put in who made the trick, then you go to Source and write in where the trick can be found.

Now you go the the Tags and create any tags you want to help you organize your repertoire.

Here are the standard tags I use:

FASDIU - "From A Shuffled Deck In Use" - These are the effects in my repertoire that require just an ungimmicked, unprepared deck of cards.

Carry On - These are tricks that require me to carry something with me. For example, Double Deception by Mark Mason requires me to have two gimmicked coins on me. Now, I'm not someone who loads up his pockets with shit before going outside. But I may take one thing with me before I leave the house in the morning, especially if I know I'll be hanging out with people that day. And then I kind of rotate my way through this list. I'll continue to take the same item until I perform it, then the next day I'll take the next item on the list.

FASLIU - "From A Shuffled Life In Use" - This is just my way of referring to impromptu effects with normal items that I don't have to make an effort to carry with me. Things that don't use cards and that I can get into at any moment.

Wallet - A list of tricks that would make sense to carry in my wallet (e.g., tricks with bills, business cards, etc.). I don't cram a bunch of stuff in my wallet, but I will keep one or two gimmicked items in there and rotate them out as I perform them.

Propless - Tricks that require literally nothing to perform.

Phone - A list of tricks on or using my phone.

Stack - Tricks with a stacked deck. Not necessarily a full-stack, but any effect requiring a stack that I can't get into in the moment of the effect.

MAD - (Marker and Deck) - Tricks that use just a deck and a marker. 

Gimmick - Tricks that require a special gimmick or prop of some sort and aren't the sort of thing I would carry around with me on a regular basis. (Tricks with gimmicked decks, for example.) 

Special - Tricks, like many of the ones I've written for this site, that are for special occasions. Meaning they require a large investment of time or set-up.

Perfect - Tricks that I think are perfect methodologically, that I can perform flawlessly, and that I have a perfect presentation for. The purpose of this section is two-fold. It allows me to identify tricks that are at the heart of my repertoire and that I would use if I was only going to interact with a person one time and wanted to have a particularly profound effect on them. And by having a section for "perfect" tricks it reminds me to make note of, and work on, the flaws in the other tricks in my repertoire.

I don’t use tags like, “Card Tricks," “Coin Tricks,” “Mentalism.” You certainly could, I just never felt the need to break up my tricks that way. Just add the tags that are useful to you. I have more than the ones I mentioned, but they’re more particular to me and not as generally useful.

In my old organization system, these tags were all separate tabs in a spreadsheet. Using tags is so much more useful because I can easily mark tricks with multiple tags and sort them however I like. I can then view the spreadsheet in many different ways. I can have it just show me all my impromptu tricks. Or have it show me all my tricks that just use and ordinary deck AND that I feel are “Perfect” effects.

But we’re just getting to the good stuff.

For the sake of explanation, let’s assume my complete repertoire was five tricks, all from the book Joshua Jay wrote when he was 9, or whatever. My page might look something like this…

Now here’s where we really take advantage of Notion as a tool. Because now I can go to any trick on the left there and when I put my cursor in that box it will give me a button that says “Open.” And now I can “open” that item into its own page.

And in that area where it says, “Press Enter to continue with an empty page,” I can now put all sorts of other information related to the trick that doesn’t fit well in a spreadsheet. I can write up a summary of the trick. I can put the details of the set-up that’s required. I can add photos. I can add videos of sleights or a performance of the trick. I can write up the instructions or link to files with the the instructions for the trick. I could make a whole other spreadsheet within this item on the spreadsheet, if i was so inclined.

Essentially you can create your own private webpage with any information you want, devoted to this trick and it just sits as an item in a spreadsheet.

Once you’ve added more information on that page, there will be a little “page” icon next to the trick in the spreadsheet.

So that’s the basic idea of what I’m using now to capture the effects in my repertoire.

Tomorrow I’ll give you some more information in regards to how I’m using Notion to track performances.

Restless

It’s 4:33 AM, Monday morning. I can’t sleep. Not because I’m tormented by anything, but just because I made the mistake of taking a long-ish nap yesterday afternoon and I’m not someone who recovers from that sort of thing well. It can mess up my sleep pattern for a couple of days. I’m a bit delicate that way. So I may take a long nap one afternoon and then that night I’ll fall asleep at what is a normal time for me but then wake up 15 minutes later completely awake.

So that’s what happened tonight and I thought, “Well… shit,” because it’s annoying. And then I thought, I’d make lemons into lemonade and just write a “stream of conscious” style post. This might be a terrible idea. It might only mess up my sleeping more. I was tempted to call this post, “Restless #1” because there’s a good chance it happens again in the future, but I decided I don’t want to jinx myself like that.

Speaking of making lemons into lemonade, I was once at a fair in New York when I was a kid. I made friends with another kid there whose family ran a food stand that sold spiedies and “fresh squeezed lemonade.” Spiedies are (is?) a Central New York dish. This Bon Appetit article describes them thusly:

“It's cubes of marinated meat—chicken, pork, beef, or lamb—skewered, char-grilled, and served in a hoagie roll or a slice of fresh Italian bread. The zesty marinade tastes a little like Italian dressing, and when it hits the grill, it caramelizes quickly on the outside and remains super-tender on the inside.”

It’s good stuff.

Anyway, the kid said to me, “Hey, do you want to see how we make fresh squeezed lemonade?” Don’t worry, the story doesn’t get disgusting. That sounded like fun to me. (Everything sounds like fun to me. I have some sort of disorder.) So he pulled off the near empty, clear multi-gallon container from top of the lemonade dispensing machine. It was something like this:

He walked me through a flap to an area behind their stand. He dumped out what was left in the jug. I was about to see how they made fresh squeezed lemonade. Do they have to cut each lemon? Does a machine do it?

And then he ripped open a large pack of Country Time Lemonade drink powder, dumped it in the container, filled it up with hose water, stirred it, then tossed in a few real lemons for looks.

It was pretty disillusioning.

Let’s see what I’ve got in my email…

Here’s an email from 12:58 AM

Amazing art you posted today. Always happy to learn about someone new and discover his work. Thanks. (Badass in barn with 4 women was my favorite) —JF

Ah, I was happy to hear some people took to Mort Kunstler’s art as I have.

Hmm… I think I’ve just had a revelation.

Here’s a painting by Monet. One of his paintings of water lilies. I guess he did a bunch of these for god knows what reason.

That is, apparently, great art. I’m too dumb to appreciate it. But I guess it is.

To me, this is great art.

This is Kunstler’s painting called, “Nine To Go.” What a story this tells! Not that it really tells a story. It’s not a comic strip. But there is certainly a story to be gleaned from this image. And that’s why it’s great art to me. You may read something different on the woman’s face than I do. You may imagine a different motivation for why he’s killing these guys than I have. But regardless there’s definitely a story told here.

I often write about the importance of story in the magic I perform. And then I always have to clarify by saying something like, “I’m not talking about tricks where your patter is a story that you’re illustrating with cards or something. I’m talking about the ‘story’ of this interaction.”

I don’t want to tell a story to go along with a trick. I want the tricks themselves to imply a greater story. Stories about magic, about me, about the spectator, about the fiction we’re experiencing—the world where such a thing that just happened could happen.

I look at the water lilies painting and I don’t get it. I mean, it’s fine, but I don’t really have appreciation of art for art’s sake.

Similarly, the cups and balls is one of the worst tricks in magic, in my opinion. With a few exceptions, it’s just magic for magic’s sake. There’s no story there, it’s just a ball vanishing and reappearing.

I lack the ability to appreciate art for arts sake, or magic for magic’s sake. I like art and magic to be in service of a story. I’m not making a judgment call on the relative worth of these things. Just my own ability to enjoy them. One of Monet’s lilies paintings sold for 80 million dollars. If you gave it to me and told me I had to keep it in my home, I’d put it in my fucking closet behind a laundry basket. So what do I know?

I’m not sure what my point is. I’m tired and not thinking super clearly.

I think what I’m getting at is this… I don’t think my inability to recognize the worth of art for art’s sake, and magic for magic’s sake is something special about me. I think the majority of people are like me. I think the majority of people need to relate to a piece of art (a painting or a magic trick) via story. The ability to appreciate a standard chop cup routine, for example, is probably rarer than magicians believe. We act like it’s somehow ingrained in people to enjoy magic as long as it’s fooling. But I’m not sure that’s true. We think it’s true because we surround ourselves with people who like magic for magic’s sake: other magicians.

Let’s look at that Monet painting again. I think there’s something interesting about it.

The interesting thing is that that’s a different painting than I posted earlier. But most of you probably didn’t notice that. So perhaps you can relate to laypeople who can’t differentiate between a trick where the jacks switch places with the aces and back again, and a trick where the four aces gather into the leader packet. For someone without a deep appreciation of paintings or magic for their own sake, it’s hard to make a distinction between things that tell the same story. Whether that “story” is a bunch of water lilies, or the story is, “I can make cards change.”

Ok. The sun came up a while ago. I’m going to go get breakfast. And then hopefully formulate some way to recapture a normal sleep schedule.

Update: A few people have written in to educate me about Monet. Thank you. There’s no need for anyone else to do so. I do understand his contribution to art and the style that he ushered in. That was, in part, the reason I chose him. The fact that you need to do research to truly appreciate Monet’s contribution, is the point I was getting at. Most people would have to have an appreciation of art history (that is, an affinity for art for its own sake) to be moved or enthralled by Monet’s work at this point in time. And that’s because there’s not an inherent story in the artwork. For those who do have the knowledge to appreciate Monet’s work, it’s because of the story behind the work, which they now understand. It’s not the image itself.

That goes along with the theme of this post—that story is the primary element that resonates with people in any type of art. (And that, in my opinion, one of the big weaknesses in magic is that we are so often presenting things to people that are completely story-less.)

Monday Mailbag #26

I’ve been reading your site since the beginning and one of the most interesting things about it is seeing your thoughts and theories develop over time. […]I was wondering if there’s something specific you’ve changed your mind about regarding magic. —DT

I bet there is a bunch of stuff. But here’s the first thing that came to mind…

If you had asked me five years ago, I would have told you that you should always try and do magic with items that are native to the environment. If you’re at work you should do something with post-its and staplers (for example, I mean, not necessarily those items). If you’re at a bar you should do something with a bar glass and a maraschino cherry. If you’re at a coffee shop, do it with sugar packets and stir sticks. That sort of thing.

My feelings on this have evolved somewhat.

I perform a lot in coffee shops, for instance. So it’s great to have material that uses napkins, spoons, coffee cups, loyalty cards, and those sorts of things. But it’s only worth doing effects with those materials if the effects are brief. The whole purpose of using native objects is so the magic feels unplanned. If you go into a four phase cups and balls routine with coffee cups and crumpled sugar packets for balls and a stir stick for a wand and balled up napkins for the final load, then I think you’re missing the point.

I started feeling this way in a performance last year. I don’t really remember the trick, but I remember asking for a few different specific items from around the cafe that I was performing in. Something about it just felt wrong to me. It felt like planned casualness.

So I just try and go with things that feel natural.

• It feels natural to do something quick with something that’s laying around.

• It feels natural to say, “You want to see a trick? Hmm… okay. Let me grab a sugar packet and try something.”

• It feels natural to say, “You want to see a trick? Okay, grab any four random items from around the room.”

• It feels natural to bring stuff from home if I have a specific trick/experience I want to share with the spectator.

But what doesn’t feel natural is to act like this is a spontaneous moment, and then gather a half dozen specific items to do a trick with. That’s something I didn’t recognize before because I was seduced by the idea of using “normal objects in their environment.” But if your goal is to create an atmosphere of spontaneity, you can’t do that with something obviously so well planned. You don’t look like a master of improvisation, you look like a guy who has been practicing at home with shit he got at Starbucks. It’s not a good look.

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David Regal owes you a drink. Interpreting Magic won the Tarbell Award over at your pal Steve’s “Cafe” for the best magic book of 2019. But I was following the voting from the beginning and your book had more votes early on in the contest than he ended up with at the end. If they hadn’t deleted all the votes for you, then you would have won. So I say you’re the unofficial winner of the Tarbell Award. —SO

Oh, I wouldn’t say that.

I’d say I’m the official winner of the award. And the Cafe agrees with me. Look, they didn’t delete those votes because they thought I wouldn’t win.

On years that I release a book, I suggest the Cafe rename its book award: The Second Placey. “And the Second Placey goes to…”

I’m not saying I would always win. I’m just saying the Cafe’s policy prevents any winner from knowing if they actually had the best magic book of the year. But they can be sure they have at least the second best book of the year.

I go into more detail on why the Cafe’s policy is actually beneficial to me in this post. The short version is just that I don’t gain anything from winning an award for a book that has been sold out for a long time. “Yes, but isn’t it nice to receive recognition for your work?” Not really. Once a year I ask the supporters of the site if they want to keep the site going another year. I only continue it if at least 90% sign up to support again. That’s enough for me as far as recognition goes.

Plus, I like Regal, so I’m happy he won. Congratulations, David, on your Second Placey!

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I added some crediting to the DAP Switch in last Thursday’s post.

Although I tried to make it clear, a couple people misunderstood the point of the GIFs on that post. Those were there to emphasize the actions of the switch to you, the reader. Not to show you what that moment looks like in context. In context there isn’t much to see (that’s kind of the point).

Here’s a story about using that switch in something that was not exactly a trick, but it still got a reaction that was very amusing to me.

Because I do a lot of my writing in public places, I befriend a lot of people who are in a similar situation. I think of these people like co-workers. Pre-Covid there was one particular woman I would see a lot at the coffee shop closest to my home. Usually if she came in while I was there or I came in while she was there, we would join each other for a minute or two, catch up for a bit, and maybe we’d continue to work at the same table or go off to separate tables.

One time I joined her at her table and, in the process of making some room, I used that move to switch out her AirPod case for a thing of dental floss (which I had been carrying around in my bag for this purpose). When she was getting ready to go she gathered up her stuff and went to put in her headphones. I expected her to notice it was dental floss and then immediately be like, “What the hell, give me my headphones back.” Instead, she turned over the case, had this weird look on her face, opened it, and then pulled out like two feet of dental floss and just stared at it for a moment. She went into this strange, confused, autopilot mode. I don’t know that she knew what she was doing. She just did what she normally does when she has dental floss in front of her, I guess. She didn’t go so far as to start flossing—that would have been amazing. But it was funny to watch her mind catch up with what was happening.

Sunday Art

I’m as dumb about art as I am about poetry, so my taste is similarly unrefined in both areas. My favorite artist is a guy named Mort Kunstler. He’s famous for his civil war paintings, which are great, but what I’m really into are the paintings he did for pulp magazines in the 50s and 60s. I find them inspirational, and I don’t mean that as a joke.

Here are a few of my favorites.

The Juxe: Favorite Newish Music - July 2020

Here is some of the stuff I’ve been digging recently.

Anaphylaxis by PUP (Toronto, Ontario)

There is a dearth of late-90s, early 2000s style pop-punk trash being released these days. PUP is probably at the top of the genre. This is their most recent single.

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The Forty-Ninth Parallel by Kacy & Clayton (Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan)

Kacy & Clayton are a folk-music duo, but this song leans heavy into country music territory. But not like some Miranda Lambert modern-country stuff. This sounds like country music from 50 years ago. I think. I don’t really know anything about country music.

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Ooh, La, La by Run the Jewels

I can’t stand much of the sleepy, sullen rap coming from young males these days. It’s women and old guys who are bringing the energy I like in the hip-hop game at the moment.

Run the Jewels, a couple 45-year old guys, bring it again on their newest album. This is the second single.

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Green Stone by Shadow Show (Detroit, Michigan)

Shadow Show is a three-piece from Detroit putting out some indie/garage/psychedelic music that is right in my wheelhouse. Their new album, Silhouettes, is all strong. My favorite song from it at the moment is this one…

Revisiting Practical Magic Week's Billet Post

Five years ago, I wrote about six benefits of creating business cards for some other entity (not yourself) and then using them in situations where you would either use your own business card or blank business card stock for billets/center tears or that sort of thing.

Here were those benefits again:

1. You're not destroying your own business card.

2. You're not carrying around a little pad of blank paper like a little fancy-boy.

3. It's a normal object that you would expect to find in a wallet.

4. If you use your business card or a blank card, then the idea of duplicates is inherent in the prop itself. You don't ever buy just one business card, or one piece of blank paper. These items only exist in multiples. So it's not difficult for a spectator to hazard a guess that there might be a switch involved. Alternatively, if you open your wallet, flip through some stuff, and toss out someone else's business card, this feels much more like it's the only one of these that can possibly be in play. Want to ramp up this singularity even more? Take a pen and write "4:00 Tues." in one of the corners on the business card. Do the same on a pre-folded duplicate. You can now switch these in and out and a duplicate will be so far away from people's thoughts.

5. They can be an unspoken status symbol. Remember, you can create a business card for anyone you like: someone prominent in your area, someone in the entertainment industry, someone in politics. You don't make a big deal about this. Let the other person mention it. For example, maybe I'm about to show someone a trick, I open my wallet looking for something for them to write on and toss Elon Musk's business card onto the table and say to myself, "yeah, I don't need this...." The other person might look at the card before or after the effect and ask why I have it. I'd just be like, "Oh, we were at the same event a couple weeks ago. He wants me to do his Christmas party this year. But that time of year is all about family for me. And as far as I'm concerned, fossil fuels are the future."

6. For me, this is the biggest benefit. Your business cards and blank pieces of paper are presentational dead ends. But you can create a business card to use in one effect that could lead the conversation in any direction you'd like it to go for a follow-up effect. You could have a business card for someone at the FBI, for a parapsychologist, for a futurist, for a casino CEO, for anybody. Why do you have this business card? You've been asked to consult, or give your input on a project, or they want to study you. Whatever, but it's all very fluid. If you're going to perform more than one effect in a casual situation then the transition has to be completely natural, and this gambit allows you to seamlessly flow into any other type of effect. 

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I’m bringing this post back up because I have a little gift for you from Myles Thornton. They’re a couple of fake business cards that you might consider using in your interactions with people. Here they are (larger files are available at the end of this post—you can just dump them on a business card printing site and have 500 cards for like $10)

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I don’t use them as a straightforward prop in a trick. I wouldn’t say, for example, “I met a psychic. Here’s her business card. Want to see something strange with this psychic’s business card?” That’s a little too pat for me. It’s a little too neat. It makes the business card feel like a prop in a trick instead of this thing that’s maybe legitimate that might just lead into something interesting.

Instead, I choose to use stuff like this indirectly.

For example, I’ll just use one of these cards like scrap paper. I just happen to need to have something written down for some other purpose (maybe a trick, maybe just to jot something down), and this is the first thing I find in my wallet to use. I don’t mention what it is. It’s just something to write on. Now, after that trick or demonstration is over, then they may notice what the card is, or I may point out what it is and steer the conversation in a direction based on the nature of the business card.

So maybe I turn the card over at the end and act as if I’m just now noticing what this card is. “Oh, god. This woman was a real kook.” Then I’ll tell some story of how I encountered her and ended up with her business card. Maybe there was some poorly organized magic convention I went to a couple months ago…

“And because it wasn’t clear what the purpose of the convention was, half the attendees were people with an interest in sleight-of-hand and that sort of thing. And the other half were a bunch of weirdo Wiccan chicks. This woman and I started talking during the lunch break. At first I thought she was fairly normal but the more she talked the more I realized she was a nutjob.

“She did show me one weird thing though… hmmm… maybe we can try it…”

Or you can act like you just stumble across the card in your wallet as you’re putting some money away and then you’re like, “Check this shit out,” and then you let the conversation roll into an explanation of why you have it, and let that seemingly inspire a demonstration of something. That will feel very natural, which is what you want in the moment. In retrospect the person might think, “Hey… was he setting me up for that?” But at that point, it doesn’t matter that much. The truth is, people don’t dislike feeling “set up” for something that was done for their own entertainment.

Often I’ll use fake business cards to plant a seed for a later performance. For example, with the exorcist’s card, if I showed that to someone or left it out to be seen on my desk at my workplace (if I had a desk, and had a workplace) someone would be bound to ask me why I have it. I’d keep it a little vague. “I met up with him because I had some questions about this thing I’m working on.” Then, at a later date, I can reintroduce the subject, “Remember that business card I had of that priest? Next time you come over, I have to show you this ring he let me take from his collection of… haunted objects, I guess? Or cursed objects. Or whatever the hell he calls them.” And now I’m setting up some future weird demonstration with some “old, creepy ring.”

This is such a simple technique, but I’ve found people really enjoy when you foreshadow something like this. It automatically sets your magic apart from what they’ve seen before. Most people, when they think of magic, think of something that has a definitive starting point, takes two minutes, and ends and it’s over and done with. To build up the effect with a little backstory is a fairly gentle way to capture people with a more immersive style of magic.

Here are the larger files. Thanks again to Myles for sharing them.

Exorcist

Psychic

Psychic UK

The Jerx DAP Switch

This tabled switch is something I use all the time. I assume it’s a standard move but if there’s someone who should be credited here, let me know. It’s definitely ideal for one-on-one social magic, so maybe it’s not in wide usage for those who perform outside of that situation. In the recent newsletter I mentioned I’d show it, so here it is

It can be used for pretty much anything. Cards, coins, bills, balled up napkins, business cards, rings, keys, cellphones, Sharpies. Really anything but matchboxes. NEVER USE IT WITH MATCHBOXES! Just kidding, you can use it with matchboxes, chapstick, silverware, condoms, receipts, whatever you can reasonably fit in your hand.

If you’re looking right at the switch, it will sometimes look perfect, sometimes it will look like there’s a little glitch in the matrix, and sometimes it will look bad. But that’s okay, it’s not meant to be done with someone burning the object. (Very few switches are.) It’s a move that happens in their periphery.

For now I’ll call this The Jerx DAP Switch. “Jerx” because putting the name of this site on it will encourage people who don’t like me to give me a proper credit for it if there is one. And DAP is an acronym for the method of the switch: Ditch And Present. [UPDATE: See end for a credit.]

The item to be switched in rests in your lap. At some point you pick it up with your left hand. If it’s small enough to palm, you can do so. Usually I’ll just hold the object in my hand and rest my index finger on the table.

The item to be switched is in your right hand. You are going to Ditch the object in your right hand and Present the object in your left hand, in the action of bringing your hands together. You must come up with a reason for putting the object from one hand to the other (either freeing up the right hand, or setting the object to the left).

Beyond having a motivation, the other important thing is to do it at a point in the routine when people aren’t burning the object. So you just watch their eyes and wait for them to look away from your hands. If they’re legitimately staring directly at the object, that’s a bad time to do any switch.

As far as the ditch goes, you can drop off the object as you swing your right hand in, or you can pull the object into your lap as you pull it off the table.

Here’s my friend demonstrating both techniques. First with a playing card and then with a condom

Now, to state what should be obvious, these are just demonstrations of the moment of the switch itself. But the switch isn’t done as a trick. (That is, it’s not like, “Watch this card change to this card!”) It’s done in service to another trick. In reality you wouldn’t set something down from where you just picked it up. You would take the item away with your left hand and set it aside. And you likely wouldn’t want to do such an overt change, as with the condom. You’d want to switch a gimmicked card or coin for a normal card or coin; one cased, shuffled deck for a cased, stacked deck; one regular condom for a condom of the same brand with a pin hole punched in it so you can get her pregnant and she’ll be forced to love you forever. That sort of thing.

[CREDIT: It looks like there are several similar things that have been written up in the past, as I expected. The earliest one I can find (but I would assume it predates even this as a basic concept) is Marlo’s Propelled Lapping which was written up in The New Jinx (thanks to EA for the credit).

You’ll find it more valuable if you think of it as more of a general concept than just as a card switch, however. Toss something in your lap with your right hand and bring out something similar looking with your left. Do this when they’re looking at your face and not your hands, and it does not matter what your technique is. Your hands can be six inches apart. If they spot movement and they look at your hands they will just assume the movement was you switching the item from one hand to the other.

But as I wrote about in the newsletter, this isn’t something you’d want to do right before or right after handing something out to be examined. And you wouldn’t want to do it right before or right after a magic moment. Try to come up with a timing where it happens on the offbeat.]