Rough Draft Week: Starcle Curve

In the last issue of the newsletter I wrote about The Learning Curve Universal Presentation.

This is an idea I had for using it with Dan Harlan’s Starcle trick. It gives the presentation a little more of a build and an arc, as opposed to the original. Not that there’s anything wrong with the original. This is just more my style.

So you tell people you’ve been learning the ancient Japanese art of paper tearing and offer to show them some examples.

You take a napkin and unfold it. Have a spectator write a 1 in the middle and a 1 in one of the corners. Fold the napkin back into its normal square configuration and tear out a 90 degree arc from the corner of the folded napkin that contains the center of the napkin. Unfold the frame and unfold the center to show you’ve torn out a circle of a napkin. Big fuckin’ whoop.

“That’s considered Level One Japanese paper tearing.”

Ball everything up and toss it aside.

You take a second napkin, and have the person write a 7 in the center and a 7 in one of the corners. Fold it up, as per Starcle, except for the last fold. Then with one straight tear you will tear out a star shape. Unfold the frame and center piece to show the two stars.

“That’s considered Level Seven Japanese paper tearing.”

Ball it all up and toss it aside.

“Would you like to see level 816 Japanese Paper Tearing?”

This is intriguing. They will want to see it.

Unfold a final napkin and have them write 816 in the middle and in a corner.

Fold up the napkin as per Starcle. Tear out the middle, allowing the spectator to hold onto and keep the middle piece.

You then unfold the frame, again showing a circle.

“I know, I know,” you say. “It looks like we’re back at Level One, but this is what makes it Level 816.” And you then unfold the torn out portion to show it’s a star.

I think this is pretty close to how I’ll do it going forward. But I’ve only had a chance to try it out twice, that’s why it’s in Rough Draft Week.

The first time I did it, it went quite well, but I wanted to prevent the idea that I had maybe switched in some pieces from the previous examples. That’s when I added the balling up of the old pieces, as well as the spectator writing the numbers on the napkin.

With that change, I think it’s..

Thanks to supporter PS for sending me on this path of a presentation for Starcle. He had written an email and mentioned the idea of doing Starcle twice. First just demonstrating your ability to tear out the star by itself, and then doing it again with the actual Starcle effect. That idea grew into the full presentation above.

Rough Draft Week: Under-Developed

On Tuesday I shared an idea based on an email conversation with supporter Sam W. This is another idea that came up in that conversation. It seems like it would be quite difficult to pull off, but if you could, I feel like it would be very powerful.

From Sam W:

One of the most magical experiences of my life, was the first time I went into a darkroom (at the age of 15), and I placed a blank piece of paper into a tray of liquid and watched as my image faded into view. It felt incredible. I get great enjoyment in teaching my friends how to develop photos and watching as they make their first print!

I was wondering if there was a way I could recreate that experience for the people I'm performing for.

From Me:

I don't really have any ideas off the top of my head for this. Although I did think how cool it would be if you had someone think of any object and write it down. Then you tell them that they've actually written on photographic paper (or whatever it's called) and you develop the paper and the photo that appears is of the object they wrote down. That may be impossible for a number of reasons, but it would be cool.

From Sam W:

Some form of what you described isn't necessarily impossible. I guess you'd need to have some kind of limited range of objects they can choose from and an index of preexposed but undeveloped photos. 
It would be a nightmare to setup, and I'm not sure if there is any time limit between exposing the paper and developing it. But what a great idea to explore.

---

I like this idea quite a bit. So, let’s say they write down “Apple” on the sheet. When it’s developed, they would see an image of an apple appear with their writing overlaid on top of the image. If they felt like the word was truly a free choice, that would be an awfully strong trick.

It might be a good revelation for one of those categories of objects where it seems like there are lots of options, but really there are only a half dozen or so that are regularly named. Then you would just need an index of those undeveloped photos.

The one thing I’m not sure about is if an undeveloped photo needs to be completely in the dark (or red light) until it’s developed. If that’s the case, that could make things a little awkward. But potentially interesting as well.

For example, you have someone join you in a completely dark closet or room. You ask her to name a European city, and you have her write it down. You then ask her if she has any idea why you’re in a darkened room. She says, “Because you’re a creep?” You say, “No, it’s because you didn’t just write the word you were thinking on a piece of paper. It’s actually an undeveloped photo.” You turn on a red light. “You could have named any city in Europe. I gave you the chance to change your mind a few times. You could have picked Venice, Rome, Barcelona, London, or 100 other options, but you settled on Paris.”

You then develop the image and of course the Eiffel Tower or whatever appears under the word they wrote.

The darkened room would likely make the swapping in of the correct image that much easier.

Another idea I had, which I have absolutely no method for, would be to give someone a sheet of photographic paper and tell them to draw a mustache on the paper. The mustache can be drawn anywhere, in any orientation, and of any size. Then when the photo is developed it’s a picture of a man and the mustache is drawn right below his nose.

The closest thing I came to a method is using a dry (non-working) Sharpie. So—in typical dry Sharpie fashion—you tell the spectator to make a “scribbled line” on other side of the page without looking. They would then see the pre-drawn line and assume it’s the line they made. The problem is, I think there’s likely to be too much variation between what they think they drew and what they end up seeing on the paper.

That method does have potential for a similar type of effect. Maybe you use the dry Sharpie to have them make an X in a “random” place on the paper and when it’s developed the photo is seen to be a picture of your high school marching band and the spectator has X’d out the face of that bitch flautist who broke your heart.

Okay, perhaps not that exact premise, but I do think there is something in the combination of a dry marker and an undeveloped photo that could lead to something interesting effect-wise.

Rough Draft Week: Precocious Precogs

If you’ve read my books, you know I like to incorporate children into effects for their parents.

I will often do this with some kind of video prediction, because it’s something the parents will keep forever.

If the kid is pre-verbal, you can have them grab at a card from a deck which will turn out to be the card one of the parents selects later. A 50/50 force deck is good for this sort of thing because you can show the camera a big mix of cards, but the kid only actually has to grab any one from one half of the deck.

But if the kid is at the point where they are speaking, especially if they’re in that mimicking stage where you can be like, “Say blueberry,” and they reply with, “Boobebby,” or something like that, then you can use them for a revelation in an effect.

You need a trick where you can force a particular word on people. Let’s say you’re using the Hoy book test and the word is, “Yesterday.”

Maybe you’re watching the kid while the parents are out or you just have a few minutes alone with him/her (because you’re not a creep and people don’t flip out when you’re alone with a child).

Record a video of the child and walk up to him and say, “Okay, Billy, say ‘yesterday.’”

Billy says, “Esterday.”

Now, in the same room, at the same time, record a video saying , “Okay, Billy, what word is Mommy thinking of?”

The room tone of these two recordings should be essentially identical. So it’s a simple matter of using any video editing software and removing the audio from the first question and replacing it with the audio of the second question.”

So now you have a video of you walking up to the kid. “Okay, Billy, what word is Mommy thinking of?” And Billy replies with, “Esterday.”

I’ve done variations on this dozens of times. Parents love this junk.

But in the last 18 months or so, I’ve started doing something new as well. I’ve started recording a third clip where I say, “Billy, what word will you think of?”

Now, 8-10 years later, when Billy is 12 or 13, I can send him a video as a prediction and have him think of a “random” word from a book. Then when he watches the video prediction, he’ll see himself as a toddler somehow knowing the word he would think of years later. I feel like that’s going to be a real Mind-F.

“You used to do this sort of thing all the time,” I’ll tell him. “You’d say ‘boom-boom’ 15 seconds before a lightning strike. Or we’d have you point to the team that you thought was going to win when we would watch sports on TV. And you were always right. Then your mom dropped you on your head one day and you became stupid like you are now.”

I know the idea of setting up a trick for a decade later is not something a lot of you will consider, but look, the time is going to pass either way. You know how quickly the last decade of your life went. The next will go even faster. It’s not like it’s a lot of work. It will just take 2 minutes of your time to set up something that will really astonish someone years from now.

Rough Draft Week: The Lady In The Water

Here is the concept as it stands in my head right now. I have a feeling this is not really possible, but something close to it might be possible.

The idea is you would have a seance type atmosphere established in a dark room. A subject for the seance to contact would be chosen by the spectator (forced). It might be a dead celebrity or a distant family member or something like that.

At some point in the seance you introduce a square-ish bowl of water.

Perhaps you have some secret way to cause the water to ripple, to indicate the spirit is present or something like that.

Then, at a later point in the ceremony, you pour some of your tea into into the bowl and then, after a little bit, you look in the bowl and amidst the swirling tea, you can see the distorted face of the person you’re trying to contact.

Freaked out, you dump the water into a potted plant nearby.

The next day the plant is dead.

Okay, so that’s the idea. The way I think you could maybe do something like that is if—adhered to the bottom of the bowl—there was actually undeveloped photographic paper with the ghostly image on it. And the “tea” you dump into the water actually contains photo developer. So, what looks like a strange image appearing in the water, is actually the photo being developed. But with the addition of some other type of element coloring and clouding the water, maybe it won’t seem like a photo? That’s my thought at least. Like if your spectator is in a darkened room, and they think they’re just looking into a white porcelain bowl, and you’re swirling the bowl and the cloudy water inside, and as they’re looking into the water a face begins to emerge, that would be scary as shit, right? It is in my imagination, at least. I don’t know if it would work in reality.

Then as you dump the solution out you could secretly remove and ditch the paper so print so the bowl is clean.

Oh, and you’d replace the plant overnight with a duplicate dead plant.

This idea came out of an email correspondence with supporter Sam W.

Here was Sam’s initial idea:

[Here’s a] photography based idea I've been working on [that would work as] more of a seance. 

You'd need to completely black out a room. Then light it with red lights, which would be quite an eerie environment for a seance, especially if you can use candles with a red glass around them (no idea if that works). 

Then in the middle of the table is a tray of water (actually just water), at some point in the seance (maybe the start) you place a piece of photo paper into it. Nothing will happen because it is just water. 
However at an appropriate point in the evening you sneak in a small amount of developer (which you normally mix with water anyway) and after a short period of time an image (which you preexposed onto the paper earlier) will begin to fade into view. 

I've no idea what the image would be, perhaps a photo of the ceiling above the table with something creepy coming out of it? 

The best part is that to develop a photo you also have to use a second chemical to "fix" it into place. 
But that won't happen here, so when they turn the light on at the end, the image will slowly fade away to black, and different shapes/patterns etc will appear along the way. 

I like the idea of leaving behind evidence, but then it fading away over time to create this weird object. 

I like that idea too, but thought it might be cool if we could disguise the fact that it was a photo at all by having the photo paper flush to the bottom of the bowl. And water that is so murky and cloudy with other shit in it that you can’t see exactly where the image is.

Again, I don’t have the technical knowledge to know if anything like this is really possible. But I get the sense that something similar would work, if not exactly how I wrote it up. And it would it be cool and creepy if we could get somewhere near that goal.

Rough Draft Week: Kettlecorn

If I was writing an advertisement for this it would say:

While at a restaurant you take the cap off the salt shaker and pour some of the salt into your closed fist. The audience can see the salt flowing into your hand. Instantly all the salt vanishes and your hand is seen to be completely empty.

You repeat the effect with sugar. Again, all the sugar crystals completely vanish. No thumbtip used.

It would be one of those ads that is sort of technically true, but would still annoy you.

In the first phase they do see the salt go into your hand, and in the second phase you don’t use a thumbtip.

So the idea is simply to do a traditional salt vanish (with a thumbtip) and then follow it up with Vanish 5000 by Gregory Wilson from the Art of Astonishment books.

I believe people will remember the image of the salt going into the hand in the first phase, and will remember the fairness of the slow, clean vanish with empty (no thumbtip) hands from the second phase, creating a sort of “best-of-both-worlds” illusion for the vanishing salt/sugar effect.

Now, why not just use sugar both times? You could, but switching from salt to sugar is part of the presentation that I’m going to go with.

It would go like this. I’d offer to show them something and then do the traditional salt vanish with a thumbtip.

“You wanna know how it’s done?” I’d ask.

“It’s simple science. Have you ever been so dehydrated that when you finally get to drink some water you’re able to down half a gallon in just a few seconds? Your body just immediately absorbs it. And then there’s other times, when you’re not dehydrated, that you can barely choke down 8 ounces of water

“This is based on a similar idea.

“About 6 days ago, when I knew we were meeting for lunch, I started starving my body of sodium/salt. I’ve just been consuming iceberg lettuce for the past week to put my body in a state of hyponatremia, which is severe sodium depletion. It’s not very safe, to be honest. I’ve been having intense headaches the past three days. But the cool thing is, when you put salt in contact with the body when it’s in that state, it just immediately gets absorbed into the skin, so it looks like it vanishes.”

They will probably be incredulous at this explanation. A faux-scientific explanation like this will often get a response like, “Okay, if that’s true, let’s see it again.” Ideally I’d get a response like that, but either way I’d continue on…

“I’d show you again but it won’t work now that I’ve upped my sodium levels.

“Oh, actually though, I could do it with sugar. With nothing but iceberg lettuce in my system, I’m running dangerously low on carbs as well.”

Then I’d do Vanish 5000 and lean in close so the other person can clearly see nothing suspicious happens, yet the sugar somehow vanishes too.

Reading this back now, I realize it’s a fairly well fleshed out routine. Not so much a “rough draft.” It’s just that I’ve never actually performed it, so it still feels “rough” to me, although I think it’s structurally sound.

The idea was spurred from an email conversation with supporter Irenee M, who wrote in an email to me:

"Right now, my preferred way to do vanish 5000 is to absorb the sugar through the flesh of my hand after a long day spent walking with a friend, as “I can only d this when I’m really tired.” It’s a, “quicker way to get the sugar directly into my veins.”

So thank to Irenee for the main presentational concept.

I think this combination of methods—when done in this order—is particularly strong. Most people, when seeing a salt(or sugar) vanish, will assume they weren’t paying close enough attention because they didn’t know what was about to happen and that you somehow ditched the salt at some point (you’ll often catch people looking on the ground as if you just tossed the salt away when they were distracted). You must have done something with the salt after it was in your hand because they clearly remember the slow trickle of salt going into your fist. So, when you repeat the effect, where is their suspicion? It’s on what happens after the salt(sugar) is put in your hand. The beauty of Vanish 5000 is that the dirty work happens long before that point. So using it as a follow-up to a traditional salt vanish allows them to burn you as much as they want and they’ll be putting their focus exactly where you want it to be for them to be fooled as much as possible.

Coming This Week

On the site this week it’s going to be Rough Draft Week. I’ll be sharing some ideas that I think might have some promise, but I only have a very basic idea of how you might use them.

To call these ideas “half-baked” is an insult to chocolate lava cake. They’re just ideas that I think could have potential, but for whatever reason I haven’t pursued them past the idea stage. So I figured I’d post some in case anyone wants to take one of the ideas and run with it.

The Juxe: Discography - Sloan

Sloan is one of my all-time favorite bands. I think they’re exactly what a rock band should be. They’ve been around for almost 30 years with the same line-up. They all write songs. They all sing lead at times. They all play multiple instruments.

They’re from Canada, and I always assumed they were like Canada’s Rolling Stones or something. Like a band that everyone in Canada knew. But then I looked at their youtube page and they have only 5000 followers. So I have no clue how big they really are in Canada. In the US, they’re not very well known at all. They’ve never had a big US hit, so anyone who knows them is someone who actively seeks out music.

In this post I’m going to give a favorite song from each of their releases to date. I’m not going to go into any deep cuts, I’m going to stick mostly with the hits, since a lot of you are probably new to them.

Underwhelmed from Smeared (1992)

This was probably their biggest “hit” in the US, reaching the #25 spot on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart. This album has a bit of a grunge/shoegaze sound that they wouldn’t really return to again. But this is a favorite song of many.

She said, "You is funny"
I said, "You ARE funny"
She said, "Thank you"
and I said, "Never mind"
She rolled her eyes
Her beautiful eyes

People Of the Sky from Twice Removed (1994)

Okay, according to some research I’ve done, Twice Removed was named one of the best Canadian albums of all time. So perhaps they are as big in Canada as I imagined, and I can’t really make a judgment based on how many people subscribe to their youtube channel.

I chose this song because I like almost any song with bah-bah-bahs in the lyrics. (And it’s probably the only one I’ll list that features the primary drummer, Andrew Scott, singing lead.)

The Lines You Amend from One Chord To Another (1996)

When I had my old blog, The Magic Circle Jerk, back in the mid-2000s (it doesn’t exist anymore), I had a sister site called The Lines You Amend, where I would dump some stuff that might be interesting, but I didn’t want to clutter up the main site with it. The name of that site was taken from this song.

It’s a little time-warpy to watch this video in 2020, of a song from the mid-90s, with a video that’s sort of mimicking a style from the mid-60s.

Money City Maniacs from Navy Blues (1998)

Navy Blues is where I first heard of the band, and it’s one of my favorite albums of all time. I have 1000s of albums in my collection, but this is one of only a handful where every song has been added to my “permanent rotation” playlist.

The first time I ever heard of Sloan was when a girl I knew put “Keep on Thinkin’” on a mix-CD for me. Out of context I thought that song sounded kind of southern-rock-ish, and I figured that’s what the band was. I ended up buying the album and realizing how wrong I was.

Below is the arena rock song Money City Maniacs which features the line, “And the joke is, when he awoke his, body was covered in Coke fizz.” Which has been apparently misheard frequently as, “And the joke is, when he awoke his, body was covered in goat piss.”

Losing California from Between the Bridges (1999)

If It Feels Good, Do It from Pretty Together (2001)

Rest of My Life from Action Pact (2003)

HFXNSHC from Never Hear The End Of It (2006)

A short punk number from their longest album (30 songs and 78 minutes). The title stands for Halifax, Nova Scotia Hardcore.

Witch’s Wand from Parallel Play (2008)

I think I’ve told this story here before. I was tangentially involved with the production for this video which lead to me meeting and dating one of the actresses in it for a couple years. So along with the fact that I think it’s a great song and video, my personal connection to the song will make this always a favorite of mine.

Midnight Mass from the Hit & Run EP (2009)

This song, and the previous one, are Jay Ferguson numbers. Band member Chris Murphy describes this one:

Midnight Mass” from the Hit & Run EP is quintessentially Jay: slap back everywhere, clicky bass sound, doubled acoustics, quirky (musical) piano figure, elaborate backing vocals (that get mid song applause when we play it live, Grand Ole Opry style) and the whole thing barely cracks 2 minutes.

Shadow of Love from XX (aka The Double Cross) (2011)

This is right up there with my favorite Sloan albums. This song gets a cool reprise six songs later on the album in the song Beverly Terrace.

Cleopatra from Commonwealth (2014)

Commonwealth was a double album with each band member taking one of the sides of an album. I didn’t love the conceit because I sort of like the way the previous albums wove together the material of the different members. But with that said, there were still a bunch of songs off the album that I dug.

Spin Our Wheels from 12 (2018)

A great power-pop gem from their most recent album.