The Ewing Ploy

The early-to-mid 80s wasn’t a great time for the NBA. The league had an image problem—specifically a drug problem—and the new NBA commissioner, David Stern, was intent on turning things around and putting the focus on more positive aspects of the game. Many people believed a key to this could be Patrick Ewing, a rookie player from Georgetown, since he was entering the league with a ton of fanfare. If the NBA could be assured of him going to a team in a high profile market, then that could potentially be a big boost for that market and, in turn, the NBA in general.

One of the things David Stern created to generate some positive buzz around the NBA was a lottery system to see who would get the first pick. In prior years, the way the NBA draft worked was that the two worst teams in the league would flip a coin to see who would get the first pick in the draft. This often lead to teams “tanking,” meaning, if a team knew it had no realistic shot of doing anything worthwhile in a given season, they would play as bad as possible in order to lose as many games as possible to have a good shot of getting the first pick in the draft. In 1985, David Stern changed the rules for the NBA draft so that the bottom seven teams in the league would have a shot of nabbing the top draft pick. The idea being that if you have a 50/50 shot of getting the top draft pick, then maybe it might be worth blowing up your season and playing like shit. But if there’s less of a chance of getting that top pick, then the reward might not be worth the risk of playing like garbage and alienating your fanbase.

So the way the 1985 NBA draft worked is that seven needlessly large envelopes were placed in a clear plastic ball and spun around and one was drawn at random and that team got the first pick.

And the team that ended up getting the first pick just happened to be the New York Knicks. A struggling team in a huge market that would benefit greatly by the addition of Patrick Ewing. Well, any team would have benefitted from the addition of Ewing. But it was thought that the league as a whole would benefit the most if New York was a better franchise with a star player.

So, because things worked out this way, conspiracy theories started to form.

One of theories said that (as you can see in the GIF above) one of the envelopes was hit against the side of the clear ball, and that was the Knicks envelope and that bent the corner so David Stern could find it when pulling out the envelope. Yes, they’re saying the envelope was corner crimped.

Another piece of “evidence” people point to is that David Stern puffs out his cheeks and exhales deeply before picking the winning envelope. This, they suggest, is clear evidence of his guilty conscience that he was about to rig the draft.

This may be the least compelling evidence of anything in the history of all humankind, but if you want to believe in a conspiracy theory, you’ll take whatever you can get.

There is one other way people say the draft was rigged, and it’s my favorite explanation. The truth is, the corners of the envelopes were likely to get banged up while spinning around in that drum. So bending a corner probably wouldn’t be the best way to mark an envelope. It would be like crimping a card and then hoping to find it after the deck had been tossed in a dryer set to tumble. So how else could they mark the envelope invisibly in a way that would seem to be instantly discernible?

They froze it.

Well, that’s the rumor anyway. The Knicks’ envelope was in the freezer until right before the televised draft. Then all David Stern had to do was feel for the cold envelope.

Is this feasible? I have no clue. People who have tried it out say that paper envelopes don’t really stay cold for too long after being taken out of a freezer. But we can’t know the exact make-up of the envelope. You’d probably have to try out different types of paper or paper-like material to really know if it was doable.

Has this method ever been used in magic? It seems like it must have. My initial thought is maybe you introduce a coin as your lucky coin. You say you found it 20 years ago on a particularly lucky day and you haven’t been without it since. And to sort of “prove” the connection you have with the coin, you put a mark on it, drop it a cloth bag with a bunch of other coins, have the spectator shake them up, then reach in with a clearly empty hand and remove the coin. (Or you could force a date and pull out the one quarter with that date on it from a bag of quarters or something like that.)

I’ve had a quarter in the freezer for an hour. I’m going to go try this and see if it works…

Okay, I think the answer is that it wouldn’t be that reliable. I initially took the coin right out of the freezer and put it in with a large handful of change and couldn’t find it in the bag just moments later. And then when removing the coins and going through them one by one, there was one coin that felt just slightly cooler. Maybe I should have froze it longer. I don’t know. I think if I froze it longer and used just a dozen other coins, then it probably would be a workable method. Actually, let me try that. I’ll go freeze the coin for the better part of the day. I don’t know how much of a difference that makes. I don’t really know the limit to which a quarter can get cold. At some point, once something is in the freezer long enough, it’s about as cold as it’s going to get. You’re never like, “Oh my god. This ice must have been in the back of the freezer for years. It’s really cold.”

Okay, this is crazy. I froze the damn quarter all day. I just now pulled it out and tossed it in a bag with only 12 other quarters. I shook them up for a few seconds and reached in and I could not find the (formerly) frozen quarter at all. It felt the same as all the other coins. I’m not buying the frozen envelope concept anymore.

So perhaps it’s not a valuable method for magicians, but I think there could be value in the story. Maybe you’re sitting around with friends and you see an opportunity to transition into this story (and I think there are more opportunities than you might imagine). “Do you guys know the scandal about the 1985 NBA draft?” You give them a brief background and then begin to slowly turn from reality into fantasy.

“But the truth is, there was no frozen envelope. And no one bent a corner on purpose (it would have been a little bit suspicious if David Stern was feeling around 28 corners for the one bent one). But the draft was fixed.

“And I know this because the president of the NY Knicks at the time was Jack Krumpe. And one of the assistants to Jack Krumpe was someone named David Mishkin. And David’s older brother was a guy named Theodore Mishkin. And there’s three things you should know about Theodore Mishkin. First, he couldn’t keep a secret. Second, Theodore was the last in a long line of psychics of Russian descent. His grandfather was apparently some big-shot in the Soviet Union back in the 50s. And the third thing to know about Theodore Mishkin is that he lived two doors down from me when I was growing up.”

You go on to tell the story of how when you were a kid getting into magic you reached out to your neighbor “Teddy” because you heard he had psychic powers. “I think he was amused by me. There was never a real ‘mentor’ relationship or anything like that. But he did teach me a few basic things. Including the technique he taught David Stern about how to discern which sealed envelope in a group held the thing you wanted. Do you want to see?”

You scrounge up some envelopes and have them write down made-up team names on six pieces of paper and the NY Knicks on the seventh. The envelopes are sealed and mixed around and you’re able to find the one with the Knicks in it.

You may feel that’s a long way to go for a 1 in 7 location, but I think the opposite is. I think because you go all that way, it makes a 1 in 7 location at least somewhat interesting when it might not be otherwise. And you’re certainly free to take it further. “That’s really only a basic psychic concept. David Stern learned it in like 10 days. I’ve been practicing much longer.” And you could do something where you open up 5 of the remaining envelopes and you’re able to match the person with the made-up team name they wrote. And then with the last envelope you’re able to intuit what the final person wrote without even opening the envelope. So a Sneak Thief type routine. I’m not going to get into methods here because there are a bunch of different techniques you could use. And this would be basic to intermediate mentalism methodology so you should already know a method you’d like if you’re considering something like this.

I don’t think this would be a good patter concept for a formal show, but in a casual situation where you’re seemingly jumping from this anecdote to an unplanned demonstration, I think it would work well.

And, as I said above, there are actually more ways to get into this effect than simply waiting around for someone to say, “Hmmm… I wonder what Patrick Ewing is up to these days?” You can basketball, sports, scandals, interesting neighbors, your early days learning magic, and a bunch of other subjects as a way to get you into this.

This would be an example of something I wrote about in the last book in a section called The Cast. The idea is to have some (real or imaginary) characters from your past that you can bring into your presentations from time to time as a way to broaden the scope of your magic. If, 18 months later, you’re having dinner with someone who was there for the Ewing story and you’re like, “Did I ever mention about the Russian psychic who lived near me when I was growing up?… Yeah, that’s right. He was the guy who showed me the envelope thing from the NBA draft. There was something else he always tried to get me to be able to do, but I had no luck until just last week….” You can now tie this spoon-bending thing you want to show them (or whatever) to this other demonstration you did the previous year. And it’s these connections that I think make for a more interesting style of amateur performing (as I explored throughout the last book).

You start with a story from 35 years ago. And it’s real. At least it’s real in the sense that it was an event that really happened and some people believe there was a scandal there. And now decades later you’re bending a spoon for someone. And that’s almost certainly not real, from their perspective. But you’ve built this journey where reality transitions into fantasy and tied all these things together in a way that I find keeps people more engaged in the long-run because there’s more of a story there to get caught up in. (As opposed to a series of disconnected moments performing for people, which—as I think most amateur magicians have experienced—can lead to diminishing returns.) That’s the takeaway here. It’s not really the Ewing story. It’s the idea of creating a connection between yourself and whatever fascinating concept you want to talk about, and then you can reintroduce that connection in the future with other effects to build a bigger story for people with your tricks.

Monday Mailbag #39

I got a bunch of emails telling me that Vanishing Inc. ripped off my business idea that I posted here. (In the section that starts—ominously enough for Vanishing Inc.—with me saying, “I have zero business sense.”) They have a new program called Vanishing Inc. Plus which is essentially exactly what I wrote about in that post: bundling their lecture offerings with deals on shipping and adding incentives to get you to purchase your magic from them.

Now, to be clear, they didn’t “rip me off.” I put the idea out there because I wanted someone to do it. And I also put the idea out there essentially saying, “Isn’t this an obvious idea? Why isn’t anyone doing this?” So it doesn’t surprise me if they were already working on it. And I would be shocked if Penguin doesn’t come in with something similar.

But yes, it’s more fun to think they “ripped off” the idea, so I’ll go with that angle. Another thing they ripped off from me was a program I had in place a few years ago called “Jerx Points.” This was where you would get “points” for certain things you did and, in turn, you would be rewarded with hyper-limited-edition (between 1 and 20 copies) of ebooks and or tricks. I’ve removed most of the mentions of this from the site, because I stopped doing the Jerx Points program and didn’t want people to end up doing stuff for points that no longer exist.

Well, Vanishing Inc ripped that off too! And now you can get your Vanishing Inc. points when you buy stuff or sign up for VI+.

I suggest you hop on that points program. If you fail to get 2000 or 6500 points, Vanishing Inc will make you wear this bracelet and hat.

Update: Okay, it looks like I misinterpreted how the program works. You need to obtain 2000/6500 points in order to get them to send you these things. It’s not to keep them from sending you these things. This is very confusing. Under what circumstances would you want these?

I think Vanishing Inc. may be over-estimating the enthusiasm for Vanishing Inc branded items. Among the “rewards” in the points program are Vanishing Inc. Sharpies, Vanishing Inc. card clips and Vanishing Inc. close-up pads.

It’s unclear to me for what type of audience it would make sense to use a Vanishing Inc close-up mat. Is there the option to just cut to the chase and have the exact URL where they can buy the trick I’m currently performing for them embroidered on the mat?

Unsurprisingly, they’ve taken the number one “Jerx point” activity (getting a Jerx-related tattoo) and made that the big point getter at Vanishing Inc as well.

If you get a Vanishing Inc tattoo you get 10,000 VI points. That’s the equivalent of a $50 gift card or 5 Vanishing Inc silicone wristbands. I’m not quite sure that’s worth the physical pain—or even just the financial cost—of a tattoo, but that’s not for me to decide.

The important question this brings up is: Are Vanishing Inc. points transferrable to your next of kin? I mean, getting a Vanishing Inc. tattoo has to be seen as a likely precursor to suicide. At the very least it shows you’ve given up and don’t even value your physical body anymore. So it would be nice to know if the desperate soul that commits such an act can bequeath those points to a friend or loved one.

And what exactly constitutes a VI tattoo? Do I have to get the logo? Or would this tattoo on my torso of Andi and Josh count?

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How often are you truly fooled by a trick? What was the last trick you were fooled by? —JB

Hmmm… it’s fairly common that I don’t completely understand the mechanics behind a trick. But, probably, 98% of the time I’ll have enough of an idea of what I’m seeing to satisfy me. The gum pack changed color? Eh, it looks like some kind of flapping mechanism of some sort. I may not know the exact method, but I know enough to feel like I wasn’t really “fooled.” Regular spectators are like this too. We like to imagine they’re not, but they are. They might not be able to articulate the nature of the gimmick on the pack of gum, but if they think, “Eh, it’s a trick pack of gum,” I think that alone is enough to say they weren’t fooled. (It’s enough in their mind, at least.)

But, at any rate, the last time I felt pretty fooled was recently when someone sent me this clip of Ryan Plunkett performing a trick at the 5:45 point in this video.

The way the face-up cards just start appearing in the face-down deck is unlike anything I have really seen before. So I was fooled. After doing a bit of research I know somewhat more of what was being used for the effect, but even knowing the gimmick, I’m still pretty fooled.

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In last week’s post on the Tone Hook, I wrote:

The best way to get into this is to be very casual at the start. “Can you hear this? How about this?” You’re not even really fully engaged with what you’re doing at this point. You’re just half-heartedly playing the tones without expecting anything. It’s only when your friend says they can hear something that you get excited.

CC writes:

Have you considered not proactively asking? Maybe you are just clicking on sounds on your own, and then the other person asks "what is that?" when a tone plays. That's when you start the engagement, explaining that you were just listening for yourself, and you replay all the sounds again to see which ones they can hear.

I suppose the downside is that there is no mystery built up around "why is he asking me these questions?" but it has the upside of the other person seemingly starting the interaction. —CC

Yeah, definitely. I think that’s probably the ideal way to do it. I did consider that before, but I’ve yet to be in a situation where I can use it in that manner and I do the write-ups based on my experience actually performing it. This Hook is one I’ve so far only used with people I’m working in the same room as, and normally they have headphones in, so I have to be more proactive with the tone.

But if I was just hanging out with someone in the same area and it was normal for me to be looking at something on my phone or computer, I would definitely just keep playing that tone until it annoyed them enough to comment on it. Then I’d act all innocent. “What? You can hear that?”

Dustings #31

Since last summer, my friend has had an envelope taped to the wall behind him in the area where he does Zoom calls for work. On the envelope it says:

WYWAAT

He never mentioned the envelope. It just sat there in the background. It was somewhat conspicuous, but it wasn’t the sort of thing that demanded anyone comment on it.

After eight months of work Zoom calls, someone finally said, “What is the deal with that sign behind you? I’ve been trying to decipher it for months.”

“Oh,” my friend said, “that’s not a sign, it’s an envelope.” He got up, pulled the envelope off the wall and brought it over to his computer and held it up to his webcam. “You wanted to know what this means?” he said, pointing to the letters on the envelope.

WYWAAT

His co-worker said, “Yeah. Is it an acronym? If it’s something personal….”

“No, it’s not. It stands for When You Will Ask About This,” he said, pointing out each letter. “Inside is something I wrote for when you asked about this.”

He opened the envelope and removed a piece of paper from inside and held it up to the camera:

You will ask about this on
February 8th at 11:16 A.M.

Which, of course, matched the exact date and time this interaction took place.

The method he used was simply an envelope with a slit in one side that he fed the prediction in when that slit was below the frame of the webcam. You could really do the same trick with any sort of prediction envelope or box that works will with an online prediction that you write off-camera. My friend would pre-write everything up to and including the month and have that off-screen with a marker nearby ready to finish the prediction. Every time the calendar turned he would write up a new prediction with the current month.

That’s the basic method. The magic comes in having the patience to wait 8 months for someone to comment on something and letting the moment come to you, rather than you trying to force the moment.

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This is a good all-purpose endorsement because if the magician saying it is stupid enough, it could apply to any trick.

The Tone Hook

Most of you—at least those of you over the age of 30 or so—have probably heard of the aural sensitivity indicators for latent psychic abilities.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it, the story goes that Stanford University was trying to study psychic phenomena in the 1970s. And one of the issues when you try and study these things is that if you put out an ad looking for test-subjects who believe they have psychic powers, you end up dealing with a bunch of nut-jobs. So these researchers had to find a way to identify potential subjects without putting out an open call that would inevitably get over-run by whackos.

So how do you identify these people? Well, there were a lot of different methods they used, but the most useful one was where they looked for “psychic aural sensitivity.” In their research they had found that people who expressed various psychic abilities had an abnormal sensitivity to sounds at very specific frequencies. So, for example, people who had a gift for intuiting images would often be able to hear tones at a frequency that most others couldn’t. And if the researchers wanted to gather such people, they’d go to a crowded shopping area or a sports stadium and they’d broadcast that tone over the PA system. Then they would just have to look for the people who were reacting to the noise that 99+% of the people couldn’t hear. And that’s how they would identify potential test-subjects for their experiments.

None of this is remotely true, of course. It’s just the backstory I came up with for this Hook which can be used to transition into any sort of psychic/mentalism effect where the spectator briefly possesses some type of power.

I don’t start with the story above. That’s just the backstory that exists in my head depending how far deep into this I want to go with the person.

Here is what this Hook looks like in action…

I was hanging out with my friend Katy recently. We had just had lunch and afterwards we went to her place to get some work done (we weren’t working on the same project, just in the same room).

At one point, in the middle of the afternoon, I turned to her and asked, “Can you hear this?” As I played something on my phone.

She shook her head and said, “Turn it up.”

“It is up,” I told her. “How about this. Can you hear that?” I said, as I played something else.

She told me again that she can’t and I said, “Hmmm. See… I think I do hear that one, actually. But maybe I’m imagining it.”

“How about this,” I said, holding out the phone again.

“I hear that,” she said.

“Wait… seriously?” I said, sitting up from my slumped position on the couch.

“Yeah. Why?” she asked.

“Hold on. Are you being serious? What do you hear?” I said, somewhat skeptically.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Just like a high tone, I guess? Like a beeping sound. A high beep.”

“Holy shit,” I said. And I gave her a very brief explanation of what it was she heard. That explanation is essentially what you read at the beginning of this post, but I didn’t go into all the details. I just said that these were tones used in parapsychology research at Stanford University to identify people who had potential psychic gifts in certain areas.

“You heard the tone that indicates an aptitude for psychic cognition related to numbers.”

“Huh?” she asked.

“Are you good with numbers? Do you have an intuitive sense with numbers?”

“No,” she said. “I’m terrible with numbers. Terrible with math.”

“Hmm… Well, that could mean a few things. Maybe the tone is off—maybe my phone isn’t reproducing it well. Or the research behind the tone isn’t accurate. Or you could be dealing with a temporary condition. Sometimes people have brief bouts of psychic abilities. Like it’s something that comes on and then fades away. Like being congested.

“Here… let’s try something,” I said.

That, generally, is how it would be used.

In this particular instance, I then went into an impromptu version of Larry Becker’s Some Total routine that I use where the spectator gets a brief glimpse of a few different 4-digit numbers and she, inexplicably, is able to instantly give the total of those numbers without any thought.

This trick knocked my friend for a loop. She was speechless.

After letting the moment sit for a little bit, I brought out my phone again and said, “Can you still hear this?” She could no longer hear the tone. “Ah, okay, yeah. I thought that might happen. It was likely just a temporary back-up of mathematical intuition. We probably cleared it out with that demonstration.

That’s how the Hook is used. They hear a special tone that you (apparently) can’t hear yourself. That tone pulls you into a demonstration of whatever “power” is supposedly suggested by their ability to hear the tone.

The best way to get into this is to be very casual at the start. “Can you hear this? How about this?” You’re not even really fully engaged with what you’re doing at this point. You’re just half-heartedly playing the tones without expecting anything. It’s only when your friend says they can hear something that you get excited.

Below you will find five different pages. On the first page, none of the audio files play any sound. On the other pages, one of them will play a high-pitched tone. Just bring up the particular page that’s in line with the trick you want to show the person. For instance, if you wanted to frame a drawing duplication as them drawing something that’s in your mind, then you would bring up the page where they hear the tone that represents an aptitude for psychic powers related to images.

You, of course, just act like you can’t hear the tone yourself.

At some point after they’ve heard the tone and we’ve talked about it, I secretly switch to the page where no tones play on any of the audio files. This allows me to wrap it up nicely at the end with the talk about how the power is frequently only temporary. I always like to clean things up at the end of a routine that gives the spectator “powers.” If I say, “You have the ability to separate red cards from black cards” and you go home and you can’t do it, then you can quickly dismiss it as a trick. But if I explain some reason why you temporarily have the ability to separate red and black cards, then you wouldn’t expect to be able to do it when you got home. And so we keep alive a sliver of doubt that just maybe you really did do it in that moment.

Okay, here are the pages:

No Audible Tones
Psychic Ability for Numbers
Psychic Ability for Words
Psychic Ability for Images
Psychic Ability for Colors

Notes:

1. I like to pretend like maybe I can hear one of the other tones on the page. That will set me up for my own demonstration at some point later.

2. I say that I got the link for the files from a friend who is studying something related to the subject in graduate school.

3. Don’t immediately have a trick ready to go. You want it to seem like you have to think of something that would suit them based on which tone they could hear.

4. You could make your own version of these pages in Notion. Then you could send them a URL with one working tone on the page. Then after—or even at an opportune moment during—your performance you could go into the page on your end and edit it so the one that did make a noise, no longer does. So they would hear the noise originally, and then after the trick the sound file would tone-less for them. As if they have gone back to normal after the demonstration burned through the psychic power that had accumulated.

5. Don’t turn the volume up too much on your phone/computer when you do this. You don’t want the tone to overwhelm them. You just want them to be able to hear it clearly.

Monday Mailbag #38

Do you have any thoughts on Grandpa’s Top from Adam Wilber?

I really love the look and the story that goes along with it, but I’ve purchased a bunch of magic that I loved the look of, only to have it sit in a drawer somewhere. Will I regret this purchase? What do you think? —ST

What do I think of Grandfather’s Top? Well, I don’t like it nearly as much as grandma’s bottom.

The effect looks pretty good. I’m not 100% convinced that the vanish will look great in real life, but you could always leave that off if that’s an issue.

I’m not really an IT guy, other than Loops which I can keep on me without them getting in the way of things. I don’t know the hookup used here, but I would guess it would be the sort of thing that I wouldn’t want to have to deal with.

The bigger issue for me is the presentation. I don’t think it’s bad, I actually like it. “This is a top my grandfather gave me….” That’s perfectly fine. And I like to use a more heartfelt and personal type of presentation from time to time, as opposed to my typical presentations which are usually more ridiculous/fantastical.

But my rule is that I don’t use an earnest presentation that is so easily disproven as bullshit. It’s one thing if you’re a professional magician, and your audience assumes everything is a lie. But in a casual situation, this type of patter will hit differently (or, at least, it should hit differently) and I feel like you need to be more careful about using a presentation like this that would be very easy for people to realize is just a “stock” presentation (once a quick google search leads them to learn this a stock trick).

Think of it like this. If your friend told you a funny story that happened to him and later you realized it didn’t really happen to him, it was something he found online, you might find that a little weird. But you’d also probably understand it. The story is funnier if it’s in the first person, so he told you the story as if it happened to him. But if he told you a sweet, sincere story about some special moment he shared with a relative, and you found out that was something he found online, you’d think he was a lunatic.

This is probably not a huge issue for a lot of you, but I’m playing the long-game. I’m performing for friends. If I say something somewhat believable, (e.g., “When I was little, my grandpa gave me this toy that used to be his when he was young”) then I want them to at least half-believe it. And if they find out that story is just part of a trick that you can buy and pay for, then that’s going to get in the way of their engagement with future presentations that I want to establish.

So really it’s not the trick or the presentation I have an issue with. It’s just how easily “discoverable” this trick will be online. It’s such a specific trick that anyone with a particular interest in what you did could find it online with an obvious google search. I try to avoid that as much as possible. I want to give them no footholds to discover after the trick is over. I certainly don’t want them to find this story about my grandpa being told by a bunch of other people on youtube. But if that’s not the sort of thing you care about, then that’s not something you need to take into consideration.

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Are there any magic theory books you rely on or would recommend? —KU

No. At this point I avoid most theory books. It’s not that I think they’re of no value. It’s because most weren’t written with my type of performing scenarios in mind, so a lot of what they write doesn’t apply to me. And I feel like I have enough time and opportunities to perform that if there is a fundamental “theory” to be found about some aspect of performing, then I will uncover it over time from audience feedback, and that will make it more concrete and real than if I had just read it in a book. And—just for the sake of this site—it’s more interesting to write about something that came from actual performing rather than saying, “Here’s something I read in a magic book.”

On top of that, most of the theory books that I have read in the past feel a little questionable to me. A lot of the theory seems derived from how they imagine the spectator is thinking, not from actually breaking down the tricks with spectators, which seems to me the only real way to get at some answers to these types of questions about performance.

And finally, when I watch a lot of the great magic theorists perform, I have no desire to perform in the manner they do. So it’s difficult to get excited about reading a book of their theory.

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Just wanted to say I really enjoyed the blog yesterday about "social media magic." Your last paragraph really hit the nail on the head. Are you aiming for the most amount of views, likes, new penpals(?),or other digital stats, or are you aiming for a new experience? I think that's what I really enjoy about the Jerx style so thanks for continually making the thought process more and more clear.

On the exposure side of blog, one method of exposure I do love is exposing the easiest version of a trick to a friend and then doing that trick again while your friend is around so they think they know what to look for, but you do the trick with a different method the next time they are present in a group. They feel like they are on the in, you acknowledge subtly they are on the in, but they aren't. Your friend thinks they are watching you do a trick for the group, but really you have two audiences and two tricks going on at once. The group experiences the trick as normal, and your friend gets really confused because they don't see the method you fed them beforehand. I'm not sure if this is a Tamariz thing or a Jerx thing... but i feel like it has roots in both ways of thinking. I've done this and had a couple people come up to me afterwards saying "hey two weeks ago you explained the trick worked because of that second deal thing, but today Jessie dealt the cards into your hand herself.... what am I missing?!" And then go into whatever weird deflection that suits your style. —AM

Yeah, I’m a fan of anything along these lines. As I wrote in this post:

“Traditionally, talking with the audience about the concepts of secrets, gimmicks, magic shops, trick-cards, exposure, etc., might have been seen as undermining the magic. But in the world we live in now—where almost all magic secrets can be found on a device in everyone’s pocket—messing with their understanding of secrets and gimmicks and those sorts of things, can be one of the strongest ways to fool them.”

This isn’t the sort of thing you want to overuse, because it loses its potency with people over time. But every now and then, “teaching” someone something and then using that information against them to fool them at a later date is a very strong way of messing with their heads.

Dustings #30

Due to a few requests, I’ve decided to make the Here Be Bunnies cover available as a shirt in the Dumb Houdini Store.

And, despite absolutely no requests, it’s also available there as a shower curtain.

You can just go to the shop, click the image and see the products there.

And, just as a heads up, the Dumb Houdini shop is run on the Threadless platform. Unlike the GLOMM stuff and anything else Jerx-related, where I (or someone I know) is handling the mailing, once you order from them, you’re dealing with that corporate entity, not me. So you will go to them if you have any issue. But if there’s anything particularly jacked up with your order, let me know too.

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I feel like Josh is always doing stuff like this. But doesn’t it seem a little one-sided? I mean, there had to be a lot of Nazis who liked magic too. Whose going to tell their story? C’mon, Josh. Do better. Let’s not be so inequitable with the stories we tell. Would, “Close-up Pads of the Third Reich,” make a good coffee table book? I don’t know, I’m just spitballing some ideas here. I’m trying to point out there there are stories to be told on all sides.

Although, to be fair, it does look like Werner Reich has an incredible tale to tell. Look at that caption: “First there was a death march.” First!? Damn. You know your story is pretty harrowing when it starts with a death march.

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When I was first trying to figure out how I could keep this site going as a reader-supported operation, I read a book with a title like, “Turn Your Blog Into A Business” or something like that. It had a bunch of suggestions in it that I completely ignored because it made running the site sound like a nightmare.

One thing you’re supposed to do when you monetize a blog is to “end every post with a question.” You do this to “encourage engagement.” So if I was writing about double lifts, then I would end the post by saying, “And what’s your favorite double lift? Tell me in the comments.” (I don’t write too much about double lifts, so it would be more like, “Who’s your favorite Nazi magician? Tell me in the comments.”)

I hate that kind of fake/forced interaction, which is why I never do it.

That being said, I do have questions from time to time about things I can’t answer on my own, or just things I’m curious about. I’ve decided to start putting those questions out in their own posts from time to time. It’s not to “increase engagement.” It’s because I actually am interested in the answers. Those questions are going to start popping up on the site on the occasional Tuesday or Thursday going forward.

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Speaking of questions, let’s solve a mystery. I’ve been asked if I can help with tracking down a trick based on the way a deck is stacked. I can’t help with it, so I’m putting it out to the Jerx Hive Mind (the Jive Mind) to see if we can get an answer. Here’s the question:

I was going through old decks and found one arranged AAAA,2222,3333,4444, then a double backer and a blank card, then the 5-K by suits. Do you know what this is a set-up for?

Send me an email if you know.

And if you have a question about some gimmick you recently found that you don’t recognize, or some trick you’re trying to track down that you only half-remember, feel free to send it my way and I’ll pass it along.

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Magical Transformations #3

My original sketches for the rabbits that appeared on the nautical maps in the endsheets of the last book. Followed by Stasia Burrington’s rendition. Then the full endsheets so you can see where these small details ended up.

The Anonymizer - Exposure and Online Magic

Are you an employee at Ellusionist who has something to say about their culture of work-place sexual misconduct, and a permanent red palm-print on your buttocks from Brad Christian spanking your bottom every time he walks by? Were you a Grammar Host at the Magic Cafe who can give us a behind the scenes perspective on the great “Oxford Comma Debacle” of 2004? Are you a former assistant to David Copperfield whose job it was to capture a child and sacrifice it to Moloch every evening so David could maintain the powers he needed to fly around the theater and bang supermodels?

If you have a story you want to divulge, or a perspective to share, or some dirt to dish—without attaching your name to it—you have an open invitation to send it to me and I’ll be happy to post it, keeping you anonymous. And you can do so with complete assurance that I will never tell a soul who you are. Your secret is 100% safe with me. Blabbing about shit that someone has asked me to keep private is against my brand.

Today I’m going to share with you an email I received from a well known “social media magician” regarding his thoughts on exposure and why he is not against it. I think it’s an interesting perspective. Not one that I completely agree with (I’ll share my thoughts afterwards) but I don’t perform magic on the internet, so it’s not really something I’ve given much thought to. (But that won’t prevent me from having a lot of rambling thoughts to say afterwards.)

In the next section you will read his thoughts…

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The Anonymizer: The Social Media Magician

One way of removing ego from a trick is to expose the secret. When a viewer doesn’t know the method, they are kinda forced to give the credit to a smug magician. “Well, I guess he did something to make that happen.” Even when they are acutely aware that the magician is playing pretend. So when talking exposure, we have to remove Jerx-style magic from consideration. This is about the traditional ego-driven performance of magic tricks. Magicians are selfish narcissists who have fooled themselves into thinking their tricks instill wonder but they’ve kept the coolest parts of the art a secret.

Reasons not to expose:

-Ruins the audience’s wonder
-The secret was invented by and belongs to someone else
-It prevents other magicians from using that secret to fool future audiences
-Exposure disrespects the “art”

I’m certainly open to the possibility that magic exposure is immoral and bad for the art. However, the arguments above start with some major presumptions about wonder and how the audience experiences magic.

To start, we cannot assume all magic gives wonder. Sometimes magic is a visual gag or fun piece of eye candy and that’s okay. The audience probably knows that the bird came from somewhere inside the magician’s coat but it was a visually satisfying performance even though the viewer arrives at 90% of the method. And I do believe the audience often has (what they believe to be) 90% of the method. And that’s enough to steal their own wonder.

But maybe the secrets belong to the inventor. That would make for a fragile career because just one guy could take you down by exposing the secrets. I don’t think that’s how it works. Also should be noted that I’ve never bought a magic prop with an agreement to keep the secret; the one exception being Michael Weber who has LOTS of fine print with his tricks. I’m not even sure one is allowed to perform tricks bought from Weber.

I guess it’s an unspoken agreement but it’s rarely taken seriously as magicians constantly reveal “acceptable” tricks. Is there some rule book I missed with the exceptions to the rules? I’m asking because it seems okay for Penn and Teller, Mac King, Amazing Jonathan, Justin Willman, Criss Angel, and even Blackstone Jr. to expose some methods used by other magicians.

Another question is, “Does one guy exposing a secret prevent the rest of the community from ever using that secret again?” That’s silly. Of course not. Masked Magician is still being watched and getting decent numbers online yet no one in the magic community is complaining. Why? Because time has shown that nobody sees or remembers anything. Same goes for classic methods exposed in Now You See Me movies or TV Shows like The Mentalist or Arrested Development. Methods like mirrors, trap doors, pulls, and flash paper have been seen by millions yet we can still safely entertain with them. This seems to be the most difficult mental hurdle for magicians to get over.

Lastly, does exposure disrespect the “art”? No. I think knowledge only increases respect. If I wanted to disrespect the art I could point to an LA Times article to show how racist, sexist and abusive the magic community is. It would also be bad for the public to learn that mentalists sincerely want the public to believe they have special body-language reading abilities. As you’ve written many times, if you want the audience to think you can really read minds you’re mentally-ill and sad.

My dream is that the general public have as much magic knowledge as an average-60-something-magic-convention-attendee. What I mean is I want the public to know about mirror tables and deceptive bases (because it makes illusion shows more fun to watch), but David Williamson will still fuck ’em up. Who loves magic more than magicians? No one. Magicians fly to Vegas and watch every magic show. We might consider giving the public a taste of why we love magic so much. Think of a dealer room where dopamine is released in one's brain every few minutes! See something impossible, then immediately learn its clever method. It's a constant reveal of a “mystery box” every few minutes to steal a JJ Abrams analogy.

Guys like Greg Rostami have a great 10 minute act based around exposure. Of course he sticks to the dealer’s room but Greg shows you a cool trick with your phone in which he reads your mind and knows what celebrity you’re thinking of. Neat-o. Then he reveals the secret for sale and shows you you how he hacked your phone! Naturally magicians say “take my money that’s the coolest thing ever!”. I believe the public would enjoy Greg’s presentation with the secret revealed at the end MORE than they would enjoy Oz Pearlman pretending like he’s a wizard who influenced your thoughts.

I’m having a blast and am excited to take magic tricks to weird new places with this freedom. With only one major requirement: audience first. Not all magic secrets should be revealed. If a secret is revealed, it’s because my data shows that the audience wanted to know the secret and wouldn’t care to watch the trick otherwise. The material must be in service to the audience.

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I don't really have a strong opinion on any of this, but I will play devil's advocate here, just for the sake of providing a counterpoint to this email.

1. While I agree with his thoughts as they apply to performing on tik tok, facebook, etc. I'm not sure they hold true for in-person performing.

2. It’s probably true to say that most laymen want to know the secret, but I don't know that necessarily means they receive any joy from knowing it. I think it’s more a matter of them just being uncomfortable not knowing how something is done. The people who get true joy from learning secrets are the people who pursue learning magic. Greg Rostami is performing for that self-selected group of people. But there's nothing to necessarily suggest people generally get the same thrill from learning the secret. If they got the same thrill we got, then they would probably already be in the magic community. Do lay people want to know secrets. On some level, yes. But I also think it’s not completely clear-cut. Would Copperfield or Derek Delgaudio or anyone have sold-out shows if they were revealing the tricks at the end? I don't think so, but I don't really know. You could easily argue that a random tik tok magician is more "popular" than Copperfield or Delgaudio. And that's true in a lot of ways. But I do wonder if a live show could exist that exposed the tricks. You could say P&T did this, but their artistry was the exposure. They didn't put their art into the effect and then explain the effect at the end too.

3. I bet there are some who would say that exposing the methods is just as much an ego driven pursuit as not doing so. In the old days you could build your ego by creating a sense of mystery and power about yourself with magic. That's not an option anymore. Not online at least. There will always be someone in the comments describing how you did it (or giving a description that satisfies enough people). So now, maybe, the way to use magic to boost your ego is to be the first one to expose a method online—or the first one to do it in a way that gains traction. That way you get to glom onto the cleverness of the method and get your ego boost there. (I have no idea, because I watch almost zero magic online so I don't know what anybody is doing anywhere.)

Again, I’m not disagreeing with our guest here in general. I’m just making the case that exposure might be as ego-motivated as anything else in magic, and not wholly an altruistic gesture.

Now, let’s jump in the way-back machine and look at something I wrote a few years ago…

If things just progress as they're going, I think in a matter of years, the "mystery" element (the "magical" element) of magic will be almost gone. This isn't a bold prediction, this is just the way magic has evolved over the past couple hundred years. In 10 years, when finding out anything will be almost instantaneous, I can see the mystery being entirely eliminated. Or at the very most it will be this very brief moment that happens before the secret is immediately revealed. Magic tricks will be almost like the set-ups to jokes. And learning the secret will be the punchline. That will be the nature of performing tricks. I don't think this is a pessimistic point of view. I think it's not only realistic, but pretty much obvious. People will still like magic, but if will be a different sort of experience.

My only mistake here was thinking that it would take 10 years. This is, essentially, where online magic is now. Here’s a video of Eric Leclerc where he shows his Fool Us performance and then explains it. This would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Thankfully, the trick he’s exposing is hot dogshit, so it doesn’t really matter either way. And, in fact, the exposure here is definitely more interesting than the trick is otherwise. So it’s hard to take issue with it.

Getting worked up about the exposure of magic online is kind of a lost cause. Exposure is baked into online magic performances. There’s really no way around it. Either the performer has to address it in some way, or the people in the comments will.

Thus, the performance of “magic” online becomes a separate thing from the performance of “magic” in-person.

Online Magic - Uses the elements of deception to entertain.

In-Person Magic (at the highest levels) - Uses the elements of deception to create mystery, awe, and wonder.

So you’re saying magic when performed on facebook or tik tok can’t create “mystery, awe, and wonder”?

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. This should be obvious. Consider watching someone vanish an apple on Instagram. It might seem very cool and visually amazing. Now imagine sitting across from someone in real life as they make an apple in the middle of the table slowly fade away to nothing. That could be a life-altering moment. It’s just not possible to elevate the experience of a trick online to that of one that happens in person. The medium is limited that way.

Imagine the internet didn’t exist. I come up to you one day and say, “Hey, I have this new way for you to beam your magic into people’s homes.”

Sounds great!

“It’s somewhat impersonal, however, because you’re doing it for an audience of, potentially, millions of people.”

Oh, that’s alright. I don’t change my delivery and patter regardless of who I’m performing for.

“Also, they can watch the trick over and over.”

Oh, that’s not good. Doesn’t that go against a fundamental rule of magic?

“They can even pause it, rewind, and play it in slow-motion.”

Uh-oh.

“And there’s a place they can go to discuss how the trick is done with every other person in the world.”

Are you kidding me? Where is this place they can go? I pray that it requires at least some effort on their part to get to it.

“Oh, no, no. It’s about an inch away from where they’re watching you perform.”

What!? That sounds like a terrible medium for performing magic!

EXACTLY.

The traditional style of performance and presentation doesn’t work on the internet. And the people who have big followings performing magic online understand this. That’s why they’re not presenting magic in the contexts we normally would and with the same reverence for secrets that was ingrained in most of us who perform in the real world.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love it if there was no exposure of magic online. I wish secrets couldn’t be found with a simple google search. I wish the experience of seeing a magic trick was something that was rare and not something that everyone could call up at any time they want with a device that’s in their pocket. But that’s not how it is. And the secret to happiness in life is to focus your efforts on how to best navigate the terrain in front of you, not spending your time wishing the terrain was different.

That’s why my magic has followed the trajectory it has these past years. As I’ve written about on this site and even more-so in the books. Slowing tricks down, burying effects in layers of presentation, putting some burden on the spectator, creating something more immersive and personal makes the tricks unlike anything the person can see online. Most of the techniques I use wouldn’t even work online. That’s part of the reason why I use them. I want people to have a different experience than they would sitting at their computer. And the beauty of social magic is that you can slowly cultivate an audience who wants that too—an audience who is interested in more than secrets.