Dustings #41

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Here’s something to think about for anyone considering creating a magic show for a theater setting.

Often a magic “show” is just a loose collection of tricks. I don’t see anything wrong with that. It’s like seeing a musical artist. They can just perform a dozen songs. They don’t need to be thematically linked in any way. That’s perfectly enjoyable, and I think it’s perfectly enjoyable for a magic show too.

But sometimes performers feel the need to present something a little more cohesive. And there are a few ways this can be done.

Message-focused - Sometimes the show is tied together with a message. That message might be, “Stop Bullying” or “Jesus Is Lord.” Or it might be a message about how our minds can be deceived. Or something generic like “the power of wonder” or something like that. Or—most confusing of all to me—is a message like, “This show is about one thing: You can do anything you put your mind to!” Which is a fine message for any type of demonstration except the one where you’re faking stuff you can’t really do.

Character-focused - In recent years, people like Rob Zabrecky and Carisa Hendrix have found success building their performance around a unique character. Sure, most magicians would say they have a “character.” But if you made them break it down, their character is usually, “Guy pretending to be suave who puts bills in lemons.” The problem with doing something character-driven is that for the character to really register, it usually has to be pretty out there, like Rudy Coby or something like that. And not a lot of magicians can, or want to, do something that broad.

So if you’re looking for some way to present a cohesive stage magic show and you haven’t hit on any strong message or character you want to pursue, I would suggest looking into a premise-focused show. A premise-focused show would be one where the show would be performed in a different context besides just a magician on stage performing tricks. It would add another layer of theatricality on top of that. So, while I recommend stripping theatricality from social magic, I think a formal show benefits from more of it.

What would be an example of a premise-focused show?

I’ll give you three. Note, that in all of these you would be playing a “character.” But I wouldn’t call them character-focused because it’s not some quirk of the character that is interesting. It’s the premise that is interesting.

The Rehearsal - You come out on stage and tell people that you’ve left your corporate job and the rat race and you’ve decided to pursue a passion of yours and do some good in the world by becoming an anti-drug magician who does school shows. “Unfortunately, there’s a bit of a catch-22 here. Before I can do some school shows they want to see video of my show in action. But I can’t take a video if they won’t let me do a show. So for the next 40 minutes, it would be great if you guys could help me out and stand in for the 11-13 year old’s who will make up my target audience. Just to give these decision makers a feeling for what the show would be like.” So you’d have the magic show, but also the comedy of you shoe-horning in the anti-drug message, and interacting with your audience as if they’re pre-teens. “What’s your favorite subject in school? Do you have a little boyfriend?” What I love about this idea is the sheer layers of artificiality involved. You’re you, but you’re playing the part of a magician, who is rehearsing the role of a magician. And your audience is playing the part of an audience who is playing the role of a different audience. It’s bonkers. And I could see it being very fun to do. “I know these may look like ropes, but what I actually have here are three different lengths—one small, one medium, and one long—of doobie.”

The Wake - Here’s a kind of melancholy one. You play the part of a 70-year old man whose wife loved magic. And you had been planning to surprise her by learning magic so you could perform a show for her on your 50th wedding anniversary. But she passed away a few weeks before that could occur. And now, here at her wake, you’d like to show the mourners (i.e, the audience) the show you had planned for her. Too sad? I don’t know. I think it could be sort of depressing yet sweet.

HR 642 - This is an idea I think would be fun to perform. Even though I don’t intend to do any stage performing myself, this is the sort of thing I would do. I’d open up by explaining to people that House Resolution 642 has been debated in Washington D.C for years now and things have been at a stalemate. “Is magic an art? Isn’t magic an art? No subject has been more hotly debated in U.S. politics for the past five years.” Then I’d explain the big news to the crowd… the Supreme Court is in the audience for the show and at the end—based on my performance—they’re going to vote on whether magic is an art or not! [Yes, I know it’s not something the supreme court would decide. I just think it’s funnier if that’s the premise.]

This is a show that would allow me to swing between playing a cocky idiot one moment and then a nervous doofus the next when things aren’t working out. And it would be fun to perform some of the tricks with a pretentiously artsy theme to “prove” that magic is an art. “Is magic an art? Gee… I guess that’s not for me to say. But allow me to show you this next trick that’s representative of my childhood in West Virginia—son of a racist coal miner, and struggling with my sexuality. I have three lengths of rope…”

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Because of some older posts, I occasionally get asked for recommendations of where to learn origami.

I will give you two general recommendations.

First, I recommend the work of Jeremy Shafer. He has a lot of videos on youtube. But if you’re brand new to origami, I would probably start with his books instead. I find it easier to learn origami from books. Yes, occasionally you’ll get stuck on a fold and need to see it in action, in which case you’ll want to see a video. But that’s sort of the exception. The more common situation is that the video is going either too fast or too slow and it makes learning the piece annoying. So I recommend learning from print, and supplementing that with video when you get stuck.

What makes Jeremy’s work fun to study is that he often creates origami that does stuff. So it’s a little more fun to play around with than folding a turtle that just sits there.

Also there is sometimes a magic element to his work. Although they’re generally not the most mind-blowing tricks you’ve ever seen, they can still be mildly amusing to play around with.

For example…

Origami Floating House

Origami Switch Blade

Origami Balancing Eagle

The second recommendation I would give is to learn dollar bill origami (for those of you that have foldable paper money in your country). This is good for leaving a memorable tip. And it allows you to do some origami in a casual moment without carrying around any special paper, like a weirdo. (I mean, I guess some would say that money is the ultimate “special paper,” but you know what I’m saying.)

I like this book by Janessa Munt, although you should probably have the basics of origami down before you pick that book up. The pieces aren’t ridiculously hard, but they’re not for pure beginners either.

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Saw this add from TCC about a lecture featuring Michael Ammar.

A Michael Ammar lecture is always good. But Michael Ammar and CUM… yes, please!

(I know this is primarily a Michael Ammar lecture, but as a big fan of Chinese Underground Magician’s work, I hope we don’t just get a sprinkling of CUM. I hope we get a big load of CUM. I—for one—can never have enough.)

The Jerx Calamity Sentence

In 1961, during Richard Feynman’s first lecture teaching introductory physics at CalTech, he made the following remarks:

If—in some cataclysm—all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.

Now, I’ve already had one successful blog that disappeared into the ether 15 years ago. So there are no guarantees this one will always be here.

So today I want to focus on the Jerx Calamity Sentence. This is the one sentence that would allow you to reconstruct a lot of ideas from this blog if you were to work backwards from the central idea contained in the sentence. It’s a sentiment I’ve expressed before, but perhaps didn’t put all the weight on it that I should have.

And that sentence is this:

The experience of MAGIC is created by the gap between what the spectator knows to be true and what feels real to them in the moment.

For me this has been the most useful definition for a “magical experience” or the “the feeling of magic.”

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If we expand the calamity sentence slightly, we get these two concepts:

1. The feeling of magic is founded on disbelief. If what they believe is possible is in line with what they feel they’re experiencing, you don’t have magic.

2. You can increase the power of the magic experience by creating a greater gap between what they know is true and what seems real in the moment.

So this isn’t just a definition, it’s actionable.

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We can widen the gap in two ways:

1 - Making our premises more unbelievable.

and/or

2 - Making the experience feel more real.

Making the premise more unbelievable is sort of self-explanatory:

“I knew which hand held the coin by reading your body language.” Believable and possible. If you do it well enough that it feels real, they’re like to believe it is real. It may be impressive, but that’s not going to overwhelm someone with a feeling of magic.

“I can know which hand you put the coin in five times in a row because of my powers of ESP.” Less believable, but still mildly plausible. While it seems unlikely that someone could intuit which hand someone would place a coin in, it doesn’t have the ring of something absolutely impossible. The gap is there, but it doesn’t feel very profound.

“I knew which hand you’d put the coin in five times in a row because this is my 12th time living this day, and you always hide the coin in the same sequence.” This is unbelievable and impossible. But if you are able to build up the premise enough and support it in a way that it feels real—even if just briefly—then you’ll have that strong, otherworldly, magical moment.

Making the experience feel more real is done by:

A) Stripping away anything that feels false (other than the premise) or performative. So no heavy-handed patter; canned jokes; or unjustified, convoluted processes.

and

B) Adding elements to your presentation that reinforce the premise, beyond what is necessary for the performance. These are things I call “extra-presentational techniques,” (hooks, reps, imps, buy-ins, etc). These techniques make the experience feel emotionally more real to people because they go beyond what is necessary if what they were seeing was “just a trick.”

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Not every trick I do reaches the level of being truly “magical.” That’s a tough bar to clear. Often I fall short, but that doesn’t mean the trick wasn’t a fun or fascinating or exciting or unique or funny or intriguing or mystifying experience.

But when I do reach the goal of something that goes beyond fun and fooling to some level of “enchanting,” it’s because I’ve hit the sweet spot described in that sentence. The real magic feeling comes out of the harmony in the duet between their rational mind saying, “This isn’t real,” and their irrational mind saying, “Holy hell, this is happening!”

Monday Mailbag #45

Last night I met up with some of my friends for a little birthday get-together. As much as I love my friends from my hometown, they aren't the brightest people you'll meet. Once again, I'm going to have to blame the Kentucky public school system. I say this because they started giving me shit about being vaccinated. Long story short, instead of debating with them, I did magic. Specifically with the presentation about becoming magnetic and being able to conduct electricity because of the microchip.

I did the bit where you make butter knives stick to your hands (Apparently it's an old gag that Charlie Miller would do but I learned it from David Ben). and then I charged my phone by placing my tongue in the charging port. This was accomplished by Marc's beautiful app Amalgam. It made it so silly and so ridiculous that they kinda stopped with the conspiracy theories for a bit.

I was inspired by your post about getting people to question their belief systems. Maybe they will see how ridiculous it is.. or maybe you'll see a Facebook post about the vaccine giving you the ability to conduct electricity. Only time will tell. —NW

A few different people have written with similar ideas based upon this notion going around that the vaccine will make magnets stick to you. I like the idea. It’s a pretty good way to capitalize upon something in the zeitgeist to be able to perform what would otherwise be a semi pointless demonstration of a useless power.

Something else you can do in addition to the magnetism bit, or as an alternative, is say how you got the vaccine and you’ve been feeling a bit “off” since you got it. Have them touch your arm near the injection site. “Do you feel a bump there?” As you talk with them, continue to rub your arm in that area and then slowly start pushing your fingers up your arm as if you’re manipulating something under your skin. Mumble, “The fuck is this?…” as you continue pushing along your skin. Up your arm. Up your shoulder. Up your neck. Over your jaw and up your face to your eye. Where you then pull down your eyelid and a little metal ball drops out. Ideally on to a well-placed ceramic plate where it produces a satisfying small clatter.

Pick it up and examine it closely. Let the horror slowly dawn on you. “What are they doing to us? What are they doing to us!!!!???” Run away screaming.

This is just a version of the old seed/bean/popcorn kernel from the eyelid geek stunt, but using a small ball bearing, and giving it some relevance beyond, “Here’s something dumb I can do.” I have no idea how safe/dangerous this trick really is, so consider this just a theoretical idea. You should absolutely not do this unless you would like to go blind in one eye or worse. Don’t come and try to sue me if something bad happens because you did this thing I told you not to do. Sue your parents for making you a moron.

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Based on your writing I’m going to assume you’re not a woman. Despite that, I was curious if you thought there was any difference in the way that men and women should approach social magic. Are there any special considerations you imagine would arise for women performing magic in the style you write about? —MS

First, let me talk about women and magic generally. My introduction into the culture of magic was in the early 90s. At that time I didn’t get the sense that there was any still-lingering codified discrimination against women in magic. I never heard a male magician say anything negative about women in magic. And all the doors were theoretically open to them. But despite that, it was still very rare to see a woman at a convention or lecture. I didn’t think much of it. I just assumed they had better taste than to want to go to a magic convention.

On the rare instance where a woman showed up who wasn’t dragged there by a guy, she wouldn’t be shunned at all. Quite the opposite. Anyone who walked though the door with a touch of mascara and/or at least one distinguishable breast was hounded by a bunch of creeps under the guise of being helpful and encouraging. The amount of infantilizing and fetishizing of women attendees must have made them long for the days when they were excluded from these events. And that’s coming from the perspective a 13-year-old me. I wasn’t cool around women at that time in my life. I would practically cum in my pants if a girl walked by me in the hall and her backpack grazed my junk. But even I was like, “Dudes, chill out. You’re being weird.”

I can only assume things are a little more comfortable for women now, but I don’t really know. I don’t go to places where magicians gather or hang out with many magicians socially. It looks like women are better represented in the world of magic these days, but that comes from a semi-outsider’s perspective. I’d be happy to hear from women about their experiences if they want to reach out directly.

Sadly a lot of the magic I’ve seen coming from female magicians is just as garbage as the stuff I see from men. The worst of them seem to have adopted all the same corny affectations and attitudes of men performing magic. That’s fine. Everyone should have the same opportunity to bore people with bad magic.

But what, specifically, of the social magic style?

Let’s start by focusing on what I consider to be the ideal representation of a social magician:

This is what I’m going for.

This is what I strive to be.

This is, in my opinion, the way that one should present themselves when performing magic socially.

Whoops… hold on…

I screwed up.

I cropped out the wrong part of the photograph.

This is what I consider to be the ideal representation of the social magician:

That is what I’m going for.

I want to be Nani Darnell. I don’t want to be Mark Wilson.

The sentiment I hear frequently when it comes to women in magic is that we need to smash the patriarchy and no longer reduce women to the role of just being shoved in boxes and penetrated, sawed in half, or vanished. But to me that’s backwards. To me the estimable partner has always been the magician’s assistant. That’s the one I want to be like.

Maybe we’re too hung up on the word “assistant.” But I don’t let that get to me. In the magician and the assistant, I just see two different entities, with dramatically different traits.

(I’m not speaking specifically about Mark Wilson and Nani Darnell. Just about the roles of “magician” and “assistant” generally.)

The assistant is the one who faces the danger. She floats in the air, gets pierced with swords and cut in half by scary looking buzzsaws.

She gets abducted by a gorilla and still remembers to satisfy the contractual obligations with the sponsors.

The magician? He waves a stick in the air, “Wheee!!! I’m a wizard!”

Sure, within the story of the show, it’s the magician who is the powerful one. But outside of that narrow perspective, there’s no fucking question who the cooler person is.

If we left a show and you said to me, “You remind me of that assistant,” I would feel flattered. If you said, “You remind me of that magician,” I would feel like I must have some sort of personality disorder.

This is a long way of saying that I think the style of magic I write about here is well suited to performers of either sex. In fact, if anything, when mapping it onto the traditional roles of male magician and female assistant, the role I think works best for the amateur—and the role I go for most often—is the role of the assistant. The “power” isn’t usually something I possess. The power is in: this weird ritual, this strange object, this haunted artifact, this magician friend of mine, this quirk of human psychology, this unusual game, this altered state of mind, etc., etc.

I want to be the assistant who brings the people to these mysteries. I want to be seen as the one helping, the one facilitating, the one who is getting the things together to allow the magic to happen. I want to be seen as the one with the killer legs and cool outfits.

Rarely do I want to be seen as “The Magician!” who is causing the magic to happen. I don’t think that comes across well in casual performing situations. I think it limits the types of “stories” you can tell with your tricks. And given that a modern audience is going to know that what you’re showing them is a trick on some level, I think it’s a much better look to underplay your involvement (i.e., to put yourself in the “assistant” role). From the audience’s perspective you are denying yourself credit you could be taking. But when you say, “I will read your mind,” or, “I have magic powers,” then—from the audience’s perspective—you are someone asking for more credit than you deserve.

So yeah, I don’t know if there are any special considerations for women when performing this style of social magic. But they are probably better equipped for it. Taking a step back and not feeling the need to get credit for everything probably comes easier to women than men.

Dustings #40

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I was talking with someone over email about places to hide a crib. “Ah,” I said, “You smothered your baby to death and now you’re trying to remove any evidence you ever had a kid. Smart. What I like to do in that circumstance is—”

No, he explained, not that kind of crib. Like a crib-sheet that holds information you don’t have memorized or information for which you’re not 100% comfortable relying on your memory. The order of a stacked deck, say, or a progressive anagram. Sometimes you’ll have this sort of information mostly memorized but you’re not completely confident to do a trick with it because you don’t want to find yourself frozen with no option if you just completely blank on what card is at position 36 in the deck. So you might take that information and write it on a tiny piece of paper you can palm, or have it printed in small letters on the barrel of a Sharpie or—most retardedly—on the outside edge of a watch bezel.

But if you’re performing a trick that isn’t magician-centric (i.e. a trick that isn’t focused on your own “powers”), you can often “hide” the crib in the presentation.

What I mean by hiding a crib “in the presentation” is having a presentation that allows you to access a crib in a perfectly logical way where the action doesn’t need to be concealed.

In magician-centric presentations, where the power behind the effect is supposedly concentrated in the performer, it can be difficult to justify openly looking at something else.

But imagine your presentation is related to “something I saw online,” “this weird ritual I read in this book,” “this dream I had where we went through this strange procedure,” or “something this guy I met at a party showed me he could do” or something along those lines. In those cases you can refer back to that thing you read online, open up the book, take a look at the notes you scribbled down after your dream, or text that guy you met at the party. And in the process of any of those things, you can get a good long look at your crib.

You might think people would be quick to assume that you’re looking at something that is helping you for the trick, but that hasn’t been my experience. If your action is motivated by the premise of the trick, then they may believe you’re really doing what you’re saying, or they may feel the action is just “theater.” But I’ve found they’re unlikely to think it’s theater for the purposes of doing something sneaky. (This is not just my experience, but also based on some testing we did years ago that I will post about if/when I can track down the data.)

So they might think I was really texting some magician friend on the phone who told me where their chosen card was in the deck. Or they may think I was just pretending to text my magician friend to find out where their chosen card was in the deck as part of the story of the trick. But they don’t seem to make the leap where they say, “I bet he’s pretending to text his friend so he can reference something else on his phone that helps him with the trick.”

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On a related note, if you’re ever in a position where you can snap a quick picture of a shuffled deck (either in a face-up fan or face-up spread), then you can do some stuff you would normally do with a stacked deck. And using the premise of communicating with “the magician” over text, you can pull off a very strong, simple trick.

So, for example, the person you’re with cuts the deck beneath the table a few times and then pockets, sight unseen, whatever card they cut to. The rest of the cards are put back into the case (where you get a peek of the bottom card). In the process of apparently texting your magician friend, you look at the picture to figure out what card followed the card you peeked from the bottom of the deck (in other words, the card now in the spectator’s pocket). Then you can pretend to have a phone or text conversation with someone to reveal that information. (Or have an actual phone/text conversation if you have someone really helping you out.)

How to get the picture of the deck? Well, that’s going to depend. This is something i don’t do with my own deck. So I’ll do it at a card game when there is a break or when the games have wound down for the evening. If no one else is in the room I’ll spread the deck on the table and take a quick pic. If others are around but people aren’t paying too much attention, I’ll be playing with the deck absentmindedly and at some point I’ll fan the deck and put it under the table edge and then I’ll take the picture. From the perspective of anyone looking over who hasn’t been watching me the whole time, I’m just looking at something on my phone.

From there you have the crib for your “stacked” deck. And any premise that involves using your phone can be used to hide the fact you’re looking at your crib.

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In a recent post I mentioned using spaced repetition to build up your repertoire and keep the tricks fresh in your head.

On this page you can find an incredibly well done explanation of the concept of spaced repetition that goes into it in much more detail.

Even if you have no interest in applying it to your magic pursuits, give that page a read and you’ll see how useful it can be in other areas of interest.

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I guess the most common question I get here at the Jerx is:

Andy, what’s it like to have sex with you?

Great question. But sadly, despite my mastery of the English language, I’ve found it a little difficult to put that experience into words. Some things simply cannot be captured in text. We may need to add a few more letters to the alphabet before you can accurately describe the dance with the divine that is a sexual encounter with me.

Fortunately, I’ve found a video that puts you right into the experience of being opposite me as we engage in rigorous coitus.

Making love to me is just like this clip from Bobby J. Gallo’s promo video from 1996.

• I play that exact song.

• The expressions I make are IDENTICAL (A combination of self-satisfaction and self-amusement, with a little bit of “oops, did I do that?” mixed in.)

• It lasts 26 seconds.

• And at the end I shoot all over your face.

Past-It Notes: The Past-Tense Svengali Force Pad

In the Dustings of Woofle post before I went on my break, I made the point that a Svengali pad made to look like a pad of Post-it notes doesn’t make a ton of sense, because people don’t write on Post-it notes when they’re still in their pad form. In fact, people use Post-it notes for the sole purpose of writing on the top sheet and then discarding it. Therefore it makes it particularly hard to justify why you’re carrying around a “filled out” Post-it pad, unless your performance character is, “Guy Who Doesn’t Know How Pads Work.”

Then Benjamin from ThoughtCast emailed me an interesting idea. What if the Post-it notes weren’t on the pad? What if it was a stack of used Post-its? As Benjamin wrote, “This way it seems like a collection of post it notes you’ve used over time instead of buying a fresh pad and writing on each still stuck note like a psycho.”

So this is a Svengali Post-it “pad” that you will make yourself. But it requires no cutting. Your force sheets will all be set back a millimeter or two, and all your non-force sheets will be forward a little bit. Either straight or at an angle, it doesn’t really matter. This is meant to look like a stack of used Post-it notes. So you’re absolutely not going for something neat looking. It’s supposed to be messy and the Svengali principle is hidden in this messiness rather than in the precision cutting of a professionally made Svengali pad.

For the purposes of illustration, I’ll use blue Post-its to represent a sheet with the force information on it, and pink (salmon?) sheets to represent the sheets with non-force information on them. In practice you would want to use all the same color, or all completely random colors. I’m using the two separate colors here just for clarity.

So first you put down a force sheet, then you stick a non-force sheet on top, but have it jutting forward a little.

Then you will put another force sheet on, pretty much squared with the previous force sheet. Then a non-force sheet sticking out, and so on. It works best if your force sheets are generally in the same position. You can go wild with the non-force sheets, but if they’re too all over the place, it makes it difficult to flip through the stack.

When you’re done you’ll have something that shows only non-force sheets as you casually flip through it.

But will only show force sheets if you direct someone to open up the stack anywhere and get a look at what the Post-It says.

Of course this is much subtler when all the sheets are the same color.

If this is something you think you’ll want to actually use beyond just playing around with the idea, then you may want to do something more permanent than just the standard Post-it adhesive that’s on the pages. Once a page has been peeled and restuck, it doesn’t really maintain it’s stickiness that well. So someone opening up the pad might “break” the pad at that point. Which isn’t necessarily a problem, unless you feel it is for your purposes. If so you’ll probably want to glue the sheets together where the adhesive would be.

Now how might you use such a thing? To force a playing card? No, let’s not do that. Let’s think…in what context might Post-its be used?

Maybe you were using Post-its to identify which items in your garage you wanted your son to bring to the dump.

Okay… that’s my fault. I asked a bad question. I should have asked: In what context might Post-its be used… and there’s a chance a reasonable person would hang onto those used Post-its?

I’ll give you three possible themes. These are probably not quite useable as is, but they may give you an idea of a direction to pursue.

Love

Everyday your wife (or husband/child/significant-other/inconsequential-other) leaves a little love note for you on the bathroom mirror so it’s there when you’re getting ready for work. You’ve held onto a bunch of your favorite ones. People can’t really read minds, you tell your audience, but they can tap into intense emotional frequencies and the items attached to those emotions. And you can use these notes to demonstrate that phenomena.

Someone flips open the stack of notes, reads one, and then tries to imagine themselves saying the sentiment on the note to someone they care about. You’re able to pick up on this.

Hate

You’re standing on stage at the Magic Castle. You toss a stack of used Post-its on the table.

Every day, at your old job, you would come back from lunch and find a whiny, passive-aggressive note from your boss on your computer monitor. At first it was an annoyance. But then it grew to be symbolic of everything you hated about the job: the mindless busywork, constantly having someone looking over your shoulder, having no autonomy. As soon as you got back from lunch you’d take that note, tear it up and toss it in the trash.

But then you changed tactics. You decided to use the notes to finally motivate you to pursue a job you were actually passionate about: a career in magic. You started keeping the notes. Letting them pile up on your desk. You’d read through them over and over, building up your annoyance and anger.

First a few days passed, then weeks. The pile grew larger. You still felt frozen in your career. Then you gave yourself both a challenge and a deadline. And you told yourself the moment you had mastered the trick of knowing which note someone was thinking of, that would be your sign that it was the right time to quit your job and go into magic full-time.

“And here I am today!”
blah-blah-blah
”Take a look at any note in the stack.”
blah-blah-blah.
”You’re thinking of a note that says… it’s something about… oh this is the one where he said I’m only allowed one personal item at my cubicle so I either had to get rid of the picture of my wife or the picture of my daughter. Correct?”
blah-blah-blah
”Pursue your dreams.”
blah-blah-blah

Magic

“See that book on the book shelf. The tall thin one with the white and red lettering on the spine? That was the first magic book I ever bought with my own money. I read it over and over and marked it with Post-its to make a note of everything I found interesting in the book. I would write quotes or ideas from the book on the notes and then stick the note on the page where that quote appeared. I didn’t want to highlight or underline the pages themselves, because I was so protective of this book since it cost me almost all the money I had at the time.

“Some years later I removed the Post-its, but I just found them all stuck together in a box with a bunch of other old junk. I wanted to try something. Peel up a corner anywhere in the stack and take a look at whatever note you open to.”

You try to read their mind, but aren’t getting anything clearly.

You pick up the pad and flip through a few of the options to see if any jump out at you. But again, you’re not having any luck.

“Maybe it will help if I have the book,” you say. You pull the book from the bookshelf and there is a Post-it sticking out from the side. “That’s weird. I thought I removed all of them.” You open the book to the marked page and say, “Uhm, okay, this is a long shot, but are you thinking of the phrase: You will need to obtain two plastic, glue-on eyes?”

Your friend says that yes, they are.

“That son of a bitch! He beat me to it.”

Monday Mailbag #44

Yo, yo. It’s great to be back. I had a nice break and I’m re-energized and ready to kick off this post(ish)-Covid, return of the roaring twenties, white boy summer.

Things here in the northeast U.S. are “more normal than not” almost everywhere. And even though we’re not completely out of the woods quite yet, I’ve found people to be considerably more sociable than they were at any time I can remember. If you’ve been wanting to engage in more social performing, here is your opportunity. Not only are people more open to it, but you have an ideal lead-in as you discuss what kept you occupied over the past year+. “I kind of went back and picked up a lot of hobbies I had been involved in as a kid… origami, magic, juggling…” or, “I ended up getting really interested in reading up on these obscure psychological phenomena,” or, “I started looking into how to read tarot cards, but ended up going down all these weird rabbit holes into other forms of divination and rituals. It’s really sort of fascinating and some of the stuff is weirdly unexplainable.” Or whatever your presentation might be.

Okay, let’s get to your letters…

Oh, Great Jerxy, your wisdom is needed on this Magic Cafe thread. It’s for a trick called Stamp by Joe Deng. A silver ball is placed into a little brass cup and smooshed down and it becomes a quarter. The thread has erupted because some people are concerned that the brass contraption that supposedly “stamps” the coin should have the imprint of heads and tails side backwards or else the trick makes no sense. You couldn’t print a coin from a stamp that looked like this

That would print a backwards coin.

Nate Kranzo comes to the thread and doesn’t do himself any favors by pitching a fit because people are pointing out this inconsistency.

What do you think? Will people notice? Will they care? Is it worth a purchase? Is there a presentation that covers the issue? —FE

First, I agree that Nate doesn’t come off great in this thread. The issue is legitimate and saying, “Put it away and go on to the next trick,” is not really an answer. The nature of the trick is that you’re asking people to show some interest in the prop and what it does. Having to whisk it away at the end is completely incompatible with that type of interaction, which of course will raise suspicion in some people.

If Nate had said, “We did it this way on purpose” and gave a reason, or, “Yeah it was a mistake, we screwed up. But here’s why we don’t think it’s a dealbreaker…,” he could have put the issue to bed, at least to some extent. Flipping out over people pointing out the problem just comes off as defensive and puts more focus on the issue than there would be otherwise.

But it’s also understandable. I’m sure he’s got boxes full of these things to sell. And if you put the time and money into putting out a trick and the first thing that happens is people start pointing out a flaw with it, that’s got to be a huge bummer.

Getting to your questions:

Will people notice? Yes. Especially if they have the quarter and the stamp in their hand at the same time. It will be clear that stamp couldn’t make that quarter (not only is it backwards, but it’s embossed when it should be debossed). So I would try to have them look at the items individually. Some people will still see the problem, but certainly less than if they’re looked at together.

Will they care? I don’t know if “care” is the right word. But it’s not a non-issue.

Is it worth a purchase? I actually think it is. I will probably get one despite the flaw.

And that’s because—while the orientation of the imagery is a discrepancy—with the right presentation, it doesn’t need to be a discrepancy that spoils the trick.

Now, look, if your presentation was, “I have super human strength, and I’m going to squash this silver ball into a quarter with this device,” then yes, the reversed quarter would be an issue because it completely undermines that presentation.

And just saying, “I’m a magician, so it doesn’t have to make sense!” is a pretty bad way to handle it too. Sure, it ends the conversation, but It’s also completely unsatisfying for the audience. If someone asks why something is the way it is, and your justification is “because I’m a magician,” it might as well be, "because fuck you, that’s why.” And I hate to break it to you, but bringing out a little brass gimmick to smoosh a ball doesn’t exactly scream, “I’m a magician!” It screams, “I went to the magic store!”

The easy way to handle all of this is just to take your “powers” (physical or magical) out of the equation altogether.

For example, I might say, “Check this out. It’s a reproduction of an early 20th century counterfeiting machine I picked up at a flea market the other week. I never heard of such a thing, but the guy who showed me how to operate it. You drop a ball bearing in here. Then just by pressing down on it you can make a quarter. Look, you don’t even have to press hard. Just gentle pressure. Isn’t that crazy? I don’t really quite understand how it works. These days, it doesn’t make financial sense to use it because quarters are worth so little and you have to buy the ball bearing. But apparently 100 years ago you could make a lot of money doing it.”

Now, let’s say my spectator says, “That didn’t print the coin. It would be backwards if it did.”

Then I would just act low-key confused and look at the trick and mutter. “Huh… wait… yeah you’re right! But that means… what does it mean? The ball just… disappeared? And was replaced with a quarter somewhere? That can’t be. Well…. shit… now I really don’t get how this works.”

If you introduce the gimmick as an unusual object you’ve come across, then the discrepancy doesn’t have to undermine the experience. You can actually use the discrepancy to make the trick more mysterious, if you play it right.

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With the world opening back up I was thinking of taking an acting class to help improve my presentations. Do you think that’s a good use of my time/money or would you recommend something else? —GC

Hmmm… I feel like if you have a latent acting talent, just waiting to be released, then taking an acting class might be good for you and your performances. But if you don’t have that natural ability and you just think taking a couple acting classes will be good for your magic, I doubt that’s the case. I think it would likely just put you up in your head and cause you to be less present than you would be normally. In a close-up, casual magic setting, the ability to be you and to be present is the most important thing. Acting is playing a role. When I engage in even the most fantastical types of presentations I do, I don’t think of myself as “playing a role.” I just think of myself as lying. But it’s not in a malicious way because everyone knows I’m lying.

I would recommend an improv class rather than an acting class. Improv focuses on getting out of your head and being in the moment and not over-thinking your instincts. I’m sure you get some of that in acting classes too, but it seems like it would be less fun.

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Have you ever stopped yourself from posting something because you were worried it would hurt someone’s feelings? Or do you have any stories about posts that you intended to publish but then thought better of and decided not to? —BR

My initial thought was: “No. There’s nothing like that.” But I’m sure I’m wrong about that. There are likely posts I wrote up but never hit the publish button on and ended up deleting. But I don’t have any memory of them because it’s the sort of thing I’d forget about immediately. (There are 1200 posts on this site, I don’t really remember the stuff that didn’t make it to the site.)

In fact, I can say with certainty there is at least one post I wrote up that I thought better of publishing. But the only reason I remember it is because it happened just a couple of weeks ago.

The new issue of Genii came out with this cover:

I had written something for one of the Friday posts that was an email, purportedly from Joshua Jay, expressing that he was furious about the new cover of Genii magazine. At first it sounded like he was upset that Genii was glorifying this nazi magician. But then the twist was that he was mad at Richard Kaufman for stealing the design of his upcoming book and the performance identity that he was trying to establish for himself: Hitler’s Magician.

I decided against publishing it not for Josh’s sake, but just to spare myself emails from people who don’t quite understand how jokes work who want to lecture me about comedy. I can usually count on one or two of those any time something I write about touches on a taboo subject. And at the time I wasn’t feeling in the mood to deal with that.

Dustings #39

Hey boys,

I’m taking next week off for a late spring break. Regular posting will resume on June 7th.

Jerx Hot Tip: If you’re looking for some more online magic content while I’m away, go to the site “google.com” and put the word “magic” in the search bar. You will get dozens of results.

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From an email I received:

I found this lying on the sidewalk yesterday when I was out walking my dog. It's really weird, like some kind of experimental shield thing.

Actually, it's just a simple presentational construct for a Lubor's Lens but it fits me nicely. —DK

That’s great. The Reality Twister/Lubor’s Lens thing was pretty underappreciated in my opinion.

Here’s a Magic Cafe thread of a bunch of people not getting it.

“It’s just an optical illusion!” they say. Yeah, no shit. That was the point. The point was that you would use this weird lens thing to make objects distort or vanish when viewed through the lens. And just when people are thinking, “That’s an interesting optical illusion,” you do something with it that seems to actually affect some object in the real world.

The misunderstanding was that it was the optical illusion part by itself that was supposed to be amazing.

Another dumb thing people did with this was even done in the ad for the effect:

Your friend holds a pen on her open palm as you hold a clear "Credit Card Protector" just above the pen.

Why call it a “credit card protector”?

Because, Andy, magic with everyday objects is stronger.

Okay, sure. And how exactly is a clear “credit card protector” an everyday object?

Magicians get so caught up in the “everyday object” concern they think they can just make something an everyday object by claiming it is. That’s not how it works.

Not only that, but it’s a dead end presentationally.

“Behold the magic I create when you look through my credit card protector!”

The simple alternative is just to say. “Look at this thing I found. I have no idea what it is, but check out this strange thing it does.” That’s a perfectly fine default presentation: The object is a mystery and it does something impossible. Sometimes that’s all you need.

DK’s idea above of tossing it in an envelope and adding some obscure labeling to it in order to enhance that presentation is quite a good one.

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Some say I’m responsible for both Penguin and Vanishing Inc having better shipping deals becausewithin weeks of me suggesting it in this post, Vanishing Inc came out with their VI+ program that offered free shipping with no minimums, and soon after that, Penguin started offering the same thing. Was it the Invisible Hand Of The Jerx that puppeteered these titans in the online magic industry? Perhaps.

So now I’m proposing another benefit one of the major magic companies should offer…

There’s nothing quite like buying an expensive book or trick and then three weeks later seeing it for 40% off. If there was a company that offered some sort of “purchase protection” where they would give you credit for the difference between what you paid and the sale price (within a certain amount of time, not eternally) they would have my business. And this would be something that is not just good for the customer. It would be good for the company that adopted this policy as well because it’s a policy that would be especially attractive to people making high-dollar purchases.

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Through A Layman’s Eyes

I encourage my friends to not let me get away with stuff in a magic context. I want them to “go along” with the presentation, but I don’t want them to “go along” with the process of the trick if they think there’s something suspicious or questionable going on. I want to be able to sand off those suspicious or questionable moments, and I can’t necessarily spot them without their help. So I encourage people I know to call me out on stuff. This doesn’t always go so well when I introduce another person who does magic to my unforgiving friends.

A couple years ago one of my friends who does magic was performing for some of my non-magic friends. I forget what the exact trick was but it involved a Svengali-style pad that was made to look like a pad of Post-It notes.

When it was over, one of the people he was performing for said, “It’s a trick pad.”

Are my friends assholes? Well, no. I mean, some of them are, but that’s not what was happening here. They’ve seen me perform a bunch and I’ve asked them to be critical. I tell them it helps me. So that’s what they were used to.

When I asked my friend why he thought it was a trick pad, his girlfriend chimed in and said something like: “Because that’s not how you use Post-Its. That’s not the sort of pad you write on every page. He probably needs the pages to stick together for the trick or something, so he used post-its.”

Now, she was wrong about the method. But that’s not what matters. Their point still stands. You don’t use a Post-It pad to write on every page. You write on a page, pull it off and stick it on something or throw it out.

“That’s not true, Andy. I knew a guy, and every morning he would take his first bowel movement and microwave it and record how long it took to melt and he kept that information on a Post-It pad, and he never pulled the pages off and he kept all the pads like that until the day he set himself on fire.”

Okay, I get it. I’m not saying no human in history has ever used a post-it pad in that way. I’m saying it would be unusual. And in magic you want to limit the unusual things. Especially unnecessary unusual things.

It’s already somewhat unusual to ask someone to think of something from a pad (rather than from their head). Unless you can justify the pad, of course. And you would justify a pad by using it in a normal, human way. “I’ve been practicing my drawing and doing a daily sketch.” “I’ve been writing down a highlight of each day to try and be more present.” “I found this notebook my dad kept of the women he banged. It has their names, measurements, physical attributes, and rates them on scale of 1-10. Notice they’re all different. I want you to think of one of these women and I want to see if I can pick up on a psychic thought of my dad fucking them…. Okay… yes, I’m seeing a large breasted woman…red hair….” Etc. Etc.

It would be very difficult to make pulling out a pre-filled post-it pad feel natural. It would feel solely like a prop for a trick.

And there’s no reason to use the post-it version when they make perfectly good Svengali pads that are like the little spiral notebooks people do actually carry.

“But my pocket space!”

Ah yes, the true concern of the magical artiste. Okay, fine. If your primary concern is how much junk you can fit in your pocket, go with the post it notes.

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Chris L. writes:

Just wanted to share this with you. Google has a morse code trainer that is spectacular.

https://morse.withgoogle.com/learn/

In literally ten minutes you can learn the full alphabet, just from using this website and installing the morse code keyboard on your phone. It might be a useful tool for people who fear that it might be too difficult to learn.

It’s a really good program. I didn’t bother downloading it on my phone, but I played around with the online version and it’s definitely one of the easier ways I’ve seen to learn Morse code. Thanks, Chris.

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Okay, see you back here on June 7th.

Until then, I hope your next week is pure…