The GLOMM Charity Auction (Current Bid $2450)

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A few weeks ago, when there was a bunch of GLOMM-related activity on this site, I received the following email from Timon K.

Regarding your most recent post - I'd like to offer to auction away the last remaining copy (save for my personal one) of my book "Which Hand - Method & Philosophy" through your blog, in support of the GLOMM […]

The book was limited to 500 copies and sold out pretty much immediately. People still message me about it regularly, so I'm sure it would generate at least a little bit of cash.

So that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Over the course of the next week I am going to auction off Timon’s acclaimed book and the money made will be donated to RAINN - The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, which is the largest anti-sexual violence organization. I chose this organization in honor of Meadow P., who refocused attention on this issue in the magic community with her facebook post last month.

Here is some more information from Timon about the book, a copy of which recently sold for $500.

This is an impromptu, gimmickless which hand method. You do not need to touch the participant, nor do you need to ask any questions - this could, in fact, be done naked and silent (yay). I've used this on Fool Us (it was a Fooler).

Came out in 2019, limited to 500 copies and sold out in under two weeks.

The copy for auction is one I kept for sale, trade or for a good cause at some point in time, and here we are now.

Here's the original promotional text:

"The single most convincing method for the which hand effect that you will ever learn!” - Michael Murray

Now is your chance to learn the singular routine that has taken Timon across the globe for the past nine years. Not only did Timon use this routine to fool Pen and Teller, but it also secured Timon the title of the Best European Mentalist in 2016.

Now is your chance to learn the routine that Timon used to fool Penn and Teller on the hit TV show ‘Fool Us’.

Inside this book, you will learn two incredible scripts and presentations that Timon uses on an almost daily basis. This is coupled with all of the variations, subtleties and additional ideas that Timon has finessed over a nine-year period.

You will also learn Timon’s entire script writing process and his thoughts on the philosophy of magic and mentalism and there is even a bonus Q&A routine that requires nothing more than a single coin!

This is as real as it gets, no gimmicks, no questions, you just know!

The Which Hand method presented within this book is the single most convincing method you can learn to determine in which of the spectator’s hands an object is hidden. This method does not rely on gimmicks or electronics of any kind, nor is a complex verbal process involved, making it incredibly versatile.

In fact, it would be perfectly possible to perform this method with both the performer and the participant being completely silent. Taking it one step further, you could perform this being completely silent and void of any clothing. On top of that, whatever object you decide to use is completely examinable.

Lastly, you do not need to be particularly close to the participant nor do you need to touch them. All that happens, in terms of a mechanical process, is that the participant hides an object and extends their hands, as is custom in most effects of this nature. Once this is done, using the Which Hand method, we are instantly able to know where the object is hidden.

While some may think that a method fulfilling all the above conditions cannot possibly be sure-fire, we can assure you that it absolutely is. Which Hand will work 100% of the time, provided you follow the exact process laid out here and fulfil the necessary conditions to ensure the method will do its work. Do that, and soon you will feel as confident with this as with any other method you may have used before, with the added benefit of complete liberation, both in terms of not needing any special aid and in terms of creating your own presentations around this devastatingly clean method.

While Timon’s long sold-out book is the centerpiece of this auction, I’m going to add a few other bonuses to sweeten the deal, because I’ve been sent some “extra” stuff recently.

First we have Post-It Decision Maker

This is a new release from Michael Weber and Tim Trono.

As they describe it:

“A simple tool that you can slip in any wallet, money clip, purse, or pocket. It allows you to completely control the choices of others while they feel like they are making a free choice. They will believe they are deciding on the restaurant, movie, vacation spot, or anything you desire, but you are always secretly in control.”

I just got this in the mail today, in fact I was sent two (which I why I can part with one). I haven’t had a chance to perform it yet, but this is the sort of thing I like.

For more information, or if you’re not on their mailing list, you can write them here: psience.mail@gmail.com.

The second “bonus” item is Desire by Bobby H. at Dark Artifice.

Dark Artifice is a company that takes simple tricks and makes tremendous looking props with cool stories baked into them to surround those tricks. Desire is an effect that involves a lost Twilight Zone script and a prop coin that was made for the episode.

Like everything I’ve seen from Dark Artifice (I have a friend who has purchased a few of their items), this is a little piece of art.

Bobby H. sent this to me along with another product I’ll be reviewing in the upcoming newsletter. I’m giving this one up for the sake of the auction, and because my friend has a copy of this and I can always borrow his copy if I ever want to perform it.

Check out all the cool stuff Dark Artifice is putting out at their site.

And the final bonus item will be a complete set of the bonus Jerx decks from previous seasons.

The Original Jerx Deck

The Jerx Deck Squishers

The Jerx Deck Fannies

And the Mushroom Sprite deck—the most viral deck of cards ever created (I mean…I think)—which can be used to get 2.5 million views on tiktok if you so desire.

How to Bid on this Auction

You can bid on this auction by sending me an email, and letting me know who you are (if I don’t already know you) and what your max bid is. Bid increments should be at least $5 over where the bid currently stands.

I will update the current high bid on a banner at the top of this site.

The auction will end next weekend. You don’t need to know exactly when it’s going to end, because this isn’t ebay where you’re going to swoop in at the end and try and steal it away. This is for charity, for god’s sake.

Thanks to Timon for suggesting this and offering up the sole remaining free copy of his out-of-print book. Thanks to Tim, Michael, and Bobby as well. (Even though they had no idea they were going to be a part of this when they sent me their effects.)

And thanks to everyone who bids.

Testing Spectator as Magician

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This testing goes back to 2019 and early 2020. We never got a chance to complete it, at least not the way I envisioned it, due to covid. And while the months passed and I kept on thinking that surely we’d have the opportunity to pick up this testing again, it still feels kind of far off. So, I decided to just release the data we had collected so far, which is mostly complete. At least complete enough to draw some conclusions from, I believe.

The original question was this, “How much does turning a routine into a Spectator as Magician plot, improve the reaction to the trick?” In other words, if you take where the magician does the impressive bit (reading a mind, for example) and reframe it so that the spectator is the one doing the magic, is there a significant increase in the impact of the trick?

To test this we needed to strip the trick down to the barest elements to see if just that reframing alone was enough to make the trick stronger. We wanted to compare a “plain” magician-focused trick to a “plain” Spectator as Magician effect.

So the first effect we used was a mind-reading trick of a two-digit number.

This first part actually goes back to 2017 when we tested the trick on 24 people

12 people saw this effect:

“I want you to think of a two-digit number. Concentrate on the number and I’m going to try and read your mind.” Magician writes something down and sets pencil aside. “What number were you thinking of?” Magician reveals that number is what he wrote down.

12 people saw this effect :

“I would like you to try and read my mind. I’m going to write down a two-digit number and concentrate on it.” Magician writes down a number and sets the pencil aside. “I want you to see if you can read my mind and tell me what two-digit number I’m thinking of.” Spectator names a number and the magician reveals that’s the number he wrote down.

Now, I don’t have the data from the 2017 testing on me, but the overall rating for “strength” of the effect was almost the same regardless of which variation we were talking about. On a scale of 1-10 the Spectator as Magician version score averaged .2 points higher than the Magician-focused version. There was not a significant difference in regard to the strength of the effect.

In 2019, we had a lot more money to put towards testing and we looked at the subject again, this time with a much larger group of people. Over the course of 13 months, or so, 50 people saw the first version of the 2-digit number trick. 40 people saw the 2nd version of the 2-digit number effect (Spec as Magician version). In addition, 50 people saw a trick where the magician read their mind to know what card they were thinking of, and 40 other people had the experience where they were able to pick out the card the magician was thinking of.

None of these groups overlapped.

The people who took part in this testing also saw other tricks for various purposes while they were with us. But whichever simple trick mentioned above that they saw was the first trick they were shown and they rated it before seeing anything else. So any of the other tricks they may have seen in their testing session wouldn’t have affected the scores they gave for the effects in this testing.

This time, the effects were rated on the “impossibility” of the effect, and also how much they enjoyed the trick. Both on a scale of 1-10, where a 5 would be “average.” (Very important to understand that 5 is not bad, it’s average.). Because there was no real presentation accompanying these effects, you wouldn’t expect the “enjoyment” score to be all that high.

2-Digit Number Mind-Reading - Magician as Magician Version

Impossibility Score: 6.3

Enjoyment Score: 6

2-Digit Number Mind-Reading - Spectator as Magician Version

Impossibility Score: 6.3

Enjoyment Score: 6.2

Card Mind-Reading - Magician as Magician Version

Impossibility Score: 5.8

Enjoyment Score: 5.7

Card Mind-Reading - Spectator as Magician Version

Impossibility Score: 6.0

Enjoyment Score: 6.0

Is there anything to be learned here. At first blush, maybe not much. The numbers are all kind of bunched up in the same place. That’s not surprising, as 6-6.5 is usually where a solid but “small” trick ranks for impossibility. By “small” I mean something like knowing a number, knowing a word, a sandwich trick, a quick coin vanish. That sort of trick without much presentation usually scores in that range .

Where there is maybe something a little more interesting to look at is where we asked people to describe the effect.

Only 3 of the 40 people who saw the Spectator as Mindreader version of the 2-digit number trick described the trick as anything like a “Spectator as Mindreader” effect. One person wrote down that the effect involved him being able to know what number the magician had written down. And two other people said something like, “The magician gave me the power to read his mind.”

But almost all the other 37 responses put the power back with the magician. “The magician predicted the number I said.” “The magician knew what number I would say.” That sort of thing.

The card effect did better, with 10 out of the 40 people describing the effect in terms that somehow they were able to remove the card the magician was thinking of from the deck. And those that did describe it that way also gave somewhat higher scores for the Impossibility and Enjoyment ratings. But those scores were only slightly higher, and still only 25% of the spectators described the trick as being something they did.

So most people saw the Spectator as Magician plot as no different from the Magician-focused plot. I’ve always had my suspicions that was likely to be the case, but I was still surprised how few people described the effect as being something they had a hand in. Now, if I had to guess, I think if we really drilled down with these people they would remember that the effect was supposed to be them doing the mind-reading. But I think it’s so transparent a ruse that they were perhaps embarrassed to describe it that way. (It would be like if Kareem Abdul-Jabbar picked you up so you could stuff the ball through the hoop, you’d be embarrassed to say to people, “Oh yeah, I can dunk.”)

So just telling someone, “You’re doing this!” Doesn’t actually reframe the effect in most people’s minds. Unfortunately, in many Spectator as Magician effects, there is little going on besides the switching of cause and effect. (From, “I’m going to write down the number you’re thinking” to “You’re going to think of the number I wrote down,” for example.) And I think people either just fail to see the difference or they just don’t bother putting any credence into it.

I do think the Spectator as Magician/Mentalist plot can be very strong, and I’ve laid out how I go about making it the most powerful I can in this post. Basically you need to do something so that the experience feels abnormal for the spectator (you’ll see the details in that post). You need to give them a new/different sensation that they can then associate with the act of reading someone’s mind (or whatever the effect is). Without that sensation they just feel completely normal, yet you’re telling them they did something they know they can’t do. You need to give them something different to latch onto as being part of this experience which leads to this temporary ability to do whatever.

That’s the best way I’ve found to let the spectator really feel like maybe they’ve done something out of the ordinary and to wring the greatest impact out of Spectator as Magician effects.

Monday Mailbag #63

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I know you have better things to do, but I saw a subliminal message in Ellusionist’s Royal Road to Mentalism Volume 2 trailer at around the 2:06 mark it shows the word BUY in white letters. —DJ

Okay, here’s the moment you’re talking about:

Now, look, I like to bust Ellusionist’s balls as much as anyone, but I find it hard to get too worked up about this for a few reasons:

  1. It hardly seems subliminal to me. It’s quick, but obvious.

  2. If they wanted to put a subliminal message in their video, wouldn’t they do so during the part of the video people watched? Not the closing logo that no one is paying attention to.

  3. I can understand why people might be concerned if a movie theater flashes “Buy Coke” in the middle of a movie. But a “subliminal” message that says “Buy”… in an ad for the product itself? I already know they want me to buy the product. That’s why they made this ad.

  4. Even if this message was “subliminal” there’s pretty much zero evidence in the scientific literature that this sort of thing even works. So I’m not too concerned.

In fact, just to be safe, I quickly watched all 23 copies of this download that I bought to see if there were any other hidden messages, and I didn’t find anything really.

It’s been over a decade since I’ve played card games with friends, but it’s something I’ve always enjoyed doing. Recently some friends and I decided to get together to play poker and I’m hosting, which means there could be plenty of opportunities and Hooks to get into a magic trick.

I’m curious about your experiences playing card games and performing magic. Almost everyone I’ll be playing with has seen me perform some magic before, so I’ve already been getting the good-natured teasing about playing cards against a magician. It’s a friendly game, so I’m not worried about being accused of cheating or anything, but I was wondering how often this comes up with you when you play cards. Do you have any ways of deflecting or even playing into that vibe when playing cards? —DW

I enjoy taking part in a game night from time to time, but I haven’t been part of a regular poker night in a while, so I don’t have too many ideas for this particular circumstance.

Generally, I’ve never thought it was a good idea to do something too similar to the game you’re playing. If Im at a poker game, I’m not going to do a poker trick. Or even a gambling trick, really. Doing a trick thats like, “This is how I cheat at poker,” is a weird thing to do when you’re gathered together for a poker night, in my opinion. I’m sure some magicians would say that’s the perfect time to do. But for me it feels awkward. So I might do a card trick, but it would be unrelated to gambling. Or I might do a trick that’s in the format of a quick game, but it wouldn’t be a card game. That’s where my head is at.

There’s an easy way to set Hooks when you’re performing in a card game that you host. Just put something that shouldn’t be there in the deck; an odd-backed card, or a card with something drawn on the back or whatever. Now, the cards are taken out and shuffled and this oddity is spotted. “Ah, sorry, that shouldn’t be in there. It’s okay. The deck is complete.” You set the oddity aside. Then later, during a break, you pick up the oddity and say to someone nearby, “Want to see something interesting?” And now they’re going to get the answer as to why this blue card was in the red deck, or why this card with the arrow on the back was in the deck, etc. It’s an intriguing callback moment.

Here’s a game night trick that I’ve done in the past. (It works best for a group you don’t play card games with regularly.) At the beginning of the night, someone other than me opens up one of the card boxes and dumps out the deck. But it’s not a normal deck of cards. It’s a deck of cards that’s just one solid block. All the cards are stuck together. And there are people’s names written on this block.

“Ah, sorry,” I say. “My bad.” I take this weird object back and set it aside, while I grab another deck.

We use this new deck throughout the night.

At the end of the evening, I offer to show them a trick. It’s a short ambitious card routine. And at the end the deck—the one we’ve been using all night—solidifies into one single block of cards. Which I then have everyone sign and I keep as a souvenir of the evening.

So, this is just a way of doing Paul Harris’ Solid Deception.

Now, just to be clear, the block that is removed at the beginning is not supposed to be the same block of cards that appears at the end. This isn’t some sort of time-travel effect or something. The purpose of the block at the beginning is to plant a seed of, “What is that thing?” Then at the end, long after the first block has been forgotten, they get the answer. “Ah! So the deck magically becomes one unit and he has everyone write their name on it as a memento of the evening. That’s what we saw earlier tonight too.”

You don’t have to have the first block as part of the presentation. You could, of course, just perform Solid Deception at the end of the night. But I like the idea of bringing it full circle and making it feel like, “Oh, I see. This is something he does on nights he wants to remember. This is a night he wants to remember.”

Dustings #61

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Everybody and their sister has been sending me this video of Mark Lemon at Blackpool. (You need to be familiar with Ellusionist’s goofy Black Ops Watch to really “get” the joke as intended.) It’s nicely done which is something I rarely say about anyone in magic trying to be funny.

Sometimes when I first meet someone and they’re telling me about what they do for a living, I like to say:

“Oh, how much money do you make?”

I say it real innocent like. That moment where they’re trying to figure out if I’m serious is usually good for a laugh.

Along the same lines, I was recently wondering how much money you can make creating viral Facebook videos. No real reason, I was just curious. So I sent an email to Rick Lax and said, “Hey, how much money do you make?” Unsurprisingly, he didn’t want to give an exact number. But he did give this information which potential viral video creators may find motivating…

We post videos on Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, and sometimes YouTube.
A bad video makes nothing.
A fine video makes $1-$100.
A good video makes $100-$10,000.
A great video makes $10,000-$300,000.

Now, obviously he means a great performing video. Not a video that is, like, “great” artistically or something.

But there you go. Now you see what’s possible. I think the best route to take is to create one great video and make $300,000. But that’s maybe too lofty a goal. My plan is to make 300,000 fine videos, which I think is more doable for me.

I assumed this was widely understood, but it came up in a discussion with someone recently and they seemed to not know this:

If a trick is advertised as “great for social media,” that’s their way of saying, “this looks like shit or is completely unworkable in the real world.”

It would be like if I said, “Hey, I’ve got this amazing girl I want you to meet. And guess what? She looks good in pictures!” That’s your clue that she’s probably a bit of a disaster in real life.

So this is pretty cool! This is a sneak peek at some footage from an upcoming Penn & Teller documentary. This clip captures an early meeting between Joey Teller and Penn (née Norman) Jillette. In fact it documents the first time the subject of magic came up between them! It’s crazy that this was caught on tape and that it has survived all these years.

I’m not sure when exactly this piece of footage was recorded. My understanding is that it comes from a little bit after the time when Teller was a detective in Beverly Hills. But quite a bit before the time he was married to the ex-wife of the guy who accidentally killed santa, put on his suit, and therefore inadvertently became subject to a legal technicality known as “The Santa Clause.”

Is there a sexier line in magic literature than this one from page 40 of Sam Sharpe’s Neo Magic?

Hell yeah. This sexy-ass book got me feeling some kind of way.

My Top Three Variables for Differentiating the Magic Experience

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The professional is limited in the ways they can differentiate their performances. If you’re performing at the Magic Castle after David Regal, and you wanted to differentiate yourself from what he did. Then you might decide not to do any card tricks (because he frequently does those) or you might decide not to do any rejected jokes from an old According to Jim script (because he always does those).

You might be so scared of being compared to him that you come up with some weird “Rapping Magician” character.

I’m Magic Tommy and I’m here to say
I’m going to link these Chinese rings in a magical way

But no matter what you do, both experiences (your performance and his) will feel similar in a significant way to the audience because in both situations they will be sitting in a small theater watching a magic show.

As an amateur magician performing in social situations, we have a much greater set of tools we can exploit to make the experience of seeing a trick feel different for our spectators.

Usually when we talk about differentiating our performances, the first thing that comes to mind is changing up the type of material we do. Maybe we do a card trick one time, sponge balls the next, a mentalism trick, a gambling trick, etc.

“Type of material” feels like the most obvious variable to change up. But I think it’s also one of the least effective at generating a different experience for the spectator.

Here are my top three variables for creating magic experiences that feel distinct from one another.

Location

If I wanted to create five diverse memorable experiences with magic tricks and I was given these two options:

Option 1

Perform these five tricks for someone on different occasions at my dining room table:

  1. Spoon bending

  2. Color-changing knives

  3. Coins thru table

  4. $100 Bill switch

  5. Linking safety-pins

Option 2

Perform a card trick for someone in these locations:

  1. In front of a fireplace

  2. On a picnic

  3. While going through a car wash

  4. In a phone booth

  5. In bed

I would choose option 2 100% of the time as being the option that would generate stronger memories.

Someone will say, “Okay, so they might have more distinct memories of the environment in which the tricks occurred, but not the tricks themselves.”

Well, yes and no. Ideally the environment will be tied to the trick in some way. Maybe we’re burning a card if I’m performing in front of a fireplace. Or maybe we’re calling a random stranger from the phonebook to have them name any card in the deck if we’re in a phone booth.

But even if it was just five random card tricks in five different locations, I would still choose that over five varied tricks in the same location if my goal was to generate lasting memories of the experience of the performance.

Of course, this is a false dichotomy. You can change up your location and the type of material as well. I’m just saying if I could only change one or the other, I would prioritize location over material.

Time

If you write a word down and I read your mind, the experience of the trick is wildly different if I do it in 5 seconds, 5 minutes, 5 hours, or 5 days.

I think amateurs don’t nearly take enough advantage of the opportunity they have to present magic that lasts different lengths of time. Instead, almost everything they do is, like, 1-4 minutes.

Now, a two hour trick doesn’t mean they’re actually involved with watching a trick for two hours. You can do that, and I’ve done it in the past. But rarely. Usually it will be something that starts at a given point, and then I come back to it one or more times and then it concludes later on in the evening.

Of course, the implication should be that there’s some reason it’s taking so long, not that you’re just dragging things out.

Spectator’s Role

This is probably my favorite variable to play around with. What is the spectator’s role in the interaction? What is the relationship between you, them, and the thing they’re seeing? In a stage show, the role is almost always the same. They’re the spectator and the magician is the performer demonstrating something for their entertainment.

But in amateur magic, they can have many different roles and relationships to the effect.

They can be the spectator watching a magic trick.

They can be the “magician,” somehow demonstrating a magic ability they didn’t know they had.

They can be a student learning a trick from you.

They can be a spectator along with you to some other third-party magician (who may or may not actually exist).

They can be someone you’ve asked to help with a trick you’re working on.

They can be someone you’ve asked to critique a trick you’re working on.

They can be someone who is playing a game with you.

They can be someone taking part in a ritual with you.

They can be someone helping you test a concept or conduct an experiment.

They can be someone you’ve asked to join you on some mini-adventure into the unknown.

They can literally be playing a different role, e.g., “Hey, I have this trick I’m supposed to show my nephew’s class next week. Would you help me out by pretending to be an 8-year old?”

Playing around with these variables (and others) is the best way I’ve found to keep my performances fresh and interesting to the people I perform for regularly.

Monday Mailbag #62

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Lately, anytime I'm tempted to buy the latest and greatest trick or prop, I show the trailer or a performance video to laymen that I know and get their opinions on it. Mainly to see if they can distinguish the method right away.

The latest example is "Thin Air" by Ignacio Lopez

Every person I showed came to the instant conclusion that there's a flap. One person pointed out in the trailer that he lowers one corner but picks up on the corner beneath it. I think this is a great standard to implement on deciding what to buy. This should be the last step in "The Jerx Purchasing Principle".... Show to at least 3 laymen... —CH

Yes, this is the purpose of the Virtual Focus Group, to get demos in front of laypeople. I sent this one out to a half-dozen people and all of their “best guesses” involved there being something going on with the silk. Even though I had edited the demo down to just one effect (so they weren’t seeing the silk in action over and over again).

When used as an appearance or a vanish, this is the sort of trick that might look "magical,” but won’t be very fooling. Usually I’m concerned about the inverse of this. A boring card effect, for example, that might fool people but doesn’t seem very magical. Here I think you have the opposite. Seeing something appear or disappear will give a little magical thrill, but there’s just too obvious an explanation of where the thing came from or went. So you just have the “Surprise” reaction, and then it quickly fades. (The Surprise Fizzle.)

That being said, I think it becomes less obvious when using this prop for an invisible switch. For example, having a borrowed dollar bill folded up and covered with the silk and then you divine its serial number. But I feel like even in that situation the use of the silk itself will raise eyebrows. It’s going to look out of place in most situations that aren’t your Magic Castle set, or something along those lines.

If I had to try and jam this prop into a more casual setting, maybe I’d have a small brass bowl wrapped in the silk or sitting on it in some sort of Wonder Room area of my house. Then I’d go through some ritual where something gets secretly written down on a piece of paper which is folded up, that paper gets burned in the bowl, and then at some point later in the night, that word, or name, or object that was written on the paper, manifests itself in some manner.

In that case I’d have to come up with the choreography for when/why the billet is placed on the silk and covered. If I could come up with something that makes sense, then the benefit of this—over just manually switching and burning a dummy billet—is that I can claim to “never touch it.” Then, of course, their actual billet would just be hidden in the silk for me to get later in the evening and set it up so their word appears in the steam on the bathroom mirror during their shower or whatever.

Playing cards are ubiquitous, but playing games with playing cards is sort of disappearing--except with old guys like me. But the proliferation of magicians who whip out a deck of cards is enormous (Larry Haas has published the final two books of Eugene Burger's magic; he tells me that the penultimate book did okay, but the final one is flying off the shelves because it is all card magic--magicians love cards).

So here's the thing. Even if we notice a pack of playing cards in someone's silverware drawer--I don't know why she keeps them there--and say, hey, I want to try something, the immediate thought is always "magic trick." Because, what? You're going to show them a variation of Hearts? I know that if our casual friends know we do magic, this isn't really a problem, but I know you also approach strangers in coffee shops.

So my question is--do you ever whip out a deck of cards in such settings [and if so, how]? I suspect that the "can you help me with this? I'm working on something," might work, but I have not done that [yet].

I don’t often bring out a deck of cards and show something to a complete stranger in a setting like a coffee shop. At least I don’t spring it on them just out of the blue. If it’s going to happen then it’s likely to happen because the subject of magic (or gambling or psychology or something) comes up in conversation while talking to them—because I’m talking about my interests, or something I was doing the other day. Once that subject comes up, it’s very likely they’re going to latch onto it because that’s what people do. At least people who are interested in talking to you. So once they take the bait, it’s easy to say, “Oh yeah… actually, there’s something I’ve been working on. Could I get your help with it?” And then I might remove some cards from my computer bag. So that’s how I would get to that point. That’s not the first thing I say to them, it’s the thing that links the discussion we’re already having to the trick.

Now, I also happen to be in a unique situation where I can go into any of a dozen coffee shops around me and there is an 80% chance that one of the regular customers or employees has seen me do something in the past and knows that I’m always “working on” something so it’s very likely they’re going to ask if I have anything new I’m playing around with. This is one of the benefits of being the world’s only professional amateur magician. I’ve created a whole bunch of locations I can go to where I see people regularly enough for them to know who I am and what I’m into, but infrequently enough that they aren’t burnt out on seeing “something weird” or “something interesting” or “a new trick I was reading about.”

Now, let’s say you’re out at a public place where you don’t know anyone. And for some reason you’re desperate to show someone a particular card trick. Here are two methods you can use to approach someone sitting next to you without saying, “Can I show you a trick?”

Both of these methods rely on making that person feel helpful in a concrete way. If you just say, “Do me a favor, watch me do a magic trick.” That’s almost going to feel like, “Do me a favor, give me some validation.” Because that’s what it would feel like if someone offered to “entertain” you out of the blue, in any situation really.

So here are a couple of tactics you can use. One for a more procedural trick, and one for a visual trick.

Procedural

Have your deck of cards out and a notebook. Do some cutting and dealing or some actions similar to what your trick entails. And every now and then make a note in your notebook (or on your laptop if you have that). Do this for 5-10 minutes or so as you drink your coffee. A couple of times, mutter under your breath, “What the heck?” Or, “Hmmm… wait a sec” Or something like that. Don’t be overly theatrical with it.

At some point, turn to the person next to you and say, “Excuse me. Could I get your help with something? It will only take a second—I just need someone else’s input because I think I’ve looked at this too much myself.” Or whatever. You’re not saying, “Can I show you something?” Or, “Would you like to see something?” Instead you’re asking for their help. And this works because, generally, people like to be helpful. Now you go through the trick with them. You may say it’s “a trick” you’re working on, or you may say it’s something else, “I’m testing some blackjack probabilities” or whatever, I don’t know. It’s going to depend on what your trick is.

So you walk through the trick with no presentation. And at the end you reach the climax of the trick and you turn over the top four cards to show the four aces (for example). You don’t say, “ta-daa!” You just go back to your notebook and make a couple more notes and shake your head and mutter, “I…just…don’t…get…it.” You thank them for their help and then turn back to your own work. You can then let them engage with you as much as they want or don’t want to afterwards. I would say 4 our of 5 times they want to engage more and talk about what just happened. But even if they don’t, assuming the trick is solid, it’s going to gnaw at their mind a little. And because you didn’t go in looking for their adulation, it’s going to make them wonder a little bit exactly what it was they just saw.

Visual

With a visual trick you’re going to create another area of need for them to help out with. You take out your phone and turn on the camera and try and prop the phone up against your coffee cup or whatever as you show something to the camera. Essentially you want it to look like you’re practicing something and recording it.

Now you turn to the person next to you and ask them if you could get their help quickly. Ask them to hold your phone and record your hands. They’re going to watch the trick, but they’re going to do so by watching it through a screen. Seeing a trick on a screen would normally dullen its impact. But it’s a much different situation when they’re the one capturing the magic on the screen themselves.

Almost every time I’ve done something like this (and it works for any visual trick, not just a card trick, of course), they’ve asked me to text them the video. So it’s a great way to potentially open the lines of communication beyond just this moment, if you’re so inclined.

But the real purpose of both of these techniques is to remove the “ask” of saying “Do you want to see a trick?” or “Can I show you something interesting.” Instead you turn the ask into a simple task, “Could you name a card and a number for me?” or “Could you record this for me.”

If I was going to pull a card trick on a stranger in that kind of environment, that’s likely the approach I would use.

Dustings #60

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In keeping with some recent discussion on the site, there is a new GLOMM booting to announce. Jordan Parton from Wales has been kicked out of the Global League of Magicians and Mentalists.

Jordan Parton also performed under the name Crazy Clown Balloons—which, along with his taste in playing cards, should have been a tip-off that something was wrong with this dude. Crazy Clown Balloons isn’t a name. It’s just three somewhat related words. It would be like calling yourself Fun Magician Card-box.

Incredibly, the pictures below were not the most unsavory photos found on Justin’s computer…

You see, his crime involved posing as a 15-year-old boy online to get sexual images from girls over snapchat and then using those images to blackmail the girls into performing sex acts online which he would record.

Now, the GLOMM has recently come under attack by the WKPB (the White Knights of the Pedo Brigade). So I want to make sure I address their concerns.

  1. Yes, this is a real person who was really convicted of these acts. No, it’s not just my neighbor who plays his music too loud and this is my way of getting back at him.

  2. Yes, there is supporting data online. You can find it with a google search. Here is a link to get you started because I know you’re confused how google works.

  3. No, I’m not suggesting “vigilanteism.” He is paying the legal price for what he did. And he’s paying the magic price by landing an eternal spot on the GLOMM's list.

  4. Yes, I realize you could argue that there are worse crimes than grooming and blackmailing girls for the purposes of child porn. But this isn’t a FISM category where I’m trying to find the one World’s Most Monstrous Sex Criminal Magician.

This is not Jordan’s first run in with the law. Nine years ago he made up a bullshit story about being attacked on the street. I mean, there’s no follow-up to this story, but it’s clearly fiction. You don’t get punched and kicked for five minutes, as he claimed to be, and be left “uninjured.” That’s literally not how punching and kicking works. He clearly just dropped his Blackberry and had to come up with some excuse because he’s scared of his mom.

Well, regardless, Jordan Parton, once the youngest member of the Cardiff Magic Society (and as far as I know, still a member in good standing today), is the newest person to be kicked out of the GLOMM.

If you’re releasing a download teaching a trick that requires a lot of sleight of hand or specific hand positioning—like rubber-band effects, most coin tricks, many card effects—I think the right ratio is for about 90% of the video to come from the performer’s perspective, and 10% to be the audience view.

However, if one of the big magic companies wants to create the ultimate video teaching tool, they should have a video control panel specifically made for learning magic. And it should have the feature where, at any point, you can swap from the performer’s perspective to the audience’s view. Perhaps one view is always inset in the corner, and by clicking on it, that becomes the main view, swapping with the other.

In addition there should be a simple speed slider so you can increase and decrease speed easily. And a button that flips the image for people learning who are left-handed if the performer is right-handed (and vice-versa, of course).

There are probably other features that would be helpful too, but I’ve given you a start.

You would need one definitive downloadable version of the instruction video, but the interactive one could live on your site. Of course not every trick requires that level of clarity in teaching, but for those that do, it could be quite useful.

This is the trick you got if you were a member of the Society of American Magicians this past year.

“Attached is my gift to you for making it through the challenges of the past year.”

Did the continuing global pandemic cause you to lose your job or a loved one? If so, this trick is your gift for making it through that challenge.

Okay, okay… let’s try and dissect the many layers of this brilliant trick.

First you have the very common and modern conceit of a “wooden nickel.”

But it’s not just that. It also includes the very funny joke that if you put the word “tuit” on something that’s round you can then refer to it as “a round tuit,” which sound hilariously like the phrase “around to it.” Now we’re having fun!

It’s also includes the inspiring message, “We do more together.”

And finally, it say 4 of ❤️’s. Which is an interesting use of the possessive S. But with how well thought out this trick is, I’m sure there’s a reason behind it.

So just imagine the power of this trick. You force the 4 of Hearts on someone and then you hit them with what I consider the greatest, most logical, line in the history of magic. Just imagine how your spectator will react when they hear those three beautiful unrelated clauses jammed into a single sentence: “I knew you would pick the 4 of Hearts because we do more together when we get a round TUIT.”