I Live

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Hey, your boy’s back. I finally got that Covid but I’ve come out the other side. There are some lingering aches and issues, but I think the old brain is doing alright and no worse for the wear. I did come to the realization while I was away that the Bill in Lemon is actually a really good trick. It’s a bill. But it ends up in a lemon! I mean… come on! Now I understand why this is in repertoire of so many professional magicians. It’s not sheer fucking laziness. It’s because it’s such a meaningful piece of magic that makes people think and feel.

I’ve got a new schedule planned for the site. Starting next week, posting is going to be Monday thru Friday, the first three weeks or so of every month.

It’s going to be essentially the same amount of content, I’m just going to be divvying it up differently. The same pizza, just cut up into more slices. So the content for the Monday mailbag posts, and the Friday Dustings posts are going to creep into Tuesdays and Thursdays.

What I want is to have each post be a little more focused on one topic. Unless it’s something truly trivial and stupid. In which case I’m happy to toss a bunch of those together into one post. So mail posts will focus on one question (or multiple questions on the same topic). And I’ll only group them together in a mailbag when I have a bunch of super quick ones to answer.

So you can stop by every weekday for a quick hit of something here, if that brings you joy. But the purpose of this isn’t to get you to come by the site more often. It’s just, as I said, to have more focused posts.

If you choose to stop by once a week, you won’t miss out on anything. I’ll try to always give a week’s notice on anything time-sensitive that might come up

[UPDATE: I’ve already received a number of offers to help with this. At this point I don’t need anyone else to submit. But thanks to everyone who wrote in.]

I’m thinking about bringing on someone to create an index for this site and my other work as well.

This would be a long-term project, obviously, given the amount of content here.

I would cover the cost of your support payment indefinitely, as well as pay you a fee on top of that.

If you’re interested, send me an email with Index in the subject. If there’s something that makes you particularly well-suited for this project, let me know.

There’s a decent chance I’ll just end up doing it myself. But it might be quicker if I hire someone else.

This is one of the reasons I want to focus each post on one subject going forward. It will make indexing easier in the future.

Love Letters #1 will be in supporters email boxes today at noon, my time (New York).

If you didn’t get it and you think you were supposed to:

  1. Remember that—unless you told me otherwise—it’s going to the email address that’s associated with your paypal account.

  2. Check your spam and all that.

  3. It’s possible I don’t have you on the distribution list. Send me an email and we can get it sorted.

Speaking of Love Letters, if you wake up to music for your morning alarm, I highly recommend the song below. It’s got some gentle, non-jarring horns for the first 1:20 to softly rouse you out of your sleep. Then it kicks in with some bouncy energy to get your day started. I, fortunately, don’t usually need to wake up with an alarm, but this is what I use when I do.

Thanks to everyone who wrote and sent along their best wishes while I was out.

Change of Schedule

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Soo… I finally got covid.

I’m bummed.

Originally I thought, “Hey, I don’t care. I won’t let this slow me down!” But it is slowing me down.

So I’m pushing back the current schedule a week.

Postings and the newsletter were supposed to begin on June 1st. They will now start on June 8th. Sorry guys. I’m loathe to ever change any kind of deadline I’ve set for myself. But I also don’t want to treat myself like a robot and not give myself a break if I need it. Hopefully a week will be enough time to get me back on track.

I will make up for lost posting when I return.

If you have something that might be interesting or entertaining to occupy my mind while I’m dealing with this, please send it along in an email.

Until June…

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As mentioned in a recent post, the new schedule will involve posting year-round, with no Dec-Feb break. But there will be small breaks at the end of each months during which I’ll focus on the newsletter which comes out on the first of every month for subscribers at both support levels.

The new newsletter, Love Letters #1, will come out this coming Wednesday at noon, New York time, and it will go in depth on the three effects/releases that were the highlights for me in the month of May. And each new issue will look at the highlights from the previous month. (The may not have been released the previous month, but for whatever reason they were a highlight for me that month.)

So, for new readers, just to clarify how I split up my content for the different outlets:

The site: Topical content, ideas in the early stages, un-tested effects, Q & As, emails, dumb shit.

The newsletter: A place for me to go into more detail on other people’s routines and releases that I’m really enjoying. In the past the newsletter has been for reviews. That’s still sort of true. But now I’m just going to be focusing on the stuff I particularly like. In future issues there may be a small section with brief descriptions of some of the effects I bought that didn’t pan out for one reason or another, but that’s not going to be the focus of the newsletter. It’s more going to be about how I’m performing some current favorites originated by other people. If I really want to trash a product for some reason. I’ll just do it on the site. The newsletter is called Love Letters because it’s about the stuff I love. (If you couldn’t figure that out yourself.)

The book: Fully-formed and tested tricks, and what I’ve found to be the most impactful theory and techniques from the previous 1-2 years.

Other releases: There is likely to be some stand alone books on specific topics, and also effects that require a physical prop or gimmick (i.e., effects that I couldn’t just include in the books). These will only be available to active supporters at the time of the product’s release.

Who knew this site was going to get so goddamn complicated? I certainly didn’t when I started it as a goof seven years ago.

Happy Birthday/Anniversary or whatever the hell it is to the site and thanks to those of you who have kept it alive for 2500+ days. See you in June.

A Thought Experiment

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Here’s Dai Vernon performing the cups and balls on Magic Circus…

Over the course of the routine there are about 23 magical moments (moments where something appears, disappears, penetrates, etc.). It’s a classic. For the most part the audience seems to enjoy it. Of course, as a magician who has see too many cups and balls—especially a lot of versions of this particular routine—it’s a little hard to appreciate it as I would if I was coming to it as a blank slate. ‘

This video made me think a little about magic and mentalism.

In the past couple decades, a lot of people have moved away from traditional magic and gotten into mentalism because it seems to have a greater effect on people.

I think it’s true that, on average, mentalism seems to hit harder than straight magic. But let’s do a little thought experiment.

Imagine these two performances:

Performance #1

You’ve gathered a group of people around a small circular table. On the table is one ball and one cup. The cup is handed around the table from person to person so they can get a look at it. The ball goes around the table next so everyone can see that up close too.

Everyone is now very familiar with the feel of the cool, heavy silver cup, and the little crocheted ball.

“Knock on the table,” you say. “Take a look under it. There’s nothing special about the table, is there?”

You very slowly and cleanly take the red ball and place it under the cup in the center of the table. Your hands are empty as you step away.

You have everyone join hands and imagine a beam of energy traveling from their “third eye” to the cup on the table.

After a few moments you reach over to the cup and slowly lift it up. The ball is gone.

Performance #2

You’ve gathered a group of people around a large circular table.. Over the course of the next four minutes you:

  1. Tell three people their ATM code

  2. Tell two people a word they’re thinking of which they saw in a book

  3. Tell one person the name of the first person they kissed.

  4. Tell four people the name of their childhood pet.

  5. Tell one person what number they will roll on a die.

  6. Tell one person what Wikipedia entry they looked up.

  7. Tell two people what color crayon they handed you behind your back.

  8. Predict the cards two people would would pick.

  9. Tell three people which hand holds a coin.

  10. Reveal someone’s star sign.

  11. Bend a spoon with your mind.

Mentalism frequently does receive better reactions than magic. But what if we presented mentalism like we do many standard magic tricks? What if there were 23 moments of mentalism crammed into four minutes?

Is magic actually weaker than mentalism or is it just the fact that we tend to present mentalism as if it’s something interesting? As if it’s something that is meaningful. We usually take our time with it. There’s no desperate attempt to keep their attention by doing as much mentalism as possible in the time we have.

Performance #1 is simply a magic trick presented with the pacing of a piece of mentalism. Performance #2 is mentalism performed as the cups and balls (or many other multi-phase effects).

From my experience, you get much stronger reactions by taking a few minutes to build up to one moment of magic, rather than trying to do as much magic as possible in a few minutes. So my ideal us usually a one-phase routine. That being said, often the context of the effect I’m performing requires multiple phases, in which case I’ll do as many phases as I need to serve the story.

But these mega-phase routines (cups and balls, egg bag, linking rings, long card routines, long coin routines) with many magical moments but no interesting context holding them together, have really no place in the type of amateur performing I like.

What makes them so attractive to magicians, I think, is that they can be a lot of fun to practice. You get to feel like you’re accomplishing something as you string together all these moves into one long routine. But that doesn’t make them great routines to watch. I would say the strongest routines I perform consist of minutes of story, conversation and interaction with a magical twist at the end. But the truth is, these effects are really not that interesting to practice. There’s not much satisfaction in just practicing a single coin switch. The satisfaction comes in performance, when that switch helps tell a story of traveling in time or whatever.

Perform whatever tricks you like, of course. Just be wary that “lots of magic moments” doesn’t correlate with powerful magic. In my experience, often the more magic moments, the weaker the impact of the effect. Or, at least, the more diluted the reaction is. And the more general the audience’s memory of the effect becomes.

Do I think Dai Vernon should have just vanished one ball and then been done with it? No.

But I also don’t think you should perform socially as if you were on a 1970s magic variety show.

Monday Mailbag #69

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Heh-heh… 69.

Did you ever listen to the This American Life about when Improv Everywhere held a huge sprawling surprise birthday party for a random stranger in a bar, and left him scarred with anxiety and paranoia? (See act two of https://www.thisamericanlife.org/286/mind-games-2005 )

I feel like Just For You would do that same thing, but instead of to one person, to every one of your friends (or every person at the party). Leaving them convinced all of their friends were lying to them. No matter how hard they begged, how much the pleaded or cried… their wife wouldn’t admit she was in on it. 

And yet I’d still love to try it. It would be an interesting experience for sure. —AD

Yes, I'm familiar with that story. I wouldn't be too worried about it messing people up too bad. Whereas the Improv Everywhere thing was designed to affect that one person specifically, and everyone’s focus was directed towards that one person. With Just For You, they have to choose to really see themselves as the focal point of the routine. Yes, “this was all done for you” is the premise of the routine. But it’s done in a way where they have to “opt-in” to choose to believe it. The presentation is—I think—nicely designed so there are no holes in the logic of the premise, but they still have to willingly suspend their disbelief to fully engage with the premise. And if they’re doing that, then it’s because they want to.

That’s considerably different than 30 people coming up to you in a bar, insisting your name is Ted, and that it’s your birthday.

I read the Just For You effect yesterday [last Wednesday] morning. Last night I performed it at a dinner/talent show my office was putting on. I used your script almost verbatim. I won first place and $400. I guess I should start supporting the site now. Thanks! —SC

Nice job. You can PayPal me my 20%. I’ll split your fee and your thanks with Joe Mckay for sending along the original idea.

I'm totally new to your site, and I'm looking for resources that might help me finesse my way into approaching complete strangers in public places so as to magicsh them.

I'm not interested in this because that's how I prefer to perform. It's just because I need to practice, and this is the most efficient way I can think of — to do essentially "strolling magic" without an invitation.

Can you point me to the right articles? —G

“Strolling magic without an invitation” is just about the most terrifying way I’ve heard of describing what I’m focused on with this site—that being magic in casual and social situations. I’m also not a fan of the word “magicsh,” but I’ll let that go for the moment.

“Approaching complete strangers in public places,” is not something I do and not something I recommend.

There are certain situations where I’ll perform for someone who I don’t really know.

Those situations are things like this:

  • For someone who is near me at a cafe or a bar.

  • For someone sitting next to me on a train or plane or bus.

  • The rare occasion when I’m standing in line for an extended period of time (Camping out for them Yeezys). Or in some other extended “waiting” situation.

  • At a wedding, party or other event where I may not know many people.

What do these situations have in common?

They’re all situations where it’s acceptable to engage with strangers. I’m not randomly walking up to a couple at a park bench. I’m not sitting down next to a woman sunbathing alone at the beach, “I want to show you something.”

Get comfortable interacting with people in these types of situations. If you’re uncomfortable asking stranger in these types of situations how their day has been going, then you’re not prepared to show them a trick either. That might not sound true to you. You might think, “Actually, I’d be more comfortable showing someone a trick than having a casual conversation with them.” I understand that. But the type of magic I write about is built on top of casual/social interactions. It is not a substitution for them.

People will be able to sense if your little trick is the only thing that’s allowing you to interact with them. And they will be put off by it, I promise you. If you met someone and they immediately started speaking to you through their ventriloquist dummy—and could barely interact with you otherwise—you’d be weirded out by them too regardless of how good their ventriloquism is.

Use the right material for these sorts of situations. If I’m waiting in a two-hour line for a roller coaster, I’m not going to do a card trick for the guy behind me. I’d probably do something propless or something that uses my phone. At a bar (where there is a surface nearby) you have some more options, but you’d still want to use objects that are natural to the environment. At a cafe I’m perfectly fine using anything I might be carrying with me, even a deck of cards if the layout of the cafe allows for it.

On a train or plane, at a party, in line, or at bar, there will almost always be at least a few minutes of conversation before I transition into a trick. At some point in that conversation they will have learned of my interest in: magic, psychology, gambling, supernatural phenomena, games, fortune-telling, rituals, or whatever the case may be. (These are all real interests. I just might stress one or the other given what I think the person I’m talking to might be interested in and/or what trick I’m thinking of performing.) I don’t just bring the subjects up randomly. I don’t just say, “Hey, I like magic!” But if someone is asking me how my weekend is, I can say something like, “Good. I met up with some friends for a poker game Saturday. Lost a bunch of money. I’m trying to steer the group towards some different games that I think I have a better shot at.” Or whatever. It’s perfectly normal when talking with someone for the first time to hit on hobbies, work, and activities you’re involved in. All of these give me the opportunity to transition into a trick, if I want.

The only place I come close to going directly into a magic trick is in a cafe where people are sitting and working for an extended period of time. I’ll make eye contact with the people near me as I sit down, or as they sit down. If one of them seems particularly friendly and open, I may ask at some point later on, “Hey, can I get your help real quick?” In that circumstance I would do something that’s under a minute, and legitimately requires their assistance. You don’t want to ask for their help and then make them watch a two-minute coin routine.

That’s the closest I’ll get to performing for strangers with zero preamble.

Performing for pure strangers is not something I put much effort into. I don’t really consider that casual or social magic. Social magic is generally done with friends, family, or at least acquaintances in mind. If you don’t have a lot of people to perform for, then your goal should be to grow your social circle, or at least lean into your comfort zone so you’re having more low-level interactions with people. That will give you more opportunities to perform without having to assault some total stranger.

Dustings #67

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Some readers have tested out the False Decoy Ploy mentioned in last Friday’s post. The idea was submitted by D@n Ruse (Can you solve the devious puzzle of what his real name is? The @ sign is there so a google search for him won’t direct non-magicians to this site).

Basically, the idea was this… If you casually ask someone to select a card from a spread that looks like this…

They will likely ignore the “obvious” choice—the one sticking right out at them. But while being preoccupied with avoiding that choice, they would end up taking the “easy” choice (the one marked “decoy” above). You can get more detail on this in last Friday’s post.

Here is some of the feedback I got from people who tested it…

10 different people . 6 picked the decoy. 3 picked the obvious card. 1 picked a random card. —DH

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I've been a hobbyist card magician for well over 50 years, and didn't particularly expect this to work.  but I tried it out on my wife, whom I've been with for the last 30 years (so you can imagine how many card tricks she's seen and criticized) and she immediately took the decoy.

More time will tell, but this may be better than I thought it would be. —DE

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I tried the force several times, it didn't work at all. They never went for the out jogged card, as was planned, but they never went for the easy to get card either. 

I don't really like how it feels. Each time I did it, they looked at the deck like, "What the heck is that? Are you trying to get me to do something specific?" Even though their choice was free, it definitely didn't feel like a free choice. —JB

Overall, from the people I heard back from, this seemed to work about 60% of the time. Just enough to be interesting, but not enough to really be useful.

I think the success of this would likely depend on who you’re performing for. If i had a wife who had seen 100s of card tricks, I can imagine this working well on her. But I’ve spent so much time with the people i regularly perform for trying to beat into their head that the card they choose is important. So I can’t really use something that relies on such a casual selection process. When I give people a static fan of cards like this to pick a card, they will frequently dig in with two hands to spread the cards to one particular random card hidden within the spread. After years of working on forces where the selection process is slow and deliberate, that’s what the people I perform for are used to.

That being said, there still may be other uses for this idea. Perhaps even unrelated to cards. Other situations where we can distract people with an “obvious” choice in a way that they don’t realize they’re taking the “easy” choice.

I mentioned in last Friday’s post that this was going to be a sort of meta-testing. A testing of testing, i.e., how many people who read the article would go and test out the idea? Well… not many. I would say that somewhere between .2 and .5% of the people who read that post ended up testing it out and reporting back. So the idea of creating some kind of testing squad for widespread testing is probably not going to happen. That’s okay. When I started the site I was pretty intent on never shifting the burden of content to the readers: no comments, no guest posts, etc. So I’m perfectly happy to handle the testing ideas aspect of the site as much as possible by myself.

My favorite part of putting the books together is working with our friend Stasia on the cover.

The title for the illustration on this year’s cover is “The Entertainer.” On the front cover is a magician performing the cups and balls from, and the back cover shows him from behind. The image was based on the Magician card from Stasia’s tarot deck.

Here’s a variation on Wednesday’s trick, Just For You. That trick involved using a switching box to switch a bunch of slips of paper with words written by the audience for duplicate words, and then exposing that all the words were the same in order to tell a story where everyone in the audience was working together to fool one person. And doing so in a way to get everyone in the audience to imagine themselves as that one person.

Here’s a similar idea. Again, this is something for parlor/stage, so it’s not something I’ve been able to test out.

You have everyone in the audience write a word on a slip of paper and drop it into some sort of container. Someone shakes up the container and dumps the folded slips of paper out onto the floor or table. One paper is randomly selected in some manner and it matches your prediction. Let’s say the word was “button.”

You would then go on to explain how this trick was accomplished.

As the people filed into the theater for the show, there was a video playing on a screen. You bring up that video again and slow it down and show a number of references to the word “button” that pop up in subtle and/or subliminal ways throughout the video.

You explain that it goes deeper than this. You didn’t simply suggest the idea of button to them. You implanted a complicated hypnotic suggestion in the video that would have them all write “button” when the time came, but it would feel to them like they were writing some other random word. “You’d even see that random word when you looked at your paper.”

You ask a couple people what word they wrote down.

“Dinosaur,” “moon,” “anger,” they say.

“Perfect. I’m glad it felt that way. Now that the hypnotic suggestion has passed, you can see the reality of the situation.”

You pick up some of the slips of paper and unfold them: button… button… button. In different handwritings.

You probably want to have one focal member of the audience who writes down their word in some other format or who doesn’t drop their word in the container, so you can highlight what’s happening with this one person (and apparently everyone else in the audience).

For example, they write their word on a small chalkboard. They think they wrote down “lemon” but when they show their word it says “button” (using some kind of Spirit Slate). Or they write it down on a drawing app. They look and see they definitely wrote down “lemon.” They show the phone to the audience and it says “button.” You break the hypnotic suggestion and now they see button too (using the Jerx App). Or some other switch of whatever they wrote down for something with “button” written on it (switching envelope, switching wallet, or just a billet switch). Tell that person to write their word in “capital letters” because it’s going to be shown to everyone in the audience—that way the switched in word will match their writing to some extent. (Or you could go so far as to research one audience’s member’s handwriting so your switched-in word really matches their normal handwriting.)

Either way, you really need to do the effect both ways: en masse for the whole audience, and then more directly for one person. Otherwise it’s too easy for the whole premise to unravel if they just think, “Well, he must have somehow switched all the slips of paper.” That thought will come to a certain percentage of the audience no matter what. But what you want is for them to think, “Maybe he switched all the papers? But wait… that doesn’t explain the woman who wrote her word on the chalkboard.”

Just For You

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Received this email from friend-of-the-site, Joe Mckay:

I keep thinking about premises that are neither based in supernatural claims or being a body language expert.

One idea I had was this. You have everyone in a room write down a word on a piece of paper. You then use a switching box (eg AmazeBox) to force a word.

You fool everyone in the room.

You then say that you don't usually explain how a trick is done - but you will in this case since the secret is so much fun.

You then point to somebody and tell them that everyone else in the room helped you in fooling them by writing the same word.

We are using the Dunninger idea of using a hundred stooges to fool somebody idea as a fake explanation.

Everyone else in the room is still fooled. So it puts them in an odd mental space.

Perhaps it would be better to say that everyone in the room helped you with that trick by writing the same word and that you want to thank them for their co-operation. You then say you won't single out the person who all this effort went into fooling - but you just want to be honest about how the trick worked. —JM

I don’t do performances for large groups, but I can see this being a fun idea.

Joe's last paragraph is how I’d handle this.

“So you’re all probably wondering how I predicted the randomly selected word would be ‘tennis.’ Well… you’re not all wondering that. But some of you are probably wondering how I knew the word would be tennis.

“Actually… that’s not quite true either. One of you is wondering how I knew the word would be tennis. The other 79 of you already know.

“You see, there’s one special person in the audience tonight. And if you think it might be you… then it’s definitely you. Only one person right now is wondering how that trick was done. The rest of us already know.”

I’d walk over to whatever switching box was used and grab a handful of the slips inside.

“You see, we all got together to fool you, specifically.” I wouldn’t single out an individual as I say this. I’d just sort of say it to the air as I make a broad gesture.

“A little while ago, myself and the 79 other audience members made a plan. They would come here tonight, and when I asked people to drop a random word in the box, they all agreed to write down ‘tennis.’ Then, no matter which word was removed, my prediction would match.”

Throughout all of this I would be opening slip after slip after slip. Showing “tennis” “tennis” “tennis” and “tennis” in different handwritings and tossing them to the ground.

“Now, when the show is over, the people close to you might insist, ‘No, I didn’t write tennis! I wrote mailbox!’ Or something like that. Trust me. They wrote tennis. Everyone but you did. Their denials are scripted. In fact, a number of the interactions you had before the show—and will have for some time after the show—have all been scripted.

“I didn’t do this just to fool you. No. If I just wanted to fool you I could have used one of maybe a dozen ways I know of to predict a random word. I did this to remind you that you are worth great effort. Sometime in the future—maybe tomorrow, maybe a year from now—something is going to come up in your life that’s going to require great effort on your part, or the part of those who love you. If you should ever find yourself wondering if you’re deserving of that effort, I want you to remind yourself of the time 79 people worked together to make something as thoroughly inconsequential as a magic trick work, solely for your benefit. Let that serve as an example of the effort you deserve.”

Now, okay, you could say that last paragraph is a little hokey or maudlin. I’m not really trying to “inspire” anyone with that paragraph (although it might). I’m simply trying to justify why I would go to these lengths for the sake of a trick. Otherwise it’s just being clever for the sake of being clever and it would be easier to completely dismiss. But if people think it’s something I did to prove some kind of point, then they’re closer to considering that it’s something I really did.

This explanation—“We all came together for the purpose of creating a magic trick to entertain/fool just you.”—Is one of those perfect premises, in my mind. It’s the type of idea that no one is likely to really believe, But it’s also kind of a seductive idea that they might find themselves considering more than you would expect. “Okay, that’s probably not what happened… but what if?”

Plus I like that it’s a trick that is not just based on one reality, or dual reality. Instead, each person in the audience gets their own reality. And no matter how much the people they’re with or the people around them deny that reality, it can’t undermine the premise you established.

If anyone of you ever tries this out, let me know.