WWJD, Would He Wear an M-Ring?

Today’s WWJD question comes from Anthony O.

I know you're a fan of interesting rings and of things you can wear that help you transition into a trick.

I was just wondering if you had an opinion on the "M-Ring"

I find it kind of fascinating as it was worn by magicians like Nate Leipzig and Harry Blackstone Jr. and is known as like a secret sign that you're a magician since it's vaguely M-shaped for "Magic" or "Magician". Apparently magic clubs have been known to give them out when you win a competition or if you like attain a certain level.

I've heard various reasons for why magicians like it such as how the shape prevents it from impeding sleight of hand or how it also allows you to hold out cards easily.

Part of me finds all of this stuff really interesting but part of me thinks its also extremely nerdy. I'll probably pick one up at some point.

I was just curious as to what you think of its history and connotations and whatnot. If it's something you'd wear, I was also wondering what you'd say about it if someone were to comment on it? —AO

Well, purely as a fashion statement, I find it kind of hideous.

But I do like the story behind it and the symbolism and all of that.

The problem is, if you tell someone about this ring and they look into it, they aren’t going to find details about Nate Leipzig and secret symbolism. They’re going to find something they can buy on ebay for $25. So any cachet or mystique the ring might have is completely gone. Which means it’s kind of fucked out for me. At least as a presentational tool.

Now, the idea of secret clubs, secret rings, and secret knowledge are all intriguing concepts to laypeople. So I wouldn’t necessarily throw away the idea of a ring you got as part of some secret society. I would just go out and find some other ring that is interesting looking and use that as my Hook. I’d look around vintage stores, flea markets, or maybe etsy to have something custom made. Perhaps get something engraved on the inside.

Now if someone says, “What’s that ring?” I can give it whatever backstory I want as far as what organization gave it to me, or what accomplishment I had to achieve to get one, or who I’m wearing it for as a “secret signal” that we’re both in the same club.

In my telling, I would probably be one step removed from the person who received the ring. That way I can talk up that person’s greatness without talking myself up.

“Oh this ring? This used to belong to my great uncle. The one who got me into magic. You see the IML engraved in there? That’s not his initials. It’s from the International Magic League which was a group that he was in back in the 50s. Did you ever see Good Will Hunting? You remember how they would put some impossible math equation on the chalkboard for people to try and solve? Well the International Magic League would do something similar with magic tricks that were deemed ‘impossible.’ They would post them in their monthly newsletter, and if someone eventually cracked a way to do it, they would receive a ring like this. I think over the course of a century they only gave out 12 rings. So my uncle was very proud of it. Do you want to see the trick he discovered?”

Monday Mailbag #71

I noticed this new, supposedly convincing, vanishing bottle gimmick. 

And immediately recalled the Theory of Mind thing you once posted. Wait lemme check... Sally Andy Trick. 

How did that go? Could you divert attention from the crumpled bag effectively?

I kinda want to get it, just to have a pseudo-psychological framing when calling my friend "a fucking braindead idiot.” Worth doing? —RS

It depends on what you’re going for. The Sally Andy Trick is fun to do. But because the ending is a “punchline,” in a way, it doesn’t quite capture people’s imaginations the way a non-funny trick would. The trick is fooling but nowhere near “enchanting.” This is probably true of any trick that ends with a punchline.

To get people to feel like what they saw was “special” in some way, you have to present it in a manner that you would something special. And putting it in joke structure doesn’t do that.

But that being said, I think it’s an enjoyable way to present the vanishing bottle. It’s just not some enduring mystery (which may be true of most, if not all, uses for such a gimmick). So depending on what you’re going for, it may or may not suit your needs.

And, no. I haven’t had anyone suspect the crumpled bag. But, again, it’s because the presentation is humorous that spectators don’t feel an overwhelming urge to prod at the method too much. The fact you’re presenting it as a joke suggests it’s not something they need to work too hard to understand.

Whereas, if I were to present the vanishing bottle in some other way…I don’t know… like some Time Travel thing where the bottle went back in time. And I presented it not as a “joke” but as this weird anomaly. People would understand that it’s “fiction,” but their mind might be drawn to the crumpled bag. Not because they’re looking to “debunk” what just happened. But just because I haven’t given them the pressure release of “this is just a joke.” And that will cause people to poke around a little more. Even if just in their mind.

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You’ve written in the past quite a bit about self-contained Haunted Decks. Did you get Waken? If so, do you have thoughts on it? —AS

I played with it. It’s good. It didn’t replace my current version though (Vertex by Taylor Imagineering).

Here’s why:

1. Waken has a motor and thread. So that’s two different things to possibly go wrong (or for me to screw up).

2. The “haunting” action looks a little too smooth to me. But I admit this is a matter of personal preference. I may have just become used to the look of Vertex, which isn’t quite so “neat” looking.

3. The haunting happens under just a few cards in Waken (8 cards, I believe). In Vertex it’s under half the deck.

4. With Waken, the full deck is gimmicked. With Vertex, half the deck is normal cards so you can shuffle and have a fairly free selection.

Waken definitely has benefits. It’s half the price of Vertex. And you can do a rising card with it. I can’t say how it holds up in the long term, but in the short time I messed around with it, it did what it was supposed to.

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Any idea what’s going on with The Magic Cafe? The site had been down for a week or so. Do you think it’s gone for good? —SD

I heard Steve Brooks said on facebook that it’s just down for maintenance. I believe him. That would be a weird thing to lie about. Although it’s hard to conceive of a reason why a website in 2022 would be down for a week for maintenance. Other than the fact that it might be so poorly put together that it’s completely fucked up on the back end. Like, imagine you brought a woman back to your apartment and things started getting sexual and she said, “Give me a moment to freshen up.” And she went to your bathroom. That’s fine, and perfectly reasonable. But if she’s in there for 90 minutes, then brother, something’s not right.

I hope the Cafe comes back. It’s a good resource for researching some older tricks. It could have been a great resource, but it’s not clear that anyone ever cared enough to make it such. As the magic community evolved the past two decades, little has been done to evolve the cafe. And thus it was doomed.

It’s easy to picture an alternate reality where the site changed to suit the times and became a better resource. You can imagine a version of the Cafe that got rid of all the clutter of the barely used forums. Had a cleaner layout, not strewn with dozens of banner ads. Had a proper, powerful search engine that made researching things easier. Instituted threaded comments and voting, so conversations would be grouped together, and off-topic discussion/trolls would be eliminated automatically. And included a section—in conjunction with Murphy’s and any other magic producer who wanted to opt in—where people could have access to private forums for the products they’ve purchased. So instead of going to Penguin, Vanishing Inc., and 100 different facebook groups, you could just go to one site for discussions, updates, new handlings, etc.

But making the site better was never really a focus of the Cafe. I used to have access to a secret forum there called “The Kitchen” which was where the administrators would talk, and there was never any discussion about how to improve the site.

And these days I’m sure it’s even less of a priority for Steve. My understanding is that he and his wife have had serious health problems, which, of course, would make a magic message board feel even less consequential than it already is.

Big Data vs Holistic Mind-Reading

Here is a presentation I’ve been enjoying the past few weeks. It combines a couple different ideas I’ve already written about separately, but they work so damn well together.

Here’s what it looks like.

I ask my friend to write a word down on the back of a business card.

“I don’t want to see what you wrote down just yet, but I’ll need it later.” I put the card in my wallet without looking at it, and put the wallet in my pocket.

“I’m collecting these for a project I’m involved in.”

I tell them about this grassroots research project that I’m a part of where we’re trying to build up an understanding of the words people think of by going out and talking to real people and having them think of any word and write it down.

I bring up a website on their phone for them to look at which consists of a bunch of different words written on business cards.

“I’ll turn away. You scroll to any word you like. And read the information for who wrote down that word. I’m going to try and pick up on some details about the person you’re thinking of and the word you’re thinking of.”

After a few moments of concentration I reveal that I think it’s a male, under 40. I’m right.

Once that’s confirmed I guess that the word they’re thinking of is “Mischief.” Again, that proves to be right.

I then give them a few more details about the project.

“Mind-reading is, of course, mostly nonsense. In the past decade or so there have been some attempts to use Big Data to allow you to fake mind reading by combining a bunch of databases and demographic information to know the types of things people will think of. It’s kind of shady, in my opinion. And other people who are interested in magic feel the same way.

“So in the past couple years an alternate group has sprung up, which I’m a part of. And we’re trying to find ways to mimic mind-reading, but in an organic way. A more human way. By actually going out and talking to real people in the real world, and actually learning about the way people think. Rather than just scrubbing some bullshit database.

“It’s going to take us a long time. There are only a few dozen of us. And we send in the words people have thought of every now and again and the guy who is running the project uploads them to that site. Then we try and have some meet-ups or zoom meetings to really drill down on the information we’re learning about what types of people are thinking of what types of things. But it takes a long time to really build up a ‘vocabulary’ of mind-reading in this natural way. A lot of people think we’re, like, hippies or something. But we’re just trying to do something that connects us to people rather than just meaningless data. Even if the ‘data’ way is much easier.”

I then demonstrate the Big Data method of “mind-reading” by bringing up a site on the “Dark Web Browser” on my phone. The site takes some basic demographic information from them and spits out the words they’re likely to think about. At the top of the list is the word they wrote down on the card that “no one has ever seen.”

“That’s your word? Yeah… see… it works. but it’s just soulless. You know?”

Method

Just combine these things

• A peek wallet.

• The Xeno app

• The Word Transmission Project site mentioned in this post

• This feature of the Jerx App which mimics searching databases on the dark web to determine the words people are likely to think of.

Until July...

This is the last post for the month of June. Regular posting resumes on Friday, July 1st.

The next newsletter will be with supporters on that day as well.

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One thing that will be happening in the upcoming week that you might want to keep an eye out for is that Vanishing Inc. will be releasing their two volume set that collects Joshua Jay’s Talk About Tricks columns from MAGIC Magazine.

If you don’t have the old magazine, I would highly recommend picking these up.

There was a confluence of circumstances that make Josh’s column the best trick column of all time.

First, if you don’t know your magic magazine history, there was a time where Genii magazine was pretty much the only game in town. And it looked like something that was operating with no competition. The cover of most issues in the 80s and into the 90s was the same basic template, just a different color, and with a different black and white promo picture slotted in. So lazy.

The interior looked like shit too. I remember picking up my first issue of Genii in a magic store and flipping through it and seeing all the black and white imagery and stuff that looked like it was typed on a typewriter. “Oh, how much for this vintage magazine?” I wondered. Turns out it came out the previous Tuesday.

Oh, and the magazine was always late. The editor had a little slogan for the magazine. “Always Late, Always Great!” Seriously. He only chose that because “Haha, we actually suck shit at our job of producing a magic magazine,” didn’t rhyme.

In 1991, Stan Allen started MAGIC Magazine. It was glossy and full color and didn’t look like it was some dreary soviet publication. And before long it was the number 1 magic magazine, surpassing Genii which was now fumbling all over themselves to keep up.

MAGIC Magazine’s first trick column editor was Richard Kaufman. Kaufman set a standard for quality with good tricks, that were well explained, with clear illustrations. (Kaufman would later go on to salvage Genii and turn it into a modern magic magazine.) Kaufman gave way to Jon Racherbaumer.

Then, in September of 2001—in what Jamy Ian Swiss called, “Probably the greatest tragedy of this month”—Joshua Jay took over the duties as trick editor.

Josh is a good writer and great teacher of magic. He brought a lot of enthusiasm to the job and that came through in his columns. He’s likable and has the ability to connect with people across generations and that allowed him to obtain material from well-established magicians, as well as complete newcomers.

And there are many legitimately good tricks in the column.

You see, regardless of what Josh brought to the table, he also came to the job at an ideal time. He came at a point when the internet was pretty much up and rolling. Email, message boards, and blogs were fairly established at that time. And these ways of communicating allowed magic ideas to be generated and iterated at a faster clip than ever before. But the outlets for these ideas were nowhere near as plentiful as they are now.

These days if you come up with a decent idea, you could film it or create a pdf and start selling it online before the end of the day. In the 2000s you could do that too, but it was nowhere near as simple as it is now. You had to be fairly motivated to put that all together. Therefore a lot of tricks that might now be marketed as a download or an ebook were sent to Josh. This was a way to garner some level of “fame” in the magic world and get your name out there.

And this was also before the time of “social media magic” so the ideas people were coming up with were all workable in the real world.

I’m not trying to sell you on this collection. Well, I guess I am, but there’s nothing in it for me to do so. For those of you who are new to this site, I don’t do ads. I don’t pimp other people’s stuff when they give it to me for free. I do sometimes get stuff for free, and then end up praising it in my newsletter. But more often I get stuff for free and never mention it again. Getting it for free has no bearing on anything.

But that’s a moot point as far as this post goes. Vanishing Inc. didn’t give me this for free. They’re not buying my endorsement. Hell, I’m pretty sure VI still owes me money from when I had affiliate links on this site like 6 years ago. I’d email Josh or Andi to sort it out, but I worry they’re going to refer to one another as their “best friend” and that always weirds me out. (If you’re on their mailing list and have their June 20th email “Our Best-selling magic book of all time.” You will see Josh refer to Andi as his “best friend” THREE times. It’s like, “Okay guys, you’re fucking 40 years old. You can stop ranking your friends now.”

Annyyywhooooo…

That’s just to say that my endorsement here is fully legit. You can download the final column from Talk About Tricks (and presumably get more info when the books are released) here. I have no clue what these books are selling for, but with 868 tricks included in the book you’re going to end up getting your money’s worth. You could easily live off these tricks and never spend another penny on magic. You won’t do that, of course. It’s just too fun to accumulate new stuff. But you could.

After the Magic

Here’s a little tip for when considering what magic items to purchase or perform.

I think a lot of us simply think about the moment of magic, and imagine how that will play out.

“I’m going to hold the spoon and they’re going to see it bend without me doing anything to the spoon!” And then we imagine the spectator being blown away as they see the spoon melting.

What I’m surprised by is how little time is spent thinking about what happens after the magical moment.

A lot of magicians live in some fictional world where an audience is super amazed by the spoon bending, and then when the trick is over they say, “Okay, thanks. No questions here. Moving on.”

That’s not real life. After the magic, the spectator will want to see the spoon. And if it turns out it’s kind of weird looking, doesn’t match any other spoons in the venue, is extra flimsy, or it feels like it just came out of the freezer or whatever… then they’re just going to say, “Oh, I guess there’s something weird about this spoon.”

After the magic is when the magic happens.

The “magic moment” is generally less important than what happens afterward.

Okay, Andy, that’s maybe true sometimes. But what if you have a super visual magic moment?

In that case, it becomes even more true. If the coin very visibly penetrates the bottle, then they want to get a look at that bottle afterwards even more so.

The myth in the magic community is that you can use “audience management” to somehow get people disinterested in the thing that just did something impossible. Nope. Sometimes you can use your skill at manipulating an audience to get them focused on the wrong thing. But if they establish a focus of interest or suspicion on something, you can’t get them to drop that just by your charm or “distracting” them with another trick.

What brings this subject to mind is this trick Lumos, which comes from Hanson Chien. who consistently brings something at least interesting to the table with his releases.

In Lumos you smile and your mouth flashes.

What a charming effect! It mimics a classic visual from movies and cartoons. A character smiles and a glint of light comes from their mouth.

The ad copy says:

Let’s say you are at a party and want to approach someone, but you are at the loss for words. LUMOS is here to help.

All you got to do is WAVE, NOD, and the TWINKLE SMILE!

With the help of LUMOS, you can steal hearts instantly without saying a word.

Great! But can we spend at least 6 fucking seconds imaging what happens after the magical moment?

You know, the point where you flashed your brilliant smile and the other person is amazed? What do we imagine happens next? Do they immediately stare down at the floor? Do they run the other direction? Do they click a button and an ejection seat in their barstool sends them hurtling up and through the roof?

No. I’m going to guess they’d be a little taken aback and intrigued by what the just saw and they’ll look at you. In fact, they’re going to look at you more intently than they were before.

And what do you do? Do you try to speak with something the size of a peach pit rattling around in your mouth?

Or do you raise a napkin and spit the little plastic cockroach that caused the flash into your hand and stuff it in your pocket?

Either way, after the magic they’ll realize where the light came from. There’s no way out of this moment other than for them to be acutely aware that you’ve got something in your mouth that flashes a light.

While I’m not trying to convince anyone my mouth actually flashes with light when I smile. I CERTAINLY don’t want them to think I carry around some little device and put it in my mouth so I can pretend my mouth flashes when I smile. I’d rather fucking swallow the damn thing and dig through my shit the following day looking for the flashing fecal nugget. Yes, there’s a 90% chance I’ll choke to death on it. But that death has at least a touch more dignity than the alternative. If you “flash” your smile and then turn away and spit something into your hand so you can actually talk to this person you’re trying to charm, you might still be breathing afterwards. But it’s definitely social suicide.

Re-Tweak: Sort of Psychic Part 3

Sort of Psychic, by John Bannon is a trick I’ve written about a couple of times before. Here and here, specifically.

This is likely going to be a trick that is always in my repertoire. It’s a very straightforward entry point into the Spectator as Magician plot that audience’s seem to easily grasp. The arc to the effect feels pretty natural. The spectator thinks of any card in a deck and sort of “tunes” themself to that card by trying to guess which packet it’s in. After a few rounds of this—and after becoming accustomed to the feeling of being right or wrong in regards to the sense of where their card is—they’re now able to cut a shuffled deck directly at their thought of card (despite never naming it out loud).

I’m not going to get into the method or the previous tweaks I’ve mentioned. You can track down John’s trick and read my other posts above if you’re not caught up.

Today I want to offer a tweak for the effect that comes from Tomas Blomberg. This makes the part of the effect where the 16-card pile is divided into two packets feel even more casual. That was the weakness in the original effect. The 16 cards would be coalesced and then every other card would be stripped out. It felt too regimented, and my previous tweaks were an attempt to address that issue.

Here is Tomas’ handling. We pick up at the point where the 16 card packet has been split in two 8-card portions and the spectator has just indicated which packet contains their card for the first time. You’ll need a thorough understanding of the trick, and to follow along with cards in hand, for this to make much sense.

A - Once they’ve indicated which pile has their card in it, drop the other pile on top.

B - Now do an overhand shuffle in this manner: Run three singly, and toss the rest on top. Run four singly, toss the rest on top. Run five singly, then pull off all the remaining cards as a chunk, except the bottom card in the right hand’s packet. Drop that last card on top.

You now have four options on top and four options on the bottom, with one cover card on top, and one cover card on the bottom.

Adding these cover cards prevents the issue where the spectator’s card is continually on the top or bottom each round.

C - Ask your spectator to cut the pile into two packets. These don’t have to be even packets. So long as the pile is cut somewhat evenly, the trick will work. If they cut off anywhere from 5 to 11 cards, the trick works. Keep track of where the top of the deck is.

D - Have them try and psychically find their card. Make note of which pile holds their cards. And reassemble the packet into the orientation it was in before it was cut. In other words, put the top portion back on top.

E - If they said their card was in the top half, you’re going to shuffle face down. If they said it was in the bottom half you’ll turn your wrist and do a face-up overhand shuffle. Either way you do the same thing. Run three card singly, and then pull off everything above the bottom card on the right hand’s portion and drop that last card on top.

F - The four remaining options are now 2nd and 3rd from the top or 2nd and 3rd from the bottom. Again have the spectator cut the pile in half. Again, it doesn’t have to be anywhere near perfectly in half.

G - Once they’ve indicated where their card is for the final time, reassemble the packet by putting the top portion of the packet back on the bottom portion. If their card was in the top portion, place the 16-card packet on top of the rest of the deck. If their cards was in the bottom portion, place rest of the deck on top of the packet. Either way you now have the full deck together and you know which one of two cards are theirs.

H - Riffle shuffle, retaining the options in position. Then cut/shuffle the cards to be set up for the finale. You can figure that part out.

Letting them cut the pile into two packets really makes it feel like you can’t possibly know or care which cards are in which pile. That, in turn, makes the whole thing feel extra-casual, which is exactly what you should be going for with this trick.

Thanks to Tomas for sending this along and allowing me to share it with you.

Monday Mailbag #70

In today's post [WWJD If Someone Googled the Secret to a Trick I Had Performed?}, you provide more (false) info to the spectator about what you're doing, as they teach you their method. In a normal interaction of course, they would continue to ask questions based on the information you provided them. For instance, for the below example: "What do you mean"; "where is the money going"; "how much have you lost" etc. How would you continue the interaction?

Quote for context:

"You know the best part about doing it this way? You could do this all night. The way I was doing it is really a once a week thing. Also, you don’t lose any money this way.” [Implication: The way I was doing it… the money really disappears or something? And you can only do it once a week? Huh?']—RK

Well my goal is to make talking about methods as unsatisfying as possible. So I would give them bland answers.

“Where is the money going?”

“I’m not sure.”

“How much have you lost?”

“Eh, a few bucks. As I said, it’s not something you can do all that often. For the first few months of practicing, the coin never went anywhere, so it wasn’t an issue.”

You don’t want interesting answers because you don’t want to reward them for harping on the method.

The idea here is not to imply, “You found the secret to a trick on google. But what I did for you was real magic.”

My implication is simply that they found a method via google that relied on sleight of hand or gimmicks. I’m happy to talk about those sorts of methods, but what I was using in this circumstance was something a little more arcane.

If they were to press me on what exactly I was doing I’d say “Do you know Ohm’s law?” Or something else they don’t understand. “Read up on that, and that will give you the general idea.”

If they say, “You weren’t doing anything crazy. You were just using that sleight-of-hand method that I learned.”

Then I’d say, “Okay. That doesn’t bother me if you think that. I’d prefer you think that, actually.”

Social magic is about cultivating an audience of people who enjoy seeing something that feels unexplainable. When you find someone who doesn’t, just don’t perform for them in the future. It’s that simple.

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I saw Derren Brown’s very fine ‘Showman’ performance at Liverpool on Friday night and I couldn’t help notice the similarities between one of his effects and your effect 'In Search of Lost Time', which I love and have used on friends to great success. I was wondering if you’d had any direct or indirect involvement in Derren’s show? —TH

There was some minor direct involvement early on in the writing of that show. But I don’t think the thing I was involved with ever went anywhere.

Indirectly, Derren would have been reading the book with In Search of Lost Time in it right around the time he was writing Showman. So it’s certainly possible there was some incidental influence. But I don’t really know the trick you’re talking about. So it’s hard to say for sure.

By the way, the thing I was working on for Derren (which is more a technique than a trick) will be found in the next book.

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[Regarding] this: https://www.thejerx.com/blog/2022/6/14/the-artist-distracted-in-the-wild ?

Yes, distracted artist at his best. However, now I’m expecting a complete flood of fake videos from all of those Julius Dein-ish account where a fake hidden camera discovers something incredible made by a random bad dressed up magician.

Hope not. At least for my stomach. —FDM

The power of that video is that it doesn’t come from the magician’s account, and we don’t even really see who is performing the effect. Yes, it’s true that you’ll probably see some corny instagram/tiktok magician attempt to capitalize on this idea. It will be difficult though, because the strength of this idea is found in the premise that this is something that wasn’t meant to be captured and broadcast in any way. While it’s possible to fake that, it will be hard to do so in a way that brings the magician any notoriety. So the social-media magicians are likely to avoid it.