T.I.E.S. vs Loops

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Since Penguin recently released their pre-tied T.I.E.S. (The Invisible Elastic System), I thought I would compare them with Yigal (No, autocorrect, not “Yoga”) Mesika’s loops based on four factors.

  • Price

  • Visibility

  • Strength

  • Stretch

Price

TIES - You can get 32 TIES for 20 dollars. For a cost of 63 cents each.

Loops - Come in a pack of 8 for $10. There may be some discounts available somewhere online, but this seems to be the standard price. That means each loop is $1.25, approximately twice the cost of TIES.

Winner: TIES

Visibility

On the left is a Loop, on the the right is a TIE (I realize the singular form of that acronym doesn’t really make a ton of sense, but for the sake of having something to refer to it as, that will have to do.)

The TIE is significantly more visible than the Loop. I don’t really know how to quantify things on such a small scale, but if you told me it was three times thicker, I could believe that.

Winner: Loops

Strength

To test the strength, I stretched both gimmicks between my fingers and started hanging paperclips off of them. Spending 40 minutes threading paperclips on invisible thread really put my life in perspective.

TIES held 92 paperclips, a total of 37 grams.

Loops held 61 paperclips, a total of 25 grams.

I don’t think you can see those numbers as the weight limit for the thread however. That’s going to depend on what you’re lifting and how it stretches the thread. The paperclips were putting all their weight towards one point on the thread.

But I do think this tells us that TIES are about 50% stronger than Loops.

Winner: TIES

Stretch

I simply stretched each gimmick until it broke. Both gimmicks were in new condition before I conducted this test.

Surprisingly, to me, they both broke at the same point. I would have assumed the TIES would stretch further (given that they proved to be stronger) but they both broke when stretched to around 17 inches. I’m guessing the reason they break at the same point has something to do with the strength of the elasticity vs. the strength of the thread itself. I really don’t understand the physics of it, but it’s probably something along those lines.

Winner: Neither (or Both)

Conclusion

Depending on what you’re prioritizing, you can make an arguments for TIES or Loops.

For me, I just don’t want the thing to be seen first and foremost. So I will go with Loops.

If I ever have something slightly heavier that I want to float, I will use TIES.

To save a few bucks, I could see myself practicing with TIES and using Loops when I actually perform. Given that they break when stretched a similar distance, I think they should be comparable enough that I can practice with one and perform with the other. (Although, who knows, I may find that it feels significantly different. But I doubt it.)

Until September...

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The posting for August is complete and I will see you all back here on September 1st as we jump into the final 1/3rd of 2022… fall, the holidays, and all that good stuff.

During this coming week I will be working on the next newsletter which will arrive in supporter’s emails on the 1st. If you’re a supporter at the $25/month level and have an ad for the upcoming newsletter, get it to me by the 28th or so.

Here something some of you might be able to help with. I have a number of magic products that I’m thinking of producing. My intention is to produce them as I do the books: in limited quantities, available for supporters, and never re-made.

One of the things that’s holding me up from this is the notion of coming up with packaging for these products. (Not like the shipping packaging. But the packaging the product lives in.)

When I was first getting into magic and buying tricks at a magic store, the packaging was often, literally, a brown paper bag, or a ziploc bag. The answer to the question, “How do we package this magic trick?” was no different than the answer to the question, “How do we package this ham sandwich?”

These days it’s much easier to get custom packaging, but their minimum orders are usually far greater than what I need done. And I don’t want to get 500 little custom boxes when I need 62, you know?

Now, if I was asking myself about this issue—if I was my own customer—then I would say, “Don’t worry about the packaging. I’m just going to throw it out anyway.” Because that’s what I do.

But that’s not a real solution either. When you’re releasing something that’s very limited, the price is going to be at a premium. So it might be $70 for a trick that would otherwise sell for $40, if it was being mass produced somewhere. And if you’re charging a premium, it doesn’t feel right to just put it in a generic box.

Anyway, If you have any thoughts/ideas/or experience with product packaging and have any suggestions for how to do it in a way that is workable for very short-runs of products, let me know. I have some Ideas in mind, but I’d happily take guidance from anyone with experience doing something like that.

Catch you back here on the first. Try to get out and make a couple final summer memories if possible. It’s the best way we have to slow time.

Biggest Takeaway Follow-Up Part 2

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We continue on with some of the emails I received after last Friday’s post…

I’ve been doing David Williamson’s Saline Solution trick [where salt vanishes and reappears in a coffee cup] professionally for over a decade now. David suggests that you shouldn’t ask them if the cup is empty. Instead you should give them a napkin and have them clean out the cup. Then they’ll know it’s empty without you having to say it. That always made good sense to me. But it still occasionally happens that people will say the salt was in the cup the whole time. I’ll remind them that they cleaned out the cup and they’ll remember that and then react to the trick but it’s a less intense reaction than the trick normally gets.

During my performances this past weekend I experimented with your idea of over-emphasizing the conditions and instead of just asking them to clean the cup I asked them to confirm that there was nothing in the cup and to make sure it was absolutely empty, I asked had them clean it out as well. Reactions across the board seemed stronger than ever.—JW

I don’t make it a habit of disagreeing with David Williamson. I will say that having them clean out the cup is a way of cleverly convincing them the cup is empty. As opposed to just making the claim straight out. And I think in a trick like this, if you only cleverly make the case, then it’s incumbent on the spectator(s) to do some “math” at the climax of the trick.

“Ah, salt is coming out of the cup! Was that salt in the cup the whole time? No… wait… I cleaned the cup. So there couldn’t have been salt in there.”

This is a little less straightforward than them confirming the cup is empty and then having salt flow from it.

I cleaned the cup, therefore the cup was empty, therefore there couldn’t be salt in the cup.

Is one more extra thought needed than just

We established the cup was empty therefore there couldn’t be salt in the cup.

It may seem a small difference, but generally the less thinking someone has to do at the climax of a trick, the more intense the reaction will be..

I like the idea of using both techniques, as JW suggests. Have them confirm it’s empty and then go the extra step of having them clean it out.

[Regarding clearly establishing the conditions] I fully agree with you. This point was very apparent in several of my performances of Chameleon Sandwich by Doug Conn, a color changing deck routine cloaked in a sandwich trick. Magicians were consistently fooled, but laymen would often miss the point because they had not taken in the implied color of the deck. —GT

It’s so important to understand that magicians and laymen process tricks differently. It’s important because so many magician perform almost exclusively for other people interested in magic. So you think how that group processes tricks is normal. It’s not. Magician’s pay attention in a different way.

You know this if you perform for non-magicians. One of the most frustrating things they do is look in your eyes or look at another person in the group at a moment when you want them focusing on your actions. You have something that’s so clean that you want them to really notice that you don’t do anything sneaky. But instead they look up at their buddy and are like, “This is cool, right?” Magicians don’t do that. They understand that they’re doing you a disservice if they remove their attention when you don’t want them to. The pay attention differently.

When you flash an empty hand, the magicians thinks, “Oh, his hand is empty.” Normal people might think that, or they might just see it as a gesture, or they might not register it as anything. This sort of thing is true with all subtle convincers when it comes to non-magicians.

What you pointed out today [Tuesday’s post] is exactly what Tamariz often does. And it's showcased in its most basic nature in his trick Neither Blind Nor Silly (aka Blown Away when first published in Apocalypse).—GT

I’m going to say something that might get me excommunicated from the art of magic, or at least it will get me denied entry if I ever try and visit Spain: I don’t 100% “get” the appeal of Juan Tamariz.

I know he’s a genius, and I don’t doubt if I were to read his magic theory I’d find a lot of overlap between our ideas. (Which is part of the reason I don’t read too much magic theory. Because I want the experience of coming to these ideas naturally.)

But his performance style is so antithetical to mine that it always surprises me when someone says—as has happened a few times in the past—“Tamariz says something similar….” But it really shouldn’t surprise me because my “theory” comes out of performing as I’m sure his does as well. So even if we have very different styles it makes sense that we would come to some similar “truths.”

That being said, I think clarifying the conditions of an effect is most powerful when it doesn’t come off as part of the overall presentation. A lot of magicians will perform an effect where “fairness” is the presentation. “I couldn’t be more fair than this, could I? Actually yes. I could have you shuffle the cards.” Etc. Etc. And they’ll go through that sort of structure a few times, emphasizing more and more fairness.

While that may seem in line with what I was writing about in regards to “clarifying conditions,” I don’t think it’s the best idea. When “clarity” becomes the focus of the presentation—when it’s scripted—then it becomes a sort of “meta-clarity” that I think people trust less than if it seems like something you’re mentioning as just a point of fact.

Having performed magic since the age of 6 (I am now 73 years young), I can resoundingly confirm, from my own anecdotal experience, how crucial it is to strong magic (whether amateur or pro) to make things unequivocally crystal clear to the spectators in order to build optimal conviction and frame the effect. As you aptly noted, laymen do not perceive performances like magicians do. This is something I learned in decades of performing for both. As one example, years ago I performed Simon Aronson’s Shuffle-Board for a woman, an absolutely killer routine. She did all the shuffling and I was hands-off throughout the presentation. However, after the denouement, as I was expecting her to exclaim that she would be starting a religion around me and have t-shirts made bearing my image, I was flabbergasted to hear her say, “You must have switched the deck - that’s the only possible way that could have happened.” Lesson learned.—AD

Yup, this stuff happens all the time.

I was performing OOTW once while sitting on the floor next to my bed with a girl I was dating at the time. After the reveal she said I must have switched the cards she dealt for other cards after the dealing procedure. There was, of course, no opportunity for me to switch two different piles of cards invisibly. But that’s what her mind went to. She thought I had maybe shoved the piles under the bed and took out other ones. I had her look under the bed and check. Of course by that point it’s too late. The chance for the big, powerful reaction is lost.

“I must have missed something,” is such an insidious thought for a spectator to have after a trick. It can be very difficult to prevent it completely. But the more you strive to make all the conditions as clear as possible, the less you allow that thought to have a foothold. If I had a done a better job at making it clear that I wouldn’t manipulate the cards she dealt in any way, that would have raised her guard to the possibility that I would manipulate or switch the cards. With that possibility in the forefront of her mind, it would have made it much more difficult to think she “just missed it.”

Alright, but what do you do if you’re clarifying the “reality” of a push-through shuffle and your friend says, “Okay, if it’s a real shuffle, then let me shuffle the deck.”—NS

You have no choice at that point other than to let them shuffle the deck and do a different trick. If you fight it in any way you’re just going to confirm to them that it’s a false shuffle and ruin the use of false shuffles for future performances with them.

That being said, this comes up very rarely. I thought it would happen much more often, especially since I encourage antagonism from my spectators. But surprisingly, when I say, “Notice, this is a genuine shuffle. The cards are being thoroughly mixed.” They don’t stop me and ask to shuffle the deck themselves. They certainly get more focused on the shuffle, sometimes, but the notion that if this is a real shuffle they should be able to shuffle the deck doesn’t come up much at all in my experience.

It seems to me that going out of your way to clarify the conditions would go against your style of generally not taking credit for the miracle they’re about to see. Once you start emphasizing the conditions, don’t you cement yourself in the magician role? —MC

No, it’s actually the opposite, I think.

If I’m showing them a game, or a ritual, or an experiment, or at trick someone else is supposedly performing for both of us, or showing them some strange object I picked at a yard sale, or something—I can clarify the conditions as an outsider.

“Wait, double check. Is that box really empty?”

“Do the instructions say we can’t shuffle the cards? Okay… I’m going to shuffle them then.”

“Hold on. Let’s look real close. Are those cards all different? Sometimes they’ll repeat the same group of cards over and over as if you wouldn’t notice.”

“See, I thought there must have been something tricky about this thing. But as far as I can tell it’s really just a normal ring. Can you see anything weird about it?”

So for that reason I think the Audience-Centric style of magic can help you add clarity to an effect.

The only performance style I wouldn’t do it with is the Distracted Artist style. When performing something in that style, the magic is supposed to come off as unpremeditated, so any overt clarification would seem out of place. (This is what makes Distracted Artist such a good style for those tricks where you can’t clarify the conditions satisfactorily for one reason or another.)

I’ve come to the same conclusions as you have when it comes to NOT being subtle with the conditions of a trick. Whenever I find myself thinking “I don’t need to tell someone that. They’ll surely pick up on it themselves.” I think of the video below. It makes your point but from the opposite direction. —AC

Final thoughts on this for now… What I’ve seen cause effects to fail most often is what the audience fails to notice, as opposed to what they do notice. We spend a lot of energy to get them not to notice a move or a gimmick. This is important, but it’s only one aspect of fooling people. Hiding things is just the defensive part of the game. The offensive part is clarifying the conditions in order to forcefully establish the reality that you’re going to soon violate.

Two TV Recommendations

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I mentioned earlier this week that today’s post was going to be a continuation on the feedback from last Friday’s post. However, after working on that for a couple days it has become a longer entry than I originally anticipated. So tomorrow I will give you a super-sized post where I respond to a half-dozen or so emails about the topic of clarifying conditions and using that to create more powerful magic.

For today’s post, I just want to give you two quick television recommendations. One of these you likely already watched a couple years ago, but if you were avoiding it like I was, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Recommendation #1

I could not be more late to the game on this, but I finally watched Magic for Humans on Netflix and enjoyed it quite a bit. Justin Wilman is legitimately funny. Not “funny for a magician” funny. And the magic is all well done.

As a magician, you’ll be annoyed because you’ll think, “Oh, come on. They’re cutting out some very important stuff. It doesn’t look like that in real life.” But once you can get past that, it’s an enjoyable watch.

One thing I realized while watching it is that cameras are reaction equalizers. You can take a below average trick and make a demo for it, and as long as there are cameras there, you’ll get some good reactions. But at the same time, if you perform a miracle for people, and there is a camera there, you will dull their reactions. Almost everything in Magic for Humans got a reaction between, like, a 7 and an 8. Stuff that would have been life-altering for people if it wasn’t being filmed for a tv show would instead just get a nice solid reaction. Now, that may be because they were seeing the full effect, and not just the edited version we see. But I think a lot of it is also because they know they’re being filmed for a show.

I regularly get much stronger reactions even though I’m performing much less “impossible” tricks. And I think the reason for that is because I’m performing in a way that is more intimate (and camera-less).

This is one of the clear benefits of performing as an amateur. When David Copperfield flies on stage, people are filled with joy and wonder. But they still just applaud at the end. If you were walking down a nature trail with a friend and flew up to the top of a tree, your friend wouldn’t clap. They would faint.

Not that your goal should be to make your friends faint. But if your goal is to provide moving, interesting, powerful experiences to people, don’t bemoan the fact that you don’t have the resources of a professional tv magician. Because along with those resources comes a layer of distance between the spectator and the effect which deadens the impact.

That being said, the show is a lot of fun. And inspired me to bring out some effects I hadn’t touched in a long.

Recommendation #2

The Rehearsal, which you can currently find streaming on HBO Max, is the most entertaining show currently on television. It has nothing directly to do with magic, although the writer and star of the show, Nathan Fielder, is an amateur magician. And, for me, it touches the same sort of nerve that a really fascinating trick does. It’s a “docu-comedy” series and it’s completely fascinating.

I don’t want to give too much away. It’s ostensibly about giving people the opportunity to “rehearse” important interactions in their life. But that’s just the start of it. Just trust me on this. I have reason to believe that if you like this site, there is a good chance you will like the show.


Reading Your Thoughts

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I’m taking it easy today and sharing some of the thoughts and ideas that readers have sent in recently. While I haven’t explored these ideas myself, I think they have some merit…

This first idea comes from Graham P. I’m particularly ill-equipped to comment on it, because I don’t play Wordle. But those that do might be able to take this idea and run with it…

My wife and I enjoy our daily wordle challenge.

I have discovered that if you download Wordle as a webpage complete (plenty of instructions on how to on internet), then change the date on the computer you can play wordle as far forward as you like.

I tried a loose presentation on my wife telling her the strangest thing happened with her niece. I was solving wordle and she pointed at it and kept saying "tomorrow Weird". Don't know what she means.

Then the next day the wordle answer was "Weird". (just an example)

She didn't know what to say.

Hopefully, if it floats your boat, you or your readers can come up with a better way of using this idea.

Couple of Caveats

  • Don't jump too far ahead with dates.

  • If you put in an earlier date to one you have already done, then the program will keep showing the answer to the later date until you catch up to that date.

  • Don't open any other app until you have reset the date to normal.

—Graham P.

Next comes an idea from David S.

I recently purchased Flip by Wes Iseli (force heads or tails on a flip of a coin) and wanted to mention that it works especially well with Stasia's Decision Making Talisman that you previously wrote about. There are certain features of Stasia's Talisman that makes it easier to do the "move" compared to a quarter or half dollar, plus the "yes"/"maybe" or "no" opens up a lot of interesting possibilities for mentalism or fortune telling type routines. —David S.

Sadly, if you didn’t pick up Stasia’s decision-making coin at the time, it’s no longer available. But I know a lot of you did get it then. So this combination is something you might be able use.

The final idea comes from Oliver M. It expands on the suggestion I had for the presentation of the Bounce trick that I wrote about in this post.

Re: Bounce - Love your idea of producing sounds from the ball. You could expand it into a routine/running gag with different objects. So 'Boing's comes out of the ball (maybe written like BIFF and POW in old Batman eps), you 'ding' a glass with a knife a few times, like the start of a speech, and little coin-sized 'ding' discs fall out. Maybe you finished with an unexpected sound, like you drop something and it leaves a 'thud' (bowling ball), or you slap your forehead at something obvious and 'slap' appears there. —Oliver M.

This is such a great idea. Not for any of the types of situations in which I perform. But someone could take this and win FISM with it.

You would want to mix it up a bit. You wouldn’t want it just to be the physical manifestation of sounds over and over. But that’s how you would start it off. Then you could vanish some of the “sounds” and now the objects that made those noises would be strangely silent. Imagine you shake the “jingles” out of a tambourine, vanish them, and the tambourine is now dead silent when shaken.

You could change the sizes of the sounds making them much louder or lower, or softer and higher depending on if you grew them or shrunk them.

You could take the physical manifestations of the sounds and combine them together to create new sounds.

You could also take the “sounds” and reinsert them into the wrong objects. So now the stapler makes a huge CRASH when you use it, and when you slam the cymbals together you get a little click.

It’s a cool idea. Someone should do it.

Biggest Takeaway Follow-Up Part 1

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Last Friday’s post on my biggest takeaway from the focus group testing got a lot of feedback. I’ll be sharing one email today and a few shorter ones on Thursday.

About "My biggest testing takeaway", I understand and feel the same way about the importance of clarifying the conditions of a trick.

But a long time ago I started to avoid some clarification statements. I feel there are phrases that raise doubt instead of clarifying. I think that if people conclude, by themselves, that something (like shuffling) is being done, suspicion over that thing is less likely to arise than if the magician directly tells them about the action.

For instance, if at some point you ask how many people shuffled the deck, or if you call attention to something related to the act of shuffling, that may be enough for people to remember that the cards were mixed. And compared to literally saying that you are shuffling the cards, I feel people are less likely to question the validity of your shuffle. —RD

Yes, I think that’s what the conventional wisdom would say—that you’d rather have the spectator come to the conclusions by themselves rather than the magician telling them what things to make note of.

I’m not saying that’s necessarily wrong. But there are two important points to consider that run counter to the conventional wisdom.

The first is this: You can’t always tell what the spectator is going to conclude.

By explicitly stating the conditions, and getting them to agree to them—even if they seem obvious—you are trapping them into a “reality” that is more difficult for them to escape later. It’s very easy for people to talk themselves into or out of something they only saw. If you’re looking for your car keys and they’re not on the coffee table, but when you look back a second time they’re there, you don’t say, “Oh my god, my keys magically appeared on the coffee table!” You just think you had a brain fart and missed them the first time. If conditions are established just in the spectator’s head, they can convince themselves (when they look back on the trick) that they weren’t paying close enough attention or they mis-read something that happened. But if the conditions are established verbally by the magician and/or the spectator, it becomes harder to deny what they thought they saw.

The second point I want to make is this: Going out of your way to establish the conditions is what you would do in any situation when you’re showing people something special or unusual. That’s the normal thing to do.

Imagine you were at a county fair, and there’s a booth set up where a guy is demonstrating his Miracle Carpet Cleaner. Which is more convincing:

  1. He takes out a stained piece of carpet, sprays his cleaner on it, and wipes it clean.

    or

  2. He takes out a piece of carpet and hands it to the people gathered around him. “When you see how clean this will get, you’ll think it wasn’t a real stain. You’ll think it was something that would wash out easily. But take a look. That’s really caked in there, would you agree? Spray this water on it and give it a scrub. Nothing happens. That stain is really set in there, yes? But watch what happens when I use my Miracle Carpet Cleaner.”

I think the latter would be considerably more convincing, whether you go in trusting the salesman or not. If you think the guy selling the stuff is a con-man, then the first demonstration would be totally unconvincing. The second demonstration would at least require you to question how the carpet actually got clean if this cleaner isn't legit. And if you do trust the salesman, you would believe him in either scenario, but the second demonstration would give you more information and clarify the strength of the cleaner.

Before someone writes me an email saying, “Oh, so when I turn over a double I’m supposed to say, ‘I’m just turning over one single card.’ Or when I have someone write down a word I’m supposed to say, “Take note that this is an ordinary business card. Examine it fully. And note that there’s nothing special about the pencil.” No. I’m not saying “justify everything” or “clarify every possible condition.” And I’m not saying you draw attention to things that won’t withstand the scrutiny.

I’m just saying to put yourself in the position of the spectator at the end of the trick. What elements would you be questioning? That the deck was really blue at the start? That the box was really empty? That there was really nothing in your hand? If they’re going to be left with those questions, then those are the things you can’t over clarify.

Of course, there is an art to this. Going back to the original email, I would never say, “I’m giving these cards a real shuffle.” That would sound suspicious. I’m not just going to tell people something. I’m going to have them confirm something.

The best way I’ve found to do this is to time-travel with them to some point after the trick has finished. “When this is over, you’re going to wonder if the cards were really shuffled.” “When you drive home, you’re going to tell yourself this must not have been an ordinary piece of rope. Maybe it pulled apart or something.” “Tonight, when you’re in bed, you’re going to think I made you take a particular card..”

Then you have them confirm that this thought is not the case:

“So can you confirm for me the cards are really getting mixed?”

“So I want you to give this rope a close look. Is there anything special about it? Take your time.”

“So just confirm that this card is the one you wanted. If you want a different one, go ahead and touch any other card you see here.”

Now, this isn’t just patter. When you say, “Later on you’re going to think XYZ.” It’s because you know that later on most people will think XYZ. That’s the purpose of putting it out there beforehand.

Of course, If there’s an idea that’s not going to occur to them, you don’t need to introduce that idea into the conversation, solely to debunk it.

You might say, “Of course you want the audience to be convinced of the conditions of an effect, but you should convince them in a clever way. Don’t just come right out and say it.”

But that goes back to the second point in bold above. If I’m trying to demonstrate or show you something fantastical. And I want to immerse you in the world where this thing is happening. Which feels more realistic? Would I cleverly imply the conditions? Or would I just state them straight out? In real life you don’t hint at conditions when they’re important. You make them as clear as possible.

Of course, I’m just speaking generally. You can find plenty of examples where you would want to be less direct when clarifying the conditions of an effect. But I would consider those to be exceptions.

“Don’t run when you’re not being chased.” Sure. That’s fine logic. But solidifying the conditions isn’t “running when you’re not being chased.” It’s being smart enough to know what the spectator is going to question at the end, and proactively getting in front of it. Which, in my experience, is mandatory if you’re hoping to create undeniably strong magic.

Jacob Blow and Graciano Lopez Have Been Kicked Out of the GLOMM

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Dull slob, Jacob Blow has been kicked out of the Global League of Magicians and Mentalists for his recent rape conviction.

This article states:

“A rapist magician has been sent to prison for sickening crimes that resulted in his victim trying to take her own life.”

As the GLOMM boot list continues to grow, “rapist magician” is becoming an all-too common description. It’s becoming it’s own sub-category. “I’m a close-up magician.” “I’m a kid’s show magician.” “I’m a rapist magician.” I’m surprised it’s not its own section on the Magic Cafe. I mean, there are more entrants on the GLOMM’s banned member list than there are posts in the “mime section” of the Cafe.

“Blow was said to have initially tried to deny any wrongdoing before breaking down and admitting to his dad and police what he had done. However, he then denied the allegations saying he lied when initially speaking to the police because he thought if he agreed with what was being claimed that would be it and he could carry on doing magic.”

So, in addition to being a rapist, he’s also a fucking moron.

His YouTube channel is still up. If you ever wanted to see the embodiment of this meme

Graciano Lopez, aka Louie Lopez, aka Jolly Bean the clown, owner of the depressing shithole known as Jolly Bean’s Magic Castle (pictured below) has been sentenced to 106 yeas to life (I think 106 years will probably be enough) for the sexual abuse of multiple victims.

From this article:

“[The Judge] said Lopez took advantage of positions of trust — as a foster parent in the case of two victims, as an employer at his lawn service company and Jolly Bean’s Magic Castle, a magic shop near a middle school — to sexually abuse vulnerable young children who looked up to him and trusted him.”

At his sentencing, Graciano thanked law enforcement ”for working tirelessly so these young men's voices could be heard," and the two boys for "bravely starting this process."

"You saved my life. And now I can get the help that I need. I didn't set out to hurt anyone, but in the end my actions hurt so many.”

Of course, it’s easy to pretend to be remorseful once your sorry ass has been busted. If you “don’t set out to hurt anyone” and then spend 15 years assaulting multiple victims, then you’re evil and an idiot. We need you to rot in prison because otherwise you might “not set out to hurt someone” and push them in front a bus, or shove a fire poker through their stomach.

Yes, you’re going to die in prison, but on the plus side, you no longer have to run that dump you called a magic store, and you don’t have to embarrass yourself in this get-up anymore. So maybe it’s a lateral move.