How to Bed Women With Magic

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It was announced that Sam Raimi is going to remake the 1976 classic (in my opinion) film, Magic.

The original starred Anthony Hopkins, who was supposed to be this brilliant ventriloquist and magician. Yet this is what his French drop looked like.

He goes on to seduce Ann Margret with a Do as I Do routine. I’m not kidding. For you younger readers (and you don’t have to be that young—she was before my time too) this is Ann Margret.

She’s an all-time, easy 10 out of 10.

And here’s Anthony Hopkins.

Like you, he’s a generous 4.

And yes, he really beds Ann-Margret’s character by doing a Do as I Do routine.

Not something that looks like a Do as I Do routine. He’s doing the actual beginner’s book method for a Do as I Do routine with a key card and all of that.

I’m going to go through this scene and tell you what he’s doing that makes it believable that he could seduce one of cinema’s hottest women with one of the simplest card tricks there is.

Now, to be clear, Hopkins’ character is fucking insane in this movie. And in this scene as well. You shouldn’t really take things as far as he does in this scene. You shouldn’t be trying to manipulate people into having sex with you with something Mac King taught you after a commercial break on World’s Greatest Magic.

But you can still take some of the techniques he’s using here to give tricks more weight and resonance. These are things I’ve written about on this site frequently.

Here is that part of the movie. The clip is 9:30 long. There’s some set-up to the trick. Then there’s the performance of the trick. Then the clip of him balling her brains out. If you’re unfamiliar with this movie/scene, it’s legitimately worth your time to give it a watch.

1:00-1:50 - Techniques: Hook & Cast - Long before the two of them are ever seated at the table, Hopkins sets a Hook for the trick by talking about his mentor Merlin and his wife. Merlin and his wife used to do fake telepathy with cards. But as she was dying they tried it for real, and Merlin was able to read her mind.

I often write about expanding magic beyond the limits of the trick itself. That’s what he’s doing here. He’s giving the trick a history. The “story” of the effect exists outside of the few minutes the trick takes place.

I’ve also written (more in my books than on the site) about creating a “Cast” of people to populate the fiction of the trick. That too is what he’s doing with Merlin and his wife.

1:50-4:30 - Technique: Buy-In - Here he performs the trick for the first time and it fails. Asking someone to take the time to watch you do an effect and have it not work is something many magicians aren’t comfortable with, but it’s very powerful

I frequently like to incorporate some element of failure into my presentation for a trick. (See November 2019 for a series of posts on this.) Not because it makes the trick seem “more real” but because it confuses people into just exactly how the thing they’re seeing is fake. For example, if I do the movements of a coin vanish but without vanishing the coin and I’m like, “Can you see it?” You say you can. That’s a failure, so I’m frustrated. I try it again and this time I actually vanish the coin. “How about now?” I ask. Now the coin is really gone, but I act as if I don’t know if you can see it or not. This makes you less likely to think I ditched the coin somewhere. Because if that’s all the deception was, why would I have thought it worked the first time when the coin was clearly visible? “Failure” is a red-herring clue to methodology that spectators are usually not prepared to handle.

There’s other Buy-In elements here as well…

  • Hopkins’ character is yelling at her to take it seriously. You don’t want to genuinely berate someone like this. But asking someone to buy into the effect by changing their attitude is a powerful technique.

  • He also utilizes time so well here. In the second go-around of the trick it takes him 50 seconds to tell her what her card is, even though we know that he knows it immediately. Rushing your magic is the death of suspense and mystery, but it’s also something that 95+% of magicians do. Slow down.

7:20-7:40 - Technique: Reps - What does he do when he gets her card right? Does he say, “Ta-daa”? Does he make a joke? No, he slumps in his chair and mumbles to himself, “I didn’t fail. I didn’t fail.”

The idea of Reps is to blur the ending of an effect. What might you do afterwards if you had really just done what you pretended to do? Would you excitedly call your mentor to let her know the trick worked? Would you take an aspirin because your head was aching? Or would you slump in your chair and mutter, “I didn’t fail,” because you’re a sad-sack, piece-of-shit who nothing goes right for?

Any of these things will give the effect more resonance than just moving on to another trick or making a joke.

Now, here’s the part where I have to fucking spell shit out for the people who will inevitably write me because they’re misinterpreting this post.

The title of this post, “How to Bed Women With Magic,” is a joke about the clip I’m using. Not actual advice.

I don’t think you should scream at your spectators.

I don’t think you should manipulate them into fucking you while your ventriloquist dummy simmers in the other room.

I do think it’s okay to sometimes “blame” the spectator for something not working, if your goal is to get them to engage more deeply with the experience. (Not if your goal is—as I said—to stick your dick in them.)

The purpose of this post is not to get you laid. It’s to give an example of the power or some of the extra-presentational techniques I’ve written about, and how they can be used to make some of the simplest tricks feel un-trivial. Too often magic feels like a throwaway thing. And you can’t get around that with stronger tricks or faster tricks or more jokes (these are techniques most often used by magicians when they’re worried about how their tricks are going over).

But you can generate less trivial interactions by making the experience of the trick more engaging, which is what these techniques do. The “magic” demonstrated in the clip above is not that these techniques will allow you to bang Ann Margret. It’s that these techniques can be used to make one of the first tricks you learned interesting enough that it was presented in five-minutes of real time in a major motion picture.

Mailbag: Uncanny Valley Props

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Have you seen Lloyd Barnes new release, ProCaps? It’s like the old nickels to dimes but done with soda bottle caps.

Am I crazy in thinking this is a step backwards? —JR

I don’t know too much about this other than what I can see in that demo. I haven’t followed any of the pre-release talk on this, so my assumptions might be a little off.

Let me start by saying that I love the instinct behind this. Taking a weird magic prop and turning it into something that looks like an everyday object is almost always a good idea.

But here’s the thing. If your goal is to make a magic prop look like an everyday object, you have to nail it. You can’t get most of the way there. A bottle cap that looks 92% like a normal bottle cap is an 8% odd looking bottle cap.

And a 8% odd-looking bottle cap is a 100% odd bottle cap.

If you came home and your wife was 8% different from what she normally was, you wouldn’t think your wife was a “little off.” You’d think something was completely wrong with her.

Sadly, they weren’t able to nail the look of these caps. It’s what I call an “uncanny valley” prop. It looks almost right. But the small differences are actually what make it stand out so much for a lay audience.

An unbranded cap with the recycling logo on it is something I’ve never seen in my area. More importantly, the inside looks pretty questionable after the cap has picked up the shell.

“Okay, Andy, but certainly it’s better to have something that looks ALMOST like a normal object than something that looks unlike anything anyone has seen before.”

No.

Look, the old style brass caps were an oddity. But they were an oddity that could be examined. And if your presentation contextualizes that oddity, then you have something that isn’t inherently questionable.

For example, imagine we’re sitting at a table in a cafe. I’m looking through my bag for something and I say, “Oh, check this out.” And I toss a brass cap out on the table. “I bet you haven’t seen anything like that before.”

“Hmm… I don’t think so,” you say.

“I can’t remember if I told you I was doing some consulting for Chase Bank. You know how you can deposit checks online now? They’re working on something like that for cash. We’re in the earliest testing phase at the moment. We’re only working with coins for liability sake. We don’t want to be losing 1000s of dollars if something goes wrong. But it’s kind of cool.”

I fiddle around on my phone for a bit.

“Okay, so I have $500 in my checking account.” I show you my screen with $500 listed in the account.

“Now, let’s see,” I dig around in my pockets for some change. “We’ll use a few nickels I guess.”

I stack four nickels on the table and cover them with the brass cap. Then I place my phone on top of the cap.

“It just takes a few seconds when you’re using such a small amount of money.”

After a few second I pick up my phone and look at my account. I show you the screen and it now has $500.20 in the account.

“And the cash itself just goes to the bank.” I gesture to the brass cap on the table. You turn it over and the coins are gone.

“They’re still a couple years away from creating the adapter for bills and mass distributing these. But it’s fun to play around with. I’ve been sending all my pocket change to my bank account just for the hell of it.”

Now, that’s a version of the trick using the classic gimmick and a couple screenshots of your checking account.

If you’re a friend of mine and know me well, you’ll probably understand that this is just some fun nonsense.

There’s a chance—especially if you don’t know me too well (and you’re not super bright)—that you think it’s maybe possible.

But what you’re absolutely not thinking is, “That’s bullshit. That’s not what a brass coin deposit adapter for cell phones looks like.” Because it’s just a made-up thing. You have nothing to compare it to.

But if instead I use something that’s supposed to be something you’re familiar, and it doesn’t quite look like that, that’s all you’ll think about. You won’t think, “Ah, perfectly ordinary bottle caps.” You’ll think, “Those are weird bottle caps. Oh, and you just happen to be able to do something magical with them?”

Yes, you can still fool and entertain people with these. But a good portion of the audience who sees this will realize that they’re being fooled by your special fake-o bottle caps. The caps aren’t ancillary to the effect. They’re a primary focus. If they weren’t important, you’d just cover the coins with your hands. You wouldn’t be carrying around bottle caps with you.

That’s the other thing. You have these two bottle caps that don’t really look like anything else nearby. So… you’re just carrying around bottle caps with you? Is that the look you’re going for?

Using the “weird” brass cap may not be the ideal solution, but to me it’s the better option than a not-quite-normal looking cap that can’t be examined.

Here is the hierarchy of magic props as I see it.

  1. Normal, borrowed objects.

  2. Apparently normal objects that can be examined.

  3. Unusual objects that can be examined. (You can use a story to justify its existence.)

  4. Apparently normal objects that can’t be examined.

  5. Unusual objects that can’t be examined.

  6. Normal-ish objects that don’t quite ring 100% true to the audience and can’t be examined.

It looks to me like ProCaps falls into that final category. (I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.)

The thing is, it’s really hard to put time and money into manufacturing a prop that maybe falls a little short of your expectations and then just give up on it. So I can understand why this is being pushed, even though it’s maybe not what the people behind it hoped it would be originally. Would they have bothered manufacturing this if they knew the best they could get was a cap that looked like something was nested inside of it? Probably not.

That being said, I’m sure Lloyd, Murphy’s and Craig Petty have done their best to come up with routines that de-emphasize the caps and draw people’s attention elsewhere. I’m just not sure that’s what I want with this particular gimmick. The beauty of the original is that people could focus all their attention on the cap and coins and were left able to freely examine everything.

Charity Deck Sale - Update: All Gone

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[Update: These are all gone. If you missed out and you’re desperate to get your hands on one of these for some reason, let me know. Once everything gets sent out I’ll know if there’s an extra of any given deck hanging around and I can set you up with that.

Thanks to everyone who purchased a deck or decks.]

This is the final post of October. New posts will return on November 1st. That same day the next issue of the Love Letters monthly will be in subscriber’s emails. If you’re a subscriber at the family tier and have an ad for the next issue, try to get it to me by the 25th or so.

I’ve decided to get rid of the extra decks I have from previous support years. I haven’t really known what to do with these in the past. The decks were a reward for people who supported at a mid-level tier that was $60 more than the tier below. So those people paid, essentially, $60 for the deck.

Now, one thing I won’t do is sell something at a discount to get rid of it. I’d rather just toss it out. I don’t like screwing over people who supported the site early on by offering stuff for cheaper later on. I realize that’s how things are done. But I still find it to be a bummer when it happens to me, so I don’t want to do that to others.

That being said, I don’t just want to sell these decks for $60 either. These were intended to be bonuses for supporters at the time. Not some way to make money later on.

So now the decks are being made available for $60 each, but proceeds will be split between two charities: Save the Children (the highest rated children’s charity I could find) and a local food bank near me (because I want to do something for my specific area as well).

There are links to purchase the decks below along with a brief description of each deck.

I will ship the decks early next month. So you will have the perfect gift to show your wife how loved she is, well in time for Christmas.

Jerx Deck #1

This was the deck that was included with the very first book I released. Features custom jokers and Ace of Spades.

This deck was printed by Expert Playing Card Company.

Jerx Deck #2: Squishers

Based on the Bulldog Squeezers back design.

This deck also includes a fake advertising card that’s used for a reveal in a trick of mine called Shitshow. I’ll include a pdf with instructions for that trick with any orders for this deck.

Jerx Deck #3 - Fannies

This is probably the dumbest idea for a Jerx deck, and hence, one of my favorites.

The idea started as a joke in this post, and became a reality a few years later.

Instead of red and black pips, this deck uses brown and pink pips which allow a new equivocal statement (as explained in the post above).

The back design continues the butt/vagina duality of the equivoque.

Jerx Deck #4 - Mushroom Sprites

The viral sensation. Millions of views on TikTok can now be yours.

The Goodfriends Greeting Company (a Christian greeting cards and other paper goods company based in the midwest U.S.) put out this deck in 1974. The card backs were intended to be delicate fairies dancing around the head of a mushroom. That’s… not what other people saw in the back. (It’s still unknown if the designer intended this.) The deck was pulled from the shelves weeks after its release. They sat in storage for decades until 2020 when the remaining decks were finally made available. Or so you tell people.

Jerx Deck #5 - Empoisonneurs

I wrote years ago about why it’s good to have a “bad marked deck.” My idea there is basically this… People already know about the concept of “marked decks,” but most people have never seen one. So if you show them a bad marked deck, but you just act as if it’s a normal marked deck. Then they will assume marked decks are much less useful than they really are.

It’s similar to the concept in magic where you talk about “palming” a card and openly expose a bad palm. If people assume palming involves a stiff, cramped hand, with part of the card peeking out, they’ll be less apt to think of palming when you use it later and your hand looks normal.

With the Empoisonneurs, I made a professionally printed “bad marked deck.”

As I write in the instructions for this marked deck, what makes it bad is:

1. It's labelled on the card case as a marked deck. ("The first thing you can do to check for a marked deck is look at the card case. By law all of them need to indicate it's a marked deck. So if you don't see that, you're probably safe.")

2. The markings are easy to spot.

3. But the markings require a lot of work to decode.

4. You need to see the full back of the card to know the markings.

5. The markings only work in one orientation of the card, and it's very difficult to know the orientation of the card.

If you purchase this deck, I’ll send you a pdf explaining the general ways of how I introduce it into an interaction with the people I perform for.

I’ll try to update this page if/when any of the decks sell out. It shouldn’t allow you to buy one if they’re sold out. But I’ll keep this page updated regardless. There aren’t a lot of any of these decks to go around. The only reason I have any extras is because I sometimes had to round up my order 15 or 20 units in order to get a price break when they were originally printed. So while I don’t think these will sell out immediately—like the books do—don’t wait too long if there’s one you want.

Enjoy the rest of the month! See you all back here on the first.

Non-Cumulative Deception: The Threesome Heuristic

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Last week I wrote about the idea of “non-cumulative deception.” This is the notion that you are better off leaving a really strong deceptive methodology on its own, rather than combining it with another method that’s not’s strong. Even if—theoretically—that would add some level of deception to the experience.

For example, if I could show you my empty bedroom, close the door, then make an elephant appear in the room, that would be an amazing trick. But if I did some mathematical force of the number 5 on you. And then had you count to the 5th letter in the alphabet. Then think of “any animal that begins with that letter.” And then I made your “freely thought of animal” appear in my room. That would be weaker than just making the elephant appear with no force. Because the weak force undermines the whole thing. Not just the force itself.

I got a couple emails asking how that idea meshes with an earlier post of mine about the Importance of Combing Methods. In that post I talk about when we tested marked cards and a peek blindfold separately and then together. And how together they were significantly more deceptive than they were apart.

I can see how these ideas might seem at odds. The distinction here is that in the “Non-cumulative Deception” post I was talking about the problem of pairing a strong method with a weak or average method. In the other post, I was talking about combing two “okay” methods. (Marked decks and see-thru blindfolds can be powerful methods, but they’re not overly deceptive when used on their own in a straightforward manner.)

Here’s a heuristic to use that I think helps clarify when you should combine methods, and what types of methods to combine.

Imagine you’re a guy who is interested in the idea of a threesome. It’s not your sole over-riding passion to have a threesome. But you’re definitely interested.

Now, let’s say I found a woman or a man (whatever you’re into) that wanted to have sex with you. And this person was a 10 out of 10 in the looks department.

I ask if you want to have sex with them, and you say, “Yes, please.”

“And,” I tell you, “her friend wants to join in as well.” And I introduce her friend who is a 9.

“That is very acceptable,” you say.

But what if her friend is an 8? Or a 7? Or a 6 in your eyes?

At some point there’s going to be a number where the other person isn’t additive to this sexual encounter. Their presence would take away from your experience with the 10.

Now imagine I say, “Hey, this 5 wants to get with you. And so does this other 5.” You would possibly find that to be a much more exciting experience than just being with the single 5.

So adding a 5 might detract from the experience of being with a 9 or 10. But being with two fives might be exponentially better than just being with a single 5.

It’s not a perfect analogy, especially for the incels that read this site, but some might find it helpful when deciding on what kinds of methods to combine.

• Avoid garbage methods, of course. Any combination of truly bad methods will just end up being a shit stew.

• Feel free to combine “okay” methods in hopes of uncovering some sort of powerful amalgamation that is much more than the sum of its parts.

• Of course combining very strong methods would be the most powerful course of action.

• But try to avoid combining a strong method with an okay one. Rather than the strong method propping up the okay one, you will often be introducing a “flaw” for them to focus on that wouldn’t be there if you just ran with the strong method on its own.

The Light Switch: An Everydayness Technique

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This is a technique I’ve used for years. I’ve fooled dozens of laymen and a couple magicians with it as well. I’ve used it to switch in fully-stacked decks and memorized decks and I’ve never been caught with it. Even though it is the most blatant form of misdirection and switch that you could possibly imagine.

This is one of a number of techniques I use a lot but haven’t written up in the past because they are solely casual magic techniques, and they may sound kind of dumb if you’re thinking of them in any other context.

I can only tell you that in the dozens of times I’ve used this—as “obvious” as it may seem—people don’t pick up on it.

Here’s all it is. I have someone shuffle the deck. I take the deck back from them. I being to spread the deck, then I say, “Actually… let’s get more light. Can you turn that on?” They get up or turn away to flip on the light, and when they do, I switch decks.

Now for this to pass by unnoticed it has to feel like a genuine moment. And for that to happen, the room does need to be a little dim. And your spectator needs to be the closest person to the lamp or a light switch. (Or you can do the switch when you yourself go to turn on the lights.)

Again, it may sound stupidly simple, but it works. I came to this idea because I had a number of routines that were so much stronger if the spectator shuffled the deck first. But I didn’t really like any of the mechanical gimmicked deck switch methods. And the pure sleight-of-hand ones don’t work great when hanging out on a couch with someone.

I was doing a lot of deck switching behind couch cushions and in hoodie pockets, but I needed a good moment of misdirection. And I found that the moments of misdirection that seemed most invisible were those that weren’t directly part of the trick, but were prompted by what was going on in the trick. Turning on a light to see things more clearly was one of a few different moments of this type that I found.

Here’s another example. I used to do this with Out of This World using a spectator shuffled deck. She shuffles and immediately starts dealing into two piles. Because we’re sitting on the couch or the bed, the piles are sort of shifting around and becoming unsquared. After a dozen or so cards are dealt, and I’ve squared them once or twice, I pause, pick up the cards already dealt, take the deck from my friend, and put the dealt cards back in the deck. “Let’s go do this at the table,” I say. And on the way over to the table I switch the shuffled deck for a stacked deck in my hoodie pocket.

Again, this is another moment that is not part of the trick, but is necessitated by the trick. So it’s not coming out of the blue. The idea came to me because it was something that would happen frequently when performing on a couch or bed. It was hard to keep things neat. So this just took advantage of that moment.

Why don’t people question what happened during the 5 seconds it took to turn on the light, or the 15 seconds it took to walk to the table? I think it’s because it comes off as a normal, unplanned moment that fades into the background. Most people will turn on a light to see something better everyday. That’s not something that stands out. I’m not saying the moment would be forgotten if you were holding a red deck at first and it was a blue deck when they turned back. I’m saying in the flow of a trick it gets forgotten about.

This is the sort of thing I’ve been digging into deeper recently. Because most magic instructional material was geared for people performing professionally, it’s never looked too deeply into this type of deception. And that’s the type of deception that takes advantage of the innocence of the “everyday-ness” of an action. I have more of these that I’ll share in the future.

More Outlier Slip and Other Forcing Thoughts

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More talk about the force discussed yesterday.

Y.D. writes:

Al Mann published a similar idea in Magick. 6 billets, 3 with different items and 3 with the same item written on them, etc. —YD

Thanks for the credit. I’ve done something similar in the past. But I actually think having multiple non-duplicate slips is a step backwards. It ends up requiring the use of some sort equivocal phrasing or actions. Notice the way the choice is made in the force as I wrote it up yesterday. Their initial selection is either their choice, or it’s the first in a completely consistent elimination procedure. You can’t do that if you have multiple non-duplicates.

Also, the biggest strength of the version described yesterday is that they mix all the slips up. I’m not sure if Al Mann’s version allows for this. But having just one outlier slip means that’s all you need to keep track of.

Usually when I use the force mentioned yesterday, I’m using it as part of larger effect.

But if you’re just using it as a casual piece of magic, and you don’t have a particularly big reveal you’re working up to, here’s a potential detour you could take should the situation arise.

Let’s say you’re using the Outlier Slip variation and there are 5 “broccolis” on the table and 1 “peas” on the table. They’ve just mixed all the slips into a random order. So you, apparently, don’t know where anything is.

You can be a little more direct with your language in this version of the trick.

“I want you to select any of these slips that feels special to you in some way.”

1. If they pick a broccoli slip you give them the chance to change their mind. Then you follow the procedure outlined yesterday where you apparently show them multiple choices they kid have made. Then you reveal your prediction on your phone. The sexy woman dancing with broccoli. Or whatever.

2. If they pick the peas slip, you ask them if they want to change their mind. If they change their mind for another slip you can immediately show them the one they almost had: peas. The fact that (A) they had a free choice (B) you asked them if they wanted to keep that free choice and (C) you can immediately have them open it to show it was different than what they ended up with is a very convincing situation that suggests all the slips are different.

3. If they pick the peas slip, you ask them if they want to change their mind. If they don’t want to change their mind, have them open the slip. Then say, “it’s interesting that ‘peas’ is what felt special to you. It is special. I actually wrote the same thing on every other slip. You found the only one that was a different. “

And you have a very direct and completely examinable 1 in 6 (or however many) effect.

Another variation on this force that I’ve used in the past involves a pad of paper. This works very well, but it’s not impromptu.

Write your force word a number of times on a sheet of the paper.

Pull that sheet out and place it underneath the top sheet of the pad. It also helps if you bend up the bottom corner of the top two sheets a little, so you have easy access under your pre-written list. That’s your set up. (With a spiral bound pad, you can leave the sheet attached and just write on the sheet when it’s still in the notebook.)

To perform, take out the pad and ask your friend(s) to name some objects in whatever category you’re working with.

Legitimately write down all their answer in a list on the top sheet of the pad.

When you have enough words, tilt the pad towards yourself and apparently yank down the top sheet, but actually pull away the second sheet with the force word on it. Use the thumb of your non-yanking hand to press down on the top of the pad a little so there is some resistance to the sheet coming out.

(As opposed to what you usually do with the thumb on your non-”yanking” hand: stimulating your prostate.)

You now put the pad away. As the pad goes into your pocket or wherever, you look at your prepped sheet and rattle off the items the spectator called out, as if you’re reading them off this sheet.

With the pad out of play, tear your prepped sheet so each word is on a separate piece of paper. You would tear along the lines in this manner so no version of the word has a smooth top or bottom edge, which would give away where on the pad it was written. Obviously the spectator can’t see the front of the paper at this point.

Fold up the slips and allow them a free choice from what they believe to be the options they named before.