Modest Mentalism

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It started with this post about the basketball trick-shot guy who was cursed to make all his shots.

Then there was a mailbag question about maybe applying that concept to mentalism, i.e. being able to read people’s minds but your premise is that you don’t want to. That it’s a curse. My response was that it would be a little hard to pull that off because it would be difficult to justify the process involved for your mind reading if your premise was that you didn’t want to read people’s minds. (It can be hard enough to justify the process when your premise is you do want to read people’s minds.)

Those posts led to some feedback from people with other ideas for a more modest approach to mentalism. Where either you’re not always right or you don’t want to be right, or there’s some other layer to the presentation besides, I’M GOING TO READ THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR MIND!!!

I will share some of these ideas in the next week or two.

In today’s post we have a couple ideas that could make interesting stage/parlor presentations. I wouldn’t build a 75 minute show around these ideas—it would be too narrowly focused. But I can see someone pulling off a successful 20ish minute show with these premises.

[Here’s] a complete show concept. 'I brought you together because this is my last show of mentalism, I don't want to hear your thoughts anymore.'

My therapist says it started on stage.

It must end on stage...

It started one day when I was asking the audience for words for an improv show, and quickly I was hearing the words before people said them...

Since my life is hell. As soon as people focus on something I get it.”

Then do classic routines trying to miss them, but it's successful.

At some point find a reason, why it started? that day I drank a soda through my nose!

Do the opposite, and finally miss the next 3 routines!!!

3 random choices that you can't find!

Ending with 'now I just have to get rid of my gift of prediction', turn over a blackboard, the 3 choices were written on it! - Thomas P.

As a rough idea… I like it. That you accidentally did something once that triggered some sort of ability, and now you want to say goodbye to that ability by doing it again, or doing the opposite of whatever caused this ability.

In The Change-Up, Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman switch bodies after they both pee in the same fountain at the same time. To switch back they have to pee in that same fountain again.

My point being, in a theatrical setting, the rationale for why something happened doesn’t need to be super strong. So it’s not the sort of thing where you have to struggle really hard to come up with some plausible reason why you gained this ability. There is no plausible reason why you gained an ability to read people’s minds.

To give the show some structure, you could do something like this… You say you gained the ability to read minds a few years ago during an improv show in which you were performing. “I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know what caused it. But I do remember three weird things happened in that show. First, I did what I thought was a gibberish chant during one of the scenes. Maybe it was gibberish… or maybe I accidentally stumbled over some kind of… I don’t know… incantation? And that somehow gave me the ability to read minds? I’ve watched a video from that show and memorized my babbling so I can try it again tonight.

“The second weird thing that happened was when I went to shake an audience member’s hand at the start of the show, I didn’t notice he was eating an open-faced PB&J sandwich and I got peanut butter and jelly all over my hand. Could that have somehow caused this ability? I know that seems like I’m grasping at straws. But it seems much less crazy when you realize I’ve only had my hand covered in peanut butter and jelly once in my life… then 10 minutes later I could read minds.

“And the final thing that happened was I got electrocuted by some faulty wiring in the microphone cord. I hope that’s not what caused my ability, because that’s one thing I’m not willing to try again.”

So first you try the gibberish incantation to see if you can reverse the curse. But when you attempt to read someone’s mind afterwards, you’re able to do it with no problem.

Moving on, you coat your hand with peanut butter and jelly. “I feel like a fucking idiot,” you say. With your hand dripping in stickiness you do another mind reading experiment and it goes perfectly well. “Shit.”

You grab a wet towel and clean off your hand. You call out for someone to bring you some paper-towels to dry your hands.

“Well, no such luck, I’m afraid. It looks like I’m stuck with this ability.”

You absent-mindedly grab the mic from the mic stand with your wet hand. Sparks fly. [Google: “funken ring.”]

You scream. You writhe in pain. You finally settle down.

“Wait… why is it so quiet in here?” My god… you’re not hearing people’s thoughts.

You start pointing to people in the audience. “Think of a color… is it brown? No? It was blue?! Yes!”

You guess a city wrong. And then a celebrity.

“Oh, this is such a relief,” you say. “To finally not hear in my head what people are thinking.

“It was hard enough dealing with that one ability I already had. The one I got after that weird incident in my fourth grade Christmas pageant. That one was slightly different. It wasn’t mind reading: hearing people’s thoughts in real time. It was prediction: knowing what would happen long before it ever did.”

You pull a cloth off a chalkboard on stage:

Tonight the audience members will think of:
Blue
Moscow
and Samuel L. Jackson

Hi Andy, an idea that occurred to me regarding your post about Mentalism in a less magician-centric sense. After seeing the basketball trick shots video I was inspired to experiment with presenting a weighing the cards routine (simple memdeck stuff) but intentionally getting every count off by one. I started by counting the packets and always being one shy of the correct number, then had them name a card and I would name the position but be off by one, or I’d end up naming the position of the card’s twin (so 5 of hearts when they say 5 of diamonds for example). I then had them cut the deck and started trying to guess the colour of the next cards and got every colour wrong. (This was quite fun, dealing through the deck saying “this card is… red! Dammit. Red! Dammit, Black, Dammit, Red again, Dammit” and so on) then try to guess the values and be off by one again, I’ve only tried this once for an audience so far (it was an actual parlour audience, not a casual setting) and I need to routine it properly but I think it felt promising and it certainly achieves the goal of doing a “look how brilliantly clever I am” routine in a way that is much less self aggrandising. —Ben S.

Yes, this could be enjoyable. I’ve published something similar to what you did with being off on the red and blacks and growing increasingly frustrated. (Although I’ll be fucked if I can remember where.). I also have a trick in the next book that plays with that idea as well. It’s always fun to play angrily defeated.

I definitely think this could sustain a short show. Laypeople understand that to be consistently a “little off” is ultimately almost as impossible as being dead on. So it’s not like they’re just watching you fail completely the whole time.

You could explain that you’re trying to build up these mentalism skills but you’ve just always had a problem where you’re a little off. “If someone is thinking of a tiger, I’ll guess it’s a lion. If their birthday is on the third, I’ll be certain it’s the fourth. If their secret celebrity crush is Jessica Chastain, I’ll be picking up that it’s Bryce Dallas Howard.”

And throughout the show you demonstrate this almost ability that you have.

Then for your finale you do something involving counting. The rough draft idea would be something like this, you show your prediction openly before the. It’s 617. “Look," you say, “I’m sure it will end up being 616 or 618. But if I change it to one of those, then it will end up being 617. If I try to be a little wrong in order to be right, that never works either.”

You have a number of members of the audience who have pocket change on them dump their cons in a fabric bag (like a change bag). You spill the coins out on a table and tally the change in front of them. “6 dollars and 15 cents, six-sixteen, six-seventeen. $6.17!” You celebrate. You finally got it right on. A big smile comes over your face. You drop the performer facade and now you’re just a human who has finally accomplished his goal.

You give a little impromptu speech on never giving up on your dreams and believing in yourself and how the real magic is in all of us and our ability to achieve our goals. As your speech is coming to a close, from deep in the folds of the bag held under your arm, something falls to the ground. A penny.

“Motherfu-!!”

LIGHTS OUT

Mailbag #74

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This first message comes from Mac King, reflecting on his friend Max Maven…

What a treat to read your recent post about Max. I count him as one the most influential people on my show. He watched with a genius eye and could come up with just the right turn of phrase or little moment to enhance a performance. His ability to suggest trick plots that fit me was perfect. His knowledge of methods was massive. He was encouraging and smart. In addition to my show, Max influenced my everyday life. Book recommendations. Movies. Jokes. Food. Music. And one of my two or three closest friends. I loved him so.

The little text exchange you screenshot was telling. He was generous and funny.

I first met Max Maven when I was teenager, at an Abbott’s Get Together in 1978. I was sitting with Lance Burton in the bleachers in the un-air-conditioned sweltering Colon High School Gymnasium. Max was introduced and us two Kentucky hillbillies had never seen anything like that. The first thing we noticed—obviously—was his trademark widow’s-peak. Then that orotund Max Maven voice. And then his ensemble. Black. Obviously. But not just black. And not the black puffy pants and knee length blouses he favored in his latter years. No. A solid black beautifully fitting three piece suit. But without a shirt—chest hair proudly billowing from his vest. And then Lance and I were like, “Wait. He’s not wearing a shirt and yet there are white shirt sleeves visible at the end of his rolled up jacket sleeves.” We thought that was so cool. Already a mystery and he hadn’t even done a trick. And then he did a trick. Lance and I were 18 years old at the time, and as often happens with 18 year old magicians, we thought we were hot shit. So Max did his first trick. I looked at Lance, Lance looked at me. We each shrugged our shoulders helplessly. Neither of us had a clue. Second trick. Fooled us just as bad. Third trick. No idea. Every-single-trick simply pulverized us. Easily the most I’ve ever been fooled by one person at one sitting—before or since. —MK

I have little to add, other than that sounds like peek Max. No shirt? Chest hair flowing in the breeze? Sweet. Sadly, “Max Maven” + “Chest hair” produces no good results in an image search.

Although googling around I did stumble across Max’s entry on the Mork and Mindy Wiki. What a life.

I miss when professional magicians had a signature look. Max and Mac are great examples. Penn and Teller. Doug Henning. That’s one of the few cool things about being a professional, you get to cultivate a signature style. Sadly, these days, it seems like most magicians “style” could be described as “I’ve visited a Men’s Wearhouse.” Wouldn’t Josh Jay be, like, 1000 times better if he had held onto that red suit? Or if he had a dope-ass mohawk?

An extended tribute to Max by Mac will be in the next Magic Castle newsletter. There’s a dress code if you want to read that.

Is there a plot/premise/trick that has stymied you and you’re just unable to crack? You could maybe put it out to the readers to “hive-mind” the problem. Just a thought —CF

Hmmm… I don’t know if I would call this a plot/premise/trick, but the thing I’ve probably put the most time into thinking about and testing ideas related to lately is how to make a 1 in 4 trick (or tricks with similar odds) more resonant with spectators.

Take a trick like Killer Elite by Andy Nyman.

I used to do this trick a bunch when it came out 20+ years ago. It’s super easy and, like a lot of tricks of this type, it’s kind of fun to perform because you don’t exactly know how things will go. And while it always got a good response, no one ever came back a month later and said, “It’s still screwing with my head how you knew which killer I’d take.”

The problem with a trick like this is, if you were to perform it for every human on the planet, it would work 2 billion times, just statistically. It’s hard for a trick to carry too much weight when it seems so possible.

What I’ve learned from testing similar tricks is that the “answers” most people come up with for a trick with decent odds are:

A) “I guess everyone says _______.” This seems very reasonable considering that they themselves just said it.

B) “The magician could have gotten lucky.” With such a low-stakes trick, it’s always possible your method was “hoping for the best.”

It’s hard to deny either of these answers.

So for a long time I just avoided tricks like that. But recently I’ve wanted to incorporate a couple into my repertoire so I’ve been playing around with some ways to make the initial moment of suprise these tricks generate more durable. After trying out a few ideas, I have one technique that I’m pretty happy with which will likely be in the next book. But it’s not something that can be repeated for the same people. It’s something you can use once for any given audience. So I’m still playing around with other concepts regarding how to make the somewhat improbable feel more impossible.

I’ve got a Christmas present question. I remember you saying you got your start with the Amateur Magician’s Handbook. I’m getting a beginner magic book for a young person in my life, would you recommend that? —FQ

No. Not at all. It was dated when I was reading it 30+ years ago.

Get Joshua Jay’s Magic The Complete Course.

That’s dated too, as you’ll find out when the kid you give it to says, “What’s a DVD?” But it’s a much better choice than some grimy old book with black and white photos of disembodied hands palming thimbles.

Dustings #75

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Here’s a good idea from supporter JFC. It’s a place to keep invisible elastic thread Loops or TIES or whatever the hell you’re using.

Yigal Mesika has a good system available for keeping them on a special card inside your wallet.

But some modern wallets might not accept the card, or you might not carry a wallet.

You can, of course, just wear it on your wrist all day. That’s fine, but it can be hard on the gimmick and you might end up snagging it or forgetting it. And regardless you’ll probably want to have back-ups on you.

JFC’s idea is this.

Obviously, with an opaque case you wouldn’t see the thread cards. But I didn’t use an opaque case for demonstration purposes because then I’d just be taking pictures of a phone case.

It’s both convenient and very safe for the thread as well. It’s a good practical idea for the casual performer. Thanks, JFC.

Paul Voodini’s Penguin Live lecture has 33 ratings, and 79% of them are five stars. Sounds pretty good.

I know what you’re thinking…

But can I jack off to it?

Probably not.

Fortunately, Paul has something that will help you out. If you watch that lecture and get all worked up from Paul’s raw sensuality, you can hop over to Lybrary.com and pick up his book, The Erotic Adventures of Vampire Kate.

According to the blurb, the book is “high end erotica” full of “carnal lusts and forbidden pleasures.”

So whether you want to read someone else’s palm, or wrap your dick in your own, Voodini has you covered.

Below is a gallery of potential covers I generated for the November Love Letters newsletter using an AI art program. The prompt I gave it was“Lovers in Autumn.” These were the results…

To be clear, all the options the AI art generated were shitty. These were just the ones that happen to be shitty and struck me as funny. My goal of handing over everything I do to artificial intelligence (as explored in a week’s worth of posts last year) seems to be some time off.

A few people wrote in asking about any highlights in the second half of my horror movie watching last month. I know October is over, but a good horror movie can be enjoyed all year. I won’t go through everything I watched, but these ones were the best of the second half:

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair - I think this movie is polarizing with horror fans, but I dug it. It’s mostly “found footage” and it’s almost painfully slow in parts, but I think that adds to verisimilitude of the footage. It’s got a very creepy vibe. It’s about an online challenge called the World’s Fair Challenge which, supposedly, causes some indeterminate changes in those who participate in it. Like, imagine if after you did the Ice Bucket Challenge your hair started falling out and you had a sudden craving for menstrual blood. (That’s not the story of the movie. I’m just using that as an example.)

The Night House - An interesting take on the traditional haunted house story. Had me on edge through much of it. The story is not a retread of anything you’ve seen before and there are a couple very clever scares in it.

Wrong Turn (2020) - I’ve never really been into any of the other movies in this franchise, but I really liked this one. Any movie that begins with a bunch of young people going off into the woods is off to a strong start. This one goes off into a weird direction, which some people didn’t like, but I enjoyed it. It also has the most satisfying end credit scene in movie history.

Barbarian - This is another one that doesn’t go where you expect it might. The story and tone shift a couple of times in a way I found very enjoyable. Scary in spots, funny in spots. But never a corny “horror comedy.” I didn’t link the trailer for this one because it gives too much away. Just watch it if you’re into horror movies.

Mailbag: Reader Feedback

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Here are some recent emails in reaction to posts from earlier this week:

Regarding yesterday’s post about the way in which time affects memorability when it comes to magic tricks, JH writes:

Counterpoint to your argument about 2-3 minute tricks not being memorable...most rock songs are about 3 minutes. I read somewhere that The Beatles had perfected the form. Of course, part of that length is due to the format of radio back then. —JH

But how many times do you listen to a song, compared to how many times you see a trick?

I don’t think it’s a counterpoint, I think it reinforces what I was saying.

When a song becomes vital to you, it’s usually because you’ve heard it multiple times over the course of days or weeks. (Or, if you get super obsessed, maybe over and over again in one sitting.) In other words, you have more time with that song.

If you just heard a 3 minute song once, it’s likely you wouldn’t remember much about it a week or two later. Even if you really enjoyed it when you heard it. (That’s not always true. Sometimes it’s like, “I heard this song once walking through the mall in 1987 and I finally tracked it down 30 years later.” Those situations exist, but what makes them notable is how rare they are.)

Time is just one variable when it comes to memorability. (Those who have my previous books can read more on the subject.) But it’s probably the easiest one to manipulate, so it’s worth focusing on.

Returning to your thoughts on the Pro Caps effect, did you see Craig Petty’s weird 40 minute video defending the trick? I thought it was a joke at first. He performs a few different effects for the same person. All of them are tricks where coins are vanishing and reappearing under soda bottle caps. When the tricks are over Craig asks him if he knows which items are gimmicked and the guy starts saying things like, “Is it the deck of cards? Is it the table?” He dismisses the bottle cap even though Craig whisks it away every time coins vanish from under it. It almost seems like a parody video you would make about how people WISH spectators would react. The spectator is clearly totally coached up. I was curious if you had thoughts on it. I’m a Craig fan, and own this trick too, but this video is so desperate I feel it undermines what he was going for.—CA

Look, there’s no way I’m going to watch a 38 minute video about a trick I’m not interested in. I did watch the first performance on the video and it told me everything I needed to know, even before any magic happened.

The first trick is a coins through table effect. At 5:45 in the video, the first coin goes through the table. You don’t see it go through the table. Nor does it visually appear in the glass under the table. The only evidence you have that the coin has gone through is the sound of a coin landing in a glass. But that glass is under the table, completely blocked from view. So all a spectator knows watching this is that a coin was dropped in the glass under the table. Nothing magical has happened yet. And yet the spectator’s reaction is, “What the fuck!?” Again, nothing has happened but the sound of a coin hitting a glass under a table where 5000 coins could be hidden at the moment.

So, I’ll take Craig at his word that this guy’s reactions are real. But if that’s the case, he’s the most undiscriminating magic spectator that has ever existed. He gave a WTF reaction before anything magical even happened. While that makes him a wonderful spectator in general, it makes him a bad surrogate spectator to demonstrate these tricks on, because he’s reacting in a way that is atypical. You do come across people who react like this from time to time. And if you have a person in your life who reacts like this, hang onto that big dumb dope with both hands. They’ll make you feel like a million bucks.

With that said, scanning through the video I can see that Craig is routining these tricks in a way to do his best to take the heat off the cap, which is a good thing. I just don’t really see that as a substitute for the traditional version where you don’t have to direct their attention so much. With the brass caps you can have the spectator cover the stack of coins while you’re across the room. Then, when they say go, the coins can transport to your hand while you are far away and they can turn over the cap themselves to find nothing underneath.

Ultimately it’s going to come down to what you prioritize with this effect. Do you want to do a version that’s more hands off and examinable? If so, do the traditional version. Do you want to do one that looks more like a recognizable object? Then Pro Caps might work for you.

I would definitely avoid any routines that use this part of the gimmick though…

The part that’s supposed to look like the plastic ring on the bottle the cap is attached to.

While carrying around plastic bottle caps is odd on its own. It’s hyper odd to also be carrying around that part of the cap. The whole purpose of that piece is that it doesn’t come off the bottle. That’s its function. So to just casually have that bit of trash on you that you WRENCHED off a bottle for some reason seems a bit harder to justify.

Regarding Tuesday’s Trick-Shot post, PM writes:

For some time now I've struggled to present mentalism seriously. I don't think there's a purer form of "Look how amazing I am" than with most mentalism presentations.

But the frustration of not being able to be wrong speaks to me. I've considered for a while now to present mentalism modestly, even apologetically. But I'm just not quite there.

I imagine if you could learn to read minds, it would be horrific. I can't imagine how rough life would be if nobody lied to me successfully ever again. Never being surprised by a gift, ever. Birthday, Christmas. No need even wrapping them.

But I'm not sure where this takes me for a presentation. I'd love a sentence or two of guidance if you can spare it. -PM

Yeah, that’s going to be tough to pull off as a premise, I think. The problem is this… almost all mind-reading has some process involved. So how would you justify engaging in that process in the first place if your goal was not to do what that process was designed for? You know what I mean? Like why would you have them write the word down and put it in your wallet if you didn’t want to read their mind of that word? It doesn’t quite make sense.

That’s why, with mentalism, if I’m trying to take a backseat role, I transfer the “power” to some third person or object. Then it’s my “psychic friend” reading their mind. Or, this “weird fortune telling game” that I learned about. That way we can follow some sort of process but it’s not my idea, and it’s not me gaining the accolades.

That being said, I’m sure there’s some way to read someone’s mind in the context of not wanting to read their mind. I’ll give it some thought. And if anyone has any ideas, feel free to pass them along to share with the class.

My Takeaway From Five Years of Tracking Trick Memorability

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Starting back in 2017 I started tracking how “memorable” a trick was. That may seem like a hard thing to quantify. That’s because it is. I mean, if you go up to someone and say, “Remember when I vanished your bill and it appeared in a lemon?” They might say, “Uhm, yeah.” But just acknowledging something after being reminded that it happened doesn’t mean that thing was “memorable.” So I used a different metric, as I wrote about on New Year’s day of 2018.

[O]ne thing I could track, to a certain extent, was resonance. When someone talks to me, or texts me, or calls me long after the trick and mentions it, I can make note of it. When 6 months after a performance someone tells me they had a dream about it, that can be seen as a data point. Even on a shorter time scale, if someone brings up a trick later that same night, that's obviously a more enduring trick for them than something they never think of or mention again.

And the idea behind tracking this was to identify what aspects of a trick might make that magic feeling linger. Would something visual endure more than something cerebral? Is something mildly magical that happens in their hands remembered longer than something incredibly magical that happens in mine? Or is it the other way around? Is a card trick more memorable than a coin trick? Or are they equally forgettable?

So, for over five years, I’ve tracked in the databases that housed my repertoire of tricks, how frequently someone would mention a trick after it was performed.

Not every trick got mentioned, of course. It broke down into about thirds. 1/3rd of the tricks wouldn’t come up again after the interaction. 1/3rd would come up later that day.. And then another 1/3 would be mentioned at some other interaction down the road, days, months or even years later.

I decided to look at Resonance (Memorability) vs Time (How long the trick takes to perform). I went into my database and added a column for approximately how long each trick takes. When I compared the two variables, I ended up with a correlation that looks like this…

The lowest part of that dip (the lowest “Memorability”) were for tricks in the range of 30 seconds to three minutes.

The effect of the length of the trick on Memorability was most pronounced when tricks that were under 5 seconds (essentially instantaneous tricks) or tricks that were greater than 5 minutes.

A couple things were interesting about this to me.

First, I would guess that most tricks magicians perform fall into that 30 second to 3 minute deadzone. We’re not doing ourselves any favors with the pacing of our tricks.

Second, even when I had a trick with with a very strong, or interesting, or funny story to go along with it—if it was too short—it often wouldn’t “stick” with spectators. As good as the presentation may be, it needs some time to germinate.

Third, even if a trick was mostly dead time, as long as there was enough time between the start of the trick and the end, it still had increased resonance. You don’t need to do a 45 minute continuous one-act-play for your spectator. When performing casually, you can introduce the concept of a trick, let that sit for a while. Come back at a later time to demonstrate the trick and maybe it doesn’t quite go right. Then come back a final time and fulfill the premise of your trick. And even if the total length of those interactions was a couple of minutes total, it will be considerably more memorable than a trick that takes 2 minutes in real time.

As the graph suggests, there was also a spike in Memorability for tricks that were over very quick. A bill change with little to no preamble. Changing the color of an object. Vanishing something you no longer need. Essentially the sort of thing I do in the Distracted Artist style.

From my experience, what people remember are quick, laser-focused moments of magic, or extended immersive experiences. With the immersive experiences ultimately providing the greatest memorability.

Does this mean I don’t do any 45 second or 2 minute tricks?

No. But I do ask myself, “Can we concentrate this effect down to something punchier? Or can we broaden the experience to something more engrossing for a longer period of time?” Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t. Some tricks really aren’t intended to be anything more than a sort of brief moment of entertainment. But if you’re hoping to do something particularly affecting, you may want to play around with the time element.

Think about it. Does anything really good take 2 minutes? (“Yes, sex with me takes two minutes,” you say. Okay. But I meant really good for everyone involved.)

Jerxian Trick Shots

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Look, no one is more disgusted than I am that I’m using the adjective “jerxian.” I just don’t quite know another way to succinctly describe something that is reminiscent of the ideas on this blog (other than “brilliant,” I mean).

Madison H., sent along this email recently…

I was on Facebook this morning and saw a video that I think does a good job of demonstrating your style outside of a magic context. 

It’s a guy who is acting like he’s cursed to nail every basketball shot he takes. 

Clearly, we all know it’s fiction, but he plays it as real. Clearly he doesn’t want us to REALLY believe in the fiction, but it doesn’t take a *wink wink* or *nudge nudge* for the audience to understand that he’s only saying that to make it entertaining. It’s impressive the shots he’s making, but it’s much more intriguing to watch than other “trick shot” videos because there’s a narrative of trying to miss woven in. This narrative allows him to get creative with his shots and do things that would never be considered the “normal” way to shoot a basketball, but we don’t bat an eye at it because it fits into the narrative.

I love that video. It’s genuinely both amazing and funny. I don’t know if he was the first person to hit on this framing for a trick-shot video, but it’s genius.

As a trick-shot artist he’s fairly limited in the number of contexts in which he can present his shots. In magic we have so many potential contexts for a trick but we so often limit it to, “I have this skill/power and now I’m gong to demonstrate it.” It’s funny to see someone shy away from that framing even when he’s legitimately demonstrating a skill.

I think I mentioned in a post or newsletter recently that I’ve been doing a long-form (month’s long) performance piece with a friend of mine where I can’t lose any game I play. This started with variations on the 10-Card Poker Deal but has evolved into all sorts of games where I can control the outcome. Instead of presenting this as, “I have magical powers that allow me to win any game I play,” I present it like I’m so bothered by the fact that I never lose anymore.

It’s like that Twilight Zone episode, “A Nice Place To Visit” where the guy “wins” at everything he tries and therefore can take no pleasure at anything he attempts anymore.

This is a great way to “batch” together a number of similar effects to create one ongoing story-line.

Many years ago I wrote a presentation for Paul Harris’ trick The Perfectionist (#4 in this post), where I talk about being cursed by an old gypsy woman to not be able to shuffle cards. This was some of my earliest writing about presentation.

I remember an email I got afterwards from a guy who wrote me and said he wasn’t a fan of that presentation because it was “too theatrical.”

But it’s not. It’s only as theatrical as you make it. You can tell such a story and play it up, or you can play it very low key. That’s up to you.

The bizarre thing to me is that a couple months later this same guy posted a video of a coin trick where he said, “The leader coin calls the other coins to join it. So whatever hand it’s in, the other coins will follow.”

It blows my mind how comfortable magicians are with bland patter like this. Like, they’re going to make up a story… and then they choose a totally boring one? What is that instinct? I think it might be that a lot of the standard, corny, meaningless magician’s patter doesn’t require the performer to actually invest any bit of themself into the performance. The patter is just dead on arrival. It’s completely perfunctory. It’s like the dialogue in a porno movie. Magicians just want to “get to the good stuff.”

But what real people enjoy most with social magic is the presentation. Don’t waste it. Do what the trick-shot kid does and embrace it. The more fun you have with the presentation, the more fun the people watching will have.

Mailbag: Thinking Like A Magician

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If I had read your thoughts on Pro Caps before today [Sunday] it would have saved me $40 and some embarrassment. I got my Pro Caps on Friday and tried them out last night at a bonfire dinner we have in our neighborhood.

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I did end up getting called out twice on the caps in the four times I performed it. I knew they wouldn’t pass inspection or anything like that and I knew they didn’t exactly match a normal bottle cap, but that seemed to be thinking like a magician. I wouldn’t say it was magician’s guilt because I hadn’t read your post yet so I was highly confident going into the night. My last performance of the trick got the strongest reaction of the night but afterwards I almost knocked the gimmick off the table and my neighbor’s aunt said, “Oops. Don’t lose your special cap.” I was very tempted to toss it in the fire and say “Oh there’s nothing special about it.” But I chickened out at the end.

It would be good if you could partner up with Murphy’s or whomever and you could get effects pre-release to give your comments to us. You’re one of the few voices in magic that I trust to give an honest opinion. —JS

I appreciate the thought, but you may be confused about how magic marketing/promotion works if you think Murphy’s would want to partner up with me because I would give an “honest” opinion about things…that’s not what they’re looking for.

I don’t really have any more thoughts on Pro Caps. I don’t own a set and don’t see myself getting one. Hopefully the people who pick it up end up enjoying it. That’s pretty much my only thought on it at this point.

But I do want to dive into something you mentioned in your email: Thinking Like A Magician.

In the magic world we’re frequently being told, “Don’t think like a magician.”

Do these bottle caps look a little off? Maybe. But only a magician would notice that. You have to stop thinking like a magician.

Is this a big, bulky weird looking wallet unlike anything anyone carries in the real world? Don’t worry about it. Stop thinking like a magician.

You’re worried that the deck can’t be examined after the color change? That’s “magician’s guilt.” Stop thinking like a magician.

I have important information for all of you. As someone who has been involved with more testing of magic tricks than any human who has ever lived on the planet, there is no such thing as “thinking like a magician.” You’re not concerned about the bottle cap looking not-quite-right because you’re thinking like a magician. It’s because you’re thinking like someone with a couple functioning brain cells.

In the early testing days, we looked at the Ambitious Card to see what spectator’s ideas were in regards to how the trick was done.

The vast majority of the time, they suggested the possibility of some kind of trick deck.

Maybe it’s our performance, we thought. So we showed people Bill Malone, Doc Eason, Tommy Wonder and others performing the Ambitious Card. It didn’t matter who the audience was. It didn’t matter which performer they saw. “Trick cards” or “Trick deck” was always one of the top guessed methods.

We would soon learn that unless you controlled for it in some way, audiences almost always assumed a “trick” something was involved. A pen went through a bill? Trick pen. Coins jumped from hand to hand? Trick coins. One sponge ball became two? Well, it must be some kind of trick sponge ball that pulls apart, of course!

Questioning how much an audience will accept the normalcy of an object used in an effect is not “thinking like a magician.” In fact, it suggests a foundational understanding of how laymen think.

Any props that play a primary role in your effect will be questioned. You can get around this by using borrowed objects, examinable objects, and switches to make it feel like everything is normal. But you can’t get around it with wishful thinking.

How important this is to you may be something that comes down to the professional/amateur divide as well. If you’re a professional magician (or are performing in a professional style) people expect you to have your magic props with you. Do they probably know there’s something funky about your bottle caps? Yes. People don’t just carry bottle caps with them. In the same way they probably know there’s something funky about the box Copperfield put the girl in on stage. They allow for that in the professional performance because a professional performance is all artifice. Is the bottle cap fake? Sure. And the joke the magician just made was something he’s said 1000 times before. It’s all fake.

Social magic is less forgiving in that way. The whole goal of it is that the magic moment feels like part of a casual interaction. “Normal” objects have to really ring true as normal objects. What you say shouldn’t feel scripted. The moment should seem unrehearsed.

For the social magician, you can’t underestimate your audience’s suspicions. You need to anticipate them and adjust for them.

You might hope, “If I’m a great enough magician, that will get them not to question the objects I use.” But you have it backwards. You can’t get people to see you as a “great magician” until they get past their innate suspicions about the objects you use.