Dustings #79

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Concerning a question in Monday’s mailbag where someone mentioned a person at Magifest who did a spongeball routine that was supposedly my creation, I said I had no clue what the email writer was talking about. I’ve only done one sponge ball routine in the past decade or so and didn’t remember ever writing it up.

Apparently, I did though. A few people wrote in to remind me of the sponge ball idea as one of many things mentioned in this post.

I don’t know if that’s what the person was doing at Magifest. But if he said it was my idea and it involved sponge balls, that’s one of the few ideas I have with them.

EDCeipt continues to be a big subject in my inbox. Thankfully now it’s more about the trick than the drama surrounding it.

Colin H. writes, “I actually like it a lot, but I was getting questioned about the receipts almost every time I performed it. I don’t live in an area with most of those stores. I started just saying they were fake receipts lol. I said they came with a toy cash register we bought for my daughter. It’s not an elegant solution but it explains why they don’t seem right.”

Someone said you could make your own receipts by going to the store and buying the items to make up what you need for the receipts. I mean… sure… if you want to make five trips and spend 100s of dollars on items you may or may not need in certain quantities in order to have gaffs that will last you a couple weeks… go ahead. It would be much cheaper and more efficient to just buy a thermal receipt printer and print out your own receipts. Which I think is the definitive solution for anyone who truly loves the idea behind this trick.

Coincidentally, I was in my friend’s car the other night having a conversation and at one point she opened her center console to get a piece of paper to write something on and she pulled out…

A bunch of old receipts?

No, not quite.

But close.

Three old grocery shopping lists.

Perhaps that’s a workable alternative?

My friend has a long pad that hangs on her refrigerator which she makes her shopping list on throughout the week. Then she pulls the top sheet off before her grocery store trip. These lists sometimes accumulate in her car because she doesn’t want to throw them out as they might have a phone number, a note to herself or a date to remember also written on them. So she just jams it into the center console to deal with later.

I’m not imagining a scenario where you carry around five shopping lists with you in your wallet. That would be at least as odd as carrying around five grocery receipts. But if you ever carry any kind of bag you could jam them in there and it wouldn’t be that crazy. Or this could be exclusively a “car trick.”

I usually carry something in my car that wouldn’t feel out of place there (an old lottery ticket, a pack of gum, etc.) but that is actually there for the purpose of showing someone something when I’m in a situation where I’m killing time with them in the car. I’m in that position once every few weeks, at least. So it’s not that unusual for me. And I can see myself with my friend, waiting for our take-out to be ready or something, poking around my car and asking, “Do I have anything interesting to show you?” Digging around, finding the shopping lists, dismissing them at first, and then saying, “Hmm… actually… here’s something we could try.”

And the lists could easily be marked with innocuous seeming scribbles, tears, and folds.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s too much effort for this particular trick. But it takes the “fake receipt” issue off the table. And because you could build the lists around stuff you actually buy, nothing would seem out of place to those who know you. Also, there could be other writing/information on the papers that could be useful in this trick or others. At the very least it could help justify why you haven’t thrown the list out.

And finally, I hereby bestow the idea of a binary sorting trick with shopping lists to Craig and Murphy’s. So now you can buy EDCeipt, transfer the concept to a grocery list, and use the trick with no ethical concerns that you’re stepping on the toes of Weber and Trono.

Unless someone else has already had this idea in the past in which case: Problem Unsolved!

Nicholas R. is repping GLOMM: Argentina with this sweet tattoo.

Note: You don’t need my permission to get a GLOMM tattoo. However, if you end up being convicted of a sex crime you must cover it up with the logo of the International Brotherhood of Magicians or some other organization that doesn’t have an issue with that sort of thing. Otherwise I’m sending someone to remove that area of your skin.

The Traditional/Social Performing Divide: Part Two

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Today I want to try and answer the question posed in the email in yesterday’s post that asked why some performers think, “The audience won’t notice [or the audience won’t care] if there’s something off about these gimmicked receipts [or whatever the prop may be that you’re using].” And why other performers can’t even introduce these things into an interaction without the person for whom they’re performing questioning them.

Yesterday we looked at how something you say can work just fine in a traditional style of performance, but would stand out in a social/casual style.

I’m going to work that around to the props you use as well. But first, another example of the Traditional/Social divide…

Copperfield has a really beautiful illusion where he plays his most believable role ever: a pervert staring through the window at two women in bed.

Imagine this trick didn’t have to be done on stage. Imagine it could be done in your home. You tell everyone to come to your place at 8 pm because you have an illusion you want to show them. Your friends show up and your present this amazing piece of magic to them. The girls disappear and reappear on the bed. Everyone is blown away seeing this happen right in front of them.

Now imagine you decided to perform this trick in a less formal way. Instead of putting on a “show” for people, you just want to have this moment arise more organically. You want to be hanging out in your bedroom with some people and then you make two of them vanish and reappear on your bed. What a crazy moment that would be.

So you invite a few people over and at one point you think of an excuse to have them follow you into your bedroom. The group includes the two people working with you on the illusion and then a couple of other friends who are the “audience” for this trick.

As a group, you walk into the bedroom.

What happens next?

What happens is that your audience takes a look at the structure in the GIF above and says, “This is your bed? What the fuck? You sleep on this? How can that be comfortable? Are you insane? Are you poor? Do you need money? We can get you a proper bed. We care about you.”

Now, for the first performer, this is a brilliant trick.

But for the second performer, they can’t even start the trick without someone questioning it.

This isn’t due to the quality of the performers, but due to the style in which they’re trying to perform.

Social performing is not just doing a trick in a casual setting. If that was the distinction, there would be nothing to talk about with it. Social magic is about blurring the lines between the performance and your everyday social interactions. It’s a more naturalistic type of experience. It’s still a piece of fiction. But it’s a style that’s akin to a mockumentary sitcom or a found-footage horror film. And if things feel false or contrived in social magic, it can stand out significantly.

The traditional style of showing people magic involves giving them a little performance or show. And in a '“show” people expect some artificiality.

So if you’re doing a “performance” and you pull out five receipts, it doesn’t matter if that feels contrived because a performance is a contrivance. The power of the method behind EDCeipt is that you could literally say, “Here are five fake receipts. I want you to think of an item on one of them.” And you would still fool them.

But if you tried to do a more naturalistic presentation where you “just happen” to have these five receipts on you, you’re likely going to get called out.

The strength of using receipts in a binary sorting trick is that it contextualizes a list of items. The strength of ProCaps is that it contextualizes a little cap you’re using to cover coins. It makes these things feel familiar.

But don’t confuse an object feeling familiar to an audience with an object feeling innocent to them.

Familiarity may help things feel more innocent, but if you have an object that plays a big role in the mystery you’re showing them, that item is going to be suspect to people even when it is the real thing.

The takeaway here is just to be cognizant of the style you want to perform in and then choose the material that supports that style.

With traditional magic, you have a little more latitude in regard to the objects you use when you perform, because—for better or for worse—they will be seen as props. Even if they’re “everyday objects,” people will still suspect there’s something special about them. The very first thing someone says in the first demo for EDCeipt here is, “Are those real receipts?” He is then clearly eyeing the receipts and reads off some information from one of them. This is before Craig has even asked him to look at the receipts. So to say they won’t possibly notice the location or the pricing is just nonsense. Some will notice, and some will find these things odd. Some will find the Tyvek receipts odd. Some will find the fact you have five receipts on you in the first place odd. But what you’ll find is that a lot of people don’t really care because they understand this is “theater” and these are “props.” And whether they buy into them as being real or not, it doesn’t prevent you from doing something they can’t explain.

With a naturalistic style of performance, people are unforgiving of anything if it doesn’t ring true. You can’t ask people to get more immersed in the presentation and use props that are too suspect. That breaks the spell.

In the previous post, Edward H. asked:

“How do people get their spectators not to notice these things? On facebook they said people don’t look at the receipts that closely but the trick REQUIRES them to look at them closely. Am I being gaslit? I’d accept that maybe I’m just a bad magician but I’ve had people comment on some of these issues before I’ve even really started the trick.”

I don’t think you’re being gaslit. Nor do I think you’re a bad magician. No matter how good you are, you can’t get people not to notice objects that don’t match up with their understanding of how those things look and feel. In fact, the more engaging a performer you are, the more attention people will give to the objects you bring into the interaction.

What’s more likely is you’re trying to fit a trick into a style with which it doesn’t mesh. If you really like the trick, I would go with a more traditional style where there is less heat on the “normality” of the objects in question. You’ll probably find you have something that’s still fooling. And then it’s up to you to make it entertaining in that style.

The Traditional/Social Performing Divide: Part One

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I said I wasn’t going to wade back into the EDCeipt drama anymore. And it really wasn’t my intention to do so. Despite the fact that I recently learned the girl I’ve been dating online for the past two and a half years was really Michael Weber catfishing me. And now, not only have I lost the person that I thought was my soulmate, he also has all these sexy pictures of me that he’s threatening to release as part of a new website he and Trono are working on where they rate magician’s genitals on a scale of 1 to 100. The site is called MagiciansGenitalRatings.com. That’s got to be illegal, right? And how fucking unoriginal is that website name? Ugh.

I actually don’t have more to talk about in regards to the drama surrounding this trick, but I have been getting a few emails asking if I have any thoughts on how to deal with some potential weaknesses in the trick itself. I have some thoughts. But it will take a while to get to it.

One of those emails I received was from Edward H. who said,

“[Regarding the receipts themselves] The Tyvek receipts feel strange, the stores aren’t common to my area, the addresses are far away, the prices are all wrong.

[…]

How do people get their spectators not to notice these things? On facebook they said people don’t look at the receipts that closely but the trick REQUIRES them to look at them closely. Am I being gaslit? I’d accept that maybe I’m just a bad magician but I’ve had people comment on some of these issues before I’ve even really started the trick.”

I’m going to help clarify what’s going on here. I think what’s causing the issue here is not about whether you are a a good or bad magician. The issue here is caused by whether you’re performing in a social style or a traditional style.

When ProCaps came out, I wrote a post about Uncanny Valley props. These are props that are designed to look like common objects, but they don’t quite reach that standard. And because they’re somewhat off, they might as well be all the way off. Because a bottle cap that does something magical is going to be suspect to begin with. And if it’s not clearly normal and examinable then it doesn’t matter that it’s an “everyday” object. It will just come off as a fake everyday object.

After that post I received three emails from people who said things like, “You were wrong about ProCaps. I use these at my restaurant gig and rarely does anyone question them.”

If that’s the only feedback I’d heard, I would have posted here that maybe my initial impression was wrong.

But I also received a bunch of emails that said something along the lines of, “I thought you were being overly cautious when you said people would notice something odd about the cap [or the stack of coins] but you were right.”

And there was a clear trend on the people who were having a good experience with the trick and those who weren’t.

The people who wrote to say they liked it were performing the trick professionally. The people for whom the trick didn’t work well for were performing it socially.

Now, because my site is written from the perspective of a social magician—and a large portion of my audience performs socially rather than professionally—I was getting much more negative feedback about that trick. If this was a blog about performing magic professionally, the feedback about the trick may have leaned positive.

A very rudimentary assessment of this feedback might have someone say, “Ah, the lowly amateurs didn’t like the trick because they’re not as good as the professionals who can pull it off well.”

But that’s not what’s going on here.

Here’s what’s happening. Traditional magic is a capital-P “Performance.” It’s a separate thing from the normal interaction you’re having with someone. For the period of time the trick takes, you are clearly “The Performer.”

In Social Magic, the magic trick is a more casual affair. The dynamic isn’t “performer and audience” it’s “you and your friend.”

And it’s because of this that everything is judged differently by the people to whom you’re showing the trick.

For this post, let’s consider a simple example. Imagine a standard magic line. “Hold out your hand… no, the clean one. Oh… that was the clean one.”

You can say this in a professional show and people may think it’s funny or not, but they won’t be confused by it.

You can also say it if you’re showing someone a trick in a traditional way in your living room. Again, they may think it’s funny or not funny, but as long as it’s in context of a PERFORMANCE it will come off as your SCRIPTED JOKE that’s part of the PATTER for your MAGIC TRICK. They can categorize this sort of statement.

But if you’re performing in the casual/social style, this line is going to confuse people because it doesn’t fit with that style of the interaction.

Imagine I’m casually chatting with a friend over coffee. I ask her if I ever talked about all the time I spent trying to bend metal with my mind when I was a kid. Like months and months in 5th grade. I could never get it to work. But then for like a six weeks when I hit puberty I could do it. But the ability left just as quick as it came. But sometimes, like if I look at a picture of Elle McPherson on the cover of the 1988 issue of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue…

I get some of that energy flowing again and I can sometimes get it to work just a little bit. I pull up the picture on my phone. I ask for a quarter. I ask her to hold out her hand. “No, the clean one. Oh, that was the clean one.”

Do you see how out-of-step that is with the social style of performance? The style that’s supposed to replicate a real human interaction?

Any scripted, jokey line is going to feel out of place in that style. And it’s not because my friend thinks this story I’m telling them is true. It’s just incongruous and doesn’t fit with a naturalistic style of performing.

You can imagine a dream sequence on the Simpsons. You can imagine a dream sequence on The Big Bang Theory. But you can also feel how out-of-place a dream sequence would be on The Office, yes? Why? They’re all just half-hour sitcoms. They’re all clearly fictional. Why can’t the The Office have a dream sequence? Or a laugh track? Or a flashback to when Michael Scott was a kid? Because those things don’t fit with the mockumentary style.

That’s what’s going on here. There are certain things (props, tricks, lines) that work perfectly fine in certain styles of performance but they don’t mesh well with others.

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at this distinction further and hopefully have a better understanding of why certain props and tricks are great for performing in the social style and why others are much harder to work with. And how this translates into some talented magicians thinking a particular trick is great, while other talented magicians can think it’s unworkable.

Dear Jerxy: Invisible Braille

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I've had an idea I've played with, but it seems to be missing something at the end.  I'd love your thoughts or those from your readers.

I call it "Invisible Braille" and it uses a stack and preferably a marked deck (like you, I prefer DMC Elites).  It comes after doing a trick, preferably a divination of some sort.  I'd ask if they know how I do that and I explain using marked cards.  But, I tell them, the markings are not what they think.  I have them choose a card and I hand it to them (me handing it is important).  I then reveal the card to them.  I ask them to feel around near the corner and ask if they feel that.  They usually get confused and I explain I can tell the card just by feeling.

To prove it is not the back of the card, I then have them cut cards and hold the packet cut to their chest w/o looking.  I peek at the card below (using the markings) and know what card they have.  Without either of us looking I have them pull it off their chest enough for me to touch the face corner and reveal their card.  Then I have them feel for the markings again.  I may proceed to do it once or twice more, depending on the audience.—DP 

I see two issues here.

First, the trick doesn’t really build (probably what you’re saying when you say it’s “missing something at the end.”)

Second, it verges too much on believability, in my opinion. If you look at most playing cards (including the DMCs) there is a finish on them that looks like tiny bumps. If you told me there was someone who could “read” those tiny bumps, I’d think, “Nah…, that can’t be true. Well shit… maybe?” I prefer to push them over into “definitely not true,” and then still do it.

If I was going to do this trick, here’s how I’d do it. I’d start it the way you do where I perform a trick and then “expose” the invisible braille markings. Then I’d give a couple of examples of how I can read the cards with my fingertips. Essentially the same as you’ve written it up.

“It’s funny… let me show you something,” I’d say as I get on my phone. I’d tell them these decks have made their way into some gambling circles and it’s become a huge issue because people are using them to cheat. “My friend, Allan, is super paranoid about cheating and doesn’t have the sensitivity to know if the cards are marked in this way. So this is how he made us play cards the last time we got together.” And I’d turn my phone to them and show them a picture of me and a few friends around a table, playing cards. All of us with big smiles on our faces and oven mitts on our hands.

Then I’d explain that I took that as a challenge to try and increase my sensitivity to the subtle braille markings. And I’d have them shuffle the deck while I got some oven mitts from the kitchen. I’d return wearing the mitts and have them hand me the cards under the table. I’d feel the first card, name it, but get it slightly wrong. The second time I tried it, I’d name three cards I thought it might be, and I’d eventually make a guess at which of those three I thought it was. (“Hmmm… it’s either the 4, 5, or 6 of Diamonds. I think the 6?” I’d get it right, but not with much confidence.

The way I could do it with a shuffled deck is that these two cards would be in one of the oven mitts. And I’d just remove the cards when I put my hands under the table and then place them on top of the deck when they handed me the deck.

A month later I’d say, “Oh, I’ve been wanting to show you my progress with this.” I’d give them the deck to shuffle and I’d put on the oven mitts. Take the deck from them under the table, then start naming cards and pulling them out one at a time. Eventually whizzing through, naming a card every second or so.

The method is that I just stuff their shuffled deck into one of the oven mitts under the table and remove my stacked deck from the other mitt.

Then, if you wanted to take it further you could say, “It takes a few hundred hours to get to that proficiency. But many people can pick up on the basics really quickly.” Then spend a couple of minutes having them feel the difference between red and black cards. “You probably won’t feel it physically. But your subconscious will learn the subtle differences.”

After a while, I’d hand them 20 cards or so and see if they can deal them into reds and blacks. Of course, using a partial deck handling of Out of This World, I could reveal that they did.

Now, this is probably not a trick I’d do in reality. But I wanted to dive into it as an example of some of the subjects I’ve written about in the past (Reps, breaking up a trick over time, establishing a process before launching into a spectator as magician plot, etc.)

I’ve made a post in the past that I think magic is the manipulation of belief. It’s not about being convinced something happened when it didn’t. It’s not about being fooled. It’s about a state of mind where you’re wavering between what is real, what feels real, and what could be real. That’s what the progression I’ve laid out here is trying to capitalize on.

They see a trick. You “explain” the trick in a way that is maybe plausible. You demonstrate this technique so it’s feeling more possible. You show the picture, which seems to lend credence to the idea that maybe it is real. But then you demonstrate it in a way that couldn’t possibly be real. But if you’re faking it… why didn’t you just get the cards dead-on right? Then a month later you demonstrate it in a way that must be fake. But then you follow it up with a demonstration where they themselves accomplish a rudimentary version of what they had just decided was fake. This is how you manipulate and “sculpt” with a person’s sense of belief.

If you say, “I can read these cards with my fingertips,” that’s a fine premise, but not overly memorable.

Seeing that picture of a group of guys playing cards with oven mitts on, watching you fumble around with the deck with mitts on yourself, having the trick reintroduced a month later, and finally achieving the color separation themselves—those elements are what’s going to make the trick stick with people.

Mailbag #80

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With all the talk of sock-puppet accounts and secret identities, do you worry about your identity being outed?—LM

Not really, no.

I’ve explained this before but it’s hard to go into detail without giving away too much. But there’s a fundamental misconception behind the search for who writes this site. So asking me if I’m worried if someone is going to find out who I am would be like asking me, “Look at those burglars in your house. Are you worried they’re going to find your stash of gold?” And my answer is, “All my money is in silver. And that’s not my house.”

So no, I’m not concerned. You can do detective work, and that will bring you—at best— to people who help run the site. But it would be hard to get much further than that.

Plus, this isn’t like uncovering Erdnase. He claimed to be an “expert” at gambling and sleight-of-hand. I can understand the desire to track down this famous expert.

But I’ve said, “I’m nobody you’ve ever heard of. I’m an amateur magician who performs socially. These are my personal conclusions from performing in that environment.” If anyone did somehow track me down, they would discover… I’m an amateur magician who performs socially that they’ve never heard of. It wouldn’t be quite the revelation some might hope. And it would make the person “uncovering” me look corny—it wouldn’t make me look bad at all.

I’ve had various reasons for using a pseudonym throughout the years I’ve been writing about magic. But the primary one now is that I want to be able to engage with the people in my life and show them tricks without them saying or thinking, “Oh, are you going to write up this incident for one of your little books or blogs?” My ability to get honest reactions and genuine interactions would be gone at that point.

You were well represented at Magifest last week. I saw a few GLOMM pins and shirts. One guy did a trick for [our bartender and waitress] where a deck that was invisible became visible and vice versa and it destroyed them. He said it was your trick. Someone else did the most impossibly hands-off ACAAN I’ve ever seen which he credited to you. Another guy did a really interesting sponge ball presentation which he credited to you. Are these on your site or in your books? —PE

The first trick is from a book of mine which is now out of print.

I believe the ACAAN you’re talking about is something I was discussing over email with the person you saw perform it. It’s not my trick. There’s an effect called F.A.S.T. that I’ve been playing around with for a couple months. It’s frustrating because half the people I’ve tested it on were incredibly fooled by it and the other half literally walked me through step-by-step how it’s done. What you saw was my attempt to address the parts of the trick people we’re seeing through. My additions make it entirely hands off and far more difficult to figure out, but there are also drawbacks which make the trick less convenient. There’s a good chance my changes will be in a future newsletter where I can delve into the trick a little more deeply, but without giving too much away because it’s not my trick.

The sponge ball thing… the guy was either fucking with you or I just don’t remember it.

I can’t find the messages at the moment, but last year I received a couple emails asking me what type of bag I use. I’ve mentioned in the past I carry my computer with me when I’m out doing work and I usually have some magic items in there.

For the most part I use a messenger bag that has some interior pockets in which I can store effects.

The one I have is similar to this.

If I’m doing something a bit more active than just walking from my car into a cafe, I sometimes use a Fjällräven Kånken laptop backpack…

with an interior organizer like this…

Obviously this just comes down to personal style. But what I’m looking for is something that has different pockets so I can keep my magic stuff separate from my other work stuff. But I’m not looking for something that you look at and say, “Wow, that’s got a lot of pockets!”

Dustings #78

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I want to keep you all in the loop on a fun show coming up at the Smoke and Mirrors Magic Theater in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 1st.

“Can you guess which one of these guys is a lawyer?” Haha, good stuff, good stuff.

Can you guess which one is a child molester? It’s the one on the left.

On the page for upcoming shows, they don’t list the names of these “two superb comedy & mystery” performers. I’m going to guess it’s because if you google Jeffrey Leach, Jeff Carson, Ron Geoffries or whatever other name the guy on the left is performing under, you’re going to find his sex offender profile which details his crime:

OFFENDER INAPPROPRIATELY TOUCHED VICTIM AND HAD VICTIM TOUCH HIM INAPPROPRIATELY OVER A 6 YEAR PERIOD.

Or you’ll find articles giving information such as this:

According to the indictment, he was accused of molesting a girl more than a dozen times, starting when she was 10. In that indictment, Leach was accused of “placing or rubbing his penis against her,” “having the victim touch his penis for the purpose of sexually arousing or sexually gratifying himself or to humiliate or degrade” her, “showing videotaped pornographic images of adults engaging in sexual behavior” to her, and “masturbating in view” of her.

Sounds like a fun guy! I wonder what zany antics he has cooked up for the April Fools day show! This guy’s got a MILLION jokes. Like when he gains your trust in order to get alone with your child and then molests them for six years! April Fools! 🤣🤣🤣 He got you so bad! You thought he WASN’T a pathetic pervert when really… he is! That’s classic Jeff Carson for you! (or classic Ron Geoffries, or classic Jeffrey Leach).

Please note that the show is 18 and over only.

Here’s a shot of Jeff Carson when he learned that.

I will be adding “The April Fools” to Jeff’s listing on the GLOMM website. Jeff, tell your lawyer friend there not to worry, I’ll include the trademark symbol so everyone knows it’s the official April Fools. Not some people just trying to coast on your name.

You might ask, “Andy, didn’t you say in Wednesday’s post that you weren’t going to be posting on controversial topics? And then this is the lead off to your Friday post?”

Well, no, not exactly. I said not to expect me to dip into every controversy, especially the morally grey ones. Expect me just to go after the true scourges of the magic community like sex criminals and Joshua Jay.

I did ask myself if I really wanted to post about this. I don’t see it as my job to follow around sex criminals for the rest of their lives and make sure everyone knows what they’re up to. I wouldn’t even say everyone on the GLOMM boot list is a horrible person. They may have made a horrible decision and cleaned up their life afterwards. I can’t always judge. That’s why the GLOMM list is just binary. “Were you convicted of a sex crime—yes or no?”

On this site, however, I have different standards. I do a little more editorializing on this site. I’m not going follow every move made by some 20-year-old idiot who convinced a 15-year-old to send him nudes for the rest of his life. I’ll chalk that up to youthful stupidity. But I’m not sure a guy who was in his 40s, molesting someone for six years, deserves any grace. Jeff Carson may have paid his dues to the legal system, but my heart goes out to the kid. I can’t help but think of the 10-year-old who has to live with this face in their nightmares.

That’s a life sentence that they don’t deserve.

I’m not saying he should never be able to perform again. I’m not saying the theater should cancel the show. I’m sure they know his history; they’re free to do whatever they want. He’s certainly allowed to pursue his art (if you consider the card duck or the Chinese sticks to be “art”). I’m allowed to pursue my art too: talking shit about creeps.

I had never heard of the Smoke & Mirrors Magic Theater before this. That’s cool that there’s a theater devoted to magic. I’m not too far away and I look forward to checking out a show there at some point. Not this show, of course. But maybe a different show in the future. With someone who didn’t coerce a kid into playing with his dick. Do you have any of those coming up?

Changing subjects completely—although still in the general realm of “controversy” talk—when the Petty/Weber situation came to light a week ago, I didn’t immediately know if Craig Petty was being brave or foolish with his claims.

With his latest attack though, I know for sure that he’s not acting brave or foolish.

He’s acting dangerously reckless.

When you go after Michael Weber, you’ll probably piss him off and some of his buddies in magic’s old guard. Who gives a shit. That’s a small portion of the magic community.

But in this recent video on how to act at the Blackpool Magic Convention, he takes aim at a full 98% of the magic community when he cautions them…

You’re on your own here, Craig. I’m not going to alienate most of magic by taking a stand like this. I actually like your average magic convention attendee’s scent. The breath that smells like they’ve been sucking on a blue cheese lozenge, the unscrubbed armpits, the butthole that has had almost a full 60% of the fecal matter from their last bowel movement cleaned away, and whatever that cologne is that they wear (I think it might be soy sauce). I think it’s great. This is Craig’s war to fight. Please don’t drag me into this.

Mailbag #79

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I have a date with this girl I met on Hinge on Tuesday and I feel like I'm set up perfectly to do some sort of trick for her. We've had multiple instances in the past couple days now where she would type something as I'm typing it, almost word for word. She said it was "pretty magical" so I feel like this is a great opportunity to go into some sort of trick along those lines.

I will point out that I did tell her I'm into magic, her bio says she's an atheist, and she mentioned that she doesn't believe in the Law of Attraction/Manifesting. I was worried it might come across as manipulative to imply there's some kind of supernatural connection between us if she actually believes in that sort of thing but it seems like I'd be in the clear on that. However, I also feel like it would still come across weird to do something like that on the first date anyway. So maybe, if this goes anywhere, I'll wait until it happens again in person and then use that as an opportunity to go into a trick. I'm not sure. What do you think?—AO

Yeah, your instincts are right here. That’s a sketchy situation. You don’t want to toy with the idea of your “connection” too early.

There are only two ways that can play out:

  1. She really believes that this magical thing that just occurred was caused by some unusual “connection” between you two. In which case, that’s really emotionally manipulative.

  2. She doesn’t really believe that this magical thing that just occurred was caused by some unusual “connection” between you two. But she thinks that’s what you want her to think. In which case you come off as a completely corny douchebag.

Now, once you’re actually in a serious relationship with someone, you can play around with the idea that maybe something happened because of your connection.

Do you see the difference?

Once you actually have a connection, then it can be fun or flirty or sweet to suggest that what happened might be because of that connection.

But what you don’t want it to look like is that you’re trying to establish a connection by using a trick. Then you’re just socially awkward at best and a conman or incel at worst.

In your blog post of November 7, 2022, you mentioned that people often believe that the explanation for the Ambitious Card effect(s) is a trick deck/trick cards, and that they entertain similar suspicions regarding other props (e.g. sponge balls or coins), ascribing what they’ve seen to the prop(s) being a trick whatever.

My question is, do have your participants examine the cards (when they are not gaffed of course) and/or other props you use? Also, it seems to me that if a prop is examinable, it would be more desirable to have it examined prior to the magical effect, rather than after. What are your thoughts on this? —AD

I’ll answer your last question first.

It’s more important to have an item examined after an effect than before it. The issue is, before an effect, people don’t know what they’re supposed to be looking for. It happens all the time that you can let someone examine an object, do something magical with it, and then they want to look at it again.

If you only let them examine it beforehand, they’ll think along these lines, “Oh, I didn’t know what to look for. I must have missed something originally. If I could get a look at that quarter [or whatever the object is] now, then I’d definitely see what’s going on with it.” The trick ends and you put the object away. “Oh… he’s not going to let me look at it? I knew it, there’s something weird about it.”

If you only let them examine it afterward, they’ll think along these lines, “Oh, there must be something unusual about that quarter. If I could get a look at that, then I’d know how it was done. Wait… he’s going to let me see it? Well, now I have no idea.”

So I always allow someone to look at something at the end. And often at the beginning as well. However, sometimes I want to increase the suspicion around an item. In that case I won’t have it looked at before the trick.

In general, when it comes to social magic, I avoid using the term “examine.” It’s too formal and clinical. I may say, “Check this out,” or, “Look at this.” But even that is unnecessary most of the time. If I hand you a quarter and say, “Here, I want to try something with this.” You’re going to naturally take a quick look at it. And at the end, if I hand it back to you, you’re going to feel compelled to examine it without me saying anything. But throwing around the word “examine,” is going to make this feel more like a challenge—which is not the vibe I think you generally want to go for in a social interaction.