Tequila Diddler

Here’s a small, fun, sexy idea to use with your girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse/friend-with-benefits. It would not be good for your mom/boss/pastor (but don’t let me stop you, you freak).

If you’re apart from each other—maybe you live in separate houses, or one of you is traveling—call the other person on the phone before bed.

Tell them you want to try and tune into their mind and body. Have them put the phone on speaker and start touching themselves with one hand. They can choose to lie or tell the truth about which hand they’re touching themself with. Then they can choose to switch hands or not and again they will either lie or tell the truth about what they did.

You match your breathing to theirs and after a moment, one of your hands begins to feel warm all the way on the opposite side of town or opposite side of the globe. You can now tell them exactly which hand they’re going to town on themselves with. You can repeat it again, but afterwards, it’s probably best to move on to something more urgent.

This is Mark Eslsdon’s Tequila Hustler, just done with your lover’s genitals rather than a coin.

I’m not writing this as a joke suggestion. I’ve done it and it goes over surprisingly well. It’s fun and quick, which is what you want. You don’t want to do anything too substantial when you’re mixing magic with sex. For that matter, you don’t want to do anything too substantial when you’re mixing anything with sex. Licking whipped cream off someone’s nipples could be a sexy moment, but you don’t want to gobble down pulled pork and roasted brussels sprouts off them. Just do something quick and easy as a prelude to the good stuff.

Mailbag #90

Do you have a theory as to why more guys are into magic than women? Most artistic pursuits are evenly split if not women dominant. Why not magic? —WL

I don’t know. Maybe magic isn’t an art.

Why are there more men than women in magic? Probably the same reason there are more men than women in juggling. In ventriloquism. In trick shots exhibitionists.

Because these things are stupid. And men, on average, have a greater interest in these types of stupid activities than women do (again, on average).

Yes, magic is stupid. It isn’t intrinsically wonderful and awe-inspiring. It can be made to be more powerful and engrossing than any other form of entertainment, in my opinion. But it rarely is. The idea that people will just automatically be charmed by you doing something they don’t know how to do is the fundamentally retarded misunderstanding most magicians have about magic. What most people think after seeing most magic tricks isn’t “Oh, how incredible! What a sight to behold!” What most people think after seeing most magic tricks is, “Huh. I wonder how he did that? I guess there’s some way to do that. Well… whatever.”

If people were overwhelmed by the wonder of everything they don’t understand, they’d never get anything done. They’d just spend eternity weeping at the automatic door at the grocery store.

For most people, faking the impossible—in and of itself—is sort of meaningless. Like repeatedly tossing 8 balls into the air or making it look like a doll is talking or shooting a basketball into the hoop from the second level of the stadium. And pursuing these types of meaningless goals is something that seems to intrigue men more than women.

I’m not suggesting women are some evolved species that isn’t into dumb shit. They’re just into different types of dumb shit.

---

[Regarding the post No Questions]

Great post & insights today!

Probably because this has been my mindset for years!

My first performance test of a trick/effect/routine is to my wife. I would say that she has the average lay person brain thought process but because she's been my wife for almost 40 years, she also "knows stuff", like some magic concepts. So with her, I get the best testing of both worlds.  

If she figures out the trick, I don't use it. Even if she's wrong but reasonably 'close', I might not use it. She has to have no idea as to which path to go down.

If she doesn't figure out the trick, then it gets tested on my mother or someone at work.

Bottom line: If ONE person figures it out, it's off of my performance list because most people aren't that stupid (although I'm around A LOT of stupid people.) —MP

A lot of people think their wives are really hard to fool when in actuality, their wives are just one of the only people giving them an honest reaction. If you have such a partner, consider yourself lucky. It’s great to have someone who will give you straight feedback. (Either because they know you can handle it if a trick didn’t fool them, or because they are just—more generally—sick of your shit.)

If you don’t have a partner, or yours is too kind really give you honest feedback, you need to cultivate some other relationships with people who will. Magicians are mostly useless in this regard. They’re delusional about what a normal person suspects or understands. Just seek out your smartest friends and use them as your trick gatekeepers. You don’t even always have to perform for them. You can just show them a demo of a trick online. “This has me stumped, do you have any idea how it could be done?”

If they say something like, “There’s probably something funny about the coins he’s using.” And you know for a fact there is and the routine doesn’t allow for the coins to be examined. You know not to pursue the trick. It’s the benefits of the Wife Test without the wife or the test (of your own performance).

---

I’ve been trying to think of a more interesting thing to tell people I’m into other than “magic.” Do you have any ideas of a better way to state that? What about telling people that I enjoy “manipulating perception”? —WO

If you tell people you like “manipulating perception” that may generate some interest. But if you then follow that up by doing something that feels like a magic trick to them, they’re going to say, “What the fuck? ‘Manipulating perception’? He’s just doing magic tricks.” It will look like you were trying to hide or disguise your interest in magic (which, let’s face it, you were).

Embrace the word “magic.” It may sound corny to some. People may have a negative association with it. That’s fine. Now it’s up to you to do something that defies their expectations. It’s up to you to do something where they say, “Wait… what was that. I’ve seen magic tricks before, but that was crazy.”

I get that saying, “I’m into magic!” can make you feel a bit like a dork. But trying to run from that will make you look even dorkier.

If I ever want to blunt the impact of just saying I’m into magic, then I’ll add some “sub-interests” afterward. So I might tell people I have an interest in magic “and some other related things, like psychology, gambling, old rituals, weird phenomena.” The nice thing about this is that you’ve given people a little grocery list of things. And they can pick one of those things to latch onto, if they’re so inclined. This can give you an entry point to an area of magic that might interest them without having to disguise your own interest in magic.

Dustings #86

Supporter Ricardo D. sent along this video which could serve as a great back story for any strange object you want to exhibit to your spectator.

Your friend in Japan has sent you this mystery box from a Japanese vending machine. Let’s open it up together…

It wouldn’t take much to replicate something similar to those packages. Put the unusual object inside and include some roughly translated instructions.

The fact that you can point to this video or other references to these packages online gives the presentation some real-world weight.

This obviously has a lot in common with my Yento presentation. But it’s different enough that you could use both with enough time between.

---

When the pandemic happened, Marc Kerstein add an auto-pair functionality to his Xeno app. Xeno is an app that allows someone to go to a site that you direct them to—say, for example, a site of 100 movies—look at anything listed on the site, and you’re able to tell them what they’re thinking of. It’s just that straightforward. The only semi-tricky part was the process involved in syncing things up so you could get your peek. Auto-pair made that part of the effect simple and close to automatic. At the beginning of the pandemic, I used it quite a few times. But when I went back to performing in person, I completely forgot about it, like a dingbat. So this is a reminder for myself, and anyone else reading, that Xeno with auto pair allows for some of the most straightforward mind reading experiences possible.

---

One of the joys and frustrations of being off social media is being out of the loop. It’s nice not to have to be privy to every dumb fucking thought some casual acquaintance or distant relative has. But then again, when something important happens in the life of an old friend I’ve lost touch with, it would be nice to find out about that in a more timely fashion than being told 4 months after the fact, “Oh him? Yeah, he died.”

On a similar note, not being immersed in the social media aspect of magic has been a huge boon to me as far as creating my own material and ideas. But it does leave me out of the loop at times.

While I get a lot of emails saying, “I bought this trick and it kind of sucks, can you think of a way to make it better?” I don’t get too many people raving to me about some particular trick/product/or download out there that they love. Perhaps it’s because people assume I’ve already heard of it. Or perhaps they think, “Well, if he wants other people’s opinions, he can go on the Cafe and Facebook like everyone else.” But I’m just not interested in that scene. However, if you ever find something you love, I’m always interested in hearing recommendations if you’re so inclined to pass them along. Just send me an email.

---

Unintentional Real Life Magic Tricks

Attractive Magic

Amateur magic is inherently unattractive. Especially the way it’s traditionally performed. Normally it’s performed in a show-off type of way. “Look what I can do!” That’s a very unsexy attitude.

Let’s say you’re a guy, and you happen to show up at an event and you’re wearing a suit that makes you look sexy. That’s great.

But if you show up and say, “Hey everyone. Look at me in my fancy suit! And this tie… it was really expensive!” That’s what’s known as a vagina-dryer-upper.

It’s the same thing: wearing a nice suit. But in one case it’s an attractive quality and in the other it makes you look like a tool. The same magic trick can come off in different ways as well.

Magicians often think, “Power is sexy. So displaying my magic powers will be sexy.” Nope. Sorry. Displays of power for the sake of displaying power come off as corny to everyone but the most vapid of mindless dipshits.

I’ve recently realized that a lot of my ideas about performing magic are about ways to make performing magic more attractive. Not because I’m looking to “attract” people with magic. But just because I don’t want to turn people off with magic, which I think is something the traditional modalities often do.

So how can we present magic in a more attractive way? Well, as I said, I think that’s the underlying theme of most of my writing. But I’ll get to some specific ways in a second.

First, let’s consider a trick…

“I can float a bill with my mind!”

This basic-bitch style of magic is about as uninspired and unattractive as it gets.

How could we present the trick more attractively?

1. Allow them to see your progress. One day you’re just staring at a bill and nothing is happening. A couple weeks later you can get the bill to shift a little when you concentrate on it. A month later you finally get it to float. Watching people accomplish a goal is attractive.

2. Do it casually without begging for their attention. If you dropped a bill and floated it back up to your hand nonchalantly, then you would just be the guy who shows up to the party in the nice suit, not the guy who says, “Look at my nice suit!” See: The Distracted Artist performing style. People who can do unusual or difficult things with ease and without seeking validation are attractive.

3. Create a story around the moment that is not about you. If—to make this bill float—we have to take a little journey to some weird location of “low gravity” out on the edge of town, or there’s a haunted corner of the public library, or something, you can make the trick more about the experience than just the thing itself that’s happening. See: The Romantic Adventure performing style. For many people, life can feel like the same thing day after day. If you can give people a new experience (even a fictional one) that’s attractive.

You will find other techniques throughout this site, but those are some of the big ones.

The Wash Replacement

Palming cards is one of the scarier moves in card magic. It’s not that it’s difficult to do, but it’s easy to get busted and there’s no talking yourself out of the situation if you are. If someone catches you doing a double-lift you can sometimes say, “Oh, whoops, I accidentally turned over two cards.” If someone spots something funny when you’re culling a card you can just be like, “Huh? What? No… I was just spreading the cards.” You can play dumb.

But if you’re spotted secretly removing or bringing in cards from a palm, you’re pretty well busted. You can’t really be like, “Huh? I have cards in my hand? Oh wow. That’s what that feeling was. Thanks for telling me.”

A lot of the time, you can change your routine so it doesn’t have to use a palm. And that’s what I did for the first 10 or 15 years of performing. Then I tried palming one day and it wasn’t really that bad. There’s still a decent chance to get busted, but it’s usually worth it.

Regular readers will know I’m a huge fan of John Bannon’s Directed Verdict effect and have come up with many different presentations for it. In its basic form, it’s a Spectator Cuts the Aces effect. Although it can be used for so much more. And I’ve learned that palming out the aces and then adding them back in elevates the trick to a point where I can’t justify not doing that. From questioning people, I’ve found spectators only have a couple of guesses for how that trick is done. First, they think there are a whole lot of aces in the deck. And when they see it’s a normal deck they think that maybe the Aces were set up at certain spots making them likely to be cut to. As if that would work.

But when they shuffle the deck, they are truly left without even the beginning of an understanding of what could have happened.

So, for me, that trick needs to start off with them shuffling the deck.

If you don’t like palming, this is a super easy alternative and one that I think is actually better than palming if the situation allows for it. I use it all the time. Certainly, others have done this before. I’m not suggesting I created this. Just pointing out the benefits for the amateur. It’s ideal for when you’re sitting on a couch with someone.

First, you don’t palm out any cards. The cards (let’s say the Aces) are already out of the deck and in an easily accessible pocket or—in my case— they’re usually stuck behind a pillow or between couch cushions on my end of the couch.

The deck is on the coffee table in front of us, in its case.

I ask my friend to take the deck of cards and spread them all around the table so they’re completely mixed up.

This takes all their focus. Nobody does this while also staring at me. So I have all the time in the world to get the Aces into this position in my right hand (or whichever hand is furthest from them if we’re side by side—for this example we’ll assume they’re on my left).

You don’t have to clip them like this, you can palm them if you prefer.

Now, with the cards spread on the table, I say, “Let’s just gather these up.” And I will go to help them scoop up the cards.

I reach forward with both hands. My right hand is palm down. My left hand is at a 45-degree angle, fingers spread. If you draw a straight line between my friend’s eyes and my right hand, my left hand is directly on that line, obscuring my right hand. They’re not looking at my right hand. And they wouldn’t really see anything if they were. But the left hand is just an extra bit of obfuscation. From their perspective, it just looks like two empty hands reaching for the cards.

If I’m opposite the other person, then my empty left hand reaches forward and up a little while my right hand hovers low over the table. As if I’m going to scoop some cards back toward me.

From there, my right hand deposits its cards on the table and I start gathering up some of the cards and coalescing them under the cards in my right hand. I don’t gather up all the cards. I let the other person help.

Once the cards are straightened up, I take the packet the other person gathered up and push it into mine, below the Aces on top.

Then I go into whatever the trick is.

One of the advantages of this over giving someone a deck to shuffle is that you can “palm” in a huge chunk of the deck. I’ve done up to a third, regularly. If I’m doing this with more than 6 cards, I will usually dump out the cards out of the case and onto the table myself and start to spread it a little. This way the other person never sees the deck in its coalesced stack until the other cards have been palmed in and it’s a full deck. A normal person who doesn’t handle cards frequently can’t tell the difference between a scatter of 38 cards and one of 52 unless they’re Rain Man or something. This allows me to do tricks where very significant set-ups have been removed from the deck. Far larger than you’d feel comfortable palming out of and into a deck and allowing a spectator to shuffle with that many missing cards.

Washing the cards across the table is also more memorable than a shuffle and feels like it’s less predictable. And the percentage of the population who can shuffle a deck of cards gets less and less every day so this technique matches perfectly with that decline in dexterity.

No Questions

There’s a mindset I think you need to adopt if you want to take your magic to the highest level.

It’s a mindset about what you’ll accept and what you won’t accept in the material you perform.

I’ve noticed on the Cafe and on some Facebook groups that when someone asks how people handle the suspicion that a certain prop or technique might generate, often the response will be something like, “No one ever questions ______.”

No one ever questions the cards. No one ever questions the coins. No one ever questions the fake receipts, or the unusual book you’re carrying around with you, or your coin purse, or the gimmicked lighter. No one ever questions the weird process you went through to tell them their star sign… they just think it’s real mind reading!

Imagine I made a movie and I showed it to you and when the aliens were attacking the White House, it was very clear that it was just people wearing masks made out of paper plates. And you said to me, “Don’t you want to make a more convincing costume for the aliens?”

And I said, “Oh, no one ever watches the screen at that point.” You would rightfully think it was a terrible movie and audiences were disinterested in it.

That’s because watching is how people experience films.

And QUESTIONING is how people experience, interact with, and appreciate magic.

That’s literally the defining aspect of magic: its ability to defy the questioning of the spectators.

If something incredible happens with an object that’s slightly unusual… then people will question that object. Also, if something incredible happens with a completely normal object… people will still question that object. That’s precisely what you want them to do. And then, hopefully, the routine is structured in such a way that their suspicions evaporate because you’ve anticipated and accounted for their questioning.

“The magician changed the red deck to blue. It looked amazing. I thought there must be something funny about the deck. But he let me look at it and it was just a normal deck. I have no idea how he did it!”

That would be the type of reaction you’d hope for from a color-changing deck.

“The magician changed the red deck to blue. I was amazed and had no further thoughts on it.”

That reaction only exists in the minds of people who are trying to sell you magic and morons who have no understanding of how humans think.

“No one ever questions….”

When people say this, what they really mean is, “No one ever verbalizes their questioning to me.” But most questioning takes place in the spectator’s head. So just because they don’t explicitly ask you about something, doesn’t mean they don’t question it or think they know what’s going on.

The mindset I find most helpful is not to think about what things the audience won’t question or what things I can get away with, but to just assume they will question everything. And then placing a high value on methodologies and presentations that go towards answering and defusing those questions.

Mailbag #89

So, I’m using the [Jerx] app with some ideas, specially one that I just developed and I wanted your help to improve some details on it.

Is it possible to implement the fake home screen, like Earworm, Wikitest etc? Just to have the icons like the “NOTES” for us to “open notes” in front of the spectators, rather than opening “The Jerx “ or having to navigate through the tabs? —GV

Sure, I’ll put this on the list for possible updates to the app.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is the fact that no one needs to watch you get into your magic app. If you’re bringing up a magic app that is supposed to be a browser, or a drawing app, or a calculator, or notes app or whatever—then the most natural thing to do is to open your phone and bring up the app with the phone facing you. Maybe saying something like, “Let’s Google that,” or whatever the fake thing is that you’re bringing up.

If you’re like, “Okay, I’m just going to go into my calculator,” and you’re showing them the screen as you navigate to your calculator—that’s actually more suspicious than going to your calculator with the screen facing towards you.

To be fair, I know GV—the email writer—is a professional performer, and there are going to be different considerations in those situations. But in a casual performing environment, you want to handle your phone like a human. And that means opening it up, navigating to where you need to go, and then showing the phone to the person you’re with. That’s what people do all over the world, millions of times per day. What they don’t do is say, “Look, I’m just going to go to open my phone. Look… watch… I’m just opening my photo app. Now look, I’m just navigating to this folder,” etc. Whatever you gain in transparency in that way you’ll lose by acting weird. It would be like passing someone on the sidewalk and saying, “Notice I’m keeping my distance. I’m too far away to sexually assault you.” That’s weirder than just acting normal.

---

Do you remember the first real magic book you bought? And do you still perform anything from it? —CS

I assume by “real” magic book, you mean the kind that couldn’t be found at a library or bookstore, and instead needed to be purchased from a magic shop or sent away for from a magic publisher. If by “real” you mean a book of actual magic spells for witches and warlocks, then I don’t have an answer for you.

My first “real” magic book was Simply Harkey.

From that book I regularly performed:

Body Language - A four-coin production

Handiwork - A chain of paper dolls that goes from separate dolls to linked

Over the Edge - Coins to glass

Jazz Band - Linking rubberband

Dirty Pool - Small black balloon is slightly inflated. You pluck the nozzle off and it turns into an 8-ball.

Showdown - Like a bullet catch, but you catch the streamers from a party popper.

East Meets West - Pencil thru Bill

Transpose - A folded and unfolded card visibly switch places.

Le Ricochet - Coins Across

Spotweld (released as The Sizzle by Penguin Magic)

Two to Tangle - Rubberband penetrates a matchbox

Persuasion - A version of Paul Harris’ Re-set

Those were just the ones I have concrete memories of performing. But I played around with at least twice as many.

The most recent trick from that book I performed (and this was well over a decade) was a trick called Budge, where the spectator can’t remove a deck of cards from a card case but the magician can.

It was a very different time when I got that book, of course. This was an era where you’d read Genii magazine cover to cover every month because that was your monthly dose of magic content. And when you bought a book like Simply Harkey—especially if you were a kid with not a lot of money—you didn’t just read it through and pick out a trick or two. You sat with it for months and tried out everything you could.

In a way, I was spoiled by Simply Harkey because a lot of the tricks in the book sounded completely incredible. I didn’t perform them because I didn’t have the items necessary, but they were fascinating to read. Like a trick where you visibly change a glass marble into an hourglass, or one where the label on a mini bottle of alcohol penetrates the bottle, or one where a black crayon splits into three different colored crayons.

Since that was my first book, I thought that’s what most magic books would be like. I thought they would all have some totally unique effects with a variety of premises. I didn’t know it was more of an outlier until I started getting more magic books and thinking to myself, “There sure are a lot of ace assemblies in here.”