Mailbag #105 - Christmas Party Wrap-Up

Happy New Year, Everyone!!!

Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?

No! I submit that it should not.

I got a lot of feedback regarding last month’s Christmas Spectacular. I thought I’d take this week’s mailbag to address some of the general responses I got.

“Thank you!”

You’re welcome! But really, don’t thank me. Thank the people who contributed. And I mean that literally. If there was someone who contributed something that you found to be of value, please reach out to them in some way if you haven’t already. It’s one thing to hear it from me, but I’m sure it will mean much more coming from the people who consumed the material.

“So, is this going to be an annual Christmas tradition?”

No!

Here’s the thing, part of the reason I can put a call out to 36 magicians and get 33 contributions in return is because I never do this. This was the first time in eight and a half years that I asked other magicians to submit something to the site. If I started doing it regularly, even if it was only annually, there would be diminishing returns.

So no, don’t expect this to return next Christmas.

That being said, any magicians who want to share something on the site are always free to. (I mean… if it’s good.) This site is one of the few places where you can share ideas with a large world-wide audience who all have a genuine interest in magic. People aren’t just casually perusing this site because they have a fleeting interest in magic. The site is just too dense for that.

So yeah, while the Christmas party was likely a one-off thing (or I’ll do it again in another 8 and half years (Summer 2032 Christmas party, y’all!!)). I’m always open to sharing stuff from other magicians on the site.

“How much was written ahead of time?”

For each entry, I had four things:

1. The guests’ contribution.

2. What time I was going to put their post up.

3. A couple words about what I might write about leading up to their contribution.

4. Anything they were working on that they wanted me to mention.

I wrote that on index cards. And all night I just went from one card to the next. So, for example, with Andi Gladwin I had a card that looked like this.

I’m an incredibly slow writer, generally. Not a slow typer, but a slow writer. As in, slow to organize my thoughts and put them forward in an intelligible way.

The only exception to this is the type of goofball bullshit that introduced many of the posts. That shit flows out of me. But still, trying to write and edit and format a couple of posts every hour was pretty rough.

“What the hell happened in the middle of the night?”

Okay… first, let me start with what my thinking was in regard to how to present the material originally. I decided to make it one long post even though I knew that would be harder for me and harder for the reader. My thinking was, at least on that night, I wanted people to experience the post as if they were travelling through a party. When you go to a party, you come in and wind your way through from room to room and interact with different people as you go. So even if there’s one person in particular you want to see, you still have to work your way to that person. That was the idea of the long post. You had to scroll all the way through to get to who you most wanted to see.

About nine hours in, this became unmanageable. The post that I was repeatedly editing became too long and unwieldy, and every change I was making in the background was super slow to load, which just made it unusable when I was trying to edit and change things quickly. So I broke it off and started a second post around 1:30 am.

So I start in on a second post at that point, and all was going fine until 3am or so when I realized the first post was gone. It wasn’t on the site. And it wasn’t on my dashboard in Squarespace. Just poof 💨

I’ve had posts disappear before, but not posts I spent 9 hours straight writing.

Duplicating effort is my least favorite thing in the world. I’d rather have to walk an additional 5 miles than walk backwards half a mile to get something I forgot. So seeing that post disappear was a gut punch. And it was made worse by my choice to write it live and make it all one post. If I hadn’t done one or the other of those, it would have been the mildest of inconveniences. But the confluence of all those things made it a disaster.

As I was contemplating how to deal with this (while still trying to get the other posts written) I put a message in the announcement at the top of the page that if anyone happened to have the site open in another tab or on another device and they hadn’t refreshed the page recenly, I wanted them to email me so they could copy and paste everything over to me. It was a long-shot, but in the end, with the help of Seth R. and Dan C., I was able to get everything back up by, I think, like 9 or 9:30 in the morning. It meant reformatting and publishing 150 or so graphic elements, text blocks, and all that stuff. But it was better than the alternative in my mind of either writing it all up again a week later, or just saying fuck it and setting the blog on fire.

“How long did you crash for afterward?”

Three hours. I had Christmas plans all the following day with friends.

The timing wasn’t well-thought-out.

Staying up all night isn’t that foreign to me, so it wasn’t that bad. What was bad is that after staring at my laptop screen for 17 hours straight, I couldn’t see anything. Everything was super fuzzy. I prayed, “Please don’t let me lose my eyesight because I tried to write a magic blog for 17 hours.” I didn’t want to have to explain that to others.

Fortunately, god answered my prayers and my vision went back to normal after a day or so.

All-in-all, it was a fun experience. The feedback has been great. But it will likely never happen again.

Oh!

One thing I forgot to mention as I was dealing with sleep-deprivation and losing all the work from earlier in the night was what Caleb Wiles asked me to share on his post. So I’m going to highlight it here.

Caleb is the president of a non-profit called Magic For a Cause. Their mission is in three parts, per their website.

1. We organize magic shows to raise funds for charitable causes. All proceeds go straight to the charity... we never take a cut.

2. We provide magic instruction to empower young people to develop social skills and confidence.

3. We engage in community outreach to perform magic for underserved groups (such as children’s hospitals, foster care group homes, etc.)

If you are interested in donating, please check out the site at the link above.

Caleb also says… “I'm also looking for people who are interested in helping with the project overall (graphic design, website design, custom print services, submitting easy-to-do tricks, etc.) If anyone is willing to contribute, they can reach out to me directly at caleb@MagicForACause.org “ Do it!

Jerx Christmas - So Long - 7:34 AM

Okay, everyone. The sun is up. We’re cooking breakfast here at the Jerx party house. About half of us made it all through the night, the other half are waking up as I type this.

I hope you had a good time. I’m exhausted. Sometime after Christmas, I’ll break the holiday post up into its component parts so it’s not such a bitch to navigate.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to all!

Jerx Christmas - Justin Flom - 7:25 AM

Guy’s I’m super excited. All night I’ve been trying to wrangle this trick out of Justin Flom.

He was hesitant to give it up at first. But I think the combination of sleep deprivation along with gallons of mulled wine, dozens of christmas cookies, and a nearly lethal dose of holiday cheer have warmed his heart to the point that he has decided to share it with us.

As Justin presents it, it’s already a strong trick. But if you personalize it, I think it has the power to be a strong and emotionally resonant trick.

Before we get to that, let’s let Justin explain.

After Justin recorded that, we went and looked up how difficult it is to create those one line drawings yourself. So you could do this trick with anyone’s image. Your girfriend’s beloved grandfather. The president of your company. The four-year old who got dragged off by that falcon at whose memorial service you’ve been inexplicably asked to perform magic.

Honestly, it doesn’t look that difficult. It looks pretty easy, actually. Although I’m sure it’s not really that easy. But it seems like the sort of thing a capable artist would be willing to do for you custom for pretty cheap. Or you could muddle through it yourself.

But imagine taking it a step further…

You come out with a completely blank deck of cards. Blank on both sides. Cards are distributed out to people and they’re also given a marker to do a random scribble in the manner you tell them. The line should start on one side of the card and go off another side or the same side. They can make a little loop or other simple shape, or just keep it a curve or straight line. Something simple. And you gather all the cards together and mix them, and now their own random doodlings combine to make the bride’s face, or whatever.

You’d have your 16 card set-up that’s blank on one side, and 25 (or however many) more fully blank cards. Start by giving them a few truly blank cards and showing them how to do the random scribbles on one side. Then take them back. You’re handing out a few at a time, so they’re not really sure how many there are altogether. Once all the cards have scribbles on one side, you pass everything out again to have them scribble on the other sides as well.

With cards going in and out, being scribbled on by multiple people, it would not be difficult to hide the fact that 16 of them started out with scribbles on one side. What would be difficult is making sure you distribute them and re-collect them in a way that keeps your stack in order.

It may just make more sense to swap in your stack at some point when you’re collecting up the cards. Either way, I love the idea of the collective unconsciously creating this image of someone special.

Even if your one line portrait wasn’t super smooth and crisp, that doesn’t matter. If it even hints at the portrait of someone important, that’s a miracle.

Jerx Christmas - Spidey - 6:57 AM

Welp… another crazy thing just happened. I went out on my back deck to enjoy the last few moments of the night and who do I see out there but Spidey.

And spread out all ove the deck are playing cards with weird shit smeared on them: dijon mustard, hot sauce, shampoo, acne cream, toothpaste, ben-gay. And so on.

“Spidey,” I say, “What the hell are you doing?”

“It’s going to happen. Something’s going to happen,” he said. He had a crazed look in his eye. “Look what I discovered,” he said.

And I was caught somewhere between being sort of impressed that he discovered this and a bit perturbed about how he discovered it. And I was like, “That’s cool, man. But I really don’t think you’re just going to stumble over some other crazy combination that has some bizarre effect. Would you mind putting my condiments and toiletries back?”

Immediately, he snapped out of it. “Oh, jesus, man. I’m sorry. My life has been taken over by smearing stuff on playing cards. I’m fucking losing it!”

“It’s okay, dude, seriously. Calm down.”

He gathered himself. “I feel bad,” he said. “I can’t believe I took all your stuff. As an apology… please take this and share it with your readers.”

I like that a lot. It’s reminiscent of something I posted recently. I like any force where the spectator is making clear choices that affect the outcome, and they can see those repercussions in real time.

When I pick a piece of fruit from a fruit bowl, I’m seeing the fruit I’m selecting, and I’m seeing everything I’m not selecting. For a force to feel like an actual choice, that’s the sensation the spectator needs to have. That’s why I like about this, they’re seeing the results of their choices as things get (seemingly) fairly discarded.

I think I would handle the ending just slightly differently. Instead of asking for a number, I’d say: “You’ve eliminated all but these 10 cards. We can stop here and go with the top card as your choice, or we can eliminate that top card.”

If they say they want the top card to be their choice, you can do a double and turn it over.

If not, you turn over the top card and use the handling you described. But instead of counting to a number, you’re slowing things down even further. And they get to choose card-by-card to eliminate cards until they finally settle on one.

When they eliminate one, you turn it over. “If you had stopped their you would have ended up with the 4 of Clubs.” So they’re immediately seeing the consequences of their choices. They’re repeatedly seeing the alternate paths they could have chosen. That makes for a strong force.

When they say they want to stop, you just gather up the face-up cards and set them aside, leaving the force card in place.

I like it. Thanks, Spidey. Don’t worry about using up all my chocolate syrup.

By the way, while Spidey was high on calamine lotion fumes, he let it slip that he and Richard Sanders have a packet trick coming out soon through Murphy’s called King Con. As a huge fan of Richard Sanders, it’s something I’ll definitely keep an eye out for.

Jerx Christmas - Matt Mello - 6:29 AM

From the other room, I heard the front door bang open and loud bellowing voice saying, “Let’s get this party started, baby!!”

What the hell? I thought. It’s after six in the morning.

And I went in the other room to see Matt Mello.

“Matt,” I said, “I wasn’t expecting you. You didn’t RSVP that you were coming.”

“You asked me like a month ago,” he said. “I have know idea what I’m doing a month out. I’m like the guys in The Fast and Furious… I live my life… a quarter mile at a time.”

I just shrugged like, what in the hell does that mean.

“It’s good to see you,” I said. “What have you been up to recently.”

“Well, I just released a hard cover version of my totally propless effect, Thought Control, on my site The Outer Mind.”

“That’s great,” I said. “That’s one of the few pieces of strong, pretty-much-sure-fire, propless mentalism effects that I’ve come across. I’m glad it’s getting a hard cover release. But… uhm… things were just winding down here so….”

“Really?” he said. “My night’s just getting started.”

Just getting started? What is this guy on? I wondered.

“Hey, before I leave,” he said, “Can I share something on your blog?”

“Go right ahead,” I said, and he typed out the following.

107 by Matt Mello

Effect: The performer removed his watch, his business card and a marker, placing them on the table. He wrote something on the card, rolled it into a cigarette and placed it down. Picking up the watch, he said, “I’m going to show you how our subconscious mind can be influenced. Watch the hands as they spin around and around, trying to get a sense of how much it moves on every turn of the dial.”

The performer turned the watch towards himself now and continued to spin. “Allow your subconscious to keep track of the dial. Don’t think about the time, that it could be one or seven, just watch the spinning dial.”

After a few moments he handed the watch to the participant facedown. “Keep spinning it and stop whenever it feels right.”

Following a few more turns of the dial the participant stopped.

“Turn it over and let’s see how you’ve done.”

The watch read 1:07.

“It’s amazing how our subconscious minds can be influenced by things we see only subliminally.”

He unrolled the business card to reveal: Set the watch to 1:07.

Reactions ensued and as they died down, he said, “Do you think your subconscious followed the movements of the marker? Did it react to me saying, ‘it could be one oh seven’ when you thought I said, ‘it could be one or seven’? Or did it react to the flash of this image just before I picked up the watch.”

He placed the watch back onto the table between the rerolled business card and the still open marker. The participant noticed the card created a one. The watch sat in the middle, a perfect zero. And the uncapped marker created a seven.

Method: I’ve always been a fan of random objects spelling out a word as a reveal, but it always felt awkward carrying cards with pictures of objects rather than using organic objects in the performance space. I’ve created a lot of these in English for close-up and stage, and the trick is to not pull a pair of handcuffs out of your pocket to form the number 8 or pull a banana out of your pocket for the letter I, etc. Unless being kinky is part of your character, you want to use objects that feel natural.

This is my presentation for the classic double pin watch force, and the workings should be obvious, so I will mostly cover the choreography.

We start by taking off our watch and placing it on the table. Remove a business card and a sharpie from your pocket. Pull the cap off the marker and place it to the right of the watch.

Write (Set the watch to 1:07) and then place the marker down at an angle near the cap to form the seven.

Roll up the business card and place it to the left of the watch. Leave it for a second and then pick up the watch. It is during this moment that the image of (107) is supposedly being “subconsciously” implanted.

We now perform the classic time force using the double pin feature, ideally with a borrowed watch if you can find one. I set it right in front of them after having them watch the spinning hands. When I’m getting a couple hours from my predicted time, I turn it to myself for them to subconsciously track the time as I set it to 1:07.

All that remains is to work our way through all the supposed implantations of 107 and then place the watch back in the center for the big finish.

And if you can perform the effect and time it to actually end on 1:07 pm during the day, or if you perform it on January 7th , you have an extra bonus to really take it to another level.

Jerx Christmas - Josh Jay - 6:01 AM

While stopping by the kitchen to get a glass of water, I noticed someone peeking out the blinds. I couldn’t see who it was in the shadows, but when I got closer I realized it was Josh Jay.

“What’s going on, buddy?” I asked.

“Nuffin’,” he said. “I’s waiting.”

“Waiting for what, pal?”

“Santy Clause!!” he screamed and jumped up a down.

“Uh, first of all, it’s December 23rd, ding-dong. Secondly, aren’t you fucking 40 or something? What’s going on with you?”

Out of the corner of my eye I see Andi Gladwin give me one of these gestures…

and wave $40 in my face. And I got the hint. So I just said, “Ah, never mind. You know what I hope Santa brings me this year? I hope he brings me the revamped version of your Prism deck. That’s a great trick.”

“My own magic!” Josh shouted.

“That’s right, buddy. That is your own magic. I’m also looking forward to you putting out your Particle System book, covering your stack and your card work. But you’ve been telling me that’s been coming out for years now. You guys bind the books at Vanishing Inc by hand or something? What the fuck. Sorry. Sorry. I lost my temper.” But it didn’t matter. Josh was distracted by his zipper.

“Did you have something you wanted me to share on the site for Christmas, big guy?”

“Yeah!!” he screamed, no doubt waking everyone dozing off in the other room.

What’s this going to be? I wondered. Some shit smeared piece of construction paper? Jesus Christ.

But I just kept remembering that sweet $40. “Oh yeah, what do you want me to share with the people?” I asked.

And then he airdropped to me the following two videos of an outstanding trick he calls Nameless Ship which he hasn’t shared anywhere before.

Jerx Christmas - Angelo Carbone - 5:33 AM

Well… I just had a really awkward experience with Angelo Carbone.

He asked me to go with him into the corner, hold his hands with mine, and close my eyes.

Oh shit, this guy wants to kiss me! I thought.

And then I thought, Eh, whatever. It’s late. Might as well.

And I leaned in and he was like, “What the hell are you doing??”

And I go, “Well, I was about to make your night, if not your year. Why? What’s going on?”

“I wanted to show you a trick,” he said.

And I had to play it off like I knew it all along.

Anyway… he held his hands about shoulder width apart, palms down. With a shot glass full of whiskey held in his right fingertips. He had me hold his wrists so his hands couldn’t move. Then he asked me to close my eyes. I did this. His hands didn’t move. And yet, when I opened my eyes, the shot glass was now in his left hand. Incredible.

Here’s the explanation as taken from Angelo’s upcoming book. (Don’t hold your breath. He first told me it was coming about 5 years ago.)

(If you want something from Angelo you can reliably look forward to, his rising card effect Notion of Motion is supposed to be released this year by Vanishing Inc.)

DARK TRANSPO

The Wonderment:

This is a bit of fun which can work with one other person or even two people.

A small object which is unique or borrowed is held in the right hand. A spectator stands in front of you and holds on to both your wrists which are about 2 feet apart. The spectator is told to make sure that your hands never move towards one another. The spectator is now instructed to turn their head away or close their eyes and to shout out if the hands are moved towards one another. After a few seconds they are told to open their eyes and look back at your hands. The borrowed object is now in the other hand.

WonderMatter:

• Any small object that can be hidden in your hand and has a flat bottom (e.g. a wedding ring, a coin, sweet, matchbox, USB flash drive etc)

• Double sided tape (optional)

WonderWork: 

You need to be quite agile and have a good sense of balance. However if your balance is an issue, it may be easier if you perform this effect while your back is leaning against a wall or table.  Having said that, when your spectator holds onto your wrists, you will also get some stability from them and therefore balance should not be a problem.

Have your spectator stand in front of you – face to face. Borrow a suitable object from your spectator or use a coin and have it marked. Hold the object in your closed right fist. Do not grip it too tightly and have your fist loosely clenched.  Extend both your arms in front of you with your closed fists in line and at the same height as your hip bone. Your elbows are slightly bent and the backs of your clenched hands should be uppermost (Photo 1). The height you hold your hands out should be  such that when you raise your knee, your knuckles automatically end up touching your knee without having to move your arms downwards. Make sure your hands are at the right height to start with. Practice beforehand and memorise the correct height your hands need to be at.

Ask the spectator to grab your wrists from above and to not let go. State that if your spectator feels your hands moving towards one another (demonstrate this by moving your hands towards one another under the tension of your spectator’s grasp), then they are to shout out and say so. Ask your spectator to look away AND close their eyes until you tell them to open them. 

As soon as their eyes are closed, raise up your right knee at a perfect right angle and bring it directly below your right fist. By carefully opening your right fist and without moving your forearm, place the object on your knee (Photo 2). Immediately swing your right knee carefully to under your left fist, whilst still balancing on one leg (Photo 3). Be careful not to make the object fall off your knee. Pick up the object from your right knee without moving your left forearm and then lower your leg back to starting position.

Now ask your spectator to open their eyes and ask if your hands were ever moved toward one another. The answer will be no. Then ask how on earth did their object get to the other hand, and open your left hand to show the object.

WonderNotes:

Do not balance the coin or object on the very end of your kneecap where it is rounded as the item can slide off. Instead, position it more towards you, where your knee starts to get flat.

If you use your own coin, you can have some double sided tape on the reverse so when you place it on your knee, it will not accidentally slide off due to the friction. Just have the coin stuck to the inside wall of your pocket along with some loose coins. When you go to your pocket to find a coin, just remove it from the wall and hold it out to be signed by using the same left hand grip as a French Drop (held from below).

To make sure your spectator grabs your wrists from above and not below, hold your extended arms much lower and only when they have grabbed your wrists do you raise your hands to the correct position.

You may want to clench and unclench your fists slightly (massaging the object) while the eyes of your spectator are shut. This is to disguise your forearm muscles from being felt as you open and close your hands slightly. 

To perform with two people just get one spectator to stand on your left and hold onto your left wrist and another spectator to stand on your right and hold onto your right wrist.

It is also possible to perform this effect while seated. Sit opposite you spectator who is also seated and perform the effect exactly as above. Just make sure your extended fists are a few inches above your knees and yet you can still raise your knee up while seated. This is much easier to do as no balancing is required. What makes the seated version even easier to do is  to seat yourself on a swivel office chair. This allows you to pivot your hips easily while keeping your raised fists  in exactly the same position in the air.

Instead of asking your spectator to close their eyes for the magic to happen, just ask them to close their eyes and as soon as they have done so, execute the move as you say “Would you like to keep your eyes open or shut?” Normally they would say open. By the time you ask them to open their eyes, the move is done but apparently the effect hasn’t happened yet. Now just do some magical massaging gestures with each hand as if that is the moment it will start to happen. Sneaky huh?

Finally, you can also perform this with an entire audience watching and a spectator on stage. Just before doing the secret knee move, wink towards your audience. At the end, ask the audience if your hands went towards one another and they will shout out “No”. This effect is in the same category as ‘Corinda's Power of Darkness’.and the ‘Paper Balls Over the Head’ effect where the audience are in on the trick, but not the spectator.

This was first published in Genii Magazine, March 2010.

WonderHow:

For this trick I started with the effect but had no method. I held an object and asked myself how I could get it to the other hand. I did think of invisible thread but hooking up was not practical. Then somehow it just dawned on me to use my knee. This of course meant I could not fool an entire audience and would only work one on one. I lost balance a few times practicing until I got used to it. I realised sometimes it was easier to secretly lean against something behind you. Also I had to experiment with a few objects as they would fall off my knee. Sometime later, Dark Transpo was born.