Mailbag #98
/There’s a rumor that I normally wouldn’t believe but I heard from two reputable people who don’t know each other that you wrote part or all of Derren Brown’s new book.
I’ve read it and I can definitely see your influence at the very least. There are ideas in there that are more similar to your books than anything Derren has written in the past but there’s a lot he must have written himself as well.
It’s also interesting that you took a longer break between your books that just happened to coincide with the release of his book.
Were you involved? Or was the reveal five years ago [See here] the real deal?—CT
Who me?!?!?!?
The secret author of Derren Brown’s new book?????
That’s totally ridiculous.
That I, a simple magic blogger, could ever write anything so wonderful is utterly absurd!!
Seriously though… no.
I didn’t have anything to do with Derren’s book. If it sounds anything like what I’ve written, it may be because he read my books a couple of years back, and those ideas were floating around in his head. He once told me that before he read my books, he had read only one magic book in the previous 20 years. So it wouldn’t surprise me if there were parts of my philosophy that resonated with him and permeated into his work, given that he isn’t someone who is consuming a ton of other outside magic content.
But other than that, no, I didn’t have anything to do with the book.
You’re going to be getting a lot of emails asking about Weber and Pictionary, although you might already know that….
Weber’s debuting a booklet with new work on Pictionary and a couple new cards to go with it at Magic Live.
Max Temkin wrote the foreword where he describes TheJerx.com as being Weber’s blog citing his distinctive performance style. —MC
Who me?!?!?!?
Secretly Michael Weber—the newguy himself?????
That’s totally ridiculous.
That I, a simple magic blogger, would ever be compared to someone who is described as a “living legend” by no less an authority than Vanishing Inc., is utterly absurd.
Seriously though… no.
I’m not Michael Weber. I know we have similar philosophies in some regards, but I’m not him. I’ve never even met him.
It’s not crazy to me that someone might suggest it, but if there’s one person that should know I’m not Michael Weber, it’s Michael himself. So I’m surprised he would print that. Especially without running it by me.
But he may be so much on my wavelength that he knows I couldn’t possibly give less of a shit about it. Anyone who wants can claim to write this site, as far as I’m concerned.
But if you care about the reality of the situation, no, I’m not Michael Weber.
Did you get Enigma yet? It’s been a fooler for me but the reactions have been just “okay.” And ideas yet to squeeze a little more juice from this? —MC
Who me?!?!?!?
Oh wait… that structure doesn’t work for this question.
I got to play around with Enigma this week. It’s pretty cool. My initial introduction to it was a bit inauspicious. I was working my way through it with a friend who has had it for a while and while he was demonstrating one of the inputs, it gave him no results. That is to say, we coded the information to the app, and it gave us no results, but there definitely should have been results. We went back and forth doing the same input a few times, sometimes it would give us a bunch of options. Sometimes it would say there were no results. Normally, I would assume we were the ones screwing up, but it tells you what you have inputted, so it was clear that we hadn’t. So it seemed a bit flaky originally, but I haven’t heard of anyone else having this issue. So maybe it was just a weird quirk.
Then we went to the drive-in movie theater (an surprisingly good place to find social, friendly people with a little time to kill) and between features he performed it for a girl sitting in the back of a truck that was parked next to us. He nailed her word and she seemed pretty impressed. When this girl’s sister got back from the concession stand, she asked him to do it for her. So my friend started performing it for the sister and the first girl said, “Is it spoon?” She made a lucky/educated guess just based on watching along and decoding the information, and maybe some sisterly-intution. So it was kind of a weird performance overall and I think after that they sort of looked at it as a game he was good at rather than “mindreading” because they started thinking up words and going through the Enigma process back and forth with each other to see if they could guess each other’s words before the next movie started.
Since then, I’ve performed it a couple of times to good reactions. I like it a lot, but I’m still missing something that will push it to the next level for me presentationally.
And I don’t love that the information you openly collect from the spectator is also the information that is used to determine their word. I wish there was a bit more of a disconnect there. Somehow.
I got an email from someone saying it actually didn’t diminish the effect that people inform you the length of the word and where vowels are and so on. But that’s a hard argument to make, given that Christian uses dual reality to hide that he’s getting this information from the participant. If it didn’t weaken the effect somewhat, you wouldn’t bother with that. (On top of that, it just doesn’t make sense to use dual reality when performing socially. The next person will say, “Try with me!” and realize what’s going on.)
I’m trying to conceive of other techniques to use that might hide that they’re giving away information, even to the primary participant (since I prefer to perform one-on-one). If any of those pan out, I promise I’ll let you know. And that’s a promise you can take to the bank, or my name isn’t Derren Weber.
