Mailbag #153
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I bought Eject by Trick Trick Boom and it’s a great bit of kit, but do you think there’s any way to make it feel like something other than I bought a little machine that shoots out a Sharpie?
So far it definitely gets a little shock and a laugh, but everyone seems to know what’s going on. Thoughts? —IC
Thoughts? I guess… what did you expect, exactly? When a Sharpie comes shooting out from an area people aren’t allowed to look into, yes, they’re going to assume there’s something in there that shot the Sharpie out. That’s what you would presume, correct? You should have known this when you bought it.
Could you incorporate it into something that was truly fooling? Yes, probably. You could do the teleportation bit, but have the Sharpie signed, then do some sort of sleeving switch and drop a different Sharpie in the first bag. Then catch the marker that shoots out of bag number two, and do some other switch again with their original Sharpie coming back into play so they can confirm their signature. It’s possible if you’re great with flipstick/sleeving-type stuff with markers it could look really great. But I don’t know that “teleporting Sharpie” is a premise that’s worth all that much effort.
If I owned this thing, I’d be looking for the most fun way to use it, not the most mystifying. I just don’t think it’s that well-suited for that sort of thing.
Unless maybe you used it as a non-visual moment. For example, you have someone examine a room in their house and lock the door to that room. You make a Sharpie vanish in another part of the house, and when they go back into that room, the Sharpie is sitting on the floor (because you have the gizmo hidden somewhere inconspicuous where it can shoot the marker into the middle of the floor or whatever)
I recently got a marked stripper deck and found it incredibly useful—but not in the traditional way. Stripper decks are typically considered beginner gimmicks, and there's not much information online beyond basic beginner tricks.
I'm not using it as the main method for tricks, nor am I pulling cards from the deck (the typical tell). Instead, I use it as a tool to create a "crimped" card on the spot by simply reversing a card in the deck. This lets me cut directly to the key card.
Another use: marking the stack portion I need to keep separated. For example, in Shuffle Bored, I reverse the last card of the stack so I can naturally cut to exactly the portion I need during performance.
I've found the combination of marked deck and stripper deck to be an incredibly versatile tool. It allows me to get into the right setup for normal tricks (not typical stripper deck effects) much more easily and naturally. For some tricks, it even allows the spectator to freely shuffle the deck.
So I wonder—why is there so little discussion of stripper decks? Why are they mainly considered magic-kit gimmicks for beginners?
The only theoretical concern is examinability. But I don't think laypeople will notice it, especially if you're not pulling cards from the deck. My sample size is small, though. Do you have any insights, ideas, or data about stripper decks being identified by laypeople? Or why magicians use them so rarely as a tool? I couldn't find a single mention on your website either.—TH
I can only speak for myself, but perhaps this holds true for other magicians as well.
For me, the stripper deck was one of the first magic gimmicks I ever owned. It was something that was sold in normal toy stores.
Now, when I was eight or ten or whatever, I found it to be awkward, difficult, and inconsistent. That could be because the decks weren’t made well, or it could just be because I was a little kid and didn’t have the dexterity to use the deck well.
Either way, that left me with the impression that stripper decks were awkward, difficult, and inconsistent, so I never really bothered with them again in the decades to come.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was true for others.
Maybe I’ll make it a little project to revisit the gimmick as an adult. If someone can really sell me on a use case for it (other than stripping out the cards for OOTW), I may give it another shot.
just stumbled over this article:
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/mathematicians-just-found-a-hidden-reset-button-that-can-undo-any-rotation/
At reddit there was an ELI5, that explained it enough for me to think there could be a trick in it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1ob8dvx/comment/nkf6qg2/
Maybe you could "demonstrate" this effect by doing a triumph or by shuffling cards back to new deck order or something. —SS
It’s interesting, but I’ll tell you my experience with this sort of thing.
If I have a trick with a backstory—something a weird guy showed me at a convention, or something strange that happened with a kid I knew growing up—I can hold people for ten or fifteen minutes just on the lead-up.
But if I’m showing people a demonstration of some strange concept, they don’t want a dissertation. They don’t want to struggle to understand the basic concept.
If the concept itself is confusing and they’re also puzzled by the method, that’s just confusion stacked on confusion.
If I’m introducing people to a new concept, I want to be able to do it in just a few sentences: “Apparently our eyes have a kind of built-in heat sensitivity. With enough training, you can learn to sense what’s on the other side of a wall—almost like seeing a faint heat map, or even a low-grade version of x-ray vision.”
Something like that.
But with the concept you mentioned, even the “Explain Like I’m 5” version runs several paragraphs. So it’s likely too confusing to be good for most spectators.