Classic Cafe: Decibel

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The Magic Cafe was so much more fun back in the day when I was writing my old blog. There was really nowhere else to go so everyone mingled there: amateurs to professionals, young to old, standard brain-dead morons to the functionally retarded. 

These days it's more like that mall by your house. You know, the mall people used to go to before they built the good mall? Yeah, that one.

But you still get some classic dumbfuckery at the Cafe and every now and again readers of this site will direct me to something at the Cafe. This weekend a couple of people wrote to tell me about the thread for the new Ellusionist effect, Decibel, because it includes one of my favorite things on the Cafe. And that is when someone is questioned about something and their response is "audience management." 

Q: "How do I get the audience to not want to look at the deck of cards after it changes color?"

A: "Audience management."

That is the equivalent of this:

Q: "We're down by 6 points. The ball is on the 40-yard-line. There are three seconds left. How do we score a touchdown on this defense that has stopped our run and pass game all day?"

A: "Strategy."

It's an identical answer. You're offering a generic term for a group of techniques because you can't suggest one of the actual techniques that would help. It suggests you have no clue what you're talking about. I hesitate to point this out because I love when dumb people use it on the Cafe and I don't want them to get wind of the fact that it identifies them as being dumb. 

Decibel is an effect where you take the the spectator's unplugged headphones in your fingers and cause them to hear audio coming from the headphones. If you have an accomplice you can cause them to hear pretty much any song they can name, without one you are limited to causing them to hear a forced selection.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about the effect. As presented in the abhorrent 7-minute demo (get an editor, Ellusionist), the effect is that a spectator freely names a song and that song comes out of their headphones. I'm not sure if the effect is supposed to be that the magician is causing the spectator to think they're hearing the song or if the magician is causing the headphones to play that song while apparently not plugged into anything. In other words, is the effect "I'm messing with your mind" or "I'm messing with electronics"? I suppose it could be either one, but I'm not sure this particular effect is ideal for exhibiting either phenomenon. 

If you say, "I can make these headphones play even though they're unplugged," any reasonable spectator will say, "Ok, just let me see that they're unplugged.." 

If you say, "I can cause you to hear any song as clear as if music was actually coming from these headphones." I think you will find people think, "I think music really is coming from the headphones. I bet they're plugged into something."

That's not to say you can't adjust to their thinking, I'm sure you can. BUT...

You need to be realistic enough and smart enough to anticipate the average spectator's train of thought or you will NEVER be able to present convincing magic. 

There is one guy in that Cafe thread by the name of kissdadookie, who is clearly a master of Grand Illusion. Sorry... my voice recognition software messed up. There is one guy in that Cafe thread by the name of kissdadookie, who is clearly a master of Grand Delusion.

When someone mentioned that spectators might question why they can only see the plug before and after the effect and not during the effect, he wrote:

"How is it that it matters most to be clean when the music is playing?"

Yeah, why would that matter? Why would it matter to be clean when the effect is happening? Also, why do we put a hoop around the lady while she's floating? Why not before she lays down and then at some point later that evening?

Kissdadookie then gives us more wisdom into the workings of a spectator's mind.

 When the music/audio is playing... your spectator will be in shock because this is truly an impossible thing which is happening....There's no heat on you. 

The MOMENT when they hear audio coming out of their seemingly unplugged headphones, they will react and start thinking about what is happening perhaps how it's happening. HOWEVER, they are busy doing that during that moment but none of that actually leads for them to go "hey let me see that plug!"

The assertion that an audience will be too amazed by the impossibility of a trick to notice if what's happening is actually impossible, is one of the dumber things posted on the Cafe in its history. And that's saying something. I'm surprised he can't follow that logic to its obvious conclusion.

Kissdadookie: The audience will be so amazed they won't think to look if the headphones are plugged in.

The world: What are they so amazed at?

Kissdadookie: That there is music coming from the headphones.

The world: And why is that amazing?

Kissdadookie: Because they're not plugged into anything.

The world: So wouldn't they have to see the naked plug to know that?

Kissdadookie: Uhhh... no... they're too amazed to want to look at the plug.

Okay. That makes perfect sense. Usually the audience would have to understand something impossible is happening before being amazed by it. But kissdadookie's audience comes in pre-amazed. That must makes things a lot easier. 

When he's called out on this logic he falls back on the prototypical dipshit's argument: Only someone who "lacks performing skills" and "audience management" would be worried about an audience suspecting the earphones are plugged into something. 

Sure. You just need to manage your audience into not suspecting the headphones are producing sound by the way all headphones produce sound... being plugged into something. My style of "audience management" is to beat them in the head with a brick until they can't make this connection.

No. What you need to do is recognize a trick's flaws and compensate for them. You can tell people like kissdadookie never actually perform. It's much easier to be forgiving of the weaknesses of an effect when you never put it in front of anyone.

There some other stupidity floating around in that thread.

This guy works for Ellusionist. I don't believe for a second he actually performed it like this, but imagine if he did. You're in the audience and a spectator is brought up on stage (in a previous post he mentions there was a stage, here he says it was busking). You're told what song to project to the volunteer. The volunteer is, inexplicably, given headphones to wear. And then they claim to hear the song. Well... who is this effect for? The audience will rightfully assume she heard something through the headphones. They're too far away to tell if the headphones are plugged into anything with the plug hidden in your hand. So for them the effect is, "Someone put on headphones and was able to sign the song we were thinking of." 

It's only maybe an effect to the spectator. And then only if he un-blindfolds her. But no performer would blindfold someone, write a song on a white board, then un-blindfold her. You'd just have her turn around. Not waste a bunch of time with a blindfold. AAHHH!! Why am I looking for logic in this bogus story that never happened. 

Although he claims:

"It rocked the crowd, everything from applause to stunned, opened mouthed silence."

Here's how I imagine that stunned, open mouthed silence. 

Listen, everyone, it's so rare that you have something that is potentially this organic. A trick where you just borrow the spectator's headphones and apparently have nothing else on you. I do not understand the compulsion to add in a deck of cards or a fucking pad with force locations on it. 

And most people will have headphones on them so they can listen to music. So why take this out of the realm of music into a card trick or some other magic-y junk? (It's especially a bad idea now that Marc Kerstein has created an app that allows for a solo presentation of any song named coming from the headphones.) It is such a magician's way of thinking to remove the music aspect and turn it into some shit card trick. "Music is too personal and vital to people. Let's remove that element completely." Smart.

You guys know how earbuds work, right? First you make a little incision in your inner ear, then you jam the earbuds deep into the gooey, bloody, damaged flesh.

I may still get Decibel, I don't know. I feel like my need for a music related impromptu effect is satisfied with Marc Kerstein's Earworm. With that effect I can have my spectator think of any song and I pick up on it. Or I can send them a song I sing in my head. Those are both very powerful effects for me. 

I don't know that the "headphones are playing but they're not plugged into anything (as far as you know)" is super strong, unless the cord is dangling without you holding it. I heard about a friend of a friend in NYC who has been showing this around and every layperson has asked to see the plug when the music was playing. But maybe he's clumsy with the gimmick, I don't know.

There is one killer presentation for this that avoid all of the pitfalls. Now, this presumes the gimmick can be turned on and off with pressure. And that you could generate that pressure with your sphincter. 

Setup: Put the decibel gimmick up your butthole.

Presentation: 

"So I was out running the other day when it started to rain. Then it started to downpour. There was thunder and lightning."

"I don't really know what happened but one second I was running and the next I found myself waking up on the sidewalk. I could smell ozone and burnt hair. I think I was struck by lightning. Or it struck my iPhone or something. Look."

You take off your shirt and there is a dark burn mark in the shape of an iPhone, above your heart, where a breast pocket would be.

"And ever since this happened, I can do the craziest thing. Can I borrow your headphones?"

You undress completely, take her headphones and plug them into your butthole (and into the decibel gimmick).

"Here," you say, handing her a marker. "Write the name of any song on my chest."

She does.

"What does that say... Porcupine Pie by Neil Diamond? Hmmm... have you been listening to my sex mix? That's the first song on it."

You have her put her headphones in.

"Now press my left nipple," you say.

When she does you throw your head back and scream. That dies down after a moment but you continue to writhe and groan. After a few seconds she hears her song coming from the headphones plugged into your butt. 

After some time has passed you ask her to press your right nipple. She does and the music stops. 

You unplug her headphones and hand them back to her. 

"You can keep those," she says.

The Hedonic Treadmill and the Art of Not Always Doing Your Best

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I used to think I only wanted to perform miracles. And I would look at all the material that was released to the magic community and wonder what the point of most of it was. A lot of it was good, but why perform anything unless it was absolutely devastating? Sure, maybe a restaurant magician wants to do magic that isn't overwhelmingly powerful. For the same reason restaurants have pleasant mariachi musicians stroll around and not GG Allin cover bands. 

But I was wrong about this. Even for the amateur, non-pro performer—perhaps especially for the amateur, non-pro performer—you want to have a repertoire that includes magic of various levels of astonishment. This is for the sake of getting the strongest reactions to your strongest material.

It took me longer to come to this conclusion than it should have. If you often perform for friends and family, and you only perform the most astonishing tricks, then, over time, your most astonishing tricks will start to elicit their average reaction. 

This is similar to the concept of the hedonic treadmill in psychology. If this is your introduction to the term you may find it the most empowering or the most depressing idea you've encountered in a while. The concept—or my bastardized interpretation of it for our purposes—suggests that happiness is something of a fixed state and once we adapt to a new circumstance we revert to that level of happiness. So if you win the lottery or if you have your hand blown off by a firecracker, you will at first deal with the highs or lows of that situation, but then you'll eventually return to the level of happiness that is your natural set-point.

If, like me, you're a generally positive, happy person, then this is great news, because it means no matter what bad things happen, you will likely, eventually return to that positive state.

If you are an unhappy person and if you think happiness is around the corner once you get married or get a particular job or something, this is bad news because it suggests your long-term happiness won't be found in these external circumstances. But maybe you can flip that around on itself as well and say, "I'm unhappy. And I thought I was unhappy because I'm not in right circumstances. But if circumstances don't really create that type of happiness, then maybe I can just choose to be happy where I am now." I don't know. This isn't a self-help blog.

Whenever I think of the hedonic treadmill, I think of the remake of The Dawn of the Dead. That's a near perfect horror movie in my opinion. And one thing I think they got right, that you don't see in a lot of zombie movies, is the montage where things have just sort of settled down a little. These people are living in a mall, surrounded by zombies, but eventually that just becomes your new reality and you go back to being the person you were before.

Where am I going with this?

My point is that if you're always doing big, hard-hitting magic effects for the same people, then that becomes the new normal and you will find reactions regressing to the mean. You will still get good reactions but you will be getting good reactions to material that should get great reactions. To avoid this, you need to 

I'm not saying you should do shitty magic—I only do tricks that I think are good—but it's a question of intensity.

I think of magic like sex. (This makes perfect sense, of course. When you're world-class at two different activities it's completely understandable that you would conflate the two.) If you're having two hours of tantric sex every night, that's going to lose its charm real quick. It might always be pleasurable and you might always enjoy it, but it will become too common to be magical.

Dammit... I keep forgetting my audience here. I can't use sex analogies. Oh... I know... let's think of a reverse situation. What if you didn't cum every time you masturbated? What if masturbation was just something you did as a mildly pleasurable activity and then 1 out of 20 times you had an orgasm? In what way would that affect you? Well, Andy, I'd masturbate 20 times more frequently. Ok, yes, I get it, no one is going to deny you your orgasm. My point being, if that was something that just occurred a few times a year it would be the highlight of your week. 

You need to hold back some with your audience. For your benefit and for theirs. If you have people in your life that you perform for regularly, think of your performances for them as one long work of art that plays out over the course of, maybe, 50 years. You don't want to be too predictable. You want them to not know if what they're about to see is a gentle brain-fingering or a true hardcore mind-fuck.

Again, this is not an excuse for doing bad magic, boring magic, self-indulgent magic, or magic that doesn't fool people. It's just about giving people different experiences with magic.

Here is, generally, how I'm trying to look at my repertoire these days.

50% - Are what I consider minor effects. 
These are primarily effects that don't involve a huge investment of time or energy from the spectator. There is an emphasis on quick, visual moments. Things done in the "Distracted Artist" style would fall into this category. On the other hand, process heavy tricks would also be in this category. I agree with the notion that process can take away from the feeling of magic, but I still like performing these types of tricks (for reasons I'll talk about next week). This category would also include things like interesting optical illusions, unusual demonstrations, and teaching tricks to the spectator.
Examples: Mark Elsdon's Conversations as Mentalism series, a quick levitation or animation with Loops, Collusion by John Bannon, Stegosaurus by Phill Smith

40% - Are what I consider major effects.
Whereas the quick tricks or the process heavy tricks in the minor effect section have no real premise or a convoluted one, the tricks in the "major effects" category have a clear premise a spectator can easily digest. The tricks in this category should also have no real "magic-y" compromises that are visible to the spectator (convoluted processes, mathematics, obvious "magic" props)
Examples: French Postcards by Chris Philpott, Earworm by Marc Kerstein, Invisible Palm Aces by Paul Harris.

10% - Are what I consider immersive effects.
These are tricks that involve a greater investment of time and/or energy on the part of the spectator. They usually have to take a more active role in the effect. And the effect is generally performed one-on-one. The result of their ownership and investment in the effect, and the one-on-one nature of the performance, will often be a more profound experience for your spectator.
Examples: At the moment, this is kind of my own schtick. There aren't really a ton of resources for this type of material other than this site and the book coming out. So... from this site: Limitless Ahead, Multiple Universe Selection, Bazillion Dollar Bill Mystery. From The Jerx, Volume One: Talisman, Pale Horse and Rider, Dream Weavers, among others.

The purpose of performing in this way is not to get you more praise. This is an audience-centric concern. You want these big effects to feel special to people. By not making it too commonplace you are giving the weight to the experience that will make it even more amazing to your spectator.

 

Diary, Cha Cha Cha

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When your tummy’s feeling funny
And your pants are hot n’ runny

Here's me as a smart, but dumb, 13-year-old, not knowing how to be a magic spectator when a guy was showing me a trick at one of the only magic conventions I've ever gone to.

Him: Do you know how a deck of cards is like a calendar?

Me: Uhm... they're both made of paper?

Him: A deck of cards—

Me: They have numbers?

Him: A deck of cards has two colors—

Me: My grandma has an old one that she should replace?

Him: Huh? No. Listen. This is the patter.

Me: Oh! I thought it was a riddle or something.

Him: A deck of cards has two colors. Red and black, representing day and night.

Me: A calendar doesn't track day and night.

Him: And it has four suits, like the four seasons.

Me: Okay.

Him: And it has 52 cards, like the 52 weeks of the year. 

Me: Huh... interesting.

Him: And it has 13 values per suit, like the 13 lunar cycles.

Me: Lunar cycles!

Him: And—

Me: That's a stretch.

Him: But the most—

Me: Like... sure... what's a more common way to think of the way a calendar is broken up than lunar cycles. C'mon man.

Him: Stop. Hold on. But the most interesting thing is if you add up all the values, you get 364. And if you add the joker you get 365, the number of days in a year.

Me: Aren't there two jokers?

Him: Well, yeah. But we add one to get 365.

Me: Oh...It seems like it didn't work out there at the end really. And if we add a joker, aren't we now talking 53 cards which spoils the number of weeks in a year thing?

This was my introduction to the Diary Effect and also my introduction to the fact that magicians don't actually like to be talked to when they're performing. I mean, they didn't get into magic because they were great at interacting with people.

When your stomach starts a rollin' 
and you're cleaning out your colon

The Diary Effect is this: A spectator names a date and then they look that date up in a datebook that has a card next to every date. I just used the word date four times in that sentence. Sorry. Anyway, they look up their date and next to it is a card, and you show that you've predicted the card in some way. 

I find this trick gross. I realize that's weird to say. And don't think I don't understand that my views on magic are somewhat idiosyncratic. I sometimes wonder how this site has any regular readers at all. 

One time I was in Virginia, with a buddy of mine who also does magic. We were on a snowboarding trip and staying at a friend's house. My magician friend was performing a diary effect for the owner of the house and, as he performed it, I was rolling my eyes and making faces. Really trump'ing it up.

And my friend was laughing because he knows I hate the effect and I was being a baby about having to sit through it. Later he asked me why I disliked it so much and I said, "Ah, it's such phony, fake bullshit."

"Phony, fake bullshit!" he said. "You just spent 20 minutes communicating with her dog like Son of Sam!"

[Son of Sam the Bellhop

Effect: I used to do a drawing dupe effect where the spectator would draw an image and show it to her dog while I was out of the room, then I'd "talk to the dog" and reproduce the drawing. Then we'd put the dog out of the room, she'd freely name any card in the deck. We'd spread the cards all over the floor (face up... the dog's not a mindreader). I would go out of the room and "talk to the dog" and he would come bouncing in and pick up the card in his teeth.

Method: Any drawing dupe you want. And then smearing a little wet dog food on the back of a playing card.]

But, to me, those two effects are completely different. "This dog is talking to me and telling me to kill people. And now I will prove that we're talking to each other," is obviously fiction. But it's an entertaining fiction. And it's logical fiction.

On the other hand, "A deck of cards is kind of like a calendar. So now I have this date book with a card next to each date." What is that about? We often talk about how we should really do tricks with "normal objects." And we interpret that to mean, "Don't use Tenyo tricks." Or, "Don't use a Wow gimmick." But a datebook with a card on every date is just as sketchy. More-so, even. A Wow gimmick I can pass off as some bizarre piece of new technology my uncle snuck out his government job. I can make up something for it because it isn't anything. But a datebook with cards in it is just you putting together some dumb prop for the sake of a trick. 

And just the premise of the trick is goofy too. If you're trying to show you can predict what date they would name, then predict what date they would name. If you're trying to show you can predict what card they would select, ask them to name a card. Why the extra step?

Honestly, as a spectator, if someone took out their datebook, you might get pretty interested. "Oooh... what is this about? A trick about time and dates? Am I going to see this guy's schedule and the thing's he's done this year? That's pretty personal and interesting— Oh. Never mind. It's a card trick."

It's stinky, brown and smelly 
As it chugs out of your belly

I will admit that I do like some of the methodology used in diary effects, and I've performed various tricks based on those methods. Below are three you might want to consider. The methods aren't mine to give away but as long as you know a method, you should be able to come up with a way to map these effects onto the standard presentation. There are those methods which allow for a freely chosen date and those where the date is generated in some way. The freer the selection of a date is, the more predictions you usually need to have on hand to ring in in some way.

Version 1 - Birthdate

Instead of a playing card in an envelope it's a birthday card. The spectator names a date. They look through my datebook and find which friend has a birthday on that date (or the closest to it). When they open the envelope it's a belated birthday card to that friend. 

Things to consider: You don't need a birthday on every date. You can have your spectator look for the closest birthday from that date. That can help a lot.

Version 2 -  Dinner Date

Taken from The Jerx, Volume One

So I thought of coming up with other versions of the effect. And while it wasn’t what I ended up doing with the trick, one of my interim ideas was to have all the food holidays listed in the datebook. If you google “food holidays” you’ll find that every day of the year has a food associated with it. So my idea was to have someone name any date, let’s imagine they say March 18th. We turn to that page in the diary and find that’s Oatmeal Cookie Day. On the table from the start is a cloche that you lift up to reveal a plate of oatmeal cookies underneath. 

Version 3 - Memento

This is the version I currently use. It was borne out of the, perhaps obvious, thought that it would be nice to do this style of effect with a datebook that was actually full of the types of things you might find in a datebook.

Imagine

I'm hanging out at my apartment with my friend Chelsea. At some point she sees me pull out a datebook, open it to today's date, and write, "Watched a movie with Chelsea," in it, and then I circle that entry. She asks what I'm doing and I tell her about this form of journaling I learned from my great aunt.

"Every day I write down the things I do and then I circle the activity that I enjoyed the most. Then, at the end of the year, I go through my datebook and look at all the circled items and think about what was the the highlight of the year and I take some memento of that activity and I carry it with me in the bill section of my wallet for the following year. It's a little superstitious ritual. The idea being that the 'good energy' of the souvenir you carry with you will bring you a whole year of positive, fun experiences. I'd usually pass it off as just nonsense, but there's something to it. I'll show you. Picture a calendar in your mind and flip through the pages. Now stop on one month. Now scan your eyes around the days and stop on one day. What's the date you're on?"

"March 21st," she says.

I smile and tell her to open the drawer in my coffee table and pull out my datebook from 2015. "Take a look. Every entry is different, right? Now what does it say on March 21st,"  She looks and finds the circled entry on that date says, Celebration Dinner with Charley at Artisanal. "That was the day my book proposal got accepted. Charley and I got fondue to celebrate. it was one of the best meals of my life. Check this out. Hand me my wallet."

She does. I open up the bill section and pull out a small envelope. I show her there's nothing else in the wallet. On the outside of the envelope it says, "Highlight of 2015." I tell her to pull out what's inside and it's a receipt for dinner for two at Artisanal with a congratulatory message written on the back by my friend Charley.

I rip a piece of paper out of a notebook and ask my friend to draw a little something on it. She asks why and I say, "Well, so I have something to remember this night by and carry with me next year." 

Method

The initial method is Bob Cassidy's diary effect, Chronologue. But I just don't use cards. I use tickets and receipts and stubs from shows and business cards and notes  and little photos and anything else small and flat that you might save. You just have to make sure they don't have a date on them. 

Then I use an Heirloom Deluxe wallet. This allows you to hold 20 outs and you can show your wallet empty after you remove the envelope.

I don't want to get into the workings of Chronologue but I will just say that once you're set up, a spectator can look through the date book and they are unlikely to notice anything. Especially with my version and series of predictions. With the 20 outs in the Heirloom Deluxe wallet the spectator can look over 5 weeks in either direction before anything similar comes up. And because you're not using playing cards, you can use different words to describe the event. "Went to the Knicks game" it could say in one spot. "Basketball game with Timmy," in another. "Hung out with Timmy all day. Caught a game at MSG," in another. And for each of these you would explain that you took your nephew, Timmy, to see the Knicks play. But in a casual look through of the book, even if your spectator specifically noticed both those entries, they wouldn't necessarily see them as the same. And they'll never really notice any two specific entries weeks apart. Not when they're written in different words, and when they're listed amongst many other events on that day.

 I use a cheatsheet in the back of my current year's datebook to let me know which envelope to pull from the wallet. 

I think I've given enough details here to make it fairly clear if you know Chronologue. It's a fun effect. The only not fun thing is making up the datebooks.

It's painful as it issues
From those hot and burning tissues
Diarrhea, cha, cha, cha
Diarrhea, cha, cha, cha

Double Hemispherectomy

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Imagine

"Whoever the dumbest person at this table is, everyone else will chip in and buy their meal. So what is your evidence that you're the dumbest person here?" 

We go around the table and say why we're the dumbest person in the group.

One guy tells a story about getting caught in a bathrobe and having to call 911.

One girl tells the story about her 12-year marriage to a guy she didn't like from their first date on. 

Another guy tells the story of how, in college, he didn't like his roommates so he would pee in a soda bottle in his room so he wouldn't have to walk by them in the living room on his way to the bathroom. He would also eat his dinner secluded in his room as well. And one time, while eating his dinner, he took a big swig from the wrong soda bottle. 

I told the story of the time I went on a three-day water fast to experience what it was like. After 72 hours I broke my fast then went to bed. The next day I wake up and I go to piss and it comes out a deep crimson. Apparently I had fucked myself up on this water fast and was now peeing blood. I went to the emergency room and told the doctor I had been fasting for three days and now my pee was coming out blood red. He thought that was unusual and asked what I'd had when I broke the fast the previous night. "I didn't eat anything," I said. "I just drank a 2 liter bottle of Hawaiian Punch."

"Oh... I'm an idiot," I said to the doctor, and walked out of the room.

After debating it, we decided the guy who got stuck in his bathrobe was the biggest idiot.

Later, we stood out on the sidewalk while a couple friends were smoking. "It's not fair," I said. "I'm definitely the biggest idiot. I had my brain removed when I was four because of a parasite."

"You had your whole brain removed?" someone asked.

"Yup. I mean, except for something the size of an almond. Completely empty up there."

"Look," I said. I turned on my camera's flashlight and held it to my ear. "Can you see it coming out the other side?" I asked. They said no. "My ear is just too tightly closed, I guess. Can you see the light coming out of my mouth?" I asked and opened wide. Again they said no. 

"Huh..." I said. "That dangly thing in the back must be blocking the light. Can you push it to the side?" I asked one of my friends.

"Your uvula?" he said. "That's disgusting."

"Oh, come on," I said and reached my thumb deep into my mouth to push my uvula out of the way. Light comes pouring out of my mouth. I pull my hand out and the light disappears. 

"See," I said. "Nothing up there. The light just ricochets around my empty skull."

Method

A white D'lite.

Or not even that. The whole point of this is to sit around with your friends trying to fight for your position as the dumbest person in the group. The trick is just the punchline.

 

 

Calen Morelli - 365 Days of Magic

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In the history of magic on the internet, there have been three transcendent artistic achievements. The first was the Magic Circle Jerk blog, the third is this blog, and in between was Calen Morelli's 365 Days of Magic. This was a project where Calen would create a new magic trick every day for a year and put it up on youtube. And I mean create, as in new tricks and new methods. Other people have tried similar thing, but were just performing a different trick each day. Which is fine and all, but not quite as interesting to me. The magician in me would rather see half-assed new stuff, rather than a perfected old routine. 

Calen only made it half the year into his project before he had to give it up. That may seem like a failure, but why did he have to give it up? Well, because he had to move to Vegas because he was hired to work for David Copperfield. So it's kind of hard to see that as a failure. That would be like if you had pledged to post a video of you ejaculating onto a picture of Anne Hathaway every day for a year. And then six months in you're like, "Sorry guys... I have to stop posting. I won't have time anymore because I'm getting married to Anne Hathaway."

For a couple years now it seemed like the videos Calen created for this project weren't on his youtube channel, but now I see they're back and I encourage you to go check them out if you haven't. You want to look about 5 years back. Starting with the video "Bending the Rules" and ending with "Lose the Sugar." [UPDATE: They're gone again.]

I was inspired a ton by Calen and I ended up adding a number of the effects that got their start during this project to my repertoire. Below are a few of my favorites. These have the added bonus that, if you're interested, you can learn them from Calen's Penguin Live lecture. 

Stop Hating Rick Lax

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Every time Rick Lax posts a video on his Facebook page, I get an email from somebody making fun of it, and suggesting I make fun of it too. Here is what I hear the most:

  1. Asking people to like a video before watching a video seems like the height of desperation (or implying that they need to hit like to "lock in their answer" or something like that). 
  2. He chastises people for "stealing" his tricks and making their own versions of his videos when he didn't create the tricks in the first place.
  3. A lot of his interactive tricks are awful.
  4. His voice is painful to listen to.

Here, so I don't have to field your emails anymore, are my responses to these issues.

  1. That's just playing the game. Even with the heavy-handed "please like my videos" stuff, he's looking at maybe a couple percent of the people who watch a video actually "liking" it. Likes and shares are the currency of Facebook. He's, understandably, trying what he can to get those numbers up.
  2. Yeah, but I understand the inclination on his part. First, he's not going to mention that a lot of these effects are ancient on videos he's making for the public. That doesn't help him in any way. Second, he's trying to set up a brand. He's a "deception expert" who does interactive tricks on Facebook. When people copy him it undermines that brand and undermines the notion that there's anything special about him as a performer. "Wait... is this 12-year-old who just performed the identical trick a 'deception expert' too?" It's a double-edged sword really. He can rack up millions of views on a video because it's not too provocative. But at the same time, because the videos aren't really personality-driven they're open for anyone to just make their own version. 
  3. Ok, I agree with you. (He had one recently where he asked you to think of how many calories were in a bagel and then you were supposed to be amazed when he determined the last number in those calories was 0. Everyone (in the U.S. at least) thinks of calories in factors of 10 because that's how they're labeled on our food.) The problem Rick has is that he can't limit himself to posting on Facebook when he has a good idea. It's a marketing tool for him, so he needs to churn out content whether it's good or not-so-good. So if he has three good ideas per month, that might be better than you or I would have in a similar position. But it feels worse because he has three good ideas a month but makes 30 videos. So his batting average seems so much lower 
  4. If Rick wants to transition into more TV work or stage work (and I have no idea if he does) he needs to try to come across as more genuine. This is based on feedback I got when I pitched him for a television project I was involved in. I think Rick speaks in what he thinks is a presentational and confident manner but it can seem inauthentic to adults (who are probably not his target audience).

That's the other thing. Rick's Facebook tricks are not, primarily, geared towards adults. (And certainly not towards magicians.) His most recent post, as of this writing, tells you to share a video or else be cursed and visited by a disembodied hand. And obviously any trick with a math formula like, "Choose a secret number, now add 4 to it, now subtract your secret number..." is not something you try on high school graduates. So to complain and say, "Blech, this isn't good magic," kind of misses the point. 

It would be like watching this kid's video and being like, "You know... I don't think he's a great hardcore rapper."

The thing is, Rick is trying to do something very difficult. There are three good interactive tricks and he burned through them in his first few videos, now he has to try and repackage that content and expand his brand to keep people entertained. It's easy to criticize an individual video but it's not like there are a bunch of other people doing what he's trying to do better. 

It would be especially easy for me to criticize. Rick and I have opposite goals in magic and in our online presence. I don't ask you to "like" my posts. In fact, I don't give a shit if you literally like my posts. You have to go out of your way to share things I write or interact with me.

But that doesn't mean I don't respect what Rick is trying to do.

And even if you can't respect it, don't waste energy hating the guy. There is a lot you can take from his Facebook success. Do yourself a favor and scroll through some of the videos. It might be a surprising education for you. Some videos have 50 million views. And some, while high, are nowhere near that much. And it has nothing to do with how strong the magic is. In fact, the videos that most magicians would think are the best tend to get significantly less views. 

No, it's not "the stronger the magic the more views" it's "the more interactive the magic the more views." I think this is telling. And while "views" aren't the sole metric to define good magic, they are a pretty good metric to define engagement. And don't you want your magic to be engaging? The truth is, Rick interacts more with his spectator's in a Facebook video than most magicians do when they're sitting across the table from them. When, in reality, it should be fifty times more powerful to be in the room with the person. 

Let that be what you take from Rick Lax's Facebook videos and extrapolate it into your live performances. Don't just be demonstrating an ability at your spectators. Instead make it clear that this moment requires their presence; that it's feeding off of their input and interaction like a living entity. 

Coming Soon: In a past issue of X-Communication, I mentioned a post I would be writing soon called Presenting the Unpresentable. That should be up in the next week or two. In the past few months I've approached presenting certain kinds of "process" heavy tricks from a different angle—partly inspired by what I was discussing above—and have had a lot of success with it. So that will be coming soon. If I get enough likes on this post.

Monday Night Magic

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Andy (me) and the GLOMM get a shout-out at Monday Night Magic in New York City. Thanks Patrick and David!

Next, David Copperfield, maybe? I mean, why wouldn't he? Unless he doesn't adhere to the GLOMM's Code of Ethics. Every day that passes without him mentioning the GLOMM makes me wonder.