Until July...

This is the last post for the month of June. Regular posting resumes on Friday, July 1st.

The next newsletter will be with supporters on that day as well.

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One thing that will be happening in the upcoming week that you might want to keep an eye out for is that Vanishing Inc. will be releasing their two volume set that collects Joshua Jay’s Talk About Tricks columns from MAGIC Magazine.

If you don’t have the old magazine, I would highly recommend picking these up.

There was a confluence of circumstances that make Josh’s column the best trick column of all time.

First, if you don’t know your magic magazine history, there was a time where Genii magazine was pretty much the only game in town. And it looked like something that was operating with no competition. The cover of most issues in the 80s and into the 90s was the same basic template, just a different color, and with a different black and white promo picture slotted in. So lazy.

The interior looked like shit too. I remember picking up my first issue of Genii in a magic store and flipping through it and seeing all the black and white imagery and stuff that looked like it was typed on a typewriter. “Oh, how much for this vintage magazine?” I wondered. Turns out it came out the previous Tuesday.

Oh, and the magazine was always late. The editor had a little slogan for the magazine. “Always Late, Always Great!” Seriously. He only chose that because “Haha, we actually suck shit at our job of producing a magic magazine,” didn’t rhyme.

In 1991, Stan Allen started MAGIC Magazine. It was glossy and full color and didn’t look like it was some dreary soviet publication. And before long it was the number 1 magic magazine, surpassing Genii which was now fumbling all over themselves to keep up.

MAGIC Magazine’s first trick column editor was Richard Kaufman. Kaufman set a standard for quality with good tricks, that were well explained, with clear illustrations. (Kaufman would later go on to salvage Genii and turn it into a modern magic magazine.) Kaufman gave way to Jon Racherbaumer.

Then, in September of 2001—in what Jamy Ian Swiss called, “Probably the greatest tragedy of this month”—Joshua Jay took over the duties as trick editor.

Josh is a good writer and great teacher of magic. He brought a lot of enthusiasm to the job and that came through in his columns. He’s likable and has the ability to connect with people across generations and that allowed him to obtain material from well-established magicians, as well as complete newcomers.

And there are many legitimately good tricks in the column.

You see, regardless of what Josh brought to the table, he also came to the job at an ideal time. He came at a point when the internet was pretty much up and rolling. Email, message boards, and blogs were fairly established at that time. And these ways of communicating allowed magic ideas to be generated and iterated at a faster clip than ever before. But the outlets for these ideas were nowhere near as plentiful as they are now.

These days if you come up with a decent idea, you could film it or create a pdf and start selling it online before the end of the day. In the 2000s you could do that too, but it was nowhere near as simple as it is now. You had to be fairly motivated to put that all together. Therefore a lot of tricks that might now be marketed as a download or an ebook were sent to Josh. This was a way to garner some level of “fame” in the magic world and get your name out there.

And this was also before the time of “social media magic” so the ideas people were coming up with were all workable in the real world.

I’m not trying to sell you on this collection. Well, I guess I am, but there’s nothing in it for me to do so. For those of you who are new to this site, I don’t do ads. I don’t pimp other people’s stuff when they give it to me for free. I do sometimes get stuff for free, and then end up praising it in my newsletter. But more often I get stuff for free and never mention it again. Getting it for free has no bearing on anything.

But that’s a moot point as far as this post goes. Vanishing Inc. didn’t give me this for free. They’re not buying my endorsement. Hell, I’m pretty sure VI still owes me money from when I had affiliate links on this site like 6 years ago. I’d email Josh or Andi to sort it out, but I worry they’re going to refer to one another as their “best friend” and that always weirds me out. (If you’re on their mailing list and have their June 20th email “Our Best-selling magic book of all time.” You will see Josh refer to Andi as his “best friend” THREE times. It’s like, “Okay guys, you’re fucking 40 years old. You can stop ranking your friends now.”

Annyyywhooooo…

That’s just to say that my endorsement here is fully legit. You can download the final column from Talk About Tricks (and presumably get more info when the books are released) here. I have no clue what these books are selling for, but with 868 tricks included in the book you’re going to end up getting your money’s worth. You could easily live off these tricks and never spend another penny on magic. You won’t do that, of course. It’s just too fun to accumulate new stuff. But you could.

After the Magic

Here’s a little tip for when considering what magic items to purchase or perform.

I think a lot of us simply think about the moment of magic, and imagine how that will play out.

“I’m going to hold the spoon and they’re going to see it bend without me doing anything to the spoon!” And then we imagine the spectator being blown away as they see the spoon melting.

What I’m surprised by is how little time is spent thinking about what happens after the magical moment.

A lot of magicians live in some fictional world where an audience is super amazed by the spoon bending, and then when the trick is over they say, “Okay, thanks. No questions here. Moving on.”

That’s not real life. After the magic, the spectator will want to see the spoon. And if it turns out it’s kind of weird looking, doesn’t match any other spoons in the venue, is extra flimsy, or it feels like it just came out of the freezer or whatever… then they’re just going to say, “Oh, I guess there’s something weird about this spoon.”

After the magic is when the magic happens.

The “magic moment” is generally less important than what happens afterward.

Okay, Andy, that’s maybe true sometimes. But what if you have a super visual magic moment?

In that case, it becomes even more true. If the coin very visibly penetrates the bottle, then they want to get a look at that bottle afterwards even more so.

The myth in the magic community is that you can use “audience management” to somehow get people disinterested in the thing that just did something impossible. Nope. Sometimes you can use your skill at manipulating an audience to get them focused on the wrong thing. But if they establish a focus of interest or suspicion on something, you can’t get them to drop that just by your charm or “distracting” them with another trick.

What brings this subject to mind is this trick Lumos, which comes from Hanson Chien. who consistently brings something at least interesting to the table with his releases.

In Lumos you smile and your mouth flashes.

What a charming effect! It mimics a classic visual from movies and cartoons. A character smiles and a glint of light comes from their mouth.

The ad copy says:

Let’s say you are at a party and want to approach someone, but you are at the loss for words. LUMOS is here to help.

All you got to do is WAVE, NOD, and the TWINKLE SMILE!

With the help of LUMOS, you can steal hearts instantly without saying a word.

Great! But can we spend at least 6 fucking seconds imaging what happens after the magical moment?

You know, the point where you flashed your brilliant smile and the other person is amazed? What do we imagine happens next? Do they immediately stare down at the floor? Do they run the other direction? Do they click a button and an ejection seat in their barstool sends them hurtling up and through the roof?

No. I’m going to guess they’d be a little taken aback and intrigued by what the just saw and they’ll look at you. In fact, they’re going to look at you more intently than they were before.

And what do you do? Do you try to speak with something the size of a peach pit rattling around in your mouth?

Or do you raise a napkin and spit the little plastic cockroach that caused the flash into your hand and stuff it in your pocket?

Either way, after the magic they’ll realize where the light came from. There’s no way out of this moment other than for them to be acutely aware that you’ve got something in your mouth that flashes a light.

While I’m not trying to convince anyone my mouth actually flashes with light when I smile. I CERTAINLY don’t want them to think I carry around some little device and put it in my mouth so I can pretend my mouth flashes when I smile. I’d rather fucking swallow the damn thing and dig through my shit the following day looking for the flashing fecal nugget. Yes, there’s a 90% chance I’ll choke to death on it. But that death has at least a touch more dignity than the alternative. If you “flash” your smile and then turn away and spit something into your hand so you can actually talk to this person you’re trying to charm, you might still be breathing afterwards. But it’s definitely social suicide.

Re-Tweak: Sort of Psychic Part 3

Sort of Psychic, by John Bannon is a trick I’ve written about a couple of times before. Here and here, specifically.

This is likely going to be a trick that is always in my repertoire. It’s a very straightforward entry point into the Spectator as Magician plot that audience’s seem to easily grasp. The arc to the effect feels pretty natural. The spectator thinks of any card in a deck and sort of “tunes” themself to that card by trying to guess which packet it’s in. After a few rounds of this—and after becoming accustomed to the feeling of being right or wrong in regards to the sense of where their card is—they’re now able to cut a shuffled deck directly at their thought of card (despite never naming it out loud).

I’m not going to get into the method or the previous tweaks I’ve mentioned. You can track down John’s trick and read my other posts above if you’re not caught up.

Today I want to offer a tweak for the effect that comes from Tomas Blomberg. This makes the part of the effect where the 16-card pile is divided into two packets feel even more casual. That was the weakness in the original effect. The 16 cards would be coalesced and then every other card would be stripped out. It felt too regimented, and my previous tweaks were an attempt to address that issue.

Here is Tomas’ handling. We pick up at the point where the 16 card packet has been split in two 8-card portions and the spectator has just indicated which packet contains their card for the first time. You’ll need a thorough understanding of the trick, and to follow along with cards in hand, for this to make much sense.

A - Once they’ve indicated which pile has their card in it, drop the other pile on top.

B - Now do an overhand shuffle in this manner: Run three singly, and toss the rest on top. Run four singly, toss the rest on top. Run five singly, then pull off all the remaining cards as a chunk, except the bottom card in the right hand’s packet. Drop that last card on top.

You now have four options on top and four options on the bottom, with one cover card on top, and one cover card on the bottom.

Adding these cover cards prevents the issue where the spectator’s card is continually on the top or bottom each round.

C - Ask your spectator to cut the pile into two packets. These don’t have to be even packets. So long as the pile is cut somewhat evenly, the trick will work. If they cut off anywhere from 5 to 11 cards, the trick works. Keep track of where the top of the deck is.

D - Have them try and psychically find their card. Make note of which pile holds their cards. And reassemble the packet into the orientation it was in before it was cut. In other words, put the top portion back on top.

E - If they said their card was in the top half, you’re going to shuffle face down. If they said it was in the bottom half you’ll turn your wrist and do a face-up overhand shuffle. Either way you do the same thing. Run three card singly, and then pull off everything above the bottom card on the right hand’s portion and drop that last card on top.

F - The four remaining options are now 2nd and 3rd from the top or 2nd and 3rd from the bottom. Again have the spectator cut the pile in half. Again, it doesn’t have to be anywhere near perfectly in half.

G - Once they’ve indicated where their card is for the final time, reassemble the packet by putting the top portion of the packet back on the bottom portion. If their card was in the top portion, place the 16-card packet on top of the rest of the deck. If their cards was in the bottom portion, place rest of the deck on top of the packet. Either way you now have the full deck together and you know which one of two cards are theirs.

H - Riffle shuffle, retaining the options in position. Then cut/shuffle the cards to be set up for the finale. You can figure that part out.

Letting them cut the pile into two packets really makes it feel like you can’t possibly know or care which cards are in which pile. That, in turn, makes the whole thing feel extra-casual, which is exactly what you should be going for with this trick.

Thanks to Tomas for sending this along and allowing me to share it with you.

Monday Mailbag #70

In today's post [WWJD If Someone Googled the Secret to a Trick I Had Performed?}, you provide more (false) info to the spectator about what you're doing, as they teach you their method. In a normal interaction of course, they would continue to ask questions based on the information you provided them. For instance, for the below example: "What do you mean"; "where is the money going"; "how much have you lost" etc. How would you continue the interaction?

Quote for context:

"You know the best part about doing it this way? You could do this all night. The way I was doing it is really a once a week thing. Also, you don’t lose any money this way.” [Implication: The way I was doing it… the money really disappears or something? And you can only do it once a week? Huh?']—RK

Well my goal is to make talking about methods as unsatisfying as possible. So I would give them bland answers.

“Where is the money going?”

“I’m not sure.”

“How much have you lost?”

“Eh, a few bucks. As I said, it’s not something you can do all that often. For the first few months of practicing, the coin never went anywhere, so it wasn’t an issue.”

You don’t want interesting answers because you don’t want to reward them for harping on the method.

The idea here is not to imply, “You found the secret to a trick on google. But what I did for you was real magic.”

My implication is simply that they found a method via google that relied on sleight of hand or gimmicks. I’m happy to talk about those sorts of methods, but what I was using in this circumstance was something a little more arcane.

If they were to press me on what exactly I was doing I’d say “Do you know Ohm’s law?” Or something else they don’t understand. “Read up on that, and that will give you the general idea.”

If they say, “You weren’t doing anything crazy. You were just using that sleight-of-hand method that I learned.”

Then I’d say, “Okay. That doesn’t bother me if you think that. I’d prefer you think that, actually.”

Social magic is about cultivating an audience of people who enjoy seeing something that feels unexplainable. When you find someone who doesn’t, just don’t perform for them in the future. It’s that simple.

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I saw Derren Brown’s very fine ‘Showman’ performance at Liverpool on Friday night and I couldn’t help notice the similarities between one of his effects and your effect 'In Search of Lost Time', which I love and have used on friends to great success. I was wondering if you’d had any direct or indirect involvement in Derren’s show? —TH

There was some minor direct involvement early on in the writing of that show. But I don’t think the thing I was involved with ever went anywhere.

Indirectly, Derren would have been reading the book with In Search of Lost Time in it right around the time he was writing Showman. So it’s certainly possible there was some incidental influence. But I don’t really know the trick you’re talking about. So it’s hard to say for sure.

By the way, the thing I was working on for Derren (which is more a technique than a trick) will be found in the next book.

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[Regarding] this: https://www.thejerx.com/blog/2022/6/14/the-artist-distracted-in-the-wild ?

Yes, distracted artist at his best. However, now I’m expecting a complete flood of fake videos from all of those Julius Dein-ish account where a fake hidden camera discovers something incredible made by a random bad dressed up magician.

Hope not. At least for my stomach. —FDM

The power of that video is that it doesn’t come from the magician’s account, and we don’t even really see who is performing the effect. Yes, it’s true that you’ll probably see some corny instagram/tiktok magician attempt to capitalize on this idea. It will be difficult though, because the strength of this idea is found in the premise that this is something that wasn’t meant to be captured and broadcast in any way. While it’s possible to fake that, it will be hard to do so in a way that brings the magician any notoriety. So the social-media magicians are likely to avoid it.

New Release Roundup #2

Howdy, Buckaroos.

Time for another new release roundup, where I quickly give my worthless, uneducated opinion on new releases based solely on the advertising copy and first impressions.

I’m just plucking items off Penguins “50 New Arrivals List.”

Color Match by Tony Anverdi

This is essentially $300 to know what color marker someone is holding.

There is one truly brilliant trick you can do with these. And that’s this one that Justin Willman did on Ellen.

(Although I think the “duplicate predictions” part was a mistake, but whatever.)

I’m sure there are other good effects to come be accomplished wit this, but the ones shown in the demo look pretty dull.

Still, it’s very tempting to pick this up. What’s keeping me from pulling the trigger on this is that I’ve found I tend to abandon tricks that at any point need to be plugged in. No matter how good they are. My desire to perform the trick and the battery charge never seem to be in sync.

Plus… would I carry these markers around with me? Probably not. So it would purely be an at-home trick. Which is fine, especially if I’m taking my clothes off at some point during the trick. But it is a mild strike against it.

And while I feel like I could probably come up with a few tricks I’d really enjoy performing with this if I bought it, I feel like word would get around with my friends, “He sure is doing a lot of marker-based magic recently. What’s up with that?”

I don’t know… I think I’m posting about this because I want one of you to talk me into, or out of, getting this. If you have it and it’s really good (or not so good) or you have a particularly strong use-case for it, let me know.

Polite by Raphael Macho

Honestly, I think this looks dope.

Unfortunately it has a big warning sign on it when it says: “Perfect for Social Media.” And whenever I see that I’m like…

Because it means it looks like dogshit in real life.

Red Pill

The ad copy says,

“The magician displays a bottle of pills, and has a spectator hold on to it. The spectator can freely name any playing card, and choose either the red pill or the blue one. When they open the bottle, the chosen color pill will predict the spectator's card perfectly.”

Huh? This is the type of magic I don’t understand at all. “They name a card and it’s found written on a piece of paper inside a pill.” Well… why? Why would you do such a thing? Predicting the card they would name is a magic trick. Rolling up that prediction and putting it inside a pill isn’t a better magic trick. It’s just a needlessly complicated way of giving that prediction to them.

It’s not like pills and cards have anything to do with each other. It would be like putting your prediction in a ravioli. Yes, you could do it… but why?

I mean… maybe ask them how many prescription drug overdoses there were in 2021 and have their guess predicted in a pill. That would at least be thematically consistent.

Then you can follow that up with another new release. This “prank” Covid test. And all your friends can be like, “Hey, does anyone know what the fuck is up with Bob? His magic tricks have taken a real dark turn.”

Nudes Playing Cards

“Hell yeah,” I though, unbuttoning my pants.

Sadly this was a big pump-fake as it turns out the “nudes” on these playing cards are some bullshit artwork from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Sorry, that’s going to be a big “no thank you” from me. Here’s the deal… I CAN’T WHACK OFF TO “SEATED NUDE WITH A FLOWER” FROM 1906.

Hmmm…

Or can I?

Dealing With Bad Intentions

After Tuesday’s post I received a few emails asking what I would do if the person who was googling and looking for secrets was trying to be an asshole about it. (As opposed to the question in that post, which suggested the spectator wasn’t ill-intentioned.)

Well, first, on a general note, you may need to look inward first. It’s not uncommon for someone to want to figure out how a trick is done and for them to take to google to try and find an answer. However, it is uncommon for someone to come back to you and try and take you down a peg. If that’s happening with any regularity, then you are likely performing in a way that makes it seem like you’re showing off or trying to impress people.

If people get the sense your ego isn’t wrapped up in this, they don’t tend to come back and try and bust you.

So keep that in mind if this is something you’re dealing with regularly.

But, every now and then, you do just run into someone who’s kind of an asshole.

If that happens, you might try something like this…

Them: I looked up that trick you did the other day. The one with the aces. I totally know how you did that.

You: The trick with the aces?

Yeah, I googled it and figured it out.

Are you kidding?

[Your attitude at this point: Mildly Confused.]

No. I know that the aces were on the bottom. So when I dealt onto those piles, they ended up on top.

[As they describe “how you did it,” your attitude shifts to mild amusement.]

Well… yeah, that’s it. You figured it out. [Pause] Sorry… you looked that up?

Yeah, I found it online. There was no “psychological manipulation” involved. That’s bullshit. It was just the way the cards were set up..

I love that. By the way, you could have just asked me. I would have told you how it was done. I mean… I thought you already knew how it was done. That’s a trick from… hmm… I can’t even remember. I think I got it off the back of a cereal box when I was a kid. I’m really surprised you were fooled by that. I was just trying to kill some time when I showed that to you. I wanted to run through it because I told my niece I’d teach her a trick she could show to her Girl Scout troop. Remember I mentioned that? [You didn’t actually say that.] Hey, but that’s really kind of cool. I never thought something made to fool kids would fool an adult too. You just made my week. That’s delightful. Thank you.

[Your attitude at this point: You’re satisfied. You’re in a good mood.]

If someone’s intention is to be an asshole, then acting genuinely pleased with what they have to say, while simultaneously suggesting they’re an idiot in the process, is a solid way to parry their remarks.

But going forward, try to have better A-hole detection. You can develop it. And once you do you can pretty much avoid them altogether. I haven’t performed for an asshole in years.

The Artist Distracted in the Wild

4.3+ million likes (not just views, but likes) on this Instagram post of a magician in the wild performing in the Artist Distracted style. (The Artist Distracted is a variation on the Distracted Artist style. In this style the magician is in his own world, focused on the trick and not those around him.)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Pubity (@pubity)

How many likes would this trick have if he was performing for the camera. “Hi everyone. I’ve got a little miracle I’d like to show you with just a simple piece of tissue. Nothing more, nothing less.” Like two dozen, maybe?

This video is just one example. And the Artist Distracted is just one style you can do this with. The broader point goes to what I’ve been writing about for 7 years. The more you remove the trappings of a “performance,” the stronger your magic is (in casual settings) The memorized patter, the highly “routined” tricks, the scripted jokes, the close-up mat, and so on. All of this stuff undermines your ability to create something “magical.”

—Thanks to Nick S. for the link.