Until December...

This is the final November post. Regular posting resumes on December 1st. That’s also when the next newsletter will be sent to supporters. If you need to get an ad in for that, try to get it to me by Monday or so.

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We currently have 49 magicians on the GLOMM’s list of convicted sex offender magicians. Let me firmly state that there is NO prize for being the 50th member kicked out of the GLOMM. So whatever sick thing you were planning on doing to get booted in hopes of getting a Vanishing Inc. Gift Certificate, or whatever, please, just forget it.

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I found this to be an odd quote from Craig Petty regarding the new trick Hand Drawn. (Taken from the ad copy here.)

“Honestly if you could really do magic this is what you would do!”

Hmmm…

Uhm, just as a reminder, this is the effect of Hand Drawn.

Now, look, I like the way the trick looks and I’ll be picking it up.

But this is what Craig would do if he could “really do magic”? It seems like awful waste of magical powers. You know there’s a famous trick in magic where you pull money from the air, yes, Craig?

Anyway, I found a few other endorsements from Craig. He gets really enthusiastic about these tricks.

“I would be willing to take 20 years off my lifespan if it meant I could make candles disappear for real. I shit you not. This is all I’d ever do. Candles would cost, like, a million dollars a piece because they’d be so rare because I’d always be making them vanish.” - Craig Petty

“What would I do with real magic powers? Day one, minute one… I’m tearing birds into two separate birds. Hellz yeah. You want me to cure all diseases? Sorry, that’s going to be a distant second on my list of shit to do. In fact, bird-borne illnesses are probably going to increase in the immediate future of me gaining those powers.” - Craig Petty

“I would sacrifice my son to the great demon-god Moloch for the ability to do this just once in my life for real.” - Craig Petty

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Someone wrote in to ask me how many emails I get a day. On average, I get about 10-20 emails a day that require a response. (Well, “require” is a strong word. I try to respond to everything, unless we’ve been going back and forth and I don’t have anything more to add.) When I ask specifically for people’s input on something I will get usually dozens to 100+ emails. (Which was why it was telling to me when I asked if anyone had an impression pad they would “highly recommend,” and I heard from just a few people. That’s a gimmick that’s dying for someone to come in and develop a definitive version.)

10-20 might not sound like a lot. But if we take an average of 15 emails a day, and multiply that by 5 minutes to read, process, and respond to each email (some take a few seconds to respond to, but others take an hour). Then you’re looking at almost 40 hours a month. That’s like three-months of full-time work per year.

I’m not complaining. With Thanksgiving coming up here in the US, let me once again state how thankful I am for the people who support the site. As well as the people who write in. I love when people write in with ideas they’re working on, details on projects they have coming out, recommendations for stuff they really like, stupid magic gossip, and all of that. If I only respond back a sentence or a short paragraph, it’s not because I’m not interested or don’t appreciate what you’re bringing to the table. It’s just because I have to budget the time I can devote to things related to this site, and that doesn’t allow for super-detailed responses to every message I get.

But again, thank you to everyone who reads, writes, and supports.

For those in the U.S., have a great thanksgiving. Meet you all back here Dec. 1st.

A Tip for Practicing Acts of Dexterity

This is something I stumbled on when learning guitar, I believe. And since then I’ve applied it to learning other instruments, juggling, and picking up some sleight-of-hand techniques. This may be something that only works for me. Or it may be something that is so obvious it’s written up in 100 other places. Or it may be somewhere in-between.

So it started when I was learning a song on guitar that was slightly ahead of my ability and I wasn’t quite getting it. And, for some reason, I began to think about how stupid I would look trying to learn this thing if anyone was watching. My face was scrunched up and my jaw was tense. So when I attempted the fingering I was trying to learn again, I focused on releasing the tension in my jaw while I did it.

And there was a noticeable improvement in my ability when I did that.

So I tried it with other songs that had been hard to play in the past, and those went smoother too.

Somehow, unclenching my jaw was helping me learn guitar better.

After 20 minutes or so, my jaw was unclenched and I didn’t have to focus on it anymore.

And my ability took a step backward. Things got tougher again. Even though my jaw wasn’t tense.

Then I realized that it wasn’t my jaw being loose that had helped me.

It was the act of focusing on my jaw that had helped me.

The natural instinct, when learning something new—especially an act of dexterity—is that you want 100% of your focus targeted on that activity like a laser-beam.

But what worked for me was splitting my focus. Not with something that required a lot of thought, but on something uncomplicated: relaxing my face. The amount of thought I was giving to the fingering and the strumming of the guitar was just enough to mentally address those things. My primary focus was on my face. I’d sort of scan around it and ask myself how it was feeling and note different areas and if they were relaxed or not. So now I was trying to learn the song while devoting less thought to it. And for whatever reason that worked very well for me.

I’ve since used this technique when learning other instruments as well as sleight-of-hand like false shuffles and false deals, and other skills of dexterity.

Obviously you need to understand the fundamentals of what you’re learning before you can use this. Like you need to have your head around what you’re trying to do and be able to do it in a simple or slow fashion. But after you have reached that level of competency, I suggest trying to improve from that baseline with less conscious thought by focusing on something else simple stimuli.

Again, I have no idea why this works, or if it will for others, but you might want to give it a shot. It has helped me a lot.

Like, before yesterday I’d never even tried surfing.

But look at me now!

New Release Round-Up #4: Penguin Black Friday Edition

Time for more uneducated opinions on new releases based solely on the advertising copy and first impressions.

Today we’re focusing on Penguin Magic’s Black Friday releases. Of all the magic companies, Penguin probably does Black Friday the best. They come out with a bunch of new releases, have a ton of bonus gifts for spending at certain levels, and they have their 5 for $99 section which was once a beacon of good deals but needs to be revamped. Now it’s like shopping in a bargain outlet store at best and a janky flea market at worst. Those types of places can be fine if you just happen to be looking for some cheap scented candles or a VHS copy of Wrestlemania 8 highlights, but they’re not really a big draw. At the very least, most of the Penguin Live Lectures should be in the 5 for $99 section, not just the old ones. The majority of the physical products that are in there are DVDs, so that tells you about how current the offerings are. Most of these things should already be discounted to $20 without having to buy $5 of them.

Penguin did a 12 hour livestream last Friday which was surprisingly watchable. I mean, there’s no reason to actively watch more than an hour or two, as they’re repeating a lot of the same information throughout most of it. But as a way to launch their sale I thought it was pretty effective. If they do something like that again, they should add more live performances. I mean live as in live during the livestream. Not a live taped performance. What people want to see is that you have confidence in these tricks to show them without a safety net, considering you are expecting people to go out and perform the tricks in that way.

Now let’s get into the tricks that were released this year in their Black Friday Sale. The headings below are all clickable links. But it’s not like I’m getting commission or anything, so you can just go directly to Penguin and find the products listed there.

Laced Up by Donnovan Mount

I think this looks great. A borrowed ring is linked to your shoelaces. That’s where it starts, but then it gets weirder with you moving the knot on your laces to a different part of your shoelace, untying it, then moving it back up. Check the demo, that will be clearer than me trying to describe it.

The weaknesses to the effect might be:

1. Motivation. Why are you attaching a ring to a shoelace? This might be a trick where the visuals are interesting enough that you don’t have to over-justify it. Although it might make sense to walk them through the process with some rationale. “When I’m cheating on my wife, I need to put my wedding ring some place. But I don’t want it to fall out of my pocket. Or leave it on the counter where the prostitute can take it. I found a very safe place is here at the bottom of my laces. Now if the prostitute—sorry, sex worker—wants to steal it, she has to unlace my entire shoe first. Which I’d probably notice, I think. But it also means I have to unlace my shoes in order to get the ring back too. So I simplified that by moving the knot.” Etc. This would be a good presentation for many of you because you seem like the sort of person who pays for sex.

2. Googleability. The problem with a very unique trick is that it becomes much easier for a person to search out online should they choose to. Maybe do it with something other than a ring, if possible. (A house key?) So they don’t have all the keywords they need to track down the exact trick.

Die-Abolical Bet by Nicholas Lawrence

A die is place between two playing card and set on a shot-glass. You, or the spectator, press down on the top card and the die penetrates into the glass.

On the Cafe, people are concerned about switching out the gimmicked card after the effect.

Nicholas Lawrence replied in that thread:

“For people worried about the switch.. this kinda hurts my head, as it’s a very basic and easy routine to learn and it really shouldn’t be something a seasoned magician worries about”

I’m not sure why it “hurts his head” as it’s literally the most basic concern a performer should have with this. Especially a “seasoned performer.”

If you push a die through a playing card, 100% of everyone’s suspicion is on that playing card. It’s not on the glass or the die. There’s no available “offbeat” after the penetration. Distracting them from the cards will be obvious. So you need a smooth, somewhat imperceptible switch.

I’m wondering if the top card of the sandwich could be a rough paired (or something similar). So at the end you could cop the bottom card while spreading the top pair and handing them out to be looked at. In that way you’re seemingly giving them the object of their suspicion immediately. Perhaps something like that is covered in the instructions if it’s possible.

I actually got an early version of this trick to play with.

It looks good I think.

Okay, I lied, that’s just a card with a little flap I cut into it. But that’s my point. Cutting a flap in a card isn’t something I learned from a summer spent at Tannen’s Magic Camp. It’s an obvious solution. If your performance doesn’t account for this, you’re screwed.

Hand Drawn by Nick Popa

This is a fun one. You draw a small black X on your hand and make it move to another part of your body.

I have a basic idea of what must be going on here, but it honestly looks better than the simple explanation that’s in my head. And this was, I think, the only trick that was demonstrated live during their livestream and it looked good there as well.

The patter Nick uses—that he used to go to clubs and they would draw an X on his hand to show he was underage, but he’d move the X somewhere else (so he could get loaded)—is perfectly fine. You just need to add another line. Say something like, “I’m just going to demonstrate it with a little X, because I don’t feel like scrubbing off a huge one later.” Because when you go to a club, they don’t draw teeny X on your hand. So you need to justify why you’re doing so in this case. Saying you’re doing so because you don’t want to deal with a big X later makes sense.

Real Viewer by Mandy Hartley

You read someone’s mind based on what they’re looking at in a View Master (or the generic equivalent).

There’s nothing gimmicked about the viewer itself. The reel of images used is designed so you can fish for what they’re looking at. But other than that, it’s not gimmicked. The question is, would you do a fishing-type trick like this if it was seven different postcards? Probably not. So what you’re paying for is the novelty of doing this with a View Master. And if that’s worth $40 to you, then this could be a fun thing to have lying around.

I don’t think this would work great in a show setting because there’s no way for the audience to really understand what the person’s options are or what they’re seeing. Yes, you could explain they’re looking at slides of different landmarks, but if the audience can’t really visualize what they’re seeing, the reaction is going to be weaker. It would be like if you were showing a spectator on stage a pad of different drawings, but you didn’t show it out to the audience itself. The trick wouldn’t be as strong.

And even with a small group, where the viewer could be passed around and everyone could look into it, you’re not really going to want to do that because then everyone will be following along with your fishing with one of the locations in their head and they’d realize, “Hey, that sort of works for me too.”

So this seems to me to be best performed one-on-one. But there may be some elements to it that I don’t quite understand that make it more usable in other situations.

It’s pretty clear what you’re getting here, so if it’s your type of thing, it could be fun.

Axis by Rizki Nanda

Effect: You balance the deck and the card case in a few different ways.

For me, this looks the weakest of the lot. Not bad, but just “okay.”

To be fair, it may look better in real life than on video. This is often true of balance effects, in my experience. So I’d have to see it in person to really judge.

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There you have it. Penguin also launched a re-release of Tamariz’s Sonata and Dean Dill’s Blizzard and a couple decks of Christmas-esque playing cards. You can read more about their Black Friday deals here.

Dustings #76

I was sad that I couldn’t find pics online of Max Maven in his suit jacket with no shirt underneath phase, luscious chest hair flowing in the breeze, as remembered by Mac King in Monday’s post. Fortunately a couple readers who apparently have hard-drives full of sexy magician pics were able to send some shots where we get a peek of that mane. Thanks to Chris C., and Clark P.

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Another Chris C., directed me to this YouTube video which I hadn’t seen before. He writes:

Something about todays post [Tuesday’s post on the Modest Mentalism stage presentations] just reminded me of this stupid Matt Colbo video. It’s much the antithesis to your idea but I figured you’d enjoy it.

I did enjoy it. If nothing else, it’s the most convincing version of one person playing two people that I’ve seen in a YouTube video.

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How to Use the Cafe’s Latest and Greatest Section

The Magic Cafe’s “Latest and Greatest” section is one of the few areas of that site where anyone spends any time anymore. When the Cafe was thriving, it was easy to get sucked in there and spend a lot of time following the hype for some new trick or some moronic debate. These days, most of that discussion has gone other places online, but you can still find useful information there from time to time.

I don’t have the time or inclination to waste much time on that site, so here is how I go about getting the most value from that section with the smallest investment of time.

• Once a week or so I stop by the the Cafe and visit that section.

• I take a look at the new threads that have started since I last was there.

• I make note of any new tricks that sound or look interesting. I specifically note their release date.

• Two weeks after a trick has been released, I visit the thread for that trick. Are people happy with it? Are people pissed with it? If it’s getting solid reviews at this time, then I’ll purchase it. More often than not though, people are logging their complaints with the product and I’ve saved myself some money by not getting swept up in the initial hype.

• Two or three months later, I’ll revisit the thread for a trick that I purchased and see any new ideas, handlings, etc. that people have come up for it.

That’s pretty much it. I don’t follow threads. I don’t post. This is my system for using the Cafe as a resource, as opposed to what it can be: a profound waste of time. (I’m not judging anyone who spends a lot of time there. When I had a desk job, I’m sure I spent more time perusing that dumb site than actually working. But now that I work for myself, my time is more valuable. I’m generally not looking to kill time anymore. )

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I’m working on the first Jerx Almanac, which is going out to supporters on January 1st, in the newsletter slot. I mentioned this many months ago. This ebook is going to break down what I’ve found to be the best tool in different categories. Which thumb writer, which marked deck, etc.

Two ways you can help the project:

1. If you have a category of “tool” you’d like for me to address in the e-book that I might not have considered, let me know.

2. There are two things I’d like your input on. And those are A) Impression Pads and B) mystery box/card to box/small prediction box (like Vision Box). The ones that I use and would recommend are no longer available. So while I’ll mention what they are, I don’t want to leave people hanging with no good alternative. So if you have an impression pad or mystery box type thing that you would HIGHLY RECOMMEND, please pass the recommendation my way so I can check it out. Thanks.

Today's Post

Today’s post was only up for a few hours. It was a post looking for a credit on a billet sequence.

Many people suggested the credit I was looking for was Bob Cassidy’s Name & Place routine. And while it was definitely similar in structure, the sequence I mentioned had the benefit of only using two billets, requiring no switches, being self-working, and ending clean—allowing you to return the billets back to the spectators at the end.

As it turns out, what I had done was reinvented, or, more accurately, “pulled from the recesses of my brain” a handling released by Michael Weber and Tim Trono back in 2017 in a project called The Works. I didn’t try it back then. If I had I’m sure I would have used it regularly, because i like it a lot. But it apparently stuck in my head only to be shot out 5 years later.

I may, at some point, release my presentation for this effect. As I mentioned in the original post, it’s still a work in progress. That presentation can be used with any version of the Name and Place handling.

Because today’s post got removed, I will add an extra post next week.

Let me take this opportunity to once again recommend you get on Michael and Tim’s mailing list: psience.mail@gmail.com.

9 Hot New Looks for Today's Professional Magician

In Monday’s post I was bemoaning how today’s professional magicians have no distinct look. If you go to youtube and look at late-night talk show appearances by magicians in recent years, everyone is just wearing a normal suit or a t-shirt or something. Nothing that stands out. Nothing distinctive.

If nothing else, today’s professional magicians are missing out on a tremendous branding opportunity by being so bland. Mac King is a very entertaining performer. He’s got a super simple name to remember. But I guarantee you when he appears on a tv screen, what people remember is, “Oh yes, this is the guy who dresses like great-Aunt Irene’s sofa. I like this guy.”

Max Maven’s widow’s peek, Penn and Teller’s matching suits, Doug Henning’s hippy bullshit, Roy Horn’s shirts unbuttoned to his scrotum-sack…

These people knew what they were doing.

I know what you’re saying. “Andy, it’s hard to come up with a signature style.” No problem. Here are nine ideas to get you started. Take one and run with it. Free of charge.

1. Big Black Horned-Rim Glasses

This is for a mentalist. When you remove your glasses, it’s revealed you have an equally thick pair of black framed glasses tattooed on your face. This is a subtle commentary on the intensity of your “visions.”

Also wear a Ben Gordon Chicago Bulls jersey.

2. Insert a glass butt-plug with a large crystal ball on the non-business end. Then, when it’s time to perform your mentalism, you pull your pants down and get in this position and proceed to read their minds while gazing into the crystal ball.

If anyone complains about you being naked and having an anal toy in your ass at the Boy Scout Jamboree, you say, “Oh, I’m sorry. I guess you’re the expert on reading the future now. Well, go ahead, the floor is yours.”

3. Wear this shirt

And before every performance clarify that you are, in fact, a magician. You misunderstood the shirt when you originally got it. You bought this shirt during a rough time in your life when you were “really messed up” on fentanyl and “the devil’s lettuce.” Never say marijuana, only say “the devil’s lettuce.” Continue to preach about the dangers of the devil’s lettuce until the audience is saying to themselves, “Wait… didn’t he mention fentanyl too? That seems to be the bigger problem.”

End your speech by saying, “Now I liked to get high on… the art of illusion!”

4. Knock all your teeth out and replace them with with white Lifesavers so you have weird circular teeth with holes in the middle. Once you become famous, thread sour gummi worms through the Lifesavers and tell everyone you “got braces.”

5. A lot of people might say that Steve Brooks’ look of a fedora, bow-tie, and suspenders was some real desperate over-accessorizing.

Actually, they’re wrong. Steve didn’t go far enough. You should take it to the next level and get totally dripped out by adding a black-power hair pick, year 2000 glasses, and a button that says, “That’s what she said.”

6. Vanishing Inc. Branded merchandise.

This option has a couple things going for it.

First, it’s very easy to obtain, you can order it online right here.

Second, you will have a unique look because no other human would ever wear this.

7. Look, you’re lazy and unoriginal. So why not just take a tip from the master and steal Max Maven’s style. It’s worked for others…

But put a fun twist on it and do it with your pubic hair.

8. First, take a dump in all of your pants, leaving a nice brown skid-mark.

Next, change your name to Mark Skidmore. This is what’s known as a “cohesive branding strategy.”

Most business advice for magicians is pretty weak. “When you reveal the card, hold it up near your face so people associate your face with the magic.” Or, “On your last trick tell everyone to stand up and applaud if they were fooled. It’s an automatic standing ovation.” That’s all idiotic. But this is solid business advice.

When you show up on Fallon with a brown turd spread down the back of your trousers and people start saying to each other, “Hey, it’s that magician we liked that we saw on Ellen. I remember his name clearly. Yes… I could never forget it. That’s noted magician, Mark Skidmore.” Then you’ll know the power of an integrated brand and style.

9. Shit… I don’t know. All white contacts, hand-knitted fingerless unicorn gloves, and this t-shirt. It can’t possibly be any worse than the style choices you’re making now.

Modest Mentalism

It started with this post about the basketball trick-shot guy who was cursed to make all his shots.

Then there was a mailbag question about maybe applying that concept to mentalism, i.e. being able to read people’s minds but your premise is that you don’t want to. That it’s a curse. My response was that it would be a little hard to pull that off because it would be difficult to justify the process involved for your mind reading if your premise was that you didn’t want to read people’s minds. (It can be hard enough to justify the process when your premise is you do want to read people’s minds.)

Those posts led to some feedback from people with other ideas for a more modest approach to mentalism. Where either you’re not always right or you don’t want to be right, or there’s some other layer to the presentation besides, I’M GOING TO READ THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR MIND!!!

I will share some of these ideas in the next week or two.

In today’s post we have a couple ideas that could make interesting stage/parlor presentations. I wouldn’t build a 75 minute show around these ideas—it would be too narrowly focused. But I can see someone pulling off a successful 20ish minute show with these premises.

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[Here’s] a complete show concept. 'I brought you together because this is my last show of mentalism, I don't want to hear your thoughts anymore.'

My therapist says it started on stage.

It must end on stage...

It started one day when I was asking the audience for words for an improv show, and quickly I was hearing the words before people said them...

Since my life is hell. As soon as people focus on something I get it.”

Then do classic routines trying to miss them, but it's successful.

At some point find a reason, why it started? that day I drank a soda through my nose!

Do the opposite, and finally miss the next 3 routines!!!

3 random choices that you can't find!

Ending with 'now I just have to get rid of my gift of prediction', turn over a blackboard, the 3 choices were written on it! - Thomas P.

As a rough idea… I like it. That you accidentally did something once that triggered some sort of ability, and now you want to say goodbye to that ability by doing it again, or doing the opposite of whatever caused this ability.

In The Change-Up, Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman switch bodies after they both pee in the same fountain at the same time. To switch back they have to pee in that same fountain again.

My point being, in a theatrical setting, the rationale for why something happened doesn’t need to be super strong. So it’s not the sort of thing where you have to struggle really hard to come up with some plausible reason why you gained this ability. There is no plausible reason why you gained an ability to read people’s minds.

To give the show some structure, you could do something like this… You say you gained the ability to read minds a few years ago during an improv show in which you were performing. “I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know what caused it. But I do remember three weird things happened in that show. First, I did what I thought was a gibberish chant during one of the scenes. Maybe it was gibberish… or maybe I accidentally stumbled over some kind of… I don’t know… incantation? And that somehow gave me the ability to read minds? I’ve watched a video from that show and memorized my babbling so I can try it again tonight.

“The second weird thing that happened was when I went to shake an audience member’s hand at the start of the show, I didn’t notice he was eating an open-faced PB&J sandwich and I got peanut butter and jelly all over my hand. Could that have somehow caused this ability? I know that seems like I’m grasping at straws. But it seems much less crazy when you realize I’ve only had my hand covered in peanut butter and jelly once in my life… then 10 minutes later I could read minds.

“And the final thing that happened was I got electrocuted by some faulty wiring in the microphone cord. I hope that’s not what caused my ability, because that’s one thing I’m not willing to try again.”

So first you try the gibberish incantation to see if you can reverse the curse. But when you attempt to read someone’s mind afterwards, you’re able to do it with no problem.

Moving on, you coat your hand with peanut butter and jelly. “I feel like a fucking idiot,” you say. With your hand dripping in stickiness you do another mind reading experiment and it goes perfectly well. “Shit.”

You grab a wet towel and clean off your hand. You call out for someone to bring you some paper-towels to dry your hands.

“Well, no such luck, I’m afraid. It looks like I’m stuck with this ability.”

You absent-mindedly grab the mic from the mic stand with your wet hand. Sparks fly. [Google: “funken ring.”]

You scream. You writhe in pain. You finally settle down.

“Wait… why is it so quiet in here?” My god… you’re not hearing people’s thoughts.

You start pointing to people in the audience. “Think of a color… is it brown? No? It was blue?! Yes!”

You guess a city wrong. And then a celebrity.

“Oh, this is such a relief,” you say. “To finally not hear in my head what people are thinking.

“It was hard enough dealing with that one ability I already had. The one I got after that weird incident in my fourth grade Christmas pageant. That one was slightly different. It wasn’t mind reading: hearing people’s thoughts in real time. It was prediction: knowing what would happen long before it ever did.”

You pull a cloth off a chalkboard on stage:

Tonight the audience members will think of:
Blue
Moscow
and Samuel L. Jackson

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Hi Andy, an idea that occurred to me regarding your post about Mentalism in a less magician-centric sense. After seeing the basketball trick shots video I was inspired to experiment with presenting a weighing the cards routine (simple memdeck stuff) but intentionally getting every count off by one. I started by counting the packets and always being one shy of the correct number, then had them name a card and I would name the position but be off by one, or I’d end up naming the position of the card’s twin (so 5 of hearts when they say 5 of diamonds for example). I then had them cut the deck and started trying to guess the colour of the next cards and got every colour wrong. (This was quite fun, dealing through the deck saying “this card is… red! Dammit. Red! Dammit, Black, Dammit, Red again, Dammit” and so on) then try to guess the values and be off by one again, I’ve only tried this once for an audience so far (it was an actual parlour audience, not a casual setting) and I need to routine it properly but I think it felt promising and it certainly achieves the goal of doing a “look how brilliantly clever I am” routine in a way that is much less self aggrandising. —Ben S.

Yes, this could be enjoyable. I’ve published something similar to what you did with being off on the red and blacks and growing increasingly frustrated. (Although I’ll be fucked if I can remember where.). I also have a trick in the next book that plays with that idea as well. It’s always fun to play angrily defeated.

I definitely think this could sustain a short show. Laypeople understand that to be consistently a “little off” is ultimately almost as impossible as being dead on. So it’s not like they’re just watching you fail completely the whole time.

You could explain that you’re trying to build up these mentalism skills but you’ve just always had a problem where you’re a little off. “If someone is thinking of a tiger, I’ll guess it’s a lion. If their birthday is on the third, I’ll be certain it’s the fourth. If their secret celebrity crush is Jessica Chastain, I’ll be picking up that it’s Bryce Dallas Howard.”

And throughout the show you demonstrate this almost ability that you have.

Then for your finale you do something involving counting. The rough draft idea would be something like this, you show your prediction openly before the. It’s 617. “Look," you say, “I’m sure it will end up being 616 or 618. But if I change it to one of those, then it will end up being 617. If I try to be a little wrong in order to be right, that never works either.”

You have a number of members of the audience who have pocket change on them dump their cons in a fabric bag (like a change bag). You spill the coins out on a table and tally the change in front of them. “6 dollars and 15 cents, six-sixteen, six-seventeen. $6.17!” You celebrate. You finally got it right on. A big smile comes over your face. You drop the performer facade and now you’re just a human who has finally accomplished his goal.

You give a little impromptu speech on never giving up on your dreams and believing in yourself and how the real magic is in all of us and our ability to achieve our goals. As your speech is coming to a close, from deep in the folds of the bag held under your arm, something falls to the ground. A penny.

“Motherfu-!!”

LIGHTS OUT