Chop Box

After the cigar version of the Chop gimmick mentioned last week, I got a number of emails asking me what I use Chop for. So today I’m going to share my most used trick that I do with Chop. You could rejigger the handling for the cigar version. Or use the Sharpie as I describe below.

The following description comes from the first issue of the supporter newsletter, Love Letters.

Okay, this is likely going to be my main usage for this gimmick going forward. Just keeping it in my bag and having the ability to do many different types of effects that would normally require a prediction box. I was surprised this idea wasn’t on included on the download, because in my opinion it’s one of the best ways to use this gimmick.

Here’s a simple example…

Before leaving to get dinner with my friend Elisabeth, I tell her I want to try something. “I had a weird dream last night. I want to test something...”

I tell her to go grab a mug from the kitchen. She comes back, and I drop a crumpled up piece of paper into the mug. I tell her to put a book on top of the mug and go place it somewhere in her house.

At dinner I say, “Point to anyone here.”

She points to an older woman near the corner with her husband.

“If you had to guess her name, what do you think it would be?” I ask.

“Hmm.... Let’s go with Agnes Goodhead.”

“Haha, perfect,” I say.

Later when we get back to her place I say, “Oh, can you go get that mug that you set aside earlier?”

She brings it back to me.

“Last night I had a dream that we went to that restaurant and we met a woman who looked just like the woman you picked out. Except in my dream, we talked for a little bit with her.”

I pull out a Sharpie from my pocket.

“In the car before I came in here, I wrote down a detail from that dream on a piece of paper.” I mime writing something with the Sharpie. “I want to show you what that was.”

I grab the bottom of the mug and have her remove the book from on top. I show her the wadded up paper inside, tip it into my hand and give it to her.

She opens it up and on the paper it says, “Agnes Goodhead.”

Okay, so the method here is pretty clear. You drop a dummy paper that has been prepped into the mug. Then, at some point in the night, you get some information that you couldn’t have possibly known at the time you gave her the “prediction” earlier in the day. Then, at any point later when you’re alone (in the bathroom or whatever), you write it down on a duplicate piece of paper and crumple it up.

When the time comes, have your friend bring you the whole set-up—which they won’t really know what it is quite yet—have them remove the book from the top as you hold the mug from the bottom. Show them the paper inside. “Dump it” into your hand (shuttle pass for your finger-palmed dupe) and give it to them to open. Step away from them while they do this (as if you’re just being fair). Drop the pen in the mug or just steal out the duplicate however you want.

Is this the “ultimate” prediction box? Maybe not. But being able to build the “box” from items they have on hand, and the fact that you only have to carry this gimmicked Sharpie with you makes it so damn practical.

You can use it to predict anything you want. What someone will order at dinner. The score of a basketball game you go to. How many people with glasses you’ll see while you’re out that night. Whatever you want.

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Over two years later, I still use this a lot. I keep Chop in my car or computer bag and use it spontaneously when a prediction box type routine comes to mind. As I said, it’s not the “ultimate” prediction box. But it fits in with my Carefree Philosophy and I’ve never found it to be lacking in its deceptiveness.

Mailbag: Hitting on the Bakery Girl

Two weeks ago this cute girl started working at a bakery near my university. Since I saw her there the first time I haven’t gone back in because I want to make an impression on her when I do. Is there a trick you do for cashiers or people behind a counter in circumstances like this? Is this a situation for the Distracted Artist presentation or something like that?—TJA

I’m getting down on my knees and slowly unzipping your pants. I gently pull out your cock and balls. Looking up at you, I take the tip between my lips. I slide you in deeper, feeling you growing hard in my mouth.

Uhm… what’s going on, Andy?

I’m making a point.

My point is, even if you like brilliantly written erotica like I just gave you, that doesn’t mean you want to be surprised with it.

You can like magic, and still not want to have to deal with that shit while you’re trying to do your job. And that’s if she likes magic. You don’t know. She may think it sucks.

I will certainly perform for a bored barista or bartender, but I don’t really spring it on them. The performance will naturally evolve out of conversation. When dealing with a counter-person, there really isn’t that chance for it to evolve.

Also, whether she likes it or not, whether it’s a good trick or not, the interaction will still have the feeling of, “Oh, I guess he came in here with a trick prepped to show me so that he could impress me.” You don’t want to look that thirsty.

If you walk into a shop and randomly do a trick for the counter person, it will come off as:

1. You do this for every counter person you run into. Which is lame.

   or

2. You did this specifically for her—this stranger who you don’t know—which is creepy.

You don’t want to be seen as putting too much effort into people you don’t yet know. Once someone is a friend or a romantic partner, they will be flattered to have you put effort into the relationship. With a stranger, though, it’s weird.

So no. I wouldn’t do a trick in this circumstance. That’s the bad news.

The good news is, daddy does have some advice for you.

Over the years, I have dated three girls I met when they were behind the counter of a bakery (or similar).

This isn’t, like, a goal of mine or something. I guess it just happens because I spend a lot of time in bakeries and make conversation with the person behind the counter.

Two of the times I initiated something with a woman behind the counter at a bakery, it went like this…

And I should say, this isn’t a “strategy.” It’s not like I went in there planning to do this. It just sort of naturally played out this way twice (over the course of, like, a decade).

I enter the bakery and look around. It’s not super crowded.

I look through all the baked goods on display. When I get to the end, I loop back to the beginning and look them over again.

“Can I help you?” she says.

“Hmmm… yes… I just don’t know yet.”

“Okay, just let me know when you know what you want.”

After another half-minute or so, I say, “Actually, can you do me a favor? Just pick out your three favorite items for me. I can’t decide.”

They might need a little talking into this idea. They might say, “Well… what type of stuff do you like?”

“Oh, everything really. That’s the problem, it all looks so good. I trust your judgment.”

Eventually she will box up her three favorite items.

As she’s ringing me up, I say, “What’s your name, by the way?”

“Rose,” she says.

I introduce myself to her then say, “This looks great, I can’t wait to try the Rose Sampler.”

I leave.

A week or so later, I come back in and greet her by name (and remind her of my name). I mention how much I liked the stuff she picked out and how I’m coming in now to get at least one of her recommendations again.

This interaction got the conversation rolling, which—over time—snowballed into a relationship.

As far as fringe benefits go, there’s not much that beats dating a girl who works at a bakery and stops by after work to bring you cupcakes and cookies.

As I said, this was never a planned interaction. It came about naturally due to my indecision around baked goods and my habit of asking people who work places for their help/advice. I’m sure there are some universal truths here. Talk to them. Look them in the eye. Get their name. Remember their name. Ask their advice and take it. Etc.

In most situations, that’s probably a solid plan of action.

Better than showing them a trick, I think.

And certainly better than getting all nervous and peeing your pants a little and thinking up good lines you should have said to her while you’re falling asleep later that night.

Or walking in and saying, “I hear you’ve got a big ol’ cake. And I want to bury my face in it.”

Dustings #118

There are two weeks until Black Friday, which means, if you can help it, you shouldn’t buy anything magic-related for the time being. Even if something you want isn’t discounted for a Black Friday sale, many companies, like Penguin, have reward tiers where you get free stuff if you spend a certain amount. So save your purchases for then.

Currently, the shops are all doing the Murphys-backed liquidation of stuff they have excess stock of. I’m not generally seduced by this sort of thing. If I didn’t want something at $40, I’m probably not going to want it at $33.75. I don’t recommend buying anything just for curiosity’s sake unless you can get it at least 50% off.

And don’t think you’re getting a deal just because you see it listed in their Black Friday sale, as this listing from Vanishing Inc shows.

For the magic companies, if your sale is not at least 25% off, that doesn’t qualify as a Black Friday sale. And I only start getting particularly interested when it gets to at least 40%. A 15% sale is the sort of thing you see all year round. That’s not going to get anybody’s pussy wet.

Speaking of things that get pussies wet. The Black Ding-Dong is on sale.

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When it comes to card tricks, the solutions laypeople have at their fingertips are:

• Sleight-of-hand

• “Trick” cards

• Some kind of mathematical trick

Therefore, if you do a trick with a borrowed deck, where you don’t handle the cards much (or, at least, you handle the cards very fairly), and there’s not a lot of counting or numbers involved—you should have something that feels nearly inexplicable ton non-magicians.

These tricks aren’t always easy to find. I’ve started a new hunt for them myself. I will keep you posted.

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I’ve been on a Big Blind Media kick over the past few months as I revisit some of their DVD collections of card magic.

As I was tooling around their site, I noticed they have a little sampler of free downloads you might want to check out.

See here.

I haven’t gone through them myself to be able to recommend any ones to you specifically. But, I mean, it’s free.

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Simple Truths

The strength of a visual magic trick is inversely proportional to the number of cuts in its demo video.

A Couple Trick Updates*

For a while now, I’ve wanted a D’lite where the lite fades up for my trick White Nocturne. I thought it would look more magical if the snowball slowly starts to glow.

Well, friend of the site, Toby H., informs me that just such a glowing thumb-tip now exists.

Toby tells me, “Having an LED fade-in is a bit of a tricky business, especially at a micro level.” And I guess that’s reflected in the price. While D’LItes are about $10, and I’ve seen knockoffs for just a few dollars, this one is…

$65.

Is it worth that much for a subtle change to a trick I might just get to do a couple of times a year?

I don’t know. I’m still thinking about it. Regardless, whether for that trick or something else, I wanted to bring this to your attention as it was something that went under my radar.

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On page 37 of my third book, TOY, there’s a trick that requires the switch of a bookmark.

Alexander FC wrote me a while ago with this alternative to the handling I offered, demonstrated here with a playing card…

A description of the mechanics can be found in the video below.

Both of us feel it’s quite possible this has been done before. Of course, there’s the related idea where the torn corner pops out of the deck of cards when you riffle it. But if there’s some credit or history I should give about doing this with a book and a bookmark, let me know.

UPDATE: The most direct predecessor to this that I’ve been informed about so far is The Book Change by Chris Brown.

What makes this particularly good for the trick mentioned above it that in that trick, you’re using a bookmark, and it’s an invisible change. So rather than putting a playing card or a dollar bill into a book and having it obviously change (which is probably not the most deceptive thing), you’re putting in something to act as a bookmark and then seemingly removing that same thing later.

Cigar Chop'er

I thought this was a great idea from supporter from. Salim K. It’s an alternative to Craig Petty’s Chop gimmick. I’m not really in the population that could use this regularly, but for those who are, I think it could have many potential uses (as Chop itself has many potential uses).

Here’s Salim’s email to me…

I performed a modified Abraham Presley from your 7.14.22 post last night.  Every few months our core group of 5 guys go to dinner and smoke cigars into the night at one of our homes.  I’d been preparing to make this my debut effect for them for a while now. 4 of them have never seen me do anything, 1 of them has.

My modification is super simple and ended up being excellent albeit very circumstantial for how we gather and interact which made it impossible for them to fathom.  Instead of the Chop gimmick I took a 20mm x 1mm magnet with me.  I had practiced and prepared the idea of nonchalantly sliding the magnet under a cigar label prior to lighting the cigar.  I did this because I didn’t want to be there pulling a Sharpie out of my pocket (too unusual) and I didn’t want to fret with having to maybe swap for the gimmick if my friend had a Sharpie at his house which in and of itself was a risk.  Using the lit cigar as the gimmick was just incredible.  It allowed me to use any pen he could find at home and since we smoke outside in the dark ink matching perfectly wasn’t a concern.  I just had to bet on him finding a black pen.  I made my gimmick drawings using regular black pen instead of a Sharpie marker.

Made it seem like I literally created a monster effect with the same collection of stuff we always have on hand.  They didn’t even fully realize I was performing until I was like 25% into it all.

Blew 4 of the smartest 50yr olds most people will ever meet completely out of their chairs, I wish I recorded it. —Salim

That’s the idea, sliding a magnet under a cigar band to use as a Chop-style tool.

I suppose you could also play around with the idea of slicing into a cigar and implanting a magnet inside of it. But then you’d have to somehow deal with the magnet as you smoked your cigar (or stop smoking it before you get to that point).

Obviously, if you don’t smoke cigars… you should start!

No. If you don’t smoke cigars, this idea may be of little use to you, unless you utilize it during a special occasion. Like one of those occasions where people who don’t regularly smoke cigars do for the evening.

But if you do smoke cigars, this is something you could use somewhat regularly. Not necessarily for the Abraham Presley routine mentioned above, but for any routine you could do with Craig’s Chop gimmick.

If there’s a weakness with Chop it’s that you have to be holding a Sharpie through much of the trick. You can often justify that. Or say you’re using it as a “magic wand,” but that can come off a little hokey in a casual performing environment.

But it’s perfectly natural to hold a cigar as you’re smoking it. That’s what you do with cigars. (Bill Clinton not withstanding.)

If you have an idea in mind for this, but you don’t smoke cigars, you could justify it by indicating you need the smoke for what you’re going to do, or there’s some scent-based Imp involved that clouds the spectator’s mind or heightens something in yours, or you could say, “I stopped smoking these years ago. But I allow myself one, on occasion, as a celebration… if I’m able to pull this off.”

The Minitoire and The Shadow

CP writes:

“I’ve kept up my 100 trick repertoire since you first introduced the idea, and it took my magic to another level. But now in the last 2 years I got married, had a kid, and got a job that’s keeping me much busier than I’ve been in years and the repertoire has fallen by the wayside. Do you have any advice on keeping up the repertoire when life gets busy?”

First, check your priorities.

Would it be possible to adopt the child out? Or quit your job?

If no, then we might have to make changes to how you approach your repertoire.

The 100-Trick Repertoire concept was created to battle against two things:

1. The idea that was trotted out in magic about how you don’t need to know a lot of tricks. You just need to do a few tricks well. “Why is everyone always buying new magic? [Insert dull old magician’s name] did the same four tricks for fifty years!” This is fine if your concern is what you’re going to do for the Keith-Albee circuit. But in social magic, you need to have more varied offerings and evolve more.

2. The other thing I was fighting against was my own propensity to learn a trick, do it for a couple of weeks while it was shiny and new in my mind, and then have it fully fall off my radar completely.

So the 100-Trick Repertoire was something you could build and maintain to give you a wide variety of material to perform, and to keep tricks from falling into obscurity after you’ve performed them a few times.

But it is somewhat of a luxury practice. It requires some time every month to rehearse the tricks in your repertoire that need rehearsing. And time to seek out new material. And time to think of ways of presenting the tricks you know. And just time to occasionally read through the repertoire and refresh your memory about the tricks you know.

If magic is your primary hobby, and life isn’t too busy, this isn’t a huge investment of time. A couple of hours week is very doable.

But if you’re juggling a number of hobbies or life is particularly hectic at the moment, you may not have time to devote to the project.

For you people, let me introduce…

The Minitoire

The Minitoire is a mini-repertoire.

And just like the Minotaur was part-bull, part man...

The Minitoire is part-“I want to have a healthy, ever-evolving, vibrant repertoire” and part-“I have so little time at the moment and I’m worn out by 9pm every night.”

The Minitoire is a 12-trick repertoire, made up of three tricks, in four areas.

So think of four broad areas you want to be prepared to perform in and then pick three tricks in each area.

For example, I might choose:

3 tricks I can do with a borrowed deck.

3 tricks I can do with nothing on me but my phone.

3 tricks I can do with some “interesting object” I keep on display at home

3 tricks I can do with a small prop or gimmick I might carry around with me when I go out.

This will keep you prepared for a good variety of performing situations.

Once a month, take 20 minutes to run through these 12 tricks. If they’re not complicated, you can probably run through many of them in your head.

Swap in new tricks in these categories as often as you like.

The 12 tricks in your Minitoire aren’t the only ones you’ll ever perform, but they’re the only tricks you’re required to actively tend to and rehearse once a month.

There are some tricks that are so easy or so ingrained in you that you don’t really need to rehearse them or think much about them. You’ll still do these tricks from time to time when you think to do one. But you don’t need to put them in your Minitoire. This is your Shadow Repertoire. Tricks that sort of linger in the background of your brain and require no upkeep on your part.

Your full repertoire consists of:

The Minitoire — the tricks that you’re putting some effort into rehearsing and keeping at the front of your mind.

The Shadow Repertoire — the tricks you just sort of know.

For example, if someone hands me a deck of cards to show a trick, I have three tricks from my Minitoire that I’m completely comfortable and on top of and feel ready to perform at all times. So I’m never fumbling in my head wondering what to perform. And I also have a bunch of old card tricks in my Shadow Repertoire that might occur to show them instead, if I’m feeling that.

When you take a trick out of your Minitoire, add it to a list that you keep on your phone or your computer. Once every three months, read through that list to remind you of some of these tricks. Maybe you want to add them back to the Minitoire. Or maybe you remember them enough that they can exist in the Shadow.

I think you need some structure to your repertoire, even if you don’t have a lot of time to devote to it. Otherwise you’ll just perform one go-to trick all the time, or your mind will blank out when someone asks you to perform.

The Minitoire and Shadow Repertoire is a good minimalistic way of structuring your repertoire, without having to devote a ton of time to it.

Mailbag #126

Last Friday’s post never got scheduled for some reason. So if you were wondering where it was, it was just an f-up on my end. There will be an extra post at the end of this month to make up for it.

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I know you’re not much of a fan of the classic force but I used the In and Out technique with the classic force today and it worked shockingly well. I used it with Vanishing Inc’s planetarium trick and the reactions I got with this version were far beyond when I just used the classic force by itself. Perhaps using it with the classic force is something you might want to suggest to people.—TL

Yeah, I’m not sure if it’s a matter of this technique working well with the classic force, so much as it is that it would work well with any force.

Combining deceptions is something I’ve been writing about for a while.

I believe that combining methods is like the Square-Cube Law. The Square-Cube Law tells us that when the size of something doubles, its mass doesn’t double. Its mass is eight times what it was before.

Combining methods is like that. When you have a trick that’s based on one deception and then add another to the mix, it makes the trick much more than twice as deceptive.

The In and Out Technique adds an equivocal beat to any force you might be doing (cross-cut, slip force, classic force, cull force). So if the force you’re doing isn’t already based on equivoque, then adding it to the forcing procedure can boost the deceptiveness significantly.

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In yesterday’s post you mentioned you keep only a small magic library. I’d be really interested (and I imagine the rest of your readers would be too) in knowing what titles you have on your shelf. —CC

I never love giving a specific list of stuff like this because it always ends up sounding much more definitive than it is. It sounds like I’m declaring The Jerx Must-Have Magic Books, when really I’m just saying, “these are the books that I personally like to revisit.” Nostalgia plays a big role in my choices, perhaps more so than the contents of the books themselves.

So here are some of the books I often return to, I’ve probably mentioned them all in the past (given that they are, in fact, the books I return to frequently).

Simply Harkey by David Harkey

This was one of, if not my first, real magic book. At the time, I didn’t know how different it would be from most other magic books, with it’s truly unique premises across a broad range of props.

I don’t do a ton of magic from this book. But I still find it inspiring to read through, and it bring me back to being 13-years-old.

If anyone knows David Harkey, tell him I want him back in the magic world, and I’ll do whatever I can to help make that happen.

As of this writing, Simply Harkey can only be found online used. Most often I see it somewhere between $100 and $150.

The Collected Almanac by Richard Kaufman and The Jinx by Theodore Annemann

The Collected Almanac is one of my other early magic books. The Jinx I found later in life. Both are examples of one of my favorite genres of books—compilations of magic newsletters. Harry Lorayne’s Apocalypse is another example (although I don’t own those books in hardcover). Compilations like these have the most re-readability for me. There’s such a wide variety of material and creators that you’re bound to stumble on something new that grabs you each time you return to it.

The 80s and 90s was the peak of the magic newsletter because of the advent of desktop publishing (and maybe cocaine). It was also before the magic video boom and the internet, so if you had a cool trick, the magic newsletters were one of the few outlets that you had to release it. That trick you see on Penguin now as a $15 instant download would have been in Apocalypse or Richard’s Almanac in 1986.

Richard’s Almanac, Apocalypse, and the Jinx (among others) also had personality. You got to know the people behind them over time, so there was a “realness” to the character behind the writing. It’s sort of like this blog, where you’ve gotten to know me over a decade. Often when people try and put personality into a stand-alone book, it comes off kind of fake or off-putting because it’s not something you’ve been gradually exposed to. It’s just someone writing with some weird energy out of nowhere, and you’re thinking, “Just write-up the stupid trick.”

The Collected Almanac has been reprinted and is available online for about $95.

Bannon’s Book

John Bannon has some classic effects, but even the ones that aren’t “hits” are still mostly really solid “album tracks.” Bannon is my comfort food of card magic. I’ll revisit his books every year or two and almost always find a new trick that calls to me.

Most of Bannon’s books can still be found for sale online.

The Art of Astonishment Books

I think it’s hard for younger magicians to understand the excitement that built up for these books over the course of months in the mid-90s. I don’t know any books these days that come close to it. There’s so much material in these books that you really can’t absorb it all in one read through (even if you take weeks to read it), which is why it’s a series I return to often.

All three books can be found at Vanishing Inc for $135 total.

Mythology Codex by Phill Smith

One thing I hate about magic books is they’re all so large that you’d look like a fucking lunatic if you were reading one on a bus or a park bench or in a coffee shop (where I spend hours every day). When I started writing books, one of the things I kept in mind was I wanted people to be able to put it in a bag and read it on vacation. You can’t do that with Mythology Codex. Your bag wouldn’t fit in the overhead compartment. Mythology Codex is more designed to bash someone’s skull in than to be read casually.

That being said, it’s a beautiful book and it has content that I find very rewarding to revisit.

You can still order this from Phill for 150 pounds.

There’s more to my library than these, but these are the books (other than my own) that I return to most frquently.