AATKT Update

For those of you who purchased the hardcover version of The Amateur at the Kitchen Table, barring unforeseen circumstances, it should ship at the end of September.

At the beginning of September, I will send an email out to verify your shipping address. I can’t ship the book without you verifying I have the right address, so keep your eye out for that.

To save myself some emails, there aren’t any extra copies. There might be a handful of overage copies from the printer, but maybe not. This was the first and only hard cover edition, and the final print edition of this book in any form.

Below is a preliminary sketch for one of the end-sheet illustrations in the book. It depicts one of the first tricks I ever saw at a kitchen table—the four jacks who go into three different parts of the bank to rob it, but they all run out the front door. (That was the version I heard. I know sometimes it’s presented as a multi-level bank and they all go up to the roof. But I lived in suburbia. Our banks were one story.)

The Three Performance Roles

When you perform a trick, you can take on one of three roles.

The Magician

“The coin disappeared because I made it disappear.”

When you play the role of the “Magician,” you are the all-powerful force behind the magic.

“The ace will disappear from this packet, and reappear in this one.”

Why did the ace do that? Because you made it happen.

When you’re going to a theatrical show, where you expect some level of artifice, it’s easy to accept someone in the role of the Magician. Just like it’s easy to accept someone in the role of Hamlet. Or to accept someone in the role of Starchild (in my upcoming stage production of Scooby Doo! and Kiss: Rock and Roll Mystery).

Seeing a magician on stage isn’t that awkward or unusual.

But it can feel out of place at your friend’s BBQ. Just like it would feel out of place to see Hamlet at your friend’s BBQ. “To die, - To sleep, - To sleep! Perchance to dream: - ay, there's the rub! The barbecue rub. Can you pass me that Tonya? I want to get these ribs on the grill.”

And yet, this has been the standard way to perform magic for… centuries?

The Bystander

“What’s going on here? These coins keep disappearing. What the hell?!”

You can present magic as if you’re just a bystander. You don’t know how it’s happening. You don’t know why it’s happening. It’s just happening.

You ball up your paper napkin and toss it toward the trash and it disappears. “What just happened?”

You ask your friend to count how much money they have on them. “This is creeping me out,” you say. “Someone just pushed this letter under the door. It says, ‘I’m watching you. You have $11.63 in their pocket.’ I knew it wasn’t me because I don’t have any money on me. Why would someone write this? How would they know this?”

You act like something creepy or something unusual or something wondrous is “just happening” around you.

It’s a fun way to perform. But there’s no longevity to this style. The minute the second or third strange thing happens, people think, “Ah, I see. It’s just a trick. He’s doing a trick for us and pretending he’s not.”

It has the same issue as playing the part of the Magician. It’s inherently theatrical.

The Enthusiast

This is the third role you can take. You are “someone with an interest in magic.” I could also call this the Dabbler, the Explorer, the Experimenter, the Aficionado, the Seeker, The Hobbyist, The Student, The Participant.

It’s far less awkward to inhabit this role because it has the benefit of being true.

Not only that, but when you embrace this role, you can take on the role of Magician or Bystander now and then, and they won’t come off as “inherently theatrical.”

If everything you do is a demonstration of your “power,” that’s going to ring false. But if you’re an enthusiast of magic, then perhaps occasionally you could access some seemingly real ability. Perhaps not an ability to vanish the statue of liberty or produce doves. But maybe to make that matchstick move with your mind? Hmmm.

If you don’t take credit for any weird thing that happens around you, that’s going to come across as sort of obvious. But if you’re an enthusiast of magic, the perhaps occasionally something strange would happen, or some unusual third party would do something incredible, that you actually weren’t responsible for.

When I perform tricks for people, they certainly will extend into the realm of the fictional and the fantastic. But they always start off with the people involved relating to me as me. Not as some all-powerful god-like being, and not as some phony innocent bystander whom weird things happen around.

And because they know me as someone who is interested in magic, and unusual phenomena, and old rituals, and superstitions, and so on, they’re much more susceptible to letting their guard down and enjoying the experience, because I’m not playing a “character.”

I’ve been banging this drum for a while now—that you should establish yourself as someone with an interest in magic. But I think sometimes people find that hard to do without seeming corny. In an upcoming post, I’ll talk about how to embrace the magic enthusiast role without looking like a goon.

For the Children

A couple of months ago, a young man, Ryan H, asked me to answer some questions as part of a project he was working on for a youth magic group he’s a part of.

I don’t really feel I have anything to say to the youth. My biggest contribution to the younger generation in magic is that I created the GLOMM. And, to be honest, saying, “Hey guys, can you please not molest kids?” is just about the least you can do for children. Yes, I know it’s more than any other magic organization is willing to say, but I’m hardly a hero to the youth.

Anyway, here are Ryan’s five questions and my answers.

What trick have you performed the most in your life?

Structurally, it’s John Bannon’s Directed Verdict (Spectator Cuts to the Aces). I say “structurally” because almost all the time I don’t present it as a spectator cutting the aces, but it’s the same method.

As far as a specific trick I’ve done the most without varying it much, it would likely be Jazz Mentalism by David Humphrey. An ESP match-up routine.

Mentalism seems to get the strongest reactions. Do you think kids should perform mentalism?

Honestly, a mentalist like Derren Brown is most intriguing because people are wondering where the line between fiction and reality exists. Perhaps his mind really can do these things? Nobody is going to believe this about a 9-year-old. They’ll assume everything is just a trick. So you lose that benefit of mentalism.

I’m not saying don’t do it, I’m just saying it won’t be as strong. But perhaps that’s true of all magic.

I’ll say this… Usually, mentalism gets the best reactions because you can’t completely eliminate the role of the spectator. People want to feel like they have some kind of part in what you’re doing besides watching you or holding a coin for you or something.

Instead of worrying about what branch of magic you’re doing and what gets the best reactions, worry about ways of making the people you perform for feel more essential to the experience.

What makes magic a good hobby for kids?

I answered this many years ago, so I’m going to copy that answer and put it here.[The only change I’ve made to the answer is to substitute “stuff” in for “shit” due to your young age. Also, forget that I just said shit…]

Magic encompasses everything because it is essentially nothing. Magic doesn't exist. So when you learn magic you're not really learning magic. Instead, you are learning dozens of other arts and crafts that allow you to present the illusion of magic. Whenever I talk to friends with kids, and we talk about hobbies for the kids, I encourage them to get into magic. Magic is a great gateway to the world around you, and it helps you identify your passions. Outsiders just think of it as sleight-of-hand. But I can't even begin to list all the areas I've had to explore in order to learn and present a particular trick, or magic in general. Writing, acting, comedy, electronics, memory and mnemonics, psychology, gambling, topology, cons, filmmaking, cold reading, juggling, crafting, dance, mime, mathematics, science, history, carpentry, theater, origami, sewing, forgery, animal training, drawing, optics, physical fitness, puzzle solving, and so on and so on. I love that "doing magic" might involve rubber cementing a bunch of stuff together, or memorizing the most popular female names of the 20th century, or determining the sight-lines and angles of every seat in a theater so you can build a stage to vanish an elephant on. Other hobbies don't have that range. If your kid plays piano it's not like, “Oh, well sometimes she sits at the piano and plays with her fingers, and other times she uses different colored light rays to make you think you heard the song.”

Does anything make you sad about writing The Jerx?

I don’t get too sad in general. I’m lucky that way.

When people rip my stuff off, that’s a bummer.

And sometimes I get sad for magicians when they say stuff like, “I love your work, but are all those things you write true?”

I don’t really care if people believe what I write for my sake. But all I really write about is performing for friends or people I meet in my day-to-day life. They’re pretty low-key stories of hanging out with people whose company I enjoy. I’m not like, “And then the Sultan of Brunei saw my Ambitious Card routine and said I was the greatest magician alive and gave me a helicopter!”

On the site (and more so in the books and newsletter) I write about my experiences spending time with friends and showing them magic. It’s a bit depressing if magicians can’t relate to that.

Should kids read The Jerx?

Sure, if they want. Smart ones should. Dumb kids should read the Vanishing Inc blog or something more their speed.

When I was a kid, I was always in the advanced or gifted classes. I believe a lot of that was due to the fact that I tended to hang out with older kids and read things that were made for an adult audience. I started reading Stephen King when I was like eight. You may say I’m confusing cause and effect here, but I don’t believe so.

This isn’t saying much, but The Jerx is the smartest writing on magic being done anywhere. While there are certainly things that aren’t for kids on the site, you’ve likely heard worse. You’ll read some bad words. But if I was your dad (and I might be) I would just be happy that you’re reading something a bit more challenging than your age might warrant.

Until August...

This is the last post until August. Regular posting will resume Monday, August 5th. The next newsletter will be sent to supporters on Sunday, August 4th.

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This video is (unintentionally) a perfect example of Tuesday’s post on Vanishes.

He’s clearly practiced and his technique certainly far surpasses mine. But because he’s trying to hide a red thumbtip in the process, he can never just open his hands and display them normally. So there is no conviction whatsoever that the scarf actually vanishes because he doesn’t do the one thing you would want him to do to prove that.

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Also, related to that post on Tuesday, the Ghost of Lou Tannen wrote me with this fairly comprehensive list of complete coin vanishes…

On a recent post, you mentioned wanting to know more coin vanishes where you actually end with both hands empty. A while ago I made a list of complete vanishes of a single coin (so not a coin from a group like Scotch and Soda or something) that are actually fooling. Here are the techniques I listed:

• Topit

• TKO

• Raven

• Coin on a pull

• Top pocket ditch

• Malini ditch as you pull sleeves back (in side jacket pocket)

• Lapping - esp. revolve vanish 

• Sleeving

• Jack miller hold out

• Greg Wilson's pitch and ditch 

• Fickle nickel

• Folding coin in a thumb tip

It's worth noting that most magicians don't know about the idea of putting a folding coin in a thumb tip, and I've fooled most magicians I've shown it to. It's a very old idea but it's so much fun to fool magicians with a thumb tip. I'm curious what your go to complete coin vanishes are?

The ones I use the most often are this lapping one, occasionally this long distance sleeving one, and one where you false transfer the coin into your left hand (retaining it in right thumb clip) and in the process of waving your right hand over the left, the coin is ditched in your breast pocket. Which I’ve always found to be a particularly satisfying vanish.

I’ve also used a Raven, Pitch and Ditch, and the vanish Joshua Jay does at the end of his three coin routine where the coin is stashed under the watch.

But a folding coin and a thumb tip is a really intriguing option. I’ll definitely play around with that and see how it goes. It won’t be a go-to given the requirements, but there may be a circumstance I can see myself using it.

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Okay, everyone. See you back here in August. Enjoy your mid-summer break. Eat a hot dog. Go to a pool party. Do something.

One Man's Testing: Voice Recognition

I reached a milestone recently that I wanted to tell you about.

It’s regarding phone magic and voice recognition inputs.

I had avoided voice recognition inputs for a long time. I was not alone in this. I think it was generally considered a bad idea. “People know about voice recognition,” people would say. That’s right, they do, I would think.

But as a test, a couple of years ago, I decided to use that input from time to time. I started using it with Earworm, I believe. At that point I told myself, “I’m going to use this until someone busts me on it.”

While I encourage the people I perform for to give themselves over to the experience of the trick. I don’t ask them to turn their brain off. And I frequently get them asking, “Hmm… is that a normal deck? Can I look at that coin? Is that a special Rubik’s cube or something?” Not all in one sentence like that (that would be a weird trick). But in general, I want people to poke and prod at how it might be done. It helps me make the trick stronger. And it makes it more baffling to them if I can prove wrong any assumptions they might have.

So I figured I would be called out on using voice recognition relatively quickly.

And yet, yesterday I had my 100th performance using that input without someone mentioning it. (Not just with Earworm, but also some of David Jonathan’s shortcuts, the new DFBX and more.)

So if you’ve been avoiding it… maybe you don’t need to? 🤷‍♂️

Now, you may want to avoid it because it can fail. Because it can “mishear” you. Which has happened to me five times in those 100 performances. Although less lately. Either it’s gotten better at discerning words or I’ve gotten better at enunciating how it wants me to, or both.

Why doesn’t it get called out? I have a couple of theories.

1. While people understand your iPhone can hear you, and you can tell it something to do, they’re more accustomed to you saying, “Hey Siri” or something like that. Most people who aren’t super-users of their phone don’t really think of setting key phrases to listen for, and then the phone doing something in the background once it hears those.

2. Talking is so essential to performing magic that it doesn’t really raise suspicion. I wrote long ago that suspicion is raised when you do something that feels unnecessary. Just talking doesn’t immediately trip that suspicion.

Now, this was “testing” that was done by me, for people I know. I would differentiate these results from the kind of results we get with wide-scale focus-group testing. I don’t have the confidence that these results are necessarily universal. But you may want to give it a shot if you’ve been avoiding using voice-recognition as an input.

And if you do get caught, play stupid. “Huh? What? You think when I said the name of the song you were thinking of the phone was listening and brought up that song on youtube? Wait… but I would have to ask Siri to do that, right? No? What do you mean? I’m confused. This sounds cool. Can you show me on your phone what you’re talking about?”

Turn it around and make them try to educate your dumbass.

Mail: The Power of Frustrating Logic

I got a bit of a confused email yesterday, but it introduces a point that I want to cover. It’s in regard to the idea I posted on Monday of adding your own notes to Chris Rawlin’s effect Declassified, in order to have a reasonable justification why you won’t just hand over the document at the end of the effect for them to flip through.

The email said:

Rare that I think an idea you come up with is not so good,  but yikes, your justification for the partial examination of the document in Declassified (I don't have it) is pretty lame.

No, no one is ever going to accept that excuse. It will just make them more curious about the document than ever.

"You can then tell them you’ll send them a pdf of the full document if they want to examine the contents more closely. "

No. Would you say, "I can't let you examine this pack of cards, but come by next week and I'll show you one just like it."

Only possible way I could begin to accept that is in a highly structured narrative presentation for one person--you go to the painting of Whistler's Mother's above your bed, move it aside and reveal a wall safe. You crack the safe open and take out the document from there. Maybe, just maybe, then I'll accept the excuse of personal notes too explosive to read, but in a casual setting, no way.

Gotta be a switch, an envelope or folder or something, somehow. They are going to want to look and not be satisfied until they do. —JS

I don’t think anyone else quite misinterpreted the post in this way (I heard from a number of people who own the trick and liked the idea), but just in case, let me clarify things before moving on:

First, writing the notes on the document is not intended to allay suspicion on the document. It's intended to give a story-based rationale for why they can't get a close look at your personal copy of the document. You still give them a look through the doc, showing all the pages as different. That's really all they want to see in that moment. They want to confirm there was lots of different pictures to look at. (If they're thinking "svengali document" you've already lost them.)

Second, the offer to send them a pdf of the document is to reinforce the reality of the document as something that exists in the real world. Again, not to allay their suspicion on my copy of the document. That's why I said it would allow them to examine the contents of the document more closely. So the trick deck analogy is irrelevant. (I've re-written that sentence to remove the word "examine" so people don't misread it similarly.)

Third, putting the document in a safe isn't congruent with my story where I'm someone with an interest in magic, I got a copy of this document, and I've been making notes on how I can use these techniques for mind-reading purposes. I guess if you want to convince people you have state-secrets that they can't look at, that would make sense. But I'm going for something more based in reality.

Think of it this way… If I do a trick involving a photo on my camera roll, I don’t give them free rein to go through my photos. If I do a trick with my Notes App, I don't let them freely look through all my notes. That’s understandable, yes?

So the goal is to turn this from just a print-out of a document to a personal item. One that I’m happy to flip through and show to them. But not something they can have unfettered access to.

I think most people got that, but I wanted to clarify.

Sure, you could put the document in an envelope or folder and switch it, but that doesn’t make the suspicion go away. It just focuses the suspicion on the moment where you’re putting the document in an envelope or folder before giving it to them to examine. Which is similar to doing the shuttle pass before handing something out to be examined.

In this case, I’m not trying to eliminate their suspicion. I’m trying to put a little poison pill into it.

And we do this with a story and a motivation that makes sense.

The thing about saying, “I’ve been keeping some personal notes on this document, so I don’t want to let you look at everything,” is that it’s FRUSTRATINGLY LOGICAL to people watching.

This is the power of a logical story. It’s the power of a reasonable motivation.

The problem so often in magic is that our actions seem unmotivated and unreasonable. “I made these two rubber bands link. But I’m not going to do the most obvious thing and let you look at them in their linked condition. Instead, I’ll ‘magically unlink’ them and then hand them to you to look at.” Oh, okay, Mr. Magician, that makes sense.

But a cohesive story can frustrate an audience by never letting their suspicion coalesce 100%.

This doesn’t mean they’re not suspicious. It just means that they don’t have the comfort of knowing they’re right 100%, because there’s a logical explanation for why they might not be. There’s always that niggling doubt.

If spectators have a little suspicion about something, and there’s no story/motivation in place to counteract the suspicion, then the suspicion takes over completely.

But if they have a lot of suspicion about something, but there’s a logical motivation in place to combat that suspicion, then you at least have a stalemate.

My friend used to do a visual coin bend with a gimmicked coin and a switch at the end. There was always at least a little suspicion at the end on the switch, and that little suspicion ended up killing the effect. “He did something with the coin at the end,” was the feeling.

So then he started performing it this way. He would concentrate on the coin and say it was getting hot. It would begin to bend. “Fuck,” he’d say, “this hurts.” The coin would continue to bend and he’d grimace his way through it. Eventually, he’d say, “Goddammit,” and start shaking his hand in pain and the coin would go flying. After a few seconds, he would go to retrieve the coin from under the couch or behind a chair or wherever he “accidentally” tossed it, and would pull out a normal, examinable, bent coin in the process. “Don’t touch it yet, it’s still hot,” he’d say, and blow on the coin until it had (supposedly) cooled enough that he was comfortable letting them look at it.

Obviously, reaching under a couch allows for much more duplicitousness than just taking the coin from one hand to the other. But because the motivation made sense (“the coin got so hot I dropped it”) they couldn’t dismiss that completely as being part of the deception. It just makes too much sense. It’s frustratingly logical.

Yes, in a perfect world you would visually bend the coin and drop it directly in their hand to look at. In a perfect world you would have them look at any picture in a document, read their mind, and slide the document directly to them for a full examination. But in the real world (the imperfect world), one of the ways to prevent them from latching onto some Easy Answer regarding what happened is to give them a frustratingly logical alternative that they just can’t quite dismiss completely.

This Doesn't Work Like You Think it Does: Vanishes

If you have a vanish of a small object that doesn’t end like this…

then you don’t really have a vanish.

So if you vanish a card and it looks like this…

Or you vanish a coin and it ends like this…

Then what you have is a cute, possibly impressive, bit of finger gymnastics that allow you to hide something that’s still in your hand. But you haven’t convinced anyone the object is anywhere but in your hands.

Obviously in magic we have to make concessions because we’re not performing genuine miracles. But showing your hands empty is kind of the definition of vanishing something. So you can’t make concessions on that part of it. It’s the first and only thing you would do to show something has vanished. 

And there’s just no reasonable justification not to do it.

You can argue that a Book Test is a dumb way to demonstrate mind reading, because why would they need to look at a word in a book? That makes some sense, but I can come up with a reasonable justification for that with the story of the effect.

I can’t come up with a reasonable justification for why I can vanish something, just so long as my fingers are tight together or my hand is in some awkward position. Sure, I could feign a crippling case of arthritis, and live that way for years to really convince people. Then when I vanish the coin and my fingers are kinked in some odd manner, people will say, “Poor guy. The power to vanish coins. But not heal his arthritis.” But that seems like a long way to go.

You might say, “I don’t care. Look, they know they’re magic tricks. So it doesn’t have to be 100% convincing.” I know a lot of performers take that position. And I get that.

Personally, I want them to know it’s a trick, but I still strive to give them no obvious explanations to latch onto.

Of course, that means abandoning a lot of “vanishes” where the object is still hidden in my hand. I’m fine with that. There aren’t a lot of vanishes that end totally clean. But there are enough. I’m always looking for more though. So if you know of any (that I’m unlikely to have heard of), email me and let me know about them.