Mailbag #121

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What trick of yours is Derren Brown talking about in this video around the 52 minute mark? Is this available somewhere?—OL

He’s talking about my presentation for the Invisible Deck called In Search of Lost Time.

That trick is available on the site here.

With further discussion about it here.

An interesting detail about Mac King came out in this recent email exchange I had with him.

Good morning. Just wanted to congratulate you on your answers to that kid Ryan’s email questions. Particularly the question about why magic makes a great hobby. Delightfully insightful. And then I flatter myself by thinking that the rest of the email was similar to my experience growing up. Are you sure I’m not the person who writes The Jerx? —Mac King

My response:

There's only one way to tell if this is a Fight Club scenario and I'm you during some fugue state…

Tonight I'm going to put a traffic cone in my asshole up to the point where it starts to hurt. Then I'm going to push it a few inches deeper. Tomorrow, make note of how your anus feels. It's foolproof. (Unless you regularly wake up with a mysteriously sore asshole.) 

He replied:

If a traffic cone is snug in your ass then we are definitely two different people. An entire traffic cone would easily slip into my sphincter without any lubrication. 

I wanted to make sure this detail was captured for any future Mac King biographers. Wouldn’t want this nugget lost to time.

Dustings #113

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The winner of the Gumbo song cover contest has been notified and will be posted here in the future. The other submissions will be receiving Gumbo the trick. Or, more likely, I’ll just paypal them $20 to buy it themselves if they want. So they can watch it morph, watch it last, etc.

I read this line in the book, A House With Good Bones by T Kingfisher, and I’ve been using it sometimes when I’ve flipped from talking about something semi-normal to something crazier.

The other day I was telling someone how there is an old ritual that can be used to induce coincidences.

It’s at this point I’ll often get a look—especially if they haven’t seen me do too much magic. The look says, “Does he believe this? Does he expect me to believe this? What exactly is going on?”

It’s here I say this line, “Yes, it’s impossible. I know it’s impossible. I am telling you this, knowing that it’s impossible. The impossibility is the point.”

The idea is to harp on the impossibility so it leaves no misunderstanding about what it is I’m suggesting. It makes it clear I’m not a lunatic. It makes it clear I know what reality should be.

It’s the difference between going up to someone and saying:

“This is going to sound crazy. I want you to know that I know it sounds crazy. And I wouldn’t believe it if someone said it to me… but there’s a dragon in my basement.”

As opposed to just walking up to someone and saying,

“There’s a dragon in my basement!”

The remnants of Hurricane Debby came through New York today and knocked out the power to the café I was writing in. After waiting around for about 10 minutes to see if it would come back on, I decided to head home. On my way out, Bella, the barista, pointed at me and said with mock accusation, “You did this!”

I walked over to her.

“That’s right,” I said. “I’m not someone to be messed with.”

As I walked out, I turned back to her and said, “I’ll fix it.” I held my hands out in front of me, paused, and then clapped them together.

For a beat, nothing happened.

But as I was about to say, “That would have been cool though,” the lights flickered on.

So I ended up saying, “That…There you go.” And flashed her the peace sign and backed out the door as she stood behind the counter with her mouth hanging open.

She’s a little chatterbox who talks up everyone who comes in, so I have a feeling this story may grow to legendary status before I return there next week.

Mailbag: Bullies/Hecklers

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Hey, I'm probably one of your younger readers. [Irrelevant personal detail.] I'm still in high school and I've been trying to follow your advice about performing more. Most of the time it’s great but sometimes people make shitty comments. It's like heckling I guess but since we’re in school it feels more like bullying. They don’t try to reveal my tricks, it’s just general comments about the trick (or me) being stupid or lame. Do you have any tips for a comeback or a trick to shut them down?—TH

You can search “heckler” on this site for examples of how I handle such people on the rare occasions I encounter them.

For your particular situation, the best idea is to avoid performing when people like that are around. You want to be cultivating a group of people who are into seeing what you do, not spending your time dealing with some douchebag who doesn’t like it (or feels threatened by it).

If you can’t avoid it, then you shouldn’t be looking for a comeback to “shut them down” and certainly not a trick.

If someone says something shitty to you, your first instinct might be to say something shitty back. Your next instinct might be to ignore it. These are bad ideas, especially if you are in some way “lower status” than them (less popular, physically smaller, etc.).

If you do those things then you’re giving them what they want. You’re showing them they affected you and “hurt” you in a manner where you felt the need to lash out or shut down.

Instead, think of it like this… have you ever had, like, a 2-year-old cousin start punching you in the shoulder? And you might sarcastically play along like he’s hurting you. “Oww, stop, noooo, you broke my arm.”

This is the attitude you can bring to these types of interactions where someone is being verbally rude or aggressive with you.

So if Todd is like, “What a fucking magic-dork you are.”

You just put your hand on your heart and let a phony pained expression come across your face. “Todd, how could you say such an awful thing!” Then immediately drop the pained attitude and turn to someone else and engage them in conversation.

This lets Todd know:

  1. I heard you

  2. I understand what you were intending to do with your remark

  3. I really don’t give a shit

You can also steal a line from my friend Tim, who will often say this, in mock offense…

"YOU say THAT to ME?”

He says it like he’s the queen.

He says it as if every element is appalling to him.

That YOU would have something to say.

That it would be THAT.

And that you’d say it to ME.

Pretending to be offended when someone is genuinely trying to offend you is about the best thing you can do. Especially if that person feels they’re superior to you in some way.

This is actually a devastating psychological ploy. If someone is trying to get you to feel any emotion (happy, upset, aroused, etc.) and you want to destroy them, just obviously pretend to feel the emotion they were trying to produce.

The email writer is in high school, so imagine you waited all year to approach a girl you like. You go up to her and say, “You look really nice today.” It would hurt if she made a face or just turned away, or otherwise rejected you in some way. But what would really make you shrivel up is if she acknowledged it by sarcastically pretending to care. “Oooohh… gee thanks. How will I even be able to sleep tonight after getting such a great compliment from such a cool guy? Oh wow. Is the room spinning or am I falling in love?”

AATKT Update

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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

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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

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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...

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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.

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.

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.

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