Mailbag #127

I know you said that you were interested in eventually checking out Josh’s new memorized deck work, and I was wondering if you’ve been following any of the initial reviews and impressions. The main area of contention being discussed on the Cafe is the fact that the stack can’t really be displayed face up. You’ve made clear your feelings about that inspectability of props for the casual performer, and I’m curious to hear your thoughts on how you feel about a memorized deck that can’t be casually displayed to be “random”.—FB

I wouldn’t leave Josh’s stack in a wide ribbon spread on the table for people to examine for very long.

But to be fair, in my decades of performing, the amount of times I’ve spread a deck of cards in a wide ribbon-spread to be examined is almost never. It’s not something I really do. I spread the cards from hand to hand. And when doing that, I would have zero issue with using Josh’s stack.

You know how people who don’t like rap or country or polka will say about songs in that genre, “These all sound alike!” That’s because, when you don’t have a familiarity with something, it all kind of blends together because you’re not accustomed to picking up on the nuances of that thing.

As magicians, we see an “obvious” pattern in these cards. Laypeople won’t. I only perform for non-magicians, so that’s all I care about.

Years ago, in our focus group testing, we tried to test how long you could leave a Si Stebbins set deck in front of people before they noticed anything about.

So a Si Stebbins deck was false shuffled.

1. Then spread between the magician’s hands face-up.

2. Then given to the spectator to look through while we said, “Take a look to make sure they’re well mixed.”

3. Then spread in a wide ribbon-spread along the table.

4. Then we would say, “Is that fair”

5. And finally, “Do you notice any pattern in the cards at all?”

This isn’t precisely what we did, because I don’t have the exact details of this test in front of me. But this is pretty close.

The question was, at what step along the way will they bust us? We would wait a beat at each step to give them a chance to question anything. (And they had been lectured that we wanted them to try and catch us out on things.)

I think we only tried this a couple dozen times because no one ever really noticed anything—not even the red/black pattern—until we specifically asked them to look for a pattern. And even then it wasn’t everyone who noticed it.

Mostly, people’s eyes just are absorbing a bunch of colors, letters, and numbers. I don’t think they’re really processing anything.

So, yes, I’m hypersensitive about inspectabiliy, but I’m not super concerned about people noticing patterns in the cards. Especially given the casual way I handle cards and perform.

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I love the gift card crawl.

This might ruin it, but it’s an opportunity for a sort of unknown personal. When you get together, you add up the total value of all the gift cards, and it matches a prediction. Seems like something you could just drop in as you are getting ready to go on the crawl. You have all the cards, someone (you) wonders how much you have in total, somebody adds it up, it matches the numbers drawn by your nephew on a piece of paper on your fridge, that sort of thing. —PM

Yeah, the opportunity is there for something like that. I wouldn’t do it the first year, or else it will feel like that’s the reason why you organized this thing. Let the novelty of this type of interaction carry things for the first year or two. Then maybe introduce some ways to spice it up.

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Re: Is It Fun to Be Fooled

I just read your mini-essay on this topic. And not sure if you were aware, but Michael Close wrote a seminal essay on this topic in one of the Workers books, and his logic always bothered me. He basically contends, as does your friend, that it's NOT fun to be fooled because (I'm paraphrasing, but I recall something close to this) "If it was fun to be fooled, Richard Nixon would still be president."

I took issue with this, and mentioned it to Mike, and he wrote a clarification/modification to his position in his recent Paradigm Shift books, and he basically comes to a similar conclusion that you do. Anyway...I know your essays often break new ground and explore topics that have never been fully fleshed out before...so thought you might like to know about this.—JJ

Thanks for the reference. I assumed this was something that had been discussed in the literature (or, at least it should be… it’s like a foundational question of the art form). I didn’t remember Michael’s original essay, but I must have read it at one point (unless I only went through his Workers series on video 🤔).

I’ve been thinking more about this question. I sometimes think people come to conclusions like:

• People don’t like to be fooled.

• People just want to know secrets.

• People think magic is corny.

And they tell themselves this because:

• People don’t like to be fooled by them.

• People just want to know their secrets.

• People think their tricks are corny.

So instead of thinking of it as their own failure, it’s a failure of the art itself.

But I have bad news for you. In my experience, people love good magic. They like being fooled by it. While on some level they want to know the secret, they understand the value of the mystery as well. And they think really good magic is cool as hell.

Magic is often portrayed as lame, and magicians as dorks, in popular culture because there are a lot of dorks doing lame magic. This is not an issue with magic. It’s an issue with dorks.

Reminder...

This is just a reminder that I’ll be taking January off from working on the site. It will be my first extended break from the site in a few years. My “time off” will actually be spent writing the next book that is going to be sent to all Rich Uncle Millionaire level supporters next May.

If you’re at all curious, the general framework I work in for creating a book looks like this:

There are 18 months between supporter books.

For the first 12 of those months, I’m creating ideas for tricks and presentational techniques and thinking about premises and then testing those ideas out on people to see which ones seem to connect with people and which ones don’t.

On average, I try to test out 3 things each day during this time. So, let’s say 1100 total interactions. Some ideas get tested once and dumped. Some get tested dozens of times. And when I say “tested,” I usually mean “performed.” Although sometimes it also refers to actual testing, like working with laypeople to really break down what aspect of at trick they liked or didn’t like, what fooled them or didn’t fool them, etc.

The next five months, I continue regular performing of the new material. I whittle down the ideas for the next book to about 20-30. I outline the chapters and start to identify the needed illustrations.

Then in the final month, that’s when I actually write the book. I essentially make no other plans for the month and work on the book every day. I may go on a couple of retreats and rent a room or a house somewhere, just to put myself in different environments, but beyond that I’m just focused on writing.

You might think, “Well, Andy, you have 18 months, and 25 chapters or so, why not just write a chapter or two every month? Pace yourself.”

You would think that would be the right thing to do. But I’ve found it works better for me to lay it out like this. You need to have an idea for something, let it sit in your brain for a while, go out and practice it and test it out, then let it sit for a little while longer, then write it up. To be so regimented that I could do that on a rolling three-week schedule is not something I think would work very well. At least not for me. Especially not with writing 250 posts for this site and 400 pages of newsletters in that time as well.

It’s easier to do the books altogether in phases: 1. Creating and testing. 2. Refining and planning. 3. Writing.

And that’s why I need to take January off.

You wouldn’t want to see the posts here if I had to do them at the same time as writing the book.

It would just be like…

Hey, is this anything?

Is It Fun to Be Fooled?

In 1937, Horace Goldin put out a book whose title dubiously claimed…

The question is… Is it?

A magician stating how “fun” it is to be fooled reminds of those pedophiles who try to convince us that kids like being molested by 46-year-olds. I mean, it’s an awfully self-serving position to take.

But, I think you can make an argument they’re right. (The magicians, I mean. The pedos should burn.)

I was having a conversation with someone last week who gave up magic decades ago. “People don’t enjoy being fooled,” he said. “Give me one situation where people like to be fooled?”

“A magic trick,” I said.

“No, I mean another situation,” he said. “You can’t use that as an example. That’s the thing we’re arguing about. My point is people don’t like being fooled which is why they don’t generally like magic. They watch it to puzzle it out. Or hoping you’ll tell them how it’s done. If people liked being fooled there would be a bunch of other things they did in their life to feel fooled.”

“Well, no,” I said. “People don’t like to be fooled in most cases. But magic is the ‘safe’ way for them to explore feeling fooled, mystified, confused, or whatever. The way to be entertained by those emotions rather than threatened by them. People don’t like being scared, but they go to haunted houses and horror movies. People don’t like being sad, but they’ll watch a tearjerker or read a sad book. People don’t like to be in danger, but they’ll go on a roller coaster to get the feeling of danger. I don’t think people like being fooled generally but I do think they like it in the right context.”

Of course, this must be something that’s covered in some magic theory book somewhere, but it was my first time putting it together for myself. As humans, we like playgrounds where we can safely experience negative emotions. And magic is such a playground.

People don’t like to be fooled. People don’t like to be deceived. People don’t like to be outsmarted.

They don’t like these things IN REAL LIFE.

This is why I say that my first goal is to get them to understand that it’s fake, and that we’re both on the same page about that. Only then do I put a ton of effort into making it feel like maybe it’s real.

Of course, there are some people who just don’t like magic. But I think those people are pretty rare.

Most people don’t mind being fooled by a trick. But people don’t want you to try and fool them about the nature of the experience. If you’re trying to pretend you can really read their mind or bend a spoon with your thoughts, that’s what turns people off.

People also don’t want to feel like the goal of this exercise is to make them feel stupid. And if you do a meaningless card trick or coin trick, it can be hard for them to see any other point to this than you showing off how you can fool them.

But if you can give your tricks an engaging premise and context, people realize there’s more to the experience than getting fooled. It’s an interactive bit of personal theater. There’s a story there. And for the story to play out, something mystical or impossible has to happen. That’s why you’ve created this moment. Not just to show how clever you are.

If you can couch being “fooled” in that sort of encounter, then I think Horace Goldin was undoubtedly right. It’s fun to be fooled in the service of a compelling story or experience.

The problem many magicians have is that they aren’t fooling.

Or if they are, then they’re just fooling. Which actually probably isn’t that much fun.

Another question remains… Did Horace Goldin actually know shit about fooling people? Here’s him performing the “classic” Bunny From A Dog’s Stomach That Disappears Into A Single Sheet of Newspaper, Suspiciously Delivered On A Tray.

A Dumb But Effective Card Vanish

Here’s a card vanish that is a little dumb, method-wise, but it’s super easy and works well with my style of magic and is more or less impromptu. I doubt there’s anything “new” here, but it’s also not a standard technique. Likely because it’s best for one-on-one situations and not the sort of thing that would be useful table-hopping or something like that.

I start with a deck of 51 cards. If I’m getting into this unplanned, then I just leave one card in the card-case when I take the deck out.

Your friend can choose any card and sign it without you knowing what it is and shuffle it back into the deck themselves. (Alternatively, if the card isn’t signed, you will need to know what it is via a force or a peek.)

Without taking the deck in my own hands, I tell them I’m going to make their card disappear.

I do something to imply I’m making the card disappear.

I tell them to deal the cards into my hand and count them as they go.

There are 51 cards.

“But maybe the deck was always missing a card. That’s possible. That’s certainly much more likely than that the card vanished, right? I want you to be absolutely sure so we’re going to go through just a few cards at a time and see if we see your card.”

I deal one card face-up on the table.

“Is that yours?”

No.

I deal two more.

“Either of those?”

No.

I deal three more.

“These”

No.

I continue dealing through the cards like this, just a few at a time, until we’re completely through the deck. Their selection is gone. They can completely examine the deck.

The card reappears wherever you’ve set it up to. In your wallet. In their purse. Back at their house in their baby’s diaper.

Method

Long-time readers will see why this sort of method appeals to me. There’s a real relaxed air to it. The card can be selected, signed, returned to the deck, and shuffled back into the pack, completely in their hands.

Dealing through the deck a few cards at a time is part of the method, but it also feels like a casual and fair way to be certain their card is gone.

The method is—as I said—nothing really interesting. I’m dealing through the cards, face-up on the table. The cards are angled at me. So I’m just keeping an eye out for their signed card (or the card I peeked). When I spot it as we’re going through the dealing process, I just take the few cards above it and leave it on the face of the pack.

As I lay down the few cards in my right hand for them to look at, I thumb off the card from the deck onto my lap. Their attention is on the cards being placed on the table, nowhere else.

Once we get to the end of dealing through the cards, I push the pile toward them and say, “Maybe it got stuck to another card or something. Double check.”

At this point, you can load the card into your wallet or an envelope (or an envelope in your wallet (or an envelope in your wallet inside of a low-carb tortilla)).

It’s a minor part of the deception, but I think it’s important to do the thing where you start with 51 cards. This way, the initial “vanish” happens while the cards are still in their hands. It’s not convincing at this point, but it’s slightly suggestive that something may have happened. And it justifies the idea of dealing through a few cards at a time to see if their card is really gone.

You may feel it’s stronger to not have the cards signed. Then you apparently couldn’t know what it is as you deal through the deck. In some cases I do it like that. It really depends on where the card is going to be revealed whether I want it signed or not.

Recently, I’ve been doing this with a wingman. Actually, I’ve been the wingman when doing this the last couple of times. My friend did this twice recently when he met up with people in public. Once the card is in his lap, I steal it away. (At one place we did it, he let it fall to the floor and kicked it over to me. At another, there was a bench along one wall of the café with multiple tables and chairs off that bench. We both sat on the bench side of the tables and he slid it down to me along the bench.)

Before the trick starts, he asks the person he’s with to name a place. “Not like Paris or something. Somewhere in the general area. Somewhere we could get to easily.”

After I get control of the card, I leave and plant the card somewhere at the place she named. Then I text my friend with a pic or other details so he knows exactly where to find the card when he gets there.

We have some other techniques we use to force the specific location the card will appear (at the general location they chose) once they arrive.

For example, a timing force where the spectator stops the magician “anywhere” as they point their finger and rotate in a circle. Things like that.

So it’s a complete card vanish, appearing anywhere the spectator names. This is unfathomable stuff to a layman who has no idea you’re working with someone else.

Harsh Truth

I saw this post on Facebook a few weeks ago.

I have bad news for you. Little kids aren’t “rough.” They’re just honest.

Adults also want to look in all the pockets and touch all the things as well, but they don’t do it. They’re too “kind.” So they just think, “Well, I’m sure if I looked in that pocket or touched that thing, I’d know what was going on.”

You vanish a coin, and the kid thinks, Did he put it in his pocket? And the kid says, “I think you put it in your pocket. Let me see in your pocket!”

You vanish a coin, and the adult thinks, Did he put it in his pocket? He probably did. Yes, of course he must have. And they never actually say anything.

Magicians, because they’re delusional. think the kid is being difficult, but that they fooled the adult. They didn’t. The adult is just being nice or doesn’t give enough of a shit to bother asking. They think they know the answer anyway. They don’t want to embarrass you.

When I took nominations for the The Worst All Time magic trick, I heard back from the creator of one of the tricks that got nominated. He told me that the issue that the person had with his trick wasn’t a real issue. He told me that he had performed the trick over 200 times and no one had ever mentioned it.

This is like the people I complained about in the No Questions post. When you ask these people, “Don’t people assume it’s a gimmicked deck?” Or, “Don’t people want to examine the book?” They say, “No one ever questions the deck.” “No one ever questions the book.”

This logic: “If no one openly questions something… they must not have any issue with it!”

Is the same as this logic: “I encountered 150 people today. None of them called me ugly. Therefore… I must be really attractive!”

The most productive way to deal with an audience’s doubts or questions is not to wait until they bring them up. Instead, consider the Easy Answers and think about which ones affect the tricks you’re showing them. Then do whatever you can to address those. These are the “Easy Answers” because all audiences have them at their disposal. If you don’t address the ones that apply to your trick, your trick is incomplete.

Don’t delude yourself.

Think of the facebook post that started off this post. The kids are “rough” because they want to check things out.

Kids are just really dumb adults… you don’t think adults want to check things out too?

A little kid waits outside an elevator door. The doors open and he sees this…

“Wow, you’re a fat one!” the kid says.

Why? Because the kid is a dolt who says whatever comes to his mind.

Not one in 1000 adults would say that when the elevator doors open. But a good percentage of them are thinking it.

To perform the strongest magic, you’re going to need to do some actual mindreading and not just wait for some uncouth imbecile to call you out on something.

Mailbag: Black Friday New Releases

I’m interested to hear what your thoughts were on the Black Friday new releases this year. I don’t mean your thoughts on the deals, but on the tricks themselves. Were there any that you picked up? I have a tendency to get seduced by the sales and not think clearly and end up with a bunch of tricks I never use lol. —CT

As of yet, I haven’t picked up any of the new Black Friday releases from Penguin or Vanishing Inc. Like you, I have a tendency to ignore my critical thinking and just buy stuff because there is some deal or rewards during Black Friday. This year I decided to wait and see.

But here, briefly, were my initial thoughts on the releases:

From Penguin

Razor Card to Wallet by Josh Burch

Card to Wallet isn’t really a premise that appeals to me that much. For that reason, I didn’t even really give this much consideration.

Cheater Chips by Craig Petty

From my understanding, these are essentially marked poker chips. I like the marking system used. But I can’t get over the fact that poker chips are already marked. They’re different colors. That’s almost literally the whole point of poker chips. While I think I could maybe justify these presentationally, that’s not something I really want to do. So this isn’t on my to-buy list.

The Vanishing Card Case by Nicholas Lawrence

Vanishes are so impossible that they generate a lot of heat on things. And unless a vanish is profoundly clean, I feel people tend to dismiss it. In this case you have a deck of cards that is displayed a little death-grip-y which goes into an object (a card clip) that is a total anomaly for people outside of magic. While I think the vanish looks nice, I do think there’s a good chance people will just assume there was something funny about the deck and the card clip. So it’s not for me.

Heroes and Villains by Craig Petty

This is a marked deck of cards with Heroes and their corresponding Villains. There is also a book test element to the information on the front of the card. I’ll end getting this one. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it yet. I’m not a big fan of doing lots of different tricks with these special decks. I think that is more likely to suggest they’re special magic cards.

If you say, “I saw these at the dollar store last week and I had an idea for something we might be able to try with them,” that feels “real” to me.

Whereas, “I’m going to do a full act with this ordinary deck of Heroes and Villains cards” feels like, “Here’s my trick deck of Heroes and Villains cards.”

But I don’t doubt I’ll find one or two ideas that really work well with these.

Missing Finger by Mario Lopez

I think this looks pretty great and would totally shock people if done casually and impromptu.

My issue is just that I’m probably not going to carry around a gimmick for something that should feel like a spontaneous moment of visual magic. So I don’t see myself getting this.

Easy Writer by Franz

I love the concept of secret writing devices and the number of different effects you can do with one.

That being said, I’ve never been 100% happy with one either and so I try out each one that gets released. I’ll be picking this one up too.

Vanishing Inc.

Notion of Motion by Angelo Carbone

This is Angelo’s fabled “any freely named card” version of the rising card. I will likely get this. Although here are some things to think of…

I got an email last week that asked:

I just saw the trailer for Carbone’s Notion of Motion. It looks like such a powerful effect, but to my taste way too “on the nose” to be as magically beautiful as it could be. 

Do you have any thoughts on a “casual magic wrap around” for it? —BK

The email makes a good point. As magicians there is a depth to this trick, because we approach it with the understanding of how the Rising Card traditionally works. So there’s that higher level of interest. But for normal, non-magicians I don’t know that it has much more resonance than any other version of the Rising Card.

In fact, what if we use the Green Grass Test and imagine a world where this version of the Rising Card had been around for 100 years and then somebody came out with a “new” version. The new version could be done with a borrowed, shuffled deck, and the card could rise when the magician wasn’t even holding the pack. (Which is what’s possible with many standard versions of the rising card.) Would we not be thinking of that as the exciting new advancement in method?

I don’t know. It’s just a thought experiment. I’ll definitely pick this up and let you know if I come up with anything particularly interesting for it presentationally.

Poker Packet Trick by William Tyrell

I think this looks really good, but if I do something super visual with cards that can’t be examined, I don’t know how to get people to not think, “Let me see those cards.”

So for that reason, I won’t be picking this up.

I know other performers feel they can get away with this stuff, but I can’t.

Mortenn’s Jumbo Card

This looks pretty clean. But ultimately, the effect is a card prediction. I have more of those than I need.

The Particle System by Joshua Jay

I’ve been waiting for this to come out for a long time. I don’t know if I’ll adopt his “system.” But I’m a fan of Josh’s and I’m always curious to study his thinking, so I’ll be interested to see what I might be able to take from this to possibly incorporate into my own work.

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So yeah, those were my initial thoughts while going through the Black Friday new releases. It’s certainly possible I won’t like something I decided to get or that I’ll loop back around and end up picking up something I originally dismissed. We’ll see in time.

Until December...

This is the final post of November. Regular posting will resume, Monday, December 2nd and the next newsletter will be sent to supporters on Sunday, December 1st.

So it’s just a quick break before we pick back up again next week.

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A couple more Spex Mix references that have been sent to me since last Thursday’s post:

From PM:

You can add Ben Earl’s Shuffled Ose Control from Less is More to Joe McKay’s list:

Hand the spectator the deck. You’re going to walk them through the Jay Ose false cut, but after the put the top third on the table, they shuffle. Then they cut another group on the table, and shuffle the rest. These go on the table and the deck is assembled, keeping a top stock of however many cards the spectator cut the first time.

From M.K. (and others)

So Sato has a thing called "Mass Destruction Stacking" in his book Secrets of So Sato: https://www.conjuringarchive.com/list/book/930?highlight=45446

One packet is never disturbed and becomes the bottom of the deck.

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Carefree Philosophy in Action.

New Wave is a new version of B’wave where the card the spectator is thinking of is the one turned over in a packet of four in your wallet. The other cards are shown to be blank and the chosen card has a different back.

The improvement here is that it can be done with a value freely named by the spectator.

Previously, I would ask myself things like, “Is this a good trick?” “Will it fool people?” “Can I come up with a good presentation for it?”

Now I ask myself, “Am I going to carry around an extra fat fucking wallet just for the possibility I might want to show someone this trick?”

The answer is no.

The trick may be good. It might make sense in a walkaround magic situation where you’re carrying props for a specific “set” of magic. But for the amateur magician, I don’t think it’s great.

It’s not a bad trick (that I can tell). It’s just an anti-Carefree trick. You’re so pocket-committed to the trick that it would be pretty much the one trick you would be showing people whenever you were carrying it.

Not only that, but it’s a trick you can get 80% close to with well-structured equivoque and other linguistic deceptions. Enough so that a laymen would unlikely be able to tell the difference.

I know this isn’t a consideration for everyone, but I just wanted to mention this as an example of how this philosophy is affecting what I do or don’t choose to invest my time and money in.

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This isn’t magic related, but it was a fun, social thing I came up with along with my friend Ruby last week.

She was going through her wallet and finding a bunch of gift cards that she hadn’t used despite having them for years. She was mentioning how it made her feel bad because these were gifts and she was appreciative of them, but she never really thought to use them. I told her I had the same situation. I had gift cards for restaurants and Barnes & Noble and Target and stuff like that all piled up at home and I never remembered to bring them with me, even when I would shop at those places.

In a way, this is a good sign. It means I’m not so desperate for money that a gift card is making some big impact on my life when I get it.

But, at the same time, I shouldn’t let them go to waste. Gift cards might not be the most thoughtful gift in existence, but I’m still pretty appreciative of one when I get it.

Then I had an idea. Ruby and I would get our friends together for an event: A Gift-Card Crawl.

We gathered a few friends together, who also had their own gift cards to use and we met up in the morning and planned out our day. We went from place to place: eating, shopping, going to the movies. It was an all-day thing. It was fun just to be hanging out with friends all day, but also to have this “mission” of going through our cards.

When we used a card we would take a picture of the person whose gift card it was, posing with what they bought, and they’d send it to the person to who gave them the card. “Just bought a burger and fries from Five Guys with the gift card you gave me last Christmas. It was SO good 😋 Love you!” That’s part of the gift-card crawl. Saying thank you. We heard back from a number of people who seemed touched they were remembered.

Maybe it sounds stupid, but it was fun. If you have a group of friends who like getting out and doing stuff, then a Gift-Card Crawl might just be the sort of goofball shit your friends would like to. And you can stop at a bar between stops if you feel the need to amp it up.

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Okay, boys and girls. See you in December!