The Dick That Fooled Einstein
/Effect: You approach a guy and say, "I bet my dick is as long as yours, plus the length of this peanut, and enough left over that when added to the length of your dick it equals eleven inches." When you measure everything out, it turns out to be true.
Method: All you need is a 2 inch peanut and a 13 inch cock. Besides that the trick is self-working.
(This is, of course, a variation on this, the Trick That Fooled Einstein. Maybe you're not packing enough in your underpants to pull it off. But I bring it up only to suggest that there are some presentational possibilities for the effect that exist beyond counting objects that you might want to consider.)
Friday's post is going to be about organization. Specifically it will be about how I organize my ideas and keep track of the routines in my repertoire. I think the amateur magician needs a good way of tracking effects because -- and I'm going to say something that goes against pretty much everything you hear about how many tricks you should know -- I think the amateur magician should have about 100 routines in his active repertoire.
One of the points I make in The Amateur At the Kitchen Table is that magic is often seen as a performance in casual situations and that's somewhat weird for people. The goal of TAATKT is to try and embrace magic not as a series of distinct performances that you show people but as a character trait that you possess; an ability to manipulate situations in playfully mysterious ways.
It's the difference between knowing 6 jokes really well and being a funny person. If you only know 6 jokes or only know 6 tricks you are limited in the ways you can get into those tricks organically. But with a repertoire of 100 effects you have exponentially more inroads. And this larger "vocabulary" of effects gives you many more opportunities to perform naturally. This isn't about inundating people with tricks. It's about having the right trick when the moment arises.