Magician Foolers Part One: No Glove, No Love

These days when I hear the term "magician fooler" I tend to think about things like this card to condom trick  on Ellusionist. This is the sort of trick that looks like it was put together by some concerned Jerx readers who were worried I didn't have enough to talk shit about. Thanks guys, but I don't need you to set the ball on the tee for me to that extent. I'm all set content-wise. 

The effect itself is neither here nor there. I could get away with performing it and I even have some interesting ideas for it presentationally, but I would never use it because it says Magix on the packaging. So even in the best of circumstances where you could pull the trick off in a clever, perhaps mildly risqué way, it ends with the spectator's "souvenir" being a direct link to the name of the magic product. I don't know who is responsible for that dipshittery, but it's completely fucking boneheaded. "Let's make a card vanish and reappear in an ordinary object." Okay, good idea. "But then let's make it clear via our branding that it's NOT an ordinary object. In fact, let's put the name of the trick itself on the trick." Oooohhh... savvy marketing!

In an ideal world you shouldn't carry anything with you that's obviously a magic prop. But if you have to, just go all out and carry around some plastic Tenyo prop before this thing. Here is the hierarchy of pathetic-ness in regards to what you can be caught carrying with you as a magician:

1. Non-magic props - Not pathetic
2. Deck of cards and/or Silver Dollars - Mildly pathetic
3. Obvious magic props - Pathetic, but potentially charming in a sad-nerd way
4. A fake non-magic prop that is clearly a magic prop - Embarrassing for you and everyone around you who either has to be a jerk and call you out on it or play along with your transparent bullshit
5. A fake non-magic prop that is clearly a magic prop that is meant to look like a condom - Heartbreakingly pathetic. If I had a son and I walked into his room one day to find him dead from auto-erotic asphyxiation, wearing his mother's panties on his face like a bandit's bandana, holding a picture of a bull terrier's butthole in his hand and he had one of these fake condom's in his pocket, the first bit of scene staging I would do would be to get rid of this fake condom magic trick. He just can't be remembered that way.

I call the trick a "magician fooler" because it's really trying to take advantage of 13-17 year-old boys, and older awkward virgins, who think that if they do a trick with something that's related to sex it will make them seem like sexual entities. Sorry, boys, it's not going to work. A condom is maybe mildly racy, because your dick goes in it, but by that logic you could try and woo women with a color-changing Depends diaper. Condoms may be "sexy" in a very abstract, "this guy is looking out for my health and safety" kind of way. But removed from the act itself they're just going to be weird and off-putting to those girls in your earth science class. "Here's the little rubber tube I put my ding-dong in so when I squirt my jiz I don't give you gonorrhea " Oooo, daddy, so sexy! Trying to seduce a woman (as the ad suggests) with this type of trick would be like adding this song to your fuck-mix.

And finally, Ellusionist, don't hesitate to put me on your payroll. I could have fixed this for you. "Let's come up with a presentation that justifies the usage of a condom," I would have said. "Let's not put the name the trick is marketed under on the trick itself," I would have suggested. Then I would have offered you a new name for this effect. The perfect triple entendre of a name that would invoke conjuring, dick-slang, and a safe-sex cautionary tale. What would that name be? Simple. Two words: Magic Johnson.