Monday Mailbag #36
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What’s the latests we can send Christmas cards to you for the purposes of the trick you’re working on? —WP
Well, I’ll take Christmas cards at any time. But it’s probably best if I have them by the 20th or so. My plan at this point is to try out the trick with a few different people, and I may do so throughout the holidays, so I’ll likely be able to use cards I get after that time as well, but that would be best for my purposes. Thanks for asking!
If you’re like any other magician I know, I’m sure you have a large quantity of tricks and magic supplies you don’t use. Being in quarantine has had me thinking about offloading a vast majority of my surplus. If I were to individually sell playing cards on eBay, I’d probably still be selling them in several years from now. Any ideas on how to offload in mass quantities? And also maybe a good charity to offload some of the lower cost magic items? —JT
I assume you mean individual decks of playing cards. At least, I hope you do, or you will be selling those for probably centuries, not years.
I don’t have an answer to your question, but I’m putting it up here in case someone else does. I’ll let you (and everyone else) know if I get any good responses.
Will you be releasing any stand-alone effects in the future? Either to your supporters or just to the general magic community? —RS
Yes, most likely. I’ve had some stuff on the back-burner for years now that I’ve been wanting to put out and I intend to do so starting next year. It’s always been a scheduling issue. With three different writing outlets (the site, the newsletter, and the books) there just was never a point of downtime to make other projects a priority. Next year, I’m planning on implementing a new schedule with blocks of time set aside to work on some stand-alone effects.
If you’d like to go on scavenger… At some point in the last three years I did release an effect. It was a normal magic release that you can find available through pretty much any magic site online.
The idea to do this came from one of the friends and supporters of this site who is a magician/mentalist who regularly releases tricks to the magic community. He wrote me an email about one of my posts and said that I should have released it as a separate item.
This got us talking about different effects we had worked on and the response they received from other magicians.
This was an email exchange that went on for weeks and went all over the place. But the upshot of the emails was that we decided he would release a trick of mine commercially as if it was his.
We worked out the financials of how this would all go down, and a few months later I sent him three tricks to consider. I asked him what he felt was the strongest trick and the weakest. Then we agreed that he would release the weakest trick as if it was his, right around the time I released the strongest trick here on the site. (When I say “strongest and weakest,” we’re not talking about the difference between “good and bad”—it was more the difference of “great vs pretty good.”)
There wasn’t really any big purpose to this experiment. And I don’t know what, if anything, we proved. My “pretty good” trick (which he released under his name) sold very well, got a lot of praise, and generated an extended thread on the Magic Cafe that went on for months.
The better trick, which I posted here for free, created a small buzz in my email box for a couple days and then I was on to something else.
You might think that would make me want to release stuff commercially so that it “gets it due” or whatever. But for better or worse, I don’t have that inclination. A lot of the stuff I put up on the site is silly or limited in value, and there is a lot of stuff that is also very powerful. I sort of like just throwing it all out there and letting people come to their own conclusions. I know there are some people who overlook stuff here, because they assume it wouldn’t be up for free on a blog if it was any good. But I also know there is a group of readers who weigh the value of everything, and that’s really my target audience. I just want to have fun writing the site, not hold people’s hands through the whole thing.
In a future post someday (or maybe in a book that details the behind the scenes goings on of this site), I’ll tell you who the other magician was and what the trick we released was. But for now we have some other secret collaborations planned that I don’t want to tip you off to.
Going back to the topic of releasing individual effects, yes, that is something that is likely to happen. They probably won’t be released broadly. Just here on the site and in limited quantities.
Don’t forget my favorite use of the faro shuffle, which I realize doesn’t fit your performing style, but I love throwing it in unnecessarily when a trick doesn’t require it. Really throws off knowledgable onlookers. —CW
That’s a great idea. I’m fortunate enough not to spend too much time with people “in the know” (i.e. magicians). But if I find myself in their company, I’ll use that.
“Okay, so we just give the cards a random mix….” Hold the deck three inches from my face, weave and unweave a couple of times like I didn’t hit it exactly. That sort of thing.
I’d probably use it with a one-way force deck with one random card on the bottom. Have them cut to a card and look at. Hold an obvious break when the packets are put back together and get an obvious peek when I turn the deck over for no reason. Ask for any number between 1 and 52. Act like I’m calculating the in and out faros I need to do to get their card at that number. Do a few faros. Then deal down to the card at their number.
And yes, I did see the article about potential sexual impropriety and racism at The Magic Castle. (I have a google alert set up for news stories with the worlds magician and abuse in the same article. For the most part, all the articles that have come up this year have been about some British show called Coronation Street which apparently had an abusive magician on it or something?)
I have no real thoughts about it as I’ve never been to the Castle, much less been a member. And most of the allegations weren’t really magician-specific. (Except the ones that were like, “Magicians are creeps to women on stage.” Yeah, no shit.) So I don’t have much to say.
However, I always love juicy gossip so if anyone has any inside dirt I’d love to hear it. It could be for my eyes only. Or if you want others to read it, I’d be happy to post it anonymously.
This goes for the Magic Castle situation or anything else magic related. Is Brad Christian constantly making comments about his staff’s “taut buttocks?” Did a certain former precocious child magician and now current co-owner of an online magic shop, watch this kid on the Ellen Degeneres show and say, “You dumb mick. You think you’re going to pull off the cute child magician act? I invented that act, motherfucker. I will always be that cute child. You come at the king, you best not miss, bitch.”
If so, you can spill the dirt to me. I’ll keep your secret or broadcast it. Whatever you want.