Revisiting Practical Magic Week's Billet Post
/Five years ago, I wrote about six benefits of creating business cards for some other entity (not yourself) and then using them in situations where you would either use your own business card or blank business card stock for billets/center tears or that sort of thing.
Here were those benefits again:
1. You're not destroying your own business card.
2. You're not carrying around a little pad of blank paper like a little fancy-boy.
3. It's a normal object that you would expect to find in a wallet.
4. If you use your business card or a blank card, then the idea of duplicates is inherent in the prop itself. You don't ever buy just one business card, or one piece of blank paper. These items only exist in multiples. So it's not difficult for a spectator to hazard a guess that there might be a switch involved. Alternatively, if you open your wallet, flip through some stuff, and toss out someone else's business card, this feels much more like it's the only one of these that can possibly be in play. Want to ramp up this singularity even more? Take a pen and write "4:00 Tues." in one of the corners on the business card. Do the same on a pre-folded duplicate. You can now switch these in and out and a duplicate will be so far away from people's thoughts.
5. They can be an unspoken status symbol. Remember, you can create a business card for anyone you like: someone prominent in your area, someone in the entertainment industry, someone in politics. You don't make a big deal about this. Let the other person mention it. For example, maybe I'm about to show someone a trick, I open my wallet looking for something for them to write on and toss Elon Musk's business card onto the table and say to myself, "yeah, I don't need this...." The other person might look at the card before or after the effect and ask why I have it. I'd just be like, "Oh, we were at the same event a couple weeks ago. He wants me to do his Christmas party this year. But that time of year is all about family for me. And as far as I'm concerned, fossil fuels are the future."
6. For me, this is the biggest benefit. Your business cards and blank pieces of paper are presentational dead ends. But you can create a business card to use in one effect that could lead the conversation in any direction you'd like it to go for a follow-up effect. You could have a business card for someone at the FBI, for a parapsychologist, for a futurist, for a casino CEO, for anybody. Why do you have this business card? You've been asked to consult, or give your input on a project, or they want to study you. Whatever, but it's all very fluid. If you're going to perform more than one effect in a casual situation then the transition has to be completely natural, and this gambit allows you to seamlessly flow into any other type of effect.
I’m bringing this post back up because I have a little gift for you from Myles Thornton. They’re a couple of fake business cards that you might consider using in your interactions with people. Here they are (larger files are available at the end of this post—you can just dump them on a business card printing site and have 500 cards for like $10)
I don’t use them as a straightforward prop in a trick. I wouldn’t say, for example, “I met a psychic. Here’s her business card. Want to see something strange with this psychic’s business card?” That’s a little too pat for me. It’s a little too neat. It makes the business card feel like a prop in a trick instead of this thing that’s maybe legitimate that might just lead into something interesting.
Instead, I choose to use stuff like this indirectly.
For example, I’ll just use one of these cards like scrap paper. I just happen to need to have something written down for some other purpose (maybe a trick, maybe just to jot something down), and this is the first thing I find in my wallet to use. I don’t mention what it is. It’s just something to write on. Now, after that trick or demonstration is over, then they may notice what the card is, or I may point out what it is and steer the conversation in a direction based on the nature of the business card.
So maybe I turn the card over at the end and act as if I’m just now noticing what this card is. “Oh, god. This woman was a real kook.” Then I’ll tell some story of how I encountered her and ended up with her business card. Maybe there was some poorly organized magic convention I went to a couple months ago…
“And because it wasn’t clear what the purpose of the convention was, half the attendees were people with an interest in sleight-of-hand and that sort of thing. And the other half were a bunch of weirdo Wiccan chicks. This woman and I started talking during the lunch break. At first I thought she was fairly normal but the more she talked the more I realized she was a nutjob.
“She did show me one weird thing though… hmmm… maybe we can try it…”
Or you can act like you just stumble across the card in your wallet as you’re putting some money away and then you’re like, “Check this shit out,” and then you let the conversation roll into an explanation of why you have it, and let that seemingly inspire a demonstration of something. That will feel very natural, which is what you want in the moment. In retrospect the person might think, “Hey… was he setting me up for that?” But at that point, it doesn’t matter that much. The truth is, people don’t dislike feeling “set up” for something that was done for their own entertainment.
Often I’ll use fake business cards to plant a seed for a later performance. For example, with the exorcist’s card, if I showed that to someone or left it out to be seen on my desk at my workplace (if I had a desk, and had a workplace) someone would be bound to ask me why I have it. I’d keep it a little vague. “I met up with him because I had some questions about this thing I’m working on.” Then, at a later date, I can reintroduce the subject, “Remember that business card I had of that priest? Next time you come over, I have to show you this ring he let me take from his collection of… haunted objects, I guess? Or cursed objects. Or whatever the hell he calls them.” And now I’m setting up some future weird demonstration with some “old, creepy ring.”
This is such a simple technique, but I’ve found people really enjoy when you foreshadow something like this. It automatically sets your magic apart from what they’ve seen before. Most people, when they think of magic, think of something that has a definitive starting point, takes two minutes, and ends and it’s over and done with. To build up the effect with a little backstory is a fairly gentle way to capture people with a more immersive style of magic.
Here are the larger files. Thanks again to Myles for sharing them.