Dustings #32
/A lot of people didn’t believe me when I came out as Mac King. Despite the fact there was video evidence of me saying I’m him (I mean, that I’m me). Yes, that video was posted directly after I came out as being Derren Brown, so maybe it was confusing. But I was clearly lying about being Derren Brown and telling the truth about being Mac King. Didn’t you learn anything about spotting lies from my tv specials? Sorry… I mean, didn’t you learn anything about spotting lies from Derren Brown’s TV specials? That’s a Derren Brown topic. Micro-expressions and what not. That’s something Derren would cover. Not me, Mac King. (I’m not Derren pretending to be Mac. Promise.)
Anyway, you will soon have further proof of who I am. Watch my appearance on Fool Us tonight where I will be performing a trick I posted here many years ago. If I’ve accomplished nothing else, at least when someone goes back to watch season 7 of Fool Us, they will find that episode 24 is entitled, “The Magic Toilet.” My legacy is now secure.
I received quite a few emails about Wednesday’s post. A number of people wrote in with different ideas about how to do the coin trick I described in that post and other ways of using temperature to find an object.
In my opinion, if you want to do that coin trick, or something similar, your best bet is to get Grab Bag by Rick Lax (which is Penguin’s updated instructions for a Jay Sankey idea). That’s a much better method to use than anything with heat or cold. You can do it with genuinely borrowed change. The spectator can handle the coins There’s no time pressure to get things done before the temperature of an object changes. And it’s 100% certain.
You could even re-enact the NBA draft, no freezing required. Get a bunch of tiny envelopes and have the spectator write the “NY Knicks” on a card inside one of them. It would be adorable.
This video showed up, somewhat randomly, in my youtube recommendations. I’ve seen David Williamson perform in front of magicians before, and it’s always entertaining. But seeing him in front of a real audience and dealing with multiple kids is as impressive a performance as I’ve ever seen.
This makes me want to get married, have a kid, and raise them to the age of 7, so I can take them on a Disney cruise and watch Dave manhandle them. It’s so enjoyable.
The last time I prefaced an idea by saying, “I don’t have any business sense,” a magic company ended up implementing it just a few weeks later. So I’m going to try and use that power in a more self-serving manner.
I don’t have any business sense, but if I owned a magic company, I would create an account on the site for the most popular magic blogger and I would automatically feed all our magic downloads we release into that account. It would cost my magic company essentially nothing and there would be the potential benefit that this blogger—magic’s most handsome and influential taste-maker—would be more likely to mention a product on the site or in his newsletter just due to the simple fact that he had access to it. Sure, it probably wouldn’t pay off very often (since he doesn’t have a history of mentioning things he’s gotten for free on the site). But what’s the downside?
And, I don’t have any business sense, but shouldn’t all people selling magic send the most popular magic blogger $500 a month so he doesn’t trash their products? That seems like it would be a good business for said magic blogger. Sort of like a mafia protection racket. “Sure would be a shame if someone were to post about how lame your new trick is, and how the same effect could be achieved using a piece of double-sided tape. Yep. A darn shame.”
Great Moments in Magic Advertising
“Inside its container”? Rubik’s Cubes don’t have containers. And if they did, they probably wouldn’t be twice the size of the cube. And it’s even less likely that they’d say “Cube Magic” around the rim.
And what does it mean to say something is “disarmed”? Apparently it means it was turned into M&Ms? That’s what I was lead to believe by this ad, at least. And then I feel like a total fucking idiot when I met this guy last weekend who had two hooks for hands and I learned he lost everything from his elbows down when he got blown away attempting to disarm a roadside IED in Iraq. “Does that mean you didn’t get to enjoy any of those tasty chocolate treats?” I said, stupidly. (Well, I now realize it was stupid.) “They’re so good. They melt in your mouth, not your hands…Although I guess that’s not such a concern for you now.” I muttered, realizing—halfway through—that there was something wrong about what I was saying by the look on his face. So I go home and look it up and—whaddya know—”disarming” something doesn’t mean to turn it into M&Ms. So now I look like a jerk to this guy. Thanks a lot, Gustavo Raley!
By the way, if you really want to do a Rubik’s to Candy type of effect, there’s a truly lovely version here.
I can’t comment on the trick itself, because I don’t own it. But it looks great at the very least.
Just a heads-up for the site-supporters. The first edition of the current volume of the review newsletter will come out next month.
If you’re a supporter you can run an ad in the newsletter once a year for free. If there’s something you want to promote, just let me know. The issues will come out every other month starting in April.