Monday Mailbag #44
/Yo, yo. It’s great to be back. I had a nice break and I’m re-energized and ready to kick off this post(ish)-Covid, return of the roaring twenties, white boy summer.
Things here in the northeast U.S. are “more normal than not” almost everywhere. And even though we’re not completely out of the woods quite yet, I’ve found people to be considerably more sociable than they were at any time I can remember. If you’ve been wanting to engage in more social performing, here is your opportunity. Not only are people more open to it, but you have an ideal lead-in as you discuss what kept you occupied over the past year+. “I kind of went back and picked up a lot of hobbies I had been involved in as a kid… origami, magic, juggling…” or, “I ended up getting really interested in reading up on these obscure psychological phenomena,” or, “I started looking into how to read tarot cards, but ended up going down all these weird rabbit holes into other forms of divination and rituals. It’s really sort of fascinating and some of the stuff is weirdly unexplainable.” Or whatever your presentation might be.
Okay, let’s get to your letters…
Oh, Great Jerxy, your wisdom is needed on this Magic Cafe thread. It’s for a trick called Stamp by Joe Deng. A silver ball is placed into a little brass cup and smooshed down and it becomes a quarter. The thread has erupted because some people are concerned that the brass contraption that supposedly “stamps” the coin should have the imprint of heads and tails side backwards or else the trick makes no sense. You couldn’t print a coin from a stamp that looked like this
That would print a backwards coin.
Nate Kranzo comes to the thread and doesn’t do himself any favors by pitching a fit because people are pointing out this inconsistency.
What do you think? Will people notice? Will they care? Is it worth a purchase? Is there a presentation that covers the issue? —FE
First, I agree that Nate doesn’t come off great in this thread. The issue is legitimate and saying, “Put it away and go on to the next trick,” is not really an answer. The nature of the trick is that you’re asking people to show some interest in the prop and what it does. Having to whisk it away at the end is completely incompatible with that type of interaction, which of course will raise suspicion in some people.
If Nate had said, “We did it this way on purpose” and gave a reason, or, “Yeah it was a mistake, we screwed up. But here’s why we don’t think it’s a dealbreaker…,” he could have put the issue to bed, at least to some extent. Flipping out over people pointing out the problem just comes off as defensive and puts more focus on the issue than there would be otherwise.
But it’s also understandable. I’m sure he’s got boxes full of these things to sell. And if you put the time and money into putting out a trick and the first thing that happens is people start pointing out a flaw with it, that’s got to be a huge bummer.
Getting to your questions:
Will people notice? Yes. Especially if they have the quarter and the stamp in their hand at the same time. It will be clear that stamp couldn’t make that quarter (not only is it backwards, but it’s embossed when it should be debossed). So I would try to have them look at the items individually. Some people will still see the problem, but certainly less than if they’re looked at together.
Will they care? I don’t know if “care” is the right word. But it’s not a non-issue.
Is it worth a purchase? I actually think it is. I will probably get one despite the flaw.
And that’s because—while the orientation of the imagery is a discrepancy—with the right presentation, it doesn’t need to be a discrepancy that spoils the trick.
Now, look, if your presentation was, “I have super human strength, and I’m going to squash this silver ball into a quarter with this device,” then yes, the reversed quarter would be an issue because it completely undermines that presentation.
And just saying, “I’m a magician, so it doesn’t have to make sense!” is a pretty bad way to handle it too. Sure, it ends the conversation, but It’s also completely unsatisfying for the audience. If someone asks why something is the way it is, and your justification is “because I’m a magician,” it might as well be, "because fuck you, that’s why.” And I hate to break it to you, but bringing out a little brass gimmick to smoosh a ball doesn’t exactly scream, “I’m a magician!” It screams, “I went to the magic store!”
The easy way to handle all of this is just to take your “powers” (physical or magical) out of the equation altogether.
For example, I might say, “Check this out. It’s a reproduction of an early 20th century counterfeiting machine I picked up at a flea market the other week. I never heard of such a thing, but the guy who showed me how to operate it. You drop a ball bearing in here. Then just by pressing down on it you can make a quarter. Look, you don’t even have to press hard. Just gentle pressure. Isn’t that crazy? I don’t really quite understand how it works. These days, it doesn’t make financial sense to use it because quarters are worth so little and you have to buy the ball bearing. But apparently 100 years ago you could make a lot of money doing it.”
Now, let’s say my spectator says, “That didn’t print the coin. It would be backwards if it did.”
Then I would just act low-key confused and look at the trick and mutter. “Huh… wait… yeah you’re right! But that means… what does it mean? The ball just… disappeared? And was replaced with a quarter somewhere? That can’t be. Well…. shit… now I really don’t get how this works.”
If you introduce the gimmick as an unusual object you’ve come across, then the discrepancy doesn’t have to undermine the experience. You can actually use the discrepancy to make the trick more mysterious, if you play it right.
With the world opening back up I was thinking of taking an acting class to help improve my presentations. Do you think that’s a good use of my time/money or would you recommend something else? —GC
Hmmm… I feel like if you have a latent acting talent, just waiting to be released, then taking an acting class might be good for you and your performances. But if you don’t have that natural ability and you just think taking a couple acting classes will be good for your magic, I doubt that’s the case. I think it would likely just put you up in your head and cause you to be less present than you would be normally. In a close-up, casual magic setting, the ability to be you and to be present is the most important thing. Acting is playing a role. When I engage in even the most fantastical types of presentations I do, I don’t think of myself as “playing a role.” I just think of myself as lying. But it’s not in a malicious way because everyone knows I’m lying.
I would recommend an improv class rather than an acting class. Improv focuses on getting out of your head and being in the moment and not over-thinking your instincts. I’m sure you get some of that in acting classes too, but it seems like it would be less fun.
Have you ever stopped yourself from posting something because you were worried it would hurt someone’s feelings? Or do you have any stories about posts that you intended to publish but then thought better of and decided not to? —BR
My initial thought was: “No. There’s nothing like that.” But I’m sure I’m wrong about that. There are likely posts I wrote up but never hit the publish button on and ended up deleting. But I don’t have any memory of them because it’s the sort of thing I’d forget about immediately. (There are 1200 posts on this site, I don’t really remember the stuff that didn’t make it to the site.)
In fact, I can say with certainty there is at least one post I wrote up that I thought better of publishing. But the only reason I remember it is because it happened just a couple of weeks ago.
The new issue of Genii came out with this cover:
I had written something for one of the Friday posts that was an email, purportedly from Joshua Jay, expressing that he was furious about the new cover of Genii magazine. At first it sounded like he was upset that Genii was glorifying this nazi magician. But then the twist was that he was mad at Richard Kaufman for stealing the design of his upcoming book and the performance identity that he was trying to establish for himself: Hitler’s Magician.
I decided against publishing it not for Josh’s sake, but just to spare myself emails from people who don’t quite understand how jokes work who want to lecture me about comedy. I can usually count on one or two of those any time something I write about touches on a taboo subject. And at the time I wasn’t feeling in the mood to deal with that.