Monday Mailbag #71
/
I noticed this new, supposedly convincing, vanishing bottle gimmick.
And immediately recalled the Theory of Mind thing you once posted. Wait lemme check... Sally Andy Trick.
How did that go? Could you divert attention from the crumpled bag effectively?
I kinda want to get it, just to have a pseudo-psychological framing when calling my friend "a fucking braindead idiot.” Worth doing? —RS
It depends on what you’re going for. The Sally Andy Trick is fun to do. But because the ending is a “punchline,” in a way, it doesn’t quite capture people’s imaginations the way a non-funny trick would. The trick is fooling but nowhere near “enchanting.” This is probably true of any trick that ends with a punchline.
To get people to feel like what they saw was “special” in some way, you have to present it in a manner that you would something special. And putting it in joke structure doesn’t do that.
But that being said, I think it’s an enjoyable way to present the vanishing bottle. It’s just not some enduring mystery (which may be true of most, if not all, uses for such a gimmick). So depending on what you’re going for, it may or may not suit your needs.
And, no. I haven’t had anyone suspect the crumpled bag. But, again, it’s because the presentation is humorous that spectators don’t feel an overwhelming urge to prod at the method too much. The fact you’re presenting it as a joke suggests it’s not something they need to work too hard to understand.
Whereas, if I were to present the vanishing bottle in some other way…I don’t know… like some Time Travel thing where the bottle went back in time. And I presented it not as a “joke” but as this weird anomaly. People would understand that it’s “fiction,” but their mind might be drawn to the crumpled bag. Not because they’re looking to “debunk” what just happened. But just because I haven’t given them the pressure release of “this is just a joke.” And that will cause people to poke around a little more. Even if just in their mind.
You’ve written in the past quite a bit about self-contained Haunted Decks. Did you get Waken? If so, do you have thoughts on it? —AS
I played with it. It’s good. It didn’t replace my current version though (Vertex by Taylor Imagineering).
Here’s why:
Waken has a motor and thread. So that’s two different things to possibly go wrong (or for me to screw up).
The “haunting” action looks a little too smooth to me. But I admit this is a matter of personal preference. I may have just become used to the look of Vertex, which isn’t quite so “neat” looking.
The haunting happens under just a few cards in Waken (8 cards, I believe). In Vertex it’s under half the deck.
With Waken, the full deck is gimmicked. With Vertex, half the deck is normal cards so you can shuffle and have a fairly free selection.
Waken definitely has benefits. It’s half the price of Vertex. And you can do a rising card with it. I can’t say how it holds up in the long term, but in the short time I messed around with it, it did what it was supposed to.
Any idea what’s going on with The Magic Cafe? The site had been down for a week or so. Do you think it’s gone for good? —SD
I heard Steve Brooks said on facebook that it’s just down for maintenance. I believe him. That would be a weird thing to lie about. Although it’s hard to conceive of a reason why a website in 2022 would be down for a week for maintenance. Other than the fact that it might be so poorly put together that it’s completely fucked up on the back end. Like, imagine you brought a woman back to your apartment and things started getting sexual and she said, “Give me a moment to freshen up.” And she went to your bathroom. That’s fine, and perfectly reasonable. But if she’s in there for 90 minutes, then brother, something’s not right.
I hope the Cafe comes back. It’s a good resource for researching some older tricks. It could have been a great resource, but it’s not clear that anyone ever cared enough to make it such. As the magic community evolved the past two decades, little has been done to evolve the cafe. And thus it was doomed.
It’s easy to picture an alternate reality where the site changed to suit the times and became a better resource. You can imagine a version of the Cafe that got rid of all the clutter of the barely used forums. Had a cleaner layout, not strewn with dozens of banner ads. Had a proper, powerful search engine that made researching things easier. Instituted threaded comments and voting, so conversations would be grouped together, and off-topic discussion/trolls would be eliminated automatically. And included a section—in conjunction with Murphy’s and any other magic producer who wanted to opt in—where people could have access to private forums for the products they’ve purchased. So instead of going to Penguin, Vanishing Inc., and 100 different facebook groups, you could just go to one site for discussions, updates, new handlings, etc.
But making the site better was never really a focus of the Cafe. I used to have access to a secret forum there called “The Kitchen” which was where the administrators would talk, and there was never any discussion about how to improve the site.
And these days I’m sure it’s even less of a priority for Steve. My understanding is that he and his wife have had serious health problems, which, of course, would make a magic message board feel even less consequential than it already is.