Dustings #70
/Great Moments In Wizard Product Review History
Okay, someone’s phone going off isn’t a big deal. Feeling the need to reset (so you can edit it out) is kind of strange—this is a magic review show on YouTube, just roll with it, nobody gives a shit. David Penn being so thrown off—like he was just told a loved one died—is funny. And the fact that no one made a note to edit out this minute-long dead end is kind of amusing.
But what I find the most fascinating is what’s happening at 30 seconds in. Agnimonity? What??
If you like reading detailed reviews of (primarily) magic books, check out Madison H’s reviews on his site magicreview.org. He’s been doing reviews for about a year and a half, and he clearly puts a ton of work into them. He generally gives thoughts on every item in the book. Recently he’s taken his reviews up a notch and added in some video demos. If you’re on this site, you don’t mind reading, so you’ll probably enjoy it. And because they’re written, his reviews can’t get derailed by a phone call.
An anecdote from reader Nick S.
The “Just For You” trick reminds me of the weird interaction that sparked my interest in magic in 2012. I was working in a coffee shop on 14th St. in NYC, locked out of my apartment and waiting for my wife to get home. It was nearly closing time, and the shop was empty except for a couple of young, attractive women sitting next to me, who were chatting with each other as I worked on my laptop.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a group of men walk in. It was David Blaine and a posse of about 4 or 5 other guys. He walks right up to the women, and without hesitation he says, “Hi, my name is David, do you mind if my friends and I show you some magic tricks?” What!? I tried to play it cool, but I was freaking out because I knew he was kind of famous from his Street Magic special. I didn’t see any cameras, though. From what I recalled at the time, one of the guys solved a Rubik’s Cube by throwing it up into the air and David performed a routine where a signed card kept popping up to the top of the deck.
Up until this point no one had acknowledged me. They were directing all the attention toward the pretty girls and I was just kind of hovering nearby. Another guy vanished a torn card corner and for the first time, he looks at me and says, “hey, you...can she check inside your hoodie pocket?” and the woman reaches in, pulls out the torn corner, and shrieks in surprise. The corner had somehow teleported into my hoodie pocket.
But things just got weirder from there. One of the crew asked the girls if they want “to see something that wasn’t really magic but some sort of psychological experiment?” and that it was something about "swapping minds with another person." Only one of them was into it (the other was freaked out at the idea), so the guy nonchalantly asks me if I want to participate. Of course I agree, and he asks me and the woman to sit down in chairs about six feet apart, facing each other. He directs me to close my eyes and imagine I’m walking down a long staircase, descending deep underground. And at the bottom of the stairs is a mirror, and when I look in the mirror I don’t see myself, but the woman who’s sitting across from me. Now, my heart is beating out of my chest at this point, but I feel a light touch on my shoulder. He asks me to open my eyes, and also if I experienced any physical sensation while I had my eyes closed. Before I can even get the words out—“yeah, like...a little tap on my shoulder”—both the women and David’s posse start losing their minds. Everyone quiets down and the performer asks the woman to confirm that "he never went anywhere near me", and that he had only tapped her on the shoulder. She’s visibly shaken but she agrees.
Now we repeat the experiment. This time I keep my eyes open and she shuts hers and then the performer runs the edge of a playing card down the bridge of my nose. After she opens her eyes he asks her the same question he asked me. There’s another huge reaction from the group when she starts to say something about her nose.
And then, as abruptly as they entered, David and his posse head out into the cool NYC night. I go back to my laptop, speechless, and pull my headphones back over my head, but I could hear the women ping-ponging trying to make sense of what had just happened.
A decade of practicing magic later and I’m still not sure. Of course, now I know about Rubik’s cube shells, and double lifts and dual reality and PK touches. But none of it explains the torn card in my hoodie, because I’m positive it couldn’t have been planted beforehand. Or how the guy would have touched the woman’s nose, because I’m sure that he didn’t go close enough to her, even to execute the face-wavy method using IT. Several days afterward, I realized that the only explanation was for everyone to be in on it, including the women. I’ve never had big, exaggerated reactions to magic, and I got that sense that I wasn’t very helpful to them as an unwitting spectator. But whether I’m right or wrong, the “contrecoup” shock of realizing that it might have been “all for me” was the thing that will always stick with me. —NS
Now, I don’t know if Nick was really the only one who wasn’t in on it (I might hear from someone in David’s group who will let me know). I mean, a hoodie pocket is likely the easiest thing to load without someone knowing. And maybe he’s just misremembering about the nose thing. That’s possible. Or maybe he really was the sole target audience.
Either way, this is a good example of how leaving people wondering about the nature of what they just saw can be one of the most compelling and memorable parts of the magic experience. Everyone who sees me perform knows I’m doing a trick. But because my performing style is so casual, I’m able to blur the lines of what elements of the experience are real, and which are not. And that can be the most fun and enduring part of the whole thing.