Until September...

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To supporters: Remember that thing I talked about in the email I sent to you at the beginning of the month? You have until the end of this month (August) to sign up for it.

This is the final post of August. Regular posting will resume on Monday, Sept. 4th. The next issue of the Love Letters newsletter will appear in supporter’s email boxes on the first of next month.

By the way, as you might have noticed from the previous paragraph, there is a slight change in the posting schedule that will be starting next month. Rather than new posts starting on the first of the month, they will start on the first Monday of the month.

There will still be the same amount of postings (three weeks a month) but those posts will start on a day (Monday) rather than a date (the 1st).

A note from Allan Kronzek inspired by last Thursday’s Big Game Fishing post:

When you first posted your fix to AK-47 (based on my Think of One) I started using it in my original routine.  And still do.  But here’s another approach to the red/black fish.  No card is put on the table.  I simply say, “It’s a black card.”  If correct, continue as usual.

If not, I continue, “Really?  Not a black card?  Not a club?  Not the Nine of Clubs?”  I seem genuinely puzzled and ask them to picture the card or repeat it silently. Then the answer comes to me.  “Oh, geez, no wonder.  I’m surprised. Nobody ever thinks of the Six of Hearts!” or whatever their card.  This comes as a complete surprise—especially since you’re naming the suit and value—and pretty much negates what came before, making it seem like an intentional tease.  I find it as strong as a direct hit. 

This is similar to the idea discussed in Big Game Fishing (and the original TweAK-47 post), but without the physical commitment. I can see this going over well too.

I think the interesting—kind of counterintuitive—idea with both of these concepts is that normally with fishing, you try to brush past any NOs you get. But for these techniques to work, you need to double-down on your mistakes and draw attention to them. And by doing so, in retrospect, it will look like, as Allen says, an “intentional tease.” But it only looks intentional (and not like scrambling) if you play into your mistake.

Think of it like this, imagine you came downstairs in the morning and your wife said, “What’s your plan for tonight?” And you said, “Oh, nothing really.”And then she said, “Nothing?” And you replied, “Nah, just watch some TV.” And she said, “You don’t know what today is?” And then it hits you, it’s your anniversary. If you immediately say, “Oh, of course, it’s our anniversary. No…right…I remembered… we’re going to do something for our anniversary.” Then it seems like you forgot it, and now you’re trying to pretend you didn’t.

But if you realize what day it is and say, “Hmmm… I mean… it’s August 21st. So what? There’s absolutely nothing special about that day. If I listed the top 1000 moments in my life, I bet that none of them happened on August 21st. Oh, no… wait… what am I thinking. One important event in my life did happen on August 21st. That was the day I got a free bookmark from the public library. But besides that bookmark, I can’t think of ANYTHING good that ever happened on this day.”

By leaning into it, your small miss seems like the beginning of a premeditated misdirect. I’m sure there are other uses for this principle as well.

There’s a thread on the Magic Cafe that’s stirring up some drama about a new trick called OCEAN. The issue seems to primarily be with this statement from the trailer…

Now, as it turns out, the card the spectator names is forced.

So some people have an issue with the statement that the card is “freely named.”

Which… of course they do. Because the card being forced is the opposite of what “freely named” means.

“Freely named” doesn’t mean, “not at gunpoint.”

There are some people who try to defend this statement by saying that magic ads are written from the spectator’s perspective.

This is not really true and has never been true and suggests a complete flawed understanding of magic advertising.

Sure, the basic description of what the spectator experiences is from their perspective:

The magician covers the silver ball with a cloth and just by repeating the magic words, the ball magically floats in the air!

Now, we all understand the ball doesn’t “magically” “float” “just by repeating the magic words.”

But we accept these things and put them in the proper context because they’re describing the effect.

But when you start describing the conditions of the effect, then you’re speaking to the magician’s experience, not the spectators.

If I wrote an ad for the zombie ball which said:

  • Ball really floats!

  • No little stick connected to the ball!

And then you got it and realized the ball appeared to float because of a little stick connected to it, I couldn’t fall back on the idea that ads are written “from the spectator’s perspective.” That would make me an asshole.

If “the ad is written from the spectator’s perspective” was a defense, then you could claim any fucking thing you wanted in the ad because the spectator’s perspective isn’t supposed to include our methods.

The goal with a magic trick is that, from the “spectator’s perspective,” no card is ever forced. From the “spectator’s perspective” no thread is ever used. From the “spectator’s perspective” all decks are normal.

But you don’t get to put that shit in your ad unless it’s actually true.

“Freely” is a word that describes a condition of an effect. It’s there for magicians. For example, I don’t need to tell a spectator to “freely select” a card, because the concept of “selection” implies freedom.

There is an odd thing in magic where people feel it’s okay to write their ads in ways that are designed to fool the people spending money on the product. That’s weird, right? We’re not selling boner pills or hair growth supplements. The attitude shouldn’t be: What can I get away with saying?

The issue is, most people writing magic ads are terrible communicators and shitty copywriters. So it’s hard for them to write an ad that attracts people without bullshitting them a little bit. And magicians are such pussies that they’ll still buy products from dishonest companies time after time. So what does the company have to lose?

Years ago, I offered the Good Glommkeeping Seal of Approval. I will offer a similar service now for free. If you’re releasing a product, and you’re not sure if your advertising is fair, I’ll take a look at it before it goes live and give you my seal of approval and offer any suggestions on a better way to phrase something if you feel the only way to write about it is to be sketchy. I always thought magic ads having an independent 3rd party verification seal of approval would be a valuable thing in an industry where ads really can’t tell you exactly what you’re buying, however no one ever took me up on it. 🤷‍♂️ But the offer still stands.

Okay, darlings. Bye, bye, so long, farewell