Dustings #101

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Happy New Year Andy!

I assume this has already reached your radar - but in case it has not. 

Ellusionist has put out a new trick with Kevin Li and Hanson Chien: 

Now, these are some great creators and the trick seems decent enough - a morphing/changing [pen cap impression].

But I can't help but think one of the stamp options is unnecessary... seen around 0:58, 0:59, and 1:05. 

Here's a spoiler:

Anyway, probably hilarious when performing for some drunk college kids, but IDK, seems unnecessary. —SV

Hmm…

My thinking is this… I sometimes do magic tricks that are dumb and sophomoric, and those can be fun and get a good reaction (for what they are).

The thing is, I would never waste a good trick for this kind of reaction. Because the “I’m profoundly amazed by this” reaction, isn’t really compatible with the, “this is so stupid and funny” reaction. They’re different parts of the brain, or something.

So including this reveal in the package makes me think that they think it’s not a very strong trick. Otherwise, why would you use it for this corny reveal?

Of course, the other thing to keep in mind is that this is coming from Ellusionist. Ellusionist releases a lot of good material, but they also have a history of pandering to the world’s dumbest magicians. So it might be the case where they think, “Yes, this is a great trick. But let’s add the dick reveal to it, too, in order to appeal to our clientele of fucking imbeciles.”

So yeah, I wouldn’t judge the trick necessarily based on this one hokey reveal. (But it’s also hard to judge it based on the trailer, as it doesn’t really show what the trick looks like, which is never a great sign.)

If you haven’t built out your repertoire of tricks yet, the beginning of the year is a great time to start. Work towards finding and learning one trick per week for your repertoire and you will have a full 52 trick repertoire by the end of the year. That’s massive when compared to most magicians I know who only really keep a handful of tricks in their brain ready to be unleashed.

It might help to have some categories in your mind so that the tricks flesh out your repertoire in a way that you want them to. (Maybe limit your self to half card tricks, and you have to have at least half non-card tricks. Or make sure at least 50% of the ones you learn this year are impromptu. Or whatever your goals are.)

Watch this video as homework for next Wednesday’s post.