Mailbag #125
/[Craig] Petty had plenty of nice things to say about you in today’s video. I wondered how you took his comments, did they seem genuine to you? I’ve never been certain about your feelings on Petty.
And what about his attacks on Flom from the same video? —MF
Do his comments about me seem genuine? Yeah, I thought they were genuine. But to be honest, if anyone ever says anything nice about me in any context it never really occurs to me to question their motivations. That would feel like a weird way to go through life. I’m very fortunate with the way I’m wired that nice comments make me happy but negative comments have zero effect on me. So it wouldn’t be like me to question a compliment.
As far as my feelings about Craig, I have no issues with the guy. I get a lot of hate for him in my email but I don’t harbor any negative feelings for him myself. There are a couple of his effects that I use somewhat frequently. Others aren’t for me or my performing environments. I don’t watch all of his videos, but I do watch one or two a week when they seem like they’re on a subject that I have interest in or he’s performing a trick I’m curious about, and I’ve always found them valuable.
He’s a polarizing guy, for whatever reason. But that makes magic more fun, in my opinion. I think it’s funny when he gets all riled up, or someone gets all riled up about him.
I end up mentioning him more than most magicians on this site. But that’s just because I’m doing commentary on magic, and to do commentary you need touchstones. And because he puts out so much content, he provides more potential things for me to comment on than pretty much anyone else.
Craig’s biggest issue, from my perspective, is that he’s not someone who wants to self-edit. He puts out 15 videos a week. He makes 9 hour trick tutorials. He releases many tricks every year. And because no one could be consistently brilliant, his greatest ideas get mixed with his good ideas and with his ideas that are sort of less inspired. This ends up bringing down his “batting average” when you compare him to someone who releases just their best ideas. So maybe he doesn’t get his due because of that. But I think that’s his style. He’s almost like a human brainstorm session. And he leaves it up to you to sort out what you think are his best ideas.
I’d be curious, as an exercise, how it might go for Craig if instead of releasing 15 videos a week, he released one 90-minute video called The Craig Petty Show which would have an interview, some reviews, some live performances, discussions, rants or a monologue, etc. So, essentially, his daily video segments but just greatly redacted, and repackaged with added structure and production quality. It’s probably a bad idea for youtube engagement, though.
As far as his thoughts on Justin Flom go, I thought they were fair. I didn’t really see them as an “attack.” I know Justin loves magic, but other people who also love magic are free to take issue with what he does.
I haven’t seen enough of Justin’s online videos to know what he’s exposing or how he’s going about it. If I look at his youtube shorts in order of popularity, I don’t see any real exposure in the first 25 videos. The first “exposure” video I see is probably this one, which shows D’lites.
That’s not exactly the sort of thing that would get me riled up, but once you have any element of exposure in your content, you’re giving people the right/opportunity to get upset about it if they want. I’m not a fan of exposure content. But I also don’t believe it’s that much of an issue unless you’re performing the exact trick soon after. For the social magician, it’s far better to focus your energy on your own work than worrying about what’s happening on tik-tok.
Any idea when the next drop in the Good Enough Canon can be expected? —MO
Do you have a schedule in mind [for the Good Enough Canon]? I’m sure it’s a lot of work but I loved your 21 Card Trick piece and I’m looking forward to what’s next. —AC
If you let this project fall by the wayside after the first entry I will haunt your ghost.—CB
These are a few of the messages I’ve received in the last month asking about the Good Enough Canon, which was a project I mentioned a year ago. The idea was to go through the list of card plots and find a “Good Enough” version of each plot. One that was strong and fooling, not overly difficult, and ideally impromptu. The first entry in the canon was a version of the 21 Card Trick I put in a newsletter earlier this year.
I’ve been asked quite a few times now when this will come back.
The answer is… don’t hold your breath.
The hours of research, practice, testing out the variations, evaluating them, and working on the presentation is kind of overwhelming.
With the current schedule I’m on, it would take me decades to go through the full list of card plots. So it will probably become a project I work on in the future when I don’t have the site, newsletter, books, and outside work to do. It might be its own book in the future once things settle down.