Demons in this day and age

This takes place back when I worked in a call center. So if you told me that there are still people that believe in possession by artifact I would think you were speaking of some back water second or third world locale. I would not think that person would be working for Apple in a state capital. But as it turns out one of the people on my team believes her niece and nephew are under the influence of a book of spells that belonged to her half sister's great*?-grandmother, who was apparently a witch (not surprisingly that an automatic bad thing ). To be fair the book is supposed to sufficiently spooky looking and the kid are doing some weird sleep walking stuff.

And two other people on the team have personally witnessed an exorcism.

And for those curious about the 2 cents I contributed, when I found her looking up what to do online, I suggested sage smudging and offered to take any witch touched items off her hands.

Blood every where.

I was doing an effect at some bar and as I was getting my cards out of my steel card clip I cut open the knuckle of my thumb. And it was a bleeder, luckily it didn't ruin the effect but it did get on a few cards. Had to wrap my thumb in a napkin after though.

My confession

I don't like close up magic. Don't get me wrong, I like the effects, I like doing the effects. I just don't like performing close up. There's just some folks I'd rather not get close up to. In fact its most people. When I go to a party I do my best to perform for any interested party and sometimes I'll find my self wrapping up quickly so I can get away from the person. I have a friend who wants to start his own event planning company and to me I see it as an opportunity in the making so I help out and attend his events in case he gets his act together and actually gets it too work out that'll be a valuable resource. Any way I'm at his event and he's having a raffle so I go to purchase a ticket but he's not really worked out how to do it yet, so I write 1 raffle ticket on one of my business cards and give it to him so he has a reminder that I bought one. After he got the raffle together and no longer need my business card it some how found it's way into the hand of a large redneck like fellow who came up to me to ask me to define some words. My business card at the time read;

"Magnus Asbjorn

Thaumaturgist

Worker of Wonders

Maker of Miracles

Purveyor of Bizarre Arcanum"

Now before you give me crap about them I'd like to point out that I printed them myself for the purpose of using in the Stigmata effect. I explain that Thaumaturgist means wizard. And then he asked what Bizarre Arcanum meant and I explained that it meant bizarre secrets. To which he replied and I quote "What? Like I like to suck on toes or have a dildo in my back pocket?" If I weren't already done talking to this drunkard I definitely did not want to talk to him more. I did the hot rod effect and he sent him on about his day. Recently I had a run in with the worst type of spectator, the troublemaker, the entire effect she did nothing but try and mess me up. She failed and everyone but me and her had a good time. My point that until just after she choose a card there were no warning signs that I was about to have trouble.

Now at this point in my magic learning I can still choose who I want to perform for but if I were to go pro with the close up magic, I can't really say I don't want to perform for someone. Now I can turn down clients as I see fit but as long as I'm on the clock I have to entertain the guests of whomever hired me. The last thing I want is for a guest to complain that I ignored him or was rude to him. No matter how good a performer I am the are others out there in the same pay grade that are just as if not more willing to take the job and please everyone.

When I got into magic I was and still am enamored with the idea of parlor magic, but I had no idea how to get into that, my plan was to start with close-up learn how magic works, the basic principles and sleights  pick up some good effects, and then work my way towards my goal. Beyond learning closeup for that plan I feel a magician should be able to magic at any time, not just on stage. Not saying he has to just cause he's asked to just that he should be able to. It seems like it would make you look a little silly if you could do all that stuff on stage and then after if someone see you in the bar be all I can't. And obviously you should have a dynamite close up effect to show bookers, and convince them to hire your act, unless your act packs small enough or you have somewhere to show it off.

Laziness

Well I want to start by saying this is my blog and as such you will get my side of the story and to heck with journalistic integrity. If you wan't to get the other side of the story do your own research.

So Ellusionist had a retention vanish contest and I being the generous soul decided that it would be helpful to offer critiques. One of my biggest complaints was that most of the videos were silent or just had music to cover the noise. Well of all the complaints I made that one seem to ruffle the most feathers. The standard reply was that they just did what required by the contest to enter and nothing more. To me that was like saying I'm only here for the awesome prize and no other reason. My reaction was "You lazy opportunity wasting fucks." I mean are you so egotistical that you really think you have a perfect retention vanish and the contest will be a cinch, cause that's the only justification for such a low level effort. And I wasn't too riled up until one of them called me out for doing too much.

I busted my ass. I came up with a routine, practiced it, timed it to see if I could do it in the time limit. Then I practiced it over and over again. Then I showed it to real people. And finally I recorded it seven times, four of which I got all the way through without an interruption.

Whether or not I win the contest I still come out ahead. Besides all the practice looking at all those videos revealed to me a problem I never saw in all my time practicing for the mirror. I attribute not seeing it before to the fact that I've been looking at these hand for years but the pinky on my right hand sticks out father than normal most likely from the accident when I was a child. It creates a large window when I have something finger palmed. I have to consciously choose to close it and its little uncomfortable to do so.

An perhaps the biggest win is that I now have a new routine to add to my repertoire and I don't just mean that theoretically. Last night I used a modified presentation to hand out rubber rats at a Halloween party.

Worst spectator ever.

I've had bad spectators before, I don't count hecklers in that group. When I say bad spectators I usually mean someone that is uninterested but agreed to see what's up anyway. They don't really want to watch so they don't pay attention. I had this one spectator that spent the whole time I was performing staring at a girls ass so far to my left that I wasn't in his peripheral vision anymore, and then he told me he knew how the effect worked. I'd be surprised if could even describe the effect.

But he wasn't the worst. Last week I attended a friends birthday party. We were out on the patio and I had just finished giving my friend the gift of magic for her birthday. Her neighbor came by walking his dog (apartment complex) and as I already had my cards out I went to show him some magic. So the first bit of annoying was he called the effect a joke and immediately showed me the card I had him take. He said "I forget how this joke goes." I though maybe he was talking about the old gag where you fan the cards facing you and have someone take one and you tell what it is. So I laughed and played it off. I started over and he said it was a joke a few more times before I realized he did not know what was going on. I explained to him that it was a magic effect. And started over I had him take a card and I had him show the birthday girl for validation later. He kept glancing at her the whole time like checking for permission to interact with me, she was kind of ignoring him and I was too busy trying to do magic to read into it. I was doing the Biddle effect  (for those don't know the Biddle effect is a magician in trouble plot where the magician doesn't find the card and has to recover through magic) and I turned up the indifferent card and acted like it was his like I'm supposed to, and instead of correcting me he confirmed that it was his card. I was flummoxed, I knew it wasn't but everything about him said he believed it to be his card, his tone, his body language, so either he was an very good liar or truly didn't realize that it wasn't. The only other person who knew what his card was projecting sod off at him with her body language so I wasn't about to ask her. I slid into a few phases of my ACR so that there was at least some magic happening and then bid him farewell. I later inquired about him to the birthday girl and it seems that he has a huge crush on her and she does her best to ignore him so as not to encourage him. So far he was the worst spectator ever.

*Update: Recently had a new worst.*

Shame on me?

So I was at a friends going away party and I don't like parties. I don't drink, smoke, or do drugs, and my interesting in nailing drunk chicks is surprisingly low for my age range and peer group but parties are a good opportunity to practice my magic. Well I approached one person to inquire if there were interested in seeing some magic. The were surprised not at the opportunity to see magic but that there were two magicians at the party. I was surprised myself, of course I had to seek out this magic man. I found him and he was a bit too drunk for magic but still doing it anyway, by too drunk I mean he couldn't still perform his slights and he had this color change he though was all that but I couldn't see it fooling a sober person. Most of what he showed me (and that I saw him show others before I approached him) was packet tricks even that color change he use the jokers and carried them separate from the deck. As far as I can tell he used the deck one time. And card magic was all I saw him do. I was polite watched everything he wanted to show me and the harshest thing I said to him was "Probably works better when your spectator isn't a magician." When he showed me that horrible color change.

Now where is the shame on me part that gave the post it's title? Well later as I was heading out one of my friend stopped and inquires if I had found the other magician and what I thought of him. My reply among other comments was "I'm a magician, he's just a guy with a magic hobby." Oh the hubris. I know I was once like him in skill level at the very least. Saying something so derisive is not to be done, although I still stand by that statement. I know there are various ways people define what makes a magician. But at least to me its more than someone that knows a few packet tricks.

I have a character, I do more than card effects, and I've practiced my effects so much that even when I'm fall down drunk (I got drunk to please a depressed friend, it was not fun, but I do not regret it) I can still do my sleights flawlessly. I'm committed to magic and performing. I study and practice every day. That makes me a magician. One day I will be a professional performer.

Learning magic is tough.

In following the advice of coin magicians to palm a coin all the time, after a drive to town and back I found two bruises on my palm.

Coin magic.

So I never thought I would be doing coin magic. First a little back story, when I was around the age of three I lived on a chicken farm the type you get eggs from. Well what happens on those farms is the chicken lays the eggs and it rolls down a ramp onto a conveyor belt. One day my right hand was crushed by one of the machines. And that has been a pain in my butt ever since.

What does that have to do with coin magic, well the damage to my hand left a lot of scar tissue on my palm right where I would classic palm a coin. The scar tissue won't grab a coin, the coin slides across it, so I can't palm. And a lot of the effects I came across in my hodge podge days of starting in magic called for classic palming with the right hand. Eventually I wrote it off as not possible for me.

I'm older and wiser now and I know there is a lot more to coin magic than classic palming. So it's possible to work around not being able to classic palm with one hand. Its not easy and sometime it means learning a trick left handed which is a pain.

All that aside I kind of wish I had started study of coin magic immediately. There's something that really resonates with me about it. Its visual and it's flashy, I like that in my magic, even in my card magic.  Good coin magic also requires a lot of manual dexterity which is good for my damaged hand.

That's a trick deck.

Due to the specific nature of this blog its probably safe to say that you my reader have been to a forum of some sort for magicians. However just in case you have not allow me to illuminate you as to a constant theme that pops up over again. There are basically two groups, one group says that if you use any deck of cards other than Rider backed Bicycles your spectator will think that you are using a trick deck. And the other group is sane, I'm kidding but the other group doesn't think that it has anything to do with the deck. I am of the second group and I believe that if the spectator thinks you are using a trick deck then it is your failing as a performer that caused this.

I only use Rider backed cards in two instances, practice and gaff work. The only time that I use Rider backs in front of  spectators is when they have the most reason to be suspicious. I mostly use Artifices now and before that oddly colored decks produced by MagicMakers INC.

I remember that cards existed before I got into magic seriously but I can't say that I remember their backs, and rarely were they expensive Bikes only serious card players would buy those. I can remember one back. When I was about 10 I got every trick deck at the Dollar Tree. One of which was a marked back deck and I had to memorize the secret markings. So that back kind of sticks out in my memory.

You know that if you go to your nearest store that sells cards, they have decks that only cost $1. They are complete crap when it comes to handling but they will work for any card game you could want to play. Now if you need to manipulate cards then you want bikes. Did you also know that right next to the Bikes, there are decks with much more interesting designs for a comparable price. Coke-Cola, Spongebob, Micky Mouse, Star Wars, are all represented in card form at my local store. My mom plays solitaire and she has two deck of bikes that I gave her after I no longer needed them. One of them is that silver deck Bicycle put out.  She has two other decks one has American flags on it and the other Battleships. My sister likes card based drinking game both of the times she went out and got a deck, she did not get bikes, she got Micky Mouse and Spongebob. I left a deck of red backed bikes out on a table one day after practicing and my mother asked me if it was one of those expensive decks I got online.

So if its not the cards that make people think you are using a trick deck then what does that leave? It leaves the performer. More so it is the performers character that leads the audience to believe that it is a trick deck. If you can't find anything in your performance character that leads people that way maybe its some of the real you slipping through. How do you feel about tricks and gimmicks like that? Me personally I'd rather do it all through slight of hand if I could. Which is probably why people come to that conclusion when watching me instead of the trick deck one.

Update: Stigmata in use.

So I used Stigmata at a party I was at, due to a flub in the card force  method(I just did a different card effect than I intended) I had to go the peek method. I don't care much for the peek routine because the participant could pick a name with a really hard to do initial like a 'C' but their handwriting could be poor and the name could be weird. All of which happened to me but it went OK. I peeked and saw all that and just grabbed the first initial cause that's technically all I needed for the effect and I couldn't make out the rest. One bit of interesting was that the participant saw more than I revealed, apparently the person's last name started with a "B" and she saw that forming too.

Hand Care

So on the card handling forum I frequent you find a thread every now and then about how to get your hands the right state to handle cards. You see them more often at the start of winter when hands start to dry out. Now there are  usually several theories about what to do, but most of them are short term what to do just before a performance.

Solutions I've seen include

• Lotion your hands up before performing
• Don't lotion your hands up it will dirty the cards
• Use hand sanitizer before handling the cards.
• Hand sanitizer contains rubbing alcohol which will dry your hands out worse.

Once in a while I'll see the correct answer or at least the one I consider correct. So what do I think is the correct answer. I believe the way to have performance ready hands is with a hand care regimen. Now I know most magicians are men and so are opposed or unfamiliar with the idea. But as I see it the only way to have supple skin is to do like the ladies do and work on it every day. As such after I take a shower I apply lotion to my hands way up past the wrists most of the way up my forearms. I go so far up the arm because some of the things I do require the spectator to hold my wrist and I want it to be as presentable as possible. What all this does for me is insures that any time I pick up a deck of cards my handling won't suffer from dry hands. By the time I pick up a prop there is no left over residue on my hands to ruin anything. I have to say this method works for me, though your mileage may vary and all that.

A paper on the Cups and Balls

A few months ago I had a class at school that required me to write a research paper. I choose to research a classic effect of magic know as The Cups and Balls. For any that may be interested in the result of my research you can read the final paper found at the link below.

My Paper on the Cups and Balls

What I learned from karaoke

So I agreed to be designated driver for my brother, not a big deal since I don't drink. But this did mean I had to go to the bar. Anyway it was karaoke night. So I decided to sing a song or two. I flipped through the book of options and picked one. I thought I knew the song I thought it would be easy. I was wrong, way wrong. For my first song I picked:



The first problem was I didn't realize that I was going to have to all the characters and the singing. So I stumbled through the first 3rd of the song. And I had the stage fright. Not hard to get singing for a room of drunk strangers. Like usual my stage fright manifested through a shaky hand not a problem while I'm singing, but a pain when I'm doing close up magic.

For my second song I picked.



The second song I picked I was more familiar with the words and the rhythm and what have you. So during it I had no trouble. Also just as the song started a guy came up and asked if he could do T-pain's part, I was like sure. So that was cool.

I had a good time.

So what did I learn? I learned that when you're performing sober in front of strangers it really helps to know what your going to be doing before hand. It helps a lot.

Magic Maker's Street Monte Vs School for Scoundrel Introduction to the 3 shell game

So I knew I was going to learn the Three Shell Game and like many things in magic I had options. Now before I describe the two products I'm going to compare let me tell you where I stood three shell wise. I knew the moves and overall secret I made shell from real walnuts I got from the store. They sucked and they were too tiny for my hands. I made a practice pea out of polymer clay and it let me practice the basic moves. So I was no master but I did know what I needed to advance my skill. Enter Magic Makers (MM) and The School for Scoundrels. Magic Makers is a producer of magic tricks and DVDs of extremely varying quality. The School for Scoundrels (SfS) is what I like to think of as the Whit Haydn school of magic. Basically he feels that a lot of magicians approach magic from the view of the card mechanic, and that the con-man would be more beneficial to magic. I wanted the SfS videos a lot but they are only available to be bought on the internet which is a mark against for me. The MM three shell set up was available from my local brick and mortar. I eventually ended up getting the MM Street Monte three shell game because MM hasn't screwed me over every time in quality. I regretted it and made to get the SfS Introduction to the shell game volume one as soon as possible. Well it came today. In an effort to help my fellow amateurs I bring this review and comparison.



Magic Makers Sal Piacent: Street Monte Three Shell Game

Cost to me, it was marked for $35 but I spend a lot of money in that store so the owner knocked off $5 bucks so with taxes I paid $32.25 For that price I got a DVD, 3 shells and 2 peas of indeterminate plastics. I was happy enough with the shells and peas. I intended to get different peas as soon as I could but the shells will work till I'm ready to drop the big bucks and get something really better. But the DVD I felt was the real hustle. I felt that not only that it was poorly put together but that it also failed to deliver what it promised. It was basically a video of poorly organized randomly selected moves. The closest it came to teaching me a routine was Sal performing his routine for the camera. After watching the SfS DVD I do believe that Sal is mis-performing at least one of the moves on his dvd. On a personal note I just didn't care for Sal himself I did not like the character presented to me..

Obviously I was not happy with this purchase but there is someone to whom I would recommend this to. If you are what some people  call a hobbyist and the only people that will see you perform is close family and friends. This is a good set for the price if that's your audience. But if you are a professional magician or amateur looking to go pro do not get this.







School For Scoundrels An Introduction to the three shell game.

Cost to me $35 plus $7.50 shipping and handling. I also ordered a set of Perfect Peas for $15 so I'd say it cost me $38.75 for the DVD. What I got, one DVD. One super awesome information packed, well organised, well produced DVD. The first thing on the DVD is Whit Haydn explaining different types of peas and shells. And here he could have easily tried to sell you his company's peas and shells over any other but I didn't feel like he was doing that. Next is video of Bob's Sheets performing simple basic routine at the Magic Castle for real people. Then he shows you how to do all the moves and some audience management. If the DVD ended there you would be well enough introduced that once you had practiced and got it down you could go out and start performing the three game; $35 well spent. But the DVD is still going and teaching more complicated moves that can be added to the basic routine. If you master all the moves on this DVD you'll go from introduced to intermediate. After the complicated moves is a video of Whit Haydn lecturing which I feel is well worth a few dollars alone. So you have all of that and then you take your DVD over to your computer and open the DVD as a disk and there you find 11 PDF files on various topics to do with the shell game including a more advance routine. So for $35 buck you get all of that.

If you are a performer then this is the DVD you need to get to get you started on the road to the shell game. As for shells there are plenty out there to choose from but cost wise I hear Vernet makes some good cheap ones.

If you found this review to helpful or you thought it sucked let me know in the comments section.

Discouragement

This post is mostly for the people out there that are amateurs with aspirations of going pro. I'm going to talk about the most disparaging, dis-hearting, discouraging thing I had to deal with. Was it all that I had to learn? Was it the start up costs? Was it all the practice required? Was it the timeline I had planned out?

It wasn't any of that. It was the overwhelming lack of support from my friends and family. It seems that the performing arts and magic specifically are not real jobs. They all said there was no money to had in it. It was bad because when you have doubts yourself you need the support of those around you. But what really annoyed me was that it seem to me to be an insult. It was as if these people thought I had not done my homework. It was like they thought that I just decided to be a magician all willy nilly.

I know its going to be a lot of hardwork. I know its going to take a lot of time and dedication. I know I'm probably not the next David Copperfield. I also know stuff that they don't know. For starters I know what I want and how to get there. I know theres more to magic than huge stage illusions and kid's shows. I know its possible that I can do whatever I want but I got work for it.

So to all the other performing artists out there, make sure you want it and are willing to work for it alone because everyone else would prefer if you got "a real job"

Fear

Andrew Musgrave from the Ye old magic blog recently brought up the topic of tricks that are scary to perform I will talk on that in a bit but first I want to wax poetic about fear and stage fright.

Fear is a good thing. It keeps us alert and on our toes. It keeps us from making silly mistakes. That said you can't let fear stop you. As for stage fright I think magicians have more potential for stage fright than any other performer. We have all the same bits of stage fright as say an actor; "What if I forget my lines, what if I drop my props, what if I trip, what if they boo...etc" We have all that then we have to attempt to do something sneaky in front of people that lets face it sometimes just want to see you mess up. Some people just can't accept magic for anything other than a puzzle. But that's what you got to deal with, you practice, train and rehearse, then go out and do it.

Now for tricks that frighten me. I can't think of any trick that I'm afraid to do. But there are moves that scare me. The bold moves. The moves where you say you're doing one thing and then you boldly and sneakily do something else. Tell me that theres a slight that has poor angles and requires you thumbs to pass through separate dimensions, I'll practice the heck out of it set up with the correct angles and breeze through it. Tell me I have to do a Marlo Tilt and my hands start to shake. True story.

The first time I ever did magic for a complete stranger was when I was waiting on my order at Burger King. I was listening to the advice that practicing your magic in public place will help you get used to the idea of performing. SO I'm playing with a deck of cards and one of the employees, notices and starts talking to me which leads him to ask to see a trick. So I started doing an ACR and all was going great I had done two or three phases and was going to end it by putting his card in face up and having it rise to the top. And I was going to do the Marlo Tilt to do it. My hands started shaking so bad I lost my break twice and then I lost his card. I put it in way too far down. I didn't know what to do I just apologized, told him I had messed up. Luckily he got called away to do his job and I used that chance to set up the deck the way I needed, and just started control shuffling till he returned. He walked up I ask him if he remembered his card, did my color change. Got my order and left.

I know that with time, practice, and real performances that eventually I will be able to do those moves as good as my others. But they still scare me. Its like I think they're too simple to fool anyone and that translates to doubt which leads to messing up.