IMPORTANT: There may be downtime Thursday at around 11 PM GMT, 6 PM EST.
I viciously burnt the side of my hand one summer, and it blistered up spectacularly. I had been working in a kitchen, and my hand slid onto the flat grill as I was cleaning it one day. It fucking sucked.
I had been quite sleight-of-hand dependent on my magic for years, and this was the first event that led me to explore “hands off” or “no sleight” methods. You see, someone close to me was on track to become a flamenco guitar legend, but unfortunately sliced half his hand off during his time in construction. So after this incident, dedicating years to a craft dependent on my hands spooked me.
I tried to revisit my go-to repertoire and see if I could replicate it without sleight of hand as a mental exercise. It’s not like I could create other methods using left-handed sleights (the plaster on my right hand was in the way most of the time and I’m not Slydini), but I thought it’d be a fun challenge to choreograph routines that gave my poor hands a break.
One summer evening, I decided to try out the effect Ghost Card by Fraser Parker. Without revealing the trick, it’s basically a clean writing peek you can do with a single gimmicked card. But how would I ditch the gimmick with my blister? Read on…
If you didn’t know, Crazy Sam’s Mind is a trick by Sam Huang released through Hanson Chien that debuted at Blackpool and seemingly gives you the powers of (weak) telekinesis. It’s been getting a lot of love from professional magic reviewers, and a lot of hate from many others. Now, I’m not trying to claim this is uncommon, don’t get me wrong. Tricks that professional reviewers love and others hate come out like clockwork. Yet, I do feel that the situation here is a little unique.
If I hadn’t given it away yet, I’m not one of those who hate it. But I don’t love it either.
Caveats
First, some major caveats. The supplied gimmicks simply won’t work if you have hands that are too big. That’s really bad, and there should absolutely be size options. I hope that concerns about exposing the gimmick didn’t have anything to do with the choice to not offer this. There’s also noise, which can be a big or a small problem depending on the effect (more on this later). So that covers some ground, but neither of these are what most people complained about.
Why People Hate It
So, what’s going on? Well, the big effect that everyone is excited about is exploding a potato chip (or crisp, at Blackpool) in your hand. It looks really good, for what it is at least (exploding a snack). It looks like it would if you could actually use telekinesis to explode a snack. Reportedly, there was lots of crisp explosion at Blackpool.
This is a short tip about handling dribble selections. It might not be as easy to do when using a dribble force, but with a slight rehandling it is certainly possible. I originally adopted this approach as a result of learning the classic dribble peek.
Most of the time when magicians do dribble selections, the cards are parallel with the floor.
This is obviously a layman modeling. But, those are Penguin marked cards he’s handling. If you ever thought they were too obvious, think again.
So when the “stop” moment occurs, the faces of the cards are still facing the floor. The angle of the cards here are one in which your friend watching could suppose you might’ve seen something.
Once more for emphasis: We’re going to try keeping serious posts to Sundays for the foreseeable future, and making Wednesdays optional. For more information, see the last post.
It might be an undiagnosed mental disorder, pure fascination, or an obsession. I’m not sure. Whichever it is, I spend too much time thinking about magic. I eat, breathe, and have nightmares about the stuff.
Usually it happens in focused bursts toward specific topics. It might be a plot, an effect or a particular magician. Recently it’s been John Bannon; Jerry has converted me into a fan. A couple of weeks ago it was Brainwave, I got my brain all tangled and twisted thinking over methods and presentations.
Overall it’s had a positive impact on my life, it’s driven me to study and practice constantly. However, sometimes it’s overwhelming. That’s partly why I wanted to be a writer in the first place. If I’m going to think all the time, I might as well jot some of it down.
I decided to take a break from thinking about magic for a day. I finally found a day where I was alone. No plans with anyone special, no responsibilities, nothing to do.
There’s also a correction to make regarding Vanishing The Fucking Moon. You would need to account for crowd size and head movement when calculating the size required.
Fuck off Jerry, I wrote this with you as the spectator so crowd size is accounted for. The crowd size is you. -Gaha McViolate
That’s mostly all. See you Wednesday. On that note…
We’re going to try keeping serious posts to Sundays for the foreseeable future, and making Wednesdays optional. We feel that there’s been a bit too much unpredictability to the posts lately. You never know when you’ll get filler. This way, we can give more time and attention to Sunday posts, and make them worth your while. When there are posts Wednesday, it’ll be fluff or a part two or something like that.
In short… Posts every Sunday, and sometimes Wednesday or Saturday. Yeah, it’s not as catchy.
This is a big fat lie prelude for an esoteric or bizarre effect. It can run as long as you like, though at least a couple weeks is best if it’s an impactful trick. However, you could just retell it as if it took months if you want to do the trick the same day.
WEEK ONE:
Your friend Meg, who loves seeing magic tricks, asks you what you’ve been up to. You tell her there’s an ancient magic book published in the 1600s, written by an anonymous magician. There is a single known copy in existence, and it’s locked away in a library located on a continent you don’t live on. It could be a Parisian library. It could be a library in Tokyo. Perhaps New York City. You get the point. Whatever is appropriate for your location.
The titles and some info about the tricks within the book are known, but the knowledge of how to do them isn’t. There’s one trick in this book that you’ve been desperately wanting to learn.
Vaguely describe the trick to Meg.
Anyway, the library is difficult to get into, but you have a friend who lives in that country that you’ve paid to go to a private tour and sneakily take some photos of the pages for you. Talk about how nervous you are, and that you hope he can get away with it.
Have you ever decided to sell your soul personal data to a Chinese company using child labor in exchange for unbelievably low prices on Temu? Have you ever ordered crappy magic props on Wish.com? Hopped on Alibaba to see if you can trade a few pennies for a gimmick that almost contemplates not sucking?
This guy certainly has.
These sites filled with amazingly cheap Chinese knockoff products are gaining such traction these days that most people you encounter will be familiar with them. Which makes them the perfect excuse to introduce a magic prop in a casual setting while also justifying its unusual properties.
Knockoff Cards
“Take a look at this deck of cards I got off Temu. See anything strange about it?”
Thank you to whoever the mysterious person is that shared Chinese Black Magic on Facebook a week and a half ago.
It helps us out when you do stuff like that, everyone. If you enjoy a post and think your friends might enjoy it too, or that you could farm some karma on Reddit by posting it or whatever, let them know! This site is a labor of love and we just want more eyes on it.
Also, if that mysterious person emails us claiming it they’ll get a pleasant surprise. (This offer will not repeat, don’t think we’re bribing you.)
I have been a bad magic student. Up until recently I have largely neglected reading the Vernon classics, but I have been working to right that wrong.
Vernon’s work contains a lot of valuable insights, but perhaps the most important thing I have learned so far is that Vernon had a pet monkey. I had never heard anyone mention that The Professor had a pet monkey, but this seemed like an incredibly strange detail to leave out. The Dai Vernon Book of Magic treats this fact as inconsequential, only briefly mentioning that the monkey was part of why the harlequin act was not a financial success and that they destroyed Vernon’s apartment.
Of course, such a fascinating bit of history cannot simply be ignored. Much like the protagonist of a Lovecraft story, my sanity was thrown to the wind in the pursuit of obscure knowledge. Unfortunately, the life of this monkey was not written in the same painstaking detail as that of Vernon.
According to “Dai Vernon and the Harlequin Act,” the monkey in question was named Compeer, allegedly so because of its supposed resemblance to members of The Society of American Magicians. Compeer seemed to have two roles in the harlequin act. The first was for Vernon to throw a coconut into the air which would turn into a monkey, the second being for Compeer to appear on stage dressed in a similar manner to Vernon for the climax of the act.
However, it seems that Compeer had more in common with magicians than looks. Whenever it was on stage, like most magicians, it could not help but masturbate in front of the crowd. Compeer’s habitual masturbation meant that it had to be cut from the act and Vernon only got to employ the silly little assistant a handful of times.
Sadly, the fate of the lovable monkey remains unknown to me.
Vernon is not the only notable magician to mention having a pet monkey. In a letter to Al Baker, Ted Annemann deviates from the feud between the two in order to lament the loss of his monkey companion. There is regrettably even less information about Annemann’s monkey other than that it died in Alabama, loved to romp around in magic props, and was laid to rest in a die box. I could not find records of Baker asking any follow-up questions about this frankly bizarre tangent, nor could I find more records of Annemann even owning a monkey. There are many strange mysteries in magic, ranging from the true identity of Erdnase to the mysteries of Dr. Hooker’s Rising Card, but perhaps none so bizarre as Annemann’s supposed monkey or where all of these magicians were even getting pet monkeys.
Magic is a strange world that often attracts strange people, the kind of people who would dress up like clowns and have a monkey spank the monkey on stage. Sometimes when revisiting magic books you find strange stories from the past. Magic history is often rich and complex, and sometimes it is just strange and silly.
Please, email me if you have any further information regarding these monkeys.
