Breaking the Magician's Code, Bo Burnham, and Bob Ross

What are three things that are all on Netflix beginning with the letter B that I love?

Look, I know a magician saying they like Breaking the Magician's Code is a pretty unpopular opinion and I hope I don't get crucified for this. I remember back when they were first airing everyone was up in arms about the whole thing and saying it was the worst thing to ever happen for magic. That first special aired almost 20 years ago and, as far as I can tell, magic's still around. I think my experience with it might be different because most of the close up stuff I do was never revealed on the show. A stage magician might have a different take on the whole thing.

I love watching magic, and I also love learning magic and seeing how it's done. I can appreciate a beautiful method the same way I appreciate a beautiful trick. Granted, most of the things revealed on the show fall very short of "beautiful method" but still, every now and then I get a moment of "Huh, that's pretty clever." I feel like a lot of things shown were made up just for the show. One thing that immediately comes to mind is being chained to a ladder and raised above flaming spikes, only to appear later in an adjacent building. You know, that old classic of magic.

I'm not saying revealing those tricks was the greatest thing to happen to the world of magic, but I also don't think it was the worst thing ether. If anything, it got people talking about magic again. No such thing as bad press and all that, right? I remember when Mindfreak was a thing and people would ask me about his stuff. Instead of calling bullshit on it, I could go "I know, that was cool right? But how about this?" and show them something of my own. Like I said, I know it's a divisive topic but personally, I like being able to put them on in the background and watch some magic. Maybe one day Netflix will get the World's Greatest Magic specials, or some David Copperfield or David Blaine. Until then, I'm going to watch these. I remember watching when it originally aired and, for some reason, watching this doofus slide down a trap door while looking at the camera made me laugh my ass off.

Bo Burnham is one of the best comedians I've seen. I used to think he was just a funny song guy, which I'm not really a fan of. I never gave him a chance before and I regret that. His is very witty and I love the wordplay he uses. He also really makes you think about things. The two specials of his that are currently on Netflix, what. and Make Happy are both incredible. They both kind of push the line between stand-up comedy and performance art and both of them have left me at the end kind of sitting in silence going "Damn." The ending of Make Happy where he talks about us all being performers really hit home with me. They're both fantastic specials and well worth a watch or several. I do want to link the ending of what. right now because it's fantastic but you should watch the whole thing. Dude is a rockstar and he's fucking killing it. I hope he's happy.

The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross is on Netflix now too, and I could not be happier. One thing I wish I had in this life is artistic talent and Bob Ross makes me feel like I could paint like him. Maybe one day I'll get a paint sent and give it a shot. For now, I'm content with just watching and relaxing while he creates these beautiful scenes. It's amazing to me to see how he starts with nothing and these amazing landscapes just appear effortlessly. Even hearing him describe what he's doing as a twist of the wrist turns a blob of paint into waves or mountains blows my mind.

Bob Ross is the best magician I've ever seen.

- Andster

A Few Pictures

Back in the old days of this blog, I used to post pictures from time to time. I'd like to get back to that a little bit, so I'm going to show just a couple things from my performance at the festival a couple weeks back. As in the past, I've edited the pictures a bit to remove my face and other things that might identify me. I'm still trying to hold on to anonymity (probably stupidly and fruitlessly) for the time being. Enjoy!

Pitch from the first day.

This is my pitch from the first day, taken at the end of the day when I had given up on the escape show and started doing the straitjacket and rope escape. You can see my donation sign on the chalkboard with the money bag clipped on the back.

Straitjacket escape.

Mid-escape sometime in the middle of the day. Decent crowd. By this point I had bent the chair in the background, which is why I'm standing on the ground.

Another angle.

Another angle of the straitjacket escape. I honestly couldn't tell you what number this one was, but I can safely say I was feeling the heat and the exertion by this point.

Rope escape.

Finishing off this set with the rope escape. You can kind of see that the crowd dwindled a bit by this point, which was a problem I had all day. Thinking of this now, maybe I should do the rope escape first and close with the jacket. This was actually a decent tie, done by a former Scoutmaster. The last tie of the day was done by a couple kids and it was...not good.

Funny sign.

The second day, about mid-day with my turning tricks sign. This pitch was a lot cooler, at least in the morning. My setup was a bit more streamlined this time since I was working primarily out of the briefcase. The jacket and rope were still in the backpack under the whiteboard, just in case.

Well, there you have it! Hopefully these help illustrate the story of the festival a bit better. If I missed something identifying, please don't track me down. Not that anyone's actually reading this at this point anyway.

- Andster

Straitjacket Advice

A while back, I wrote about escapes and the problem I have with how they're being presented. I've come up with a way that I think makes escapes more interesting, and part of that is getting rid of anything that screams "magic trick" about them. I always hate when you see someone trying to escape from a car, a box, a building, a whatever, that suddenly goes wrong and lo and behold they're safe. That's a magic trick, not an escape.

Part of the presentation I'm working on is bringing the escapes out from behind a curtain and into full view. I think it becomes more interesting as a demonstration of skill than as something mystical. Now, that doesn't mean you actually need to have those skills in order to present it that way. Go ahead and use a gimmicked lock that you pretend to pick. I would rather do that in full view than just pull open the lock behind cover.

All that brings me around to the straitjacket I recently purchased. I've wanted one for years, literally over a decade. I could never bring myself to pull the trigger on one though. I finally ordered one because I decided to do an escape themed show for a festival and wanted to use the jacket as a closer. I always read that escaping from a regulation straitjacket isn't as hard as the audience thinks and I decided that, in the interest of realism, I would get the real jacket and do it the "right" way.

I'm an idiot.

While a regulation jacket isn't as hard as a lay audience believes, it certainly isn't easy, either. At least not for me. I'm a big guy, not necessarily "big" meaning "morbidly obese" but big and broad-shouldered. I get a lot of people asking what football position I played when they first meet me. I used to describe myself as more Penn than Teller, but then Penn lost a ton of weight and I can't use that anymore. I can't buy sport coats off the rack at most stores because putting my arms to the side will cause me to fat guy in a little coat. You get the idea.

I got the biggest Humane Restraint jacket I could get. It fits fine, but I have to be very careful about how tight the straps get pulled. Otherwise, I have a hell of a time pulling an arm out of the sleeve. I have gotten stuck before, several times, though thankfully none in actual performance (so far). I can get the arms over my head easily enough, it's just getting one arm out to undo the buckles that really kills me.

I also have an issue with the crotch strap. This is 100% on me for not researching further, but it has become an issue. When I picture a straitjacket, I picture a leather strap attached at the front with a buckle on the back, just like all the other straps on the jacket. What I got is a nylon strap that can be removed from the jacket entirely, threads from the back to the front and back under and clips in a friction buckle. In my experience, this is very difficult for a lay audience to understand. Even when I demonstrate how it clips before I'm put in the jacket, I still get people struggling to figure it out. It's kind of hard to point when your hands are bound and they're messing around by your ass.

Most importantly, nobody knows what a jacket is supposed to look like. I pattered about the canvas and the straps and how some people used fake jackets but this was 100% real and everyone took my word for it. I realized very quickly that nobody cares and they will believe what you say. I absolutely believe I could sell a gimmicked jacket as regulation and not get called on it.

All of this leads me to saying, I regret purchasing a real straitjacket. Given the opportunity to do it again, I would buy the gimmicked jacket in a heartbeat. From my research after the fact, I've found that some gimmicked jackets have larger arm holes to help facilitate slipping an arm out, they're made with softer canvas so you can manipulate the buckles through them, they include a way to get slack with the arms (not that I've had a problem with that, but I'd use the help if I had it), and they have a crotch strap more in line with what I had in mind. All of this would make it a lot easier when you do ten escapes in a day. It would also make me more confident in adding something to the escape, whether it's a time limit or chains or something to make it bigger. Right now, I honestly don't know that I can get out time after time so I make it more of a demonstration than a spectacular escape. It's not what it could be, and I know that.

I think it's a good think to know how to get out of a regulation jacket, but I also think doing it repeatedly is unnecessary work. After working it for one long day at the festival, my shoulder hurt and my thumb was rubbed raw from pulling my arm out. It's a lot of work for a couple minutes of applause. If I had to do it again, I would buy a gimmicked straitjacket. In fact, I may end up buying one in the future anyway.

If you are interested in getting a real straitjacket, I bought mine from Handcuff Warehouse. Their price was reasonable, their shipping was fast, and I have no complaints. I would order from them again in the future.

- Andster

The Festival, Year Two

This past weekend, I did magic at a festival for the second year in a row. I went in with a grand idea and, like usual, called an audible and changed things up a lot until what I did was nowhere near what I planned to do. I had a lot of fun though, and I'm going to try to recap what went on.

Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, wear sunscreen. I forgot all about it on Saturday and unfortunately, my spot was directly in the sun for the first half of the day. As the sun moved I got in to the shade of the building I was set up next to, but it was too late. I've got a nice burn on my arms and face which left me with a weird tanline from my Fitbit and now my face and arms are peeling. I put sunscreen on for Sunday and I don't know if it helped much or not. By that point it just hurt to stand in the sun.

Last year when I worked this festival, all I had was a TV tray with a briefcase on top, usually with a deck of cards sitting on top of that. Nobody had any idea what the hell I was doing. For this year, I bought an easel from Ikea for like $15 that has a dry erase board on one side and a chalkboard on the other side, with a little shelf that folds up. The plan was to do shows throughout the day (more on this later) using the dry erase side to say "MAGIC SHOW! NEXT SHOW XX:XX" as an attention grabber. On the other side, I clipped a canvas bank bag to the shelf and wrote "Thank you for your donation!" After the final hat line, I would turn the whole easel around and collect the money in the bag.

Last year I more or less did the Invisible Deck all day long and had a tip jar out. The plan this year was to do a full show, gathering a crowd and doing it more traditional busking style. I wanted to do escapes, and even bought a straitjacket. I based my routine on Dan Harlan's Pack Small Play Big Escape Act (I bought the whole series last year and have been meaning to write about them. One day.) picking a few highlights and trying to trim the time down but still have it look good.

Yeah, that went to shit after about the second time through. I quickly found out that the sign was getting people's attention, but I wasn't getting people to either wait or come back for the showtimes. At least they knew what I was doing. I went through the whole show, I think, twice. The first time I had a crowd of maybe five people. The second time I had six or seven, but three of them were back from the first show. I found out, unsurprisingly, the straitjacket drew a huge crowd but it came at the end of the show and they all trickled away and didn't tip. I also learned quickly that my hat lines which (I think) are funny when delivered to a crowd sound kinda harsh when delivered one on one.

I changed my sign to read 'STRAITJACKET ESCAPE! NEXT ESCAPE XX:XX" and draped the jacket over the top of my case. I was just going to ditch the rest of the act and to the straitjacket and 100 ft rope escape, which I take just about everywhere just in case. That worked a little better in getting crowds, but I still had a problem getting money from people. I did the jacket escape a few times while standing on a metal folding chair I brought, which is a nice visual and gets more people to stop. Unfortunately, it was a shitty chair and bent when I stepped off it one time so that was the end of that.

I think I ended up doing the jacket about ten times that day. I use an ungimmicked jacket, and let me tell you ten escape in the hot sun all day long is a bitch. By the end of the day, my shoulder hurt, my thumb was rubbed raw from scraping on the canvas of the sleeve, and I was just tired. I didn't know if I was going to be able to do the escape all the next day. What really clinched it for me was when, as I was packing up, I started talking with a couple of teenage girls who were working in a booth next to me. I made a joke about how they could probably escape from a jacket after hearing me all day and I hope it wasn't too boring for them. They said they liked watching and they liked magic and asked if I did other tricks. I grabbed my cards and did a really quick card to mouth trick for them.

They freaked the fuck out. I had been killing myself all day long doing straitjacket escapes and I got the best reaction of the day from a dumb card trick. I needed to think things over.

The next day I scrapped the escapes and brought back my Invisible Deck. I had some other things with me, but for the most part I just did the ID all day long. I set up in my original spot but standing in the direct sun was really hurting so I hunted around for a place to move to. I found an open spot right beside the DJ booth. The MC was a guy I've met a few times here and there and have a good time with. It was nice to set up beside him because he would talk about me throughout the day and I would goof around with him. One time he started a song and then out of nowhere announced, "Andy said he'd dance for the duration of this song. It's nine and a half minutes long. Cheer him on!" I did it. It wasn't pretty, but I did it. Even managed to show someone a trick while shuffling my feet so I didn't quit dancing.

I brought my easel with me again, but instead of doing showtimes I just tried to get something eye-catching to get people to stop. I started the day with "I CAN READ YOUR MIND!" I would see people read it and then kind of do a double take, and then I would say something like, "It's true! Come check this out!" It worked pretty well. I planned ahead and had a business card in each pocket, one with "You're the mindreader..." written on the back and the other with "You tell me!" I figured someone would be smart when I asked their name. Surprisingly, I didn't have to use them at all. After about half the day, I changed my sign to "WILL TURN TRICKS FOR FOOD" which got a lot of laughs and attention. The last hour or so I changed it to "THE BEST MAGIC YOU'LL SEE! ...here..." I really like the funny sign idea, and I would like to keep thinking of more to use for future events.

As I said before, I mostly did the Invisible Deck all day long. I did the Card to Mouth for several people throughout the day, and I used a thumbtip to vanish a silk a few times. I had a lot of fun with that, getting the attention of people in stopped cars or walking on the other side of the street and doing the vanish. That's another thing I would like to explore: long distance magic. Things visual enough to be seen and understood by people far away.

I think that's pretty much the rundown of the day. I had a lot of fun once again, made a pretty good chunk of cash. I think I learned a lot, and am really looking forward to getting back out and doing more festivals. I have a blast doing them and I think I'd like to work on finding more to perform at. We'll see how it goes.

- Andster