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

I'm Still Here

Hey, it's only been about a month since I posted. That's actually not too bad for me!

It's just going to be a quick update before I head off to work.

Not too much news to report. I've got a lot that I need to do as far as magic goes, but I have actually done very little.

There's a monthly magic show that I've been part of for the past few months, so that's been a lot of fun. It's been forcing me to get up in front of people on a regular basis and perform. The people I've met are fantastic and even though it's a hell of a drive for me to get to (2 hours one way) I'm glad I've been going.

The next show is the beginning of May. I think I'm going to do my mail bag escape for the first time in a couple years. The last time I did it for my old boss's Masonic lodge the lock got stuck. I think I wrote about that before. Hopefully this time goes better.

I've been doing more with escapes recently. I think I've got a way to present them that I don't hate. It's going to take some work to pull off like I want to, but we'll see if I can follow through with it and make something happen.

The festival I performed at last summer is coming up again and I've got myself in. I have a different plan for this year. I'm going to try to actually do shows and have showtimes and see if I can pull a crowd that way as opposed to trying to build a crowd from the little trickle that was coming by. Hopefully it won't rain like hell this year and the crowds will be better.

Looking toward the future, I'm almost ready to make one of the two announcements I've been teasing for a while. One of them is more personal and one is more magic related, and I don't know if one is actually going to happen in a timely fashion. Stay tuned.

Eva can I see bees in a cave? Random, I know but I want to put something out there while I'm thinking of it. That's a palindrome, it reads the same forwards and backwards. Is there a term for a sentence where the words read the same backwards and forwards, but the letters don't? Something like "I am, am I?" or "Fuck you, you fuck!" Is that just a palindrome too? I know the chances of someone reading this and giving me an answer are so small they're nonexistent, but I wanted to get it out there in case.

So long for now, I've gotta get ready for the day job. I've got a couple things to talk about in the near future, hopefully I can get things up early next week. Thanks for sticking around.

- Andster

Gig Recap

A week ago today I had my gig. Against all odds, it actually went pretty well. I definitely prepared more for this than I have in the past, but I also know that I put preparation off for way too long and could have done more. There were between thirty to forty people there spread out across eight different tables. Most of the tables had about six or eight people at them, but there were a couple that only had two or three.

What I had planned were two different routines that ran about seven minutes each. Just about everything was card-focused, which is something I would like to change in the future. I do think I had a good variety though, so it wasn't just a bunch of "pick a card" over and over.

The first routine centered around the four aces with a loose theme of  "Luck of the Irish," I produced the aces one at a time, did a modified spectator cuts the aces, twisted the aces, did two sandwich effects with the red and black aces, and finished up with invisible palm aces. I had a lot of fun doing this one, and overall I think it was received well. The sandwich effects could have been routined differently for my tastes. I didn't get the pop I was expecting out of it. I'll talk about that more another time.

The second routine started with an Invisible Deck with a 52-on-1 card, then a slightly modified Color Monte and finished with a version of Mr. Stickman by Richard Sanders. This routine was slightly shorter than the others as far as number of tricks, but it played about the same length of time. I wasn't super happy with this routine and wish I had taken the time to do something better. I didn't have a natural way to work St. Patrick's Day into this set like I did with the other one (which wasn't asked of me, I just thought it would be a nice touch) so I shoehorned it in by making Color Monte a demo of when I got hustled by a leprechaun and turned the stickman into a stick leprechaun.

During the second routine I did mess up twice, once revealing the ace of clubs instead of the ace of spades and once during Color Monte when I let my mouth get ahead of my brain and forgot where I was in the script. Fortunately (or not) these happened at different tables. Both of these could be solved with more practice, especially the Color Monte issue. I also usually use a line when asking them to think of a card that eliminates obvious cards, but I didn't this time. I should make sure I do that in future performances of the Invisible Deck.

I managed to hit all the tables in 57 minutes, just shy of the hour they asked for. The perfectionist in me would have liked to his that hour exactly, but there were no complaints. I was afraid of coming up way too short, so I was happy. I would like to figure out a way to carry water with me or something because I had dry mouth pretty bad by the end of it after talking almost nonstop for an hour. Maybe I could keep a bottle with my stuff and make my way over for a swig after every couple tables. I also need to do better about bringing the magic up to chest level. I spent the whole time bending over working at the tabletop level, and my back killed me when I was done.

All in all, I had a great time and I think it was successful. I learned a lot and now I have some things to think about and work on for the future. Don't know when my next gig will be. I know for sure I'll be doing a festival at the end of June, but maybe something will crop up in the meantime. I'll keep everyone posted.

- Andster

I Wish

I wish we lived in a world where magicians (or, I suppose, people in general) weren't dicks and we could openly talk about methods when selling a trick. I hate that we have to list off a big thing full of what the trick isn't (which in my mind just invites speculation and guessing more than anything) instead of just being able to say "Here's how it works," and have people still buy it.

I'm sure we all at one point or another have fallen victim to hype of some sort or another in our magic careers. Usually either the list of "No's" makes it sound like the holy grail of magic and in reality you get a convoluted handling to fit the criteria they set, or it turns out that the conditions you normally perform under aren't compatible with the handling. Then there's the issue of demo videos that don't tell the whole story, but that's a whole other post by itself.

What I would love, and I know this is a complete pipe dream fantasy world, is if a new trick told you how it worked and you could make an informed decision about whether or not you wanted to buy it. If you liked it, you'd pay the money and perform it, almost like a licensing fee. If you didn't like it, you would be a reasonable person and not perform it because you haven't purchased the license.

It would be nice to see the gimmick and find out before you drop cash on it that it's flimsy and hard to handle. It would be good to know that you require a stooge to watch what your spectator does before you spend your hard earned money and realize you have no friends. Imagine how the reviews would change. Instead of reading "The 'secret something' can be a bit fiddly, but there are ways around that. You'll know what I mean when you see it." we could have reviews like, "The gimmicked card has a tendency to slide off the top of the deck, but you can use your third finger to hold it. I haven't found it to be that big of an issue in real life."

No longer would we see ads like:
No rough and smooth!
No thread!
No wire!
No magnets!
No puffs of air!
No duplicate!
No switching!
No stooges!

Instead we would see:
This requires a piece of double sided tape and a solid billet peek.

But we will never get to that point because magic is all about the secrets, and magicians are dicks and won't pay if you give them the secret for free. Hell, I'd be happy if more (or any, really) magic shops offered refunds if you don't like a product. Sure, you'd probably still get dicks that just put money down on one trick and keep refunding and buying new ones but I feel like that would take effort and there would be fewer that do that than if you just openly advertised the secret.

I know this will never happen, but I can dream. If I ever get the chance to sell something I've created, I'd like to experiment with some truth in advertising and see how well it goes. Probably about as well as I expect it to, which is why people don't already do this.

You're all a bunch of dicks.

- Andster