I received this email recently from Colin C. I'm a fan of this Spont: set a reminder on your phone to go off in two minutes and turn the volume on. Then go start a conversation with the person you want to show something to. The reminder interrupts the conversation. Then you glance at your phone and say, "oh, hmm, do you mind helping me with something?" And off you go.  This is appropriate for something like the "Protection Spell" trick you posted or any trick that has a presentational aspect of a regular or repeating action. It gives the experience a tiny push to start it all. Your p ..read more

Here’s a Hoy Book Test variation that was inspired by the mailbag post on Monday. As I said in that response, I don’t particularly feel the need to justify the use of a second book with the Hoy Book Test. But I had the idea for this variation where a second book is required and tried it out the other day with my friend Lyndsey at the public library and it ended up going over surprisingly well, and I think it’s conceptually pretty interesting. I asked Lyndsey to grab any novel from the library. She came back with a book called The Drift by C.J. Tudor. I checked to see how many pages it was (ge ..read more

In March, I suggested the idea of doing a tournament to discover the worst trick of all time and solicited your nominations. After playing things out in my head, I realized a tournament wouldn’t quite work out the way I had intended. And yet here I was with a few dozen nominations for the worst trick of all time. What to do with them? So I conducted a poll in the last post of April asking if I should post the nominees or not. Does magic have enough negativity, or does it need more? Well, 89.8% of you thought it could do with just a little more. Okay, you monsters, you asked for this. I’m not g ..read more

I just came across your post on the Hoy book test and I was wondering how you justify the need for a specific page from a second book in a [traditional Hoy situation]? (Incidentally your ‘Take me to a random blog post’ feature is brilliant, and has led to me reading so many posts that would otherwise either be buried in my memories or never even have read otherwise.)—YG Personally, I don’t try and “justify” the need for a specific page from a second book. Justification is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you’re giving people a rationale as to why you’re doing the thing you’re doing. On t ..read more

This is the final post for April. Catch you all back here on Monday, May 6th. The next issue of the newsletter comes out on Sunday, May 5th. Hey, supporters. Remember that thing I wrote you about in last issue of the newsletter? The thing at the end? You have until the end of this month to pick that up if you’re interested. I had someone mail me something recently and it ended up getting sent back because it was never picked up on our end. The process to mail me something is to use the address found here. And then to inform me that you’ve sent me something. I don’t handle the PO Box myself (be ..read more

I have a new item I’ve been carrying around in my computer bag recently that might interest some of you. Yes, let’s get it out of the way, a computer bag is really no different from a purse. It’s a purse which holds a laptop. But don’t look down on that. Be grateful we have an excuse to carry around a little bag with us. For years, only women had this luxury. They needed something to hold their pocket mirror, rouge, and a box of tampons. In those days, women weren’t allowed in the Magic Circle and the International Brotherhood of Magicians. It was commonly understood that pretending to move s ..read more

For just the fourth time since I made the offer four years ago that someone has taken me up on the offer to discuss the worst thing about a product they’re releasing. This time it’s the MultiNotes app from Antonio Ferrara. What Is It? It’s an app that mimics the iPhone notes app and allows you to use it for up to eight multiple-outs. For example (for shitty example), I show you a note in my phone called “The number you’ll name.” I say: “Name a number between 1 and 8.” You say two and I open the note and it says: Then, you begin to worship me as a god. No, again, that was a simple (and bad) e ..read more

Here’s a video of Craig Petty performing some shitty key prediction trick. (It’s not his trick.) The trick itself is wildly flawed. Unless you have late-stage Parkinson’s disease, there would never be that much pen movement involved with writing down a number. And you end up with the goofiest reveal in the history of magic. A digital read out sticker (with clearly markered-out lines) on the back of a wooden key tag. This trick has TWAT nomination all over it. While the trick is obviously room-temperature dog vomit, I want to talk about his presentation, because he does something I see magicia ..read more

I liked [the post Keep Feeling Fascination] and it made me remember the words I heard from Michael Weber once, how we consider people we are performing magic for : 1- Audi ence  ( From Latin for, to listen ) 2- Spec tator ( From Latin Spectare, to look at) 3- PARTICIPANT ( From Latin Participatio, to share ) ( helpers) I try to keep this words in minds and go for the latter and I believe that your post was also sharing the same thing.—KQ Yeah, I think I was hitting on a similar idea. Although in practice I tend to use all of these in my write-ups. “Audience” for when I’m talking about ..read more

The eclipse performance went over spectacularly. We were gathered at my friend’s lake house on the northern border of New York state. I spun the top on my palm a few times leading up to the event, as if I was trying to get the right “feel” for it. In reality, I was trying to gauge the interest and make sure the moment was going to be right. The first time I spun it, one of my friends asked me about it, and I said something about how there’s supposed to be a moment during or around the eclipse that affects spinning objects strangely. Had he just said, “Oh,” and turned around, I probably wouldn ..read more