Not Quite Ironic

When I returned home from performing last night (at a wedding... with two brides... isn't the twentieth century awesome?) to find the latest issue of Genii Magazine in my mailbox.  This issue contains a trick I submitted to them for publication several months ago and it has appeared. No one told me exactly when it was going to appear, so it was quite a pleasant surprise to see it. Genii has been around for over seventy-five years and I'm surrounded by some rather illustrious company. It feels a bit like a high school student sneaking into a really cool college party.

The trick is called "Card Under Irony" which is a strange variation of the modern classic trick, "Card Under the Drink". Before it was published, there was spirited debate here in Toronto as to whether the trick should have been called "Card Under Irony" or "Card Under Foreshadowing". Eventually it was decided both were equally appropriate and equally confusing so we flipped a coin.

It shows up on p44 in the Magicana column, edited by Andi Gladwin.

One small correction: somehow Photo 5 got inverted. So when you get to that part of the description, it's best to do a head stand to view the photo. Otherwise when you try to learn the trick you'll be confused when you're required to magically teleport a card from the left to the right side of the table.

One large correction: those hands aren't mine! Really the wedding ring should give that away. I'm still quite single and will happily accept suitors who enjoy card tricks.

If you don't already subscribe to Genii, you can do so here.

Sweaty Thursday Afternoon

Last Thursday, it was hot... really hot... and I was ridiculously overdressed. But indoors it was much cooler at the Houses of Providence where I was performing for Magicana's Senior Sorcery program. They shares some photos on their Facebook page: 

After the performance, I was treated to a recitation of some of the most amusing dirty limericks I've ever heard (proof that age brings wit and wisdom.

You can support Magicana and their community outreach programs for children and seniors here. 

Shared Uncertainty (Part 2)

I'm slowly getting a chance to dig through the video from The Uncertainty Project back in June. Here is the next part

For those who are curious, this is a blend of material from The Vernon Chronicles Volume 1 (Stephen Minch, L&L Publishing, 1987), Vortex (Tom Stone, Hermetic Press, 2010) and Tricks (David Ben, Squash Publishing, 2003).

I hope more will follow soon but we have a lot of video (every night, with multiple cameras for some nights) and the files are huge and a pain to work with.

James Alan Uncertainty Project Poster

Repetition

The clever folks at TED-Ed point out something interesting: 

There is a rule in magic, taught religiously to new magicians which goes something like this:

Never repeat the same trick twice for the same audience.

In its simplest for, it appears to be wonderful advice. Only showing a piece of magic once keeps the secret safe since everyone has fewer opportunities to try and work out how it's done and you retain the element of surprise.

There's another school of thought that embraces repetition with escalation. That is, you can do the same trick over and over again, but with each repetition you should raise the stakes, or incorporate extra wrinkles and twists. This is much like the famed Dueling Banjo's scene from Deliverance...

This is the version I was first exposed to as a young child in a Warner Brothers cartoon.

However, in university, I became aware of a strange phenomenon in children's television with Blue's Clues. At one point they would take an episode and air it on Monday. Then on Tuesday, in the same time slot, they aired the exact same episode. And continued for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. And they did some rather interesting research on the young children watching it. It turns out, the more times they had seen the episode, the more they payed attention and the more interested they were on subsequent viewings. This runs completely counter to what our intuition says should happen; we ought to be bored watching the same program over and over again.

Of course, this matches up with my own youth. It would be difficult to count the number of times I've watched the original Star Wars trilogy or Ace Ventura. And when we were in elementary and middle school, we would watch syndicated episodes of The Simpsons until we could recite the most profound scenes from memory... Dental plan... Lisa needs braces...

I had the opportunity to run an experiment fairly recently. Due to some miscommunication, I was trapped with a group of children who were far too young (I typically try my best not to ever perform for anyone under seven years old for reasons I've explained before) for far too long. There was one piece which I learn from Eugene Burger's Mastering the Art of Magic which has always been dependable for me with children. It's fun, appropriately absurd and silly, and gets several people involved.

Unfortunately, several people wasn't enough. So to increase my interaction, I took a single segment from the middle of the trick, and started doing it over and over again, once for each child. I did it over and over again, word-for-word the same, passing form one child to the next like an assembly line. Every one was happy to get their turn, and there was no sense at all that this was "getting old". Because I was confused and bewildered, I kept going. I made it to nine times, repeating the same phase of a trick and finally moved on. I know I could have continued but I was bored myself.

Now, I don't want to repeat myself that much on a regular basis, but it was an interesting learning experience to find out that maybe repetition fundamentally isn't that bad.

Summer @ The Cage

Last night, we ended the summer season of Magic@theCage with a fantastic sold out show. Of course, we're not going anywhere. We'll be back every Sunday this fall with a new and exciting show every week. Coming up in September, we have Jason Palter, Chris Mayhew, Paul Pacific and new performers Garnett Schmidt and Gary Benesco. I'll also be doing my (older) one-man show, Lies, Damn Lies & Magic Tricks on Sept 14. Tickets are available on the site.

I went back through the summer shows and picked out some of my favourite photos, including some of the goofier ones I wouldn't want to use for promotional purposes. There are way more to be found if you visit us on Facebook.

Magic at the Cage Poster

Shared Uncertainty

Part of the problem of a show called The Uncertainty Project is the necessity of remaining tightlipped about its contents. It was extremely important for the show to force people int a position to "expect the unexpected"* with all the discomfort and excitement that comes with that state of mind. At the end of the day magic revolves around reversal of expectations. We expect our watches to stay on our wrists, shuffled cards to stay out of order and empty hats to remain rabbitless. It's a fine line, trying to walk outside the boundaries of a traditional magic show but without degenerating into total randomness and Family-Guy-Manatee humour. On the other hand, I routinely blindfold myself with duct tape on stage and do magic with thimbles, so a show on the eve of World Pride demanded a certain amount of extra unexpectedness.

Enjoy Part One of The Uncertainty Project!

The Uncertainty Project was presented June 18-21, 2014 at the Wychwood Theatre in Toronto with additional unexpectedness by Lavender Blonde.

Not sure yet when Part Two will become available or how much of the show I'll be willing to post publicly. I guess the future really is uncertain.

*It's not actually the contradiction in terms that people normally assert that it is.