A couple of years ago, Steve Martin, working with the twisted folks at CountingDown.com, created this short web film called Morto the Magician. Imagine, if you will, a stage magician for whom everything goes wrong. (This not for the squeamish.)

Since this has been “out there” for a couple of years, you’ve probably already seen it. But maybe, like me, it’s been long enough that you need a reminder: Morto the Magician.

(It’s only my irrational fear of karmic retribution that prevents me from drawing any parallels between this film and one of the acts I recently saw perform. )

One of the consistent and consistently troubling aspects of mystery entertainment is that so many performers don’t take the considerable time and effort required to create an act that is their own. There’s no denying that it sometimes takes years putting together a really good act, and more years on top of that to fine tune it. I realize it’s far easier to simply channel the personality of a performer who is already enjoying a relatively high level of attention and success — Blaine Clones come immediately to mind — but that does no good to anyone, really.

It’s not good for the original performer. He’s traded his blood, sweat and tears to craft an act that resonates in some meaningful way with his audiences. It’s not fair for someone else to pull the same stunt McDonald’s has often been accused of: staking out the competition’s territory after they’ve spent their time and money identifying a good location, then moving in next door. It looks awfully unprofessional, doesn’t it?

It’s not good for audiences, either. Here we hold in the palm of our hands the knowledge and the power to turn upside down the solid beliefs of our audience members, and some, instead, choose to take that opportunity and spurn it away by cloning an existing act. Audiences necessarily expect a special experience from practitioners of something as exquisitely special like magic and mentalism. I think it’s criminal to treat audiences so disrespectfully by giving them less than they are due.

It’s not good for the art of magic and mentalism for many of the same reasons it’s not good for audiences (which makes abundant sense as there would be no performing art of magic and mentalism were it not for audiences.) No other performing art is like mystery entertainment. No other performing art. Even outstanding part-time professionals know not to treat it like a part-time lover.

Also, it’s ultimately not good for the performer. For some silly reason, Deddy Corbuzier comes to mind yet again. (He’s our poster child for how not to behave.) In a recent thread on The Magic Cafe, Corbuzier claims he will turn in his Max Maven Clone act. (Maybe he’s trading it in for a kabuki theater style. Sorry, Jeff, I know that’s not funny. Well, not very funny, anyway.) But for some bizarre reason, he wants to make that change concurrent with getting married. It frightens me to consider the subconcious thought processes that put those two monumental events in accord with one another.

When he does change, though, he’s going to be nearly at square one building an act. Sure, he can continue to do essentially the same tricks and trade on his name, but audience expectations will be for one act that — we hope — will no longer exist. It’s like playing some cosmic game of Monopoly and he’s dealing himself the big “Go to Jail” card. “Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Go. To. Jail. Intellectual property misappropriating bastard.” (It may not actually say that; I just made that up.) He gets to start over and all the time and effort he spent building a name using someone else’s act — no doubt considerable on all accounts — evaporates into thin air.

What if he’d spent all that time building his own act instead of cloning Max’s act? Where would he be right now?

Here’s a better question (i.e. one not so rhetorical): What are you spending your time doing? Are you working at being like someone, or are you creating someone? There’s lots to ne said for dressing up your imaginary friend and sending him out to entertain the masses, you know.

Bob Cassidy is not Dr. Bob, although they may look alike. Dr. Crow may be related to both of them, but he sure doesn’t act like it. Dr. Bob can perform in a manner (and in venues) Bob Cassidy may not wish to. Dr. Crow, on the other hand…well, I’m not sure what to say about him. Never let it be said that split personalities have no place in this world.

Let’s play a game of “what if.”

What if you could create any character you wanted, and endow him — maybe I shouldn’t use the word “endow”, so let’s instead say imbue him –with whatever powers, history and abilities you wished. Some people may call that a convenient excuse for abberant behavior, but I suggest to you a better word might be context. Within context nearly any behavior is appropriate. (Why do you think pseudo-schizophrenics can have so much fun?)

Not that you actually have to follow through, but you may find it an interesting exercise to take out a blank piece of paper and a pen and design someone you are not now. Study him. Let him do things you’d never dream of doing. Wonder how he might dress if given the opportunity to pick out his own socks. (Not that he’d necessarily wear socks, of course.)

Let him choose tricks from the vast, almost endless canvass of magic trickdom. Let him choose those tricks that fit him. But most importantly, wonder how he might routine them in ways maybe you wouldn’t. (I mean in ways you wouldn’t in a million years routine them. After all, you have a reputation to uphold; he doesn’t.)

Once you’ve done that, close your eyes and picture what it might be like to watch him perform before an audience.

You might come to like someone like that.

This might come as a shock to some, but I am a quite the fan of language.

I believe the seeds for this were planted at a very early age. My two earliest, clearest memories are of watching the black and white television version of “Superman“ with my dad, and of my mom reading to me. I recall vividly that, when I was old enough to attend school, each and every morning, while waiting for the school bus (the longer variety, wise guy), she’d read to me. I’ve always had a natural love of books and reading. (Some magazines, too, but mostly for the articles.)

If you think about it for a moment, language really is magic. Words are simply shortcuts to memories of our personal experience.

If I say to you the phrase, “sweet, juicy, delicious red apple” it wouldn’t mean a whole lot until you allowed your brain to go back and pull out your memory of biting into a sweet, delicious red apple and having the juice run down your chin. When your brain does that, you substitute the words I used for the experience had. You didn’t really bite into an apple, but your brain experienced the sensation and substituted the memory for the words I used, so that you could understand what I meant. (Some people might call that hypnosis. Other people might suggest that hypnosis doesn’t exist.)

All of that happens in a split second. The words themselves don’t mean anything until you can match them up with your personal experience, which the brain is only happy to do for you without sending to it an engraved invitation.

Words are shortcuts to memories of personal experience.

Perhaps you’d not given that much thought until just now. It’s a profound concept. It’s also a very powerful tool in your performing toolkit.

In NLP-speak, the map (the words, invoking the memory) is not the territory (the apple.) It’s a representative of the territory. If you were looking at a map of New York City, you wouldn’t actually be looking at New York City, would you?

How we use language determines the level to which we can personally affect other people. One would think that, as mystery performers, we’d want to maximise our affect on our audiences. And I’m not denying that’s often the goal, either consciously or subconsciously; I hope that it is. But, in my experience in observing the performances of others in our trade and craft, I question whether enough people give it sufficient attention and, in the process, short-shrift our audiences.

Out of curiosity, allow me please to ask the question: Why use an impotent word, when it takes no more effort to utter another word which explodes meaning in the minds of our audience?

Every once in a while the subject of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) erupts on the discussion boards. Sometimes on more than one board at the same time. And each time the resulting threads of conversation eventually look like a book burning in progress. (Spirited discussion of any religion will do that, you know.)

There are the proponents, the opponents, the agnostics, and everything in between. I find it ironic that a field of study, the demonstrable results of which indicate a number of methods by which one person may more effectively communicate with another person, should create such conflicting reports of efficacy. It’s like watching two dozen blind men describe an elephant, with many of them grabbing at the wrong parts.

So, with that in mind, if you will, allow me to tell my tail.

The history of NLP — the real history — is available to anyone who can spell “Google” so I won’t go into the specifics or comment much on the folklore. Suffice it to say that as the 1970s were getting started, John Grinder, a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz and student of linguistics and transformational grammar, met up with Richard Bandler, student of mathematics, psychology and computer programming. Their friendship formed the basis of future study, joined soon enough by others, including Leslie Cameron Bandler, Judith DeLozier, Robert Dilts, Stephen Gilligan, David Gordon, and Frank Pucelik. (And, if you believe what you’ll eventually read if you study NLP long enough, another three or four million co-founders — or so they believe they are.)

Bandler and Grinder found themselves living on a lovely wooded piece of property in the mountains behind Santa Cruz, near a man named Gregory Bateson. In 1955, Bateson and his colleagues attempted to create an “appropriate theoretical base” to describe human interaction. In other words, a way to break down human communication into identifiable components. It seemed simple in theory, but difficult to bring about.

Bateson challenged Bandler and Grinder. The result was found in the books, The Structure of Magic and The Structure of Magic II. (In fact, Bateson wrote the introduction to the book which formed the opening volley of NLP: The Structure of Magic. In it, he complimented Bandler and Grinder for succeeding in ways Bateson and his colleagues had not.)

There are some people who have the astounding ability to clearly communicate with others; to “connect” with people; to influence and persuade them; to get them to change. (And, while this group of people includes them, I am not specifically referring to televangelists.) Bandler and Grinder focused on a select group of therapists who inarguably achieved outstanding results with patients, most notably Dr. Milton H. Erickson, Dr. Virginia Satir and Dr. Fritz Perls.

By studying not only what they did, but how they did it, Bandler and Grinder described in exquisite detail how Erickson, Satir and Perls did their magic. The word used in NLP is modeling — an apt term if there ever was one. Think of it this way: if, somehow, you did what Erickson did, in the same manner in which he did it — if you created a model and acted that model out — you would achieve the same results he achieved. To the degree you managed to accurately model Erickson, you could more consistently achieve those results.

It’s a simple concept, but many people have a problem accepting it. “It can’t be that easy.” But, allow me to ask this question: what if it really is that easy?

Bandler and Grinder began modeling human excellence by studying therapists because the results were immediately observable. For instance, when a patient came to see Erickson, the change in that patient was often immediate, noticeable, and — if I may use the word — magical. They soon moved on to modeling other forms of excellence: sales people, managers, consultants, negotiators, educators, coaches, and performers (both atheletic and entertainers).

There was something awfully interesting in what they found through their study: they found that, when stripped of stylistic differences — that is, those personal fingerprints that make a person’s style what it is and different from others — and from the context in which they communicated, these people were doing essentially the same thing. They were following the same basic recipe for communicating with others; the same patterns of communication. And, as a result, they achieved a level of success that excelled.

One of the most important aspects was that each of these outstanding people had at their fingertips the ability to change their approach if what they were doing was not getting the results they wanted to achieve.

Kindly read that last paragraph again, because that’s a key component to your success as a performer.

If what you are doing isn’t getting you the results you want, do something else. Albert Einstein geniously observed,

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

Yet many people are in the habit of doing just that. (Read the story of researchers and their adult-sized mazes.)

As you structure your act, you can only imagine the response from your audience to what it is you say and do. That’s all you can do. It is only by actually performing your act before an audience and, most importantly, noticing the results as your audience responds (or doesn’t respond) that you can mold an act to achieve the results you wish. Unless you are performing a silent act — curiously avoided by those who would benefit most from the choice, I might add — I’d suggest that the choices you make as your structure what you will say is far more important than what it is you actually do.

As with other examples, this aspect applies in spades to the performance of mentalism.

There are untold numbers of anecdotes told by professional performers who found that just changing one, single word made an enormous difference in the response of the audience to a performance piece. One word. That’s magic.

Model successful entertainers. Study what makes them successful. This is the real secret to the value of DVDs. It’s not the performances; it’s the thinking behind the tricks. It’s what goes behind making certain choices about how to perform a certain piece that achieves a greater level of audience response than another choice. Strip away the stylistic fingerprints and the context within which the trick is done, and find the common traits outstanding performers share. It’s right out there in the open.

Want another secret? Fielding West’s L&L Publishing DVD “The Fielding West Comedy Magic Show.” While there are some clever and very funny routines, it would not do you anywhere near as much good to copy those routines as it would be for you to study and model what makes West’s magic go over so well with audiences.

Here’s another secret. Take three steps back and give some serious, considerable thought to those people you may already be modeling. Often this may be completely accidental in that we tend to take on the qualities of those people with whom we surround ourselves. And sometimes some of those qualities aren’t quality material.

If you take the time to read some of the older entries on the blog, you’ll notice I’ve written quite a bit about Richard Osterlind’s L&L Publishing release, “Easy to Master Mental Miracles.” Until recently, I’ve written about the response by others to a set of DVDs that weren’t even released. Frankly, I’m still awfully amused by the hue and cry. But having viewed all four discs, start to finish, I have a new perspective to cover. (More on that later.)

Without covering the same territory again, Richard Osterlind has earned my deep respect as a direct result of primarily two things: the quality of the work he’s made available to this relatively small world of magic and mentalism, and my personal dealings with him. I’ve found the books, videos and tricks he’s made available — especially since partnering with Jim Sisti — are carefully crafted, demonstrating a high level of attention to detail, useful content, and overall quality. My personal dealings with him convince me Richard is a good and decent man of integrity. To my mind, integrity is the cornerstone of every good quality a man possesses.

These two things shape my expectations of anything with his name affixed to it, these DVDs being no exception.

As I’ve mentioned before, as much as I value and work at the art of mentalism, my introduction to it followed in the well-trodden footsteps of my introduction to many other deeply interesting and loved interests in my life. Which is to say, kicking and screaming. (Not an attractive way to go through life, I’ll tell you.)

In the introduction to the DVDs, host Jim Sisti notes:

Mentalism has been called “magic’s last frontier.” It’s really the only form of the art left where the audience can think that what they’ve just seen is, perhaps, real.

Ah, yes: leaving the audience thinking that what they’ve just seen just might be the real thing. It would be understatement to say I “had a problem with that concept” in the same way it might be considered understatement to say Beethoven was a little hard of hearing, or Donald Trump is a bit egocentric, or that hip-hop is just mildly annoying.

It was in the early to mid-90s, thanks to the miracle of computers and BBSs (bulletin board systems, like MAGIC! and GeMiNi) that I was able to interact with people likewise afflicted with the bite from the magic bug. One of those people was T.A. Waters, surely not an unknown name in the world of mentalism.

The Reader’s Digest version of the story is I found myself in a “spirited debate” with Waters over the very concept that some performers did not provide a clearly stated, cut-and-dried disclaimer before performing a mentalism show. It’s not that I thought there were custom designed bucket seats already being warmed in the pits of hell for mentalism performers who refused to overtly state that what they were doing was just a bunch of tricks, but I may have harbored the secret desire that, at minimum, measurements were quietly being taken.

T.A. was kind and generous with his time and infinite patience and, without drawing a single drop of blood, brought me over to The Dark Side. Waters, Bob Cassidy, Banachek, Paul Alberstat, Max Maven, and Ted Lesley have all, over the years, been kind with their time and help and guidance as I worked my way into the world of the performance of mentalism. Over the last two years, I’ve added Richard Osterlind’s name to that list.

Like most people who truly jump in with both feet to seriously wade through the waters of those things that make up the foundation of mentalism, I became a student of Theo Annemann, obtaining a set of The Jinx reprints. Truth be told, I still grab those reprints, sit back in a comfortable chair, and start on page one and just read for hours.

I obtained a copy of Corinda’s “13 Steps to Mentalism” and actually read it cover to cover, which is not an insignificant thing to do, I assure you. I’ve since read it many, many times and in each reading I find a new angle to something I had never before considered. It’s like magic when those things leap off the page.

To those I added manuscripts by Phil Goldstein, books by George Anderson, and a trip back to my Tarbell Course in Magic.

Over the years since I started that serious study curriculum, I’ve added an embarrassing number of titles to the mentalism section of my library. T.A. Waters’ “Mind, Myth & Magic” still holds a special place, for several reasons; Bascom Jones’ “Compleat Magick”; Larry Becker’s “Stunners!” — as well as a copy of the updated “Stunners! Plus”; Ted Lesley’s “Paramiracles”; Banachek’s “Psychological Subtleties”; Al Koran’s books; more Phil Goldstein; the list goes on and on and on.

But I return most often to Annemann and Corinda. “There’s gold in them thar hills.” And you don’t have to dig too far to find it. But you do have to do something I suspect many today haven’t: you have to open the books and read them.

So. Considering my deep love for these books, why would a set of DVDs containing classic pieces of mentalism — fourteen of which are attributed directly to Annemann and Corinda — be something about which I can get excited?

The first instance of the public being put on notice that these discs were on the way was by a post to The Magic Cafe from Tim Trono. It didn’t take long to witness the first shots across the bow; some people were getting their panties in a knot over the very idea that Osterlind would gather together in one place such a mother lode of mentalism.

You know, it’s not so much getting beginners to mentalism to acknowledge the importance of Annemann and Corinda; it’s getting them to embrace the relevance.

On his web site in the “mentalists only” section, Bob Cassidy posted an essay that deals with a list of books that would make up a well-stocked mentalist’s library. At the beginning, he wrote:

It saddens me when I hear newcomers to the art advising neophytes that classic texts on the art are “outdated” – these are usually the same guys who are surprised when they learn that the latest “miracle” on the market was actually introduced in a 1939 issue of Annemann’s “Jinx,” or that the actual inventor of the “missing puzzle piece “effect – a current controversy among those unfamiliar with “outdated” material – has been dead for several years now. He introduced the effect almost forty years ago.

So, why did Osterlind put together this set of DVDs to release to the world of magicians and mentalists?

Some people have actually suggested he did it for the money. Of those people suggesting such a thing and who do not smoke crack on a regular basis, I assume the reason they suggested such a thing is simply because they have no clue how much money exchanges hands on DVD projects for our weird little world. (For the remaining two of you still wondering: not much.)

Gee, I don’t know — how about we let Richard tell us, in part, his reasoning. In a post on The Magic Cafe, Osterlind states:

When I was approached with the idea of doing them, my reaction was “GREAT!” There are so wonderful great effects in the literature that people pass by and now I had the chance to demonstrate them. My approach was to not try to change much and to not try to inject too much of my own personality into them. I did add a few working points that I have learned over the years and it is impossible, of course, not to be yourself when performing. The main purpose was to show how direct and powerful these effects can be.

So why do you suppose it took all of five seconds between the announcement of these videos, and the commencement of some people ripping Richard to shreds over them? Well, take a look at this post to alt.magic. It’s a rare (and embarrassing for some) look inside the world of a private organization of psychic entertainers, many of whom are professional performers and, ostensibly, peers of Richard’s.

When you read through that post you can’t help but get the feeling that the secrets of mentalism discovered and invented and presented by Annemann, Corinda, Koran, Hoy and others are somehow now the property of the members of a private organization rather than the entire width and breadth of the world of mentalism — or at least those who take the time to learn them. I find that a troubling point of view.

Another theme seems to be that these secrets are being “exposed” to the world. Really, now.

Last I checked, L&L Publishing’s instructional DVDs are aimed primarily at the world of magicians, which — I could be wrong — would not be classified as “the whole world.” You aren’t likely to walk into your local bookstore and find “Easy to Master Mental Miracles” on the shelf.

On the other hand, you can walk into your local bookstore and likely find Annemann’s “Practical Mental Magic” on the shelf right next to copies of “Art of Magic“, Mark Wilson’s condensed version of his “Course in Magic” — among other titles aimed at magicians.

Those myopic sentiments probably explain away much of the rancor, hysterics and disgraceful ad hominem attacks on Osterlind over these DVDs. Once these members were introduced to the texts of Annemann, Corinda and others and learned of their value, now the door should be shut on the Great Unwashed Masses that are magicians? I wonder how many of those people remember their own humble beginnings as “lowly magicians.”

Disgraceful.

But the tenor and pitch of the wailing and gnashing of teeth should bring something to your attention: the contents of these DVDs represent the core of what makes up the foundational aspects of great mentalism. That is powerful stuff and, the prospect of such information falling into your hands bothers some people. Consider that for a moment.

So, do the DVDs live up to the excitement kicked up over their impending release? In a word: yes. In another word: absolutely.

I won’t go into a detailed the list of tricks covered in the DVDs, you can see those on L&L’s web site, or in the full color ads in either MAGIC Magazine or Genii Magazine. (You do subscribe to both publications, right?) Suffice it to say, though, that these four discs make up almost seven hours of truly mind-bending, exciting pieces of mentalism.

As I sit here I find it very difficult to single out some of the tricks for special mention. In a way, and perfectly fitting given the title of the series, it’s a lot like asking me to mention my favorite tricks from Ammar’s “Easy to Master Card Miracles” discs. How do you single out items from a list of tricks that itself represents singled out items?

That said, I have a special place in my heart for Al Koran’s “Five Star Prediction” — one of the greatest card tricks I have ever performed. “El Numero” by Syd Bergson is, literally, a no miss hit. “The Trick That Fooled Einstein” and “Headline Prediction”, both by Al Koran; Annemann’s “Par-Optic Vision” and “Magazine Test” are particular favorites of mine. Also, if you learn Corinda’s “Impromptu Book Test” and David Hoy’s “Hoy Book Test” you can save yourself literally thousands of dollars in commercially available book tests without trading away an ounce of mystery entertainment.

One more special mention: Richard’s performance of the original version of Ted Annemann’s “Seven Keys to Baldpate” proves that it’s awfully hard to improve some tricks as so many have tried over the years. (By the way, if you chose to do this version, you can get made for you the same style bag Richard uses in the video. Order it from Sandra Sisti. I know how much work and detail goes into making these things. The asking price is a steal.)

I think the selection process must have been tortuous — and probably torturous — to whittle down. Having watched every minute of the discs I can say I didn’t see a single piece of puffery or filler; these are all solid, classic performance pieces that should serve as a basis of your own routining. They should also serve to cause the viewer to blow the dust off of their copies of Annemann and Corinda, seek out Koran and Hoy and Becker and others, and learn some new old stuff. These DVDs prove Richard’s point that the classics — even done as they were written — play as strongly to today’s audiences and they ever did in the past.

And these pieces play as well to a room of a few people as they do to a room of a few hundred or a few thousand people. That’s one of the wonderful aspects of mentalism: the real magic happens between the ears. (Half-nekkid wimmin jiggling on stage next to you is optional, but not prohibited.) So long as the mentalist clearly communicates effectively great tricks, there’s not a bad seat in the house. Compare that to much of magic performance and you can see the draw towards mentalism.

One almost legitimate complaint is the title of the series: Easy to Master Mental Miracles. I say almost because, in reality, anyone who thinks any legitimate performance of magic or mentalism is easy to master clearly hasn’t bothered to notice the caveats found in most magic texts that demand the reader put in the time to learn how to perform. The performance aspect of what we do is the larger part; the actual mechanics of tricks themselves is not. And, in fact, there is very little that is truly difficult to master.

What you are spared is the selection process of great, professional quality pieces of mentalism you can perform — the rest is up to you.

Together with Richard’s first set of DVDs — Richard Osterlind’s Mind Mysteries — you have a wonderful introduction to, as Jim Sisti put it, one of magic’s last frontiers: the world of mentalism. And you are taken by the hand by one of mentalism’s great teachers and true gentlemen.

I don’t recommend many products but I have no hesitation in suggesting you buy a set of these DVDs.

[Audio Blog: Listen to this blog entry.]

Mimmicking. Cloning. Channeling. All words we occasionally use to describe the process of studying a particular performer’s technique and presentation, and proceeding to repeat it. Word for word, move for move. And in the case of Deddy Corbuzier, even eyebrow for eyebrow. (Although, sadly, it seems there are lots of people who, unlike me, see nothing particularly wrong with that egregious behavior.)

No one I know was born a magician or mentalist. Like riding a bike, hitting a baseball, or running over a squirrel in the road, it’s a learned behavior. How we learn is a facinating subject. While many have attempted to distill into neat little boxes the primary methods human beings learn, for the purposes of this piece I’ll focus on four of them.

The first is Reflex or Classical Conditioning. Basically, it’s stimulous-response. This is typified in the story of Ivan Pavlov and his experiments with dogs. When Ivan fed his dogs, he’d ring a bell. The dogs associated the ringing bell with being fed. Soon enough, Pavlov could ring a bell and the dogs began salivating. (The parallel between “bell ringing and dogs salivating” can also be drawn by observing the behavior of some men when certain women enter a room.)

Classical Conditioning is evident in my own life. For instance, when I hear news of a new book from Hermetic Press or The Miracle Factory, or a new CD from Loreena McKennitt, my eyes glaze over and I immediately reach for my credit card.

Another method of learning is Instrumental or Operant Conditioning, or goal-oriented conditioning. We learn to do certain actions because it occasionally returns a desireable result. Initially, that action may have been discovered purely by accident. At the turn of the last century, Edward Thorndike’s work explored this, as did B. F. Skinner’s work with what has become known as the Skinner Box. In it, a rat learns that pressing a bar dispenses a pellet of food.

In our own world of magic and mentalism, it’s like ordering a magic trick from a dealer without reading an accurate review by Mike Close, and — miracle of miracles — what you receive somehow resembles the ad to which you responded. Despite that result happening only once in a blue moon, we still tend to continue ordering tricks based on ads we read.

Another method of learning is Multiple-Response Learning. This is a bit more involved. In Multiple-Response Learning we successfully string together a series of simple actions which result in a desireable outcome.

In a way, this a lot like the experients with the Skinner Box; rats had to learn a series of turns in a maze in order to locate the cheese. Richard Bandler and John Grinder mention this in their book, “Frogs Into Princes”:

B. F. Skinner had a group of students who had done a lot of research with rats and mazes. And somebody asked them one day “What is the real difference between a rat and a human being?” Now, behaviorists not being terribly observant, decided that they needed to experiment to find out. They built a huge maze that was scaled up for a human. They took a control group of rats and taught them to run a small maze for cheese. And they took the humans and taught them to run the large maze for five-dollar bills. They didn’t notice any really significant difference. There were small variations in the data and at the 95% probability level they discovered some significant difference in the number of trials to criterion or something. The humans were able to learn to run the maze somewhat better, a little bit quicker, than the rats.

The really interesting statistics came up when they did the extinguishing part. They removed the five-dollar bills and the cheese and after a certain number of trials the rats stopped running the maze…. However, the humans never stopped!… They are still there!… They break into the labs at night.

College-age males are also frequently seen to demonstrate this behavior in bars. They perform a series of simple actions — approach a female, utter a banal come-on line, purchase the female a strong drink, utter another banal come-on line, purchase more strong drinks — all in an effort to “obtain the cheese,” as it were. (Evidently this method remains successful, even after all these years, proving once again that human nature doesn’t change; only the price of the drinks does.)

Then there’s Insight Learning, or The Lightbulb Going Off method. With this method, a person considers a problem by noticing the relationships between the intrinsic parts and, like a bolt of lightning out of the clear blue sky, or Ed McMahan knocking on your front door with the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes winning check, a solution is dropped into his lap.

Of course it’s not just happenstance; it’s a now-rare process called “thinking.” In the world of magic and mentalism, a perfect example is embodied in the human being known as Stewart James.

When you consider how we, as magicians and mentalists, learn our craft you can easily see examples of all four types of learning, as well as combinations of the four. Each of the methods I listed above require more effort than the one preceeding it.

But there is one more method to mention. This is the one we see most often because it requires the least amount of effort. And, rightfully so, it’s the most troubling.

This method of learning is pointed to as a primary reason to call a Catholic priest to perform an Exorcism of most all instructional DVDs from the world of magic. It’s mimmicking. Cloning. Channeling. The “Chimp Off the Old Block” method of learning and subsequently performing magic. It’s someone watching a DVD of a magician and learning the moves, speech patterns and mannerisms of the performer, and going out an “doing” that magician.

Eugene Burger has mentioned many times how, as a very young person and student of magic, he idolized Don Alan to the point of channeling Don’s performance. Soon enough, Burger realized the path to enlightenment was not by cloning someone else, but by developing his own character. (As an aside, I find it interesting — if not amusing — to see people today channeling Burger.)

Aside from the obvious ethical reasons for not cloning an existing performer, there’s the broader issue of how audiences respond to seeing essentially the same tricks performed in the same manner by different people. The unspoken, rhetorical question is, “What’s so special about magic?”

The fact is, we all have to start somewhere. Absent a Dai Vernon-styled mentor to whack you over the head with a magic wand as you work your way through learning how to be yourself — whatever that’s supposed to mean — it’s natural to seek out and learn a performance style in whatever manner we can. In the beginning that was done via in-person live performances. Then came watching television performances. Now, we have video tapes and DVDs to play, rewind, play, rewind. Rinse and repeat.

Has this caused great numbers of neophyte magicians to duplicate the spirit and image of another performer? Well, how often these days do we see a young magician wearing a black t-shirt and jeans walking up to someone saying, “Look. Look. Watch.”

But the speed with which those performers move from cloned status to genuine original style is in direct proportion to the burning desire to be special — which is what magic and mentalism is supposed to be. That process necessarily involves a great deal of thought and effort, fed by an equally large amount of raw material on which to base path decisions.

Lazy dilettantes aren’t likely to put in the effort required to be special. If we could somehow send them to their rooms and keep them out of the eyes and ears of lay audiences this wouldn’t be such a big deal.

When Michael Ammar released via L&L Publishing his “Easy to Master Card Miracles” videos, you’d have thought the world was coming to an end. Many of the Card Godz were absolutely horrified that Ammar would assemble in one, easy to obtain place, such a large number of astounding, audience tested card magic tricks. The argument heard most often was that we (the world of magic) would end up with hundreds of Ammar clones roaming the planet, foisting upon audiences Ammar-cloned performances of card magic.

But the interesting thing is, that didn’t happen to any alarming extent. What did happen, though, was that a large number of new magicians — and not a few old hands — were directly introduced to quality, entertaining card magic that make up the foundation of great close-up magic. But they were also instructed that they had to learn the routines and perform them in a manner that fit their individual style.

The latest chapter in the “Easy to Master…” world is Richard Osterlind’s recently released set of four DVDs, “Easy to Master Mental Miracles.” I received my set on Wednesday of this past week and I’m nearly done viewing them. (A full review will probably be posted tomorrow.) What I can say of them now is this: these DVDs follow in the successful footsteps of the Ammar videos in that they present rock-solid, classic tricks in a manner befitting their classic status.

Osterlind reached across nearly a century of published mentalism and assembled a collection of tricks that embody the foundation of what makes great mentalism great.

Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?

To hear some people put it, this will put an end to mentalism — magic’s last great frontier — because budding mentalists will no longer have to wade through tons of books to find the real gems. It’s as if being forced to digest tons of books and manuscripts — some of which are far out of reach physically and intellectually of beginners — is, somehow, the only honorable way to learn.

Worse, they won’t be inclined to purchase “new” versions of classic effects because — horror of horrors — they’ll actually have learned the original, classic version first and may find nothing particularly interesting in the new versions that they couldn’t create on their own. (Fundamental, foundational knowledge can do that sometimes, you know.)

Actually, I believe the release of these videos is a good thing, and for several reasons. I’m a loud and vocal proponent of learning the fundamentals of magic and mentalism. It’s on these foundations we build great performance pieces. Richard teaches viewers where to find these fundamentals — primarily in Annemann and Corinda’s work — and proves by demonstration that those “dusty, old tricks” play as strongly today as they ever did. It invites exploration into what makes them strong audience pieces and, as a result, invites experimentation and innovation.

We learn by a number of different methods. We learn by example. We learn by exploration. Given the proper tools and pointed in the right direction, we’re far more likely to see created new stars of mentalism, rather than yet another clone of one of our current stars. I find that an exciting possibility.

You might have noticed that, on occasion, I mention the plague in magic called “knock-offs” — where one manufacturer takes another manufacturer’s item and duplicates it. I won’t spill precious digital ink going over the same territory; you can read some of my older blog entries for those sermons. Suffice it to say that I condemn knock-offs as unethical behavior and particularly egregious in this tiny world of magic and mentalism. It is not innovation to take someone else’s trick and duplicate it.

One of the apparent knock-offs I’ve mentioned is Magic Makers’ The Time Machine, which to my eye is a duplicate of Bazar de Magia’s Watch & Wear trick. Visually, they are nearly identical in both size, styling and coloring. But the real test for it being a duplicate required comparisons between the watches’ insides.

The purpose of this post is to lay out some observations I’ve made between both watches. Please read them over. Study the pictures. Then draw your own conclusions.

I already had The Time Machine, having purchased it at a favorable price a couple of years ago via an eBay auction before I’d become aware that it and Bazar de Magia’s Watch & Wear were being compared as identical twins. Since I didn’t have Watch & Wear, I contacted Martin at Bazar de Magia and asked if he’d be willing to send to me a piece for the purposes of comparison. He quickly agreed and a safely packaged Watch & Wear was on its way from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Casa LeBlanc.

My package from Bazar de Magia arrived late last week. I immediately walked it to my watch bench for a look.

Here is a picture of Bazar de Magia’s Watch & Wear as you receive it. It is packaged in a spring-closed watch box. It is accompanied by a nicely printed owners manual containing information on the watch itself, basic operation, and routines contributed by Ernesto Canki and Trever Lewis. There’s also a note to watch shops with instructions on replacing the watch battery without causing harm to the gimmick. Finally, there’s a numbered certificate spelling out the details of your one year warranty.

In comparison, Magic Makers’ The Time Machine arrives in a felt covered plastic sleeve. The instructions are printed on three separate 8-1/2 x 11 sheets of paper loosely folded together around the plastic watch sleeve. The instructions state, “Unlike its nearest competitor it was engineered from the ground up and manufactured using some of the finest components available.” You are warned about damaging the watch stem when replacing the battery, and given details of your 30 day warranty.

Watch & Wear sells on the street for about $160; The Time Machine can be picked up for around $80.

Let’s deal with the “engineered from the ground up” claim. Watch & Wear hit the market almost seven years ago. A couple of years later, The Time Machine was released. Here are both watch faces side by side:

To my mind, the remarkable similarity between these watches immediately called into question what Magic Makers means by “engineered from the ground up.”

The next step in comparison involved removing the watch case backs and viewing the watch movements.

There are hundreds of different quartz movements used in thousands of styles of watches manufactured each year. Quartz movements basically consist of circuitry that uses a crystal to establish a computer clock signal that’s fed to a tiny stepper motor, all powered by a small battery. Tuned properly, the stepper motor advances the watch gears in proper time.

Over the years quartz movements have gotten smaller to the point where an incredibly accurate watch movement would fit on the fingernail of your smallest finger.

In viewing the movements nestled in the watch cases of both watches, it became apparent they were identical. By that, I mean they were the same model movement manufactured by the same Asian factory: Precision Time Co., LTD in Shenzhen, a city in the Guangdong Province of China. The next two pictures bare that out. They are photos taken of the watch movements under a microscope at 10X:

These are pictures of the center of the movement, but at 60X:

So. What does “engineered from the ground up” actually mean? Certainly not the look of the watch. Certainly not the watch movement.

But the bigger question is this: does it matter to you?

Does it matter to you that one manufacturer produces prop that’s virtually identical to that of one that’s been on the market for years, while claiming to have designed it “from the ground up”?

As I’ve written before, there are effects, methods and tricks. They are not the same thing, although you will see many people refer to a trick as an effect. A card turning face up in a face down deck is an effect. A half-pass or Ultra Mental are methods. Invisible Deck is a trick.

The concept of predicting the hour and minute chosen by a spectator is an effect. Leslie Anderson’s watch trick (Magick #246) — which was the foundation for Danny Korem’s “Stull-ess Watch Stunner” (from The Lost Pages of Kabbala) among others — is just one way of many to create the effect you can with a Stull Watch, Perfect Time, Watch & Wear, and The Time Machine.

But this is not about duplicating an effect. It’s not about duplicating the method. It’s about blatantly duplicating a particular version of a trick used to create the effect, down to the same watch style, size and color.

I find such behavior detrimental to the world of magic, and I believe it’s unethical behavior. Production of such props is bad enough, but customers purchasing knock-offs says three things: first, you aren’t interested in recognizing and supporting the intellectual rights of magic inventors; second, you tell inventors their ideas aren’t worth respecting or protecting; and third — and this is the worst part — you reward knock-off manufacturers, which tells them they have a legitimate place in our little world of magic.

Is that what you believe?

[Audio Blog: Listen to this blog entry.]

In his 1985 booklet, Fynys, T.A. Waters writes:

I have a vivid memory of seeing Torchy Towner perform at the Magic Castle. He did, among other things, a classical levitation performed as ritual magic. There was no hoop pass (“If I were really doing it I wouldn’t have to prove it, would I?” he said to me) and there was no obvious playing to the audience as see-how-great-I-am. Quite the contrary: in doing the preliminary trance induction of the assistant, usually done as a throwaway, he took several minutes; in fact the routine itself took about eight minutes. What was the audience reaction?

They loved it. They loved it because they believed it; for those moments they were experiencing wonder, and they sat open-mouthed at the edges of their chairs. When the act was over many of them seemed to awaken as from a dream.

While Waters was actually in the process of making a larger point about magic and mentalism being more than just entertainment, I love this quote because it dovetails nicely into a discussion about an infraction of magical law that is, when one considers it, the antithesis of what great magic attempts to accomplish.

In short, what do you have to prove?

A magician takes his stage — whether that’s really the boards or the smaller stage of a close-up table — and should command his surroundings (generally speaking, at least) simply by being. He’s the magician, he’s supposed to be special, on a plane separate from normal people. Proving, and it’s bastard twin brother, Overproving, do nothing to support what should be implicit. In fact, proving and overproving can get in the way of the real magic.

One of my favorite motion pictures of all time is “Smokey and the Bandit” (Okay, just wondering if you’re actually paying attention. Although I can nearly recite the dialog from beginning to end.) Actually, “Somewhere in Time“ is what I’m referring to. In that film, Christopher Reeve plays the part of Richard Collier, a playwright who falls for a woman he sees in an old portrait hanging on the wall of the hotel in which he’s staying to overcome a frustrating bout of writer’s block.

His obsession over the woman leads him to learn the woman in the portrait is an actress named Elise McKenna (played beautifully by Jane Seymour) who stayed and performed at the hotel many, many years before, and has since passed away. Collier uses self-hypnosis in an effort to travel back in time to be with her.

In his ostensibly successful attempt at time travel, he arranges his hotel room to the period to which he wishes to travel. He wears period clothing. He disassociates himself from his contemporary environment and convinces himself he is back in time.

In the film, it all goes remarkably well for Richard. He travels back in time to the year 1912, meets Elise, and they fall in love. Everything is just lovely. Elise offers to buy Richard a new suit to replace the outdated one he wears. In an effort to prove his is just fine, he demonstrates the many pockets of his suit and, in the process, pulls a handful of change from one of them. Looking down he sees a 1979 penny staring back at him.

This penny, clearly out of place in his magical 1912 suroundings, is an instant and obscene reminder that breaks the spell, and he’s propelled back to his own time.

It’s a heartbreaking and capriciously evil moment brought about by an otherwise needless action.

Are you creating the same sort of evil moment for your audiences by attempting to prove something that your audience is otherwise perfectly willing to accept as a given within the safe framework provided by a theatrical production?

As an aside, “Somewhere in Time” was filmed on Mackinac Island, where cars were not permitted. Travel was on foot, bicycle or horsedrawn carriage. Reeve noted in his 1998 biography, “Still Me,” that “the location quickly cast a spell on our entire company. The real world fell away as the story and the setting took hold of us.”

When your audience is before you, it’s probably not a blind date. They know you’re there to perform magic or mentalism (or — horrors! — both in the same performance.) The expectation is implicit that you are going to do some things that happily fly in the face of good and decent rules and laws of nature. If we do our job correctly, we take our audience by the hand and surround them with words and objects that work together to cast a spell they accept willingly. Something — anything — out of place breaks that spell.

Here’s another point of view, this by Juan Tamariz in the introduction to his book, “The Magic Way”:

When a trick or a routine is well worked out, well studied, well presented, and really surprises the audience, is it already perfect? Can we honestly feel that our job is done? Are we already doing Magic?

My answer is: I don’t think so. Something is missing: knowing what the spectators are thinking during and after the trick is finished, finding out what impression we have made in their minds, finding out if they suspect any method that might have been used to do the trick (even if it wasn’t). We have to reach the point where they not only don’t know how the trick was done, they can’t even analyze it, or imagine how it might have been done.

What is more, we must make them feel totally incapable of discovering the real method, or any other possible method.

And going a step further, we must make the spectator suspend his disbelief during and after the trick: He shouldn’t even want to analyze it. He shouldn’t only feel fooled, he should feel bewitched, bewildered, and fascinated by the MYSTERY he has just witnessed. We must try and make the IMPACT of the MYSTERY they have seen so strong that the audience feels incapable of unveiling it. They should be so surprised that they don’t even want to try.

Carefully crafted, our presentation subtly erases any path to a solution. It becomes implicit, without overtly provoking any thought towards somehow reconciling the laws of nature with what the brain thinks it just witnessed. This is in contrast to proving and overproving, which serves to tell the audience at least two things: you’re lying to them and you don’t think they’re smart enough to know this. I’m not sure those concepts are explicitly covered in Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” but I assure you, the sentiment is in there.

Harlan Tarbell in his required Tarbell Course in Magic writes in Volume 1:

In line with the power of suggestion is the credulity of people, their willingness to believe.

Always remember that the first impulse of people is to believe. Doubting is secondary.

…

So it is in magic. People want to believe that you make that coin disappear, that you vanish that burning cigarette.

So remember, you are betting on the safe side when you play your stakes on this impulse of people to believe.

No magical discussion about the pathological condition that forces some performers to prove things are “perfectly ordinary” would be complete without mentioning Al Baker. Baker is credited with the line which says essentially:

Don’t run if you aren’t being chased.

From his 1941 book,“Magical Ways and Means” here’s what Al Baker has to say on the subject:

Another thing: some magicians always want to prove something that the audience doesn’t question. They tell the story about the little repertory company with a special between acts, a magician with no appeal, not much experience. They tell him he has to play a bit in the show, put this cloak on, this hat on and use this rubber dagger. He comes out at the proper cue and stabs the villain. The poor villain comes back at him, “Gad, what the hell did you use?” “I used my own dagger.” “Why didn’t you use the rubber dagger that I gave you?” “You cant pass that out for examination,” the magician replied.

Finally, Sam Sharpe, in his book, “Conjurers’ Psychological Secrets,” states:

Assertion is the most ingenious method of convincing anyone that something is other than it actually is. The conjurer who boldly states: “I have here an ordinary pack of cards,” knowing that they are really anything but ordinary, may succeed in convincing the uncritical, but more subtle methods, such as casually shuffling, fanning, and otherwise naturally handling them, which leave the spectators to draw their own conclusions, are called for when entertaining less naive audiences, or in support of definite assertions.

It’s one thing to jump through hoops to create the perfect illusion, and quite another to use one and destroy the illusion completely.

[Audio Blog: Listen to this blog entry.]

As anyone either raised on, or by assimilation, had to watch Sesame Street (and, with a granddaughter, I’m on yet another round of Big Bird, Count, and those other inhabitants of — as Chevy Chase pronounced it in the film, “Follow That Bird“ — “Sess-Same Street”) one of the educational bits was a game, the lyrics to which song went something like:

One of these things is not like the other. One of these things doesn’t belong.
Can you guess which thing is not like the other before we finish our song?

Mentalism is generally regarded as magic without the props, although that’s not entirely accurate. It’s just that the props are generally not “magic-y” looking. (For the most part, anyway.) When a prop is used in great mentalism, even when it is the focus, its place is relegated to a necessity to the degree that its use is functional. Typical magic props, however, find themselves the focus of a routine, which naturally leads to the logical remark by spectators, “If I had that thing, I could do that magic, too.”

Ah, from the mouths of babes. (Redheads, in particular.)

In a post I made a couple of days ago, I mentioned the subject of watches. Specifically the remarkable similarity between Bazar de Magia’s Watch & Wear and Magic Makers The Time Machine. I use neither of those watches, opting instead for Collector’s Workshop’s Perfect Time. Why? Well, let’s play the Sesame Street game:

One of these things is not like the other. One of these things doesn’t belong. Can you guess which thing is not like the other? (hint: second from the left is a Collector’s Workshop Perfect Time. The watch on the right is Magic Maker’s The Time Machine.)

I’m working on an article about these types of watches in magic, and part of that research led to a great chat I had a couple of days ago with George Robinson of Viking Magic/Collector’s Workshop in McAllen in the Great State of Texas. In 2000, George bought outright and moved to McAllen the assets of Collector’s Workshop, a going concern built to honorable and mythic proportions in the world of magic by Nick Ruggiero and Rich Bloch. If there is someone else in this world more appropriate than George and Carol to take the reigns of Collector’s Workshop, I can’t imagine who it might be.

Among the many beautiful, functional, professional-quality pieces of magic built and offered by Collector’s Workshop you’ll find Perfect Time. From the instructions included with the trick:

Performer removes wristwatch, sets time and places watch down on table in front of him. Spectator announces freely chosen time. Spectator then picks up performer’s watch, which matches perfectly the selected time.

The watch is a simple, elegant man’s watch. It’s not a bling-bling. If you know what I mean. (And I’ll bet you do.)

It’s also not been available since George took the reins of Collector’s Workshop. The fact is, until recently, George couldn’t locate a suitable movement for the watch. Being somewhat of dangerous watch afficionada (which is to say, I not only collect them, but subsequently open them up to see what makes them tick) I understand the dilemma George faced. You can hotwire many quartz movements to do what needs to be done, but they won’t take licking and keep on ticking. The motors will burn out, plain and simple. They aren’t made for the sort of abuse magicians dish out — and I’m not talking about the verbal kind.

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario: you begin your presentation with a cheaper quality watch. As you talk with your spectator, you are also watching the watch. Then you begin staring at the watch. Apparently, it’s stopped. I mean, it’s really stopped. For good, swim-with-the-fishes stopped. What’s your backup plan, Sparky?

Granted, when you use mechanical props, things occasionally go south. But generally the difference between a professional and others is the professional will mitigate those possibilities as best he can. In this case, you want a quality watch.

Durability and, naturally, reliability may not be real high on the list of features clung to in dear life by buyers reluctant to spend anywhere near even one, solitary Benji on a watch. But I assure you, those of us who turn a few coins using a prop like this are perfectly happy to spend what is necessary to get something on which we can rely.

In part, it’s this fact — reliability — that propelled Collector’s Workshop to the stratosphere of pro-quality magic manufacturers. Nick and Rich, and now George and Carol, actually care about the reliability of the props they sell. That’s one primary reason you haven’t seen a Perfect Time being sold new in almost five years. There’s a substantial warranty that accompanies a prop you buy from Collector’s Workshop, so you’re not going to buy something that requires regular round trips to and from McAllen. (In the Great State of Texas.)

Back to my chat with George the other day.

He told me he finally located a movement that he’s happy with. Not only that, but he’s been working on prototypes of the next generation Perfect Time. Two models, actually. And would I like to play with one?

Excuse me?

Isn’t that like asking a kid if he wants another piece of candy? Asking a dog if he’d like another bone? Asking Gerry McCambridge if he’d like to create another pseudo-anonymous Internet handle with which he can prowl the web boards pimping an NBC network show that finished in the 71st position in the ratings? (Who could have predicted that?)

Do I want to test the new Perfect Time prototype? Uh, I think that would be, “Affirmative, Ghostrider.”

One day later Mr. UPS Man delivers a red-label, next-day-air package from McAllen in the Great State of Texas. Once I finished a brief bout of hyperventilating, I gazed at the package like Ralphie on Christmas morning, fondling his new official Red Ryder carbine action two-hundred shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time. (“You’ll shoot your eye out.”)

In short: Hoe. Lee. Cow.

George warned me that the strap attached to the prototye wouldn’t be the final selection — which is okay by me — but in prototype-ville, this is not about appearance as much as it is about performance. And, while I’ve only had the watch a couple of days to play with this version of Perfect Time, I can say I am already excited.

In use, you hold the watch dangling from it’s buckle between your thumb and forefinger. That’s a very natural position to insinuate the thing is as far from manipulation as possible — and it is, you know, more or less. When you’re ready to show the face to the spectator, you simple twirl the buckle around. There’s no tilting, no funny business. Very clean, very fair, very nice.

One of the complaints of these types of watches has been the hit-and-miss issue with getting the exact time, every time. Often you overshoot or undershoot which, really, is not much of an issue. Let’s face it: if a spectator calls out 3:29 and you hit 3:25, that’s impressive. But, as most of us already know, there are times when it’s not that close. If you overshoot by quite a bit because you’re not paying attention…well, you’d better start telling your story. If you undershoot, there’s a tendency to compensate and that sometimes leads to overshooting because of the way things work.

This new version of Perfect Time, without going any deeper into things than I already have, allows you to adjust things by the minute. Now, in my opinion, this precision is less about hitting the nail on the head than it is knowing you have absolute control no matter what you want the outcome to be. From a performance standpoint, that’s one less variable to worry about.

I’ll be playing with it for the rest of the week and I may update this later. But I can tell you this much: if you are currently in the market for a watch like this, hold tight to your money for just a little while longer; I assure you it will be well worth your wait.

UPDATE (11/15/2004): There’s an interesting thread about these types of watches over on The Magic Cafe. Mike Giusti was kind enough to put a link back to this blog — thanks Mike! (The thread is here.)

UPDATE (11/18/2004): George Robinson’s latest newsletter for Viking Magic/Collector’s Workshop mentions the updated Perfect Time. Before anyone asks, George gave me permission to break the news here. Take a look at George’s newsletter here.

This weekend, I’m kicking off a new feature here in Escamoteurettes-land: audio blog entries.

The first time I played with streaming audio was back in late 1994 or so using a product called Voxware. (There were beta products prior to that, but I don’t remember the names.) It was amazing what could be done over a dialup modem back then — and remember, we’re talking 14.4k.

Over the years I’ve toyed with other formats, including Macromedia, Real Audio, Windows Media, various incarnations of MP3 — but they all suffered from the requirement that the web site visitor had to have installed the software to listen to the audio. Even these days, a whole lot of people simply have none of the “default” players already installed and ready to go.

This time around is a little different. You don’t have to install any special player and, if you’re one of the luck 95% of visitors, you should be able to listen without a problem.

As I have time, I’ll record my blog entries and link to the audio version. The first audio blog entry is directly below. Have a listen.

[Audio Blog: Listen to this blog entry.]

If I actually had any hair on the top of my head, it would hurt right now.

I realize the topic of the lack of ethics in magic and magic manufacturing is an old one. I’m certain it pre-dates the oldest issue of Sphynx. And actually, now that I think about it, it probably goes back to the first time some Egyptian designed a set of cups for the famous Cups and Balls trick — and maybe named them the Syrian Fox Cups — which were later appropriated in questionable manner and sold by someone else — maybe named Buzz-B the Pharisee.

(I’d be willing to bet that if you even tried to sell a Buzz-B the Pharisee set of cups on eBay today your auction would be shut down — that’s how contentious that dirty B is.)

What troubles me is that here we are in the tail end of the year 2004 — well into the 21st Century, the century of enlightenment and quality footwear — and there’s still equivocation being sputtered in discussions about the unethical behavior of some magic manufacturers in knocking off someone else’s trick. For the love of Pete. Even my goldfish understands this issue.

In a recent exchange on the Ring 2100 email list, I was faced with the following argument:

Has anyone ever heard someone saying the following? “The new Kia station wagon is selling for $10,000, but I am going to buy the $40,000 Mercedes instead because Kia is making cheap knockoffs, and it should be banned.”

I read that and actually heard Rod Serling whisper into my ear, “This is not a dream. You have just entered The Magic Ethics Hell Zone.”

First, and not specific to the point I’m going to attempt to make in a moment, someone who is seriously in the market for a Mercedes is not very likely to look at Kia. Let’s be reasonable for a moment. There are some things more important than price: quality, reliability, and safety come immediately to mind. I don’t own a Mercedes, but I do own a car made by their Bavarian neighbors. Yes, I paid more than I would have for a Kia, but I also obtained a car that is of higher, consistent quality; runs and runs fast when I want or need it to; and positively saved my life a few months ago when another car slammed into me on the driver side. Granted, I had to crawl out of the car, but I walked away. Had I been in a Kia, I wouldn’t be writing this post; my goldfish would be. (And if you think I use obscure references, you should read some of the things he writes.)

The world of stage illusions is analogous to this Kia-Mercedes comparison. Someone willing to risk their life in a Kia-quality illusion rather than a Mercedes-quality illusion has a higher risk of finding himself in the position of never having to make that buying decision again. And while the newspaper headline — remember, “if it bleeds, it leads” — may be spectacular, Drudge Report material, dying in a poorly built illusion is not a terribly bright way of following the advice: don’t read your own press.

Back to point-making:

Kia does not make “cheap knock-offs” of Mercedes or any other car manufacturer’s automobiles. Kia manufactures low priced cars of their own design. Now, if Kia took a Mercedes and duplicated the design and began selling them, they’d have a problem.

On the other hand, let’s say a magic manufacturer like Collectors Workshop sells a trick called Badlands Bob — a trick, the rights to which were purchased from the inventor. Now, let’s say another manufacturer takes Collectors Workshop’s trick and duplicates it and sells it for a much reduced price.

Rhetorical question time: is there anything wrong with that?

Here’s another case in point. Almost seven years ago Bazar de Magia produced and sold a watch called Watch & Wear. It was a version of the prediction watch effect whereby a magician ostinsibly predicts ahead of time the hour and minute a spectator will choose. This trick is one of many versions of the effect. (Note the distinction between trick and effect — they are not the same thing.)

A couple of years later, Magic Makers offered for sale a watch that looked and worked substantially like Bazar’s Watch & Wear. It was not only the same type of trick, the watch appears to be a direct duplicate. Take a look here and draw your own conclusions.

While sharing a number of common aspects, the world of magic and music deal with these duplicated versions in a different manner. In the world of music, one artist — like George Winston — can do a tribute of another artist — like Vince Guaraldi. In this case, the resulting “Linus and Lucy: The Music of Vince Guaraldi“ CD paid not only tribute to the genius of Guaraldi, but also royaties. That’s the way the music industry works because of copyright laws. (It’s also a fantastic CD — and that’s coming from a Vince Guiraldi fanatic who is also a George Winston fanatic.)

In magic, however, since neither copyright nor patent laws typically may be reasonably applied to inventions, laws cannot be pressed into service to protect the inappropriate acquisition of someone’s idea when it comes to a particular trick. The sad fact of things is this: absent laws defining this behavior as illegal, we fall into the category of ethics and morals. And that’s when the fur starts flying because now, instead of a canon of law to which we can point as the center of discussion, we are left with as many different interpretations of right and wrong as there are people joining the conversation — and nearly everyone convinced that their point of view should be the universal point of view and everyone else must be smoking crack.

Too many cooks in the kitchen who don’t know a spoon from a pot.

The person with whom I had this exchange went on to write:

Disclaimer: I am not against banning cheap knockoffs by those who steal others’ ideas. On the contrary, I encourage people to buy original props. They will save money in the long run. In my early days I had purchased (for not knowing any better) cheap knockoffs only to end up needing to buy the high quality originals at a later time. However, I can’t help but ponder the above, since after all, we are living in a free market society. This means that McDonald’s must contend with Wendy’s, Roy Roger’s, and the likes; AT&T has to contend with MCI, Verizon, and the likes. Ford with GM, etc. If the big industry is not immune to competition, how in the world can our small industry hopes to avoid it?

But this is not about legitimate competition. This is about duplication — knock-offs. There is a big difference.

You cannot go into Wendy’s and order an identical version of McDonald’s Big Mac. Or vice versa. You cannot go to a Ford dealership and buy a duplicate of a General Motors’ Yukon (not that I can find any good reason to do business with any entity named “Ford” to begin with.) You can go to Wendy’s and buy a hamburger which is made only the way Wendy’s makes it; you can go to Ford and buy a truck only the way Ford makes it. There is no way a reasonable human being would confuse a Big Mac with a Wendy’s Double. (Unless it’s 3:00 in the morning after a long night of bar hopping, and even then, I doubt the difference would be mistakable. Even drunks know the difference between a great hamburger and a Big Mac.)

Chazpro Magic sells a trick called, “Die Cypher II“ made of brass. Would it be considered legitimate competition for another magic manufacturer to create an identical version of Chazpro’s trick — down to the precise measurements of the die? Why do I even have to ask the question?

Also, the phrase “free market society” does not mean “anything goes, free-for-all market” in the same way that “free speech” does not mean “anything goes, free-for-all speech.” There are reasonable limits put on a free market and free speech — and for good reason.

Society’s system of laws become more detailed and granular in direct proportion to the numbers of unreasonable people pressing the issue — a number that is, apparently, growing geometrically with the passage of each hour.

It’s like the old saying: just when you think you’ve won the rat race, along come faster rats. Magic has its unfair share of big, fat, hairy rats.

More than once someone has asked how the knock-off manufacturer would react if someone knocked-off one of their tricks. But, in the sort of wicked irony only saved for Last Straw occasions, knock-off manufacturers don’t have any original ideas. That’s why they take ideas from others.

I finished off my response this way:

This is not and probably never will be a legal issue. This is an ethical and moral issue. You cannot cram ethics and morals down the throats of people who do not believe in them. But you can sure exclude them from your circle. I’m not so naive to believe most — or even many — will do that. I don’t believe most people in magic give this particular ethics issue a second thought. But this issue matters to me and if I’m one of three people left shouting from the rooftops, fine.

Fortunately, I don’t harbor the dreaded thought that I’ll be one of three people left. Far from it. There are many, many people who share my opinion to a greater degree than not.

Since I’m a fan of quotations, I’ll close this with one, which I think is appropriate:

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

And unlike the case of Badlands Bob, or Ghost Kings, we don’t know who is the author of that.

I love quotations. Given enough time and enough effort and enough research, one can tell a story or make a point through quotations.

So, let us begin with a quote:

It was back in June 1935 when Theo. Annemann first unveiled the effect known as “PSEUODO-PSYCHOMETRY” in issue #9 of The Jinx. Since then the principle has been used in many ways by both working mentalists and magicians. When properly handled this can be one of the greatest mind-blowers to the laymen….when improperly handled it can become a ‘bomb’.

By the way, the use of the word bomb at the end of that quote denotes a state of stinkiness in the noses of spectators; in effect casting a pall over the room in much the same way, say, Paris Hilton lecturing a nunnery. Or Madonna walking into a temple.

That quote was pulled from the 1980 booklet, “Raven on Psychometry” which was actually a nicely bound set of lecture notes by Frater Anthony Raven. It speaks to effect.

Another quote:

It’s all right to lie when doing magic. We are in the only business in the world where lying is accepted. Everything is a lie. We don’t do real magic; we lie about it. When we tell the lie well out magic will look real.

That’s my dearly departed friend Mike Rogers from his lecture notes, “Opinions: A Lecture on the Art of Magic.”

Surprise: this, not from lecture notes, but from the Summer 1997 Stevens Magic Magalog. It was an interview with T.A. Waters and, while not a lecture per se…well read for yourself, as he answers a question about how being an actor has altered his magic:

It has made me look at performance material from a theatrical standpoint — in other words, is there something to play here? Is there some reason for doing this? Is this going to reach the audience, touch or affect them in some way? Novelty and surprise are fine, but they won’t alone sustain a theatrical piece. Unfortunately, a lot of magic has little going for it except novelty and surprise.

This next quote is by Bascom Jones from the introduction to the book, “MindFields” — a book published by the Psychic Entertainers Association in 1991:

Some eighteen years ago, shortly after I began publishing MAGICK, as a twice-a-month publication for the world’s mentalists, someone asked me to define the difference between mentalism and mental magic. The answer, I pointed out, was simple. The difference existed in the mind of the spectator.

If the spectator is left with the impression that he has witnessed a trick, no matter how clever the trick, no matter how entertaining, then that is mental magic.

Mentalism, on the other hand, leads the spectator to willingly suspend his disbelief, or, at the very least, argue that what he has witnessed might be the result of little-known or little-understood powers.

Contrary to what many contend, it is not the type of trick that separates the two categories; it is the nature of the presentation, the spin imparted to the effect by the performer, that causes the line to be drawn in the minds of audiences. Wishful thinking doesn’t count. Be honest with yourself, and you will know which of your effects, and presentations, fall into which category.

This is from the introduction to the incredible book, “Red Hot Cold Reading” by Thomas Saville and Herb Dewey:

Few people realize the impact that a casual remark may have on the life of a person with whom we are dealing! Research has demonstrated that even when prefaced with a very direct disclaimer, the need or tendency to believe may be over-riding. College students have indicated a greater belief in a description based on their birth data than when that same description is based on a personality test. Other college students have seen presentations given by a magician, who was introduced as such, and who explicitly stated that what he was going to do was all based on deception, and at the end of the performance many students still believed that he was doing psychic miracles.

Here are words written by Ted Annemann over half a century ago:

Audiences today ‘go for’ the mental type of trickery more than ever. It is more of a ‘grown up’ phase of magic and mystery, and there seems to be a greater element of wonder when the performer can reveal unknown knowledge or something personal about the members of his audience.

I’m not in any way slighting magic as a whole when I say this, but I’ve found it to be true so far as my own work is concerned.

While his set of books is considered requisite canon for study in the world of magic, it’s been my experience that the opening chapter of Harlan Tarbell’s Course in Magic is often glossed over. And that’s a terrible thing because it provides a basis and history for magic, and several admonishments that, although over 75 years old, make perfect sense today:

As entertainers we use the illusionary side of magic to entertain audiences — but we do so with the right spirit. Down the ages the man with a sense of humor has made entertainment from both truth and illusion, from comedy and from tragedy.

But our background has been fine — and that is why I wanted to stress at this time the importance of the Magi as well as a rough sketch of their teachings.

Audiences automatically look at the magician as being possessed of some unusual power and being on just a plane ahead. To lower an audience’s opinion of us is to court disaster.

Pat Marquis gained fame as a result of a Life magazine article which was published in 1937. Marquis was a thirteen year old boy from California who convinced his doctor that he could see, though his eyes were tapes shut. In the chapter dealing with the exhibitions of Pat Marquis in the book, “The Mental Mysteries and Other Writings of William W. Larsen, Sr.” Larsen makes note of the following — which I doubt has changed much since these words were written:

In preparing my illustrated talk I took great caution. I kept the following points in mind at all times: 1. I wanted neither to admit nor deny any psychic, or extra sensory, powers claimed by, or ascribed to, Pat. After all, this was a commercial proposition to me and it is well known that out of every ten people, nine would like to believe that there may be something in “the supernatural”. For every person who will pay a dollar to see a medium exposed, there are nine people who would prefer to pay that same medium a dollar for a reading. It is the sum and total of the natural human desire to have something happen.

Edwin Sachs’ classic text, “Sleight of Hand” was described as “the standard textbook on how to become a magician.” In it we find the following:

It is as pleasant to be cheated as to cheat” is a maxim that must have been framed expressly for conjuring, for the more completely one is deceived by its medium (and, it may be added, by its medium alone) the better one is pleased.

This final quotation stands in contrast from those above for two primary reasons. First, it is not from a book or other written source; it’s from the final section of Jamy Ian Swiss‘ lecture DVD “Live in London“. It was brought to my attention prior to my obtaining the DVD because of the manner in which Jamy makes his point. This section is called, “Goals” and discusses Jamy’s goals, previously as an amateur and — at the time of the taping of this lecture — his goal as a professional performer:

But let me talk to you about a second goal. And I don’t presume to press this goal on you; this one is more idiosyncratic, more personal to me. I share it with you in hopes you might find it of interest.

What is my goal as a professional performer, a professional entertainer, who uses close-up magic? Well, I’ll tell you what I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be an amusing diversion — a light amusement.

After giving a vignette in which he illustrates that point, he states (rather emphatically):

I want to destroy my audience! I want to induce inoperable brain tumors! I want them to remember me, not the magic, but me! And not for today, or tomorrow, or next week, but for the rest of their damn lives and tell their grandchildren about me!

Navel-gazing is a valid, useful endeavor. Where do you suppose the above compares with your own goals as a mystery entertainer?