I made a cleaner video of the coin to cork trick, which I’m giving the title Corkage Fee. This is the title that was stuck in my head.
I cleaned up the handling’s timing a little bit and added some context to the switch of the cork. For a quick social media video, having the balance on the nose at the beginning is a better switch than a shuttle pass. An even better way would have been to start with a bottle of wine that I took the cork out of. I don’t really drink wine, so that’s not something I have kicking around.
Yesterday I wrote about a Cork To Coin effect (read it here) and I’ve taken it a bit further than a simple 2 second trick. It’s not gone much further, but here’s where it’s at:
I like the idea of a transposition between the cork and the coin. It adds a layer of less obviousness to how the trick works. I think I may flesh it out a bit more and rerecord it with better lighting and put it out as a social media video.
Sometimes you get an idea stuck in your head. For me it’s the title of a magic trick, and it’s not a good title either. The title is “Corkage Fee“. For me that just leads to something involving money and a cork. My original idea was a cork turning into dollar bills. The second idea was a cork that disappeared when rolled into a dollar bill. I came up with a barely working version of the second idea.
I started playing with a third idea for a trick using a cork and a coin:
While not the best idea, I think it may have some uses for Instagram type videos.
The Moisture Festival Podcast records from the Jupiter Hotel in Portland Oregon. In this episode, we interview Danish comedy juggler Henrik Bothe in room 219. Henrik talks about doing two command performances for Eddie Murphy, performing on the Gong Show, and the origins of his famous ‘Neon Man’ routine.
We also learn how Henrik came to be an animated gif for his plate spinning skills. A great talk with a multi-talented performer and one of the Moisture Festival favorites.
After yesterday’s post about the offensive magic routine, it made me wonder why magicians fight so hard for things that have aged out of being acceptable. Is it that they fear having to learn something new?
Honestly I don’t know.
Ray Franklyn continues to blow my mind with his defense of how he presents this magic trick. He asked me to tell him what I felt was offensive. Here’s a screenshot (Franklyn is his “stage last name”):
His casual use of “Chinaman” shows how out of touch he is. Is he intentionally being offensive or racist, or does he not know better?
Honestly, I do not think he is intentionally trying to be offensive or racist…HOWEVER I do think that he’s unwilling to learn that it’s no longer 1960 and what may have been acceptable to say then, is not now.
Change is hard.
I struggle with keeping up with the times in my show. I also push boundaries in my show, however in the last 20 years I’m very aware those boundaries have changed. I also push boundaries with a personal point of view, not simply rehashing an Ian Adair trick that’s been done before.
Yesterday in a Facebook group Ray Franklyn posted this trick, which I find the whole presentation hook of the name Fu Ling Yu to be demeaning to Asians (full disclosure, I’m asian). It’s a joke that may have worked in 1945, but not now.
The BIG issue I have is that it’s not an original joke and doesn’t have a point of view. He’s making fun of a group of people for the sole purpose of making fun of them. And he’s put zero thought into why he does it. The Fu Ling Yu joke is older than me. He’s doing it because he saw someone else do it. That’s not art, that’s being lazy. Just because it was socially acceptable to do it 60 years ago doesn’t make it OK now. If he used the Fu Ling Yu joke to illustrate some larger point of view, I probably wouldn’t have an issue with it.
Do I think Ray Franklyn is racist? No, I don’t think that was his intention. Do I think the trick that he choose to do was? Yes
As a creative exercise, I took the same routine and just changed the ethnicity of the magician.
Exact same routine. The only difference is that mine has a point of view and I had to delete my browser history after searching for those images.
Of the two videos on this post: -One is art and has a point of view -One is lazy, demeaning garbage
Please think about what you put out into the world, and if someone calls you on it, don’t just say, “I’ve been doing it that way for years…” Do a little soul searching and think about if what you’re doing hasn’t aged out.
Recently I got to try out the “Free Picture of Beer” gag on a couple of different people. It got the desired laugh, so that’s good.
I also got to try to follow up trick where the full pitcher of beer becomes empty. I’m using the Out to Lunch principle to do the switch. The first time, they didn’t really notice the change. I think this is because they looked at the card and it registered in their brain as just a pitcher of beer, not a FULL pitcher of beer. It’s like showing someone a two of spades, but the spades are red. The average person won’t notice it’s the wrong color until you point it out to them.
The second time I added a little line which made the trick work much better. Once I got the laugh, I asked them, “what kind of beer do you think that is?” This question makes their brain actually process what they are looking at. That made the change at the end a lot more amazing!
I’m glad I got to try out the trick, and glad that I noticed what I needed to change!
Last night Matt Disero posted a video of him performing on a TV show in the early 1990’s. His comments on his set about 25 years later are great and very insightful. Basically he says it’s horrible.
Here it is, you be the judge:
What I like the is commitment to the atomic lightbulb. It’s a lot of props to lug around to light up a lightbulb, but it’s way better than just rubbing it on your sleeve and lighting it up!
I think most performers who create their own material and look back on what they were doing when they were young will have a similar impression to their show as Matt did. It’s because we’re growing and evolving and the person performing isn’t the person you are now. That’s a good thing.
One of the coolest things about performing in your home is that you know what’s within reach in your space. For me it allows me to all sorts of gags or surprise productions of items that naturally came up during the show. For example last week at the Mostly Magic Virtual Open Mic someone commented on how large my “nuts” were. They were referring to the walnuts used in my shell game. I knew I had the giant metal nuts within arm’s reach, so I grabbed them and had a fun sight gag.
Then last night I was a guest on a show and the need to bring out an artificial fist presented itself and I had one within reach. Of course I grabbed it.
It something that’s happening in the moment, and it also makes the audience wonder what you have nearby off camera. I’m not necessarily saying having a ton of props around just for gags, but knowing what you have in your space is a huge advantage!
Sometimes I think younger magicians don’t give old timers enough credit. The other night I was at a magic club meeting over Zoom and we got talking about chop cup. One of the older members showed us a really cool loading technique that I had never seen before. He used to use it when he did magic behind a bar. The best way to describe it was it was like the Sylvester Pitch done into the cup. It was a really great way to load the cup!
I remember being a kid and while I’ve always loved hearing old magicians talk, many times their moves aren’t very good. It’s not that they aren’t good, they’re just older techniques that have been replaced by better methods. It’s easy to have this cloud your judgement and quickly dismiss what they are doing or talking about.
An example of this is when I was a teenager, I could produce single cards from a back palmed stock in the modern way where you keep the stack behind your hand and peel off a single card. I remember talking about back palming with Mickey Hades and him telling me I was doing it wrong. He taught me to do it the old way of moving the whole stock to the front, peeling off a single card, and then reback palming the stock of cards. It’s a way less efficient way of doing it compared to the more modern way. I can still do it that way (not very well anymore), but more importantly it gave me time to chat with Mickey and that was fun!
If you’re a younger magician, or even an older one, don’t immediately dismiss a magician just because they are older.
