Too Cool to Be Cool

This is something I've had on my mind for a while now. A while back when I was auditioning for agents, I received a comment, "You're not like other magicians." I asked how so. Feedback is always appreciated. The answer was disheartening however. I was different in this person's mind not by virtue of anything unique I had done, but by what I wasn't. And while that's certainly not a bad way to approach building a character, it was the fact that this person considered magicians to be cornball, oily windbags with bad puns, stupid pickup lines and a sense of coolness about 50 years out of date.

I started watching more performances from both the old guard and the new guard and realized she was right. Most magicians come across as a stereotypical used car salesman. Most likely because that sort of corny act worked at one point in history. But not anymore. Times have changed. What was fashionable then is nothing more than an embarrassing novelty now.

There is a way for such things to continue existing however. They belong in the realm of ironic camp. People don't like it when magicians in real life tell their stupid jokes, but they still laugh when Gob did it on Arrested Development. Why? Because it was made abundantly clear on the show that Gob is not someone we're supposed to like as a person. The other characters' reactions to his obnoxious behavior mirror our own. Gob becomes cool by being interminably uncool.

Yet despite this very obvious lesson, magicians still persist in hokey, outdated one-liners and personae, totally oblivious to the fact that no one under the age of 60 finds this sort of thing funny anymore. They take themselves seriously. Too seriously in fact. They really do expect us to laugh at puns and pickup lines that are about as funny as prostate cancer. They think their cornball pseudo-Vaudeville antics that wouldn't make the cut in a Looney Tunes cartoon are endearing. They're trying so hard to be cool and command the spotlight that you can practically see the veins popping out of their necks under the strain and no one is fooled. It's the polar opposite of a lovable loser.

If they took themselves less seriously and didn't expect us to like them because of their campy image, they'd get a lot further. But they don't. And so here we are.

If you're going to try to be cool, you have to do it gracefully and with a sense of restraint. Or if you think you can be ironically entertaining, knock yourself out. But for the love of all that is sacred in this world, please stop aping the magicians of yesteryear and expecting people to like it and take you seriously because you're just going to end up looking like a tool.

YouTube: Is It Really the Devil?

Much has been made in the magic community of YouTube and the various exposure videos and channels up and running on the site. It's drawn a lot of criticism, not always undeserved. But how bad is it really?

I'm of the opinion that magicians make a bigger deal of their secrets than is necessary, and in the grand scheme of things YouTube really isn't that big a threat to us. The exposure videos are annoying, but if you're good at what you do, you can still maintain the mystery to your show. There are obvious ethical concerns with the exposure channels, especially the ones trying to monetize them, but that's not really what I want to address here.

See, what I think is the bigger problem with YouTube exposure videos is how crap most of them are. A lot of newbies go online looking for a place to get started, and unfortunately the exposure videos are pretty convenient. I'm not angry with the newbies. They don't know what's considered proper procedure in this community. How could they? It's not like we go out of our way to publicize it. And doing so would just draw more attention to the exposure monkeys and killjoys anyway.

The problem this creates however, and it is one that we have to be aware of in order to remedy, is that a lot of new guys end up getting their start learning from a bunch of incompetent teenage attention whores with the manual dexterity of a three-toed sloth. I've said it before, but it's worth repeating: YouTube tutorials are to learning magic what a Swiss army knife is to open heart surgery. The overwhelming majority of guys who post these videos are terrible magicians and worse performers. I've looked up some of these videos, believe me. They couldn't deliver good scripting to save a burning orphanage, their hands are all stiff and weird like they're doing an impersonation of a robot at the bottom of the uncanny valley, and they have the timing and character of a fart in the middle of a eulogy. Their webcam performances could not be any worse unless they were stabbing you in the face is what I'm saying.

Yet this is where a lot of new guys get their start. And it's a bad thing because then they develop bad habits early on and they have to spend time breaking them. Time they could have spent refining the material they have or gaining a better understanding of the fundamentals. Learning from YouTube is one step forward, two steps back.

But ultimately the magic community must share a certain amount of blame here. Being as dramatic about our secrets as we are, there's a certain degree of outsider unfriendliness and suspicion. Guys turn to YouTube because other magicians don't make themselves very approachable. The majority of us aren't complete jerkoffs, granted. It's more a sense of complacency. It's an unintended side effect of our culture of secrecy.

So YouTube is not the threat many of us imagine it is. The problem it presents is more indirect. And the best we can do to combat it is to just step back and consider if perhaps we might be acting a bit too secretive. If more newbies discover early on that there are better ways to learn and that we will happily volunteer that information, we'll see the audience for the exposure monkeys shrinking. They'll never truly go away, but marginalizing them means there will be fewer new guys who get a bad start due to the incompetence of Magic Exposure Channel #347.

Make the Other Guy Look Good

As magicians, we love attention. Don't try to deny it. To be a performer, you have to enjoy the applause to some degree. You have to have a bit of an ego to enjoy being in the spotlight that often. But there are times when it's appropriate to give up that spotlight and make one of your spectators the star of the show. I'm going to give you two examples from my own experience, but keep in mind that there are many, many more.

When I was busking in 2008, there was one day where a young boy walked behind me as I was in the middle of a routine and he caught me palming a coin. He of course had to announce this to everyone. I didn't make a big deal of it, and neither did the audience. Hey, these things happen sometimes. No sense getting bent out of shape.

Unfortunately, the young man decided to stick around. His father stood about 50 feet off, watching mutely as his son watched my next several routines, loudly voicing every idea he had for how he thought I did something, no matter how outlandishly wrong those theories were. I didn't give him any attention, but boy howdy was this kid stubborn.

After about 15 or 20 minutes of him trying to shout over me and getting in the way and his father doing absolutely nothing I decided that enough was enough. I called for a volunteer, and framed the card effect I was doing as the work of the volunteer (whom we will refer to as Jeff) rather than me. Of course, after the reveal the boy shouted out his theories, but this time I interrupted him. "Hey! Jeff was talking."

I gave Jeff a moment where he looked good in front of a small crowd and turned things on the kid to make him out as being rude, not to me, but to Jeff. Since I made Jeff look good, he was now on my side. Sure enough, at the next effect the kid piped up but was immediately shouted down by Jeff and all his friends barking in unison, "Dude, shut up!" The kid walked off after that. He wasn't going to get the crowd praising him for how smart he thought he was. They wanted to enjoy the rest of the show. And Jeff didn't want someone messing with the guy who just gave him some of the limelight.

At another time, I was doing a set for a guy and his girlfriend. I had a suspicion that the guy liked the show, and wasn't going to chase me off, but he wasn't entirely on my side. I asked them if they felt they had some sort of special connection and that I wanted to test it. I had the girl select a card, which I controlled to the bottom of the deck. I asked her to look at her boyfriend and try to focus on her card.

When I turned to the boyfriend, I held the deck in both hands and tipped it up slightly so that he could see the bottom card but she couldn't. As I told him to look into her eyes and reach out mentally, I tapped the card and gave him a little nod. He understood. He looked into her eyes, paused a few seconds, and named her card. The look on her face was priceless. Her boyfriend of course left a generous tip in my hat.

If you make a spectator look good in front of a crowd or their friends or even a significant other, they will be your buddy. And they will thank you for it. Leave an anecdote in the comments section about any times you've used this principle yourself.

Horror Movies for Dummies

A friend challenged me to watch 30 horror movies this month, bonus points if I could get some ones I'd never seen before. Sadly, my schedule has been frenetic at best, and I don't think I'll be able to meet the challenge. But it did get me thinking. There are different kinds of horror. Some are better than others. Not all movies are created equal. And horror is a very ghettoized genre. It certainly doesn't help that it's difficult to write but every anonymous twit with a word processor thinks he can turn out something shocking and scary when he's really just aping whatever clunkers he saw at the box office recently.

So it occurs to me that it's time to provide a list of essential horror movies for those who are still relatively new the genre. If you want to do bizarre, shock, or haunted magic, you have to know how to do it right. You have to know the history of the horror genre. Since movies are my thing, I'll that there. So here, in chronological order, are the horror movies I believe are mandatory viewing if you want to add horror to your magic.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: This is the granddaddy of all horror films. a surrealist tale of madness and entrapment. It set the bar for the rest of the century.

Nosferatu: The original "Symphony of Horror." While some contend that Werner Herzog's 1979 remake with Klaus Kinske was better made, the original still has a strong place in film canon.

Haxen: If you're not into documentaries, large portions of this movie are going to be difficult to get through for you. However, it contains some striking visuals and will give you an introduction to real world superstition and religious fanaticism that shaped Western culture for centuries.

The Universal Studios Monster Movies: Take your pick. Whether you're watching a vampire, a werewolf, a mummy or the creature from the Black Lagoon, it's all magic, baby!

The Val Lewton Horror Collection: I argue that Val Lewton is one of the most underrated horror filmmakers of the Golden Age. His clever use of light and shadow and camera work made his movies unbelievably creepy.

Invasion of the Bodysnatchers: This was arguably the birth of paranoid sci-fi, and though I love the remake as well, the original is still worth watching.

Psycho: This is Neo-Gothic horror at its finest. A tiny pocket of wrongness and evil in an otherwise normal world. There's a reason the shower scene became a pop culture icon.

The Haunting: Please see my earlier review for why you need to see this movie.

Night of the Living Dead: I'm not just recommending this one because I'm a Pittsburgher myself. This was a game-changing movie that redefined the zombie mythos and created a new face of evil for artists all over the world.

Rosemary's Baby: Forget that Paranormal Activity crap. If you want demonic overtones, this is how you do it. An intensely creepy movie with a bleak, tragic ending but not for the reasons you might initially think.

The Wicker Man: This is without a doubt one of the single greatest movies about the evil that men do. The creepy behavior of the villagers juxtaposed with the sunny locations and cheerful Scottish folk music really gets under your skin.

Halloween: This is Movie Zero for the slasher genre and actually has comparatively little gore and a small body count. It builds itself up on unrelenting creepiness and atmosphere, which is a good lesson for performers to observe.

The Thing: The next two are for the shock magic fans. Body horror in the 80's was all about the spectacle of the wet death. It hit audiences in a very vulnerable place. John Carpenter's foray into the genre is one of the bloodiest and bleakest films you'll ever see.

The Fly: What separates a virtuoso artist like David Cronenberg from a kitsch king like Herschel Gordon Lewis is the intelligence behind their works. This is one of Cronenberg's most successful movies, despite its intense gore, because it plays out more like a tragic opera than a monster movie.

The Hitcher: A distinctly less gory 80's affair than one would expect. This film is mostly defined by Rutger Hauer's chilling performance.

Se7en: Not a pretty thing to see, certainly, but a great example of the evil that men do. Other than that, I'm have to be honest. The 90's was pretty desolate. There were very few good horror movies that decade, and even fewer great ones.

28 Days Later: Zombie purists will argue this isn't a true zombie movie, but it stands out as a strong entry for 2000's horror for being the best of the scientific zombie flicks of recent years.

The Mist: This is seriously one of the bleakest films on this whole list. Really. The ending is such a friggin' downer. There are some parts that are a bit cheesy, but the atmosphere is great.

Geese - There's a Lesson in There

I looked out a window at lunch today and saw a flock of geese flying south for the winter. I remembered that the reason they fly in a V formation is to make the trip easier. The strongest of the flock are at the front, taking the heaviest winds and drag. The weaker members are at the back of the V where they take less wind resistance. In other words, you can tell who the leaders of the flock are based on their strength and status by watching how the flock flies.

My point? Humans are not so different. If you watch people long enough, you start to notice subtle signs and signals. When performing for a group, watch for who's got the status. Who is the leader. They're the one you really need to win over. Impress them, and the rest of the group will follow.

Friendship is Magic (Literally!)

So the new season of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has started this month. Yes, I watch the show, as I'm sure some of you reading this do as well. Trust me, it stopped being ironic a long time ago. If you don't watch the show, then being connected to the internet at all in the last year means that you've probably at least heard of it and the immense, sometimes psychotic, fan following that it has generated. I was tinkering with the idea of working references to the show into some of my all-ages routines, and that's when I decided that now would be a good time to bring up the subject of being topical.

When you're in the entertainment industry, it's actually very important to stay on top of trends, fads, and patterns. Some do it very well, such as Cracked dot com. Some do it very poorly, such as the studios that still refuse to screen horror movies to critics, even when they turn out to be a hit with the social media crowd. Being topical is not easy. You have to pay close attention to the ins and outs of pop culture and get a good sense of what's selling, what isn't, what's popular, what's not, and why. Then you need to ask yourself if this is of any use to you. And then you have to actually research the topic in order to present it intelligently, smoothly, and in a way that doesn't make me the audience want to punch you.

If you want to see some of the worst attempts to be topical, take a look at early 90's cartoons that featured a rap song in some way. Bear in mind that rap was only just going mainstream in the late 80's and early 90's. The genre had been around for years prior, but groups like Run DMC and Public Enemy were taking it to the surface. Artists like Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. also lent their respective talents to expand and refine the genre artistically. On the other hand, there were also more commercial hip-hop acts like The Fresh Prince and MC Hammer who were making a style of rap that was... let's say, much less scary to white people. With the trend of rap as a mainstream genre on the rise, a lot of media moguls and producers tried to be topical and capitalize on it.

The result was some of the worst music ever made and subsequently marketed to children. I still remember cartoons and the commercials accompanying them with awkward MC Hammer references and some of the worst rhymes and flow I've heard in my life. Even as a kid who at the time only listened to whatever I happened to catch on Alternative Nation (a show back from when MTV was still about music), I could tell this was awful.

The sad thing? The same fate is befalling most performers who try to be topical. They come across as awkward, pandering, and ironically out of touch. They show no actual comprehension of the pop culture trend they're referencing. They end up looking like an old fart using anachronistic slang that's 20 years out of date in a desperate attempt to sound hip. I'm reminded of the documentary Uber Goober, a film about the history of games and the lifestyle of gamers. One of the interviews was with a musician by the stage name The Great Luke Ski who lamented that most humor about games and gamers was based on shallow stereotypes that took zero thought to come up with. He elaborated that he tries to deliver actual wit and humor by cracking jokes as an insider, someone with real knowledge of the subject he's singing about.

You must remember that lesson if you want to be topical. Yes, I know that which is topical has a limited shelf-life. Most of the time. Some pop culture phenomena live longer than any of us ever will, so some things will be pretty safe to work into a show years from now. But in the short term, being topical has its advantages. It opens doors. It's something everyone can relate to in some way. It gives them something to talk about. And it gives them an easy point of reference. In an earlier post, Brandon Porterfield described his experience doing a Pokemon-themed birthday party. Brandon didn't have much Pokemon merchandise to work with, so he was forced to be creative. He had to learn about different Pokemon, what they did, and get a decent idea of the franchise's premise and appeal. These circumstances allowed him to create a show that was both topical and effective.

So all you bronies out there, producing a Rainbow Dash figure out of thin air like would a coin or a card just isn't going to cut it. You have a chance to get in front of people and book shows because you can give them magic based on a show that a lot of people love. But you have to know the show, you have to take the opportunities it gives you, and you have to be creative with it. Be topical, but don't screw it up.

As an aside, I wrote this entire post without once making a single horse pun. You're welcome.

Whoooo are you?

Can you tell I'm having a bit of a classic rock binge?

A while back I learned a mnemonic device from Docc Hilford. The problem with names is that they're abstract. It's true that if you trace the etymology of a name far enough back you can discover it's meaning, but that's still an abstraction. If I told you to think of a car, you might think of different brands or models, but you can think of a car because a car is a specific thing. But what if I asked you to think of a Steve? Or a Jessica? Not quite the same, is it?

All memory is based on recall, the ability to connect thoughts together through association. The trick Docc Hilford shared with me is to associate someone's name with something memorable involving that name.

"What's your name?"
"Scott."
"Great!"

"What's your name?"
"Ash."
"Housewares?"

"What's your name?"
"Steve."
"I've got some jobs for you."

"What's your name?"
"Jessica."
"Like Alba?"

Don't worry if they get the joke or not. As long as the association makes sense to you. If they don't get it, just wave it off with a simple, "I don't know what that means," or, "Nothing, I'm just spitballing."

I've been using this technique for about a year now and it works every time. Give it a shot.