Category: Magic News

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Magic News

Will Chat GPT Destroy Magic?

[The following was written in part by an AI algorithm.  We have removed the cuss words.]

As many of our loyal followers know, we embraced the AI movement years ago and most of our articles are generated solely by intelligent software.  In the early years, we would mail our story ideas to a person with a computer and that person would photocopy the letter and push it into a slot on their desktop computer.  Within minutes, the computer would print out a perfectly edited and crafted article, fit for instant publication.  We think that is how it worked.  We didn’t know the person or see the process but he or she would send us the articles by first class mail within weeks of our submission.

The 1980s and early 1990s were a heyday for magic-oriented computer generated article copy.  We rented time on a Cray Supercomputer and typed in our story idea.  Within seconds, we had a fully fledged (as opposed to the occasional “partially-fledged” articles from the postal version provided) story with an image to post.  Yes, Cray Supercomputer time was expensive (about $1,700 per five minutes of computing time, accounting for inflation), but it was well worth the money.  The Cray Supercomputer could scan hundreds of pieces of data quickly and assemble something worth posting to this site.

Readers may be surprised that these stories were computer generated: “Magic Things,” “Things Like Magic,” “Stop Magic Doing,” “Area Codes of Famous Magicians,” “The Cherry Orchard,” “Cup in Ball,” “What Smells?” “Wand Magic,” “Don’t Type So Hard,” and of course our Pulitzer Prize Nominated (by us) expose on the vast Rough and Smooth industries practices, “Not Smooth, Rough.”

Yes, the AI process has developed by leaps and bounds – or at least “leaps” – and it is clear it will eventually take over humanity and humans will need to comply with its commands and whims, struggle is futile.  But the real question for us is does AI expose secrets of magic?

We entered into Chat GPT the names of some classic magic tricks and asked how to perform them.  While the response generated was written well, the substance of the answer was terrible.  Not just terrible, but misleading and possibly dangerous.

We asked, “How do they do that thing?” and it gave us a nonsense response about not understanding our request.

We asked, “How do they do that magic thing?” and it said magic is fictional and accomplished by trained performers.

In reality, magic tricks and illusions are performed by skilled magicians or illusionists who have mastered various techniques to create the appearance of magic. These techniques may involve misdirection, sleight of hand, optical illusions, and the use of props or special devices. By manipulating the audience’s perception and using clever techniques, magicians can create seemingly impossible or mysterious effects.

Useless.  It completely omitted a magician’s keen sense of smell and soft pads on his or her feet.  There was nothing about the magician’s whiskers being used to determine the width of an opening or ability to see in the dark.

Until computers can mimic the human shoulder, there is little to worry about.  Peoples will always be able to lift heavy objects even if they are not magic.

Finally, there is much we don’t know about AI and we should not look into it too closely.  It would be like looking into the sun or flying too close to the sun.

Magic News

Finally a New Deck of Cards We Will Buy

Purple-Monarch-07868_2000x1024.jpgLet us get it out of the way at the start.  We receive no endorsement, promise, compensation or promise of compensation (including a free deck of the cards we are about to describe).  We will be buying the Purple Monarch deck from Theory 11 is our bottom line.

With those preliminaries out of the way, thus meeting the FTC guidelines for influencers (can be found here), we have long said that we did not understand the hysteria our profession has suffered from the release of custom made cards.  We have been using our Bee (blue) decks since we were in utero and have attached a sonogram showing our nascent work on the Charlier Cut in previous posts.  But those efforts were always with a Bee (blue) deck — although slightly smaller than poker size for our only then evolving little hands.

Our mother would complain to her OB/GYN that it wasn’t so much the kicking that bothered her during our pregnancy, but the sharp edge of the cards being dropped in her innards during the last trimester (we don’t know what that would be in metric) of her pregnancy with us.

As we grew into what some have described as a young man, we continued to use the poker-sized Bee deck in both red and blue (we were wild as a teen and young adult and frequently lived on the edge as evidenced by our several chain escapes in neighbors’ pools and challenges to schoolmates to tie us up with 100 feet of rope).  Fortunately, our parents understood this was normal for a young man obsessed with Houdini. They wouldn’t buy the rope or chains for us so we had to use our show money to buy them and then boxes and boxes of red and blue Bee decks.

Yes, we went the way of the devil on occasion and would try Aviators (because they were cheaper and usually gimmicked) or Fox Lake (same as Aviators but with better gimmicking) or even a set of bridge-sized Hello Kitty cards.  But we always returned to Bee (now only blue) decks.

The motivation was simple.  Bee decks have no borders and possess what some could consider a busy back.  86 percent of our card routine involves second dealing.  The entire middle section (which seems to take about 90 minutes to most audiences) is all second deals.

There are trade-offs, of course.  Our double lift is suspect and our performance of Dai Vernon’s Triumph can be easily ruined with the boardless cards.  We do the double lift on an off-beat and never do Triumph anymore.

But the point of this post was not what we did but what we will do.

Theory 11 is advertising a new deck of cards called the Purple Monarch deck.  It is beautiful and could convince us to move from security provided by one of the several gross packages of Bee (blue) decks to a new deck.  We will order one or two or three from Theory 11 and do a review if we like them.  It is Inside Magic’s policy to never do a review of something we don’t like.   We don’t want to add negativity into our art and we were scandalized in the late 1980s with a negative (with positive points) about a card sword that we described as “it looks neither like a sword or a card sword.  A swashbuckler would not buy or steal this object for a sword fight and a magician would have no need to use it to stab cards or even himself in disgust for paying over $50 dollars for an aluminum pipe and a wood handle roughly cut and unfit for the hands of anyone other than a giant or two very normal-sized men working together.”

The sword manufacturer was very distressed by this review and we felt badly.  We tried to make it up by retracting the story (that’s why it’s no longer on the site) but that wasn’t enough.  We saw him at the IBM convention in Orlando and he ignored us.  We cried and overspent at his booth.  But the damage was done.  Never again.

You can view the Monarch deck here.  You can even tell them Inside Magic sent you but remember, we receive nada for the link or the puff.  Let us know if you agree that it is a deck about which one could be very excited.

Magic Law, Magic News

Magic and Law: Can You Copyright a Trick?
Blaine's Fame is Apparently a Secret
Our Secret

No.

It is a short answer and gets us out of writing a big, long-winded piece on the legalities but perhaps inadequate.

We are not alone in our opinion.  We direct you to a great article by great  Magician and Lawyer Guy Hollingworth from 2008 about an art designed to avoid laws of nature.

It is comforting to see that the country from which we have derived the greater part of our legal system, has not backslid into the easy but philosophically unsound world where an idea can be protected.  The United Kingdom wants to encourage innovation but draws understands it must draw the line somewhere.

In the case of magic tricks, one can patent the method to perform the effect or even copyright the patter used to describe and deceive; but one may not protect the idea behind the trick itself.

For instance, the secret behind our now-classic Marked One-Way Forcing Deck can be stolen by just about anyone.  Of course, some print critics of our invention have suggested “[w]hy would anyone want to steal the idea of a One-Way Forcing Deck that is marked as well?” Regardless, it is not being knocked-off or copied by folks looking to cash in on our genius.  We like to think that is because our brothers and sisters in Magic are ethical folk.

By the way, we will soon announce the follow-up to the Marked One-Way Forcing Deck, The Inside Magic Marked Billiard Balls.  No longer will you have to guess about the location of any particular billiard ball whilst you make them appear or disappear.

Continue reading “Magic and Law: Can You Copyright a Trick?” →

Magic News

Magicians, History and Corn Dogs

Kellar's Latest IllusioinYou can ask anyone, what does Inside Magic like?

Those in the know will say, usually with a chirpy tone, cool magic stuff from magic history and corn dogs.

Taking the list in order, we look constantly for cool magic stuff from magic history.  We have a key to the city given to Harry Blackstone Jr. given by the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan.  We have posters and pictures of great magicians through the years.  Some of our fondest memories have been eating corn dogs.

Other great memories have been talking to older magicians about the magicians they have seen or with whom they worked.

We recalled a wonderful conversation about Harry Blackstone, Jr. (the impetus for our mention of my souvenir) and how compassionate he was for his staff and assistants.  He certainly did not need to be – he was the star and his show was a hit.  But he was.

We have a multi-page letter handwritten by Doug Henning in response to our question, “how can a magician who is only 12 make it as a professional.”

Not surprisingly, he did not tell us to get an agent, make posters, berate theater managers; but to practice the art, learn the rules of being a magician and have fun.

We work in a wonderful art.  People genuinely love to be entertained and fooled and corn dogs.

We provide two out of the three and the more we do it, the more entertaining it becomes for us and our audience.

We wonder how the younger generation learns about our grand history.  Perhaps there are still meetings over an occasional corn dog where mustard-stained young performers can hear stories of Willard the Wizard, Thurston, Houdini, Kellar, Dante and our favorite, Harry Blackstone, Jr.

Although the image is not of Harry Blackstone, Jr. or any deep-fried hot dog, we think the poster used by Kellar displaying his “latest” illusion of “self-decapitation” is illustrative of our wonderful history.  No one – at least no one we have seen in the last 20-years has performed “self-decapitation” and even decapitation of others has fallen into disfavor (correctly in our humble opinion) due to world events.  But his poster was drawn in sketch form, colored in, placed on lithographic machinery and literally inked with several different passes – one for each color – leaving a space to make the poster applicable to the town or setting where Kellar would soon perform.  How wonderful.

You can find wonderful posters of magicians and non-magicians throughout history at the Library of Congress for your viewing and enjoyment.  We hope you do.

Inside Magic Image of Woman Concerned About Claims of Magic Secret Theft
Latest Magic News, Magic News

Anastasia Synn – Magician and Cyborg

Inside Magic Image of Woman Concerned About Claims of Magic Secret TheftLike many magicians, we have considered getting implants.  Just not the type Anastasia Synn chose.

Mrs. Synn is more than a magician, maybe she is also a walking MRI concern. (We note that Mrs. Synn has shared that the magnet and MRI concern is a myth).

She has 26 microchips implanted in her body.  She discussed her implanting at a recent Biohacker Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

We read about her, and squirmed, in Stat News.  You can do the same here.

Where other biohackers were presenting their latest findings with PowerPoint, Mrs. Synn actually pushed the point of a long needle through her forearm.  On purpose.

Although magic is her thing, she is also a designer of implants for others.

She describes herself as a cyborg and by that means “anyone that wants to add technology or anything that isn’t already in their body to their body to achieve a new sense or a new ability.”

We had an uncle who got an extra spleen even though he did not need one – his God-given spleen was working fine by all accounts – but he felt it gave him super powers over sugar.  It wasn’t until weeks later that he learned that the pancreas was the sugar processor and not the spleen.  He processes old red blood cells like a champ but that’s not really a super power – except to red blood cells that have reached their “best used by date.”  To them, his double spleen is like a Marvel character.

At the time of the interview in Stat News, Mrs. Synn had 26 implants but was getting two more in the next day and was shooting for an even (in non-Euclidian geometry theory) 35.

“I’m a magician, so I use them in my magic act. And I also use them in my day-to-day life — to unlock my door at home, or to let my cat speak. I know that sounds crazy, but my cat’s upgraded even, so I can scan him, and he will tell his story about how I found him behind a grocery store. I love my cat.”

Mrs. Synn was very careful to not reveal magic secrets in her interview.

“I can’t go into too much detail about how the implants are used in magic, but there’s multiple ways that they can be used and even more ways they can be designed to be used.”

She notes that the implantation of magnets and devices into the human body is not literally sanctioned by the medical community.  They are coated but even the coating is not medically sanctioned.  She checks her body, blood levels, liver enzymes and kidney function every three months.

Go to Stat News for the full low down on how she has implanted more than half of the devices herself and her experience with the TSA.

It is an amazing story but we are still afeared of implanting anything in our body.  We won’t even eat sharp cheese.

Visit Mrs. Synn’s website here for pictures and a biography of her amazing work.

Magic News, Magician Feature

New York Times Loves Derren Brown’s New Broadway Show

derren-brown-secret-broadway.jpgIt should come as no surprise that Derren Brown’s new Broadway one-man show, Secret, has received rave reviews from magicians like David Copperfield.  Magicians know what amazing things can come from Mr. Brown’s very fertile mind.  He is, in a word, incredible.

But beyond the common magician or human audience member, there is the critical eye of the critics who with their often very critical pen draft criticism of nearly every new show that hits the Great White Way.

Given that truth as prologue, we were very impressed that the New York Times, the Gray Lady, praised Mr. Brown’s show and Mr. Brown in particular — which makes sense in a one-man show situation.

They wrote:

As a showman, Mr. Brown has none of the smarminess of Las Vegas prestidigitators or carnival hucksters. He feels nonsynthetic in his smoothness, and his jokes directed at the audience stay carefully on the sunny side of insults.

We have long taken a firm stand in favor of smarminess of not only Las Vegas performers and carnival hucksters but we are broad-minded enough to accept non-smarmy presentations of our grand art as well.  It could be that we like smarminess because we are in fact smarmy.  We tried to go to those camps where they sweat the smarminess out of you — we were surprised our insurance company covered the 30 days at Malibu Smart Not Smarmy Treatment Center and Spa, but they did and it didn’t work.

We even wrote an article for the Journal of the American Medical Association, “Smarminess, The New Epidemic?” It was a case study of magicians and hucksters across the US, Canada and parts of Luxembourg.  Yes, the study was later rejected by real doctors but at least we brought the issue to the attention of medical professionals.  And yes, it was removed from the site and replaced by a study on cancer or heart disease or something.  We didn’t read the replacement article — hence proving that we are smarmy by mentioning something that cannot be found to back up our claim. Quod Erat Demonstrandum, amigos.

Mr. Brown is showing his non-smarmy, smart, intriguing and, to some, “life changing” show at the famous prior home of Doug Henning, The Cort Theater in New York.

We look forward to seeing his show as soon as we can get to New York and purchase tickets to this sold-out show.

It is axiomatic that if the New York Times likes the show, the tickets will no longer be available in the short and middle-run.  We are willing to pay scalpers’ prices to see Mr. Brown.  That is saying a lot because we are cheap, very cheap.  We wear the same suit we wore to our baptism (we had to expand the pants a bit because we grew since we were an infant).  Our world-famous father once said, “save your money and you’ll always have money saved.”  He also said other things that have nothing to do with money unless you consider horse race touting as money related.

If you are in the New York area — including bordering states and parts of Canada — we urge you to work against your cheap ways and go to see this show.  It is guaranteed to be a once in a lifetime experience.  Mr. Brown is, in our father’s immortal words, “a sure thing upon which you could bet both lungs.”

Hurry though.  The show is scheduled to close January 2, 2020.

Get tickets for Mr. Brown’s show — when they become available here.

Check out Mr. Brown’s website here.

Read the New York Times review here.

 

Inside Magic Image of Innovative Bunny
Magic News

Head Lice Puts a Crimp on Magicians

Inside Magic Image of Innovative BunnyHead lice is problem for most of us working in the hat exchange underground that is West Hollywood, California.  No one wants to talk about it but it is time to change the silent acquiescence that allows these parasites to take away our fun and profit.  According to the Centers for Disease Control, lice is becoming a serious national problem.  There is a new breed of “super lice,” able to resist modern drug treatments and spread their way from person to person with impunity.

Like most performers, we no longer wear a top hat off-stage.  It used to be, a magician would not be caught dead without a top hat somewhere on his or her person.  We cannot trace this unfortunate trend to head lice – perhaps it is a question of fashion – but head lice is not helping.

[Serious students of magic no doubt recall those immortal words being uttered by Houdini during a challenge escape in Kansas City, Missouri.  A local hat maker dared the great Houdini to be sewn into a huge silk hat and escape within a half hour.  Houdini did the feat in just 15 minutes but was heard to exclaim to his on-stage assistant that the escape was progressing well “but the head lice is not helping.”]

We used to pass our hat at the end of our performance and, often, audience members would become confused and try to wear the hat rather than donate money.  Back in our carefree – and money-free – days, we would don the empty hat and stroll off to the next ward in the hospital to again perform.  We never gave a thought to the dangers of head lice.

After a day of performing, we would go to the local hat exchange pub and do what hat exchangers do.  This was back in Michigan where folks were not so enlightened.  People didn’t exchange hats in Michigan.  Your hat was for your head and that’s it.  Consequently, we had to seek out the hat-x club in a neighboring town to do what we enjoyed with people we would not later admit to knowing.

West Hollywood – like most of California – is much more accepting of hat exchanging.  People seem to accept, understand and embrace those who want to try different hats if for no other reason than it is fun.  We were at a local hat-x, The Fez, just off Santa Monica the other night and noticed a different feel to the room.

Yes, it was just as crowded.  The usual group of lawyers, doctors, day laborers, academics, anemics, anti-emetics and ambulatory specialists were in attendance.  But there was a different sense.  Gone was the joie de vivre that once infused the group.  As we watched re-runs of the 1980s classic children’s television show, Lidsville, we looked around.  No one was exchanging hats.

We offered our fedora to a professional golfer and she started, instinctively, to reach for her fine Titleist snap-back cap but then stopped.  She looked at us carefully and turned away.  We looked down at the newspaper she was clutching in her well-manicured and perfectly calloused hands to see the headline about the “super lice.”

Suddenly our head began to itch.

Magic News

New Magic Invention to Change All
Inside Magic Image of Ask Alexander Logo
Alexander Knows Genius When He Sees It

We are nothing if not visionary — which at times, means we are close to nothing.  But when the visionary thing hits us, it hits us hard.  Like a sap to the nugget out of the night.  We don’t know where it came from but we recognize it when we see it in a police line-up.

We were sapped in just this way last night.  We had finished our last show of the evening at the Hollywood Strip near the Spiderman and by the lady that sells some kind of meat with or without a stick (your choice).  We packed up our ventriloquist dummy (face away from the opening of the suitcase just in case) and loaded up our handful of coins to begin our walk down the Avenue of the Stars.

We thought about how people were making zillions off of cool decks of cards with unique backs.  There are cards with old-looking backs, mis-made backs, alcoholic product labeled backs, colorful wave backs to facilitate beautiful pressure fans (which we cannot do and admit so publicly so that no one confuses us for someone with talent), cat backs, dog backs, back of dog backs and others.

But — and this is where the genius comes in — no one has come up with a back that looks like the front of the deck.  It could be all backs of the same card; say, all nine-of-hearts.  Or it could be different backs of different cards like a new deck just on the back.  In essence every card would be a double-facer.  You could have cards that match the cards on the front or cards that are the opposite of the front, or cards that are random with only a few cards matching.  (Our quick back of the Kleenex(r) calculations says that you would likely have two such cards in a deck of 52 but it was a used Kleenex and we stopped calculating at a certain point for hygienic reasons).

Now, the only problem is to figure out what trick would be perfect for this trick deck of cards.

We could do a color change pretty easy, if the card on the back was a different color.  We could do a card to wallet but with two cards in the wallet to match the double-faced card selected.

We could even make a Svengali deck or Stripper pack to do things we don’t know yet.

Maybe we’ll launch this on Kickstarter and rake in the dough or keep it to our own selves and  die poor.

This could be big.

Magic News

Magical Guinness World Record

We have an inappropriate love for the Piddingtons.

Actually just the late Lesley Piddington.

They were a psychic team from a few decades ago but, boy howdy, did they do it up.  Ms. Piddington, our no-longer secret crush, once received a psychic transmission whilst flying on a Stratocruiser plane high above the military base at which her husband, Sidney, and other judges broadcast their thoughts psychically to his beloved.  You can read more about the dynamic couple here.

The Piddingtons never claimed to have psychic powers but for our money, they were the best (and our money isn’t much, we just invested in a company that is like 23 and Me but is just for people who like to send their DNA to people.  They don’t get results back but we figure there is a niche market for this service and we emptied our 401(k) to get behind it.  There are very little overhead costs since we don’t keep the DNA or even handle it but write back (in form letters) that their DNA is “pretty” or “handsome” or “smart” or “honest”.  We are starting a new affiliate for people who want to send DNA (salvia only) for their pets.  We write back that the DNA is “pretty” or “handsome” or “smart” or “honest.”  We’re thinking of opening a third affiliate to reach people who don’t want to send DNA but can send toenail clippings — personally, we want no part of that because 1) it is gross; 2) who is going to open the packages; 3) the smell; 4) how do we know they are not just sending random toenail clippings found at the gym or in a back alley where toenail clippers are alleged to “hang” and practice their art?)

Well, a long distance transference of information is one thing, but the transference of a person is something quite different.  The magician Scott Tokar  broke the world record according to our favorite beer company (it is a medical fact that one glass of Guinness has all the nutrients and protein needed for a day in Ireland and some islands off of Ireland) was just accomplished by Corteva Agriscience, A Division of DowDuPont & Tradeshow Magician, Scott Tokar (both USA) in Boone, Iowa, at the Farm Progress Tradeshow on 28 August 2018. By the way, we are well aware that the records book and the beer are not connected – but we can dream, n’est-ce pas?

“Magician Scott Tokar highlighted the many record yields achieved by customers of Pioneer by setting another record at the show – the Farthest Teleportation Illusion. Tokar wowed show-goers by transporting his assistant more than 936 feet from the Corteva Agriscience tent to the Pioneer tent. Michael Empric, Adjudicator with Guinness World Records, authenticated the record as did representatives of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.”

You can check out the very impressive information here.

Visit Mr. Tokar’s very impressive website here.