Being New and Different on Less Than a Dollar a Day
(Or Thereabouts, More or Less)
By Shane

Well, so here it’s been ages since I last wrote an article. I have a good reason, though: lately there’s just been so much new stuff to review – both the wonderfully magically and the desperately sad – I’ve been concentrating on that. I figure that the reviews might actually save you some money, help you make a good buying decision here and there, so I’ve let that take up the bulk of my time and resources when it comes to writing for Visions.

So here I am, writing a for-real piece since Moses waddled along the banks of the Nile, and what’s it about? Money again. It seems I do have a one-track mind for that lately.

Perhaps because I get so many emails asking me about the latest this or the newest that (both of which probably came from “The Jinx”) that I decided I’m going to let you in on a little secret of mine. But first we have to come to an understanding:

A spectator’s view of something new and different is itself different from our view as performers.

This doesn’t take a whole lot to understand and certainly less to explain. The simple fact is that we’re exposed to much, much, much more magic than spectators ever will be (even more than our long-suffering significant others). With that comes a familiarity that spectators do not share, whether it’s with our plots or out props. While we see an Okito coin box every day, our spectators likely haven’t seen that metal pill box ever. And we may have a dozen ways of performing a coins-across, but our spectators probably have never seen the like of coins going from one hand to the other.

That is what is called “the nature of the beast”: we’re around it so when we talk about “new”, we’re really going out there for something unique to us; to spectators, virtually everything we do is new.

Sidenote: “new” doesn’t always mean “good”. To either of the parties involved.

Okay, so with all of that in mind, let’s get to how this article came about.

A few years ago, I was moping around, thinking about adding some new touches to my existing routines. My stuff is my stuff, and I love it more than Snickers bars, but I wanted something new, something different, so I felt more “set apart” than other performers. My presentations during formal shows do that, and do that in spades, but all too often I find myself in other venues and, in those venues, I wanted something that I felt was different.

Then I stumbled upon the secret and, as they say, the scales fell from my eyes.

First, before the secret meant anything to me, I had to learn to think outside the box. Now that’s about as overused a saying as you can ask for, and overuse it I do, but the intent is simple: don’t fall into the trap of thinking within any limitations. Go nuts with your thinking and see where it takes you! And I did.

Here are a few examples:

I wanted to perform a “Three-Fly” routine, but, well, I’m basically a penny-pincher from the get-go. No way was I going to shell out a hundred bucks or so for ancient silver dollars (and then probably sand them down anyway, taking the value out of them) for a trick that, to be honest, I may not even like performing. So off I went, using my secret, and came back with two pairs of novelty sunglasses with those hologram-covered lenses that look like human eyeballs. With a pair of shears, I cut the lenses out, leaving the gold frame around them, and sanded down the rough spots. Voila! They’re about the right size and definitely the right shape to replace silver dollars. They also don’t talk and handle quite nicely. But the big thing is they are different. Very different as it turns out and audiences seem to get a kick out of them (especially when the last one travels, not to my hand, but up to my eye). I ended up buying eight more pair and giving the things away as souviners. Go figure.

I wanted to do one of those wiz-bang, fancy-shmancy bill changes out on the market. The problem is that I don’t want to waste a couple hundred dollars in the endeavor with all the gluing, cutting, and pasting going on. Once again, my secret came into play and I was looking at a bill change routine using Chinese Hell Money. This is fake money traditionally burned at Chinese funerals. They are also gorgeous to look at, incredibly odd (allowing for more incredibly odd presentations), and striking from across the room. With their bright coloring and obviously different patterns and pictures, these ended up being a godsend for larger gigs. And it’s definitely different.

I love doing a coin matrix, but… well, you get the idea. So off I went and this time came back with two ideas. In the first, I replaced the playing cards with two pieces of polarized plastic. These are squares of plastic that, when looking through them one at a time, are seen to be opaque but when placed together can’t be seen through. This makes for a sweetly sick little coin vanish for the matrix: hold one in each hand, bring them over a table coin, the spectator sees the coin up until the last second and when the cards are drawn away from the coin, it’s gone. That’s almost a whole new trick there, and it’s got that “new” feel to it. The second idea is just plain twisted: I applied Mylar to the playing cards, in effect making portable mirrors out of them. Now, combine a bit of Paul Harris’ “Twilight” to the matrix and you’ve got an ultra-visual piece of magic. True, it’s a hard piece to work through, but the look of it makes up for it.

When I’m out and about (meaning, strolling), I like to take cards with me. But one particularly nightmarish scenario occurred which ended with my beloved USPCC cards falling into a pool of winter slush. I recovered, thank you, but was left with a bit of a problem. True, I could carry around extra decks just in case, but that could possibly be overload. I applied the secret and began using COPAGs which are 100% plastic and handle like a dream with a very nice texture that makes sleight work easy. For a test, I dropped a deck into a bowl of spaghetti sauce, wiped them off with a paper towel, and they were ready to go again. Try that with your Black Tigers and see what happens. Speaking of which, I much prefer the Classic series COPAG decks, which were the first all-black cards I’d ever seen and which look just plain weird (and come two to a presentation box, so you take out one deck and fill that other side with your other tools of the trade and you’re really saving space). In addition, COPAG’s “Mendala” design is one of the best one-way designs to work with you’ll find: two different markings work with most lighting situations you’ll run into.

I do my share of coin work, but usually I want to do coin effects that allow me to borrow the coins. I’ve felt for the longest that, as soon as I whip out coins that the Everyman doesn’t carry with him, spectators get even just the slightest bit suspicious. Yes, that may be “magician’s guilt” talking, but practical experience bears me out. So, rather than pull out half-dollars or silver-dollars, I opt for borrowing things. But this is about being different, isn’t it? Which is why I use beads instead of coins for most “coin” routines. Come to find out there are a ton of coin routines out there that functions quite well with beads. And if you opt for the glass disc type, they even stack nicely in a palm. About the only things I haven’t used beads for is shell work and a muscle pass, but I’m working on those. Now, before you completely poo-poo this idea, think about this: bring out beads, threaded on two strings, and causing the spectator’s chosen beads to penetrate the string (a la Grandmother’s Necklace), then seguing into a “ring on string” routine using one of the beads (again chosen by a spectator), and then going into any number of transpositions, teleportations, penetrations, and the like. That’s an entire act right there (and if you originally pull the strings and beads from an Okito box, I won’t tell). Of course, if beads aren't your thing, try using mini-CDs. I've been using these for some coin routines the last year or so and they will definitely set you apart. Nice sized, easy to handle, and with a great big hole in the center for whatever your devious mind comes up with (one word of advice, though; they track fingerprints really badly but a coating of Rain-X seems to take care of that pretty well). They also come in different colors... Need I say more?

I could go on and on here, giving you a litany of small changes I've made here and there to set myself apart, even if it's just in my own mind and the minds of my audiences, but I think you get the idea.

And you may just see a pattern forming.

The changes I made to my effects were more cosmetic than anything else. My coin matrix is still my coin matrix, just with some added window dressing. The three-fly is still Daryl's, the bill change is still on off-shoot of Page's, and so on and so on. But to the mind of the spectator, they are very different things. They are unique, oddities really, and because of that perceived difference they are memorable.

Which leads us to the secret of being new and differect, Patience Reader, and unlike our usual secrets it's a really simple one:

"Anything goes!"

Shane