A couple of days ago I saw a lecture by Jon Allen. It was pretty good, lots of solid thinking, strong methods, entertaining effects, and everything he said made perfect sense… But when he explained his reasons for doing things the way he did, I continually found myself disagreeing with him.
Normally when I disagree with someone I can put my reasons into words but it wasn’t until much later that I realised what was going on in my head, and when I had this epiphany it suddenly made a lot of other things slot into place in my head, such as why I have so many props I never use.
Jon Allen is too professional.
Too professional for me, anyway.
I’m sure he’s exactly the right amount of professional for the audiences he cultivates and for the people who are aiming to emulate him. Let me go into a little detail for those unfamiliar with his work.
Jon Allen made Paragon 3D, which is 100% the best folded card in clear box routine. Better than clarity box, better than mystery solved, its just perfect. Take my word for it, you’re not going to do better.
The only caveat is that it works best with perfectly folded cards, so you’ll also have to use Jon Allen’s Perfect Score to prepare them.
Jon also has a number of other ways to use surreptitiously folded cards, such as WonderFob, which looks lovely, and Destination Box, which I know absolutely nothing about¹.
In Jon’s lecture he asked for someone in the audience to mercury fold a card, so I did and even managed to squeeze a little misdirection into it despite being on the spot. He said it was surprisingly good but of course it didn’t match up to his. How could it? He then asked me to do it with a card he’d prepared and in a truly ironic twist, I fucked it up because the card felt so different in the moment.
But it does look great and I have a Perfect Score I bought years ago but never used. Why did I never use it?
The answer to everything came when he showed his ring on string routine. I didn’t care for his routine, its the only part of his lecture I can legitimately say I didn’t think was very good. He does a variant on a Jay Sankey movie intended to make the stance more natural but in doing so his altered version has way worse angles. Also the routine lacked structure and climax in my opinion². But that wasn’t the part that really resonated with me.
When I do ring on string I use a shoelace and finding the right shoelace is a pain in the arse so my wife³ asked about how long it took him to find a good cord and he explained that it was a nice velvet cord and he wished hed brought some to sell. Apparently another magician makes them. I had a feel and it was very nice… And then he said this:
When I perform I want the audience to see professional quality, so I can’t just show up with a shoelace or something.
Readers, I bristled.
Wasn’t sure why though. Later on when he showed off Paragon 3D, which to reiterate is the best card in clear box effect. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I just use a clothes peg and Jay Sankey’s Paperclipped.
Chapter 2: A tale of two Jons
Later that night I put on an old episode of The Paul Daniels Magic Show and saw Jonny Paul do his torn and restored routine and the pieces clicked into place in my head. I immediately went to vanishing inc to get Jonny Paul’s Greater Magic Library DVD, because it was a beautiful rendition of a classic torn and restored card plot, none of this modern stuff where you tear a signed card into 4 perfect quadrants and then reassemble them piece by piece. Don’t get me wrong, I love those, I do a bunch of 4 quarter tear routines including Daniel Garcia’s Torn, Paul Harris’ completely impromptu Ultimate Rip-off and Shaun Farquar’s Torn 2 Pieces. Honestly the search for the perfect signed Torn and Restored card was one of my first magical deep dives and led me to create my own 2 piece torn and restored routine⁴. Jonny Paul’s routine was none of that. It wasn’t a signed card, in fact to a spectator it had a similar quality to a card in orange routine from Royal Road as performed by Fry and Laurie during an interview with Terry Wogan.
It’s a style of torn and restored card to impossible location I’ve seen done with all kinds of vanishing devices and destinations, like a locking card case and a packet of chewing gum. But what makes Jonny Paul’s different is that he just wraps the pieces up in a paper napkin, bashes it with his fist, and the card is restored (Minus the piece which is taken away earlier). He then uses the same napkin in another routine on the DVD, this one a card stab using a regular knife.
In his explanation he says he uses the napkin because when he performs he likes to just use whatever is around him. That’s not to say his magic is impromptu, the torn and restored trick takes a fair bit of preparation, and the entire deck from the card stab is gimmicked⁵, but he wants people to think he’s just grabbing stuff and doing magic with it.
And that’s when it hit me.
Wait… Who the fuck is Paul Allen?
Chapter 3: Who the fuck Paul Allen is
In the 2000 movie American Psycho, Paul Allen is a business acquaintance of Patrick Bateman, the protagonist and titular American Psycho. Patrick idolises Paul Allen, revering and resenting his effortless perfection in equal measure until he finally murders poor old Paul with an axe while listening to Huey Lewis and The News. Or maybe it’s all in his head, who knows?⁶
By far the most famous scene in the film is the Business Card Scene, in which a bunch of people sit around comparing their choice of font, ink, element placement and card stock. Paul Allen’s card is found to be exemplary in every way, and he’s not even in the scene.
They’re all struggling to meet the same standard and as a result the cards they present are virtually indistinguishable, and despite it all they all fall below the standards of someone else.
This is what I see when magicians are all struggling towards the same goal of being the slick magicians with the nice props and they’ll never be the slickest with the nicest props, because that requires a metric fucktonne⁷ of money to get bespoke props made by a variety of high quality artisans, and none of us will ever be as rich as David Copperfield.
Whereas my entire ethos in magic is that I want to look like I grabbed a bunch of household items before leaving the house and have to just do magic with that. I explained this to my wife as if I’d had some grand epiphany and she just matter of factly said:
Well yeah, you’re basically a hedge witch.
I think there’s a moral in there somewhere but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
¹ Okay this isn’t entirely true. The one thing I know about destination box is that Kev, from my local magic club was disappointed by it, but as far as I can tell that’s because it is a box you can do magic with rather than a box that does magic. Subtle difference but frankly I think it’s about damn time we all learned the difference and also learned to expect the former unless the adverts literally say otherwise – like Timeless by João Miranda (not to be confused with Timeless by Liam Montier; very different routine).
² Which is the only opinion you’re gonna get here.
³ Yeah my wife comes to magic club. She gets actively involved in all my interests, and she enjoys it. Suck it, herterosexuals.
⁴ The name of which is currently in flux but I have referred to in the past as Making Friends.
⁵ Funny story, this very morning I got an email from Axel Hecklau about his new time based card at any number effect, Perfect Moment and I’m pretty sure it uses almost exactly the same method.
⁶ Yeah it’s that kind of movie again, sorry. For what it’s worth, Paul Allen is played by Jared Leto so I prefer to believe that not only was he actually murdered, but due to a prop mix-up the actor himself was murdered for real on set that day, and his terrible rendition of the Joker therefore never happened and we all just collectively imagined it.
⁷ A metric fucktonne is exactly 1000 cubic shitloads.