← The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
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- [00:04]
A
Hey, it's Mike Rowe. This is the way I heard it. My guest today is Jason Ladany. If I sound a little nonplussed, it's because I know it's Ladani. I'm just seeing if you're paying attention.
- [00:14]
B
I was totally paying attention, dude.
- [00:15]
A
Well, look, the first thing I do is apologize to the guy for mispronouncing his name wrong in my mind for the last two years. I think he forgave me, this guy. I guess he's a magician. Card technician. Mechanic.
- [00:27]
B
Card mechanic, That's. I think that's the proper term.
- [00:29]
A
Yeah. Yeah. I stumbled across him on the Internet on a lazy, rainy Thursday morning a couple years ago. Just scrolling around. Yeah. And I saw him do something with the deck of cards. It just defied credulity.
- [00:46]
B
Yes.
- [00:46]
A
You know, and you play cards and I play cards, and I know some tricks and whatever. I've seen the best. I've seen, you know, Richard Turner, and I've seen. I mean, I was just so blown away by his skill and his attitude. Jason Ladani, he's so mean to the people who follow him, to the skeptics who challenge him and say, yeah, you're cheating. You know, it's trick photography or whatever. But it's delightful because as abusive as he is to his many, many followers, he. He has their permission to be so.
- [01:24]
B
Yeah.
- [01:25]
A
Because he's that good.
- [01:26]
B
Totally.
- [01:26]
A
I think the one I sent you, he tracked an ace and pulled four of them out of the deck in pretty short order while he was shuffling in between each extraction, which was great.
- [01:36]
B
And insulting the person who sent him the challenge to the same time.
- [01:39]
A
Yeah. So basically the challenge is, you know, I'll give you $250 if you can pull out four aces of continuous shuffling and blah, blah, blah, which of course he does, but. But what you don't know is that as he's doing it, as he's shuffling, he's also arranging the entire deck by suit in chronological order. So when he finds the aces, you're blown away. And then he shows you the whole deck and everything is arranged and suited.
- [02:04]
B
And he's done that without looking at them.
- [02:07]
A
He never looks at them. He's just shuffling them. He's riffling them and cutting them and insulting his audience.
- [02:13]
B
And insulting his audience, and then they're all.
- [02:15]
A
And it's delightful.
- [02:16]
B
Yeah.
- [02:17]
A
Anyway, that was two years ago. I sent you a clip, and then I've sent you many clips since then because he's, you know, he's in my algorithm now.
- [02:24]
B
Yeah.
- [02:24]
A
And, you know, we're officially calling this episode nothing up his sleeve, because I think it's apropos, but we could have just as easily called it the best 40 seconds of your day, because that's about how much time I spend every day. Every day.
- [02:38]
B
Me too now. Yeah.
- [02:39]
A
Watching him do what he does. So last night, I came down here to Microworks world headquarters, and Chuck was in touch with Jason's manager, and he was doing a show up in Oxnard.
- [02:50]
B
Yeah.
- [02:50]
A
So we took a road trip, and we saw this guy in person.
- [02:55]
B
Amazing.
- [02:56]
A
And today I was like, look, man, you gotta come down and do the podcast. Bring your cards, you necromancer, you wizard, you dark art freak. Come down here and let's have a chat. And so that's what just happened. We just spent close to two hours. He showed us some stuff that'll make your head explode. But you know what? More importantly, he was exactly who I hoped he would be, which is a version of his alter ego. He's a craftsman. He's a tradesman. There hasn't been a day in the last 40 years that he hasn't had his hands for hours on a deck of cards.
- [03:29]
B
Right.
- [03:30]
A
It's become an extension of his fingers and the personification of his purpose here on planet Earth. I don't know of anybody who's better at what he's doing right now. I don't even think he's in the prime of his career.
- [03:44]
B
Yeah, I think he's coming into it.
- [03:46]
A
I think he's gonna be very well known very soon. It's gonna be hard to say his last name. Obviously, it's Ladani. And he spells it funny too. But Card magic by Jason is what you're gonna want to search after you listen to this conversation and hopefully after you watch it as well. You know, we do these over on YouTube, and this is one of those episodes that you should find, because he's gonna do things with a dec. Honestly, man, there were moments last night where I couldn't have been more gobsmacked. Had he just pulled his head off his body. Yeah. And set it on the table and had it continue to talk.
- [04:24]
B
Yeah. It's just.
- [04:25]
A
Well, I don't know if you noticed it or not, but I literally made noises of like.
- [04:30]
B
Ah.
- [04:30]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [04:31]
B
And.
- [04:31]
A
And, like, no way. And you were gasping.
- [04:35]
B
And.
- [04:35]
A
And it sounded like some, you know, important organs were shutting down prematurely, were shifting.
- [04:42]
B
Yes.
- [04:42]
A
There were facial tics. Yes. There were. It wasn't a big crowd. That's the other thing I love about this man, he's out there like without a net. He does big houses, he does small houses. He's really very much on the comics journey, the comics circuit. But he has a skill set unlike Seinfeld. It's that plus this. And what you're left with is just a look. It's just. It's marvelous and it seems impossible.
- [05:14]
B
Yeah.
- [05:14]
A
And yet he does it with such
- [05:16]
B
ease and a little bit of panache and a lot of snarkiness.
- [05:22]
A
Oh, man, he is an R rated performer and I love it. But this is PG13, maybe even PG safe for the whole family. You're gonna love it. There's nothing up his sleeve, but there is a great deal of talent in his fingers, that's for damn sure. Ooh, that sounded virtually dirty. It's just really weird, man.
- [05:40]
B
You could have just left it with the.
- [05:42]
A
Well, whatever it is, it's right after this. Jason Ladani Dumb. Would you buy a car without taking it for a test drive first? Of course not. So why would you switch to Pure Talk before taking their network for a spin? Right now you can try any of their plans for just $15 a month for the first three months, including their top tier unlimited data plan that one normally sells for $65 a month. In other words, you can save $150 over the next three months while you kick the tires on a high speed network that's every bit as reliable as the one you're currently overpaying for right now. Look, Big Wireless spends billions of dollars every year telling people that their networks are the biggest or the fastest, most reliable or the most dependable, blah, blah, blah. I get it. If you're worried that paying a whole lot less for unlimited talk, text and data might result in a diminished level of coverage, you're not crazy. But you're not right. If you want to see for yourself why hundreds of thousands of Americans have switched from big wireless to PureTalk, this is a great time to do it. Any of their plans, including their top tier unlimited data plan for $15 a month for the next three months. No contracts, no commitments. Just a fair deal on a high speed network from an American wireless company that wants to earn your business. Give them a try@PureTalk.com row I switched. I love them. You will too. PureTalk.com ro. All right. I should start with an apology, man. I've been mispronouncing your name in my head for the last two years. I'm sorry.
- [07:38]
B
That's okay.
- [07:39]
A
It's Jason Ladany.
- [07:41]
B
There you go.
- [07:41]
A
Like Danny boy.
- [07:42]
B
That's right.
- [07:43]
A
And boy, oh, boy. Dude, you freaked those people out last night, man. It was fun to watch.
- [07:47]
B
Just doing my job.
- [07:49]
A
Do you think of it like a job? Do you think of it like a hobby that got out of hand? I mean, you're just doing stuff, dude. And you can see people's eyes. First they glaze, then they roll in their head. Then you start, like. Like about 40 minutes in, you start to notice, like, the guys I'm sitting with have developed a facial tick. Right. I mean, you're like.
- [08:12]
B
You're really starting a cult.
- [08:14]
A
You're troubling. You're troubling people and amusing them at the same time. So is that really your job?
- [08:20]
B
Well, I had a similar experience when I was young, and I saw magic for the first time. I was learning how the rule. The world works, and there's rules and everything. So I experienced what you're talking about, myself, and I knew what that felt like. And I think in life, there's this thing. I didn't know this when I was 7, but you have a. You have something. You have an experience, and there's this thing that we want to share it with. Oh, you have to try this, or. Yeah, that's just how humans work. So I felt that my brother showed me some card tricks. I was 7, and I just wanted to learn how that worked and do that to other people. And then there was kind of a power in that that I enjoy. And fooling your father for the first, you know, these are very impactful things. And fooling my brother, he was the one that showed me the stuff. And it's now my life's mission to fool him back. You know, it took 15 years, but I got him. And then along the way, I got good at this stuff, you know, and so when you say, is it a job or not? You know, everyone has. This is how I make money. But I certainly don't feel the word job, especially because when I think of that word, I feel like people that the alarm goes off and you. You know, and you go in and. And you try to take vacations from it. And you know that that's not what this is. We're. We're constantly going and traveling and having fun and everything. So it doesn't feel like anything I need to get away from. But for some reason in me is always this desire to create even more. Even though I've got the show you saw, there's. There's constantly new things I'm always coming up with to further that and make it even worse.
- [09:46]
A
Has there been a day in the last 40 years where you haven't had your hands on a deck of cards?
- [09:51]
B
No, it's every day. I, you know, unless I'm in the hospital and I'll say I was in the hospital, I still have cars with.
- [09:55]
A
I'll have somebody call, take the cards in the bathroom. Have you ever taken the cards in the can?
- [10:01]
B
Yes, I have to. Yes, yes. There is a, There is a deck
- [10:03]
A
in the bathroom, but no, really, like a little table set up by the.
- [10:06]
B
No, the full table set up. But there might be a deck within reach, let's put it that way. But in the hotel rooms, you know, after a show, if something didn't go the way it was supposed to go, I'll immediately. It might be two in the morning, but I come in and I pull the mat out and I get the cards out and work on that. Or if I have an idea, oh, this one's a curse.
- [10:26]
A
Yeah.
- [10:27]
B
It's 3:30 in the morning and you just wake up at it for no reason, you know, and you're sitting there laying in bed and you say, oh damn, it's three in the morning. And you go, now if they shuffle, now wait a second. If they shuffle it and then you take the deck back and do this and then that, that would mean I could. Yeah, okay, I'll write this up in the morning. And then you lay in there and then you go 15 minutes later you're like. But also if someone does this prior, you could use it from a new deck. If you start with a new deck and then they, and then next thing you know, it's 4:30 in the morning and you're out writing this up.
- [11:01]
A
Yeah.
- [11:01]
B
You know that you can't get away from it because your creativity starts and you. I've learned that you can't just say, I'm going to write it up in the morning. Because you wake up and you're like, I had a great idea. That's the thing that pisses me off. You'll say to yourself, I know I had a good idea, but I can't remember it. Well, why do you remember that you had a good idea but you can't remember the specifics of it?
- [11:19]
A
That's about that. The sublimely frustrating feeling of having a thing on the tip of your tongue. I think it's universally torturous, but for creative people. Right. I mean, I've had the same thing in the middle of a story where I thought, okay, okay, that's gonna Be the turn. And then I. But I'm not quite there yet. And then I write to when I get there, and I literally forget what I thought I was gonna do.
- [11:43]
B
I think the trap is. And I have had this happen several times, and that's why I changed the rule now. But the trap is, this is such a good idea. I won't forget it. This is groundbreaking. So this, I have changed. This is gonna change the world. So obviously this is so impactful that I'm on board and then it's gone like that. And I've tried ways to skip myself back into that same thinking to see if it'll pop back up again or whatever. But. So the lesson that I learned was, no matter what, if it's three in the morning or whatever, if you're driving, you can use your voice phone, your voice notes and things, but you have to write those down immediately.
- [12:18]
A
How much of what I saw last night was really. I mean, I know it was choreographed, it had to be. But how much improvisational flexibility do you look for when you do these acts? Cause you're super interactive with the audience and there's no way you can predict a lot of what I saw happen to a point.
- [12:41]
B
Yeah, we're human, so you can expect certain things. It's a great question. Thank you for asking good questions.
- [12:46]
A
And by the way, that was right from my brain, not AI. We have some AI generated questions we might rely on later. We'll see how it goes.
- [12:54]
B
Okay. So again, since we're all humans, we're going to react similar ways to things. We're going to see something and have similar reactions. So I can. Based on all the shows I've done, I can kind of rely on a certain way. But it might. It may fall into five or six different categories. Either they're going to do this or they're going to do this, or they're going to do this, or they're going to do this. And over 40 years of practice and 20 years of shows and everything, what happens is you have 10 responses ready to go if they go this way. You have 10 responses ready to go if they go this way. And you can vary these. Is it the crowd? Do I need to wake them up? Or are they fun? Are they rowdy? Or whatever. So depending on if they fall into. If they do category B, I have, you know, four responses. And I can choose the level at which I want to respond and have some gag ready or something like that. So is it improvisational? Yes, but it's kind of like guitar Licks, you know, I'm not inventing them on the spot, but I am putting them together in a new way in that moment. You know, I've never played that guitar solo exactly that way, but it's musical. Yeah. Of course, I've toured for. I started piano and guitar when I was the same age as that.
- [13:55]
A
What do you mean? Of course. What do you mean, naturally? I mean, like is. Is a musical background.
- [14:01]
B
I thought you knew.
- [14:01]
A
I thought you knew. Well, I mean, I did kind of know. I knew you played the piano. I didn't know you played the guitar. But my question, if there is one, is, you know, what kind of advantages does a musical background bring potentially to a.
- [14:14]
B
The technical. The technical for sure. So piano is all about scales and there's so much kind of empty technique where you don't have to think, you know, you just do the scale, you push these buttons. There's no music, there's no creativity. Just do this and that built up so much dexterity in your fingers with independence in hands. Right. So the normal person, we use this, our thumbs and everything. We grab a fork, the coffee. We're never using these fingers. We're just got this like this. It's all we ever need. You get to an elevator, you do that. And all day long from the morning, tonight you're just doing this or possibly this or grabbing something. So there's no reason for you to have independence on this finger, let alone hands doing opposite things at different times. So piano player pushes you right into this new thing where you're opening up new parts of your brain.
- [14:56]
A
It's a shared tendon, right? Yeah, yeah, like. Like your ring finger and your pinky only has one.
- [15:00]
B
Well, yeah, but you have to develop independence in those fingers. I can just lift my pinky or just by ring or just by Middle East. So my brain is talking to these fingers and they're doing what I want them to do. So at 7, you're not thinking at that, you're just saying, this is what my piano teacher wants me to do, you know, and through repetition, you get good at it.
- [15:15]
A
So.
- [15:15]
B
But what I noticed when I met Darwin, and we're skipping around the timeline, everything, but when I was in my 20s and I met Darwin.
- [15:21]
A
That was your mentor?
- [15:22]
B
Yeah, yeah, he's the. One of the best.
- [15:24]
A
Ortiz, was it?
- [15:24]
B
Darwin Ortiz? Yeah, he's one of the best card guys ever. He just understood magic on an entirely different level. And he would give me a purely technical. Same thing with piano. We didn't get into creativity and all that we started just with technical work. You need to do this and this and this. So mindless study. But I noticed that when he would give me something, he'd say this. Don't, you know, just prepare yourself. This could take three years to five years to learn how to do. And we're gonna break it up into steps. You just have to do this. And this is mechanical. It's not gonna look good. It's just mechanical. And then the next phase would be deception, where we try to make it look good. And then after that, it's the polish, where, you know, the person looking swears they saw the actual opposite. You know, it's not just that you can fool them, it's that you.
- [16:04]
A
That's the fun part, right?
- [16:05]
B
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that can take five years to do. And then I'd come back, like three months later and show him, and he'd be like, well, that's, you know, that's pretty quick. That's pretty quick. You know, so we both figured out that because you had all this independence in your fingers already through piano, that I was able to kind of fast track through a lot of the card moves because I didn't struggle having to lift my ring or be able to pull down with this finger on that side of the deck without moving this finger, where a regular student would really struggle with that because they didn't have, you know, 15 years of piano lessons under the belt.
- [16:35]
A
Before I ask you to bark for your fish or sing for your supper, show us some stuff. And by the way, I don't want you to do your act or anything, but I do want the viewer to see some of those basic skills you're talking about and maybe how they apply from the keyboard to a deck of cards. Because I'm thinking as you're talking, like, who's your favorite pianist?
- [16:56]
B
Well, I'm cut a little different because most piano players really are classical, classically trained and jazz players. And, you know, I can name Keith Jarrett and Oscar Peterson and guys like
- [17:10]
A
that, but have you seen David Cavett, Dick Cavett interview Oscar Peterson?
- [17:15]
B
Yes, that's one of my favorite. He's a genius. The guy's a genius. Yeah, yeah, that. That believable. I've sent clips of that to my friend Tony Cabral, who's a. Who's the same as. He's a piano player and a card guy.
- [17:24]
A
You know, sense to me was Rick Beato. I don't know if you watch Rick. He does a thing called what makes this song great? And a lot of other stuff. He's a, he's the ultimate docent in the Museum of Music that we all wish we had. And he sent me that because he wanted me to see what a great interviewer looked like.
- [17:43]
B
Great. I agree with that. Yeah, they're great questions and how it works together to go. But you have the genius of Oscar, and he breaks it down to a point. You're just in awe of how simple he's making it sound. But it's not.
- [17:55]
A
This is, this is what I want you to do, if you're up for it. Just like, like some of the rudimentary things that most people don't even notice that you're like, you never stop shuffling. You've been shuffling cards every day for 40 years. Like, never stop shuffling. So, you know, it's an instrument.
- [18:11]
B
It becomes, it's. Yeah, it's, it's in your.
- [18:13]
A
So as we get into it, you know, I'll be Dick Cavett, you'll be Oscar Peterson. Oh, and sidebar, have you seen Peter Bentz?
- [18:20]
B
No.
- [18:21]
A
Okay.
- [18:22]
B
And I think I mentioned this before. I've been locked in a room shuffling cards for 40 years. So you're, you're going to name some names and I'm going to say, never heard of them.
- [18:29]
A
Well, if you brought Keith Jarrett and Oscar Peterson, I mean, that's, that's 19.
- [18:34]
B
I actually didn't finish that because I was going to say that you asked me my favorite piano player and oddly enough, I say most piano players go refined with classical and, and then the jazz greats that have that classical training. But I was the rebel. And my piano teacher always said, we're going to do classical technique, we're going to learn classical, you know, technique through classical tunes and all that. And I'm like, man, Otis Ban, it's not my jam. And Johnny Johnson, that old blues, that just clunking blues, they're just so. The technique is just all over the place. But the feel, I want that feel that those guys are getting. And Otis Ban and. And then that got me into the old blues guys too, with otis Rush and B.B. king and Albert King. And they're so sloppy, but it was so powerful. Albert King solos are three note solos. He plays three notes, but he's flooring you. And I knew that there was so much power there, you know, Is it
- [19:31]
A
like if you're in the pocket, you can be sloppy and get away with it?
- [19:34]
B
It's all about feel.
- [19:35]
A
Right.
- [19:35]
B
It's not about the. That's what gets me about these shredder Guitar players. Okay, you're playing a billion scales. Good for you. Great. But where's the feel? You're not, you're not saying anything.
- [19:47]
A
If you're running a business today that's generating a million dollars or more, I'd bet you a million dollars or more that you're trying to figure out how to make AI work for you. I'd also strongly encourage you to download for free a terrific business guide called Demystifying AI published by my friends at NetSuite. NetSuite's the number one AI cloud ERP out there. They're trusted by 43,000 individual businesses from software to IT services, healthcare, equipment manufacturing, financial services, law. Lots of other great American industries rely on NetSuite because NetSuite delivers a customized solution for your business. They've got an AI connector that allows you to use whatever AI you're currently using. Grok, Claw, Gemini, ChatGPT, whatever else is out there to connect to your actual business data and automate all of your tiresome time sucking soul deadening manual processes. This is AI built into the system that currently runs your business. Again, if your revenues are in the seven figures, you really do need to devour NetSuite's free business guide, demystifying AI. It's an eye opener and it's free@netsuite.com Mike, that's netsuite.com Mike, that'S netsuite.com. Netsuite. Yes, Netsuite.
- [21:14]
B
I said netsuite.com.
- [21:18]
A
he said netsuite.com/, Mike, you've said a
- [21:27]
B
billion notes and he didn't say a word. And Albert can play one note and you are pushed back into. You're just like, oh my God. And it's so apparent when Albert would have another guitar player on stage with him who would take a three pass solo shredding, you know, playing or whatever. And then the band breaks down and starts doing the stop time hits and Albert comes in with one note and you're just like, that's. That's it, man. That's it.
- [21:48]
A
Show me your. I almost said show me your instrument,
- [21:51]
B
but given the tangent, we can.
- [21:53]
A
Last night on stage, I'm not sure we want to.
- [21:55]
B
We can cut that out.
- [21:57]
A
No, we don't get anything out. Hey, Mark is here with us too, by the way. You're.
- [22:00]
B
You're my manager, my partner in crime. Yeah, Mark is the reason I just show up and do card tricks. And Mark makes this whole operation.
- [22:07]
A
That's him sitting in the shadows, as any good manager would do behind Chuck, who is sitting quietly at his desk, as any good producer would.
- [22:15]
B
This is great. The power workers.
- [22:17]
A
That's it. That's it. It's, you know, it's basic division of labor. So that's a what you call a bicycle deck of cards there with.
- [22:24]
B
Yeah, I, I like using the original bikes. I'm not a flashy guy. I like tradition. So these are the cards have been around forever. And I also like using this deck because it's a normal deck that anyone can recognize right in cvs, you know, and these are grocery store playing cards. And if you have something fancy that, that costs 20 bucks and it's all different and weird, people look at that and go, oh, it's a special deck of cards. No, the stuff I'm doing, everything I do is usually a regular deck of cards. It's all in the hands.
- [22:50]
A
It's like the little black dress that Audrey Hepburn made famous. You know what I mean? She didn't have to go crazy with the sequins or anything.
- [22:57]
B
All right. So some of the work I do called shuffle work, his ability to control cards. So I am shuffling the cards. That's really happening. And you just pulled the ace of spades. Of course I was listening without even doing anything. Just.
- [23:15]
A
Just stop listening and go to YouTube. You have no idea what you're missing.
- [23:18]
B
We're building the channel as we speak. Okay, here we go. So eight of diamonds on top and the nine of hearts on the bottom. And if you know exactly where to cut by estimating cards, you should have no problem finding other race. Now, there's nothing sticking out of there. Can you confirm that? There's nothing. People say those bent cards or things.
- [23:34]
A
Put my glasses on, Necromancer. No, there's nothing sticking out.
- [23:37]
B
No, of course that's a legit shuffle. You can see that all the cards change.
- [23:42]
A
And that type of shuffle you just did is called a.
- [23:44]
B
That's a rifle shuffle. That's what they do in casinos.
- [23:46]
A
Why do they do it like another ace?
- [23:49]
B
Prevents cheating, does it? It does, actually, yeah. You don't want to do a three way cut. We talked about this in the show. See how there's a 10 on top and there's a queen on the bottom. If you do a three way cut like this, see, the middle goes back in the middle. So that doesn't get mixed. Top and bottom got mixed. But still it's not going to stop you.
- [24:05]
A
There's another race. That's annoying, man.
- [24:07]
B
So that's. That. That's just card control. So that's like some basics. And also, you can make a lot of money if you do this in card games. That's where it all kind of. That was the motivation in the beginning.
- [24:18]
A
I mean, this is a stupid question, but, I mean, were you in a game?
- [24:23]
B
Yeah. Yeah. So part of me, you know, because I have. I have integrity. I said, if I'm going to learn this stuff and do it on stage and be an expert in this field, how could I never really do this in a game for real? No, that was a real thing. It sounds like a joke, and it kind of is funny, but at the same time, how can I take myself seriously? How can I sleep at night? I really did have this struggle because my teacher was a legit card. She had all the moves. But he would demo this stuff for casino pit bosses. He was the one that was helping write casino procedure. You have to do this. This is how card sheets do this. So we need to implement this structure. He would go to these casinos and make sure that the casinos were following all the right procedures and everything and demo all these things. So the dealers knew what to look for, the pit bosses knew what to look for. So he had to have his shit together.
- [25:09]
A
Sorry, but are you allowed in casinos?
- [25:11]
B
I am, but if I sit down to play, I'll likely be asked to leave because they don't want. They don't know what you're capable of. So it's safer to say, not that we accuse you, but we just. You don't. We don't. You know, thank you, but here's some free dinner at the.
- [25:25]
A
But I mean, just. I mean, for people to understand you. Like, nobody would ever hand you a deck of cards in a casino.
- [25:31]
B
No, I couldn't. No, I wouldn't get the job. They vet their dealers. So if you have this skill set, you're not going to sit behind it. They're not going to give you.
- [25:37]
A
But how much cheating can you do if you're just sitting and playing the cards you're dealt to?
- [25:40]
B
All sorts of stuff. Yeah. So you can mark. Yeah. So this is how people don't know, you know, by nicking the corners of the cards, by bending the cards by. You can have paste, this tinted paste that you put on the back of the card, and depending on where you put the paste on the back of the card. Right. So you can do that. And then I would know that if it's further from the center, it's a lower card, closer to the center, it's a higher card, that kind of thing. So as the cards are going back into the shoe and being dealt back to me. Well, I'm basically playing now, playing with a marked deck. And you can bet accordingly. So the Phil Ivey scandal. Sometimes car. This isn't a misprinted deck, but sometimes playing cards are just like. Money can be misprinted. So if you ever see a dollar bill and one of the borders is really wider, it's a little off center.
- [26:19]
A
Yeah.
- [26:20]
B
Cards do the same thing. So can you see how these are relatively centered? I don't know if you can spot it or not, but can you see that this side is just a little thicker? The white border here, it's just a tiny bit. So that's this thickness. And look over here, it's just a tiny bit thicker.
- [26:34]
A
I'm gonna say yes, although I'm gonna stipulate it, knowing you're the kind of guy that would lead me to say, like, just to agree with you.
- [26:42]
B
No, no. I wish I had a deck that. So you don't. You open them up.
- [26:45]
A
No, I don't. I think you're right. I think that border is infinitesimally, which
- [26:51]
B
means that if I turn this around, it's now a marked card. So you go through the entire deck. Let's say. Let's exaggerate it and say it was quite thick. You'd have these thick sides on the side over here. And then all the high cards, I would spin around like this, so there'd be a thin little border there. Now, when they're sitting in the shoe, they would look like this. And you would see the border down here. And as they're coming out of the shoe like this, once you see the thin card, you know that's an ace or a 10.
- [27:14]
A
Yeah.
- [27:14]
B
So you can hit accordingly. So you know that I'm just sitting and playing. But you're taking advantage of a misprinted deck or you're manipulating the deck yourself. All this will land you in jail, by the way.
- [27:25]
A
So you could go to jail for cheating.
- [27:27]
B
Well, if. Here's the rule. If you change the outcome of the cards, it's a felony. So that means if I'm dealt an ace and I use a muck or a palm or switch to switch it to something else, I'm going to jail. But if I am manipulating the card and bending the corners, I'm going to jail because I bet based on something, how I manipulated the playing cards.
- [27:48]
A
Right. And is this a thing they determine in real time, or do they go to the tape?
- [27:52]
B
Well, yeah. What they'll do is they'll get you over time. So they set the case up so they, they may know you. Well, here's the real answer is this. Once a table goes the wrong way, you know, table eight is now 175 bucks the other way or 175,000 bucks the other way. That's a pretty decent red flag because pay attention. All night long casinos are making money and one table is now 200k in the wrong direction. That's going to raise some flags. That's just, that's a no brainer. But then they look who's there. And then if a week later it's the same team, same group of people and the table's going the wrong way, now they know, but that's not enough. So they let you do it a few more times and then build the case. And now you, now you, they've got all the tape, they've got you doing it multiple times and now you're, you're going to jail.
- [28:32]
A
Is the basic business of tracking a card, is that like in the rudimentary playbook? Is that a, is that one of the first skills?
- [28:42]
B
No, no, that's not. Definitely not a beginner skill. But I can go over some basic tracking. Believe it or not, it's easier than you think. So the ace, and right now this would be someone else shuffling the cards. And you can still figure out where certain cards are. So let's put it fifth, for example. So after a shuffle, and it's a legit shuffle, that means the cards are interlacing like this, which means the ace would just double. So right now it's at fifth. So pretty basic math. After I shuffle the cards, where's the ace gonna be? 10 or about?
- [29:14]
A
Well, I mean if you shuffled them perfectly.
- [29:15]
B
No it doesn't. So we can fix that later. We can use other methods. But also remember your, if you have an idea that an ace is going to come out within one or two cards all the time, that's an advantage you can take up overnight so you don't have to nail it. But you know that if I know that a 10 is within four cards from the top and I'm playing poker and the third or fourth or fifth seat starts betting, well, the chances are I know who's legitimately got the Ace. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. So we're nine cards, we're one off. But where is it now? It's nine. So where's it going to be after another shuffle?
- [29:46]
A
Probably 18.
- [29:47]
B
See what I mean? It's not that difficult. So I have a good idea from a legit shuffle deck that someone else shuffled perhaps. And casino dealers don't shuffle clunky. They shuffle pretty fair. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. Again, I'm only a few cards off. So now if I'm dealing, and I know an ace is one or two cards from where I need it, you can do second deals. You can manipulate switch cards. You can deal that card from that position and make it look like it really came from there. So even though tracking is. Can be a perfect science if you clean up the shuffles, but with someone else shuffling, you can still be one or two cards off and still have a pretty big advantage. That's only one card as well. So if you have two aces, where's the first one? Six. Next one, 16, 16. So where are they going to be?
- [30:31]
A
12 and 30.
- [30:32]
B
Yeah, that's what I mean. Look at you. Tracking chords. It's your first day. All right, so there's halfway, 26, about 30. Same thing. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26. Halfway right there. 27, 28, 29, 30. So you're within two cards on each
- [30:56]
A
face your first try, but you're not within two. Like you. You always get the one.
- [31:00]
B
Well, I can shuffle a little cleaner than the most. Yeah. So now we're talking about this shuffle. So this is a perfect shuffle. So it looks just like a regular shuffle, but it's actually perfect.
- [31:14]
A
And that perfect because every card, it's interrupted.
- [31:17]
B
It's alternating. No, there's no. There's nowhere in here that there's two cards.
- [31:22]
A
Right. And again, just to shuffle it perfectly, like, the first thing you have to know is exactly where 26 is. And you just know this.
- [31:32]
B
And then you got to push them together without any. It's easier to see. So the reason I did it this way when I dropped the cards is it masks that. So when I'm doing my show or when I'm doing a gambling demo, I want to kind of hide the fact that it's a perfect shuffle. So when you drop it, it just looks like a regular interlace. If I do it like this, it's much easier to see that that's quite literally a perfect split. How do guys hit free? You know, how does Tiger Wood sink putts?
- [31:58]
A
You know, he made a deal with. Be able to.
- [32:01]
B
Well, how do I Look, the cards at 26.
- [32:03]
A
Same thing.
- [32:03]
B
Yeah. When I was seven years old, I made a deal. I know a good deal when I see one. I could make money doing this. So I signed on the dotted line and here we are today. But the point is, once you get the hang of it, splitting at 26 is just easy to do. I can tell. I can tell from across the room if there's one card on the wrong side. You can you just see it for me. Remember when I told you about the card with the border?
- [32:26]
A
Yeah.
- [32:27]
B
And you said, yeah, okay, I can, I can kind of see that side's bigger over there. It's the same thing when you split the deck. You can just see. And even though it's only this one card, you can just tell by looking at it, because I look at it every single day that that's bigger. So I got to move one card from here to there. Once you get that, the interlace is similar to a zipper. When you zip up a teeth, you get the cards that just line up. Does take some practice. I'm making it sound really easy. But within 10 years, it's like a zipper. Anyway, you push the cards together and like a zipper, they all interlace. Just imagine two big picket fences and they all have points. Like trying under a microscope, a deck would look like that, and you're basically getting one picket fence. They're not going to stack up on the tips. They're going to fall into the. They're going to fall in like a zipper and they line up and then this happens. And then the cards are interlaced like this. And it technically is a shuffle. Cards are being mixed legit. You can beat the cut. We can talk about that in a second. But remember that tracking that we were one or two cards off a second ago. Well, now, since we're shuffling the cards pristinely, I might get some decent cards. Oh, two pair. I got a pair of aces and another pair of aces. Now that can be applied, that can be applied to other people's hands and you don't even have to track aces. It can be very, very rewarding. For me, when I was playing in these games, not to worry about my own hand, it was to give someone else a hand to see how they play it. Do do, do do do do do do do do.
- [33:57]
A
As you may have noticed, the skilled trades are having a moment. American Americans are finally coming to grips with the enormous skills gap in this country and what it means for all of us and the incredible opportunities that are waiting for anybody who wants to learn a skill that's in demand and get to work. This is all great news from my friends at SkillsUSA who are on a mission to serve a million members by the end of this decade and help us close America's skills gap. SkillsUSA has hundreds of chapters in schools all over the country and hundreds of thousands of students currently participating and competing every year in dozens of skill based vocations. These guys are doing more to train the next generation of skilled workers than any other program in the country. And you're invited to be a part of the movement. SkillsUSA advisors and volunteers do more than just teach the trades. They help careers and strengthen the backbone of our country by mentoring the next generation of industry leaders. Join the skilled trades movement and support career and technical education through SkillsUSA. You can volunteer at a local chapter or you can start a chapter of your own. It's happening every day. At the very least, go to their website and see the impact of this organization for yourself. Thousands of kids are being introduced to the trades in a way that's absolutely, positively moving the needle. The goal is a million members by 2030. I think it's doable. They have my support and I hope they'll have yours as well. Learn more skillsusa.org Mike I'm talking skills US skills US skills USA. Oh, so you could give somebody four kings.
- [35:39]
B
Well, not even four kids. Just give them a decent pair. You just give them set or something like that and you watch how they bet and you could just. It's so much easier to read people when you know what they got. So in the first year in that game, I was just worried about my own cards. But then I really started getting devious and just learning how these people play and slope and just read them like a book and, well, you play the man. Yeah, but it's much easier when you know what cards I got. So that was a lot of fun. But anyway, back to that original story we were talking about with I want to do these under fire. And that also helps with being on stage and doing it. You know, the first time I was in that game, I thought the guy next to me could hear my heartbeat. The blood was flowing through my ears. It was like the biggest adrenaline rush ever, you know. And then afterwards I was like, you know, I think I was watching the tv, he was watching the game while I was, you know, I'm like, well, that was easy. And then I'm like, and I made some money too. So after that, you know, within 20 minutes, I'm like, all Right. This is pretty, pretty easy. But I kind of cut my chops there and got all this stuff to work and realized that it would work. And then I felt like I was able to pull this stuff off for real.
- [36:40]
A
Have you caught many cheaters?
- [36:43]
B
Yeah, I had a great story I told on a different show. I found an amateur cheat. He was shuffling the cards face up like this. And I thought, look at this idiot. I'm going to take advantage. I'm going to be able to figure out where certain cards are, you know, because he's doing this. And what he was doing was running cards like this. See, I'm running them singly. So he was running a good card, like the queen to the bottom, and then he could put that to the back of the deck and then he'd run until he found another good card, like another queen there. And then he put that in the back of the deck and then he basically begin building up his hands at the back. And if there was four players or three players, whatever, he was able to stack him at the back of the deck. And if I deal two or shuffle two more cards at the back there, if I deal out three handed, he was going to give himself queens, you know, so he was doing a very, very elementary. I mean, it's very amateur hour to shuffle the cards face up. But the game was so loose that, that nobody really caught attention, nobody really cared. But I remember saying, look at this idiot. And my ego got in the way because I said, oh, I'll take advantage of this. I can see the cards. And then he dealt himself queen two diamonds. And then was betting pre flop and in there pushing people around. And then the flop came out, three diamonds. But I had two pair. And I was thinking, maybe I get a full house and beat him, you know, But I didn't. But I paid him for it. And I lost like a couple hundred bucks. And then I realized, wait a minute, he's in there with queen two, pre flop, like pushing. That's not right. And then sure enough, the deal came around to him again. And he's running up cards and he's running singles. And I'm like, oh my God, I got beat by a complete idiot. This guy. This is this. You're so bad. You weren't even on the radar and you're running up a hand. But I, I always thought, like, I'm the only guy in the air that knows how to cheat a card, you know, but there he was, you know, so it was like a couple weeks later and I told the Host of the game. I said, you got a problem with this guy here? And if you want, I could, you know, I can do what he's doing, but a little bit more sophisticated. But anyway, the host say, yeah. He said, all right, do it. He said, get rid of them. So what we did is we. I gave the hosts trip aces. I gave the cheat trip kings. And by pure luck, like, I swear to God. Sorry, Chad. By pure luck, this guy Chad got trip sevens. Anyways, pre flop, there was. Everybody pushed in. There was. There was 2500 bucks in that pot. And it was like eight players. Everybody was in. And my favorite part of the story was everybody turned up. The host took the money, and the cheat, the amateur cheat, said, who dealt that? And I could not stop. I was shuffling cards and I was hold. I was just staring at the deck, and I was just like, this big, stupid smile was on my face because it was so rewarding, and I just couldn't help. He's looking. He's like right here looking right at me, and I'm just like, that'd be
- [39:30]
A
a Dani deal, right?
- [39:32]
B
Whose turn is it? The deal. I just couldn't hide the smile. And he knew. He must have known because I just cracking up. And then that they. They got rid of him after that, and that was. That was the end of that.
- [39:44]
A
So you must have. I mean, you said before you had integrity. Not that I doubt you, it's just that I guess maybe you can use your powers for good. You can use them to cheat. You can use them to entertain. I go back to what I said to you at first. The. That kind of crap right there is where the facial tics start. Like, when people realize they're in the presence of somebody who can do something that not only they can't do, but that they can't conceive. Buddy of mine sat there years ago, the human calculator. I don't know if you've ever seen him.
- [40:23]
B
I've seen videos of people doing things that I can't explain.
- [40:25]
A
Scott Flansburgh. Yeah, he holds a lot of Guinness World Records for just, you know, being able to manipulate numbers in his head faster than you can enter them in onto a calculator. And it's a neat trick, except it's not really a trick at this point. It's as reflexive and automatic to him as breathing is to me as this is to you. And when you're in close proximity to somebody who is doing something like that, you know, that's when you start to understand really how cults form. Right. I mean, that's how you understand, like. Like when you look back through time.
- [41:00]
B
Yeah, yeah, you're right.
- [41:01]
A
And people are like, oh, you know what, man? The sun. There it is again. There must be a chariot and there must be a God dragging it across the sky. There's really no other explanation.
- [41:10]
B
I'll black out the sun today at 3 o'. Clock. That's it.
- [41:13]
A
Once, you know, when the eclipse. Once you figure out the eclipse right
- [41:17]
B
now you're a God.
- [41:17]
A
You can run the Mayans. Anyway. How much time did you really spend, like, thinking about, what do I want to do with this level of skill once I own it?
- [41:29]
B
Well, I knew that my teacher was on the right side because he wasn't looking over his shoulder. And I knew other guys that do this stuff and they got to run away to Chile for. You know, they got to. They got to live in Argentina for six months. And then those FBI will come in and they'll seize your bank and the IRS comes in.
- [41:45]
A
Your.
- [41:45]
B
All your accounts are locked up, and now you're living out of a suitcase in some, you know, in the middle of nowhere. And I didn't. I didn't find that appealing. But also, I was putting a lot of time into character and the entertainment value and drama, dramatic structure and how to progression, how to build this show that would constantly kind of keep you on the edge of your seat. So I knew that that entertainment value was something I was putting a lot of time and effort into and, and how to get. I play a really edgy character because I'm a horrible person. The character is just horrible. But you've been.
- [42:19]
A
Yeah, well, look, if you're not on his Instagram, check it out and you'll see that he's cultivated a certain Persona. I don't want to put words in anybody's mouth, but dickish.
- [42:30]
B
It's horrible. I don't know how to explain it. He's just. It's made up of a lot of movies from characters and things, but sometimes you hear a joke about some dark joke with a dark twist, and I'm like, oh, that's. That's. That's what my guy would do. I mean, I take somebody's wallet in the show.
- [42:45]
A
Yeah.
- [42:45]
B
And at the. It's bad enough just to take somebody's wallet. And then you get him to agree that this is a good idea by saying, look at the psychology. You're a skeptic. I asked for a skeptic. He come running up on stage. So you're Obviously a skeptic. So this is a safe bet. There's no reason why you look at the opportunity you're giving out if you don't take this bet. So you get. The guy didn't agree to anything yet. There's his wallet ready to just get lost. And then you're taking his watch at the same time, the guy's car keys. At the end, there's people just putting all this up there. And then you do this ridiculous thing. People are gonna know that you're doing. You just take the money, and it's now go have sit down. Done. And it's just horrible. And then at the end of the show, you're throwing their wallet out into the crowd as a gift. Who's. Does anybody want this guy's money? And you're taking the. Slinging the credit cards out, and that guy's sitting out in the crowd going, that's my wallet.
- [43:34]
A
I don't think I'm gonna get it back.
- [43:35]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So. And I'm just laughing, and the car keys, too. And I just laughed and walk off stage. And the people like it. Yeah. So you had to find that balance where people are laughing and enjoying that, because, boy, there's a fine line. If you cross that line, you're kicking a puppy. See, that's a very. But I put a lot of time and effort into how do I become this horrible person but make people laugh and enjoy it? So George Costanza, I mean, it's not the same territory, but he's an awful person. But we love it. Larry David, you're an awful person, but
- [44:06]
A
people love that you're awful because they earn it. Right? It's a permission structure.
- [44:10]
B
Yes. Oh, you just said it. You got it. Yeah.
- [44:12]
A
Right. So, like, your. Your talent has to be commensurate to your dickishness.
- [44:18]
B
Yes, yes, yes.
- [44:19]
A
And if it is, then they go
- [44:21]
B
along for the ride. They like you, they understand it, and they want to play along with it. And now it becomes very entertaining. And that's where it's weird, because on the Internet, people don't get that. They just see who. This guy's awful. But when you've been to a. When you're at a show, you get it. And then also longtime fans will start to understand. Always it's a bit. You know, it's a big, long thing, but it's. It's this. Do we agree to do this? And then come along with me. It's. It's that kind of a thing. And people really enjoy it.
- [44:46]
A
And you're you're terrific in the show with the way, I mean, you come in pretty hot, I think, because there's an assumption that a lot of people.
- [44:54]
B
Well, that's on purpose.
- [44:55]
A
Yeah. Right. So like you set a bar. But, but, but that weird level of permission and trust, it builds over the course of the hour.
- [45:05]
B
Yes, yes, but. And I have to say there's a template I'm stealing here and that is a Bond movie, a good Bond movie that we learned in eighth grade. And this is all answering your question about why did I choose the good side or the dark? You know, I enjoy all this stuff. So if I can make great money doing entertaining and doing all the same skill set and even betting real, those are real bad. I have to catch the card. The chip has to land on the card. This is the real bets. So it's still that. But I can make money doing this without having to worry about somebody. I took money or casino coming after me or somebody that I took money off of, you know, hunting me down or whatever. So that's why we're talking about this. But anyway, back to the story arc thing. In eighth grade, you learn the story arc, right? The story starts here and does this. We need peaks of excitement, ebbs and flows. Yeah, but then we need the plot. And then we build up again and the next peak has to be higher than the last. And then we come down and have the data war. Exactly. That we build, we introduce new characters, we have expositories, all stuff. And then it builds again to this peak. Any Bond movie does this, but we learned that in eighth grade, this thing. And that's what gets you to watch a movie where you're just at the edge of your seat the whole time, you know, just like, this is incredible. And movies that don't follow that, you're like, I'm lost. I'm just 40 minutes and nothing's like, what is going on here? Like, who's this guy? And what is happening? You know? But great movies will do this. And action movies are especially good because they're fast paced. So that storyline is the one we learned in eighth grade. Is this, this thing like this. But that's not exactly right. It's more of a check mark. And Bond movies do this where it comes in hot. We come in and there's cars.
- [46:32]
A
The Bond open.
- [46:33]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. We don't know what's going on, but he's chasing him. The Hitchcock thing where something's happening and I don't know what's. But I'm Invested. And then it drops, but then it goes back up. So that's what I'm doing. I come in really hot and obnoxious and it just establishes you right away. And everyone that. Then people know, okay, this guy, he's all right. It's real. I don't have to. He earned it. Then we come down, but then we have to continually build up to the end. And we end on a whole. You saw the end of the show. I don't want to give it away. But you end on a tier where people are just like, what is this? And that's why people walk away. And I'm happy that I did a good show. That's where I want to put my energy. Not into mucking cards in a casino and hoping that I don't get my knees broken.
- [47:11]
A
Good for you. I don't want to talk about. Well, the chip thing, since you mentioned it. And the controversy that accompanies that. Like right now on. What is it? TikTok, people are just in a freaking lather that.
- [47:24]
B
Yeah. That every time I post anything like that, the algorithm just goes nuts. Because the comment section. People just can't believe it. It's such a simple. It's such a stupid. The simplicity of it. There's no complexity whatsoever. Here's the card, here's a chip, and there it lands. But people in the comments love to argue and they say that it's not possible. And they come up with the crazy theories. The magnetic strip in the card and the magnetic. That you have a straw. Here's. Oh, my God, the theories. I just sit on my couch and laugh sometimes because they're so stupid, but they're so smart at the same time. He's got a fishing line attached to the ceiling and he found where the pendulum would like. That's brilliant because if you swing a pendulum, it has to land in the center. So he does and he puts the thing there and it looks like the chip is spinning, but all that's really happening is the string is. And then someone cuts the thing so it lands flat. Just so. That's brilliant.
- [48:17]
A
It's diabolical, but so people understand. You're basically taking a poker chip and you're flicking it and it's rolling randomly over a bunch of cards. 52 cards that have been washed and somehow or another, you know where it's going to land.
- [48:33]
B
Yeah.
- [48:33]
A
And yeah, that's when the facial tics at my table anyway, turned into a full on, like, Grand Mall.
- [48:40]
B
For some reason that the part of my branding almost. I These things I've created, I've done it multiple times. And the card catch and the chip that people. There's a weird suspense element to it which shouldn't be there because you've seen it a hundred times, you've watched, you've shared it with your friends. It gets reposted every year. And you know the ending, but it's all execution. I know you know the ending.
- [49:05]
A
Yeah.
- [49:05]
B
So we start out, we get all. Here's my favorite thing to do when I do these kinds of tricks, because they're too short, if you think about it. If I just said, watch here, pick a card, boom, there's your card, it's over. There's no dramatic structure. But by getting all of this, the skeptic garbage, out of the way first, I haven't even done the trick. And you're fooled by saying here, they're all different. You confirm they're all different. It's not a deck full of vases, yada, yada. And then you can see it's a fair shuffle. You can see I can't see the cards. So we're just cutting off all the avenues of possible methods before I've even done it. So in a weird way, the structure of the trick is just killing all of that first. So it's really sadistic if you think about it. Because if I just did it, I would leave you all of these avenues afterwards that you'd be driving home saying, oh, he must have done this, or he must have done that, or he must have done this, because he has no control over anything. So it must have been this or this, or this. So you can sleep at night because you don't know which avenue, but it must have been one of those. But if you get the person before you do it to agree that this couldn't be it, this couldn't be it, this couldn't be it, this is not it, and this is not it, and this. And you get them to agree to all that, and they sign. They sign on the, okay, I 100% agree it's none of these. And then you do it. I'm sorry, it's so good. And then you do it. They have nothing. You already agreed that it's none of this. So you can't go back. You can't go back on any of that because you agree to it. And if my job is to find all of those and get them to agree, and that's just my favorite part of this whole job, because what that does is it gives you an endless Kind of bubble to live in. Yeah, that you can replay. It'll never be solved.
- [50:43]
A
Well, that's how you get them from a facial tick to full on incontinence. The cult.
- [50:47]
B
The cult.
- [50:47]
A
Yeah, well, the cult. But in between is incontinence. That's where they just. They just. Like at my table. That's when people started to soil themselves and they begin to realize we're not,
- [50:56]
B
you know, it's good to have an ear out in the audience to know what's really going on.
- [51:00]
A
I'm here to know that it was total renal failure at my table. It was a mess. And I know you delight in that, because if I can go back to your mentor for a minute, I would love to know, like, when you realized you were in the presence of.
- [51:18]
B
Oh, my God. I can tell you the exact moment.
- [51:21]
A
I want to know that. And then I. I want to see the first trick he showed you.
- [51:27]
B
Yeah, yeah, I can do that. All right, so I. When I was like 15, remember, I was trying to fool my brother. So I was 15 or 16 years old.
- [51:35]
A
What's his name?
- [51:35]
B
Michael. And he showed me a real basic card trick. And I was going, I lived above a library. It's a lot, I know, but we had access.
- [51:46]
A
Who lives above a library?
- [51:47]
B
Cooksackie. Cooksackie. Herman's Memorial Library in upstate New York. And if you lived above the library and you maintained it, you got your rent. That was your, like, cheaper rent.
- [51:57]
A
Is that near Herkimer?
- [51:58]
B
Yeah, well, Herkimer's out 90, a little bit more west.
- [52:01]
A
My human calculator buddy came from Herkimer.
- [52:03]
B
Yeah, that's neck of the woods.
- [52:05]
A
But maybe all you necromancers are coming
- [52:08]
B
out of south of Albany about 35, 40 minutes. Anyway, so there was book, card books down there. And I was buying, checking these books out, which I still have. I checked them out, never returned them. So even at 7, I knew it was okay to just steal this book, but. So I was fascinated. But the card sections were small, so the book would be a variety of tricks. And there was a section on card tricks. But then I found this guy named Martin Nash, and suddenly he did nothing but card tricks. And I'm like, wait, you can do that? Like, I thought a magician had to do coins and rings and silks and like that. That was your job. And maybe a few card tricks. But like I said, Martin Nash came along and I'm like, whoa, this guy tapped into just a card act and it's all different and great plots, and he did nothing but cards. I'm like, that's amazing. And that led me to find more of that. I said, who else is doing this? And there was a guy named Darwin that just by. Just. I was looking through a catalog, and Darwin Ortiz, card magic. And I'm like, all right, it's nothing but card tricks. Let's do it. But when I got Darwin stuff, I watched it, and I just couldn't believe. There he is. I was in the studio when that photo was taken.
- [53:16]
A
He looks like a magician.
- [53:17]
B
He's just. He's brilliant. He's. He took this to an entirely different level. So when I found Darwin and I watched these videos, you know, with other magicians, I could kind of see what they were doing. I didn't know exactly, but I could kind of follow along. Or I saw the. I saw that palm. Or that shuffle's a little suspect, or something's going on here. That cuts a little hinky. But when Darwin did stuff, I'm like, okay, those cards are shuffled. And then suddenly, like, why you can't. Because you mix the right. And then when he's cutting the cards, it's like, okay, that's a legit cut, you know? But nope, you know, like, what is happening here? And then he'd do a bottom deal, and I'm just like, other magicians. You could see all the stuff flashing around. And with Darwin, it just looked like the. Like, are you messing with me? Yes. At an entirely different level. And he did, like, an overhand shuffle. And I remember thinking, okay, an overhand shuffle. That's too slow, sloppy. That's like. That's just garbage. You can't fake that. And nope, sure enough. So he had technique on an entirely different level. So anyway, I agreed to.
- [54:15]
A
I.
- [54:15]
B
On the back of the book that I was reading was a phone number, and I thought it was the publisher, and I wanted to call the publisher and say, this is great material, and please put more stuff out like this, because this is great. And Darwin answered the phone. So back then, you know, that's how you got bit. The pre.
- [54:32]
A
Internet literally had his phone number on the actual.
- [54:34]
B
For business, you know, because casinos can call and you get work. So anyway, he answers the phone. I'm like. I'm like, just. You're the guy. So after, like, 10 minutes of, you know, nothing but praise, and you're the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life. Oh, I got all that out. He's like, all right. All right.
- [54:48]
A
And you're what, 15, 16?
- [54:49]
B
I'm like, probably 18 or here, because I'd studied the books and then I'd read all the books. But the first DVD that I got was, it was VHS tape, actually. Darwin Ortiz at card cheating. That was when I saw it wasn't just magic tricks, it was the gambling stuff where I just could not see the moves. I. I'm sitting there, it's like, what is happening? How can I not see any of this after all of this? I've 10 years of study and I can't recognize one thing this guy's doing. So that's what hooked me. And it was on the back of that. But I called his number. So anyway, he agreed to do a lesson. And I went down there and I just, I learned some. I was, my hands were trembling and I had a list of like 100 things to learn. And he said, let's just do two of those, you know, let's, let's. And I learned that the Hustlers triple cut. So this is my first lesson, the aces on top. And I did this in the show a few times. And you want to make it look like you're cutting the cards, but you're not, you know, and you can do it. There's ways to cheat that and have it look like it's a three way cut across the table. And you can add shuffles into that, you can do all sorts of odds and ends and you can control those cards. So I saw him do that stuff and I'm like, okay, that's pretty cool. But the thing that changed, the thing I'll never forget, is I asked to see a bottom deal and he took the kings out of the deck and he started doing a bottom deal. And I'm watching him and I'm sitting just closer than you.
- [56:09]
A
Yeah.
- [56:10]
B
And he's doing a bottom. But I'm looking at it, I'm going, this old man, he's doing duplicate kings. He's lying to me. He's bullshitting me because I can see the top card coming off the top of the deck. I can see it with my eyes. So what he did is he had duplicate kings in the deck and he's putting four kings on the bottom. He's pretending to do bottoms. And I'm thinking, you know, I drove eight hours and you're showing me some stupid like trick, magic trick or something. And then he goes, let me do it again, let me get in stroke. And I'm thinking, getting the stroke, getting stroke, like, like a golf swing. Let me get this polished up. And I'm thinking, that's Weird to say that, because this is like a fake pseudo gambling demo. And then he shows me the bottom of the deck, and there's no kings there. And I'm thinking, oh, that's clever. So he must have found a way to hide the other kings that he had. And the gears are starting to tick, and he says, let me do it again. So he puts the kings on the bottom. He does it again and again. I'm seeing the top card come off, so this isn't a bottom, you know? And then he shows me the bottom of the deck again, and there's no kings there anymore. And I'm like. So he must have four sets of that must be.
- [57:14]
A
You're the guy in the comment section going to Fishing Wire.
- [57:16]
B
So that's what's happening. He has a deck of set cyclical kings, and every fifth card is an indifferent card that he can show the bottom to prove that the K. And I'm thinking, those are bottom deals. Are you out of your mind? Because in my world, a bottom deal is that you. When I first learned it, that you quickly pull the card out without the audience seeing what's going on. But with a good stud, a good stud bottom, this card comes off. You see how. So your eye sees that.
- [57:41]
A
Yeah.
- [57:42]
B
And a second later, the aces. So you get all that time on that ace, that top card, Right. And it comes right off the bottom. So.
- [57:51]
A
So what he was doing was that. Yeah.
- [57:55]
B
So what's happening? Well, I thought. Because in my little brain at the time, I saw this come over. I saw the hand grab this. So at that point, I said, that's the top card. But the retention, that I didn't know any of this stuff even existed, that your eye is fooled because you. You get this conditioning. And then here you see that top card come off and everything about that. And at speed.
- [58:17]
A
Yep.
- [58:18]
B
You're never in a million years gonna see those cards coming off the bottom. So I saw it two feet away from it and said, okay, this guy's messing with me, because I can see the top card. But it was just an entirely different level of thinking, because I thought a bottom do was just pull it out super quick so the audience can't see it. And he was doing it slow enough to show you the top card. To show the hand grab the top card.
- [58:39]
A
Right.
- [58:39]
B
And then in the tiniest thing, speck. There's one little moment you can't see when the bottom. The top card gets drawn back, the bottom card comes out. And that just gets. Your brain doesn't pick that up.
- [58:49]
A
So back to the piano. Is this analogous in some way to.
- [58:52]
B
Absolutely, because it's left hand. So believe it or not, I'm right handed. But in piano, both, that doesn't matter. Your both hands get developed. And especially with the music I learned with bass lines. And boogie woogie has a really busy left hand more so that, you know, boogie woogie piano bass line is never stops. Yeah, that's swinging ace. And you got to be rocking all over the place. So the left hand is this train that you cannot stop. Meanwhile, the right hand can dance around and do whatever it wants, you know, So I had a lot of development in my left hand. And card work is dominantly your left hand. The right hand is providing a lot of COVID and doing things and pointing at things or pulling chips around and do it. But the left hand is doing a lot of dirty stuff. So especially in the bottom deal, if you want to peek under the hood here I have. I can't open these fingers up. That's the tell. When I open these fingers up, people can tell. So these fingers have to move this way, which doesn't make any sense. And also I have to be able to take this card out without those fingers moving. It's very complicated to do. And in order to push that card out, you have to do that. So look how moving independent. These fingers have to move independent. These fingers can't move. If anything squeezes too tight, it doesn't work. So you have to learn how to hold a deck. So the saying is like light as if you're holding a bird.
- [59:58]
A
Yeah.
- [59:59]
B
You know, too heavy a kill it, too light, it flies away. So this stuff took years and years to learn how to get down and feel. Yeah, yeah. It's just like a golf swing. There's so many, so many analogies that you can come up with where you know what, he just does it right. You have to do it and do it and do it and experience it and experience it and talk to someone else. I think the mentor thing is huge because you surrender and you don't fight back. You just accept that they've got 50 years on this. So when they give you a thing just.
- [60:27]
A
Was he mentoring other people when you met him?
- [60:29]
B
He was very picky about. He said something that changed my life because he said, if you're willing to put the time into this stuff, we can continue lessons. It wasn't like, sure, I'll give you a lesson by saying, if you work hard enough. That to me was like, if I don't impress, if I don't have the chops. He might not be able. He might just say, I'm not interested in teaching you. And I could see that this is what I want. So I needed to make sure some sort of weird. I mean, my father passed away when I was 14, so there was some relationship there where I need. This is the person I need to impress with something. And if he. I can get that approval or something. But. But the, the secret sauce in this that made it even worse was Darwin was not a social person by any means. He was very. He was a machine with cards. That's all he cared about doing was just card work and writing and building and performing. So there was never any small talk. You'd come in and you. He'd say, how was your. He wouldn't even say that. He'd say, come on in, have a seat. What are we working on? You know, there was no, like, how was your ride down? Or how was this? So I'm like, oh my God. You know, so the fact that there was no small talk meant that that approval wasn't like, you couldn't buddy up.
- [61:43]
A
Right.
- [61:44]
B
It was just work. Yeah. So that made it even worse because now I'm fighting for this. Like, can you just say that was really good? Yeah, but it. And then what I didn't know about the bottom deal and any of the stuff that he taught me, he's a fantastic teacher because he was breaking it up into tears that I didn't know about. So I would do the thing he said and say, look, I did all the finger placements. I'd relax my arms after this to sell that beat. Do the cut, keep these fingers together, complete the cut, offset. And then, you know, and he'd say, okay, the next level. Now we're going to do this and add this to it. And I'm like, well, you mean it's not. It's not done?
- [62:21]
A
Yeah.
- [62:21]
B
You know, and then I do that next level. And then he'd say, okay, now we're ready for this. Now add this speed into it, you know, so it was just never done. And we just fell into this cycle of I'd come down and learn something and then he'd take it to the next. And he had like a long term plan where we're going to do these rudiments first and then we're going to do this and then we're going to move on to character and then, you know, entertainment value and business. You know, it was all.
- [62:45]
A
She still around?
- [62:46]
B
No, he passed away a couple years ago.
- [62:48]
A
That must have been hard.
- [62:50]
B
Yeah, that was. I had a show that I was with Mark in the city. I had to do a show on the day he passed away.
- [62:55]
A
Wow.
- [62:56]
B
And it was interesting, too, because in a weird way, your character is a mask. I don't know if you slip into your. You have a Persona that you wear, if you feel like you're you or not, but I certainly become a. And I felt it with Darwin, too. The first time we were having a conversation, and he showed me a trick, and in the middle, I'm like, who is this person? Like, it's a. I could just feel. It was like a switch. He became a different person.
- [63:17]
A
Yeah.
- [63:18]
B
So when I'm performing, it is a different. It's a thing. And I was able to kind of hide in that and perform and laugh and do the jokes and everything, even though I knew in the back of my mind that the world was falling apart. And then I finished the show, and I just collapsed. I just fell apart. It was awful. But. And it was sudden, too. It was from COVID Complications from COVID And it was just. It was just empty.
- [63:41]
A
Mark, what did you do? What did you. I mean, as a manager, what can you do when your client is wrecked like that?
- [63:49]
B
Well, that was, you know, the first time. I think I had a grown man cry in my arms. You know, he was crying.
- [63:55]
A
He was. He was a mess.
- [63:56]
B
We just consoled him, and. And that was it. And it was a tough day.
- [64:02]
A
Did you write a eulogy? Did you. Did you speak?
- [64:06]
B
I had a post. I did a big post with a bunch of pictures in a lifetime of, you know, this is when I met him. And, you know, kind of a. This picture from this year and this picture from this year. And this is the first time we did a show together. And I was on stage with him at this point, and. And I just wrote a big, long thing, and. And the magic community, you know, really got behind it, obviously. But their family just, like, how much of a machine he was. And not socialist families are kind of the same way. So they didn't have. They just had a small. There was nothing like that. But I've been back down there, and after he's passed, and I treat his apartment like it's. I mean, obviously he doesn't live there, but, boy, it feels looking down that hall. It's. It's. It's really impactful.
- [64:45]
A
Can we riff on the C word that you just used? Community. Like, the magic community is fascinating to me the way all subcultures are and, like, Last night, you know, we were in Oxnard at a little club. I don't know, it was 50, 60 people, maybe more. Oh, was it? Yeah, I can't tell. It was dark and everybody had a facial tick, so it didn't seem, you know. But, you know, I was just so struck because so much of what you did reminded me of comics on the road. Like, ventriloquism is its own community. Magic is its own community. Comedy is its own culture. You know, all of these things are really kind of blended in your act. Not the ventriloquism so much, but that,
- [65:35]
B
you know about that.
- [65:36]
A
I know, but. But what? Like, it seems like magic in general now is having a moment. You know, you see these guys on America's Got Talent. You see a lot of. I mean, there's always been. I'm sure the Copperfield had an influence.
- [65:51]
B
Yeah, I saw him when I was 8. That was a big. That was impactful.
- [65:54]
A
Yeah.
- [65:55]
B
I remember a very specific. And I actually created an effect that kind of recreated that. That moment of seeing him on stage. He gets into a little cardboard box and they lift him up and I'm eight years old, you know, and he's suspended over the stage in a box. The box opens up, smoke comes out, he's gone and he's gone. And my mom taps me on shoulder and I'm like, what? And she says, look. And I look over and David Copperfield is two seats for me on a Harley, like, six feet up in the air on a. Like. Like in my row.
- [66:25]
A
Yeah.
- [66:26]
B
And I'm like, that. And that'll change your life, you know?
- [66:29]
A
Yeah.
- [66:29]
B
And on a Harley, like what? Like, how did. Like you were like what? So that was quite impactful.
- [66:36]
A
Did you think about going in that direction?
- [66:38]
B
No, no. For some reason. I'll tell you what happens. And it sounds so stupid, but it's. The word is practical. Because I would go to the magic shop and I'd buy the cigarette through the quarter and the link, the rings and the silks and the, you know, disappearing. The records, you know, plastic or a little vinyl record that you could make, could change color and all the polka dot. And now there's the polka dots are. Thing. And now they're not. And just like all this stuff and. And, you know, you're a kid, but you don't realize it at the time. But this is the guy just hawking the stuff that comes in the boxes, you know, so he was great guy. I had nothing against. I was always amazed. And the guy's name was Peter Monticop. And he really did teach me a very impactful thing that I use today. When you get the magic trick, like, throw the directions away, you know, that's just one thing. What are different? What's. I mean, this tool was invented for this, but what else can we do and explore? So that creativity really came a lot from him. Because if you just follow the directions, you have one thing, but explore and say, oh, I could do this with it. That was a very interesting thing. But anyway, the short story is, I had a giant box of stuff, and then I'm out there. You know, you go to your family outing, or, you know, then, Jay, do it. I want to hand me my stuff, you know, Or I go to school and say, hey, kids, want to see a trick? And then nine kids rip the thing out of your hand and break it into a thousand pieces and say, you're stupid, you stupid idiot. And you're left there with a broken piece of plastic. Yeah, so I'm never doing that again. So this silly box of stuff, and nothing's ever ready to go. Oh, let me go into my little bag and get. Oh, you want to see a trick? Hang on. Okay. A perfectly ordinary box. You know, I just knew. So I knew that with cards, I could do 30 minutes. Like, the. The deck is all that everything I need for an hour show is here, and I can just go one after another and do it. And I didn't need any stuff. And I'm not a birthday magician. Or here's an ordinary. It's just. You could do gambling stuff. You could do whatever. But. So there was something cool. And I could tell that from the Bond movies and Steve McQueen. There was something cool about when Bond's, like, at the card table, the cigarette with the cards, and he's playing box. It was tapping into that. So even at an early age, I could feel that I don't want to be taking polka dots off of a coffee can, and, oh, the die is over here, and now the dye is over here. And having that kind of kids magic stuff, it didn't appeal to me at all. So the practicality of just being able to throw this in my pocket and say, if I can entertain a whole party with this for an hour, that was the reason why I went with cards.
- [69:09]
A
I love that, man. And you said earlier, this idea of your mask and you become a Persona, you know, for me, in a way, it was kind of the opposite. Like, I'd impersonated a host on TV for, like, 15 years, and with dirty jobs the idea was, well, wait a minute. What if you're a guest instead?
- [69:31]
B
Like, what if you sit on its head? Yeah, yeah.
- [69:33]
A
Like, what if you just let go of the pretense of pretending to know things you don't and just be blisteringly honest about your own ignorance? And now the expectations get managed, and now you can be an apprentice and let somebody. Right. So, like, the mask thing is really, really interesting to me. And the big gift of that show for me was that I never had to pretend. Like, the whole hook was, stop. Stop doing that.
- [70:00]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [70:00]
A
Just be yourself and see if you can get away with it.
- [70:02]
B
I mentioned that to you. It was just. It was seeing that through your eyes, but it was real. There was something so real about that show.
- [70:08]
A
Well, we never did a second take.
- [70:10]
B
Well, that's what makes it feel that way. But I could just feel I was with there with you in the moment, observing and feeling all this stuff as it's coming. Not. It could have been a voiceover of. Look at what this. Now this happens.
- [70:21]
A
Holy crap.
- [70:21]
B
Now this happens. Now the person has to do this, like, how things are made. Now this. Now. But it wasn't that. It was you discovering, whoa. And you captured that on camera somehow.
- [70:31]
A
Well, what I. If there's a parallel back to Copperfield, like, you're not gonna show up with your polka dot scarf any more than you are a motorcycle and a box that can. Right. I mean, it's like, there's just no way that's a spectacle. And so by the time Dirty Jobs came around, my. My working thesis was production, while necessary had become the enemy of authenticity. And so the bigger the thing was, and the more careful we were with our crew. And Taylor knows he shot a bunch of them, you know, And I'm a nightmare out there because I'm constantly pushing back against the beauty of the shot or the deliberateness of the thing, only because I didn't think anybody else was doing it at the time. And that's why I love what you do on stage. You've got a couple of props that are pretty funny, but in the end, it's not about. It's really not even about the cards.
- [71:24]
B
Oh, God, no, no, no. It's the journey. You're getting to experience getting conned without actually losing your money. You're getting to experience all the suspense, all the comedy, all the entertainment. So you should. When you leave that show, it should feel like you watched a comedy show or a play or something. It's. This is just holding it together. Yeah.
- [71:42]
A
It's catharsis.
- [71:42]
B
Yeah.
- [71:43]
A
It's the thing you talked about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The flow, the hero's journey, all that stuff.
- [71:46]
B
You know, the stage stuff. It's fun to watch. And believe it or not, I still don't know how a lot of that stuff works. I. That's a curse of being in the magic community. You can kind of see through a lot of stuff. So the big stage stuff, I never explored. Never. I don't watch any YouTube exposure videos or anything like that because I want. I could preserve that feeling of, you know, how did that happen?
- [72:06]
A
We talked about this on the ride back last night. You know, part of the curse of living today is that if you really want the answer, you can probably find information.
- [72:16]
B
Yeah, of course.
- [72:17]
A
Yeah.
- [72:17]
B
Or here's another little interesting fact. You can find that information, but there's a chance that it's just not even. It's some guy that wants views.
- [72:26]
A
Sure.
- [72:26]
B
Do you want to know how this. Do you want to know how to build this muscle? We'll do this. And it's just some guy that came up with some new thing no one ever heard of just to get views, but it doesn't actually do anything.
- [72:35]
A
Yeah.
- [72:36]
B
So when you're watching, you don't even know if this is the real thing or not. That's a fascinating thing, too, because it's the age of misinformation.
- [72:41]
A
Well, it's. Look, I think you've used the word a few times, but. And a lot in the show last night. You know, who's skeptical? Who's skeptical? Well, you know, every hand in the audience should have gone up because everybody should be skeptical because we're surrounded by so much bullcrap online. I don't know why our default position isn't disbelief. Like, why would. What's the argument to believe anything you see online today? That's why I love the fact that you're online, because you're lampooning that at the same time, you're proving it again and again. It's messing with. Just messing with trust.
- [73:21]
B
The survivability of it is amazing, too, because you'd think by now that people would say, all right, all right, he's good. He's putting out videos for 10 years. He's got it. Nope. I can open up a video today, and 40% of the comments are saying no. So it's the Dunning Kruger thing. It's that that person's circle of knowledge is this big, and they're right. In their world, they are right. So it's endless content. Because you just find that.
- [73:46]
A
But we're not in their world. We're in your world.
- [73:48]
B
Yeah, exactly. So what I always find interesting is that person probably works where, you know, what is your expertise? So why all of a sudden, you know, why all of a sudden is a plumber of 25 years telling me how this works or how that works? Or suddenly there's an expert in special effects and editing, and I can see artifacts, and they're like, I'm sorry, what do you do again, for a living? Oh, I'm a lawyer. All right. So what part of your law degree did they talk about? You know, special effects training or this. So it's just funny. But that's the Internet. That's the problem with the Internet. I say, always say this quote, I want to get in on a T shirt. The Internet is a bottomless pit of people that think they know what they're talking about. But what's also fascinating is you can watch a video on Sheetrock. You can watch a video on Sheetrock, and the guy's saying, so we do this. We put tape here, and then we do this, and then we do this, and then we put this down. And 45% of the comments are, well, that works if you want your wall to fall apart in two years, you know, and why would you do it that way? That's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. You should be sued. You know, you're going to hurt somebody if you do it that way, because that wall is going to climb. Everyone's an expert. And the guy that's leaving that comment works at a shoe store. What are you doing?
- [74:59]
A
Right?
- [74:59]
B
So that is the Internet, everyone. That's a bottomless pit of why do it that way. You should do it this way, or you're an expert, or this is stupid. Or what? Because they want that clout of.
- [75:11]
A
I'm right.
- [75:11]
B
I got the top comment because I said this, Whatever. But anyway, I just figured out how to monetize that. That is. The thing that's holding the whole page together is doubt. And doubt is my. It's like that. That Internet meme of some guy sitting in the chair, glowing. You know, he's like his body is just becoming a glowing ball of light. When I get doubt and skepticism, bring it. I've done everything with this for 40 years. He can't get me with it. So whatever doubt you have, I'm gonna do 10 times what you expect and then send you on your way.
- [75:40]
A
Who do you admire?
- [75:42]
B
Guys that are at the top of the game that are, like, iconic. Michael Jordan. Tiger Woods. Tiger woods in early 2000, when he was just sinking. And he came onto this, he wasn't
- [75:50]
A
a golfer, he was a magician.
- [75:51]
B
And when. When he had that meeting. Oh, man, I can't remember. He had the interview right before he, like, won everything. And the guy said, no offense, kid. I don't know who that was.
- [75:58]
A
Oh, but.
- [75:58]
B
But he said, I'm gonna win. And he said, no offense, kid, but you're not winning your friend. He went out and won. You know that. That interview was just fantastic. But he should show that everyone said he couldn't do it, and he did it. And that's. Those are the people that I really look up to. And Anthony Jeselnik even said it in a recent video, art Monster. You know, you're just in it for the art. I just want to continue to explore and come up with new things and change the game. And when I'm gone in 3,000 years, when the world is just a big pile of rubble and there's two people digging through the. Hey, this used to be a library. And somebody's going to dust off a book, and they're going, oh, this is the Jayla Danny book. This guy was. You know, I'm happy.
- [76:41]
A
There's numbers on the back.
- [76:42]
B
Let's call it. So, like, just somebody that came along and just. They put everything into it, like you said, I go to every day. I'm just. I can't get away from it. Even Seinfeld is another guy I look up to. You look, it's a prison, but you like your prison. He's always writing jokes. He's always thinking, you cannot turn it off. And Howard Stern said, that sounds like a prison. And he said, it is. Yeah, but I enjoy. I enjoy it.
- [77:06]
A
Well, what do you do if you're Seinfeld? You just walk away from a couple hundred million dollars from the last season. You've mastered the form, and you've mastered the medium. What do you do? He goes back on the road, does a documentary called Comedian, and then comes out with comedians in cars getting coffee, which is proof that production is the enemy of authenticity. And if you're going to try and reset your thing, strip away anything but the absolutely essential trappings, and then reintroduce yourself to yourself. Right. So, I mean, I love those answers. Do you know, do you play pool?
- [77:46]
B
I thought I was going to get into. I have golf. I play golf. I really enjoyed that. And I did flirt with the idea, but believe it or Not. I felt like I was putting too many things because my upstairs neighbor actually had like an actual shark from the city come up and they were. Did like five hour lessons. You know, her version of Darwin.
- [78:04]
A
Yeah.
- [78:04]
B
And she would. It was girls, so she'd get hustled all the time. And guys would come up and be like. And she would hustle. You know, she'd be like, wait, which. What's the English. What is English doing? Yeah, yeah. So that was appealing to me, but I felt like between piano, guitar and I. Guitar isn't like a hobby. I'm transcribing old solos and I put my heart into that piano. I'm constantly digging through that.
- [78:25]
A
And Peter Benz. Mark, remind him.
- [78:28]
B
Okay.
- [78:29]
A
Game changer.
- [78:30]
B
Okay. I feel like I put my time and effort into all this stuff. And I flirted with the idea, but I said to myself, you know, let's do. I want to open up because I know my personality and I'm gonna have to find this and I'm gonna have to, you know, explore and go and go. Because I don't like that idea of just dipping my toe. I'm gonna go all in. And I said, I didn't do it.
- [78:53]
A
You're not asking for this, but I'm gonna. I'm gonna recommend anyway. Efren Reyes.
- [79:00]
B
Mark, write it down.
- [79:01]
A
Efren Reyes. E F R A N. He's Filipino. He's the greatest pool player who ever lived. In fact, he's called the magician.
- [79:09]
B
This is the stuff. I like watching these guys that just do things that you cannot explain. They're willing what they want.
- [79:14]
A
This is why you're here. This is why the Internet is not entirely as you've described, although mostly.
- [79:22]
B
Oh, I focus on my. I. I said 40. There's plenty of nice things in your career has.
- [79:28]
A
And by the way, I am who
- [79:29]
B
I am because of the Internet. But I just. You what I was. The point I'm making to clarify was just I'm using that piece to continually kind of. How can I do the same thing over and over again? Because I'm.
- [79:40]
A
Well, I do want to ask you about your business without getting too personal, but not to belabor the point, I. I'm not saying it's noble. I'm saying that I don't feel cheated, ironically, or robbed or I don't feel like my time is wasted when I watch your videos.
- [79:59]
B
Oh, it's a payoff.
- [80:00]
A
But I do. Like, if I'm just doom scrolling. I'm titillated in the same way everyone is. But When I'm done, I can't remember most of what I saw. And I don't feel in any way, in any way improved or elevated. Your videos, abusive though they are, they don't leave me feeling cheated. And I mean that as a compliment. Efren Reyes is the same way. You can watch this guy for hours, do things with a pool cue.
- [80:32]
B
That because my imagination you're seeing behind you. What you're seeing is the subtext. The thing is not on the screen is what's behind it. That's what's making you just go.
- [80:41]
A
You're seeing excellence at the highest level in an area that might not get the acclaim it deserves. Look, I'll sit up all night watching frickin cornhole. Like if the best cornhole players in the world are draining those things with the Baked Bean sponsor. I just sit there and watch. I watch the darts like the dart championship. You see three in a bed four times in a row. You see guys, it's like I don't really care if it's horseshoes, pool cards. Show me somebody who's mastered their keyboard. Show me Oscar Peterson. I don't care. I don't care what the, what the lane is. I'm just super interested in what it took to get to where you are.
- [81:32]
B
That when you asked about my favorite piano players and who my favorite people are, it's all, it's. We're all on the same page there. It's just anybody that's devoted her life to something, regardless of what it might be. I talked to Darwin about it because I asked these questions. What makes, what makes the person this?
- [81:48]
A
Yeah.
- [81:48]
B
And he said consistency. So you can see a guitar player who you love. Lucky Peterson. I don't know if you're a blues guy. Lucky Peterson is a great singer, great guitar player, organ player, gospel. See him on a Thursday and he's drunk and he can't remember the line. He's just all over the place. So you don't know what you're gonna get. But you know, find me a bad clip of Stevie Ray Vaughan. Every single clip I've ever seen of early 1990s camcorder footage. Can't like shaky kit for the club. He is hitting every. He is putting everything into it. Playing on 20, playing things he's never played like he. Because if you listen to. If you understand guitar neck and understand blues and you can see guys got their pockets and they have all their signature stuff. But Stevie's like every time you hear him, it's something BB's the same way. You never hear, like, the same chop twice.
- [82:36]
A
Stevie Wonder, they have.
- [82:37]
B
They have. They have their sound, but they're not copping. So they're not just cop and chops and playing stock solos of, like, basic. They're, like, exploring and Ronnie Earl. Like, these guys are just playing things that are just. And on every album. So consistency was a thing. And if you. If you're at that level and you're consistently there, you're going to be one of those guys. But if it's hit or miss, then you got to work at something. Something's.
- [83:00]
A
And the Internet gave us this, like, they. It gives you a portal, right? It's back to the early. Like, you can. It's a tool. You can waste your life on it. You can waste your time on it, or you can.
- [83:12]
B
You make.
- [83:12]
A
You can use it.
- [83:13]
B
What I find interesting is, with the Internet, is that I had no intention of listening to so and so today, but next thing you know, I'm listening to some Junior Wells or some buddy guy from the early Sick. I'm just like, where is this? That's a treat. You know, you're gifted it by. For no reason, because you can, like, search, but that takes, like, work, you know? And then you might not even find a good clip because you're just searching. But the Internet is interesting in the sense that you will find some of these people that you and I see and go, that's it. Just in your living room. Just. There it is. Here's the best 40 seconds of your day right here.
- [83:50]
A
You know, I like it too, as a. Like a winnower in the. Like, music's too broad. Don't tell me you're a music fan who can. Who's who don't like music, but to be able to geek out. Right on. I don't know. Maybe it's accordions. Maybe it's. You know, I've been listening to this guy who I met years ago in the barbershop world. How weird is this? It's like, talk about a community. It's like 35,000 diehard dudes who sing the old songs in four part harmony. This guy's name is Tim Wark. He sings all four parts he makes. He just sings with himself and posts it.
- [84:27]
B
I think I know who you're talking about.
- [84:28]
A
So freaking good.
- [84:29]
B
Is this the cornbread guy?
- [84:31]
A
Yes. Yeah, you've heard cornbread.
- [84:33]
B
It gives you goosebumps.
- [84:34]
A
You've got to be kidding me. Google Tim Warwick cornbread. It's just a ridiculous tag. And he's he's singing a like that
- [84:42]
B
takes talent to do that. And to compose you have to have a deep understanding of music theory to be able to move the appropriate chord tones around.
- [84:50]
A
He's singing in perfect intonation with himself.
- [84:54]
B
Yes, but you have to know it's again, technique. But you also have the mindset to know where this is going to go and what tensions and resolves are going to happen. It's one thing just to hit a note, but to be able to compose all that and come up with it is. And then also, how do you say the word cornbread and package what you know into that vessel.
- [85:11]
A
Right.
- [85:12]
B
To feed the Internet. Because if he just did a song about whatever, you know, let's all go to the lobby. But to say a silly but. But to put it into the vessel of a silly word and next thing you know it's got 75 million views and we're talking about.
- [85:27]
A
And how many hours later and we're
- [85:28]
B
talking, we're talking about it now still. And you know what else I found out? What Darwin said about consistency is those guys that all that hit that level, it doesn't matter how much time goes, Stevie's gone, but we can still. Steve, everyone's gone. But we can still listen to that and still get all of that. And that'll never go away. That'll be as impactful.
- [85:45]
A
Yeah.
- [85:46]
B
In 150, 200 years. Right. It's still gonna happen.
- [85:49]
A
It is what you call it again, the Internet.
- [85:52]
B
Oh, a bottomless pit of people that want to sound like an expert in any craft.
- [85:56]
A
I like Hunter Thompson wasn't referring to the Internet when he said this. He was talking, I think he was talking about the music industry. But he called it a long plastic hallway, a cruel money trench where pimps and thieves run free and good men die like dogs.
- [86:13]
B
Oh, this reminds me, my teacher had a very similar. Not, not as eloquent as that. But Bill Taylor was an amateur magician, was a super special effects guy that worked on Casino Royale, worked on a special effects guy that worked on another one of the Bond movies. And what was the other one? Oh, the score De Niro and Ed Norton, he did all the special effects. This guy won Academy Awards and everything. And they're on a message board and somebody says that all the special effects in Casino Royale sucked. And like a 13 year old kid says, oh, that was awful. Those are green screen garbage and blah blah, blah. And I could see through it. And then Bill Taylor who did the movie said, no, I was the guy. I'm the visual, the spirit. I. This my work. Those were miniatures. And the kid says, nah, that was green screen. The kid won the argument. You're talking to the actual guy that did the thing. That's the Internet. That's the Internet in a nutshell. Nobody had. The kid was as equal to the guy that actually did the effects.
- [87:18]
A
It's the great democratization. Look, okay, here's Tim.
- [87:21]
B
Here it is.
- [87:22]
A
Singing Cornbread. You want me to play it? Yeah, play it, man. I want to hear it. This is. This is the Internet. All right. See if you can get some audio on this. Crazy cat.
- [87:32]
B
Didn't think we'd be here today.
- [87:34]
A
I. I can't believe you've seen this video. Corn.
- [87:59]
B
Church. That's church. We'll talk about that in a second.
- [88:12]
A
35 seconds.
- [88:13]
B
Those overtones. Insane. Church. Can we talk about church for a second, please? Because in music, when I was telling my teacher would say classical music and you need to study Bach and you need. And I'm like. And I'd hear gospel changes. I said, what is that? Why is that hitting me? I feel something in my body. And he said, that's church. He's doing gospel structure to bring you through the scale with certain tensions. And then just when you think it's going to resolve, adds more attention. Like a good suspense movie.
- [88:43]
A
Exactly what you taught.
- [88:44]
B
Yeah, exactly. So. And then you. You think you're getting. It's this. It's. Have you read the McKee book at all? He talks about this. Robert McKee.
- [88:52]
A
I did a seminar. Yeah.
- [88:53]
B
Yeah. So it's. Again, you create. I'm going to give you what you want right here. And we just get to it. He says, well, wait a second. Why don't we just introduce this for a second? Oh, you still want that thing? Let's do. So in my show, I'm doing this all the time. Remember, I square in the cards if they want to see that card. And I'm like, oh, let's just square these up, you know? You know, it's creating this thing so that when you finally release, it's a bigger release. And this is. The same thing happens when the audience starts to applaud too soon. I don't know if you this, but sometimes the audience will start to. You have to know, because if you go now, it's going to be less at the end. So anyway, with these gospel changes in piano, it's just that same thing where it's like you're giving me this chord and you're pulling me to home. You're pulling me. But suddenly you play music at all five. So you're on the five chord.
- [89:35]
A
Yeah.
- [89:35]
B
And then you got the flat seven and then a nine and 11. And there's that church chord. And then the one is just begging. And suddenly it's the four, you know, and you're like, oh, there's the church four, you know, B3 comes in and then you're still. Okay, now comes. Nope, here's the major. The three over the one. Then the flat seven. You're just dancing around the one like, just give me the one. And then finally you get to it. And then a beat. The Hammond B3 comes in. It's amazing. So what I've noticed, especially with all the music and when I find somebody who's playing something even modern, even we talk like modern music isn't cutting it. But when it something somebody is tapping into it. It's got all the old blues influence. It's got all the church in it. Again, this. This modern tune is working because they've sampled a church or a blues groove from like the 60s. That's why it's good, you know.
- [90:20]
A
Well, I just. Just the idea that it's the same 88 keys.
- [90:24]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [90:24]
A
That they've been there.
- [90:25]
B
Or seven notes. That's the other one. My teacher would always say tempered clavicle, seven notes, relax. I guess I'd say, why is it so confusing?
- [90:32]
A
Okay, it's seven notes. Relax. Hey, it's 52 cards. Don't get freaked out, by the way. I don't want to do anything you don't want to do. But I do want to encourage people to go where your Instagram, your Tick Tock.
- [90:44]
B
Yeah, you can. I'm really easy to find. It's Card Magic by Jason across all the socials. So we're have really successful on Tick Tock. Although the Tick Tock algorithm has been a bit weird lately. There's a lot of suppression and things that happened with Tick Tock just as a platform as a whole. But Instagram, that algorithm is great. We post videos, people love it. YouTube's doing great. Facebook's doing great. So that's where you can find me.
- [91:09]
A
What's a big show look like for you? Because Oxnard was not Vegas.
- [91:13]
B
Well, we did Philadelphia was at parks parks casino. 1700 seats. We sold it out. I've never seen anything like that in my life. Now I used to tour on the road as a musician and we did the Gorge. I want to say west Oregon, maybe West coast somewhere. Right. They set up the the grandstands are on the beach.
- [91:29]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [91:30]
B
So as the artist, you're looking out the waters here, the lands here. That's right. And there's 10,000 people.
- [91:34]
A
Right.
- [91:35]
B
That's a sea of people. I've never. I've walked on stage and I'm like, you know, so we would do big festivals and those were usually. Or arena had. They split the arena in half and we'd do those types of shows. So 2500. Five grand. Used to that now, you know, when I used to do shows back in the early, you know, 2010, 2016, somewhere in that neck of the woods, I was performing for 50 people or something now Mark and I were doing 300, 500. And Parks was our biggest one. Yeah, when I walked out on that stage, I'm like. It was the IMAX theater screen behind me, you know, and we're doing tricks, so. And right now it's just me and a camera and like I said, very minimal. So I think a bigger show perhaps would be maybe a live camera that would. Because, you know how much interaction between me and my. The guests on stage and the jokes and the delivery and all that. 1700 people, they can't see my face in the background. So do you have a live camera? That's right. Because all you see now is this. But people want the hands. But if we had a live camera, that would be able to make sure that you're seeing what you need to see and seeing my face. Because honestly, I don't know if people know if you haven't seen the show. Jokes and comedies are really holding a lot of the show together. We enjoy that aspect of it. So that's why having a, you know, while I'm doing all the comedy bits, you're just looking at a dead screen. So a little bit more production value there. And also my teacher Darwin and I came up with this idea that. To utilize the screen for some of the storytelling. So when you're talking about the card cheating moves from the 50s and what you could be looking at, John Scarney and have a. More of a. I don't know what you would call it, but multimedia. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Just showing. And then like this, this, you know, this mob boss at this time did this and you're just having kind of a little documentary going on behind you.
- [93:17]
A
That's the first card book.
- [93:18]
B
I remember seeing Scarney on cards. I read that book. I've broken bindings on books.
- [93:25]
A
Here, I'll show you the trick I learned from Scarney.
- [93:27]
B
Would you like the mat.
- [93:29]
A
No, no, I don't need a mat. That's a very amateur kind of mat right there.
- [93:32]
B
I'm a professional. I don't need no mat to help me with anything.
- [93:35]
A
My, my uncle showed me this when I was God, probably 12 years old, and destroyed me. Absolutely destroyed me. So he's like, okay, Mike, here's how it works. I'm gonna look at this card and based on this card, I can tell you with certainty that's a nine of hearts, right?
- [93:59]
B
That's good.
- [94:00]
A
Here, let me do it again one more time. Because if I really want to be clever, I think I can force another one of these. If this one tells me nine of clubs, right? Oh, now my nine year old has.
- [94:12]
B
Yeah, yeah, I know the feeling.
- [94:14]
A
How in the world, man. And then he would do things like, okay, sometimes it gets a little tricky, like, okay, that. It's definitely a two. It's a black. I think it's a club. It could be a spade. I'm not sure. Oh, it's a heart. And then I'd be like, oh, crap, now what are you going to do? And he'd be like, oh, here's what we do, here's what we do. Let's just get another two here if we can, if this lets us know. Wait a minute, is that possible? Sure it is, right?
- [94:40]
B
Yeah. Your brain's melting.
- [94:41]
A
And then he does this. He's like, here's the thing, man. I don't even have to. I don't even have to look at him. I could tell you that that's a jack of hearts and that's a nine of diamonds. And the world is. I never got. I never got over it.
- [94:57]
B
Yeah, you won't. That's what I was talking about earlier. Because here's something interesting about magic. It will live in you differently than looking at a painting does. We can see the closest I've noticed is seeing a band. When I was 14, I think I saw Pink Floyd in a stadium. I'll remember that because a full sized B52 bomber plane. I'm 14. Oh, that's the band I listen to sometimes at home.
- [95:26]
A
Yeah.
- [95:27]
B
Oh, there's a B52 plane that is now 30ft over my head now flying into the side of the stage, blowing up into a massive fireball. And then they start playing Run, you know.
- [95:40]
A
Wow.
- [95:40]
B
And now there's two giant pigs and there's a laser show. And then David Copperfield's or David Gilmore's doing his solo in Comfortably Numb and a crystal ball comes out. But it's the size of a house. Okay. That's amazing. And now it's spinning. Then the whole arena is like this. And then two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl. Then the thing opens, and there's a ball of light. I mean, I will never forget that in my life. Now, what's amazing, though, magic has a similar thing where you just, like. You're talking about how what is going on here.
- [96:13]
A
Yeah.
- [96:13]
B
Will live in you like that. But looking at it. No offense against, you know, a painting, but I don't feel. I don't. I can't. It's not as, like, impactful. It's great when I'm looking at it, but I don't. I don't sit at home and just go, oh, so there's some art forms that just. And magic just seems to have something in it that doesn't die because you replay it.
- [96:34]
A
It's tactile. Like, nobody puts a magic trick in a frame and hangs it on a wall.
- [96:38]
B
Yeah, yeah. Ye.
- [96:39]
A
That's the end of the process here.
- [96:42]
B
When you relive it, it's just as. And that's what I noticed about the Pink Floyd thing. It's, like, just as impactful.
- [96:46]
A
This is controversial. Well, that's not controversial.
- [96:48]
B
Well, I feel like the Internet's gonna eat me up because painters.
- [96:51]
A
What does he hate against painters?
- [96:52]
B
Well, nothing against that. There could be amazing paint. There can be amazing. I've been to the Smithsonian, seen amazing things. But magic, for me, in that Pink Floyd concert is just something that I can't.
- [97:03]
A
Well, here. You know, here's a good place to land the plane. With regard to art and music. You know, Oscar Peterson, in the end, was a magician. Not because he came up with a new note. He just played them all better than anybody did.
- [97:18]
B
The way he danced, his bebop theory and how he effortlessly just danced around the changes and also didn't seem to run out of gas. Is something that will never get old.
- [97:35]
A
I don't think so either. It's truly eternal, but in a weird way, so is Bob Ross.
- [97:41]
B
Oh, that's another great. Oh, that's another reason magic is. I have these amazing memories of being seven or eight years old, and his magic was the same way, because there's an empty thing there, and it's not anything yet. And my favorite thing about Bob Ross. Do you remember when he had that big comeback in On Twitch, I think where they. It took the world over. There was like 8 billion views on these things every single night.
- [98:01]
A
Made a movie about them.
- [98:02]
B
And that was so special because the world collectively came up with the same thing that I know I personally had. When you would say, oh, no, Bob, you ruined it. Remember that?
- [98:11]
A
Yeah.
- [98:12]
B
He'd have this beautiful sky and his beautiful lake, and then he'd take that black thing and go. And I'd at home going, you just ruined it. But what was great about that twitch thing, this was probably five years ago by now. It was a live stream of it. And suddenly he'd do that.
- [98:30]
A
Ruined, ruined.
- [98:32]
B
You ruined it over.
- [98:33]
A
Ruined it.
- [98:33]
B
And then he would then turn it into a shed, and then it would all turn to. Oh, you saved it. You saved it.
- [98:37]
A
That's what you did last night in Oxnard. You made people think from time to time that you might have ruined it.
- [98:43]
B
The failure is a big.
- [98:44]
A
You might have ruined it.
- [98:45]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [98:45]
A
But you didn't.
- [98:46]
B
The woman that dealt the cards the way that she wasn't supposed to deal with, that's a great opportunity, because that's out of my control. And if you can act. But acting is a big part of what I do. You have to sell it. Because if you're good and you go, whoops, I've made a mistake. I don't know if I. Oh, no. You know, the audience is going, all right, do your thing. So selling failure is really difficult for me because you're portraying this. I'm a flawless thing. I'm invincible. I'm up there starting cults. I'm not going to make mistakes. But the moment that the spectator does something that's out of your control, you can really use that as fuel. And if you can act, okay, when I said, oh, no, no, did you do two. You know, and then the audience. Now it's. Now, you know what you gotta do now. Yeah, the audience is really invested. And if you can act and play on those things, it sells that failure much more. But that's a huge part. And look at any Bond movie. What happens 20 minutes before a Bond movie ends? He doesn't have his gun anymore. This is the right. The villain has a huge part.
- [99:42]
A
He's tied down, he's half naked. The lasers come up between his legs.
- [99:45]
B
Yeah, there's nothing. There's nothing. And in order for it to be a good movie, it has to be clever. So it has to be clever because in that Bond scenario where the lasers coming up, if the villains running out the door and he kicks the plug out of the wall and the laser goes off, we're all not like, oh, thank God. Thank God. Bond got out of this one?
- [100:04]
A
Close one.
- [100:04]
B
Yeah. No, it's got to be the Shakespearean thing, where whatever the thing was used against him is the very thing that. That is his demise. So, Dr. No, with the steel, that's his power. Well, he couldn't hold on to the pole because of his steel thing, and he died. So, Goldfinger, you have to. But that's the. You have to know your formulas to get this stuff to hit.
- [100:25]
A
Right.
- [100:25]
B
So it's all what you're talking about, with all the craft and the work that goes into it. It's no coincidence that trick ended the way it ended because you had to find that it was my ego that got me in trouble, but it's my ego that got me out of it as well. You know, you have to be clever about that. It can't be. Whoops. Oh, I found your card by accident. There's some sort of weird twist, so I don't want to give too much of the show away, but there's a lot of moments in there that I'm purposely creating something that is my kryptonite, because apparently I don't have any. That's the biggest struggle for me. If you really want to get technical, I don't have kryptonite. So how do I create weakness? For the audience to wonder, will this work? That's been a huge challenge to find that.
- [101:04]
A
Can I tell you who else talks about this a lot? Have you seen Reacher?
- [101:09]
B
Yeah. Well, that's Tom Cruise. The show or the movies?
- [101:12]
A
The show.
- [101:12]
B
I've watched the movies. I like the movies.
- [101:14]
A
Okay.
- [101:15]
B
And I've seen it at the first, maybe three seasons. I think it's a big.
- [101:18]
A
Yeah. So the series is a much better portrayal of the physicality of the character. And Lee Child created Jack Reacher. He said the biggest challenge was I wanted my character to be unbeatable in a fight. But how do I create stakes with an unbeatable character?
- [101:40]
B
Exactly. It's very difficult.
- [101:41]
A
But he does, and that's a neat
- [101:43]
B
trick, too, along those lines. That's what's wrong with John Wick. And I want to stir up the Internet. You don't like John Wick? What's wrong? No, it's awful because there's 30 people come in the room, and he instantly demolishes all of them. So where's the pro? Where's the. And then 30 more people come in, and we see five minutes of beautiful, choreographed fight scenes. But the character was never in trouble. There was no vulnerability. So are you a fan? You know, what's the movie Called Harry Brown. Michael Caine.
- [102:15]
A
Michael Caine. I'm Michael Caine.
- [102:18]
B
Harry Brown. You ever see that?
- [102:19]
A
No.
- [102:20]
B
He's going up against the London gangs, but he's 80 years old.
- [102:23]
A
I have seen it. It's the death wish.
- [102:25]
B
Death wish formula where the crime is out of control. But he's an old frail. There's scenes of him in that movie. His wife's dead, wife's passed away. He's in his kitchen eating. And the scene's like two minutes long of him making toasts. That's it. And he's so sad and lonely and vulnerable and, you know, you're just watching him and he takes the. And he sips the coffee and he just says, sad old man. But then he's got to go out and fight like a mob of 20 gang members. It's amazing. But the vulnerability is why we are on. On his side and wondering, will he make it? But John Wick is going to just blow everybody up and it's no fun.
- [103:00]
A
But they killed his dog, dude. And you know what? They've been dining out on that.
- [103:05]
B
I don't know how that blew up like that did. I think video games is why that people enjoy the fight scenes, but there's nothing really holding it together. You need that vulnerability. And that's what I struggle with too, is I have to make the audience genuinely believe he can't get out of this one.
- [103:17]
A
Hey, was that real scotch on stage last night?
- [103:19]
B
A lot of it. You were drinking? Yeah, we. Mark and I have a thing where we have a. We like to go spend about a grand or 1500 bucks on scotch. And it's part of the branding. And I want to say something. I don't know if this is going to land me in jail or not.
- [103:32]
A
Probably not.
- [103:34]
B
But our tax guy, we're doing taxes and I've never written off anything. I didn't think you could write scotch off, but because it's. Listen to this. I'm going to be in jail by June. Because it's part of your branding. Yeah, it's part of you. You have it on stage, it's now a prop, and it is consistently part of your branding. It's all over your social media. You get brand endorsements with it. So having it there. And he said, you can't write it all off, but you can have a percent. There's a percent. This is a thing as part of your brand. So that means we can buy as much scotch and drink as much scotch as we want. That's what I heard.
- [104:05]
A
I tell you what Else, it means. It means this episode, the way I heard it was brought to you by Noble. Noble Tennessee Whiskey.
- [104:11]
B
Bold, smooth, sophisticated.
- [104:13]
A
It's not scotch. And that was the first scotch I had in probably 10 years. Last night. It was great.
- [104:18]
B
Did you have the 21?
- [104:19]
A
It's a 21. Yeah. Yeah. This is the best of the batch that I've got. This is the stuff named after my pop. It's a single barrel. It's a bourbon. It's not scotch, but you guys can take it break in case of emergencies. No, it's my pleasure. I'd give you two, but it's the last one I have.
- [104:35]
B
Well, that means a lot.
- [104:37]
A
But you guys can, you know, split it on the ride home, I guess, or, you know, make it disappear.
- [104:42]
B
Is it okay to finish with showing you something?
- [104:44]
A
I'd be honored.
- [104:44]
B
Okay, let's do it. I'll show you something. You know, when you are work with the deck of cards long enough, you start to develop a sense of the cards like you did earlier. That was really amazing. And you know what's great? People are going to watch. People are going to watch this and say, how the hell did he do that? That's what's really great.
- [104:58]
A
Some will. And you were probably like, I can't believe this guy invites me on his podcast. I may be one of the greatest card mechanics living today, and he shows me.
- [105:05]
B
But Scarney. That's a testament to Scarney. Yeah. So earlier you were cutting the cards, but this time I want you to cut for me. So I don't know where anything is, because if I cut these cards, you would say, oh, he's tracking. And he knew where to cut, and he would know the top card of the deck. So what I want you to do is give the cards a cut. And first of all, you can see they're all different. And we'll take that right out of your.
- [105:24]
A
Yeah, thank you.
- [105:25]
B
And then give the cards a cut. So I can't know what the top card is. And complete the cut. No, no, complete the cut. Just like they do in Vegas, right? You cut the cards in half. Complete the cut. Now, you might think that, well, maybe they're marked cards or something. If they were marked cards, I could tell you what this card is. I could look at the back and read whatever. They're not marks, but you might think that. So as a matter of fact, what I'll do is I'll turn my back and you cut again. So good. Give him a cut.
- [105:47]
A
Full cut.
- [105:48]
B
Yeah, cut half over wherever you want and then complete the cut.
- [105:50]
A
That's complete.
- [105:51]
B
If they were marked, it wouldn't matter because I'm not even looking at the back.
- [105:54]
A
Right.
- [105:54]
B
I can't see it.
- [105:55]
A
Can't see.
- [105:55]
B
But you could still think maybe he's tracking. Maybe. Could he track two cuts? How could. There might be some way he could know what that top card is. So, Mike, if you don't trust me, do you want to cut the cards again? What? I'm not looking. Yes. No way I could track three cuts now?
- [106:09]
A
I don't think so. It's not reasonable. All right, good. There you go.
- [106:13]
B
The suspense is already starting, isn't it?
- [106:14]
A
It's thick.
- [106:15]
B
Now. The cut is complete, correct?
- [106:17]
A
It is.
- [106:18]
B
No way I could know what the top card is. Correct.
- [106:19]
A
Well, I mean, it sure doesn't seem like.
- [106:20]
B
Do you want to cut again?
- [106:23]
A
Chuck, how much time has elapsed so far? We must be close to two hours, hour 40. Oh, yeah. I'm cut one more time.
- [106:32]
B
Fantastic.
- [106:33]
A
Good.
- [106:33]
B
And I'm not looking. There's no way I could track five cuts by now. I'm not looking at the cards. It wouldn't matter if they mark you. Satisfied. Those cards are cut. I couldn't know anything.
- [106:39]
A
I'm as satisfied as it is.
- [106:40]
B
Can you take the top three cards? Don't look at them. Top three cards, put them in your pocket. I got a site. Okay, let me know when that's done.
- [106:48]
A
These cards are in my pocket.
- [106:50]
B
And you didn't look at them, right?
- [106:51]
A
I did not look at them.
- [106:52]
B
And they're in your pocket. You don't know what they are, right?
- [106:53]
A
Nope.
- [106:54]
B
All right, get rid of the deck. All right, here we go. I want you to reach into your pocket and take. There's three in there. Just take any one of the three. Well, not yet. It could be the one in close, the one in the middle or the one on the outside. I couldn't possibly know what it is. And I'm going to look away again. I hope. Mike, I'm going to turn the mic like this. But just take it out. Don't show anybody.
- [107:12]
A
All right?
- [107:12]
B
Just yourself. I'm looking away.
- [107:13]
A
I can look at it.
- [107:14]
B
Yeah, of course.
- [107:15]
A
Okay.
- [107:15]
B
Don't say it. Are you looking at one of the cards?
- [107:17]
A
Yeah, I am.
- [107:18]
B
I'm looking at it again. I've been handling cards for 40 years. You start to develop a sense for these cards. Is that. Is that like a high valued card? Like an ace?
- [107:34]
A
It's. It's very much like an ace. Yes. Uncannily sell.
- [107:42]
B
I mean, you could have taken any one of the three out. That's. That's the really confusing part. But is. Is it a. Is it a heart?
- [107:49]
A
So much like a heart that it's not even a diamond. It is, in fact, the ace of hearts.
- [107:54]
B
It is the ace of hearts. Oh, I got one. Okay, you can put it face up on the table here.
- [107:57]
A
Okay.
- [107:57]
B
Now there's two cards left in you. Remember, you cut so many times, five times. It wouldn't matter if the cards were marked because I wasn't looking.
- [108:03]
A
Wouldn't matter.
- [108:03]
B
And then you put three in your pocket, and you didn't show anybody, so there's no way I could have seen it.
- [108:07]
A
Nope. Didn't look at it myself, actually.
- [108:08]
B
I know. Yeah, exactly. Now there's two left. You can take either one out. Just don't think about it. Just reach and take one out.
- [108:13]
A
Just gonna take one out.
- [108:15]
B
Don't show them. Don't show them.
- [108:16]
A
I'm not gonna show them. I'm gonna look at it myself. All right, I'm looking at this one now. I'm setting it down. I don't want to touch it.
- [108:22]
B
And I'm not looking at it. I'm not looking at. Right. So. So this. The first thing that. That popped into my mind was that even though you cut five times that. It's. It's a black. Is it a black card? That's what I'm.
- [108:32]
A
Yeah, it's the very picture of ebony.
- [108:37]
B
Oh, now I might be getting a little confident here. Is it a club?
- [108:41]
A
No, it's not a club.
- [108:43]
B
So I starting to get too confident. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that it's a spade. Is it a spade?
- [108:52]
A
You're deductive.
- [108:53]
B
See, I got. I got two. See what happened? See what happened? When I started to get confident, I got to take this seriously. It's a spade. Okay, so it's a spade. I want you to imagine a movie theater screen, and. And you're sitting in a theater by yourself, and there's. There's a movie theater, and on that screen is one card playing on the. On the screen.
- [109:07]
A
Yeah.
- [109:07]
B
And that card. You're visualizing that.
- [109:09]
A
I got it.
- [109:09]
B
That card is. That card is of spades. Is it? Is it? Yes, it's the seven of spade.
- [109:17]
A
We're all shot.
- [109:18]
B
We got to get my confidence back up.
- [109:20]
A
All right.
- [109:20]
B
Anyway, you got one card left, but don't take it out.
- [109:22]
A
No, I'm not going to take it out.
- [109:24]
B
If you didn't look at that card, how could I know what that card
- [109:28]
A
is, that would again involve a deal with old Scratch.
- [109:33]
B
And you know what?
- [109:34]
A
What
- [109:36]
B
is this? The devil's card? Is it the four of clubs? The four of clubs. The devil's card.
- [109:42]
A
Take it out before I look. Why is the four of clubs a devil's card?
- [109:46]
B
That's just the. The nickname it was given. Oh, man. It was a good deal. It was a good deal.
- [109:57]
A
I made a devil in my pocket.
- [109:59]
B
It was a good deal I made.
- [110:01]
A
Now, listen, the obvious question that comes to mind, Chuck, is how'd you.
- [110:06]
B
You do that?
- [110:07]
A
But what's the point?
- [110:08]
B
Well, it's just skills. Name any card. Just name any card.
- [110:10]
A
Any card. Just say it out loud. All right. Three diamonds. 20. 20.
- [110:16]
B
Oh, no.
- [110:17]
A
Come on.
- [110:18]
B
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. Do you cut these cards? How many times? Turn that over five times. Thank you and good night.
- [110:36]
A
Wow. Oh, God. Who's that other I hate now? Oz guy. What do you think of him?
- [110:42]
B
Oz is great. So Oz. Oz is doing something very similar. Magic has been around. Magic. Listen to this. Magic has been around forever. These techniques have been around forever. You're reinventing it, pushing the boundaries, forging ahead and repurposing. And, you know, we have new media today. We have new things. And he has found a way to just get it out there and make it bold. And this is great that we can finish here, because one of my absolute favorite quotes of all time of, like, that is just, I heard this, and I said, oh, my God. And that's Steve Martin, be so good. They can't ignore you. And that went into my soul. And I said, you know what I'm gonna do, right? I have the chops, and you're gonna watch them. And always tapped into that. And we're doing the same thing where you just. People watch and they just say what you're feeling. And how is that. How can this, any of this be?
- [111:33]
A
Well, I'll leave you with another Steve Martin bon mot. With regard to articulation, he said, you know, some people have a way with words, and others not have way.
- [111:52]
B
Oh, he's brilliant.
- [111:53]
A
Hey, man, this was so much fun. Thank you for last night. Thanks for your generosity. Mark, you know, thanks for. You know, you guys are a great team. I don't know what your ultimate goals are, but you're going to be a household word. You're going to be a Scarni. You're going to be. And somewhere Ortiz is looking down and going, pick a card. You Son of a man.
- [112:14]
B
You know what's great is there were so many moments with being with him that he would fool me constantly and slowly. I would have moments where I would show him something and. And he'd say, I don't know. And I'd go, yes.
- [112:26]
A
Gotcha.
- [112:26]
B
I got you. And I stood up and I was like, yes. And I looked back and he's just sitting there politely. And I'm like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. Here's what I did. But I had those moments of doing that. It was very rewarding to be able to. You showed me these tools and I took them in, was able to do this with it. So it's all about craft and life and learning and pushing forward.
- [112:43]
A
Clubs.
- [112:44]
B
Seven of spades, seven of spades and then a three of diamonds. That you're gonna. That you're gonna.
- [112:48]
A
That would hurt, man.
- [112:49]
B
You're gonna suffer with.
- [112:50]
A
Oh, you know what?
- [112:50]
B
That would.
- [112:51]
A
That's the twitch. The twitch just started.
- [112:53]
B
Beautiful. A pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.
- [112:55]
A
When you leave a review, which we hope that you'll do, tell us who you are. Tell us who you are. And before you go, whoa, whoa, won't you leave? Five star. Five lousy little star.
- [113:33]
B
You didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. You're here to sell more today than yesterday. You're here to win. Lucky for you, Shopify built the best converting checkout on the planet. Like the just one. Tapping, ridiculously fast acting, sky high sales stacking, champion of checkouts. That's the good stuff right there. So if your business is in it to win it, win with Shopify. Start your free trial today@shopify.com. win.