Just got back from the gym. Good workout. I was on a ship the past 2 weeks and the workouts I did there paid off with a few more reps today. The Old Man here is fightin’ back the claws of death.
When I got home I ate a bowl of meaty & spicy chili as a post workout protein boost.
Hmmmmm …what to do next …what to do next …
I know. Let’s talk about card indexes!!
It’s alive!! IT’S ALIVE!!!
Thanks to the release of Dex, the Facebook magic pages are ALIVE with posts about card indexes.
DISCLAIMERS:
First, post workout chili is an extremely underrated post workout meal. I am fueled with POWER.
Second, I don’t have Dex or any other pocket index that’s on the market.
Third, I use an index in nearly every stand up show I do.
Fourth, I don’t want to talk about pocket indexes (indices?) per se.
I want to talk about psychology before and after the hand goes to the index.
BEFORE
A selection process that’s 5% equivoque and 95% freedom can reduce index size by fifty to seventy-five percent in three seconds. Card gaffs can be a help, too.
DURING
See my previous post about wide engineering tolerances. Mistakes happen. Does your index routine include a safety check to make your have the right card?
AFTER
Speaking of “after” how much after does your routine have? By “after” I mean how much time misdirection is built into your routine? While not always the case, often additional time between retrieval of the card and the reveal of the card, can make for more deceptive magic.
There’s more to using indexes. A lot more. But don’t want to get too deep in the weeds here. I only wanted to offer a pause for two groups: those who want to praise an index tool as the Holy Moly Grail of effortless miracles and those who want to condemn an index as crap sight unseen.
A card index is like most of the equipment I saw at the gym this morning.
Use it properly and make big changes.
Use it poorly and it sucks.
Until next time,
Doc Dixon
BREAKING NEWS NEXT SOON:
My New Book On Kids Magic
I’m not going to say much about it now, other than …
1. It’s coming out very soon.
2. It will be useful for you if you’ve done zero kid shows or 1,000
3. And, yes, it’s deeply rooted in my “pack small, play big, and live large” philosophy.
PS #1: While it doesn’t have an index, the table of contents of my new book is awesome. My new book, The Show Is The Mother Of Invention is currently SOLD OUT, so make sure you subscribe to my newsletter to get news of the next printing.
PS #2 You could drive a truck through the engineering tolerances of my routines. Three examples: Reign Man, the KING of All Magic Square Routines and MAWEEGE and Corn Hole Zero.
