Sacrifice and Preparation

How stabbing oneself in the hand is a great lesson in not being an idiot.

There are a lot of classic magical routines that have been staples of acts for hundreds of years. Cups and Balls, gambling demonstrations, doves, bunnies and sawing women in half. One of the most dangerous and enticing of the illusions in the magical repository is Russian Roulette. At least 13 magicians over the past half-millennia have either been injured, killed, or killed others while performing the feat, often set up as the Bullet Catch. It’s extremely dangerous.

Because of its risk, performers have used a variety of non-lethal presentations, such as staple-guns or nail-guns. One recent rendition involves a large nail under one of many styrofoam cups. The performer waves his hand over the cups and, one-by-one, slams his hand down, smashing each of the cups in succession until the ‘loaded’ cup, with the nail, is left. There is obviously some significant danger, but, unless slamming down with one’s head, you’re probably not going to end up dead.

There are many different methods to figure out which cup is loaded, from invisible thread markings to magnets to stooge participants, and so on. There are some less-than-foolproof methods, as well. Some psychological methods. One can survey the audience’s reaction to your hand-placement as it hovers over the cups and the participant’s body-language. One can use what’s called muscle-reading—the unconscious, automatic muscle contractions that occur when a spectator thinks about a direction—to help.

In my third ever public performance I performed Styrofoam Cup Roulette at Stanford in front of an audience of about one-hundred people. I ended the routine with some scattered applause, gasps, confusion, and a four-inch nail through running through the center of my palm.

Back then, I wanted the “magic show” to explore something like the strange quirks of our humanity; the strengths and weaknesses of the mind and the idiosyncrasies of intuition. The show tried, through some silly tricks and feats, to circle around those fascinations in order to display what is possible. Not what is impossible. Because at 22, I thought this was an amazing and brilliant idea for a magic show.

There’s an idea of magic, that if you perform illusions of the impossible without giving any explanation, you will turn the art of magic into a puzzle that pits the spectator against the magician in a battle of wits where, if the spectator figures it out, he wins and if he doesn’t, he loses. This conflict, it’s thought, can remove much of the joy, the meaning and beauty of magic from magic. I believed that we lived in an age when nobody would actually believe we magician possess supernatural powers, so nobody will believe we can actually perform the impossible—and that this would make magic close to lost! Hadn’t it been widely demoted, I thought, to the world of kids birthday parties? (from what heights, I wonder now?)

Those ideas were my ideas, but the problem is that I was an idiot. In truth, people just want to be entertained, and are perfectly capable of suspending their disbelief. People know the magician can’t do real magic, but they don’t care. It’s still fun! And when you can wrench someone into disbelieving even when they are a skeptic, wow, that’s something.

Back then, I decided, like an idiot, to use the real method for Styrofoam Cup Roulette; the audience/participant-reading techniques. When done correctly, these are supposed to be 100% reliable. I was apparently willing to bet my hand on it.

And so, after getting my participant up on the stage, having her place any cup over the nail and moving the cups in any order while I was blindfolded, I was ready to go. Five cups. If I smashed at random I would have an 80% chance of ending up 25% crucified. I smashed one cup, two cups, three cups. There were two left. I was not confident I had the right cup. But the show must go on, so I said, “I’ve made my decision.”

And I slammed my hand down.

At the last second I averted my hand to the wrong cup, the one with the nail. I usually do this so the audience thinks I’m going to impale myself and then gets pleasantly surprised. It’s intentional. But this time, the audience believed I was going to choose correctly as my hand began to slam down over the safe cup. They were happily waiting to politely applaud at my cunning. Instead they were witness to me quietly screaming an expletive and ripping my hand away from the table, grabbing my hand and examining a nail-sized hole. I asked the spectator to wrap my hand in the bandages we had laid out earlier (as a joke) and continued the show.

The show's conclusion was equally disastrous. The ‘finale’ also failed (less spectacularly), and as I took my bow, no one from the production team were there to close the curtains. The lighting guy didn’t turn the lights on the stage down, so there were a few awkward moments before someone shouted “Encore!” I could only respond by walking over to the side of the stage and pulling the curtains down on myself. People found that humorous. I thought it was pathetic.

Finally alone, after still the worst performance of my career, I walked back into the center of the stage, still lit up but now isolated by the closed curtains. The remnants of my show were strewn across the floor and the table; smashed cups, books, paper bags, playing cards, a nail with some of my DNA on it. I took a seat in the sole chair on stage, and put my head in my hands, shaking it.

“Fucking disaster,” I said to myself. I said it to myself, but strangely, I heard the words also come out of the PA system of the room as my microphone hadn’t yet been turned off. My dead heart fell even more deeply into my sick stomach. I am a fucking idiot. I furiously switched it off, stood up, and heard the shuffling of the audience on the other side of the curtain.

And unique to this stage, there was no side-stage, or back-stage, or stage exit other than through the curtains I had just closed on myself back into the audience, so I had no where to go. So I gathered myself, took a deep breath and walked out to meet my friends, family, and any remaining audience members who were still there waiting to say hi.

I’ll never forget that show. It was a horrible experience, but extremely valuable. It taught me a lot about sacrifice, risk, and preparation.