Brian Brushwood (2016)

Hang on. Let me call her.

Okay. I clearly just woke her up: http://shwood.com/Reddit/mom.wav

Apparently she wants you guys to know that I'm "deep."

Heh. In some realities, they never left: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE7ibBvgQhY&index=25&list=PLjqQ16mcrfswivBaqcRHzk58vvcje7B6x

We just did a big shoot with Mac King, Michael Goudeau, and Brent Braun. It was a bit off-brand for scam school, in that we're just 4 magicians hanging out in Mac King's kitchen and swapping random gags, but was just about the most fun I've had in years.

Here's the first of those four episodes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaDc6VUgMMw

By hiding behind this guy: https://youtu.be/0IEJxr8qF3g?t=1h1m51s

The exact same thing, but with me wearing a derp face.

It is back. Only it's called "The Modern Rogue" and it's on YouTube :-)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC42VsoDtra5hMiXZSsD6eGg

Over the years, Teller's helped me write or fix almost every routine in the show, so if I wanted to fool them, I'd have to come up with a completely new routine.

That's not impossible for me to do, but I'd much, much rather performed polished work that's a good showcase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJEYtEo7c-c

(Remember, the biggest success story in PTFU history didn't fool them: http://www.wimp.com/perhaps-the-funniest-magic-trick-ever-penn-and-teller/ )

I'm very friendly.

1. Yeah, it's been a conscious decision to do more stuff from home. I pretty much only get one decade with all three girls as kids, and I don't want to miss it. It's even why we launched scamstuff.com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvPeBn_BtCQ

2. If happiness was a video game, you'd have three health bars: Money, Health, and Relationships. Each of them is constantly fluctuating, so when I catch one that needs attention I switch things up. But there's definitely times my schedule puts a strain on everybody. (Not just family, but the production team and co-hosts, too)

3. Man, I was interested in No Man's Sky, but the release sounds like it's been a fat bag of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vupCgB8H9Og

4. Recently, Bold by Peter Diamandis was good. Gave me a bunch of new tools to work with. For fundamentals, read "The Richest Man in Babylon."

5. I'm ashamed to admit I've relapsed, and I'm back on the H... Hearthstone, man. She's a bitch.

This trick we made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QQGBwm5ubE

Freaking Richard Garriott (Lord British) performed it on the ISS! That means I get to tell people "Hello. I designed mind control experiments that were carried out on the International Space Station."

Put that on my tombstone, man.

Teller wrote decades ago that when creating art, you should let hate, not love, be your driving creative force. When you create art out of love, the best you create is a pale imitation of the thing you love. Instead, make something that's the opposite of everything you hate, and you've created something totally original and wonderful.

When I was getting started in magic, I hated the sequined purple outfits. The dated music. The standard hack lines. The slow-motion process that insulted the audience. I hated that you were only supposed to feel bemusement when watching it, never pants-pissing terror.

So I made a magic show that was the opposite of all that. A magic show for people who think they hate magic shows.

That's the great thing about our friendship: the whole thing has played out in front of the cameras. You can see the first time we did a face-to-face interview (I think... can someone find that "talking head TV" thing we did in 2008?) and you can see the first time Justin appeared on BBLiveShow.

honestly: Justin just kept showing up and being funnier than all of us put together. At some point, it became clear I was hitching myself to his comedy star and not the other way around.

It's shocking to me how nice people are. Like, all of them. Even when I've been in a prank war (like with my friend CJ Johnson), there's this total BDSM cooperative play happening, where neither of us wants to cross the line with the other.

Equally shocking: how few people have claimed the free drink I owe them. They flash a coin with a smile, but then insist on buying ME a drink. Man, people are really, really good.

Most shocking of ALL: The cyclops wins. (I know. Nobody saw it coming.)

...side note: I didn't realize I had made a clever literary reference at the end. Well played, me.

Man, I still don't know what that whole thing was about.
¯_(ツ)_/¯

The hurricane change. It's so touchy (even the humidity matters), but when you do it right it fools yourself: https://vine.co/v/O2pQzUlU0FI

That was amazing. Penn and I aren't close, so to hear such kind things from him had me floating for weeks.

Non-Fiction:
The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
Abundance by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

Fiction:
Stephen King's Dark Tower Series
Patrick Rothfuss's Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicles)
Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastards series

(and thanks so much for the patronage, boss! <>)

SHIT! I forgot to mention "how to fly a horse" by Kevin Ashton. The best book I've ever read on the creative process: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00M60RKUK/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1#nav-subnav

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Yes. Only we use more USB thumbdrives and type EVEN FASTER.

I've put a fair bit of thought into this, actually: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwQJXgQaHiM

thanks so much. This just made my day!

If things keep progressing, I figure by the time I'm 80 I'll be owed at least one beer from most of the free world. I plan to collect all of them at once, completely destabilizing the economy. During the ensuing panic, I'll push through legislation finally putting all global currencies an ethanol-backed standard.

I figured I'm not very interesting, but everyone loves to know some clever tricks/hacks. I've been collecting this stuff for literal decades (Jason Murphy, too!), and love sharing it.

Hot damn, I want to make it to Australia. You guys are like the Texas of Planet Earth. It almost happened this year, so I'm hopeful it'll be soon.

when I was touring 100+ days a year, I was really good about keeping that public calendar updated. Now that we're doing more on-screen production and I'm traveling less, it's tough to put time into.

Your best bet is to keep an eye on my twitter feed: @shwood

I used to keep the Hundy 500 on me. That visual transformation, making $500 of real money appear in front of their eyes was not only a visual treat, but was socially a great pattern interruption.

Unfortunately, I lost 3 full sets ($600 each): one to the desert, one to a con man, and one to a blackjack table.

I...

I...

I think I need to re-evaluate some life decisions I've made.

Norway! Stavanger, in fact.

The first half-year was torture: No shopping malls, no TV, no greasy fried chicken.

The rest was bliss: No shopping malls, no TV, and no greasy fried chicken!

heh. fine: http://shwood.com/Reddit/IMG_2068.JPG

Not right before, but close enough.

oh, man! we totally should! Also: Captivology looks fascinating. Is there an audiobook of it?

To serve others.

Man, I've always marveled at how similar those names are.

Oh, wow. I knew we were striving for improvement, but hadn't really paused to consider we'd actually done it. Can I pretty-please turn this around? What do YOU see that's changed/improved over the years?

oh SHIT! How did I forget this book in the above question!?? That is far and away the best book I've read on the creative process: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00M60RKUK/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1#nav-subnav

Rule 1: Whenever possible, find a girl.
Rule 2: If they maintain eye contact and interest while you describe the show, they're probably going to be good on camera.

...and that's pretty much it. We get a wide variety of people on the show, and most work out pretty well.

Also: We're talking about doing Night Attack Live in STL, and it'd be amazing to perform at this same venue where I made my New Media debut in 2008: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mStMdWLyYI4

Then we'll have stolen away the fed's true power and my mission will be complete!

It's really not. His move was simply "spend 3 years acting like a friend. Turn out to be garbage."

EVP. Not only was it a technical marvel, but it genuinely caused actual terror. Pants-pissing, I-want-to-punch-that-guy-in-the-face, terror.

It was awesome: https://youtu.be/q4rVA9TStdY?t=6m52s

That performance was at a rowdy bar, but when we performed it at the magic castle, it was this amazing, intimate haunting thing.

"Pretty Princess Party," in which I delicately discuss the comings and goings of high society socialites while drinking pretend tea with my 3-year-old.

There's no room for the lazy up here.

Just figure out what everyone else is too lazy to do (something like, oh, I don't know... answer every single question in an AMA all day long), and then do it.

And for Cthulhu's sake, get yourself some written goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWsXI-XJRuA

I did not know that, but I'd love to hear the story.

(Is how I'm answering your question. Because it's definitely a question)

I had and continue to have zero interest in fooling Penn and Teller. I love it as a store conceit, but I've seen good performers mess up their performances by trying to "win" the game nobody (including P&T) really cares about.

The real winners are the ones who walk away with showcases that entertain and delight :-)

Thanks, man! Means a lot.

My fave go-to is still the first we ever taught: the human chimney. I usually follow it up with a medley like this:

https://youtu.be/km5FlDY2CvA?t=1m56s

Greg Grunberg might be the single best human being on the planet.

I still do the Human Crazy Straw during stage shows! https://youtu.be/hmoMiY0zAXA?t=13s

SHOCKINGLY good! I was convinced I'd never be able to brew anything, but it's really a testament to the kit and to Michael Lipton's instructions: http://www.scamstuff.com/products/the-rogues-brew-kit

oh, jeez. I'm sure I've done a million things I shouldn't feel good about, but one sticks out (and makes me feel like an old man).

When I was a senior in college and the internet was young, I blew what felt like insane money to get Hughes's satellite dish internet service. The promise was 1 megabit downstream over the satellite, and 56k on the upstream (over the modem). The latency sucked, so you'd never game on it, but that downstream was incredible.

(If you are under 30, you simply cannot understand how revolutionary these numbers were at the time.)

Anyway, this was the early days of MP3 swapping (pre-napster times), so most sharing was done in IRC channels that would trade access to FTP's.

So I made a script that kept announcing that people should "come to the MOTHERLODE! Hundreds of FULL ALBUMS! Upload a full album and get FULL LEECH ACCESS!"

With astonishment, I saw Prodigy's "Fat of the Land" download to my computer faster than any file I'd ever seen before. (had no idea what a good album I was getting, too!) Keep in mind, this is the time you'd start a download before going to bed, and hope beyond hope that the connection stayed up all night and you'd have the full album when you woke up.

This thing got THE WHOLE ALBUM in like 30 minutes! We were Prometheus. We had stolen fire.

And, of course, I gave the guy full leech access at our best upstream speed: 56k.

After typing all this out, I just realized I'm not much of a dastardly scam artist.

Talked my way out of going to jail for frolicking naked in a fountain in downtown Austin? Either that or cheated in Vegas. (though my lawyer insists that technically I wasn't the one cheating).

Man, oh, man... once and only once I went to the bar with something to prove. I told myself I'd buy one beer, and every single other one had to be bought by a stranger via one of the tricks in my book.

Bit of advice: when you're drinking with a purpose, it rarely ends well.

We told the story on the latest comedy album: https://www.amazon.com/Real-Brian-Brushwood-Born-Explicit/dp/B00QTJQEUQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474039932&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Day+The+Real+Brian+Brushwood+Was+Born

Scam School is as authentic as we can make it. You can tell, because sometimes the tricks don't work and the riddles don't stump people.

We also grab real people who just happen to be at the bar (though it's always awkward to walk up to people and say "hey... lemme make you famous on the internet!").

We've had a few duds that led to cut footage, but in general I find normal people do great at learning magic.

As for the mixology videos, I want to keep doing them forever. Trever is amazing, and the shoots are a blast. Our job literally becomes to laugh and drink.

1 - I really loved testing the gas masks. It was terrifying and thrilling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffvw6EJPmEg&amp;list=PLMviV1kG2V2g29X7Dl4SopoJnjh0UrDFu&amp;index=28

2) Red Headed Stepchild. You'd never know it's there: https://www.google.com/search?q=floppy+disk+repair+co+austin&amp;espv=2&amp;biw=1378&amp;bih=794&amp;source=lnms&amp;tbm=isch&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwi2noLhm5TPAhXHFT4KHRWkCI8Q_AUIBigB#imgrc=Vy-9KTCrGT3CkM%3A

3) The Arcana Artifact: https://www.scamstuff.com/products/the-arcana-artifact

oh, man-- we go WAAAAAAYYYYYYAYYAYAYAYYYYY back. like back to when it was "The Reel Deal" and they were shooting at Austin Cable Access. (shit. Is that really nearly 20 years ago?)

They're some of the funniest, most thoughtful and caring people I've ever known. I'm thrilled for their success, and sad it means it's harder to meet up.

oh, you gotta keep reading, right? Also: there are some fantastic prescriptions of which books to read in what order people have done. My number one advice is to listen to as many of the books as you can narrated by Frank Muller (RIP). They're amazing, and the defined voices of those characters for me forever.

high fives

Oh, very much so. My early days in magic were fueled by this simmering frustration with magic, magicians, and our reputations in the bigger world.

It's why I wrote and received this life-changing letter to Teller: https://www.scamstuff.com/pages/the-best-letter-i-ever-received

That exchange is the best thing to happen in my career. You can pretty much trace every major decision I've made to that advice.

yeah, there was a great writing team on that show. Half the material we presented was stuff Jason and I had found, and half was totally new to me.

Because production was so hectic, there were moments I'd show up on set, read the gist of the hack and say "Shut. UP. This really works?"

Charging an iPhone with a 9-volt battery was like that, and this one, too: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/hacking-the-system/videos/portable-fire/

The UK and Australia are at the top of my list. Maybe in 2017?

Nope! Far from coincidence. From who you're following, the odds looked good that you would know my work, so I followed you first. (Think of it as if twitter is a party, and I'm the guy shaking hands and trying to start conversations)

Thanks so much for that! I'm so glad Double Toasted is killing it.

As for wacky shows, oh jeez. I had fruit thrown at my stage in West Virginia... that count? It was an audience of 900 people, and man-oh-man did they not like my show.

NO! AND I STILL WANT ONE!

1. Yes.
2. Yes.