Sinogeek: Welcome (again) to the site David and thanks a bunch for coming.
My first question (of many)...here goes.

You are without doubt one of the busiest guys in Magic.
How do you keep everything up in the air at the same time so to speak?

What keeps the Magic machine that is David Acer oiled up and running and on the road?

Do you have a personal staff of thousands working behind the scenes or what?

David Acer: I have a staff of about 1300 right now, most of whom work in the factory making my Cardtoon decks...oh wait, that's Dan Harlan.

Actually, this might be counterintuitive, but I find having more than one project (and indeed, more than one kind of project) on the go at once actually increases my creativity and efficiency (there's an old adage: If you want something done, give it to a busy person).

When the mental well runs dry on a magic DVD, for example, I can turn to a script I'm working on, or an article for Genii, or a stand-up bit I'm trying to hone.

But early on in my career, I found myself working on a wide variety of different projects out of necessity. In Canada, if you want to make a living in "show business," you have to have a number of irons in a number of different fires; otherwise you simply can't pay the bills. It just so happened that most of the mediums I starting working in (stand-up comedy, close-up magic, radio, television writing, television acting) developed into parallel careers. Two have fallen victim to the others over the years; children's magic, which I enjoyed doing, but frankly, I felt that the income never justified the amount of work - it's an extremely tough and demanding career, both on and off stage; and radio, which I dabbled in (there are lots of fun clips from radio shows I co-hosted on my website on the COMEDY page, under "Audio Clips"), but I do very little anymore.

Lady Laura: Okay, I'm gonna start with a totally unrelated to magic question, but hey!

I finished my philosophy degree last year (whohoo) and really enjoyed it. I know that you've also study at degree level for philosophy, what was your favorite area that you looked at?

David Acer: It's been a LOOOOOOOOOOONG time since I dabbled in philosophy, but at the start, I remember particularly enjoying the old Greek classics - in particular, Plato and Socrates. I also went through a period of really liking more trippy books like the Carlos Castaneda stuff, J. Krishnamurti and "The Life and Teaching of The Masters." But it's been years (indeed, decades) since I've looked at any of that, and I doubt I could carry on an intelligent conversation about it. It's sad, really, that I've replaced DesCartes and Kant with Elmsley Counts and Kurtz.

Sam X: Ok, I have to ask and dredge up some of your worst memories. Was there a specific time when you wish a great big hole would open under a spectator and remove them? If so, what did they do and how did you combat it?

(Please feel free to ignore this question if you don't want to answer)

David Acer: My favourite story along these lines is one that ran in my Genii column about a year ago. Here’s the piece:

Recently, while shooting a one-off, one-hour special for Canadian television called “Urban Magic,” Richard Sanders and I performed a simple (but powerful) two-man card trick on a grungy street corner (not the first trick ever offered on this corner, I’d wager).

The effect went as follows: I had a card chosen, then shuffled back into the pack while Richard looked away, whereupon he turned around, I tossed the deck in the air, his hand lashed out, striking the pack and sending cards in every direction, then retracted holding only one card! The card was slowly turned around, showing it to be the selection.

The method, if not abundantly evident, required Richard to palm a duplicate of a card I would force, then produce it at his fingertips as his hand struck the airborne pack. And indeed, on the first take, it worked absolutely perfectly. The crowd let out a collective gasp as Richard turned the card around, revealing the selection... But then, amid little, awe-struck comments like, “How the hell?” and “That’s impossible!” a tiny voice rang out... “Look, there’s another one!” All attention turned to a small child pointing at a single, face-up card on the ground – the selection, which I had forgotten to palm out of the deck.

So the crowd dispersed dejectedly as Richard and I reset the trick and, this time, I had every intention of palming out the card... Really! But the man who chose the card simply would NOT stop burning my hands. So I thought to myself, with cards flying all over the place, what’s the likelihood of the selection landing face up again? (Evidently the answer “one in two” evaded me.) Thus, making an executive decision, I didn’t palm out the card. Instead, I tossed the deck in the air, whereupon Richard (blown away by my invisible Side-Steal) snatched the selection out from the airborne pack and turned it around as before to gasps of amazement.

Then, cutting a bloody swath through the joy and wonder, a teenager called out, “Yo, dude. You’ve got two of those, man!” then picked up the face-up selection from the ground.

And that’s when Richard lost his mind.

He turned to me, red-faced and perhaps even trembling, and unleashed a tirade of profanity normally reserved for shipyards, laced with technical magic jargon that, being meaningless to those looking on, likely sounded like more cursing and swearing.

Fortunately, through the magic of television, both takes were equally usable, since we had only to cut the trick after the revelation of the selection, omitting the offending (and expositive) portion. But every time I watch it, I know, even as the trick fades out on a high note during a slow zoom-in on the “chosen” card in Richard’s hand, that somewhere, down on the ground, where no one is looking, the real selection lies watching, waiting...

It wants to be found...

Happy Toad: LOL best laugh I've had in ages

Yin Ho Ng: Heya. Hope you're enjoying your stay at MB!

I was just wondering if you have a specific purpose when you're performing, creating, thinking magic?

David Acer: YES! How can I develop the cleanest, simplest most interesting way to hold an audience's attention so I'm not wasting a second of their time while they're watching me?

Yin Ho Ng: Its funny, cos 'simple' and 'interesting' are two 'concepts' that, for me anyways, seem to head in opposite directions...But it has obviously worked for you!

Will Wood: Really? That's fascinating because, even though I can't say my view/purpose isn't a refined as David's, I do agree with him. Why do you find that? (Maybe you could post your reply in a new topic in General Magic Discussion or somewhere similar so we don't clog up David's valuable time here. Or feel free to PM me; I'd love to chat to you about this.)

David Acer: I suspect the conflict here is probably just over our definitions of simple. I don’t mean “obvious” or “predictable,” I just mean “not convoluted.” A good (though not all-encompassing) indicator is whether the plot of an effect can be described in one sentence, like “A signed, selected card jumps invisibly to the top of the deck each and every time it is inserted in the center,” or “A borrowed pocket watch is used to strangle a chicken to death, then the watch is set back thirty seconds, whereupon the chicken comes back to life."

Granted these terse, one-line descriptions do not always capture the charm and richness of an individual’s approach to these plots, but they do indicate an uncontrived, relatively organic – indeed, simple – effect.

Conversely, I am less moved to purchase a product with trick descriptions like, “A card is chosen from a shuffled deck, signed, then wrapped in a fur coat and told to be quiet. Two toothpicks are introduced and used as dousing rods to find the nearest bathroom. The audience moves into the bathroom, then is asked to sing their favourite Britney Spears song (if it’s a weekday), or make their initials out of licorice (if it’s a weekend). The fur coat with the signed, selected card is sent by Fed-Ex to San Francisco, whereupon the recipient is asked to call the magician on his cell-phone and open the coat. The recipient does so, informing the magician that the signed, selected card is gone, but in its place is a block of cheddar. The magician says, ‘Oh that’s where that went!’ then lifts the toilet lid in the bathroom, revealing another block of cheddar. ‘I used to have two of those in here.’ He then shows the spectator that half of the signature from his card is now on the magician's shoulder.”

This, of course, is an old Marlo trick from The Cardician.

Sinogeek: Oh really?

I will have you know that he stole it from Vernon.
It was Vernon who first introduced the idea of using the block of cheddar.
If memory serves me well in Vernon’s original, on production of the cheddar it was found that the signature from the card had been transferred to the cheese.

This handling can be found in Vernon’s 'More Rennet Secrets'.

Hope that's of use.