Gardyloo #79: Halloween Edition

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Happy Halloween, my groovy ghoulies!

I’m going to murder you all.

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One of the most successful projects I’ve ever been involved with (somewhat tangentially) was a mixture of magic and horror. It was a piece of viral advertising for the Carrie remake in 2013. I still think it’s pretty brilliant. There’s a great buildup to the way the effects all unfold.

I’ve done a lot of creepy/spooky tricks in the past, but I think there was only one time when I truly terrified someone with a magic trick.

I was with two friends of mine who are married and I mentioned that I was learning a technique to control pulses. Not my pulse. Other peoples. So I had my friend take her husbands pulse as I attempted to speed it up and slow it down through some gestures and intense concentration.

It wasn’t working.

Her husband started giving me shit and he was being relentless about it. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I gave him one of these gestures…

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And his pulse stopped and he slumped over in his chair.

His wife thought we were playing around but then she realized his pulse was really gone, and she started screaming at me to “fix him.”

Yes, it was the old pulse stop trick, just done with a stooge.

This, by the way, is why I always recommend magicians get involved with their local theater group in some capacity. You will find a bunch of people who will be more than happy to assist you with any crazy idea you want to do. Yeah, actors can be insufferable to be around. But more often than not they’re just fun, outgoing people who are happy to play along with all sorts of nonsense.

If you’re into horror movies at all, Eli Roth’s History of Horror on the AMC channel is a really great show.

It’s a seven part series and they’ve aired four so far (they’re available on demand).

They have interviews with almost everyone you would hope to hear from. It’s amazing. I’ve watched a bunch of horror documentaries over the years, but never one with so much access to all the big names in the industry.

There is some level of horseshit when they try to read too much into these movies. One dope said about a movie that featured a possessed female, “The horror genre is the only one that will address this truth: Society is terrified of women.” Or something like that. It was moronic because she seems to have forgotten all the horror films where men are the monsters.

But other than that sort of thing, it’s a great series.

One of my favorite people and Jerx resident artist, Stasia Burrington has a new project she’s working on that I want to inform you about. It’s a Deck of Many Things which is some sort of D&D nerd thing that I don’t know anything about because I’m sorry but I’m not into WITCHCRAFT. I guess I didn’t think it was “rad” and “dope” to turn my back on Jesus and celebrate the occult.

No, I’m kidding. Although as it is Halloween, I hope some of you will be disappointing some kids by handing out the Dark Dragons Chick Tract instead of candy.

I won’t be picking up the deck to use in any D&D games, but I know I’ll get some use from it regardless. As it says on the kickstarter page, the deck can also be use as:

  • An alternate mini-tarot tradition deck

  • A storytelling device

  • A roleplaying game character generator

  • A random number generator

For me, I will definitely find some uses for it in a magic context. I’m a big fan of using various types of cards as a small way of helping to differentiate performances. And I just find it easier to capture people’s interest initially with a deck that doesn’t look like anything they’ve seen before.

Here is the Kickstarter page where you can support the project.

One of my favorite Halloween traditions is watching this video that some friends of mine were partially responsible for. it’s got one of the dumbest premises: The Monster Mash that we know and love (?) is actually the result of the record company re-writing and toning down a graphic song about monsters having sex.

Catching Up On Some Stuff

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If you want to guarantee yourself a copy of the next Jerx book, Magic For Young Lovers, this is the last week to order. I’m only having printed as many as I’ve sold.

There will likely be some available as “overage” printed by the publisher, but I can’t guarantee that. Of any overage that is printed, half will be made available for sale and the other half will be packaged up with the rest of the items in my back catalog for the occasional person who comes late to this site and wants to get everything.

Don’t feel any obligation to buy the book if you’re not really inclined to. The more limited it is, the better, in my opinion. But at the same time, I want to make sure everyone who does want a copy has the opportunity to get one. So if you want it and you haven’t ordered it yet, now is the time to do so. You can purchase the book, which comes with the second Jerx Deck, 4 issues of the X-Comm newsletter, and the Jerx app (if you don’t already have it) here.

A small update to the Jerx App should be appearing in the app store in the next week or so.. A number of people have requested the ability to store multiple drawings in the app for the drawing swap section, so they don’t have to make a new drawing each time they want to perform a different tricks. That functionality will be in this update.

I don’t look at the analytics for this site very often, so I didn’t notice that about a month ago the RSS subscribers for the site fell overnight by like 90%. I’m not sure what caused it. I may look into it if I get a chance, but regardless, if you did subscribe via RSS you may need to redo it.

In regards to last Wednesday’s post, I got an email that said, “I understand what you’re saying about presentations that are more ‘immersive’ in nature, but I think you underestimate how many people just want to sit back and watch a magic trick.”

Well, I don’t disagree that many people would enjoy that, but I think it’s a rare person who would prefer that to something that felt more interactive, in a social situation. Similarly, I think people enjoy hearing jokes, but they would rather have a funny conversation. People like watching the Food Network, but they’d rather eat a great meal. People enjoy jacking off to YouPorn, but they’d rather fuck. (Maybe not magicians, but normal people, I mean.)

As the possibility of someone having real magic powers has faded, magic has become about the interaction between performer and audience. Take a look at the magic tv shows that have gained traction in the past 20 years, they are all about the magician and the people watching the magic. It’s about Blaine performing for the wealthy and also the downtrodden; it’s Carbonaro peforming for people who aren’t even aware they’re seeing a performance; it’s the magicians on Fool Us performing for Penn and Teller; it Justin Willman performing for people in casual settings, it’s the Got Talent magicians performing for the judges; it’s Criss Angel performing for stooges and bad actors.

Will we ever see another Copperfield or Henning type of special where they’re performing out towards an amorphous “audience”? I kind of doubt it. The next magician who really makes a name for him/herself probably isn’t going to do so because their tricks are so impressive, but because they’ve found a new type of audience to perform for.

This is why I think the idea of just sitting back and observing magic is a concept that is well on its way out. The interaction is what people are drawn to these days. And in a social situation, the interaction they want is one which includes them.

Congratulations to Steve Brooks on the 12 year anniversary of his most recent post on “My Side Of The Screen,” his special section on The Magic Cafe dedicated to his “Thoughts and views on magic, the internet and anything else that’s on [his] mind.”

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Wait… hold on…this might not be the cause for celebration I thought it was. Now that I think of it, 12 years is kind of a long time to go without having a thought. And certainly no sane person would set up a special section on a website if he only had six ideas for posts chambered, right?

Has anyone checked on Steve recently? Like, say, within the past 12 years?

Just a minute… I hacked into his webcam many years ago. Let me see if I can time-lapse the footage between then and now.

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Aw crud. That’s not good. Steve’s dead everyone. RIP you glorious son of a bitch.

Gardyloo #78

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Once early December rolls around, I hope you will take a moment and remember the “day that will live in infamy.” No, I’m not talking about Pearl Harbor. I’m talking about another senseless tragedy.

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That’s right, you can stop your clamoring, your prayers have been answered. Our old pal, Brooksy, is having a magic lecture.

Here is the facebook event post.

I know you’re thinking, Oh, what’s your angle here, Andy? Are you going to say Steve won’t be teaching his Bill in Lemon trick because he keeps eating the lemon?

How dare you. I’d never say that.

Were you going to say that this line from the ad:

WARNING: Due to the hands on nature of this workshop seating will be limited to the first 20 PAID reservations.

Should really say this:

WARNING: Due to the hands on nature of this workshop bring a deck of cards that you don’t mind getting chicken grease on.

No! Knock it off. I won’t tolerate such disrespect.

All I want to say is that I hope Steve’s lecture/workshop goes well. And if there are any Jerx supporters in the area of Haines House of Cards (Norwood, OH) who would like to go, I will reimburse you the cost of your ticket. You just have to send me a pic or some other proof you went. I’m completely serious. I want to pack the place for Steve.

We got some big news from our brothers at Vanishing Inc. this week.

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I was hoping we would finally get the news we all know is coming, that Josh is carrying Andi’s baby. Sadly, that wasn’t the big announcement. This was:

“Effective immediately, Joshua Jay and Andi Gladwin (on behalf of Vanishing Inc) are pleased to announce the purchase of Art of Magic and all its content from Dan and Dave Buck.”

Okay, that’s a little less #exciting than I had hoped, but whatever. They’re two quality organizations and I think they’ll mesh well together. It’s a good acquisition for them.

Speaking of…, if Vanishing Inc. or anyone else is interested, The Jerx is also for sale. $84 OBO.

In the fall issue of the X-Comm newsletter, I mentioned Michael Weber’s Charge Card effect and its use with Marc Kerstein’s ChargeMe app.

Well, Marc informs me that ChargeMe is no longer available in the app store because Apple didn’t like an app that mimicked the battery charging aspect of the iPhone. So if you were going to get the Charge Card to use with this app, then don’t.

Marc may try and come up with some workaround for the app that Apple will approve of, or we may bury it somewhere in the Jerx app. I’ll keep you updated if either of those things come to pass.

In response to Monday’s Witch’s House post, reader Daniel Lee suggested doing a version of the Trapdoor Card with a Stranger Things style of presentation. So one side of the page would have a relatively normal, colorful drawing, and the other would have some ominous image in black and grey representing the “Upside Down.”

I think it’s a good idea when presenting the effect to someone who is familiar with the show. I haven’t done it myself, and I don’t see myself saying, “Here’s a trick about Stranger Things!” But I might perform it and approach it more obliquely. “Have you seen Stranger Things? My girlfriend’s sister teaches elementary school and apparently they have a kid who acts out in the same way as the kid on that show. Like he freezes up and when he snaps out of it he implies he’s seen some other plane of existence. But not in those words. At first I thought she was saying that he’s imitating the kid on the show, but then she told me it was something he did before the show even aired. She gave me this picture he drew….”

I would probably experiment with not showing the other side of the paper first. That way, when the other side is revealed, their first instinct will be, “Oh, well you just turned it around or something.” Then it will dawn on them that I couldn’t have just turned it around since they were holding it the whole time. 

More Friends of the Jerx with some notable accomplishments in the sphere of magic for the general public’s consumption…

First, famously non-pregnant magician, Joshua Jay, is going to be on the Tonight Show tonight, October 26th. Set your DVRs. Or, if you don’t have anything better to do, watch it live.

But here’s the thing, if your life is at the point where you feel you don’t have anything better to do than stay home and watch Joshua Jay on the Tonight Show on a Friday night, then you actually do have something better to do. It’s called suicide.

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Last week I mentioned Justin Flom’s new book for kids who are interested in magic. At the other end of the age spectrum, we have Allan Kronzek’s new book, Grandpa Magic. This is a book for people who want to use magic to entertain their grandchildren. What a good idea. I read the preview on Amazon. It looks like it will be a pretty fun read.

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If nothing else, the cover and illustrations are so much more pleasant than Allan’s previous magic book for the public.

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Who is the monster that designed this hideous book cover for young magicians? Has he never met a kid? Or does he just hate them?

Dover always had the bleakest covers. If you saw this book from across the room and couldn’t read the title you’d say, “What’s that? A book on what to do with your loved one’s possessions after watching them die from gallbladder cancer?” No, no. This is a book about magic aimed at young people.

How does Dover choose the color palette for their magic books? Do they just mix a giant vat of shit and vomit together until they capture the color of chronic depression?

Chris Grace in an actor and comedian who I haven’t met before, but I have seen him do improv in NYC a few years ago, as we have a couple of friends in common. He stumbled on this site recently and I’m glad he did because he makes me laugh. He sent along the video below which has him re-dubbing the demo for Cameron Francis’ trick, Captivated. As I mentioned on Wednesday, I hate the brand of patter Cameron uses in that trick. Here Chris ratchets the stupidity of that type of patter up profoundly and it’s actually much more entertaining, in my opinion.

My friend Stasia, who is the illustrator on the forthcoming book (as well as JV1), has been doing “Inktober” on her Instagram. This is a drawing challenge where people draw one ink picture per day in the month of October based on some prompt words. Here are some of my favorites…

The Nearness of You

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This is something I’ve written about before in other posts, but I wanted to devote a post specifically to the subject because it’s something I see frequently. It’s a type of bad patter that I people use all the time. The following example comes from a new release by Cameron Francis called, Captivated.

“So I was having a chat with a magician friend of mine the other day. And I said, ‘You know what, I want do an effect that really captures my audience’s attention. Using just 8 cards: the four aces and the four kings.’”

And then he goes on to tell the story of a past performance of the trick to accompany himself performing that trick in the present.

Now, to be fair, most patter in online demos delivered to the camera is bad. It’s not really conducive to something more interesting. And I have no idea how Cameron would actually present this in real life. For a youtube demo, this patter is fine. But I have seen people perform almost identical patter to real humans in real life, and in that context it’s terrible.

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One of the best things about close-up magic is the immediacy of it. It’s something that’s happening “in this place” and “at this moment.” Only magicians would think to screw this up by distancing the spectator from the effect. “Here’s something that once happened with me and some other guy I know.”

Here’s the thing, if you don’t think, “This ace will turn over. And now so will this one. And now they’ll turn to kings,” is an interesting enough thing to talk about in the present tense, then it’s certainly not interesting enough to tell a story about.

I know why people do it. It’s a defensive approach to showing magic. Instead of confidently suggesting you have something interesting to show them, you couch it in the presentation of “this thing that happened to you.” Sometimes it’s even further removed than that. Sometimes it’s, “this thing that happened to another guy once.”

  • “While he wasn’t looking I shuffled his deck face up into face down.”

  • “I was certain I put the card in the middle of the deck, but the next time I looked, it was back on top.”

  • “One time a gambler bet a magician a million dollars he couldn’t cut to four of a kind.”

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The close cousin to the “here’s something that happened once,” style of patter is the, “magic trick as analogy” patter. This is where you tell a story and the coins or the cards represent something else. This is another case where you’re making it not about the present moment.

I’m speaking to the social/amateur magician here. Maybe Eugene Burger could get away with telling the Hindu creation story alongside his performance of Gypsy Thread, but in the real world when performing for friends, acquaintances, and family it’s a very alienating thing to do. Are you someone who would normally tell the Hindu creation story? Probably not. So it only comes off as a justification to show the trick. Which again suggests that the trick itself isn’t worth their time on its own.

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In social magic, the presentation should ultimately be about the two (or more) of us in the room and the magic that is happening in that moment. It may sound like I’m advocating for breaking down the fourth wall in your presentations. I’m not. In social magic there is no fourth wall. Social magic is an interaction, not a show.

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If you’re a social magician and you want to perform a trick like the one Cameron performs above (a longer, multi-phase card trick) then you would likely only show it to someone who likes you and who likes these sorts of tricks. (This is not the sort of thing you would spring on someone as a first trick when you meet them.) So if that’s true—if they like you and they like card tricks—then the only baseline patter you need is: “Hey, I’ve been working on something and I want to get your thoughts on it.” This Peek Backstage style is not only good because it’s simple and “honest.” It’s good because it focuses the magic on this present moment. “I want your feedback on this thing I’m showing you now,” is a normal human interaction that concentrates their attention on what’s happening now.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t strive for a presentation that is more compelling and interesting than that. I’m just saying that default presentation is good enough and it doesn’t make sense to replace it with something worse. Add a good story or add no story. And if you add a story it should be one that leads up and into the present moment. Not something like, “So this one time a guy took a card and it turned into another card and blah, blah, blah…”

Don’t add a dull story just so you can check the “presentation” box.

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Here are some examples of other generic, present-tense presentations:

“Here’s this weird thing that happened to me once… and here’s how it affects me to this day.”

“There’s this old ritual I read about… let’s see if it works now.”

‘I found this strange object… let’s see what it does.”

‘I read about this psychological game… and I’ve been waiting to meet up with you so we could test it out.’

You see how each of these—even if there is a backstory to it—all play out in the present moment. The benefit of this is that it can seem like neither of us know for certain what’s going to happen next. And that should make for a more exciting effect, more-so than me just relating a story.

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Ultimately this comes down to the professional/amateur divide. As a professional, it makes perfect sense that you would tell stories and illustrate them with magic. A professional magic show is not designed to feel like a normal human exchange. So heightening the theatricality is an understandable choice when performing a “show.”

The thing to understand about social magic is that' it’s not just an informal close-up show in a coffee shop. It’s designed to happen within an interaction. That’s its strength. And it’s the reason why a spectator can’t experience social magic while watching a video of it, because they’re removed from that incident. If your goal is to do an informal show in a coffee-shop, that’s fine, and you can just follow the precepts established for the professional magician. But if your goal is to create the unique experience of social magic, then any choice you make in presentation that takes away from the immediacy of the performance is a bad one.

The Witch's House

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Are you familiar with this trick The Trapdoor Card by Robert Neale? I think it’s one of Neale’s more famous creations. Here is a variation done with a dollar bill. And here are a bunch of different variations with cards and other stuff as performed by the world’s greatest grandpa.

Over the years, I’ve done the variation with a bill (Wonderland Dollar) which doesn’t require the spectator to close their eyes, and I’ve done it with a playing card as well. I never really got it to feel like much more than a puzzle, but for the people I knew who liked puzzles, it could be an interesting thing to show them. In all, it was an effect I liked, but didn’t love.

Then, right around the beginning of 2018, I got an email from Nico Ruiz about a trick he does with his 6-year old daughter, Kala.

Here is part of his email:

As I told you, the trick is done by my daughter. She tells the story of a little witch who lived in the forest away from the village, but when she left, some lumberjacks from the village went into her house to eat and steal her precious sweets, so she made a curse: Everyone who entered her house in her absence would automatically find themselves outside, by magic. So she shows a drawing of her house and asks the spectator to hold the door of the house on the inside, hold it very tightly. And depending on the moment, she covers the drawing with a handkerchief or asks them to close their eyes, and instantly the spectator is holding the door on the outside. The truth is that she has a lot of fun doing this trick dressed in her witch hat.

Here’s the little witch herself.

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When I got the email I thought, “Oh, that’s cute.” But I didn’t really put that much thought into it.

A few weeks ago I decided this might be something fun to try for myself. I’d scribble a little picture and throw it in my wallet. Then I could tell people about this story my niece made up about a witch and a house and some lumberjacks and a curse. And then I’d pull the picture out and say she drew it the other day and she says it’s the house from the story.

“I didn’t think the picture was very good. And I was going to tell her to work on a few more revisions to have her get it to the point where it lived up to my high standards. But then I found something interesting about this drawing that made up for the poor artistic skills.”

“So, the way my niece told the story was, the lumberjacks would enter the house, then their eyes would get heavy and close, and when they opened them, they’d find they were on the outside of the house.”

“Here’s the weird thing about this drawing. Right now you’re on the inside of the house. Take a hold of the door with your hand. Now there’s no way for me to turn the paper, and the only way for you to get to the outside of the house, without letting go, would be if you somehow went through this door.”

“Don’t let go, not even for a second. Now let your eyes grow heavy and close, like the lumberjacks in the story. Now open them… and look… somehow you’re on the outside of the house.”

And I performed it like that for a few people and their reactions were much more in line with seeing something magical, rather than just seeing something puzzling.

I think there are two reasons for this.

First, a child’s drawing is something that has some emotional weight to it. Much more-so than a card or a bill. And the idea that maybe a child drew something that has some strange property is inherently more interesting than, “I’m going to fold a playing card and you’ll go from looking at the front to looking at the back.”

Second, there is a very straightforward clarity to the effect with this version. You’re inside the house, then you’re outside the house. The hole in the middle represents a doorway in the picture, emphasizing that this is a door, not just a flap in a bill or card. This strengthens the idea that the only way to get to the other side is to go through the door. When it’s just a flap, that symbolism is lost.

In Neale’s version, the flap is also a picture of a door, but his story that went along with it was too abstract for me. He talks about how in every town there is a white wall with a green door and if you go through the door you’re in a garden and when you come back out your spirit is renewed. What does that mean? I don’t know. I’m not sure any spectator would know either.

Even though it’s just a cosmetic change, I think the simplicity of “inside and outside” really helps cement the effect in the spectators mind. “There was a picture of the inside of a house on one side of a piece of paper and the outside of the house on the other and a little cut-out door in the middle. I was standing on the “inside” side of the paper, holding the door. Then I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I was now on the “outside” side of the paper even though I had never let go.” That sounds like a magic trick, not just a puzzle.

The story that goes along with it is so simple that literally a 6-year old can tell it and understand it. And it helps reinforce where you start and end up. You’re in the witch’s house and then she kicks you out. Simple. As Neale has said, the most important thing is for people to really understand what side they start on. This version makes it 100% clear.

Some final thoughts:

- The trick isn’t mine to teach. You can see Robert Neale teaching it in the Celebration of Sides download here. I don’t do the push-through action he does in that download, I do more of a folding action, like in the clips in the first paragraph. Because I keep the drawing folded and in my wallet, I can fold right along the creases already established in the drawing. I fold it and unfold it when their eyes are closed. I’m not trying to hide that I’m doing something to the drawing. But with them holding onto it, it doesn’t seem like I could be doing something that changes the orientation in any way.

- Here is a pdf of Nico’s house drawing. You can print it double-sided on a piece of paper if you want to try it out. If you’re going to carry it around with you, you should draw your own version. I do mine a little bigger than this.

- I also have a full-size version I put on my refrigerator, just waiting for someone to say, “Hey, why do you have such a cruddy drawing on your refrigerator?”

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- I’ve also done it without out the niece story. I just say it’s an old drawing I once made but there’s something strange about it. I have them hold the door on the “inside” side. Then I have them close their eyes, take a step forward, and turn the other direction. (As if they’ve stepped out of doorway and turned around.) And when the open up their eyes, they’re looking at the side, yet they’ve never let go of the picture.

Thanks to Nico and Kala for sharing their version of the trick.

Gardyloo #77

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Hey-o, I’m back, and as adequate as ever.

The past week wasn’t a vacation. I was putting the finishing touches on Book #2 and writing the next issue of the X-Comm newsletter, which Year 3 supporters will receive later today.

I was also doing some preparation for the next round of focus group testing. Specifically the testing we’re going to do on controls. I was practicing some of the questions we’re going to ask on some non-magician friends, just to make sure things were clear.

I first explained the idea of controls to them in the most basic way. I wanted to see if this is something that laypeople already have an understanding of. Most non-magicians know about forcing a card, but do they understand controls too? So I explained how when you choose a card and it’s returned to the deck, the magician may shuffle it and mix the cards, but it’s possible he still knows where the card is or has controlled it to a specific position. Each of the four people I talked with this about were like, “Yeah, of course.” (And they were all asked this separately, not together.) They didn’t know the term “control,” but the concept was innately understood.

I guess that should have been obvious to me, but I felt I needed to ask anyway.

But here’s why I’m mentioning this. I told them I wanted to show them some ways a card could be returned and lost in the deck. “Some of these are controls, and some aren’t,” I told them. I lied. They were all controls. But with two of the ones I showed them, they were 100% convinced they were not controls. They even laughed at the question, “Do you think I controlled your card that time?”

If that trend holds up when we do the full testing, you’re going to have at least two controls that you can be fully confident are truly fooling. They might not be appropriate for every situation due to some constraints, but you should probably be able to work one or the other into many or most tricks.

The even better news is that they’re both easy.

We’re not doing the testing until the end of November, and I won’t have the write-up on it until well after that, but it’s something to look forward to.

From the Failure Files: Hair Raising

I once thought about making another blog that just talked about all the stuff I’ve tried that didn’t end up working, then I realized that was a dumb idea. But I’ll occasionally post some things that didn’t work here. Maybe you’ll come up with an idea that does work based one of my failed attempts

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This idea involved having someone with long hair push all her hair behind her shoulders, and then pinch a small bit of hair near the front of her scalp and pull it forward so it lay down the front of her chest. So, imagine the blue line here was a small “rat tail” of hair strands.

My thought was I could make the hair levitate using a loop. It’s not the most clever idea I’ve ever had, but I thought it would be an eerily intimate trick because it affected part of the person’s body.

When I first tried it with someone, her hair kind of splayed out along the length of the loop, giving away that something horizontal was lifting it up.

The next two times I tried it, I had them tie a loose knot in their hair, to keep it as one unit. That solved the spreading problem, but both women said I must be using their own hair to make the hair rise. Like they thought I had just snagged a piece of hair and was somehow using that to pull up the rest of their hair. And I couldn’t very well say, “No, no, I’m not using your own hair” because if they reached up to check, they would have found I was using something that might as well have been their own hair.

So that idea is on the scrapheap for now.

Some friends of the site have some recent or upcoming accomplishments that I want to acknowledge.

Justin Flom has a new book of magic for kids coming out on November 13th. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m sure it’s good. It’s not out for another few weeks, but as I write this post, it’s the #2 current best seller in Children’s Magic books on Amazon. Understandably behind the greatest magic book of our time.

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Around the holidays I always get a couple friends asking me what book they should get for their kid about magic. I always just go with the most recent one that’s by someone I know is talented. Kids are drawn to the things that feel of their time. They’re not going to connect to some decrepit old tome talking about thimble magic and foulards. So this year I’m sure I’ll recommend Justin’s book and probably give away a couple copies myself.

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My pal, Toby Halbrooks, is a producer on The Old Man & The Gun, which opens today. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ll be checking it out out next week. It’s getting great reviews.

They’re saying it’s going to be Robert Redford’s last film, but that’s a lie. He and I are working on a remake of the Fat Boys’ movie, Disorderlies.

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And, as I’m thinking of people who won’t get that last reference, I’m reminded of our darling friend, Alice, who was the JAMM Muse for April 2017, where she posed as Dan Harlan.

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Now, I tell every model I meet: “Take your modeling cues from the poses of Dan Harlan. That guy is sexuality personified.”

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Well, Alice had the good sense to listen, and now she’s working with Playboy. You can check her out here.

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You know I’ll post any video of someone destroying The Expert at the Card Table. This time a dog got in on the act. I guess he was all done licking up a puddle of his own shit and vomit and figured this couldn’t be any worse.

Here’s a fun game you can play. Almost every day, Penguin Magic sends out an email promoting some product, old or new. And the subject line is always some quote about the product. Whenever I get one of these emails, I like to pretend that they’re from a plastic surgeon who specializes in penile enlargement surgery, and these quotes are from his patients. And now that I’ve told you about it, you’re going to do it in your head whenever you get one of those emails too. So now you’re stuck with it. Sure, it doesn’t always work. But it’s good for a laugh now and then as long as you’re not some sad sack of shit who takes no joy from life. See the examples below.

Check out these quotes from the satisfied customers of award winning plastic surgeon, Dr. Altinsel’s penile enlargement surgery.

"I will use this wherever I go. I love it, love it, love it." -Ira Gurewitz

"Exceeds expectations. GREAT reactions." -Mitchell Rushing

"People started screaming and yelling" -James Wesley

"Dare I say...perfect" -Reynold Fuentes

"AMAZING. I will be using it for sure!" -Romanos

"It surprised me. It also fooled me." -Max Maven

"Turns adults into children." -Rick Lax

"I will use this for the rest of my life." -Steve Haynes

"A dream come true. I'd have paid triple the price." -Reza Mikhaeil

“A whole new spin on a classic" -Rick Lax

"This is the best I have to offer." -Richard Osterlind

Autumn Music Mix

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Here’s a short mix of some of my favorite music that feels like Autumn to me. I’ve strayed from the theme in some places so it’s not all just wispy vocals and acoustic guitars, although there’s some of that too.

Here I Am by Adam Green and Binki Shapiro

This isn’t just a good autumnal song, it’s a five-star perfect song in my book. It has so many things I love: boy-girl vocals, a counterpoint-esque chorus, and the original version (not the live version below) opens with a gorgeous Beach Boys style harmony featuring overlapping vocals of Binki Shapiro who is amazing (and who is also in the band Little Joy, who was on my summer mix).

Requiem for a Witch by Gloria

Anything with the word “witch” in it is going to seem autumnal. You don’t think of witches on jet skis and shit. Add to that the crisp steel-string acoustic guitar sound and their pretty harmonies and you have a great fall song from my favorite French band.

A New Beginning by Wolfie’s Just Fine

In Friday the 13th, A New Beginning which came out in 1985, there is an extended nude scene with a girl right before the killer stabs her in the eyes with garden shears. Here’s the original death scene (not safe for work—and it’s in French because that’s the only clip I could find).

This song is about a young boy in the mid 80s seeing this and seeing sex and death all mixed up together when he may have had little exposure to either of that before, and the weird mindfuck that was for him.

The video is great. They do a really good job re-enacting the movie.

Yes, Friday the 13th takes place at a summer camp, but it’s still a movie that belongs to the fall and the spooky season..

We Could Walk Together by The Clientele

In a previous post I called The Clientele the greatest autumn band of all time. 95% of their songs would fit on this list. Here is one of their earliest.

Ooh Yah Yah Yah by Sweet Spirit

I love this song, but it doesn’t remind me of fall. However, the video does. I’m a big proponent of renting a house in the woods and staying their with friends for a long weekend once the weather turns cold. After the summer and before skiing/snowboarding season is usually a cheap time to do it. This video reminds me of that sort of thing. Everyone together in a house or sitting around a fire-pit in the chilly night air. That’s my scene.

Monday Morning, Somewhere Central by Ultimate Painting

Ultimate Painting were around for three years and put out three albums and then broke up. In those three albums is a lot of 60s inspired, autumnal music. This is one of my favorites from their album, Dusk.