Free Magic Giveaway - EVP by Alan Rorrison

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Good news:

One of the mainstays of the old Magic Circle Jerk site was giving away magic. I would buy prizes, friends would give me things, magicians, dealers, and artists like Todd Lassen would donate goods for me to give away to lucky readers for winning dumb contests like guessing how much Doug Conn weighs or writing the most disturbing Magic Cafe related erotic fiction. Good wholesome fun for the whole family. 

Well, a friend of the Jerx has donated a brand new, unopened EVP by Alan Rorrison that I am going to give away. If you don't know about EVP, here you go. I think it's a genuinely freaky effect. I'm not sure I would ever perform it, because aren't ghosts super spooky? I'm not sure if I've mentioned that, but I get all scurred when the subject of ghosts come up. They're our dead relatives guys!!! Not something to be the subject of fun magic! So here is how I would probably use this gimmick. I'm pretty sure it can be used this way, but I don't own it so I don't really know. (Scroll down to where it says "Better News" if you just want to know how to win.)

(For this effect and for future reference, all my performance ideas, unless otherwise noted, take place in a casual situation, ideally one-on-one, on a couch, with a female (or whatever you're into), pre-coitus.)

  • Have her think of something and then reveal it using whatever method you like.
  • Say, "Can I tell you a secret? Look, you can't mention this to anyone because it's kind of the foundation of mindreading. I didn't read your mind just then. You read mine. I'm serious. When you thought of the candle, you did it because I sent that thought to your mind and you picked up on. This is how almost all of these types of tricks work. It's nearly impossible to pull a thought from someone's mind because we spend almost every waking moment guarding those thoughts and only letting specific ones out to the world by what we say or do. But at the same time, you're constantly trying to pick up on what other people are thinking. You're scanning everything to try and find out what's really going on behind the eyes of your friends, bosses, lovers, etc. So it's much easier for me to give you something you want rather than take something from you that your natural inclination is to hide. So I send you the thought, 'think of the candle.' You pick up on that and end up thinking of that. Then I tell you what you're thinking... the thought I told you to think. Simple! The only mindreading going on was all done by you. It's actually pretty easy once you get good at being open with your thoughts. That's the hard part on my end; letting down my guard."
  • "But at this point I'm pretty good at it. Especially because we're both here together, in the same room, we can see each other's faces, touch each other, easily hear the tone of each other's voices. And it doesn't hurt that you're naturally so smart and perceptive. That makes it relatively simple to send you my thoughts. What I'm working on now is trying to do it with someone who's not here. And that's next to impossible. Do you want to try it?"
  • Ask her to bring out her phone and pick one of her contacts. Tell her to choose someone she thinks might be good for this. Maybe a relative or a close-friend.
  • Now force something on your spectator (whatever you're set up to reveal via EVP). Or don't force it. Just pull a ceramic turtle off a bookshelf or something. "This is the thought I'll try and send her." 
  • You use your spectator's phone to call her friend. And you have your spectator film this whole thing on your phone.
  • You and your spectator explain what's going on to her friend. You say, "Okay, Suzanne, in a moment I'm going to try and send you a thought. Just try and remember anything you hear. It might sound garbled or might sound a little faint like it's just in the back of your head somewhere. But just be open and try and hear it."
  • You sit there silently for a few moments.
  • "Yeah, I don't have a great feeling about this. Suzanne, do you know what we're thinking of here?"
  • Suzanne says, "It's a turtle."
  • Your friend freaks the fuck out and asks Suzanne how she knew that. 
  • Suzanne says, "What do you mean? I heard him say, 'It's a turtle.'" Your friend says, "He never said that. I swear." Suzanne doesn't believe it. So you say goodbye to Suzanne and have your friend send her the video she's been taking from your phone.
  • Your friend's mind is blown. Perhaps half-way across the country Suzanne is now getting the video on her phone that shows the conversation and shows you sitting with your eyes and mouth closed at the exact moment she would have sworn you had said, "It's a turtle." Her mind is now blown too.
  • You've made a great impression on your friend and someone very close to her.
  • Coitus.

Better News

My grandma is deathly ill and I've been given power of attorney over her finances. This old bag is loaded, and I just cleared out her account. 28 million dollars. Finally... FINALLY... I have the money I need to produce my magnum opus: The Magic Cafe: The Movie. It's going to be amazing. It's going to document the formative years of the cafe. I have got some inside dirt on it, and it's just the most amazing story. It's all drugs and violence and fucking and sucking -- every sick twisted thing you can imagine. Not only that but I'm investing a ton of money into a smell-o-vision technology for the film. Whenever Steve Brooks is fucking on screen (and in my first draft this happens 16 times), the theater will be infused with what an insider has told me is a true-to-life scent for this scenario. (We're mimicking it by pumping in the smell from a vat of rotten Moo-Shu Pork.)

Here's where I need your help, and here's how you win the EVP. I'd like your thoughts on casting. Here is the Cafe staff circa 2003. These are the roles we need to cast. So what I need from you is to suggest what actors should play those roles. Send your casting suggestions to me in an email. You can make a suggestion for one staff member or for all of them. I will be taking submissions until June 10th. If I use one of your suggestions you will receive an entry to win the EVP. So the more suggestions you make, the better chance you have. I am not limiting this to well-known actors, but if you have an unknown, make sure you link me to his IMDB page or something so I know who you're talking about.

Have fun.

This Really Burns My Ass

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Listen, I get it that independent invention happens, and that when people fail to do their due diligence they often end up releasing something that someone else has been doing for ages, but I don't think that's what happened here. I think I've been straight-up ripped off.

Andi Gladwin alerted me to this effect that Dominique Duvivier has tried to claim as his own.

Uhm... excuse me?

Dominique, you know this is mine. Oh my god... I'm so fucking frustrated I can hardly write this post. 

Sorry, It's just that I'm kind of known for this effect. I've spent years perfecting it. This is such a powerful effect. It really gets the audience to sit-up and take notice. 

I was working with Dan and Dave and the guys from Brazzers to come up with a whole limited edition set devoted to this. But now it's like, why even bother? Not that I think Dominique has even come close to examining this plot the way I have.

A lot of people think it's just a one-on-one effect, or only good for a webcam or something, but I have versions I do for 500 people (in my Tijuana stage show).

I can do it impromptu. People often ask of a trick, "Can you do that naked on a beach?" Uhm, yeah, I can. It's probably easier that way to be honest. 

It packs small but plays big.

I have a great presentation for Christian magicians about how you have to relax and just allow the Holy Spirit to get inside you; don't fight it.

This is what Michael Close would call a "worker," what Greg Wilson would refer to as my "1000 timer."

I even have a version where the spectator gets to become the magician.

I know a guy who got a tv special just by performing this for the head of the network. (And taking pictures and threatening to send them to his wife.)

Sometimes I combine it with an Axtell bird arm illusion for a fun bit of puppetry.

It's probably the best opener there is.

Okay, that's it, I'm not going to let this blatant act of thievery prevent me from performing my signature trick. I will release this, and you guys are going to love it. It gets the best reactions. Sometimes it gets screams, but other times it just gets stunned silence. But either way, the look of surprise on people's faces is priceless. 

My Disclaimer

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I don't follow these sorts of things too closely, but apparently a magician went up against a dog in Britain to see who was the most talented or something? Well, the dog won. And now he gets a vote in parliament, if I'm understanding things correctly? (Black Mirror, season 3)

Meanwhile the magician did the bill in lemon and got busted for the big gaping hole in his lemon. That's too bad. However, I applaud him for using such a unique, personal piece as bill in lemon in order to try and win this huge competition. What a bold, brave decision. What says creative and original more than putting a bill in a lemon? And talk about emotionally resonant for the audience! We don't perform the bill in lemon because it's easy to jab a bill in a lemon and there are a bunch of jokes floating around for the effect and it's a guaranteed way to burn 10 minutes. We perform it because of how the audience connects to it. What person hasn't held a $100 bill and secretly wished it was in some citrus fruit instead? That's one of those desires that is almost instinctive. You see it pop up in every culture. And that's why we perform that completely non-arbitrary effect.

But I have to be honest, I'm a little afraid that once the stage-show I'm working on goes up that people are going to see me make a bill appear in a lemon and then think I'm a true sorcerer. Not to mention what they'll think after I make the egg disappear and reappear in the bag. I can just see them now, "Excuse me, all-powerful one, can you remove the egg that is the tumor from the bag that is my husband's lungs?" This is the curse of being such an amazingly convincing magician or mentalist. 

So I'm working on what my disclaimer will be to open my show. Below you can listen to part of my rehearsal that I recorded today to give you a sense of the disclaimer as it stands now. I just really hope it's enough to counteract the power of my amazing performance.

The Ones That (Almost) Got Away

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Here are some other things I'm sad to have missed talking about while I was gone.

Paul Harris' True Astonishments set. The effects, like in all of Paul's work, ranged from the brilliant to the "wait...what?" But the set was worth $300 if just to watch Bro Gilbert perform. His low-key, engaged style worked very well in the context of this DVD set. But for me it was also a small piece of the puzzle in regards to the evolution of performing informal magic. But more on that another day. The genuine, delighted reactions you see in the trailer are a tonic for your weary soul.

Rus Andrews' "effect" The Changeling. I love when people lie on the Cafe. If Steve Brooks puts together a coffee table book composed of threads of people claiming to have created effects that they hadn't, I would be first in line to buy it. That's my favorite kind of horseshit. A couple of years ago, Rus Andrews made a post saying that he was a few days away from releasing his new effect, The Changeling. It smelled fishy immediately. In the effect a spectator would take a joker, examine it, and put it in their pocket, then they would think of a card, remove the joker from their pocket and it would have changed into that card. Rus didn't claim that that's what the spectator would remember, but in fact that that's what would happen. After further questioning, Rus claimed that what you would get is a psychological force of a card that was 90+% accurate (and all it involved was asking the spectator to think of a number then think of a suit, if the demo he posted was to be believed) and a gimmicked card that he had created that could be examined by the spectator, placed in their pocket where it would change to another card, and then be removed and examined again.

I'm not sure what reaction he was hoping to receive from the announcement that he had created this effect, but I don't think it was the one he got which was, "No. No you didn't." After being called out by many, he had some of his friends come in to claim that they had seen the effect, knew how it worked, and it was legit. Unfortunately, he didn't coach up his friends enough regarding what to say, so all their claims contradicted each other and the thread turned into a true clusterfuck. In the end, the thread got deleted and Rus punished the non-believers by never releasing this effect that never existed in the first place.

Patrick Redford's cameo in the Max Maven Penguin Live Lecture. Look, it's not fun to make fun of dumb people. That's for bullies. But when an intelligent person does something dumb, that actually IS a ton of fun. I know Patrick Redford isn't an idiot because I've seen his work and I'm a fan of it. But in Max's Penguin lecture he exhibited a tremendous brain fart or blind spot in rational thinking. I don't know what was going on. Patrick was thinking of a rose, and Max was trying to guess what he was thinking of and asked, "Is it an animal, vegetable, or mineral?" The standard 20-questions question. Patrick not only didn't say "vegetable" the first time around. If I'm not mistaken, that wasn't even his second choice. To him a rose was more mineral or animal than vegetable. I wish I could have been in his head to watch his thought process play out. I'm sure it was amazing.

Nothing to Hide on Broadway with Derek DelGaudio and Helder Guimaraes. This show was praised so highly during it's run on both coasts that there's little point in me saying, "Oh yeah, I liked that too." But I did really like it. I only wish I hadn't read the long articles about the show in the magic magazines because I would have preferred to have been caught more off guard by what I saw. It is not the show I would write if I was writing a stage magic show (oh, and I will, mark my words). But it was about as great as a card magic stage show could be. It was just a perfect thing in its way. You know how some things are just perfect? Like the sound of Eugene Burger's voice calling you a "sassy little rascal." Or the sight of Steve Brooks so intently focused on gleefully licking a triple-scoop ice-cream cone that he's not paying attention as he walks down the sidewalk and he trips and falls into a row of parked motorcycles, knocking them down like dominos. Nothing to Hide was perfect like that.

Jim Callahan on Phenomenon. 

NOW do you share my fear of spooky ghosties???? They inhabit your body and turn you into the world's shittiest actor. It's a good thing no one watched or remembers this show or we'd still be trying to live this down.

Also, is a car a "rectangle"? Metal, rectangle, 4 wheels. That seems like a needlessly complicated way to describe a toy car. I would have said "Toy Car." Or "Car." Was the ghost playing Password? Or the $25,000 Pyramid? What I mean is, could he not say the word car? Is that what was going on? Like, he understood the concept of "metal" and "wheels," but not cars? Or was he just being super cautious because he didn't want to be wrong? Like, "Look, I see a metal rectangle with 4 wheels. That could be a zillion things. Like one of those... I don't know... like a fucking metal couch thing with wheels for moving it into different rooms or something? Who can say. Quit bothering me when I'm ghosting."

Wait... wait!!! I think the ghost is getting ready to speak through me! I'm losing control of my fingerdsasfgh----------

bɒɘʜɘlʞɔunʞ ɘlǫnɒƚɔɘɿ ʜƨɘlʇ

Aw, dammit. That's just a bunch of nonsense. Oh well. Wait! Let me get a mirror.

Okay, it says Flesh Rectangle. Well, that's obviously a person. Because that's what a person is. A flesh rectangle. Flesh Rectangle Knucklehead. Huh. Oh! The ghost is saying hi to Jim Callahan. Thoughtful lil' ghostie.

Actually I just re-watched this video and pretended he was on the toilet the whole time and it's much more entertaining. Can someone with some video editing skills put him on a toilet and add a bunch of fart sounds to this? You'd be doing the lord's work.

New Feature

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So a lot of people are accusing me of being Jon Hamm because my old site ended just before Mad Men started filming and my new site came on-line just after it ended, and because my writing oozes raw sexuality. I'm not going to come straight out and confirm this because it's really not the way I wanted this all to come to light. I mean... I don't know... can we just drop it? Let's just move on.

When Michael Close used to do the reviews in Magic magazine, he had a section called, It's Not Magic, But... This was a section for him to talk about things that he enjoyed that were off the topic of magic. When Steve Brooks started his site, he came up with a really cool and wholly original name for his off-topic forum: Not Very Magical, Still....

Inspired by that originality, the name for my off-topic post feature is: There Are Those Things We Would Categorize, However Loosely, As Magic Related, And Then There Are Those Things That Would Land Outside Of That Designation. These Things That Follow Will Fall Into The Latter Category, However...

If you have Netflix, one of your friends has probably pestered you to watch Black Mirror, a kind of modern Twilight Zone(esque) series out of Britain. Your friend is right, It is a good show. (And if you like it, try and see the movie Ex Machina which feels like a lost Black Mirror episode). But it also tries to be a bit highfalutin. And I'm not highfalutin. I'm straight-up Piper Smurf (low flutin').

So my recommendation for the best anthology series on Netflix is Darknet, which is geared less towards the snobs and more towards the slobs like you and me. If you like horror, EC Comics, urban legends, or things like that, you'll like the show. It doesn't try to "make you think" like Black Mirror does, it just tries to scare you or gross you out. But if you feel dirty slumming it with the riffraff, then just say to yourself at the end of each episode, "They make a good point. These technologies that are meant to bring us together often just push us further apart." And then it will be like you're watching something smart.

When To Pull the Trigger On That Magic Purchase

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I try to live my life, as much as possible, by heuristics. I'm not sure if that's the right word, because I'm not quite sure I understand what the word means, but the sense I use it in is, like, rules of thumb, or a personal programming for my brain to process all the decisions that I really don't want to devote time to analyzing each time they come up. 

For example, I'm a big music lover. I have 3578 albums in my iTunes and that number grows each week. I also live in New York City where there are easily 3 or 4 concerts every week that I'm interested in seeing. Part of me wants to see all of those shows. Part of me doesn't want to leave the apartment. I used to spend some of my precious brain-time debating whether I should see each individual show or not. But then I came up with a simple heuristic. Some shows are can't-miss shows, and there's no debate about them. For everything else I ask: Do I have more than two albums by this artist and have I never seen them in concert before? If the answers to both of those questions are "yes," then I go see them. This is boring, I know, but I'm trying to make a point.

The problem with being smart is you spend too much time thinking. Oh, how I wish I was dumb. I pray for adult-onset muttonheadism. When you're smart you try to optimize every decision. When you're dumb you just react to your environment like a fucking scallop. Having a bunch of heuristics you live by -- and I have 100s -- brings you closer to that scallop non-mentality.

I only want to think about 4 things:

  • The people I love
  • Creative ideas
  • Women
  • Things and activities that give me pleasure (This could conceivably include the other three.)

Everything else, from mundane things like laundry and dish-washing, to important things like money and health, I try to automate (either in reality or at least in my mind).

So, with all that established, I end up having a number of magic heuristics too. The one I want to discuss today is the rule I use for when to buy a magic item. Since I adopted this a couple years ago I have had no regrets on my magic purchases. It's a simple algorithm that is customized to you and the item you want to buy. If you use this you will save a ton of money and garner more happiness from the money you do spend. You won't end up using this, of course. I'm just saying that if you did, that's what would happen.

First, we need to establish what your impulse price point is. How much can you waste on a magic purchase and not have it bother you? If you wasted $1000 on something, that might eat at you for a few weeks. If you blew $50 on a magic product, that might bother you for a day or so. But if we keep ratcheting down, eventually we come to an amount that you could spend and if it was a waste you would just say, "Oh well," and move on rather quickly. Maybe that's $1, $2, $5, $10, or $20. It could be anything. It all depends on your financial situation and your temperament towards money. So decide what that price would be for you.

Now, the formula is simply this: Divide the cost of the item you want to buy by your impulse price point. That is how many days you need to wait after the first real review comes out for you to order the item. So if you want to buy a $35 trick, and your impulse price point is $5, then you would need to wait 7 days after the first real review to order the trick (35/5 = 7). 

A "real" review comes from someone who paid for the item. Reviews don't come from friends of the person who is releasing the product (that's just mutual backscratching). Reviews don't come from people who own magic shops (those are commercials). 

During the time you're waiting, one of these things will happen. All of them are better than if you just bought the item when it was first released.

-- You'll lose interest in the item.

-- The reviews will begin to pour in showing the item is a piece of junk; or that it only works from one angle in dark, noisy environments; or that you have to wear a vest over a winter coat to do it; or something else that turns you off from the product.

-- It will come up for sale second-hand.

-- Or, on rare occasions, it will get good reviews and the praise will grow over time and you'll wait a couple weeks or months before you finally end up buying it. This may seem like a failure of the system, but really this is the best possible outcome. You get the effect/book/dvd and you get the bonus of anticipation, an emotion that is in short-supply in adult life. 

Please refer to this as The Jerx Purchasing Principle and use that term liberally in threads on the Cafe if you want to get on their watch-list. For example, something like,  "Not only do I not do pre-orders, I always apply The Jerx Purchasing Principle to every item I buy. It has saved me a fortune! I really appreciate him for coming up with it. And so does my pocketbook! Uhm, I mean my wallet, of course. I'm no sissy. You believe me, guys, don't you? Please... PLEASE! I beg of you... don't tell my wife. Things are going so well. We just got a tandem bike. Aw jeez.... what have I done now. It was just a gag. A gag, I tell you! I don't carry a pocketbook. And I don't wear lipstick. And I didn't spent 40 minutes trying to get a tampon in my urethra last night either, if that's what you're thinking." Or words to that effect.