The Dr. Phil Deck

Things you need to know to understand this post.

1. Dr. Phil - He is a television psychologist here in America (and undoubtedly in other parts of the world as well) who likes to build people up or break people down. 

2. The Phil Deck - In the traditional version of this trick, you ask your spectator to think of a card and you say that you're going to name it. They think of a card and you say, "I'm going to name your card... it's Phil!" This is greeted with incredibly mild amusement. You then ask them to tell you what card they were thinking of. They say, for example, the three of diamonds. You say, "Yup, that's Phil." Then you pull out the deck and show them that the cards all have a different name on the back. And on the back of the three of diamonds, it says "Phil." 

It's a fun enough trick. Not earth-shattering, but decent. But the nice part of the Phil deck is that you can have whatever you want appear on the card they name. You can buy "blank" Phil decks and customize them. I've found most of the customization ideas somewhat underwhelming -- often it involves having numbers on the backs of the cards (instead of names) or putting a company name on the back for corporate work. I don't know, that's all fine, it's just not my scene.

I've probably bought a dozen blank Phil Decks in my life and have used them for a few different purposes. This post will cover one of those ways and I'll mention another one (probably my favorite one) in next Tuesday's post. I don't know how useful they'll be to others, but there's definitely something valuable in the idea that these decks can be used for something other than just having the punchline of the trick on the back of the cards.

The Dr. Phil Deck

Like Dr. Phil himself, this moment (it's not exactly a trick) can be used to build people up or tear them down. I generally only perform for people I like so I've only used it for the former, but I'll describe both ways. 

Build Them Up

Imagine you have a friend who's dealing with some upheaval in her life. A divorce, break-up, loss of a job, whatever. You've invited her over to watch a movie and order dinner and maybe take her mind off things for a few hours. She notices a book on your coffee-table. Something like the one below that you can pick up off Amazon for a few bucks used.

Maybe she thinks this is a little unusual for you because you normally don't go for this type of nonsense. You explain that it's just an offshoot of your interest in playing cards and you thought it would be a good idea to know what the meaning of each card supposedly is. "I don't really believe in the cards' ability to predict the future. But I do think there may be some validity to the idea that certain types of people gravitate towards certain cards, and you may be able to get some insight into yourself by knowing what the meaning of a card you're drawn to is." You pull out a deck of cards that you've created as "flash cards" for yourself in order to help you memorize the personality traits associated with each card. You spread through and show her how each one has a few words or sentences on the back with some personality traits. Then you pull out the Ace of Spades and the Queen of Hearts. "If you ask someone to think of all the cards in the deck: Ace thru King, clubs, hearts, spades or diamonds. And to let their mind scan thru all the cards and eventually settle on one, then you will have some understanding into who they are as a person. It's not magic. It's just an unconscious preference for certain things by different types of people. Which just makes sense. The numbers, letters, and symbols of a deck of cards aren't meaningless, so of course different types of people will be drawn to different cards in a manner that's not completely random. Like if you went through the visualization process and settled on the Ace of Spades, it would suggest that you are," you turn the card over and written on the back it says:

You are generally good natured but are easily manipulated and lack creativity. 

"So that's probably not the most flattering one," you say. "And if you named the Queen of Hearts it would suggest," you read the words off the back, "That 'You have a great capacity for love and a big heart, but often immature notions of what a relationship entails.' And that's because a lot of young girls tend to think of the Queen of Hearts, so you can see why that would be accurate."

You spread through the cards and show her other message that discuss people's work ethic, the way they handle finances, their tendency towards laziness and so on and so on.

"Let's try it with you," you say. "Imagine all the cards in a deck of cards spread out in front of you. Try to see all of them in your mind. The number cards, letter cards, clubs, hearts, spades and diamonds. Some of them might be visually appealing, but it's better to let yourself be drawn to one seemingly at random. Can you picture the cards in front of you? Okay. Now let all of them fade away except one. Which one are you left with?"

"The five of diamonds," she says.

"Okay, let's see what that means." You spread through the deck and pull out the 5 of diamonds and turn it over. It reads:

You underestimate your ability to deal with change. You have vast reserves of strength that will get you through times of turmoil. 

---

So what have you done here? You haven't done a trick. You haven't told someone their fortune. You've just told them something about themselves that might be useful to remember in a particularly trying time.

I've performed this twice in my life for two different people and both got somewhat emotional and said almost identical remarks. Something along the lines of, "That is exactly what I needed to hear right now." 

B-b-b-b-but Andy, you've always said you don't like when magicians or mentalists play things as real. Aren't you playing this as real? Isn't this being manipulative?

Here's what I don't like. I don't like when people try to make others believe they have a power they don't really have. What I mean is, I don't like magicians who want others to walk away from their performance believing something untrue. I think that's bad for the spectator, bad for magicians, and bad for the art of magic. 

This, however, is not a magic trick. It is a way of you sneakily introducing just what someone might need to be reminded of at a vulnerable time in their life. And shining a spotlight on that message in a way which might allow it to be accepted more than it would if you were just to offer it as some advice.

This isn't like trying to justify being a fake psychic by saying, "Well, I make people feel better." That's just a bullshit rationalization. You're not taking money for this. You're not invoking some phony power. And you're not lying.

I can comfortably say you're not lying because what's written on that card is true of essentially everyone. Are you in the midst of some upheaval in your life that feels overwhelming? I promise you that you are underestimating your ability to deal with that change and that you have vast reserves of strength that will get you through this time. 

We may need to be reminded of it from time to time, but that's just a statement that's true of the human animal. It's essentially a self-fulfilling belief. You might say, "Oh no, not me, I'm bad with change." But look, if 99.99% of the population, including everyone you know and love, died in a zombie outbreak, within two days you would be doing a fucking shoulder roll out from behind a parked car to blast some zombie's head off. You have the capacity to adapt to change, you just don't like to because it's a pain in the ass. I get that.

You can put some other positive message on the backs, of course. Just try to make it something that A) is true, and B) protects or enhances the other person's self esteem. (That should generally be your goal with any interaction with someone you care about.)

Tear Them Down

Of course, this can be used for the opposite purpose as well. In fact, I'm sure this idea will be much more popular than the previous one.

You're performing magic, maybe at a party with friends, or even in a professional walk-around situation. Some guy is being a total cocksucker and annoying you and everyone else. You've put up with him for a while but now you've had enough.

"You're a lot of fun," you say to the a-hole. "Can I try something with you real quick? I've been studying some psychological research that says people's choice of playing card says a lot about them. This isn't like fortune telling or something. Essentially they reverse engineered it by interviewing 1000s of people, asking them to name any card in the deck, and then they seeing what the people who named those cards tended to have in common."

You pull out a deck with phrases on the back of each card. 

"I've actually been conducting the test myself in an unofficial way and it's astounding how accurate this is. I don't want to influence you by showing you the front of these cards just yet, but for example, people who named this card tended to be entrepreneurs, people who named this card tend to excel with languages, people who named this card were generally children of divorce." The cards indicate these qualities with definitive statements and the percentage likelihood of this being true based on the study.

For example, those three cards would read:

96% - You are an entrepreneur
99% - You are good with languages
98% - You are a child of divorce

You continue to spread and show all the different traits that the cards might indicate. Most are positive or neutral.

"So, just for fun, name the first card that comes to your mind? The Queen of Clubs? Okay, let's see... Oh this is interesting, and pretty specific." You turn it over and it reads:

100% - Your dog's butthole smells like your cock

"It's consensual, though, right? I mean, I'm not sure if it's defensible either way. But I truly hope you're not forcing yourself on him. Or are you just rubbing up against it without actual penetration? I guess that's better..."

Okay, so it doesn't need to be that crude (although that's probably how I would do it). It could say something like, "100% - The last time someone referred to you when you weren't in the room it was as, 'That idiot.'" Or, "100% - You are the most dispensable one in your circle of friends. Deep down, you know this." Or simply, "100% - You are not exceptional in any way."

Again, this is not really a trick. Is it a heckler stopper? Kind of. I mean, if you consider making someone cry or instigating a fistfight to be stopping them from heckling, then it definitely is. 

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Tuesday: Like the indians did with the buffalo, we're going to butcher up the Phil Deck and use every part of it. It will serve as an emotional hook, presentation, method, misdirection, and surprise ending for a trick called The Mad Lib Ploy.

Field Report: Beginner's Magic

"I want to learn magic!" she says. Which usually means, "I would like to immediately have the knowledge and skill to do the cool, fun stuff you've shown me after you've practiced magic 20+ years. What I don't want to do is have to trudge my way through the dull, boring things and practice to actually learn this stuff."

It was my girlfriend, Lynn's, birthday and since she had shown an interest in learning magic I had planned this moment for her.

She opens up one of her presents and it's a beginner's magic book. "That one looks pretty good," I say. "It comes with a DVD which will probably make things easier to learn."

Later that evening we are laying together, flipping through the book. "Oh, that's a good trick," I say. "Let me try it for you."

I ask her to pick a card. She slides out one card, the ace of diamonds, and slides it back into the deck. I ask her to shuffle the deck. She hands it back to me. "Now watch this," I say. I cut the cards numerous times, each time reciting a letter to go along with the cut. "H-A-P-P-Y-B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y. Now, you had a free choice of any card in the deck, and you shuffled it back into the deck, correct? All I did was spell "Happy Birthday" and we landed on one card, your card, the four of spades," I say, flipping the card over. 

"That wasn't it," she says.

"Ok... Oh, it's the one after the last letter. Sorry. Your card... the eight of spades?"

"No," she says.

I fan through the cards. "Huh.... well... whatever, when you learn the trick you'll have to show it to me because I guess I forgot it." We turn on the tv and watch for a few moments.

"Sorry," I say, "this is driving me crazy." I flip through the magic book and start reading and say under my breath, "But that's exactly what I did." I pause a moment. "Would it be okay if I watched the explanation off the DVD? If I don't it's going to bug me all night." She says that of course it's okay and I take the DVD and pop it into my laptop. I cue it up to the right segment and start watching the explanation with her.

The magician/author on the screen says, "At this point the selected card should be seventh from the top." He executes a series of cuts and says, "And that will bring their selection to the top of the deck. In this case, the king of clubs."

"Of course, the king of clubs wasn't your selection, was it Lynn?" the guy on the DVD asks my girlfriend. 

"Oh my god," she says.

"No," the magician says, "I think this was your card." He gives the King a flick and it turns into the Ace of Diamonds. "Happy Birthday, Lynn."

She sets the laptop aside and climbs on top of me and grabs my collar in mock anger. "I knew it!" she says. 

"Knew what?" I ask. "That the author of that magic book would make a special video for you where he changed a card into the card you freely picked earlier?"

She sighs. "No... I didn't know that. I just knew something was up. You wouldn't mess up my birthday trick."

"Good point," I say.

She leans down so our noses almost touch. "Tell me," she growls.

"Tell you what?"

"How he knew my card!" she whimpers.

"Oh," I say, "it's in the book."

It wasn't in the book. It was a one-way force deck with some indifferent cards thrown is as convincers. But I knew it would get her to read the book more carefully.

How did I do it?

Well, the first thing you need to do is write a somewhat popular magic blog and garner a few fans, one of whom should be a latent beginner's magic book author who is a good enough guy to be generous with his time for someone he doesn't know. This guy should be a Joshua Jay type. For me it was, in fact, Joshua Jay.

Then, five years after you shut down your blog you should email this guy and say, "Hey, I plan on getting my girlfriend one of your books for her birthday. Would you mind shooting a video and emailing me the file so I can use it as part of the gift?" Once you get the file you just have it on your computer and act like you're playing the DVD, but really you're just firing up the file that was sent to you. Presto. 

Am I a Pretender or an Addict?

I got this intriguing email from Daniel Madison a few days ago.

Oooohhhh... what a juicy little question. Am I a pretender or an addict? You know, the embarrassing thing is... I've never even thought to ask myself that! Talk about the unexamined life not being worth living.

Well I thought I owed it to myself to really dig deep and find out. You know, considering it is Cheat Week and all. (Cheat Week is when we go down to the docks and operate the business end of a glory-hole. Wait... no... that's Fleet Week. Cheat Week is... hold on... I have no idea. Let me find out. Oh... got it... it's some uninspired Ellusionist promo.)

Okay, now... I think I may be a Pretender. I've acquired my skills "for entertainment, not survival." Although there was that one time, while traveling through darkest Africa, when I bashed that guy's skull in with one of those wooden ducks that finds a card from Collectors Workshop. Of course, it turned out that the guy I killed was my interpreter and traveling partner, Obatku, and not a spooky ghosty or a bear as I had thought in the moment, so it's questionable how much I needed to kill him for my "survival." In retrospect, when he screamed, "Andrew, it's me, Obatku, please stop beating me with that duck!" I should have taken a step back and reassessed the situation. But as it was happening I just thought, "Fuck no. This bear can talk and imitate people? That's the most dangerous creature in the world. This ends now!"

So, perhaps I'm actually an "addict."

Let's look at these criteria again:

• They McMillan switch their credit card for yours.
• They haven't picked-up a tab in years, and they probably won't EVER.
• Cheating consumes their life,
• and their only real friends [are] the court cards. 

Well... I'm enough of an "addict" to know it's actually the MacMillan switch. So I guess that's a point in my favor. But can you imagine what a badass you would be to switch out your credit card for someone else's! I can see myself doing that. Like my buddy puts his credit card down to pay for dinner and I -- super nonchalantly -- just MacMillan switch in my own credit card! Hahaha, the sucker! Oh, fuck... wait... now that means I'm paying for dinner. Waitress! Come back! What the fuck did I just do? Why would I ever switch in my credit card. That's something only a moron would do...

Wait.

Ohhh... I see now. Is "addict" some kind of code word for having an intellectual disability? I mean, if you met someone and they're like, "This is our son Petey. Look out, because Petey will switch in his credit card for yours. He's been racking up a hell of a credit card bill this way, which he is in no position to pay off. In fact he hasn't picked up a tab in years, and probably won't EVER. How could he? He's essentially unemployable. Pick up a tab? He's 34 and wears a diaper and you want him to buy your club sandwich, you creep? Look at him. His only friends are the court cards. If that's not the most depressing thing you've heard in your life, you don't have a heart. Excuse me... what's that, sweetie? The Jack of Clubs wants to look at trucks out the window? Okay, darling, you two go do that."

What are some other indications of being an "addict"? Your walls are smeared with feces? You don't know your multiplication tables?

Of course, Daniel Madison, who is incredible with a deck of cards and has some brilliant ideas, is the perfect person to differentiate between a "pretender" and a real cheating "addict." He has been pretending to be a card cheat since he arrived on the scene in magic. He has a whole goofball origin story of how he used to be a crooked underground gambler until he was nearly beaten to death after he was caught cheating, which led him to take up magic. The story is ridiculous and blatantly untrue (although Magic Magazine did, embarrassingly, write a profile on him where they reported it as if it was completely credible). I mean, I have no doubt he got the shit kicked out of him early and often, but that goes for 90% of you in magic. However, "The boys at school stuck my head in the toilet, gave me a swirlie, and now my only friends are the court cards," doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Daniel had enough esthetic sense to not want to be associated with magic so he made up the story of magic being his fallback. I understand why he did it, but unfortunately he couldn't really keep his story straight and the timeline was in no way believable. (It was essentially, "I sprouted my first pube, and then I became an underground gambling legend.") I completely get why he didn't want to come out originally as just a guy who was really into magic. But I think we're approaching a tipping point in magic's perception. Not where it's cool, but where it's not inherently uncool. And I think Daniel Madison, with his skill and style, could help in that transition if he wasn't so apologetic about why he's in magic in the first place. So come clean, Daniel. Join us. Become a pretender. Embrace it.

Whiskeys up!

Oh, and before I end this post commenting on an email ad I received, I'd like to quickly mention another one. Did anyone else get this sick email?

Uhmmm... okay.... I admit I didn't read this super carefully, but it appears that Vanishing Inc is planning on selling Andi's baby and Josh's wife? Or maybe raffling them off as some sort of promo? This is some sick, twisted shit. I'm sorry... I like to have fun on this site, but sponsoring white-slavery in order to push a few more copies of Blomberg Laboratories, or whatever, is simply not acceptable to me. Sorry, Vanishing Inc, but this demented little promotion gets a big "No Thanks" from the Jerx.

100

This site has now been running with daily posts for 100 straight days. You all owe me big time.

People often email me asking what my plan is with the site and if I'm going to keep posting on this schedule. When I started this site I had a backlog of 80 topics I wanted to get to. It is now 100 days later and I have a backlog of 126 topics. The site itself is kind of self-perpetuating. I'm always finding something new to write about in magic and I every time I write up an effect or presentation I think of two new ones. So you can expect daily posts to continue for as long as I have the time to write this site. (It's time, not content, that will be in short supply eventually. Unless Ellusionist or somebody wises up and hires me on full-time as a blogger to create content for their site. I can do it, Brad Christian! We'll invert the colors on this site, making it mostly black. And put some cool skulls over the cats faces. And I'll be the guy at the beginning of demos to say stuff like, "Hi, I'm the Jerx, and this... is Cum-Stain," and then I'll kind of cover the lens with the palm of my hand as if I just don't give a shit, cause I'm a total badass. Of course for this specific example you'll need a trick called Cum-Stain. Maybe a trick where you slide a cum-stain around on your shirt or something? And then you slide it off your shirt and onto your spectator's shirt. And then she slaps the shit out of you? I'm just spitballing here. Wait, wait... "I'm the Jerx, and this... is Spitball." See? I'm a natural.)

Okay everyone, see you at 101.

The Baby Who Knows

Effect

Your friend's unborn baby is clairvoyant.

Imagine

I'm visiting my friend Rebekka who is pregnant with her second child. 

"This is one of the oldest tests there is for psychic powers," I say. I give her a die and a little plastic canister and ask her to hold both behind her back. I tell her to roll the die around in the palm of her hand a little and then to put it in the canister and cap it. I ask her to hand the canister to me and I slide it into another plastic canister and set the whole thing on the table. 

"That die is now inside an plastic canister, which is inside another plastic canister. In the field of psychic research this is what's known as a "double blind" test." [Yes, of course I know it's not, but that's never stopped me.] "Imagine we opened the larger container and removed the smaller container, and then we opened the smaller container and looked down on the die inside there. Some number will be pointed up at us, yes?" She agrees. "Do you know what number that would be?" She says she doesn't. "Right, because you did it randomly. And if you don't know what it is, then I surely can't know what it is. And there's no way to tell by looking at the canister is there?" She picks it up and examines it and shakes her head.

"If someone in this room was psychic they could know what it is, but I'm not, and you're not." I pause for a little bit. "But maybe she is," I say, pointing to her stomach. 

"I can't wait to see where this is going," she says.

"Many people believe it's possible that unborn children are able to perceive and pick up on things that they can't after they leave the womb. But it's almost impossible to test because they don't understand language so we can't communicate with them in that way. But we're going to try and see if we can get her to tell us how many spots are pointing up on the die inside this canister. Are you ready to try?"

She says she is. 

I ask her to hold onto the canister between both hands. "I can't just ask your kid to answer the question. No one can. At least not with language. But there are those who believe you can with your thoughts. Let's try it. I want you to close your eyes. Now picture the canister you hold in your hand. I want you to see it sharp and focused in your mind. Now picture opening it up and removing the smaller canister. Still keep it a sharp image until I tell you otherwise. Now imagine popping the top off the smaller canister but don't look inside yet. So take off the cap in your imagination, keeping everything in focus. In a moment I want you to imagine looking into the canister, but when you do I want you to imagine that what you see is unclear and unfocused and kind of hazy, like a dream, okay? Okay, look in the canister and I want you to see a blank white cube. And there are black spots floating above it. They are fading in and out. Sometimes one dot, sometimes two, all the way up to six. Do you see that? Okay. In a moment I want you to take that image that you're picturing and I want you to imagine pushing it towards the back of your brain and down your spinal cord. Almost like you're swallowing that image in your mind. And when you're done I want you to open you eyes." After a second she opens her eyes. 

I ask her for the canister and hold it in my right hand between my thumb and forefinger. I shift myself closer to her and place my left hand gently on her stomach. 

"With your mind, and with visual images, you've painted a clear picture except for one aspect. Now, the idea is that your child may be able to sense that void of information in your thoughts and and answer the question even though you never explicitly asked it. If this works, she's going to tell us how many spots are on top of the die. In a moment you should feel something. I want you to keep your eyes on my hand on your stomach and make sure I'm not moving it. I'm just acting as a bridge from your body to the canister. I'm not going to move at all. You're going to feel something and it might feel like a kick, or maybe like she's waving her arm, or tickling the inside of your stomach, or just a weird sensation of some kind. This is not doing any harm to her at all. Anything she does is because she wants to, because she wants to play with her mom, and answer her mom's question, okay? Now just sit still."

After a few moments my friend's eyes go very wide. "What... was... that!" she says.

"You felt something? Okay let's just wait and see if you feel more."

After a second she starts laughing. "Yes. There it is again." Then a moment later she feels it again. "What on earth is that?" she says.

We sit for a few more moments. "Anything else?" I ask. She shakes her head no. "So how many was that? How many times did you feel it?" She says she felt it three times.

"Okay," I say, "let's take a look." I open the larger canister and dump out the smaller one, then hand it to her. "She indicated "three," yes? Take a look."

My friend opens up the small canister, the die inside shows three spots.

She looks at me. "Andy... what was that? That was so strange. Sweet but strange," she says, her eyes tearing up a little. She squints them at me and gives me an accusing look. Then she smiles, grabs her stomach with both hands and coos, "You did a magic trick, sweetheart!"

Method

I often have the desire to use a method that is not intended for one person, on one person. This is what inspired some of the one-person dual reality effects I've worked on that I've mentioned in the past.

This particular effect was spawned by the idea of doing a trick one-on-one where the method was an instant stooge. Obviously that seems impossible. And I didn't exactly accomplish it, but that was the genesis of the idea.

The method is pretty simple. Obviously the dice part is just Crazy Cube. One of the best $2.50 investments you can make in magic. But you don't need to do this particular effect with dice. You just need a way to have your spectator thinking of a number that you apparently don't know, and I think it's better if she doesn't know the number either (although you could easily argue the other way). So you could force a playing card or an Uno card on her. Just keep the number relatively low. 6 is about as high as you want to go. 

The "kicking" of the baby is, of course, not that at all. You have a remote-controlled thumper on your left wrist. The remote is in your right hand (you pull it from your pocket while her eyes are closed during the visualization part) which also holds the canister during the main part of the effect. You will activate it to vibrate your hand which the woman will feel as a sensation on her stomach. To be clear, the vibrating part of the thumper is not being pressed against her, it's just sending the vibrations into your hand and out into your spectator. The thumper I use was made by a friend of mine out of a remote-controlled vibrator. You probably have some of them lying around, you horny little sicko.

So the way this effect evolved is this.... One time, while doing an electronic version of a "which hand" effect with a coin, my hand got too close to the spectator's and she felt the vibration emanate from my hand (well, from the thumper strapped to my wrist and through my hand). "I felt that," she said. But she didn't mean it like, "Hey, I felt the vibration of the electronic gizmo on your wrist that goes off when it senses a magnet nearby." She meant it like, "Wow, I felt the energy of you doing this effect coming from your hand." It was part of the trick to her. 

I wanted to repeat this kind of moment in a more deliberate way and I began wondering if that sensation could masquerade as something else. Like could you maybe hold someone's stomach and say you could make it growl, or something like that. I had a couple other ideas that were all okay, but then I hit on the idea of the sensation being caused by a woman's child in utero and it was perfect. It's perfect because you don't say exactly how the child is causing the sensation so it doesn't have to exactly mimic any known feeling. Plus the concept of a child in a woman's stomach who is poking her or tickling her from inside to communicate -- I mean -- that's like one of the greatest images anyone has ever come up with in the history of magic.

I would also like to highlight the concept of "swallowing" a thought. The notion that you can have an idea at the front of your mind and then imagine sucking it back into your head and down your spinal cord and perhaps into your central nervous system and then down to an unborn child or out to your fingertips is one that I find people have a surprisingly easy time grasping, given what nonsense it is. And I've used it in many situations to have them send a thought from their brain, down into their hand and into mine; or into a glass of water for me to drink; or things like that.

Now go knock someone up so you can do this trick.

Update (2/13/17): I was just informed that Christopher Taylor at Taylor Imagineering has a product called Impulse that looks like it would be great for this effect or similar effects where the spectator feels some kind of unknown sensation. While I don't own it myself, I've only ever heard great things about his products so I would definitely check it out if you're interested in this sort of thing. I can think of dozens of uses for this and will definitely be picking up one in the future. I don't know if Christopher was the first person to use a thumper like this in order for the spectator to feel "something," but it's the only other example of it that I've seen, and I look forward to playing around with the idea more once I have Impulse.

Sundry Drive No. 9

Congratulations to Joshua Jay and his lovely new wife, Anna, on their marriage yesterday. 

A photo posted by Amanda Kloots (@ackloots) on Aug 29, 2015 at 10:26pm PDT

I think Josh is one of the smartest, most talented, and most generous people in magic. I feel fortunate to have him as a fan, friend, and supporter of the stuff I've done online for 10 years. From what I know about his wife, which primarily comes from her delightful blog which she wrote about their travels during Josh's lecture tour last year, she is a sweet, smart, and charming woman. I have no doubt that this is just the beginning of a truly enchanted life together and I wish them both the absolute best.

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It's rare for me to have a 100% genuine sentiment on this site, so I'm putting this block of text here to ease you into the rest of this blog post so you don't get whiplash from the shift in tone.

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Alright, you fucking dodos, let's see what bullshit you're going on about at the Magic Cafe. Ah, look what's back on the front page of Latest and Greatest. You know how there's usually a "summer song" that blows up each year and kind of defines music for that summer? Well the Summer Thread over at the Magic Cafe is definitely the one on the Ellusionist trick "Change." It's got everything: chumps who bought a trick based solely on some of the most blatantly bullshit hype in magic advertising, sketchy product spokespeople who hype up the product and then vanish after its released, claims of false advertising, suckers who know they got swindled but can't admit it so they try and defend the product, people losing their shit over $30, and what looks like complete indifference on the part of the company who released the product. That's a good snapshot of magic marketing and consumerism as of the summer of 2015.

Okay, now I'm back in the flow.

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One of my friends who helps out with the running of this site was talking to a woman the other day. They were talking about bad gigs she had picked up off of Craigslist.  She mentioned that she had once worked for a magician who needed silhouette's cut out of business cards and he paid her 20 cents per card. My friend asked if she remembered the name of this magician (so he could come running back to me, of course) and she said, "Yes. Oz Pearlman."

Oz, you magnificent son of a bitch! 20 cents? You're an animal! You couldn't swing a quarter?

You know how magicians always talk about what they'd do if the airline lost their luggage and they had to perform with whatever they could find or buy in the immediate vicinity? Well, Oz would just root around in the ashtray of his rental car to see if he could scrounge up enough change to have some locals hand-craft something quick for him to use on stage. 

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Getting close!

If I get 25,000 retweets I'll release my Twisting the Aces presentation.

— The Jerx (@TheJerx) August 29, 2015

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Here's your one warning. That female magician you're sending the creepy and embarrassing PMs to on the Magic Cafe might just be me. So maybe don't be such a cretin when you're dealing with a woman there (hey, or anywhere, for that matter). Unless you want this to get blown up, Ashley Madison style. Put your dick back in your pants.

So, You're New Here

I've been meaning to have an introductory-esque post to put in the sidebar for a while now. New people are always discovering the site and the emails I get from them tend to ask the same sorts of things. So I'm posting this in an attempt to give an overview of what I'm going for here. In a few days I will move a link to the top of the sidebar for the sake of future visibility.

So, you're new here. 

Someone linked you to this site and told you it was great or that it was terrible, or you made some errant Google search, and now you're poking around trying to get a feel for it. Well, allow me to answer some of your questions.

Where should I start?

The beginning. It's all gold. 

Who are you?

Nobody you know.

Oh, cool... so you're like a well known magician but you want to be able to speak your mind without-

No, seriously, I'm nobody you know.

Who is this site aimed at?

It's not really "aimed" at anyone. I mean, obviously people who have some interest in magic, but other than that there is no real target audience. I'm not a professional performer and I write from the perspective of someone who performs primarily in casual situations for non-paying audiences. Thus, some of what I say won't be applicable to a restaurant performer who is performing the same tricks multiple times an evening for strangers.

But, on the other hand, a lot of what I have to say is relevant to anyone interested in magic regardless of where they perform and who they perform for.

Why should I listen to you?

Fuck if I know. Take a hike, I don't care.

The purpose of this site is not to convince you to like it. The purpose of the site is merely to be here for the people who do like it.

What do you mean by "audience-centric" magic?

It's the notion that the audience's experience should be the most important thing. Most magic, especially when it's presented by amateurs, is magician-centric. It's about getting people to be impressed by your abilities. We know this is true because the "story" of these effects is almost always, "Look at my impressive ability." I'm advocating that you structure your magic to be the most entertaining it can be and, whenever possible, to remove yourself from the equation as much as you can, and shine the spotlight on the experience itself.

You might be saying, "Well, screw that, the whole reason I got into magic was to get people to like me." Okay, that's understandable. But even if getting people to like you is your whole goal, trying to impress people with your skills is a misguided way of going about it. This is true in other areas of your life as well. If you want someone you meet at a bar to like you, you can try and impress them or you can show them a good time. The latter always works, the former will backfire as often as it will be successful. 

Do you really do these grand, drawn-out presentations? Don't you ever just do a normal quick trick?

Yes, I really do the presentations I write up. And yes, I do a ton of normal tricks too. But I don't have much to say about those types of presentations so there's really no need for me write about them.

Why are most of your presentations written up as a 1-on-1 situation?

Because that's how I prefer to perform. The best and most rewarding conversations and interactions I've had in my life have been 1-on-1. Performing that way allows you to tailor the moment specifically to that one person which creates more powerful moments. It feels very personal to them. Watch a Derren Brown special where he is performing for one person and compare their reaction to the reactions of the crowd for one of his stage shows. Both reactions are incredibly strong, but when it's just for one or two people, the reaction on an individual-level is much more intense. This almost goes without saying. Obviously the more people you're performing for, the more you're performing for an average of those people. That's why I prefer to perform 1-on-1. But I don't always. And I have many ideas for -- and love seeing --  a good stage or parlor magic performance.

What is MCJ?

MCJ refers to my old blog, The Magic Circle Jerk which I wrote from 2003 - 2005. Don't bother clicking that link. I poof'd the whole thing out of existence when I was done with it. You can find some remnants of it on the Internet Archive, but there are a few missing months that aren't to be found anywhere except on my computer. 

I'd like to debate a point with you.

Don't bother. I'm probably smarter than you and have already considered your point, and have argued it to myself better than you can, and I've dismissed it. 

No, but I think I have something you haven't considered.

Alright, cool, send me an email. I'm happy to hear it.

So you don't like mentalists/mentalism?

I like mentalism a lot, but it's a very needy branch of magic and that is a turn off for me (and for audiences a lot of the time as well). I'm constantly on the lookout for ways of presenting mentalism that don't feel like I want something in return from the audience (in the form of their esteem for what I've done). This is why a lot of my routines for mental effects involve something other than "my power" being responsible. I don't have it all figured out, but I definitely get a much better response the further I steer things away from the premise being, "I have this incredible power and now I'm going to demonstrate it for you," which is what 99.9% of mentalism is.

Why don't you like people who pretend magic is real or that their powers are real?

Well, first, in the context of a performance I don't have that much of an issue with it. I just usually think it's boring when presented that way. And I think an audience can be confused, wondering if you want them to actually believe you when you say you have this special power. That's alienating to people. Most people are more than happy to play along in a moment of interactive theater. But if they see what you're doing as any form of validation seeking (which is how it often comes across when you play it "real") they will push away and find you completely corny. 

And when you're performing for friends and family or people you'll see again, what's the plan for after the show? To continually keep up the ruse? No thanks. But if you come clean then it's like, "Okay, but if you were going to make up a story to entertain us, why not make up a more interesting one than, 'I can read the thought you wrote down on that piece of paper with my mind.'" And coming up with alternative presentations (presentations other than "look at this power I have") almost universally creates more original, more engaging, and more fun performances.

But you're removing the "magic" from magic.

No. I mean, look, the magic isn't there in the first place. You're not a warlock. You're faking it. I'm just recommending you fake it in a more entertaining way. I've performed the way you do. And I've gotten great reactions to things in that style. But the reactions to what I perform, and the interactions with the people I perform for, have been far stronger since adopting the performing style I advocate for on this site.

I genuinely believe in magic. More than you, I bet. More than most people. And by that I mean like the magic of the universe and of human interaction and fate and artistic experiences and a whole bunch of other cheesy sounding shit. I met my last serious girlfriend when she was wrestling with a bunch of bags and an umbrella on a rainy autumn evening in NYC. I offered to carry the bags she was lugging around if she would let me share her umbrella while we walked. She agreed and we ended up walking 30 city blocks together to her apartment (skipping the subway station we were originally bound for) and falling for each other along the way. In the time that followed that initial meeting we would always ask the questions: What if I hadn't left my office when I did? What if she hadn't gone Christmas shopping that night? What if she had stayed in the store a few moments longer? What if it hadn't been raining? What if I had an umbrella and hadn't been compelled to ask her to share hers? It seems like a miracle our paths ever crossed. Of course, you can play this game with almost any interaction, the shitty ones included. But when you play it with a relationship that is vibrant and satisfying then it gives that relationship a "magic" feeling, even when you know it's just a way of looking at the situation. One in a million coincidences are happening constantly, but that doesn't mean you can't choose to see the magic in them when they happen. That's all real magic is; a sense of appreciation and wonder for the good things in our lives and the recognition that they could just as easily have never happened in the first place. 

To think you're giving someone a truly "magical" experience by doing fake magic and pretending it's real is moronic. It's like catfishing someone so they can experience "true love." Or recording a voice and playing it over a loudspeaker and telling someone it's the voice of god so they can have a "spiritual" experience.

The ironic thing is, the magicians who want to be seen as real -- under the pretense of giving their spectators a "magical" experience -- often end up looking ridiculous and cause their spectators to disengage. Whereas a performance that seeks to entertain first can be a really compelling and transcendent piece of work, which in turn can be a magical experience for people.

How do I support the site?

For now, don't worry about it. If there are people you know who might enjoy it, send them a link.