Book Updates (Final Week), GLOMM Updates, Pedo Updates

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You have one more week to order the book, after which point I have to submit to the publisher the final number of copies to be printed. I've made this point before but some people have questioned me about it over email, so, for the final time: I'm going to be printing enough copies to cover the orders, a few copies for myself, and then as many more as I need to get to the next price break on the printing. Is that confusing? The way I wrote it makes it sound like the "The Trick That Fooled Einstein."

Basically, what it means is I will only have a small quantity available after the book is actually printed. Due to the limited supply and the fact there will never be another printing, the price is going to go up once this week is over (since, at that point, my final order will be in with the publisher and it will be a limited resource). It will immediately go to $300 and won't include the bonuses.

I'm not concerned with selling as many books as possible. My only concern is making sure everyone who wants one gets one. So if you want one, place your order soon.

If you want a copy but this week is a bad week, for whatever reason, then you can reserve a copy at this price, with the bonuses, by signing up for The Jerx Coffee Club. That was introduced back in October as a way to buy the book via a $5ish weekly donation. You can still sign up for it now which would reserve your copy of the book. The book will be sent once you're paid in full, and you can pay off the balance at any point in time. If you stop payments before you're paid in full... well... then you've just made a donation to me for nothing in return, so don't do that. 

The book is about 50% new material. When you get it, I would read it through linearly, for two reasons. First, there is new material in the old material. Second, you'll be super confused by some things if you don't read it straight through. There are some weird parts of the book that are explained in other areas of the book and you'll have no idea what the hell is going on if you haven't read the prior part.

Here is the final list of new effects in the book. This won't mean anything to you, but it's exciting to me to have this finalized:

  • A Very Unusual Camera (Probably the strongest effect I've created.)
  • And Now He Is Me (My favorite punchline of any effect ever.)
  • A Brief History of Cartomancy from the 15th Century to Today (fake chapter with a trick built into it)
  • Dear Penthouse Forum (I would say it's the greatest story deck trick ever, but that's damning with faint praise. It's really just an incredibly strong trick, with a story deck element that is both funny and mindboggling. Prop Included.)
  • Dream Weavers (A card transposition that happens overnight)
  • The Magician’s Role as Moral Arbiter & A Guided Visualization (Another fake chapter with instructions for a different trick that's built into the book. Prop Included) 
  • I Know What You Need (Featuring the Jerx App, free for all pre-orders.)
  • Narrow Your Eyes (The only effect I was talked into including. It's a very slight reframing of a classic mentalism effect. But it's impromptu and I do it ALL the time and it's a favorite of my friends so I'm including it.)
  • Pale Horse and Rider (A complete reworking of one of the first effects I ever published on the MCJ site. And a lesson in turning weaknesses into strengths.)
  • Shutterlock (My favorite word reveal for a group.)
  • The Shadow of the Shallow End (My favorite presentation for OOTW which allows a much cleaner handling as well.)
  • The UY Gambit (The most basic example of 3rd Wave Equivoque between two objects. Can be used in many different effects and is essentially invisible. I've often fooled people who understand equivoque with it.)
  • The Return (More of anecdote than a trick, but it is a trick, and one I will give you the instructions for, you just probably won't be able or willing to do it. Regardless it's the greatest trick ever performed.)

There's only one essay in the book, a long one containing my best/favorite ideas on presentation from this site along with some new material, including the actual step-by-step process I use for coming up with presentations. Everything else in the book is tricks or concepts used in tricks, including further exploration on 3rd Wave Equivoque.

You'll be happy to know this is the last sales pitch you'll have to read for the book. If you like this site, and if you can afford it, you should pull the trigger. And you might think, Well, yeah of course you'd say that. But the truth is, if it had turned out another way I probably would have just released it quietly to the people who pre-ordered. If I thought it stunk, I wouldn't encourage anyone to get it at this point.

All shirt sizes are currently in for anyone ordering their GLOMM membership kit (Elite level), with the exception of 4XL which have turned out to be frustratingly hard to get printed and get printed correctly. I appreciate the patience of the two friends of the site who are waiting for those sizes. 

The red shirt for Secret Hyper-Elite Platinum members are being reprinted as we speak and should be ready this coming Wednesday and will be mailed the following day.

Jerx: Australia came through—going so far as to search through court records—and it looks like we've identified the creep from a couple posts back. I'll be publishing his name when I kick his ass out of the GLOMM soon. I just want to be 100% sure (we're about 99.9% now). I'm just happy I won't have to kick the entire continent out which was my backup plan.

Apparently in Australia, if you're a pedophile, you can petition to have the court not release your name publicly. You can read more about it here. It's kind of interesting. Of course, I'm not in Australia, and I don't give a shit, so I'll release his name regardless of what the court says.

And finally, along these lines, I received the most unexpected email since I started this site. I won't give away too many details as you'll understand in a moment, although he did give me permission to mention the email here. It was from someone who wrote to say he was a magician who struggled with "sexual fantasies about children." He said he never acted on them and was married and in a "normal" relationship. He finished by saying, "I know the 'sexual predator' angle of the GLOMM is intended as a joke/threat but I've found myself thinking about it frequently. I look at the list of banned members and think that I don't want my name to be on there. I don't even know who you are but I don't want you labelling me a creep or a monster because I know it would be true. I can't control my thoughts but I can control my actions and your site is playing a role in that."

Holy shit.

Sometimes I feel like this is the strangest site on the internet.

The Global League of Magicians & Mentalists: Changing the world for the better for, like, a few weeks now.

I'll Be My Mirror

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This is a premise that I have worked on a number of times and presented in a few different ways. It's based on an effect called Voodoo by Arthur Monroe in Annemann's Practical Mental Effects. I think people who are familiar with that book and this site will not be surprised to find I'm a big fan of that trick. But while the skeleton of the idea remains, this trick has evolved into something different in a macro and micro sense from Voodoo. I always wanted to perform Voodoo but it required some props that I didn't have easy access to. I still hope to perform it someday because I think it's a great effect.

Originally this was going to be in the book, but it got nudged out, mainly because I'd only performed it a few times, and it requires some marketed items the way I currently do it.

This effect could pretty easily be re-worked to be done on stage or in a parlor setting as well.

Imagine

I'm hanging around with a small group of friends. I've performed a trick or two. 

"Do you guys want to know how I do a lot of these tricks?" I ask. "My twin helps me out. He's actually visiting town right now, he's in the other room as we speak. We don't really get along. In fact we refuse to spend time in the same room together, but we both had an interest in magic when we were growing up and that's the one area where we come together in order to help each other out. I'll show you. I'll walk you through how we might perform a trick together and you'll see the machinations happening behind the scenes." 

Everyone in the room is a good friend or family member. They know I don't have a twin.

I pull out a stack of business cards and a marker. "I want you to think of something you love, Eric. Something that gives you joy. But don't pick your family or your pet or something we all know. Maybe something you haven't really expressed to anyone —a place you love to visit or an object you cherish. We may not find out what it is, but we might, so make sure it's something you're willing to share. Got it?" He does. With the cards held vertically I write I love in the top half of one of the cards, then I hand the stack to Eric and ask him to fill in what he loves on a line I've drawn on the bottom. "When you're done, place the whole stack writing-side down on the table." As he does this I remove a matchbox and some rubber bands from my pocket and toss them on the table.

When he's finished I turn my head the other direction, slide out the card from the bottom of the stack and fold it in quarters. Once the writing is concealed, I turn back and have the card placed in the matchbox and bound with rubber bands.

"Eric, I want you to take this matchbox, leave the room and go hide it somewhere in the house or even leave the house and hide it somewhere outside. We will all stay here, and they'll all make sure I don't look and try and see where you're going. But you should also take a look around at all times and make sure there's nobody following you. Then come back when you're done." 

Eric leaves, we all make small-talk for a couple minutes, then he returns. 

"It's hidden somewhere? And nobody followed you, right?" 

He agrees.

"Okay," I say, "here's where I'm going to kind of expose what's really happening. You were followed, Eric. You were followed by my twin, Randy. I know you don't believe you were, but that's why I use my twin for this. He's the only one it would work with. Did you notice a bunch of pictures of me around the house? You didn't? Haha, wow, it's crazy how psychologically invisible these things are."

"Here's what happened: as you went to hide the matchbox, my brother followed you. He was carrying a large empty picture frame. Every time you turned around to make sure no one was following you, he just held it up to his face." I mime doing this. "You—knowing I'm in the other room—just assume it's a photo of me. And because there's nothing unusual about a photo of someone, it slips your mind entirely. This is like, top tier CIA mind-control stuff. Also perhaps familiar from Scooby Doo."

"So yeah, he followed you, and saw where you hid the matchbox and now he's going to get it and bring it back here. Normally I wouldn't be telling you all this, he would just be doing it secretly, but I wanted to explain the inner workings. In fact... let me go get him."

I go to leave the room but then pause and turn back to them. I draw attention to my outfit, a hoodie, jeans, and a t-shirt. "I want to make it clear that Randy... well... Randy is an evil twin. And that's really why we don't get along. We're pretty much identical so when we're in the same area I always wear this shirt to identify myself as Andy. I want people to know I'm the good twin."

"Don't worry, you'll be able to tell us apart by our shirts. And the fact that I don't say such awful things. I wish I could stick around to keep him in line, but we're just too incompatible. It's almost like it's physically impossible for us to be in the same room together." I shake my head. "I'll just get him."

I exit until I'm out of view in an adjacent room. Everyone can hear me rustling around, making a bunch of noise and a commotion. 45 seconds later "Randy" walks back into the room. He is rattling the matchbox in his hand, has an obviously fake goatee on, and is dressed identically to me except he's wearing this shirt.

"Whatup, whatup, shitheads? Hey, nice hiding spot dude. A real brainbuster. Here's you: 'Uh, duhr, duhr... is there someone behind me?' That's totally you. That's so you dude. Hey lady, what a set of titties you got! Yummy. Me likey! You find me later and we'll make some magic of our own."

"Okay, normally you'd never even see me. I would just go, open the matchbox, read your word, maybe mess around with it, and then I'd call Andy and tell him where the matchbox was and what the word is. Then he acts like he's having a psychic vision and POW he can read your mind. So there's your peek behind the curtain."

"Let's see what we have here." Randy opens the matchbox, takes out the business card that's inside, unfolds it, reads it, and says, "Oh, my god. What a loser." He takes a red sharpie out of his pocket and writes something on the card, folds it back up and puts it in the box. Then he grabs a sheet of paper, writes something on it, turns it over and leaves it on the table."

"In the normal trick I would put this box back where I found it. So I'll go do that. Plus it will let that little pussy Andy feel free to come back into the room that he's unwilling to share with his big brother! Two minutes older. I just bust his balls about it. It's fun. Alright, you turds. Catch you on the flip-flop. I'm out."

Randy exits the room and immediately—seconds later—I return. No goatee, and the shirt under my hoodie has changed back to the GOOD shirt.

"Sorry about that," I say. "I heard everything he said from the other room. I apologize."

"So normally my brother, after grabbing the matchbox from your hiding spot, would then signal me the information. Maybe he'd call me or do sign language from outside a window or something. This time, because we're explaining it, he was just able to write the word you were thinking of down on this sheet of paper. And, if you didn't know I had a twin helping me, it would be impossible for me to know this word, because nobody saw what you wrote and as far as you would know it's hidden somewhere far away from this room. But with the secret assist from my twin I can tell you that what you wrote down is...." I turn the piece of paper over.

GLABENSHORTZ

"Glabenshortz? Did you write.... Oh, goddammit... he wrote it in our secret twin language from when we were kids. Glabenshortz... what is that, what is that. Oh... did you write down library? Did you say you loved the library."

"Are you shitting me?" Eric says. "How?"

"Uhm, Eric, we've been explaining the whole thing all along. What do you mean, 'how,' you goofball."

"So now what I would do is have you go grab the matchbox from your secret hiding place, so you could see it wasn't disturbed and there would be no way for me to know your word. So go do that. Actually... I don't know where you hid it, so would Randy have had time to return it yet?"

Eric says yes, as if there's really a Randy somewhere returning the matchbox to where he hid it. 

"Ok," I say, "go get it and bring it back to us."

Eric brings it back, opens it up, unfolds the card, and finds the message Randy wrote on it a few minutes earlier.

Method

Okay, so there's a lot going on here, but I think much of it is clear to most of you so I don't have to dwell on the method. 

You need to plan to do this somewhere where there's an interior doorway in your house. On the side of the doorway that isn't where you're gathered, there should be an area where you can ditch some stuff. Maybe a china cabinet you can throw things on top of or a vase you can toss stuff in or a piece of furniture you can throw something behind. That's really the only requirement.

The Word Reveal and Writing Appearance

Your stack of business cards is doubly gaffed. You're set up to do Out-to-Lunch with it, and the writing area is set up with a Psypher type impression surface. 

OTL gets a bad rap, but I use it quite frequently with no issue. The problem is, as magicians, when we see a rubber-banded stack of cards, we immediately know whats up. But the overwhelming majority of people have never been introduced to this concept. If you want to avoid it, there are certainly other ways to do this same effect, but for me this is the most expedient and casual way. A stack of cards with a rubber band around them is not suspicious in any way. This is how many people have index cards or business cards in their junk-drawer at home. I have a no rubber band version that I use (that I'm assuming can't be original to me) that requires you to hold the stack when they write on it, but I like the freedom of being able to toss the stack to a person very casually. Toss them the marker. And have them write a word and set the stack down. 

Once they set down the stack, I slide out the card and fold it into quarters with my head turned the complete opposite direction of my hands. (I know which direction to slide the card because the printed surface of the business cards is face up.) Then I set the folded card on the table and pocket the stack. 

You can do the math on the rest of this, yes?

The Quick-Change

This is Calen Morelli's Dresscode. You want to be set up to go from Evil to Good, although you'll be in GOOD at the start. 

The time it takes to do the quick change is the time it takes to rip off the goatee, toss it and the duplicate matchbox somewhere to hide them, then do the Dresscode switch which just takes a second or two.

Everything Else

The rest is pretty straightforward, I think.

The first time you go out to "get your evil twin," you should be in no rush. They will understand that you must be changing into your twin getup, and you want to establish that it takes a bit of time to go out, remove your hoodie, remove your t-shirt, put on a different t-shirt, put your hoodie back on and return. You want to establish this because later you will apparently do all that in a matter of seconds. It's going to take you some time anyway, because you're setting up the shirt and putting on the goatee and getting a peek at the word on the impression part of your stack of cards. My point is there's no need to rush it.

During this time make sure it's clear that you never go anywhere other than just out of view on the direct opposite side of the doorway. Feel free to put on a fake dialogue with your twin and flash your limbs every now and again. You want to make it clear that you didn't actually go anywhere which could confuse things later on.

I used to have some convincers that the matchbox the evil twin returns with is the same one as the one that was hidden, but that's the wrong way to go, I think. You actually want them to think it's a duplicate. I think you want to pile the climaxes on at the end, rather than have this one in the middle where you've somehow magically acquired the matchbox. Instead, you beat them senseless with climaxes at the end. 

BOOM - He changes outfits in seconds.
BOOM - How did he know the word? I just assumed he was looking at a duplicate matchbox. Maybe he wasn't.
BOOM - But no, it must have been a duplicate. How else would the matchbox end up back in the hiding space.
BOOM - But it must have been the same one because it had the writing he wrote later in the trick on it.

One thing I've tried is, when "Randy" is writing something on the card, I fold the bottom of the card up and back, so that part can't be seen, then I hold the card in my left palm and invite someone to watch what I write on it. And then I write "What a homo" (or words to that effect) and laugh like a big jackass, and put my hand on the shoulder of whoever is watching what I write, really conspiratorially, and continue laughing and pointing at the guy who wrote the word on the card originally. In that way, not only do the words appear on the card in the box at the end, but someone saw exactly what you wrote, apparently. I'm not sure if it's better, worse, or the same. But it's something to consider.

Don't leave out the part where the Evil Twin writes the word in gibberish first. It gets a better reaction that way.

This trick gets really strong reactions, but it's also something of a grower, not a shower. The reactions build over time. This will sound like bullshit, but I think in the midst of the trick, people almost forget that there really isn't another entity helping with the trick. And it's only after the trick that they chew it over and realize the impossibility of it all. It's a trick that seems to extend some distance beyond the bounds of the room you're in and I've found it takes a little bit for people to remember you never actually left their sight. And when they do, that amps up the power of the effect.

But the true beauty of the trick is playing your own evil twin. If you're not going to really get into that, then don't even bother.

Australia... what the fuck...

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Seriously, my Australian readers, what is going on?

Who is this animal? (If that link doesn't work, you can read the article below.) Another fine example of magicians in the media. Honestly, this guy is a particular monster. 

What I don't get is, in the U.S., if you're convicted of rape, or even if you're just accused of rape, we let people know your name. Is this not standard practice in the rest of the world? Why can't the paper reveal his name? Is this an Australian thing? Or is it this specific circumstance? Is it because, as a pedophile, he would get fucked to death with a lunch tray by his fellow prisoners if they knew his crime? Well... okay... but that seems like something he should have considered at some point during his 30 years of raping pre-teens. (And while we're at it, someone kick that bitch in the vagina who "didn't believe" her daughter. Hey, howzabout we give the kid the benefit of the doubt when they report their sexual assault to you.)

I really want to know, though, why is he just referred to as "the man" and a "depraved magician." No names? Seriously? A depraved male magician? That's implicates like... 90% of fucking magicians!

I need a name so I can kick this bitch out of the Global League of Magicians & Mentalists. Otherwise I might have to ban the entire continent. Get on it Jerx: Australia.

Jail for magician’s depraved attacks on young girls

June 17, 2016 12:27am

Padraic Murphy Herald Sun

A DEPRAVED magician has been jailed for the appalling rape and sexual abuse of two young girls.

Despite concerns there may be more victims of the remorseless monster - who has done previous jail time for raping children - the Herald Sun is prevented from revealing the man's identity.

The man is well-known in children’s entertainment circles and has performed overseas.

He has sex offence convictions stretching back to 1977, but still managed to work regularly at children's parties.

County Court Judge Phillip Coish today said the man’s offending was perverse and left both victims devastated.

One requires on-going counselling and feels isolated and unable to trust.

The man repeatedly raped the two girls, both aged under 10, sometimes at the same time.

The victims were children of friends the man knew through work.

The appalling abuse of the children occurred while he was working regularly at children's parties and only stopped when he was arrested in 2005.

He showed one of the young girls pornography, and continued to rape her, ignoring pleas for him to stop.

One of the victims complained to her mother, who did not believe her.

She again complained to police in 2011 after she had grown up, and the magician was charged with fresh offences.

The man was found guilty after a trial in which one of the victim's was forced to give evidence about what he had done to her.

Judge Coish said the man's not guilty plea meant he could not claim remorse and jailed him for at least seven years, with a maximum of 10 years.

“Both victims were very young children... (It was) a gross breach of trust,” Judge Coish said.

 

Project Slay-Them: Summer School

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[This is the third entry in a series of posts for people who would like to perform for people more but don't. If you're not in that category then this advice won't really apply to you.]

In the first post in this series we talked about amassing a large repertoire, and so far we've looked at that from two angles. The first is simply going through your books and DVDs and finding the tricks that appeal to you. The second is looking at the items you carry with you or could carry with you on an everyday basis and working backwards from those. 

So we've looked at growing your repertoire based first on the tricks you like and then on the items you have with you anyway. The final way we want to look at identifying material for your repertoire is based on the places you spend your time. Think about the five places outside of the home where you spend the most time. It might be work, the gym, a bar, the library, and a park near your house. Think about each place individually and what their characteristics are and what objects they contain that you might be able to take advantage of. These are the places you're already at anyways. Why not have a game plan? 

So, for example, you think about the bar you always go to. And then you recall, "Ah, there's a dartboard there." This can lead to material in three ways. Either you will already know of an effect that uses that object. Or you can search for effects that use that object. Or you can create effects that use that object. What can you do with a dartboard? Ok, I know there's Corinda's Dartboard Prediction effect. Then I do a little searching and I find this Brent Braun trick that looks pretty good. Then I think about it and see if there's any other way I could use it. Perhaps you could do a card at any number type thing. Riffle the cards towards the spectator and then tell her "Three of Hearts." She throws a dart at the dartboard and whatever number she hits we count down to that place in the deck and we find the three of hearts. You frame it as some incredible skill on her part. It's a decent idea. And in a bar with people gathered around I think it would go over pretty well.

The purpose is not to add three tricks to your repertoire for every item in every location you hang out at. It's just to have a portion of your repertoire that is location specific to the locations you spend a good amount of time at.

You say you don't leave your house? Who were you hoping to perform for? That's a completely different issue. Go engage with the world.

I don't get it, Andy. You said this was going to be a series about going out and performing more and for 6 months all we've done is build up our repertoire. That's exactly what I've been doing while I sit at home not performing.

Not everything is as seems. First learn stand, then learn fly. Nature rule, Daniel-san, not mine.

These posts are not directed at people with social anxiety or people who don't perform for that type of reason. These posts are geared to those people who like magic but don't perform it because they feel cheesy or like their being invasive when they offer to show someone a trick. And that's because it is cheesy and invasive to shoehorn your "performance" into a normal human interaction. 

Let's look at another art form again for an analogy. If we're sitting around and I say, "Hey, I'd like to sing something for you. Swing low, sweet chariot. Commin' for to carry me hooommmmmeeee." And if I do it seriously, you're going to feel awkward. Even if it's just the two of us together. But if you're talking about your favorite tv show and I'm like, "I love the theme song," and you're like, "Yassssssss!" As soon as I belt out, "Unbreakable!" you're joining in with, "They alive, dammit!"

Here is the key thing to remember for casual performances. A performance that comes out of the blue and is unrelated to anything puts your spectator in the position of "audience." This is an awkward position to be in when you're just hanging out in a friendly setting. But a performance that is borne out of something the spectator says or something in the environment puts the spectator in the role of director or fellow actor. 

Think back to that example above. If I sing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot unprompted, it's uncomfortable. But if you say, "I love a good negro spiritual," and then I start belting it out -- it's an entirely different situation. You're raising your hands and closing your eyes and swaying back and forth. "Preach!" you exclaim. Because it feels like your idea. But if my goal is to sing more around my friends in a non-awkward way, I can't just have that one song in my holster and hope someone brings it up. I need a big catalog.

Magic, done in a casual situation, is not different from other art forms. The key to making it not come off as corny is to make it fit the situation. To reiterate what I've said in a previous post, the purpose of this large repertoire is not to go out and show people 14 tricks in a row. The purpose is to have the right trick to slide seamlessly into the right moment. Yes, we've been building up our repertoire, but in a very specific way so that it gives a lot of options for ways to get into effects organically.

Magic books —as they often do when writing about interacting in social situations— will give you the exact wrong advice. They will tell you, "Steer the conversation towards talk of ESP." This does not work. It's obvious. "Yeah, that Donald Trump is crazy. Who knows what he'll do next. It's almost like you need to be psychic to predict it. Oh, did someone mention psychics? Funnily enough I have a trick that deals with that subject" This comes off sketchy and weak. And it poisons the whole conversation. I mean, if you do successfully change the subject to psychics and people are into the conversation and then you're like, "Here's a trick about psychic power," people will think, "Oh... wait... so that's why you brought it up? Not to hear my opinion or interact with me. Got it." You've been in a conversation where someone tries to steer the topic towards something else they want to talk about. It's not subtle. And it's actually worse than just directly changing the subject and asking if you can show them a trick. That type of direct approach (which I'll touch briefly on in a future post) can work well. But ultimately the indirect approach —using their conversation or objects in the environment to get into an effect— is stronger, in my opinion. You do not steer the conversation, you let the conversation steer you.

The other reason I'm stressing increasing your knowledge-base of effects is because, armed with this type of repertoire, you will feel like an idiot if you never brandish it. Especially when you're stuck around people and you're all just killing time and you have something that would be perfect for the situation. You'll feel like someone who took a bunch of first aid classes and just quietly sits with their hands folded while someone at another table chokes on a bratwurst.

Okay, so maybe you want a little more guidance on getting back into performing. If your only audience for many years has been yourself, you may feel the need to take it slow when it comes to performing for other people. I understand that. First, let me restate the purpose of this series is not to get you out performing for strangers. I think that type or performance hurts magic more than it helps it. This is to get you performing more for friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances, and yes, even people you've just met, but not people that you're introducing yourself to for the sake of showing them a trick.

If you feel the need to dip your toe into performing for real people again, here are three homework assignments for you this summer. You should complete each one three times.

Assignment One - The Set-up With No Climax

Sounds like my honeymoon!!!! hahahahah
hahaha
ha

For this one I want you to ask someone to name a color (red or black), then name a suit of that color, then name a value from A-K. When they do, thank them, make a note of the card they selected on your phone, and move on.

They will ask you what it's about, you just tell them it's for a project your working on (which is sort of the truth). 

That's all you need to do.

Now, you could, of course, have an invisible deck in your pocket and say, "See, this is so weird. It keeps happening." And then show the card reversed. If you feel compelled to do that, you've just shown someone a magic trick. Congratulations. If not, don't worry. To complete this assignment you just have to ask for them to build a card in that way.

The purpose of this assignment is to get you used to starting a trick. The truth is, once you start it you'll probably want to finish it, but you're under no obligation to. It's also an example of an approach we'll look at in the next post in this series.

Assignment Two: Optical

Keep the picture below somewhere on your phone. Try to find three conversations during the course of the summer where you present it in a way that feels organic. This won't be easy. It's the equivalent of having one magic trick to show people and looking for ways to work it into a conversation. Maybe someone is talking about paint colors, or something about their vision, or maybe the shadows on a baseball field affecting the hitter during a later afternoon game. Or hell, maybe you'll get lucky and someone will bring up optical illusions. I don't know. 

No one is going to bring up this specific subject of how our eyes compensate for a perceived shadow, etc. etc. That doesn't matter, because as long as they hit a subject nearby you can use the magic words: "That reminds me."

"Yeah, I can't really tell if that dress is red or orange either. I'm a little colorblind.  Oh, that reminds me. You have to check out this picture and tell me if I'm crazy or not. They say squares A and B are the same color. That can't be, can it?"

Then maybe you rip a couple holes in a napkin or business card and place it over the image so only squares A and B show. "Son of a bitch, I guess it's true," you say.

That's it.

The purpose of this assignment is to get you looking for openings to present material. And to get you used to showing people things of a mildly interesting nature.

Assignment Three: Project Mayhem

I want you to go out and perform a trick and screw it up.

For example, ask your bartender to grab any number of objects and place them in a row on the bar. Tell her to think of any one. Hold your hand over the items one by one and then name any of the objects. If you get it right, great. But you have to go somewhere else and do it again. You have to do it until you screw it up. Once you do, the assignment is complete.

If you have a fear of screwing up tricks in public this is a good exercise because you'll learn no one really cares. And since you're going into it knowing you're going to fuck it up you can mentally prepare yourself. 

If you try this exercise and find it's actually easier than presenting a trick normally, this suggests your concern in performing is being seen as a desperate approval-seeker. A valid concern. In this case, knowing that you're going to fail actually takes that pressure off. In the next post in this series we'll look at ways of getting into effects that will remove that pressure and stigma but in the context of presenting a successful, amazing trick.

Introducing: Jerx Points

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So I have this ebook that I've been working on very sporadically over the past few months. I think I'm calling it 20 for 20. It's my 20 favorite tricks —other people's tricks, that is— from the past 20 years. And I kind of go through them and talk about them and talk about my presentations for them or the changes I've made to the them. Some are well known, some are hidden gems, I guess. These are the effects that I've performed the most in my life -- the impromptu stuff, the everyday tricks.

And I haven't known why I'm writing it, because I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. I'm not going to sell it, because it's not the type of thing you'd sell. It's fairly substantial, but these are my personalizations, not my routines. And it's not the type of thing I would post on this site, because, while I don't explain the routines, I do talk in general about the methods. And this ebook really consists of material that has made-up my day-to-day repertoire. I don't want 100s or even dozens of people having access to it. But I do enjoy the sharing of ideas with a small group of like-minded people. 

(I think most people who write a blog are looking for the widest possible audience. But I'm only looking for a wide audience so I can identify a super narrow sub-group of that audience. As I express to people in the GLOMM welcome email, it's about a winnowing process of finding a group of people with whom I share a similar ethos. I spent 25 years on the outskirts of magic identifying with very few people. (And happily so.) This site has allowed me to share my ideas and find those handful of people I'll want to continue interacting with after this site is gone.)

So, anyways, I began to think of ways to identify even smaller subsets of people for when I want to release things, like this ebook, to just a handful of readers. And at the same time I was thinking how much it delighted me to see people destroy their copies of Erdnase, or post pics of themselves in their GLOMM shirts. And then it struck me to combine these things.

I like whenever people invest time and energy into seemingly meaningless fun. That might be the mission statement of this site, actually. And I want to recognize these actions as they pertain to this site so today I'm launching Jerx Points. 

Jerx Points are like Marlboro Miles. Except you can't get a canoe with them. Actually... I've changed my mind, you can. 500 Jerx Points get you a canoe.

Jerx Points are not primarily about rewards, although there will be rewards. The five people with the highest number of Jerx Points (or anyone with over 100) will receive the ebook I was talking about at the beginning of this post at the end of 2016. 

But that's not what Jerx Points are about. They're about pride. The pride that can only come from ordering a copy of Expert At The Card Table just so you can destroy it. Or the pride that comes from taking part in any of the activities/objectives that I might think up. Eventually there will be a permanent link in the navigation bar that will contain all the Jerx point generating things you can do, and I will be adding to the list from time-to-time.

We will start with what's below.

Earn Jerx Points

- Buy the Jerx. Vol 1 - 40 points

- Join the GLOMM Elite Membership - 30 points

- Put a picture of yourself in your GLOMM shirt on social media - 5 point

- If that picture contains anyone who has had their own Penguin Live lecture - 15 points.

- Post a GLOMM banner on your professional magic website - 15 points

- Make a video of yourself destroying a copy of Expert at the Card Table and post it on social media - 15 points

- This is the inverse to the one above. Look to youtube for examples of self-serious videos that fetishize Expert at the Card Table. Make one in a similar style that is an ode to one of these books:

Post it on social media - 15 points. 

- Start a rumor on twitter that helps cement Andi Gladwin's legacy as a magic's dark, brooding, bad boy. Things like how he fingered your wife in an elevator (and made you watch) or knocked your teeth out for looking at him wrong. #BADwin - 3 points.

- A GLOMM tattoo. With video proof. You're an idiot - 100 points

There will be more of these to come, but that should get you going. 

I am the final judge on whether you get the points or not. You can only get points one-time per objective. Unless you do something really cool the second time.

Some of you already have a number of Jerx Points. Don't go bragging about it, hot shot. In fact:

- Any tweet that brags about the number of Jerx Points you have - minus 2 Jerx Points.

- Any tweet that humbly mentions the number of Jerx Points you have - 2 Jerx Points.

You are also free to come up with your own ideas and submit them for Jerx Points. This will be like @Midnight or Whose Line Is It Anyway, where I'll arbitrarily award points for your effort. I'm not really looking for things that promote this site directly. In general anything that legitimizes the GLOMM is funny to me and would get you some Jerx Points. Some guy offered to write a death metal song about how Erdnase sucks -- that would be a Jerx Point worthy effort. Any artistic endeavor done with genuine talent and an investment of time that reflects some dumb thing I talk about here is potentially a Jerx Point worthy event.

You'll have to notify me on twitter or email to make sure I'm aware of your Jerx Point efforts, but you're responsible for keeping your own tally too. Include proper hashtags where applicable: #erdnaseblows - #GLOMM - #BADwin.

To reiterate, yes, there will be rewards and exclusive content for those at the top of the Jerx Points Leaderboard. But this is not about that. It's about being able to take pride in something for once in your rotten life. It's about creating a legacy to leave your grandkids. ("They say Poppy had the most Jerx Points in all of Missouri!" -- "It's true son. He was a great man... maybe the greatest.")

To spare myself some emails, I'm completely serious about all of this. Even the canoe.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Masuda?

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So, did you come up with any good ideas for Liberty Vanish? Yeah, me neither. It might be one of those tricks that is just a fun visual and you can't do anything that's really going to stick with someone past the momentary shock.

If someone was to force me to use it (which seems pretty unlikely) here's what I'd do with it. 

You may have to modify the gimmick to do what I suggest, but I think it's possible. First I'd make a copy of the gimmicked postcard with the statue vanished. Then I'd print up a bunch of postcards with that as the actual image. Then I'd lop off the bottom 25% of the gimmick (making any necessary adjustments to the gimmick to make this workable). And I'd set the whole thing up out-to-lunch style on top of some other postcards I'll mention below. What we want to do is take advantage of their suspicion of the card by expanding it to suspicion of an entire stack of cards. You'll see.

So your friend Bob comes over. You say, "Oh, I want to show you something I got at this weird garage sale." You show him a stack of postcards rubber-banded together. You flick through the edges and he briefly sees a bunch of different locales. "Here's the weird thing," you say. You grab a marker and have him put his name or a mark at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty postcard. Then you make the statue vanish. What does he think? He thinks it's a tricky postcard, but more than that, he probably suspects the whole stack. Good. 

You take the rubber-band off and immediately spread through the postcards face down. They all have some cryptic message on the back. "See you soon," (or cryptic-ier words to that effect). You hand him half the postcards and when he looks at the faces he sees that all of them are missing their central figure. A postcard of Egypt with the pyramids gone. A postcard from Brazil where Christ the Redeemer is not on his pedestal. Mt. Rushmore with no faces. (You'd have to make these in photoshop.)

At this point you cull the gimmicked card under the spread of cards you hold. You continue to spread through and once you get to the bottom one (which would apparently have been the postcard he signed) you pull it out of the spread and hand it to him to examine. As he does you ditch the gimmick. Maybe cop it out if it's not too big? I don't know. I mean his attention should be on that signed, altered postcard for at least a few seconds. Then you toss the rest of the cards on the table for him to look through if he wants. 

(I like the fact that you draw suspicion to an entire stack of cards. He might imagine a slit in the top card leading to a hollowed out section in the stack with a little reel type thing that pulls the image back or some other complicated situation like that, but at the end you can just spread the entire stack out and it's just cards.)

On the back of his card it says:

Wish you were here.
Since you're not,
I'll come to you.

"What does that mean?" You ask each other. 

He gets to leave with his signed, permanently altered postcard.

When he gets home he walks into his bedroom and finds his wife buck naked wearing only one of these.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your hard massive cock, yearning to blow its load," she says.

"God Bless America," your friend replies.

There you go. It's doable as along as you can get your friend's wife to play along. If you can't, then get friends that are more fun in your life.

Also, was there a gas leak at the Cafe? In the thread there on this effect there are people complaining that the Statue of Liberty that's provided for you to produce at the end doesn't look like the one you vanish. Uh... no shit, goofballs. It's supposed to be a joke at the end of the trick. "She vanished... and here she reappeared!" There's some real magician-think going on in that thread. "If the plastic Statue of Liberty doesn't look like the real one, then my audience will never believe I made the picture on a postcard disappear and then reappear but now as a two-inch three-dimensional figurine!" I would contend the last thing you'd want to reproduce is something that sort of looks like the real Statue of Liberty but smaller. Your audience will be like... Uhm, do you want me to believe this is the the statue from the picture or... what are you going for here? I think the goofy statue provided by Masuda is much better. If you can't get your friend's wife, I mean.

Interactive Magic Post

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This isn't a post about interactive magic. It's just a question that I'd like you to consider until my next post.

(But speaking of interactive magic, one of you has to be friends with David Copperfield, right? Can you get him to do this for me? What I want is to get him to re-record this trick. He doesn't need to get James Earl Jones, he can use Steve Harvey or something. Or no one, for that matter. You see, I had this idea that I would start up one of his old specials to watch with a friend. And when he gets to the interactive trick and he's like, "Come up to the screen so you can touch my finger," I would rush up to the screen, unzip my pants, and put my dick on his finger while looking over my shoulder at my friend and braying like a jackass. Then I want Copperfield to say, "Andy, get your little dick off the screen you stupid animal." And I would just freeze, and swallow hard, and shamefully zip up my pants while, on screen, David gets back to the trick. You see? And I would just cut that into the special where the original version appeared. It would make David look great -- well, at least to my one friend. And you might think, "Well, she'll just know you used some connections to get him to re-record it. It might be funny, but it wouldn't be magical or anything." But I think you're wrong. Here's the thing, my anonymity goes both ways. My non-magic friends don't know I have this site. The don't know I have "connections." So the idea that somehow I could have finagled Copperfield into making a dick joke for the sake of one of my friends isn't even feasible. Oh, and I have a way to make it look like we're watching video from an old VHS but we're really watching something I'm playing from my computer. So at the end we could re-watch the actual tape and all would be as it was in the original broadcast. And I'd turn to her and ask, "That did happen right. We didn't imagine that. And how did he know my dick was so little?")

Oh, right, the question I'd like you to consider... Here's a trick that recently came out called Liberty Vanish.

Back in the days when I didn't have a magic blog empire to run, I would ask my friends to give me their shitty tricks they bought and I'd try and come up with a way to use them. It was just an exercise to try and keep my magic-mind sharp. This morphed into my "friends" emailing me links and saying, "So, do you think there's anything worthwhile you can do with this?" They didn't buy the product in the first place. Now they were just looking for free consultation without even investing in the trick itself. Leeches. 

Anyway, one of them asked if I had any ideas for this trick. He likes the visual, but recognizes that this is, what I call, a half trick. A full trick would be: you vanish the statue of liberty and let them see the postcard to verify it's really gone. Examination -- in the context of a trick like this -- is not optional. Examination is the only confirmation that the trick has happened. What I mean is, without examination the trick is "It looks like the Statue of Liberty vanished." With examination it's, "The Statue of Liberty vanished from this card." That might not be how they articulate it, but that's the level of conviction they would be able to have in the effect.

Regardless of that, I'm asking you now what my friend asked of me: Do you have any ideas for this effect? Maybe a context that might make it something more than it is? Can we use that visual moment in some other fashion? I don't actually want to hear your ideas at this point. For now I just think it's a good exercise to think of these things. I'm going to think on it too and tomorrow I'll let you know if I come up with anything.