Andy (me) and the GLOMM get a shout-out at Monday Night Magic in New York City. Thanks Patrick and David!
David Corsaro seemed to be having a little trouble reading last night at MNM... @TheJerx #GLOMM pic.twitter.com/Wg0bNOmS2N
— Patrick Davis (@MagicalPat) July 5, 2016
Next, David Copperfield, maybe? I mean, why wouldn't he? Unless he doesn't adhere to the GLOMM's Code of Ethics. Every day that passes without him mentioning the GLOMM makes me wonder.
Tomorrow I finalize the details in regards to how many copies of The Jerx, Volume One will actually be printed, so today is your last day to get your order in or reserve a copy at the current price and with the bonuses. See my June 24th post for details.
I want to thank everyone who has donated to the site in order to receive the book. Your support has allowed me to take a chunk of my time every week that I should be working and devote it to this site instead. I especially want to thank those who were on board that first week—that first day even. When I think of it, it's a huge compliment that there was a not-insignificant number of people who ponied up a not-insignificant amount of money, for something they wouldn't receive for many months to come, by a first-time author, who writes anonymously—especially in the world of magic that's filled with a-holes taking money and then never actually delivering what they claimed. Everyone who likes this site owes the people who stepped-up early on a debt of gratitude because the site wouldn't be here without them.
And it's nice to get a bump in orders in these final weeks too. So don't think I don't appreciate you, you slackers and loafers. You're my people. And that's going to help keep posting fairly regular at least until Fall rolls around.
Also thanks to Jerx: France. I'm not sure what happened but I ended up with a handful of orders from there in the past week or so. I can't imagine reading this site if English isn't your first language. And I'm sure it's a total abortion if it goes through an online translator, so it amazes me that anyone can sift their way through this site in that way.
So, just generally, thanks to everyone who has supported the site via buying the book. I would happily sell-out in a minute if Ellusionist, or whoever, dropped a nickel and it rolled my way. But until that time, I'm happy to keep this baby independent and user supported.
By the way, when I asked how long it would take for the book to be ready I was told "a few weeks after the file has been approved." My hope is that means I should be able to ship the book in August. I think that's a conservative date, but maybe I'm being naive. I will keep everyone who orders updated on that.
For those who are curious about things like this:
About 60% of the book orders came from the U.S.
About 25% of those U.S. orders came from LA.
About 50% of the non-U.S. orders came from England.
One person in China ordered the book. He's literally 1 in a billion.
Nobody in any of the following states ordered the book. (If you're in one of these states and think you did, make sure to email me.)
I love this commercial for the movie Magic. The movie was the inspiration for one of the tricks in The Jerx, Volume 1. And the poem in the ad gives that trick its name
This may be apocryphal but apparently this commercial only ran once and it scared kids so much, and parents complained so much, that it was taken off the air. I like to think that's true.
If you're a horror movie fan, there's a service called Shudder which is like Netflix but only for horror. It's $4.99 a month. And Magic is one of the movies in their library. They also have a link there for Shudder TV which is constantly streaming horror movies and it's free.
Speaking of horrors. This fucking mutant has been identified as David Drowley aka Twister the Clown. Rot in hell, old man. And you're out of the GLOMM.
Oh, and going forward I will be including people's shitty magic names (e.g., Twister the Clown) with their real name on the banned members page of the GLOMM website. You're not going to dodge being associated with that name for eternity.
Regarding "eternity," I was informed that one of the guys on the banned list died in prison recently. Tough. When you get banned from the GLOMM it's everlasting.
Thanks to Kamal "The Pedo Hunter" Farmer for going through the court records and tracking down the name of this guy.
I knew this looked familiar.
I'm a big believer in testing magic methods, techniques, and concepts, as I've mentioned since the beginning of this site, and most recently in this post. When I bring this up to people they will often object. They'll suggest that it is, in some way, like deconstructing and quantifying poetry or something like that. But, while magic is an art, it also has a lot of practical and testable elements to it as well and I think it has suffered because of our fear of rigorously examining those things. We think, "I don't need to test anything. I know when a trick fools them and when it doesn't." But no. No you don't. It's almost impossible to remove yourself from your role as the magician and look at things objectively. And unless you present things plainly and ask your audience pointed questions, you have no idea what they're thinking. "But they laughed and clapped after my trick. Clearly they enjoyed it, so it must have fooled them." Maybe. Or maybe they're just being nice people who were watching a magic performance.
Most people are nice like that. They're not hypercritical and they don't question every unusual action. And we take advantage of that by presenting magic that relies on their charitable view of the proceedings. In fact, if someone does approach our performance with a hard-line, critical assessment, we think he's an asshole. "Lighten up, buddy, it's just a magic show." But, with testing, you can create material that does fool the harshest critics. And you know it will because you've paid people to take the most unforgiving look at your methods and effects. You can't get this feedback from an audience that paid to see you. You can't get it from other magicians. (I would submit that they're the least equipped to tell you what will fool an audience.) Your best hope is a smart, layman friend. But after testing enough tricks with him/her they're not really laymen anymore.
That's why I like recruiting people, focus group style, and having them come off the street knowing their job that day is to find the weaknesses in the effects we're presenting them. It's a hassle and it's expensive but I would split the cost with other magician friends and it wasn't too bad. You could bring in 12 people for 90 minutes and pay $240 total. Split a few ways it was just 60 or 80 dollars every few months. I just considered it an entertainment expense. To me it was fascinating to see what things flew by people and what things they immediately busted.
And what you end up with if you really work this process is magic that is bulletproof and doesn't require a spectator to drop their critical faculties. I find that this alone is a fairly wild feeling for a spectator -- to not have to be forgiving in any way when they had intended to be. It's like going to lift what you think is a heavy bag and it turns out to be filled with styrofoam. Or if you were going out on a blind date and you approached the door thinking, "Well, no matter how she appears, I'll let her know how pretty she looks. That's the kind thing to do." And then she opens the door and she's truly the most jawdropping woman you've ever seen. It's a great feeling to not have to compensate for something when you thought you would.
A great trick is more than just a fooling trick, of course, my only point in stressing the testing of method is because it's something you can test and improve on without sacrificing anything you bring to the artistic side of the effect.
If you like this notion of testing magic in a more formal setting, I suggest you keep an eye out for an article by Joshua Jay in an upcoming MAGIC magazine. He worked with a university research group to gather some data about people's opinions and thoughts about magic and magicians and it's pretty interesting stuff. It's a little different than the focus-group style I conducted, but it came to many similar conclusions.
I told him I wouldn't spoil any of the results, but I will say if you're someone who does a lot of straightforward card routines with a normal deck, you'll probably not be enthused when you learn the results of how forgettable these types of tricks are to people.
As I wrote to Josh:
We also did something similar to your study where we invited people back a week or two later and asked them for details about three card tricks we had shown them at their previous visit [Performed live and via video by legends in magic]. Less than 20% (and it may have been closer to 10) could tell us anything other than in the broadest of terms ("Cards changed" or "It was a poker trick"). Anyone who tells you their card tricks are truly memorable are (with rare exceptions) lying to you or themselves. Other than a few transcendent card tricks, most are forgettable. And I don't think that means they're not worth performing, but don't kid yourself and think you're creating some memorable moment. I've made the comparison on my site to these types of card tricks being like action movies. Or maybe a massage. Or an average hand-job. It's fun in the moment and maybe you think about it later that evening, but it's not something that stays with you long term. And I'm perfectly fine with that. I like to do really big, memorable things, but I'm also cool with people just remembering they had a fun time.
Today I want to talk about one of the results of the testing I helped conduct that deals with something that is not unintuitive, but is, I think, undervalued. And that is the idea of combining methods.
Before I go further I want to admit I don't have the exact results of this testing in front of me (it's all in storage at the moment) but my numbers are correct within a couple percentage points.
Here's what we did.
First we would have someone slide a card out of a face-down spread, peek at it, and the magician would guess what it was. When pressed for an explanation, 78% said maybe the cards were marked in some way.
Then, for a different group, we did a trick where someone slid a card out from a face-up spread and the magician, who was blindfolded, was able to tell them the card. 86% said he could probably see through or around the blindfold somehow.
Then, for another group, we performed the trick with the deck face down and with the magician in a blindfold. So we just combined two somewhat transparent methodologies. But when we did, only like 8% suggested the method was a see-thru blindfold AND a marked deck.
I was amazed at how strong a method could arise from combining two weak methods. I would have thought, "Well, 86% understand you might be able to see through a blindfold, and three-quarters are familiar with marked decks. So... at the very least we're looking at like 60% who get both concepts. And I would expect most of them to be able to put the two together." But that's not how it happened. And we repeated this test and similar ones often enough to show that it was consistent.
Why does it work like that? I can't say for sure. It's tempting to think you'd be more likely to get busted when you use two methods that aren't that strong. But that's not how it works out at all. I suppose it's just a matter of people looking for the (singular) solution and their mind is not set to parse a trick in order to look at its component parts. If you walk them through it, they can figure it out, but I don't think looking at the pieces of an effect comes naturally to non-magicians.
Perhaps it's like being a perfumer and being capable of pulling out all the notes that comprise a particular fragrance. But a perfume layperson, like myself, would just say, "Oh, this is summery," or, "This is earthy." I honestly don't even know enough about perfume to know if that's an apt analogy.
All I know is that it works. I am 100% on board with the power of combining methods. To the extent that I almost believe if Bernie Madoff was not just running a Ponzi scheme, but was also counterfeiting money as well, he might not have been caught. Like maybe each action might have covered for the other.
In my mind I think of methods as horses, and if you just have one it will run free. But if you tie that horse's tail to another horse's tail they will pull at each other to get free and not make much, if any, forward progress. In the forthcoming book, the last effect is about a camera that takes pictures of the future. You do it with any cellphone camera, no apps. It takes something like 40 steps to describe because it layers so many methods on top of one another. In my head I see a dozen horses all tied at the tail.
In magic there is the saying, which I generally agree with, that a trick that can be described in one sentence is probably a good trick. But I think a corollary to that is that a method that can be described in one sentence is probably a bad method.
That's why you should always be combining methods to make your mysteries impenetrable. It's like that movie says: ABCM.
And finally, I'll hide a pro-tip for the mentalists here at the bottom of this post.
A traditional center-tear involves a few different deceptions. First, the manner of folding and ripping to preserve the information. Second, the stealing out of the target piece. Third, some type of peek of the information you stole out after a time delay. It's a very solid, deceptive method.
But many mentalists have taken a giant step backwards by performing a center tear where they peek the information while they tear it. This is only more deceptive to magicians/mentalists. For the rest of the universe it is exactly what they would think you're doing. It's a perfect straight line method.
Perform a center tear for people with a real-time peek in it. Or have people watch a video of it being performed by whoever you think does it best (as long as the video includes their entire upper body so the person will experience it similar to what they'd see in real life). When it's over ask them, "If you had to guess how it's done, what would be your guess?" An overwhelming majority will say something like, "Maybe he looked at the word as he tore the paper?" I know this to be true because I've done just this for people.
No, they won't understand the intricate details of the folding and the ripping. They will just know they saw you glance at the paper while you were tearing it up (which, when you're tearing to destroy something, there is no justification for). That's all they need to know. But you don't understand, Andy, I barely glance at the pieces as I tear them up. It doesn't matter. It is not possible to look at the torn pieces so quickly that people won't catch you. (Ask any woman who has worn a low-cut top if even the quickest glance can go unnoticed.) And, in fact, the quicker your glance, the sketchier it is. You may get lucky and the person may not be looking at your eyes when you get your peek, but then you are relying on luck. If they see or sense your eyes going to that paper—or even just imagine it's a possibility—then you're sunk.
I realize I won't get many mentalists who agree with me. That's fine. Mentalists, even more than traditional magicians, hate the idea of testing effects in front of real people. That's why they're fans of so many awful methods. Which is just as well. Even shitty mentalism can have a strong effect on people. When you proactively take steps to make your mentalism irreproachable you end up with something more powerful than I trust most of those goofballs with.
I'm a little scatterbrained today, no time to talk about magic.
I just got two great job offers. The only trouble I'm having is deciding which boss I'd want to work for more. Going to have to think this one through.
Option A
Option B
By SEAN ALFANO AP July 31, 2007, 9:37 AM
The owner of a car dealership has been accused of killing two employees because they kept asking for pay raises.
Rolandas Milinavicius has been charged with two counts of murder in the shooting deaths of Inga Contreras, 25, and Martynas Simokaitis, 28.
Milinavicius, who was having financial problems, told police he shot the two Thursday after they kept asking for more pay, said police in East Point, which is just outside Atlanta.
Milinavicius, 38, turned himself in two days after the shootings and confessed to the killings, Popham said.
"As I understand, the employees were not really happy about the pay, and they had questioned him about it over the course of time," Popham said. "That morning he said he just snapped."
It's a real brainbuster. I hope I make the right choice.
Oh, by the way, here's a sweet pic a security cam caught of the "BIG bright smile" I gave Option A.
First off, that's some next-level punning in this post title. If you don't get it, go ask Max Maven or some other smart guy because it's solid as Sears.
This is a quick presentational idea for French Postcards by Chris Philpott. I've found this to be a very enjoyable effect to perform. People seem to really connect with the idea. And it's pretty cheap, no reason not to buy it. Even if you never perform it you'll end up with 22 boobs to look at, you little pervert.
The effect is a version of Out of This World where your spectator separates "nudie" postcards from ordinary postcards of landmarks. You can tie the presentation into this actual study where people were able to determine which side of a computer screen an image would pop up on at a rate slightly better than chance, but only when that image was an erotic picture.
The way I'm going to suggest performing it is a way I have only done once, and I regret doing it that way (for reasons I'll explain). But if you're in a serious relationship or married, then I think what follows would be a perfect way to present French Postcards, and might put a spark in your dull marriage.
What it amounts to is this: You ask your partner for their help with something you're working on. Then you perform French Postcards for them. But you don't do the trick. You just actually have them try and separate them. At the end you reveal how good or bad they did. Again, you're actually doing the demonstration at this point, not a trick. So they'll likely be close to 50/50 at the end. After you've displayed their results, as you talk to them, reset the packets so you can do the effect again (properly this time) in a few minutes.
"I want to try that again in a moment," you say, and set the timer on your phone for 3 minutes. Now take your wife (or girlfriend or husband or boyfriend) by the hand and lead them over to the couch or the bed. Start kissing your way up their neck, nibbling their ear. Engage in an old-school make-out session like you haven't in years.
Keep your clothes on, but let your hands explore freely. Bring some passion to the moment for the love of god. For many of you this will be a novel experience as your sex-life has evolved into two minutes of lifeless humping before bed a couple times a month. Slide one hand up her shirt and glide it across her body, down to her stomach, and let your fingers slip into the waistband of her jeans. "Is there any better feeling than someone sliding their hand down your pants?" my college friend Jake asked once. He had a point. Don't take things too far, tease her a bit.
Soon your alarm will start going off. "Let's just ignore that you say." And maybe you do. Or you can say, "Sorry, let's just break for two quick minutes. I want to try this again."
Then you bring her back to the postcards and ask her to separate them into two piles again without looking. This time she separates them perfectly. The implication being that your activity together somehow amped up her sexual intuition. Which has a certain kind of logic to it.
Then you go back to bed and finish what you started.
In the future I would only do this with someone I'm in a serious relationship with. Not because I won't hook-up with someone I'm not in a serious relationship with, I absolutely will. But because I think it has a tendency to imply a connection on a level that isn't really there. And there's something slightly too believable about it. If you're in a real relationship I see no issue with a trick that possibly suggests an even greater chemistry and sexual connection. But if your goal is to establish such a connection with a trick like this, I think that's creepy as fuck. Of course, this won't stop any of you. You know, those of you who perform effects where you can read their mind based on your "deep emotional connection" with them -- that's just as manipulative and shady. Save this trick (and ones like those) to use as manifestations of connections that really DO exist. Not as a way to create ones that don't.
"Point to any tree in the backyard," I said to my friend.
She pointed to the one in the back corner of the yard and we walked out to it. I plucked a leaf from the tree and then tore a little chunk out of it and gave her the leaf to hold. Then I massaged the piece of leaf into the palm of my left hand, where it disappeared (or was "absorbed into my flesh"). I made a motion as if I was sliding the piece of leaf (now under my skin) up my arm, across my chest, and up my neck. Then I coughed a little and pushed the piece of leaf out of my mouth. She gasped. I bit the piece between my teeth and stuck my head out for her to take it. She did and matched it up with the leaf in her hand. A perfect fit.
First, a note on terminology. I've argued that in magic advertising, the world "impromptu" has—or should have—a specific meaning. In the same way the FDA has determined what the word "light" means when applied to a products label.
In this case, I'm not defining a particular trick, but a stable of techniques and I'm using impromptu in the non-magic sense of, "suddenly or hastily prepared." These are things I find helpful to have in my head in order to create magic on the fly. Some of the effects I generate require a bit of a set-up, including the one mentioned above. To be a technique included in the toolkit it has to lead to effects that can be done completely spontaneously or with a set-up that can be done without any special tools while someone is taking a shit.
I've mentioned a few of these techniques before (they're listed at the bottom of this post), but I thought I would officially start compiling the toolkit for anyone else who might be interested.
Today's effect/technique is Angle Z by Daniel Madison. I can't go into the details of the handling here, and you may think $30 is too expensive for a download, but for me it has been completely worth it. I may bust Daniel Madison's balls for the fake gambler stuff, but he's a super talented magician and this is a simple but very useful method. In fact, I think magicians may tend to think it's too simple. It's not the type of thing that holds up to multiple viewings on line or something like that, but in the real world—when the spectator doesn't know what's coming—it fools people completely.
I can't remember if Daniel mentions any non-card uses in his download but I actually almost never use it with playing cards. I just transfer the same method to whatever objects are around me.
In the trick at the top, there were four areas of trees in the backyard with leaves that were within reach. I set up a leaf on each tree and had each piece in a different pocket of my jeans. She pointed to one area which I interpreted as being the tree I had set-up. We walked out there and as we did I put the piece in my mouth without her seeing. The only problem was finding the correct leaf again. That was harder than I expected. I took a few extra seconds looking for "the perfect leaf" but that time was forgotten after the trick was concluded.
I've done Angle Z with a pocket-sized notebook. Flip it open and hold it for them while they sign the top page (holding it in a way that disguises the set-up). Pull the page out, tear a piece off, and have that piece go anywhere.
At Chipotle recently they had a stack of business cards by the register. In the time it took for my friend to pay I set it up so the second card in the stack was ready to go and the piece was set-up to penetrate into my water bottle (i.e., jammed in the cap).
It's almost a habit now when I see business cards on display. Prep the card, put it back in the display second from the face. Then if I find an interesting place for the corner to end up, I can perform the trick. I don't always. In fact, most times I don't. But the nice thing is, very few people are taking the manager's business card at a Chipotle (or most places, for that matter). So I can come back weeks later and potentially be set-up to go into the trick. And now I've had time to get the corner in an even more impossible location. (For example, it might appear back at his apartment in place of the bookmark in the book on his nightstand.)
Keeping the prepped card second in the stack keeps it from being found immediately. And it looks like you're just grabbing the front, normal card of the stack. Your hand blocks where the card is coming from, and no one is paying too much attention at that point. (Unless you say, "Watch as I remove the front card from this stack of business cards.")
Late last night I was at a Denny's and I did it with the paper placemat. My friend went to the bathroom and I set the trick up so the corner would appear inside a plastic table display card holder thingamajig (I don't know what it's called -- one of these things) in the booth behind my friend. Then I set my soda glass on the prepared corner of the placemat. When my friend returned I waited a bit and offered to show him a trick. I ripped the corner off my placemat, placed it in my mouth and chewed it up. Removed the piece from my mouth (an extra little spitball I'd had there since he returned from the bathroom), put it in my straw, and shot it past his head into the booth behind him. I told him I'd knocked over the plastic display thing (I hadn't, it was already laying down), and when he went to put it back up he noticed the corner, now unchewed, in the display. I held up my placemat to show a perfect match.
Essentially you can do it with most anything you can rip, which is why it's so useful in the Impromptu Toolkit. The toolkit is different than just my impromptu repertoire. That is just a group of tricks, whereas things in the toolkit can be used to create effects on the fly.
I will be adding to this series in the future. Here is the Impromptu Toolkit as it stands now, including the items I've mentioned in the past:
Schedule
New posts Monday-Friday, the first three weeks of every month.
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