Coming in JAMM #4
This one may be too far out for some of you. But it's completely practical, and a ton of fun for both the performer and the spectator.
What happens in it? Oh, someone thinks of a playing card and a fairy directly communicates to you what card it is in an absurd and amazing fashion.
Subject #1
TommEE Pickles
What he was trying to say: I got my picture on the cover of MAGIC magazine!
What it actually says: I got my DWI mugshot on the cover of MAGIC magazine. :(
Subject #2
Marc O
What he was trying to say: I am a powerful magician who commands your obedience.
What it actually says: I'm the Netherlands' #1 transexual dominatrix.
Subject #3
Xiqual
What he was trying to say: Behold ye, the masquerade that is LIFE! Perchance our true visages be revealed in the disguises we don.
What it actually says: Speaking of wearing people's faces as masks, you better pray you don't bump into me in a dark alley, or that will be your fate. And then I'll go to your home and fuck your wife while wearing your face.
Subject #4
George1953
What he was trying to say: My brain... what can I say about it? My mind is like... a finely crafted machine. The gears, ever spinning. The machine of my mind... processing the world around me and manufacturing moments of genius.
What it actually says: Uhhh... does anyone know where in the skull the brain is located? It's...uhm...that thing that hangs down in the back of your throat is part of the brain, right? Aw, crud, I don't even know. And hey! Wait a minute! These gears aren't even interlocked in any way! It's just loose gears rattling around in my skull. They might as well be fucking bottle caps.
Subject #5
Eddie Garland
What he was trying to say: My avatar expresses my interest in the magical and ventriloquial arts. (And its simple, clever animation makes it the best avatar on the Cafe.)
What it actually says: I cannot tell you how many times I've masturbated to that scene in the Anthony Hopkins movie, Magic. No... not the scene where he makes love to Ann-Margret. The one where he beats Burgess Meredith to death with the dummy.
I spent much of the weekend in the initial stages of working on the Jerx Deck for 2017.
Do you collect decks? And then people find this out about you and they go to Nebraska and they bring you back a deck with scenes of Nebraska on it and you're like, "Ah, no. I don't collect these types of decks." Or did like 8 people get you those clear plastic playing cards when they came out 10 years ago? Look, they don't know any better. They just think, "Oh, he likes decks of cards. These are decks of cards." They don't know if something has the right feel or finish. They buy you the magic-related stuff they can find at Barnes & Noble. Maybe they get you the Joshua Jay book there for Christmas. What are you going to do? Throw it in their face and explain to them that in the magic community that is considered the utmost trash? No. You accept it and say, "Thank you, grandma. Yes... yes... he is a very handsome young man."
Do me a favor. The next time your aunt brings you back a deck from her trip through Wyoming, don't be a little snot. Say, "Oh, this is fantastic. I'm going to work on a trick to show you with these." Then show her something cool a week later. She'll feel she was part of it. Make people happy.
And you can make me happy by supporting this site. Just $2.25/week—the price of a cup of coffee, or the price of hardly any cocaine—to feed this hungry orphan boy. And if you collect decks, this is the only way you will receive one of the more limited decks in magic with your paid year subscription. You see, most of these decks are printed in the 1000s, which is way, way more than I need. I can't even seem to find a place that will do runs as low as 500. And I don't even need anywhere near that many. So I'm just going to order as few as possible, and if I end up needing to order 100s more than I require to meet their minimum order, my plan is to take the decks that don't have homes and set them all on fire. I'll make a video of it for you. Your deck will be a true collector's item.
Imagine you're in a relationship with the love of your life. Every morning, before she wakes up and before you leave for work, you write her a love letter that you then hide in some location so that she'll stumble upon it later in the day; in the fridge, in her purse, on top of the coffee pot. This is just one of the many ways you remind her of how much she means to you. You also plan special trips, surprise her with elaborate birthday celebrations, write her love songs, chop firewood for her elderly parents, make her favorite dinner when she's had a rough week, and so on. Over time, these romantic gestures become less frequent. But those daily love letters always remain. Kind of. They get shorter and less thoughtful as the years go on. What was once a full letter-sized sheet every morning, becomes half of that, then it becomes a post-it. As time passes the messages on the post-it become even more generic until you're just writing "♥U" on a post-it every morning. Then one day you realize it would be easier just to take yesterday's note out of the trash and put it back on the kitchen table. So now you just re-use the same note every day for a couple of months until it gets too ratty and you replace it.
Someone says to you, "Does your relationship still have that spark?"
And you reply, "Yes, in fact, I leave her a love note every morning."
You applaud yourself for leaving that post-it on the table every morning, when really it's the least possible effort you could put in.
Magicians have a similar issue with taking pride in putting in the least possible effort. And that comes in the form of their passionate love-affair with...
Snapping.
"When I snap my fingers, your card will rise to the top."
"When I snap my fingers, this card will change to your card."
"When I snap my fingers, the ball will disappear."
Nearly every well-known teacher of close-up magic praises snapping. "You need to snap your fingers so people know the moment the magic happens," they say.
Hmmm...
Okay, I'm going to give you one simple tip to invigorate your close-up performances: Don't ever snap to make magic happen.
If you ever do anything with a "snap" of the fingers, you've literally put the least possible effort into coming up with one of the more interesting aspects of a trick: the stimulus that makes the magic happen.
This may seem like a small point, but I've found removing snapping as my default magical action has had a fairly significant benefit in terms of audience engagement and interest.
Last Wednesday I talked about the idea of performing magic that feels real in the moment. When you snap your fingers to make magic happen you're essentially saying, "Look at me! I'm a magic genie!" That's going to pull the rug out from under any sense that what they're seeing has any real relevance. "Well... he's treating this like hokey bullshit, so why should I invest anything more in it as the viewer?" And that's completely fine if you want your tricks just to be a momentary diversion. I think that's perfectly acceptable. But then let's not hear this shit about magician's complaining how people don't take the art seriously and people think it's just for kids, etc. If your performance is on the level of, say, a knock-knock joke as far as depth goes, then the fact that people dismiss it and move on is exactly what you're asking them to do.
Why don't you respect my knock-knock jokes! I'm an artist! Perhaps you will respect my Knock-knock Tragedies!
Knock-knock
Who's There?
Officer Williams
Officer Williams who?
Officer Williams from the county sheriff's department. I'm afraid your husband has been in an accident. It's not good ma'am.
So what do I do if I'm not snapping?
What does the guy in the hypothetical at the top do if he can't leave his wife the old post-it note? It doesn't matter. Any other gesture is going to be better. Same with not snapping. Do any other goddamn thing you want. You're doing ambitious card? Rub your hands together and hold them around the deck like Mr. Miyagi. Say a prayer. Stare at the deck and sharply inhale after a few seconds. Cast a shadow over the deck a la Michael Ammar (I like to do very elaborate variations on this). Teach your spectator to create an energy ball then pluck it from their hands and smash it into the deck. Set the deck on the table and wait for 2:33 AM (the Devil's hour). Slowly breathe over the deck. Put the deck in the refrigerator for a minute. Extract the "essence" of the deck from the deck on the table, spread through this invisible deck in your hand, and place their invisible selection on top of the invisible deck and then push that essence back into the actual deck.
Or go deeper. Multiple Universe Selection is a change from one card to another. I could have changed the card with a snap of my fingers. Instead I change it with a visualization exercise that sends us to a different dimension. Guess which one stays with an audience longer.
Most of my presentations are just elaborate ways to get rid of snapping.
If I brought you over to my house and said I had this incredible thing to show you, no matter what it was—a liquid solution that turned $1s to $20s, a levitating rock, a picture of my mother that jumped from room to room—and I said, "Check this out, watch what happens." And after a moment it just happened, you'd be like, "Whoa, what the hell was that?" But if I showed you the same thing and said, "Watch what happens with the snap of my finger!" You'd say, "Oh, that's a neat trick."
Snapping is a holdover of the need to be seen as The Magician. "That was me, everyone. I'm the one who did this. I did it with my snap. My powerful snap. Don't forget." That's right. You snapped. You've got the power. (It's gettin' kinda hectic.)
You're an adult. You don't need that validation anymore.
At the very least it's a bland, cliched action. It's something every single close-up magician is doing just out of force of habit. And certainly, with a little thought, you can come up with a more compelling way to initiate the magic than the thing that requires no thought that everyone is doing on auto-pilot, right? Right?
Oh, thank you Jayyyyysus!
Brother Madison is SAFE!
I received the blessed news in the email from Ellusionist on Wenesday.
So the "authorities" concluded that no one was likely to kill someone over talking a little smack about Erdnase. Oh, thank god. Thank god Law and Order: EATCT was on the case.
You may remember I first touched on this "controversy" back on March 6th.
And then, on March 7th, Ellusionist sent us all a very sobering email telling us the product would have to be pulled... for Daniel's safety. You see, apparently gangs of magic nerds were threatening to KILL Daniel Madison!!!!
The email, if you haven't read it, is a god-damn classic. Now, what they should have done is sent out a quick email that said:
Due to recent threats against Daniel Madison and an ongoing investigation into those threats we are removing Erdnase x Madison indefinitely from our product line-up and removing all references to it from our social media. If you have any information about the threats made please contact [some level of law enforcement that deals with cyber threats]. Thank you.
Instead, they sent out an email that was just pretty much another ad for the set (including a screen shot of the positive reviews it had received), and then shrouded it with hammy, melodramatic nonsense like this:
What started as a campaign with an outspoken member of our community has turned ugly.
As a first in Ellusionist history, one of our team has received death threats.
More than one.
More than one? Yeah, that's what the S at the end of threats would indicate. "I ate apples. More than one." You can just stop at, "I ate apples."
We’ve been asked by local law-enforcement to cease campaign activity in the event that it provokes an attack.
Plans were made for YouTube LIVE game-shows, more videos and contests, but we’ve pulled all of these.
We loved our campaign, but we don’t want to risk Daniel’s safety over a few sales.
On creative calls last week, we joked about #MadisonGate.
Nobody is joking now.
I am, bitch!
It may just seem that I'm just goofing on this corny marketing scheme, but I do think this has broader implications to performers. You see, what Ellusionist attempted to do was the "magician in trouble" plot. But they attempted to do it in real life. And, predictably, they made the exact same dumb mistake magicians make when they try to pull off the magician in trouble in performance. They continued to speak in a presentational tone, but upped the drama.
"Pay attention as I crush each bag, except the one that holds your watch. We'll see how I do in a matter of... time.
Oh, what folly! Oh dear nooooooooo. It appears I have crushed the bag with your watch in it. 1000 pardons, kind sir. This brings great shame to me and my family."
That's a bit of a stretch, but you get the point. People think, "I need to amplify the impact of this dramatic moment by acting dramatically."
No. If you want it to feel real then what you need to do is drop all pretense and break the pattern of your established communication style.
"Pay attention as I crush each bag, except the one that holds your watch. We'll see how I do in a matter of... time.
[To himself] Oh shit, shit. [Says something to someone off stage.] Just a.... [starts examining the other bags] [To himself] Oh come on, Karl, what the hell. [To the audience.] Just a moment here. Obviously we've had a bit of a mishap. A mistake. A...uh... mishap. I think we're going to take a momentary break. Are we? [Looks offstage] No? We're going to go to the next piece? We're going to go to the next piece. Sir, please meet me and my crew after the show. I apologize. We'll take care of this.
Uhm... okay... so... right.
I was recently traveling through the dark and mysterious forests of Vietnam."
Then, at the end of that bit, when you pull the watch from your butthole (It's a Pulp Fiction inspired magic show) you might actually surprise people.
The short email I mentioned above could have come off as real. The highly dramatic marketing email they sent instead just came off like a total goof.
It didn't help that they tried to include some "evidence" of the awful abuse Daniel was receiving with these screenshots.
These "unknown numbers" as the email describes them, were given to the police.
Notice any problem with these images? Besides the dopey writing, I mean.
If these are unknown numbers, why would Daniel have an image of the person associated with the number that needed to be blacked out?
Oopsy-daisy!
The March 7th email ended with them asking you to forward any information to them so they could relay it to the police. Because... you know... that's how investigations work.
"I found these cum-soaked panties in the woods."
"Well... go give them to the rape victim so she can give them to the police."
But now Ellusionist has made the brave choice to re-release the project! Finally! Just what we needed! A magic project devoted to Erdnase!
As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, this is their statement from the email:
"To address the controversy, authorities concluded the threats weren't likely to be actioned upon, and we feel 'keyboard warriors' took the release to new heights that this industry won't bow down to."
Those were the results of the six-week investigation? "These threats aren't likely to be actioned upon." That seems like something you would determine before you investigate for six weeks.
And they're especially unlikely to be acted upon because they never existed. They were made up. People may have thought saying "I'm better than Erdnase" was dumb, and I guess maybe someone could have been mad. But no one was like, "I'm going to murder that person!" Other than someone on Ellusionist's payroll.
I routinely talk about how much Erdnase sucks. (20 Jerx Points to the first person who takes a shit on that book.) Nobody really cares because no one takes this stuff that seriously. I routinely correspond with, and this site is supported by, numerous Erdnase-philes.
And what a bummer that that's the big denouement for this story. "These threats aren't likely to be actioned upon." I need a disappointed slide-whistle sound.
I wish I could have been in the room when this idea came up.
Brad Christian: We need to come up with a campaign for the Erdnase x Madison set. No 13-year-old in his right mind gives a shit about Erdnase. How do we change that?
Employee 1: How about some YouTube LIVE Game Shows?
Brad Christian: Fuck that noise. You're fired.
Employee 2: How about we try and set a world record for the largest balloon launch and all the balloons say "Erdnase x Madison" on them?
Brad Christian: Oh christ.
Dumbest Employee: How about we say someone is threatening to kill Daniel Madison because they're so furious at him?
Brad Christian: Hmmm... I like it. It's a storyline that would appeal to your average 13-year-old, or a full-grown moron (our target demo). Yes...yes...I like it. Penn and Teller have admitted that, at first, they fabricated the hatred towards themselves for publicity and then dumb magicians decided they genuinely were upset. Maybe we can fabricate some hate towards Daniel and some idiots will actually decide to be bothered by it. And it gives a chance to pull it from the market and re-release it a month later. Essentially giving us two releases for one product. Let's roll with it!
If it sounds like I'm bashing them, I'm not. I love that they're doing stupid shit like this. I think it's fun. It's just my job to point out the nonsense of it all. At least it's my job until Ellusionist hires me for their marketing team. I'm here for you Ellusionist. You need me, E. Isn't Chris Ramsey gone? According to the Kickstarter page for your How to be a Magician set, Chris was the funny one.
That's a pretty sad state of affairs when Chris Ramsey is the funny person in your group. That would be like if Mungo was the "hot" one in the Catillac Cats.
No! Cleo was the one you wanted to bang.
No offense, to Chris. He seems good natured enough, but not the person I'd look to to bring the "funny." He's not exactly Eddie Murphy. Hell, he's barely as funny as Audie Murphy.
But either way, if he's not around anymore, why not bring your pal Andy on to fill the void? I've worked on marketing projects much bigger and more successful than this one. And I can connect with the kids with my hip references to the Catillac Cats and Audie Murphy.
We'll roll this blog right onto your site and I'll just make fun of Rick Lax all day. Whatever you want.
Think about it. We'll come up with some good audience-centric ideas about redefining magic for the 21st century rather then indoctrinating another generation into worshipping some bore-fest of a book by some phony gambler and fetishizing the lamest aspects of this craft.
And finally, here's a classic from when I was asking folks to destroy an Erdnase for a chance to win a free JV1. PLEASE DON'T MURDER CHRIS SLATER!
Sometimes I'll think I have some great idea for something, and I'll write down a phrase or save a picture to a folder for "ideas" and then I'll go back later and be like, "What the fudge were you thinking about?" At some point I had big plans for these ideas but they just couldn't hack it. I just consider this survival of the fittest in regards to ideas. If I can't remember what it was, how great could it have been?
In today's ad post I'm going to dump some of these words and images here. Perhaps you'll consider supporting this site so more ideas don't turn into hungry orphans? In return you'll get a 20+ page ebook every month in the style of a magazine called The JAMM. Plus you'll receive the Jerx deck of cards later this year. And a couple other little bonuses to come. Plus I'll think you're a cool guy (or a super cool chick).
Ooo-kay.
(Sadly, I remember that was a pretty good idea. Just not what the idea was.)
I think I wanted to use this for a trick. Or maybe it was just for my "personal" shopping list. I don't recall now
That's the foot of the girl behind him. I'm not sure what I thought this had to do with magic.
Actually, that's a pretty well fleshed out effect.
There are two things I preach that might seem at odds with each other. The first is that if you want people to think you have real powers you're a total nutjob. The second is that you should strive in your performances to give people an experience that they can't immediately write off as "just a trick."
These goals aren't at cross-purposes. Patrick Stewart wants you to feel he is Macbeth when he is onstage playing Macbeth. But he does not want you to feel he's Macbeth when he leaves the theater.
The world is completely comfortable with the concept that what the actor is doing is "fake." And yet people are routinely moved by a great acting performance, not just in the moment, but also as they reflect back on it later. They don't get caught up in it being "not real." In fact, if Patrick Stewart had been insistent on trying to get people to think he was really Macbeth—and he walked around in the costume and only answered to Macbeth—that would probably ruin the performance for you. You'd be like, "Oh god, what is this corny shit?"
Similarly, with magic, I'll often perform an effect where, for instance, I read someone's mind. In that moment, I want it to feel like real mind reading. I want them to think there's no other way it could have been done. But because I'm most often performing for friends or people I'll see again in other social situations and because I'm not a weirdo, I don't want them to walk away thinking I want them to believe I have these powers. If anything I want to capture their imagination with the fact that these things somehow can be done without having any special abilities.
So that duality is something I think readers of this site understand. I want people to find themselves believing the unbelievable as they are caught up in the performance, but I'm not looking for people to give me credit for abilities beyond being entertaining and crafting an interesting and fun experience for them.
But there is a third layer of reality that I've been focusing my attention on in recent years. An area I call The Gloaming. This is the layer where the "performance" reality and the "offstage" reality get blurred.
No intelligent, modern audience will really believe you have magic powers. I think that's a statement we can all pretty much agree with. At the very least they won't believe someone with real powers is on America's Got Talent or has been sitting at their Thanksgiving table for the past 20 years. Maybe someone with real powers exists somewhere, but it's not someone they know or someone doing an ABC special or someone performing at a T.G.I.Fridays.
So we can't get people to believe in "Magic" but we can use our magic to increase the level of mystery in people's lives. And while I have a moral issue with pretending they're genuinely psychic, because that is done for personal gain, and I have a moral issue with pretending to talk to someone's dead relatives, because that's manipulating their memories of someone they care about, I don't have an issue with willfully obscuring the line between reality and fiction.
(In the past I've received the occasional email where someone has questioned if it's right of me to not be completely upfront about what's a trick and what isn't. I remember a couple people thought this post (which isn't really a trick) was somehow manipulative. If you have a problem with that, you've lost your sense of perspective. There's a gigantic difference between saying, "Your dead mother wants me to send this message to you," and orchestrating something to increase the mystery or serendipity in someone's life.)
The recipe for pushing the audience into the Gloaming is this:
Some examples:
The Distracted Artist style of presentation
(Sample) Performance: My ring switched places with his keys.
Reality: It's a trick.
The Gloaming: Is it possible this could have happened unintentionally? Are magic methods like that?
In Search of Lost Time
Performance: The card I freely named was turned around in the deck
Reality: It's a trick.
The Gloaming: Did I really lose five minutes of time just like that? Or is their some other explanation?
Mr. Yento
Performance: A little sword penetrated a ring.
Reality: It's a trick.
The Gloaming: Is there really a mysterious man sending off little tricks to magicians all over the world? Is it even possible a trick could be constructed so that it would be impossible to backtrack and figure out how it was done?
You see? The idea of The Gloaming is, in part, to switch the way we prioritize presentation and effect. Since we can't use tricks to get people to believe in "Magic" (in the long term), perhaps we can use the tricks to reinforce the presentation and it's that presentation that stays with people (beyond the point where the details of the trick fade away). The Gloaming is a way to use magic to tease, fascinate, and mystify a modern audience without asking them to believe in magic. Instead it's about giving them the chance to consider ideas on the fringes of possibility. Ideas that are perhaps more interesting, romantic, or fun than the concepts we typically present people (i.e. "I'm an a potent wizard!" or, "I can read body language cues.")
This is a subject we'll pursue more in future posts.
On Monday I'm going to suggest a change every close-up magician can make to the way they perform. It's something all of you do—ALL OF YOU—and it will sound like such a little thing when I mention it, but if you make this change it will go a long way towards satisfying that first element in the recipe mentioned above: performing effects that feel real in the moment.
Schedule
New posts Monday-Friday, the first three weeks of every month.
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"What is The GLOMM?" Click here.
A Glossary of terms used here.
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