Now Shipping
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The Jerx decks are in the process of being sent out. They'll go out in batches over the course of the next two weeks.
And emails have gone out to Season 2 supporters in regards to Season 3. If you were a JAMM subscriber and you didn't get the email, check your spam, and if it's not there, let me know and I'll re-send it.
Check in a week or two for an update on a potential Season 3. Later, sweeties.
The Secret to Happiness Part Two
/Hey, everyone. This is the final post in Season Two of The Jerx. Will there be a Season Three? We'll see. There are more details on the future of this site at the bottom of this post.
This is a follow-up to this post on the secret of living a happy life.
I'll repeat the two caveats that I started the previous post with.
1. I'm not trying to explain a mindset that I adopted, I'm trying to explain (via analogy) a mindset that I'm fortunate to have been born with. That's not something I take any pride in, by the way. I realize it's just a quirk of some chemical imbalance that allows me to be naturally pretty joyful about life. Now, maybe the fact I didn't adopt this mindset means it's something that can't be adopted. Maybe what I have to say would be more valuable if I had struggled through depression. I don't know. I think there is still some insight to be gained even if I didn't have to work for it. Perhaps even more than if I had to work for it. If you're trying to lose weight, it's probably valuable to learn tips and techniques from someone who has lost weight themselves. But if you could find a way to relate to the mindset of someone who was naturally thin and healthy, that might be even more beneficial.
2. Happiness is strange in the sense that it's something everyone strives for, but when you're genuinely happy, the reaction you often get from other people is, "Haha, look at this idiot. He's not living his life in a constant state of agitation and self-doubt!" So be prepared for that reaction when you embrace happiness.
My first post on the Secret to Happiness dealt with the mindset I use when handling difficulty, adversity, and obstacles. Honestly, I think that's the most important element to happiness. However, there is another aspect to happiness that is less about the defensive game of how to handle difficulty and more about the offensive game of pursuing goals and objectives.
In regards to that area of life I suggest you:
Treat Your Life Like a Heist Movie
There are three elements here that I think are important.
1. Heist movies involve an audacious goal.
2. Heist movies involve meticulous planning.
3. In Heist movies, obstacles are plot points.
Audacious Goals
The best heist movies have the criminals pursuing a goal that seems almost impossible. What I'm suggesting is that you pick one ludicrously ambitious goal that is technically possible but wildly unlikely, and then dedicate yourself to achieving that goal. (I don't mean you have to dedicate all your free time to it. I mean it's something you work towards consistently, a little each day.)
Here are some examples of audacious goals:
"I'm going to write a book." No. That's too realistic. Any idiot can write a book. I've written two.
"I'm going to write a book that will stay at the top of the New York Times Bestseller list for a year." That's more like it.
No: "I'm going to open a restaurant."
Yes: "I'm going to open a restaurant that will eventually be named the best restaurant in the world."
No: "I'm going to get in better shape."
Yes: "I'm going to play in the NBA."
No: "I'm going to get married and have kids."
Yes: "I'm going to start a family that is so close and loving that one day a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie will be made about how great we are."
You'll notice that each realistic goal is a part of the ludicrous goal. I'm not suggesting you change the direction of your goals. Just amplify them.
But how does having a goal you'll likely never achieve lead to happiness?
Well, I think humans are happiest when they are pursuing some sort of goal that is in alignment with their interests. And I think genuinely pursuing a goal leads to more stable, long-term happiness than even achieving goals does.
If your goal is to win the Super Bowl and then you do, you probably have a spike of happiness that fades over time. If you don't come up with some new goal to replace that, then your happiness is tied to your achievement and that's in the rearview mirror.
The pursuit of a goal is always pushing you forward. That momentum is a key to happiness. The happiest people I know are looking ahead with hope and anticipation.
Okay, but why make the goals unachievable? Why not set a realistic goal, meet it. Set another one, meet it. And so on?
I don't see a benefit to that. It certainly wouldn't be a very interesting heist movie to watch someone steal $20 over and over. This isn't about the satisfaction that comes with accomplishing something. It's about the happiness that comes in working towards something.
You're not locked into this one unrealistic goal. If your interests or priorities change, you can change the goal at any point in time.
If your goal is realistic and you achieve it, but it's not the way you imagined it to be, then achieving your goal can actually feel like a negative thing. "I wanted to write a novel, and I wrote one, and it sucks, and now I'm miserable." And maybe you never write one again. But if your goal is to write the #1 New York Times Bestseller, and you write a shitty novel, that's okay. This is just one step along the way to writing that bestseller. Like in a heist movie, this was a dry run. If your goal was to write a novel and you write a bad one, that may feel like a failure. But if your goal is to write a bestseller then this is a big goal with many steps to it. Writing a bad novel is one of those steps. It's part of the learning process. Maybe you need to write 20 bad novels first. Who knows. You make up the steps to this heist as you go along. And you can celebrate the completion of each step along the way and not be let down by the fact that it didn't turn out exactly as you had hoped because it's always just a step of a work in progress.
This may sound like horseshit to you, but I can say that I've received confirmation on this idea from a number of people who have achieved their "dream." For the past 10-15 years I've watched a bunch of my friends in the entertainment industry succeed at a goal they had set out for themselves. Whether that be getting on Saturday Night Live, becoming the lead on a sitcom, getting a comedy special on a major network, or making millions of dollars on youtube. And yet, I've had personal conversations with them and all of them have told me that the mid-2000s when they were grinding it out with their friends and constantly writing and working on new material and doing shows for a couple dozen people, those were the happiest times of their lives.
When I tell these people I have a theory that achievement doesn't lead to happiness, and that it's the pursuit of a big goal that brings joy, there is almost a universal understanding and agreement on their part. They all get the idea that there is some sort of magic in pursuing a long-shot.
That's not to say you shouldn't take happiness from your achievements. You should wring all the happiness from everything. If I fold over an omelette cleanly I'm pretty pumped for a couple of days. What I'm saying is, linking your happiness to achieving some goal is probably not a good strategy.
Meticulous Planning
You have your audacious goal, now you break it down into as many steps as possible. Let's say your goal is to be the first person to win a Tony award for a magic show. What are the steps? The more steps, the better. This may be something you work on for the next 70 years. You need to work on your magic, your writing, your stagecraft. Maybe you take some online classes or night classes somewhere. You need to see more theater shows and meet people involved in the theater. You need to write a show that you put up in a local theater, then you take it to a bigger city, then eventually NYC. Once you're in NYC you'll start in a small theater, move to an off-Broadway show, then... finally... you get your Broadway show! But that one doesn't get the Tony. So now you start over again with a new show. And so on, and so on. Each of these steps has 100 sub-steps.
I said the happiest people I know have hope and anticipation for the future. Plans are a manifestation of hope and anticipation.
Make spreadsheets and fill notebooks with your plans. Allow them to be rambling and meandering. Maybe to get your Broadway show you'll have to seduce Neil Patrick Harris, so you take two years to get in the best shape of your life and then arrange it so you bump into him randomly at the Magic Castle and then you accidentally drop something and when you go to pick it up, your trousers split (along the seam you weakened) exposing your bare, beautifully toned buttocks. Ah... but he doesn't take the bait! So now you have to find another Broadway producer. But she's more into abs so you spend three months on those.
A lot of you, maybe most of you, are wondering what the hell I'm going on about. Why plan for a goal that's almost impossible to achieve? You're never going to win a Tony for a magic show so what is the point of putting in effort to try? Isn't that wasted effort?
No. Because you're not picking an arbitrary audacious goal. You're picking an audacious goal that's in line with your interests.
If your goal is to win a Tony for your magic show, then you are probably going to die having not achieved your goal. But perhaps because you pursued that unreasonable goal, you die having written three different theatrical magic shows that you put up in smaller theaters in other cities. And you have beautifully toned buttocks and rippling abs. In the pursuit of this audacious goal you will have a bunch of other achievements and accomplishments along the way.
The goal is kind of meaningless. It's the MacGuffin. It just keeps the plot moving. The plot being your life.
Obstacles Are Plot Points
In a heist movie, the alarm goes off and the SWAT team comes in and our heroes are dragged out of the building. This seems like the dissolution of their plan.
But no! Those guys in the SWAT outfits are actually other members of the crew who are sneaking out our heroes right in front of everyone.
When things go wrong in a heist movie it becomes an opportunity for the characters to outmaneuver the problem with cleverness. Or that thing that has gone wrong is actually part of the bigger plan. Or, it only looks like something has gone wrong because what you thought was the plan was actually cover for an even bigger and crazier plan.
You're writing this movie, so you can see the obstacles you encounter as any one of these things. But you shouldn't bemoan them because the movie would be meaningless without them. The obstacles are what give you a chance to show your cleverness or your resilience. That is what my first post on happiness was about.
Here's a heist movie no one would watch. This group decides to rob a bank. "Hey, no one is in the bank," the ringleader says. "Check this out, the vault is unlocked." Then they go in the vault, put the money in duffel bags and leave in their van. The obstacles are what makes this all interesting.
Objections
"But I don't want to be famous or write bestsellers." That's fine. Neither do I. You can have audacious goals about family, or making friends, or even living a life of leisure.
"But I don't have time for pursuing such a goal. I have a job and a family." I'm not talking about putting hours into this goal every day. You can find 20-30 minutes somewhere in your day to do some work in an area of your interest with an eye towards a long-shot goal. And if it does take off in some way then yes, maybe you'll need to devote more time to it, but that's something you can choose to do or not. And that's a good problem to have.
"But if I pursue an unreachable goal I'm guaranteed to die unfulfilled." Well, what would be wrong with that? That means you get to come back as a ghost because you have unfinished business. And that's cool as shit. But no, I don't really think you'll die unfulfilled. (So if you want to come back as a ghost, you'll need to make sure they build a shopping mall on your burial ground or something.) Here's the thing, the goal is just a goof. It's a little adventure you're pursuing. And it's something you got into knowing the outcome was unlikely. And this isn't about fulfillment, it's about happiness. What I see in the people who seem the least happy is they don't have anything they're chasing, nothing they're planning for. They've either attained some reasonable goal, or given up on the unreasonable ones they had when they were younger. They're kind of muddling through their job and their relationship. On the flip-side, I don't know anyone who is really unhappy who is pursuing some big goal. So for your mental health, to keep you young at heart and happy, I recommend spending 30 minutes a day working on some audacious plan. And if that turns out to be an actual bank heist, I want my cut for inspiring you.
Season Three
In the next week or so, an email will go out to the supporters of Season Two of the Jerx to see if there's interest in another year. The email will include the details on the planned rewards and all that. If there's support for another year then I'll start up again in a few weeks. If not, then I won't. Simple!
Now, this is more of my bad business sense, but the reason I'm leaving it in the hands of the previous year's supporters and not making a public post here about it is because I feel like they're the ones who should have the say. If this site is still providing value for the people who have backed it for a year or more, then it's still worth doing for me. But if they didn't find it worth their investment, then it's probably not.
If we end up doing another year, then there will be an opportunity for new people to support the site and get the rewards later in the year. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
I'll update you on what's to come at the end of the month. Either way, you're the best. Thanks for reading. And have a dope 2018.
Gardyloo #45
/A Critical Examination of a Flattering Critique
Earlier this week over email, someone accused me of writing the following critique of this site on the Magic Cafe.
If you're reading this on your phone and that's too small, it says (the spelling and grammar errors are his, not mine):
The Jerx is great, but many of his ideas are not original as some people here seems to think.
His ideas for example with Ring Flight and doing an effect like an experiement has been written by T.A.Waters in his big book.
Stopping time has been done by David Berglas long time ago.
Knowing things by taste has been done by a guy on Jay Leno in the 90's. Even Lee Earle mentioned it in his magazine.
And when the Jerx writes about the mixing of methods, as if this is a new notion, I wonder if has never heard of an effects like The Linking Rings or The Ambitious Card.
I get why they thought it was suspicious. It's phrased as a criticism, but it's actually incredibly complimentary. At least that's how I took it.
Look, I've written like 600+ essays, articles, and effects over the past 2.5 years. And in all that content these are the examples of "many" of my idea being "not original."
1. I wrote a one-paragraph description once of how I do ring-flight without any presentation at all. The whole purpose of which was to disconnect it from being part of a magic trick. In TA waters book he writes about doing ring flight as a kicker at the end of a psychometry routine. The only similarity I see is that we both register confusion rather than "ta-dah!" at the moment the effect occurs. But in a broader sense, the ideas are at the complete opposite ends of the presentational spectrum.
2. This is correct. I did not invent the idea of stopping time. (I don't think David Berglas did either.)
3. I've never written a trick about "knowing things by taste." I have written a trick about being able to read what someone wrote with your tongue by eliminating all your other senses. I'm going to guess this is probably not what was done on the Jay Leno show in the 90s. Although it's possible.
4. I haven't written about "mixing methods as if this is a new notion." I have written about combining methods, but didn't suggest it was new. I said it was "undervalued." And I was writing about how two weak methods could create a strong method. This, again, is the opposite of what he's suggesting. With the ambitious card or linking rings, you're talking about doing multiple methods to do the same effect over and over. But you can't use multiple weak methods in a sequence or you're just upping the possibility of getting busted. What I was writing about was blending methods to create one effect.
So, as I said, I found the post on the Cafe wildly flattering. He was trying to make the point that many of my ideas are "not original" and the best example he had of that, amongst hundreds of posts, was that I didn't create the concept of stopping time. (Full disclosure, I didn't create the concept of ESP, hallucinations, spectral visions, synchronicity, or any of the other presentational ideas I've explored in my work.)
Speaking of "not original," I have a notebook full of card tricks that I've come up with, and while some of them are pretty good, I don't really ever publish them anywhere because I just assume every good card trick idea has been thought of before. And doing the research required to figure out if a card trick is original or not feels like a lot of work for not much reward, that's why you don't see much of that sort of thing here.
However I'm making an exception to that with the trick below because I've been doing it a bit recently and it gets a lot of bang for the buck in the sense that you get two pretty hard hitting magical moments for one relatively simple move.
It's something I came up with myself but I would not be at all surprised if it's something that's in, like, Stars of Magic or something. Or maybe it's the first thing everyone thinks of when they learn this move. That's why I'm burying it here in this post. If it's not at least somewhat original, I can just delete it.
Here's what you need, going from the top down. A red deck of cards. A double-backed red card. 4 blue backed aces. Hold a pinky break over the double-backer. Spread the cards in order to have four cards touched and out-jogged for half their length. Do a Vernon strip-out addition type thing to remove the four selected cards as well as everything under your break. Turn everything over on top of the deck to show the spectator has found the four aces. From there you can go into changing the back color (or revealing something written on the back of the aces, or changing the aces into other cards (if you use double-facers instead of blue-backed aces) or whatever.)
Again, I don't post many traditional card tricks here, but I wanted to offer this one up in case it's not something everyone already knows. It gets a much bigger response than I would have anticipated. I think because of how straightforward it is. It's a kind of unusual trick in the sense that everything the audience perceives is actually happening. They do freely select any four cards. Those exact cards are out-jogged from the deck. And then those cards are turned over on top of the deck. Yes, something additional happens that they don't perceive, but everything they do perceive does actually happen, which I think is somewhat rare with a visual card trick like this.
I've decided I'm going to give the 450 Minutes treatment (15 minutes of practice, every day for a month) to dice stacking. What I like about dice stacking is mainly how stupid and pointless it is. I like that fact that it serves no practical purpose. Even if a guy came into your house and said "Stack these dice or I kill your whole family," it still would be quicker just to stack them with your hand than shaking a cup back and forth.
I'm not sure when I'm going to start, but it will probably be some time next week.
First, let's establish a baseline for my skill at dice stacking at this point in time.
Ellusionist recently re-released a trick by James Brown (not that one) called Pot of Jam. It's an effect where you have two coins and one goes in your pocket and then it comes back to your hand a couple times and then it ends with the production of a "pot of jam" (like, a little jelly jar, I guess).
A friend of mine asked me if I had a better idea for the final load. The pot of jam thing doesn't really resonate with either of us. Maybe because we're not British. But even then, it doesn't seem so much like a willful arbitrary choice so much as it seems like something he may have settled on for lack of any other idea.
So, if like my friend you like the routine, and would prefer to use an ending that had some thematic cohesiveness, I have an idea. Do a google search for tiny piggy bank. Or search "piggy bank keychain." There are a bunch of those out there that you can have your business details printed on, if you perform professionally. You can give them away for about 50 cents, or less than a dollar if you crammed them full of pennies, which would be the way I'd go.
The original routine isn't really my style, so I haven't put much thought into this potential variation. I just think there are probably better presentational options with coins and a piggy bank than with coins and a pot of jam.
That is, again, unless you want something arbitrary, in which case I think there are better options than a pot of jam. Say, fart putty or a squirrel's head wrapped in a sheet from your old school newspaper, for example.
(My first idea, because the trick would use a dime and penny in the US (I think) is that you would keep referring to it as the Eleven Cents trick. And you'd have the audience repeat that a few times like, "And of course the dime comes back to my hand because it's the...?" Eleven Cents Trick, they reply. Then at the end you'd ask them what you had in your hand and they'd say a dime or penny or both. And you'd be like, "A dime and a penny? Did you forget what this trick is called?" And they'd say, "The Eleven Cents Trick" and you'd be like, "Clean your ears out, dumb-dumb. It's the Lemon Scent trick." And you'd open your hand to show a small lemon. Eh... I give that one a C-.)
We'll be doing another series of focus group tests next month in Manhattan. One thing I want to test is how often people notice discrepancies like an Elmsley count that displays the ace of hearts twice instead of an ace of hearts and an ace of diamonds. Or one of those tricks where you supposedly show the four jacks singly, but really you just show the same two jacks twice. I have this theory that people notice this stuff more often than they say. But I don't know if that's true or not.
Then the question becomes, at what rate of failure do you not use tricks with such a discrepancy? If 1/3rd of people notice it, do you not use such a trick? Probably. But what if it's 10%? I guess I'll wait to see what type of results we get before I concern myself with that question.
The final JAMM comes out tomorrow.
Here's an email I received from a "friend" of mine a couple months ago.
Andy,
Attached is an ebook I bought for $22. It's 12 pages long and there is no formatting or any effort put into the presentation of the material. It has one trick in it which is not very good. I repeat, this guy made $22 off of me. And he doesn't write a magic blog for free on top of that.
Toodleloo, sucker!
This has been a kind of running joke with some of my friends who laugh at my business acumen when it comes to this site. The main theme of these emails is that I end up wasting time and money by doing the JAMM like I did, in the format of a magazine paying for models and photography and so on. Their theory is most people just care about the tricks so I could have easily just written them up and copied and pasted them into a word document and sent it out unadorned once a month. Or charged more. Or not included a deck. Or something.
This is probably all true, but as I've said before, I'm not good at the business part of this. That's okay, though, because my goal has never been to minimize costs and maximize profits. It's only been to produce content I find cool or interesting or fun and that has some value for people.
And when I look at the covers for this year of The JAMM, I'm pretty psyched with how that all turned out and I'm glad I didn't half-ass it and just copy and paste a couple routines into an email every month.
Is it the greatest magic magazine of all time? Well, I'm biased of course, but I think I agree with all future magic historians when I say, "Undoubtedly, yes."
In the last issue I'll be mentioning the names of the people who assisted in the production of the magazine, but I want to give a general thanks to them here as well. Thanks!
Introducing, The Jerx Deck
/[This is not an advertisement. All the decks are spoken for, other than a few that will be going in The Vault as part of my retirement plan.]
Starting next week, the physical reward for those who supported the Jerx, Season Two will start shipping: the first Jerx Deck.
For this deck, I wanted to stick pretty close to the esthetic of the blog so the design and illustration is based upon the work Stasia Burrington has done for this site and The Jerx, Volume 1. Which, in turn, is obviously based on the masthead for Annemann's, The Jinx which was done by Chris Carven. (Thanks to Max Maven for tracking down that illustration credit for me.)
I also owe a big thanks to Bill Kalush and The Expert Playing Card Company, both for lowering their minimum order, dealing with the incompetence of myself and the people helping me out who had never worked on this type of project before, and for pushing the deck through the process quickly so I could have it out around the new year.
Here it is, The Jerx Deck #1.
The deck is black and white with a classic finish on the cards, housed in a beautiful uncoated matte paper tuck box. I'm not sure what all that means either.
I know what you're thinking. "Oh, Andy, is this one of those decks you have to liberally butter in order to be able to do your moves?"
Not at all. These babies will glide right out of the box, first time, every time. (If you need to do a sleight other than the glide, then I suggest you use another deck of cards, hot-shot.)
While the faces are standard, the deck does feature custom jokers as well as the ace of spades.
I also did that self-indulgent, narcissistic thing where I put my own face on one of the court cards. Here's me...
That might look like a normal card face, but that's actually what I look like in real life. I'm a dainty little fop with pale skin and dull lifeless hair that hangs to my shoulders and I constantly have the 500-stare of a Vietnam vet.
Finally, we all know a big problem in the premium card industry is people going out and creating their own bootleg playing cards with an office copy machine. We've all had it happen to us where we open a deck of cards that we've paid big money for, we start dealing through them and then realize, "Wait... I think this deck may have be printed on regular copy paper and then cut with a pair of scissors." To combat deck piracy, each case has this admonishment, inspired by the words in Harry Lorayne's Apocalypse magazine...
Coming Up
/The Jerx Decks are in and the first images of them will be posted tomorrow. (This weekend an email will go out to those of you who will be receiving the deck. That will link to a form to collect your current mailing address, and the deck will start shipping next week.)
Thursday, the final JAMM cover will be posted.
Friday, an extra long edition of Gardyloo.
Saturday night, the final JAMM will arrive in subscribers email boxes.
Monday, in what will be the last post of Season 2, and potentially the final post altogether, I won't be talking magic. Instead I will return to my erstwhile lifestyle blog, The Splooge, with a sequel to this post. Yes, the Secret to Happiness Part Two.