Gardyloo #80

/

Now that the second book is no longer for sale, I feel more comfortable selling you on it. I think it’s pretty great. I think it’s at least as good as the first book, you know, the Tarbell Award Winning, Jerx, Volume 1? Although it may appeal to even a smaller audience. While editing the book I had to try and cut out all the times I was saying, “Oh, I love this trick,” because most of the write-ups for each trick were done after I had been deeply engaged with performing a given effect pretty intensely for a few weeks. So I was particularly enamored with each trick as I was writing it up. That makes it hard to pick favorites, but some of the ones I’ve been having the most fun with recently are:

Two Dying Worlds In Orbit - You and the spectator each freely shuffle two decks of cards and the order ends up matching. More-so than the trick itself, the presentation on this one is one of my favorites.

Card Libs - You and your spectators play a prototype of a new game you’re thinking of pitching to some game manufacturers. It does not go well. In a magical way.

Ass To Mouth - My friend Andrew’s version of Card to Mouth. The only version that has ever fooled me. Completely impossible and impromptu.

With the books likely coming to me mid-December-ish, they will probably go out either the week after Christmas or the week after New Years. On the Season 3 rewards page, I’ve put an estimated shipping date at the top. I will push that forward or back as needed so you can check there if you’re ever curious. If there is a significant change in the ship date, I will announce it here.

The same friend who created the card to mouth effect that’s in the book also purchased tickets to Joshua Jay’s show in NYC. Immediately he got an email from his bank…

Screen Shot 2018-11-08 at 6.34.52 PM.png

Even Citi Bank is like, “Someone’s spending $250 for a Joshua Jay show? This must be fraud.” No, surprisingly it’s the real deal.

I’ll be seeing the show myself in May. If I do a write-up here, it will mostly be bullshit because I know Josh wants to keep things under wraps.

I received an email from Hector Chadwick with a suggestion in regards the Blow Up My Phone idea from Wednesday. I like the idea and plan on working on a version and trying it out over the next couple weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes.

With Hector and I together, we just need S.W. Erdnase for the greatest meeting of the pseudonymous/anonymous magic minds in history.

Actually, here is what collaborating with Erdnase would be like. “You know what we should do here? A diagonal palm shift.” That would be his answer to everything. “You don’t think the audience would be that intrigued by this premise? Hmmm… ok… well… let’s see. Maybe a couple diagonal palm shifts would help.”

Does anyone know if the magician named Martyn Smith who created this trick, Up the Ante, is the same magician named Martyn Smith who just was arrested for murdering someone?

I hope not. Up the Ante is a decent effect.

Not that it really matters, I’m just curious. I mean, either way, it’s a magician who killed someone. A tragedy regardless of which Martyn Smith it is. And—while not nearly as important as the pain the victims’ families endured—it’s just never a good reflection on the magic community. No matter what the crime, if it’s a magician, they’ll make sure to mention that.

Hey, good news, Andy. At least he didn’t rape them first. (As far as we know.)

Good point. Some might call that a hollow victory. But I’ll take it.

I got a number of nice comments on last Friday’s post, The Power of a Little Emotional Doubt. And I got one strange criticism via email,

“I thought today’s post offered a good summary regarding why you perform the way you do. It just seems odd that it came out after three years of writing routines in that style. It seems like you’re trying to retroactively fit your performance philosophy to the routines.”

Yeah. That’s 100% true. I never had a “performance philosophy” of my own that wasn’t dictated by the spectators. I started exploring some different styles of performance and some worked and some didn’t. The ones that worked I pursued, and after a while I thought I had a good understanding in regards to why they seemed to work. So my “performance philosophy,” to the extent that it exists, developed backwards based on the reactions to the effects, breaking them down with the audience afterwards, and putting ideas through testing.

I think magic has enough people coming up with how they think magic should be done and then making proclamations based on their own artistic preferences. I’m no artist. I just do whatever people seem to like. If they flipped out over rhyming patter and hot rods, I sure as shit would be doing that.

Six jewels I have on this stick, so you see
And I’d like you to choose one jewel for me
Pick a number in the 1 thru 6 range
And to that stone, the others will change
We’ll count to 3 and to 4 as well
But the other numbers we’re going to spell
Spelling a number might seem a bit wonky
But it’s normal if you’ve been kicked in the head by a donkey

Seedling: Blow Up My Phone

/
170614_Hackathon_1600.jpg

This is, at the moment, a very small idea. Consider it a brainstorming session.

It was inspired by something Joe Mckay sent me in an email which was, in turn, inspired by a Paul Gertner idea. Both Joe’s and Paul’s ideas were more for a stage scenario and intended as something of a marketing tool. My idea is for casual situations when you’re in a small group (although I guess I could see something like it being used in a formal show) and it’s just a straight-up trick.

The ideas I have so far in relation to this concept aren’t very good. I’ve only been thinking about it for two days. Usually I need to sit on something for a few weeks or months or more if I’m going to come up with anything particularly clever. But I have a feeling that something good might come out of this eventually so I thought it could be interesting to explain the basic idea now and then we can revisit it at some point down the road, if I come up with any good ideas utilizing this concept. And certainly if you come up with some variation on this that you’d like to share, feel free to send it my way.

Here’s the idea. I’ll explain it with a nail-writer prediction of a two digit number, but it can be applied to other types of effects too. So, typically you would ask one person to think of a two digit number and then you would reveal it’s the number you wrote down.

Instead, let’s assume you’re with a group of five or six people. You ask all of them to think of a two-digit number. You write something down. You have them go to their phones and open up their text messaging app to send you a message. You have them each put their two digit number in the message field and you tell them to all hit send simultaneously when you say “Now.” Whatever number gets to your phone first is the number you’ve predicted.

Is this just a needlessly complicated way of predicting something? That’s what I’m kind of wondering. It could be. But I think it has a few benefits:

  1. It eliminates the excuse that, “I guess everybody thinks of the same number,” since you had five people and they all sent you different numbers.

  2. It adds a layer of impossibility which is something I’m all for. It’s one thing to read someone’s mind. But for this version to work you would have to… what… read everyone’s mind? And have some idea of their reaction time when hitting the send button. And know something about the way different phone networks connect to yours and the priority given to messages or something? I don’t know.

  3. It gets other information in play which could be useful in a follow up effect.

Let’s think about that last point.

Imagine you were doing this with cards. “Everyone think of a card and text it to me simultaneously… Look, the card that came to me first is the one card that’s in my wallet.” Then, at a later point, you could have a deck cut into four and it’s found the deck has been cut to the other four cards. That’s how you might do it with two unrelated effects.

Or you could have everyone send you a number between 1 and 10 and a playing card. The first card to get through is your target card and you add up the other numbers people sent to find its location in the deck. So it’s just a presentation for ACAAN that seemingly involves the whole group on a small level.

Or if you’re doing it with just numbers, you could predict the first number that comes to you and then the other numbers could be added together and that number could be… something. I’m not sure what. Another prediction? There’s probably something better than that. Same thing with words. You predict the first one, but then it turns out the other ones are all… again… I have no clue. As I said, this idea is in its earliest stages.

I never wear an apple watch, but I do have one and I sometimes just finger-palm the face of the watch and use it to peek stuff. I’m wondering if the notifications on the apple watch are definitely in sync with those on your phone. Assuming you have five people sending you a text simultaneously. Can you be sure that the first notification you get on your phone is the same as the first one you’ll get in your watch? I may have to test that.

There are probably technological things you could do to your phone that might work with this premise. There may be a way to bias your phone towards certain phone-numbers, so you could actually know which person will get through first.

If you knew who would get through first, there are other things you could do. For example you could combine this with Phill Smith’s Quinta. Everyone texts you a single digit number. You predict whose number will get through first, you predict the number that person would think of, and the other people’s numbers—when added together—lead to that person when you count back and forth along the row of your spectators.

Again, these ideas are all at the early-early stages. It will be some time before they germinate into something good. And that will likely be a the point where the idea meshes with a broader presentation, probably something beyond just predicting things. We’ll see. If something interesting comes of this, I’ll update you.

Two Ways to Get Out of Traffic Tickets

/

[NOTE: The link to buy book number two will be taken down at 12:01 AM EST on Tuesday. So tonight, if you’re reading this on Monday.]

I’ll be honest, I don’t know if these two techniques I’m going to write about will actually get people in general out of traffic tickets. Combined, the two techniques have gotten me out of three tickets in 10 years (and most of that time I lived in NYC with no car). I’m not someone who drives like an asshole and then has this unbeatable method to get out of tickets, that’s not what I’m suggesting.

The times I’ve been pulled over it’s usually for speeding on relatively empty streets or for running red lights in the middle of the night. (I mean, I stop, I look to make sure there are no pedestrians or card, then I run through the red lights because I don’t feel like sitting around to allow non-existent traffic to pass through. I’ve got things to do.)

The Psychological Technique

Here’s how this works.

1 - I follow all the normal rules for when you get pulled over. I pull off to a safe place. Turn off my engine. Have my license and registration ready. Act polite. Essentially I don’t give them any reason to think I’m a prick.

2 - I admit guilt. I know they say never to do this, but this is part of my technique. What I do is I admit guilt and give them any somewhat rational reason for what I was doing. So I might say I was speeding because I wasn’t feeling well and wanted to get home as fast as possible. Or I might say I was speeding but I thought I was driving safely for the flow of traffic. Or I might say I ran the light because it seemed safer to drive on with no cars around than sit there at the intersection in the middle of the night. It really doesn’t matter what my rationale is, the important part is admitting guilt. Some people say cops have to give you a ticket if you admit guilt, but I know that can’t be true—at least not everywhere—because I’ve used this technique and gotten out of tickets in the past.

Why admit guilt? Well, here’s my theory. People like to be in a position to forgive someone or do someone a favor. If you don’t admit guilt, you can’t put the person in that position. If you say, “No way man. I never speed,” the officer is just going to trust their radar and know you’re lying. They can’t “forgive” you for your transgression because you’re not admitting to it.

3 - But that’s still probably not enough for them to let you go. So the next step is this: I restate my case, but then suggest it doesn’t matter anyway because I understand they have rules to follow. So I’ll say something like, “It just seemed safer to go through the intersection when it was obvious no one was around rather than sit here and potentially have a drunk driver t-bone me while I’m waiting. You know? You understand. I mean, I know it doesn’t make a difference. You have to do what they tell you to. It’s not your choice. I just wanted you to understand where I was coming from on a person-to-person basis.”

Here’s the thing, no one likes to feel powerless. Especially not cops. So I’m subverting the power dynamic here. Instead of having the situation be, “You’re the cop and you have the power and that’s why you’re giving me a ticket for breaking the law.” I’m reframing the situation as, “You’re a cop and you have to give me this ticket. I get it. You’re just following the rules. Go do what your masters tell you to do.” Obviously I don’t say those words, but that’s the idea behind what I’m saying.

So now, not giving me the ticket is a demonstration of their independence and power. It’s like, “Oh yeah? You think I’m just some mindless automaton following rules and not using my own judgment? I’ll show you. I’ll not give you a ticket. How do you like that?”

Will this work with you and the officers you encounter in your jurisdiction? I have no idea. I don’t know if it will work for me the next time I try it. But it’s worked twice in the past, and I’ll undoubtedly give it a shot in the future.

The Magic Technique

I’ve tried this once and I got out of that ticket. Yes, it’s a small sample size (some would say the smallest) but it’s still a 100% success rate.

Here’s what it looks like.

The cop pulls me over, walks up to the car and asks for my license and registration. I pull out a $100 bill and say, “Is this what you’re looking for officer?” and hold it out the window. She looks at me. I act all innocent. “What? That’s what you asked for, right?” And when she looks again the bill has transformed into my license.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

Method

When I stopped living in NYC full time and needed a car to travel, I had the idea for this trick and bought the gimmick it’s based on. It hung out in my car’s console for a couple of years until a few months ago when I finally got to use it.

The trick is Dollar to Credit Card 2.0 by Twister Magic.

You can make up the trick with any type of credit card (or in my case, an expired license) and a bill of any denomination.

Here’s how I do it. I offer the bill with it completely unfolded. Then I fold it half way and hold it out with two fingers. Then it depends on what the police officer does. If he/she looks at the bill or tries to take it, I do a visual change. If they look at me, I just do the change without them seeing, so it will just be a license when they look back.

Here’s what it looks like. This is using the credit card and single dollar bill the trick comes with. I’m not dumb enough to upload a video with my license information on it. (And, like most of the videos/gifs here, I didn’t record this myself.)

IMG_5791.GIF

Once the officer sees the license and I’ve casually shown it on both sides, I pull my hand back into the car and kind of lean out the window in a “huh? what’s the issue?” sort of way. While I do this I drop the gimmick down at my side. I then take my registration (with my actual license under it) in my right hand and put it into my left and put both out the window. So it looks like I had my license in my left hand, brought it inside the car, then added my registration on top of it and handed both back out.

Now, here’s the thing, I don’t think police officers like the idea of being confused or fooled on the job, even if it’s in a harmless/fun way. They’re on edge. So you want to clarify what’s going on immediately.

“Sorry. I’m a magician. I just always wanted to try that.”

Now they’re back on solid ground, and at this point it’s your chance to get out of the ticket.

When I did it, the officer was immediately interested. And why wouldn’t she be? She’s probably had a day full of dealing with angry or upset people, and here’s someone who added a moment of levity to her day and doesn’t seem pissed or anything. She asked me about being a magician and I showed her a couple other tricks with stuff I had on me and she let me go. I don’t even remember what she pulled me over for.

I don’t think it’s the magic trick itself that will get you out of a ticket, but it gives you the chance to interact with the officer and come off as a real human. And when you’re as delightful as I am, it’s hard to give such a person a ticket.

The Power of a Little Emotional Doubt

/

Book number two is finished and will be sent to the publisher next week. Barring something unforeseen, I should get it in time for delivery around the New Year. I’m pretty psyched about it. It’s 340ish pages, 28 tricks (16 of which have never appeared anywhere before), 50+ hand painted illustrations, three small additional props, and what I consider to be some of the only practical advice on how to turn tricks into memorable experiences for people.

I ended up asking over 100 friends and family about what were the effects they’ve seen me perform that left the most indelible impression in their memory. Some of these people have seen me perform magic for almost 30 years. From their responses I attempted to reverse-engineer the elements that make tricks strong and resonant, and the book is really a discussion of those elements and a look at them in practice.

For fans of this site, I think you’re going to love the book. It’s got the best tricks I’ve come up with over the past 18 months and the clearest distillation of some of the things I ramble about here.

I’m not trying to sell anyone on it. If you like this site, then you’ve probably already bought it. I’m just getting you hyped for it. I’m really happy with how it turned out.

One of my friends who did some proofreading on the book suggested I post an excerpt from it here because he felt it helped explain something that I sometimes struggle to make clear on this site.

Here is that excerpt, slightly redacted to remove the details of the trick it appears in. It’s enough to know that the trick involves engaging in an activity that leads to a series of coincidences with the spectator.

This is one of my favorite tricks to perform. It’s almost excessively casual. We’re hanging around on the couch or sitting on the floor, listening to music and talking. The hanging out is part of the presentation.  But at the same time we’re [REDACTED]. And surely this is all bullshit, right? That’s what my friends think, at least. They think that right up until coincidence #2 when [REDACTED]. Then I begin to sense the doubt. Oh sure, intellectually they know this must be a trick. They’re 90% sure. Hell, 95% sure, even. But then there’s that five percent that says maybe this is something else. It feels like something else. And you might say, “Five percent is not enough. I want them to really believe in the power of what I’m doing.”

You don’t need that. I’ll prove it to you. If intellectually you were very sure your spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend was faithful to you, but you were 5% unsure. And if that 5% percent was based on your emotions, not your intellect, that 5% would eat at you. Emotion trumps intellect. And 5% of something that feels real to you in the moment is more powerful than 95% of something you know intellectually.


I want to pursue this a little more because I think it clarifies something some people have found sort of contradictory. That being that I recommend putting a lot of effort into presentation, but I don’t recommend trying to get your audience to actually believe in the reality of your presentation.

Traditionally, I think amateur magicians have fallen into one of two group. The first group says, “Well, this is just meant to be a bit of fun. It’s entertainment. We’re all adults here. We know there’s no such thing as magic. Yes, having a good presentation is great, but I’m not going to put too much emphasis on something I don’t expect them to believe in.”

The second group says, “I want people to see me perform and to really believe they are seeing someone with some sort of genuine power. Therefore, I want my presentations to be impossible and amazing, but also believable to a certain extent.”

Both of those groups will look at this site and see a trick where I’m suggesting immersive presentations about traveling back in time, or hopping through dimensions, or dealing with an invisible dog, or interacting with your evil twin, and they both have the same response:

Why are you putting energy into a presentation they’re not going to believe anyway?

By that, group number one means: “Why are you making people seriously engage in an interaction that we all know is fantasy? Sure, go ahead and say you’re going to restore the card by traveling back in time. But just say you do that by snapping your fingers or something. You don’t actually have to go through some extended process to ‘time travel’ given that nobody is dumb enough to believe that’s what’s actually happening.”

Why are you putting energy into a presentation they’re not going to believe anyway?

And by this, group number two means, “If our goal is to be believed, why would we undermine that with a presentation no one is ever going to think is ‘real’?”

Most magicians fall into one of those two camps, and that’s why this site isn’t popular with most magicians.

But I think the answer to why it’s worth putting effort into an unbelievable presentation is in that excerpt above. You can still affect people with something unbelievable. You don’t need 100% intellectual belief, you just need a little emotion-based doubt.

Let’s say you and I were walking on the far outskirts of town, late at night. We come across a covered bridge that we need to cross.

Scary-Creepy-Bridges15.jpg

We stop before going in and I tell you a story about how there was this crazy inbred family nearby who used to get their kicks by hiding in the shadows and up in the rafters of the covered bridge and they would jump out and terrorize people passing through. At first it just seemed like it was some kind of sick game to them, but then people who set out in the direction of this bridge started going missing.

And I take 5 minutes and weave a story and when I’m done talking about the sick shit that happened on this bridge, there are two things that are true:

  1. You know I’m just making this all up. There is no inbred family killing the people who go through a covered bridge. That would have been on the news.

  2. You don’t want to cross that fucking bridge.

It doesn’t matter if you know it’s not true, you can still feel the fear.

Why do we tell scary stories around a campfire? Not to get people to intellectually believe them. Not to have them say, “Let’s go talk to the mayor and have him assign a special investigative unit to catch this guy with a hook for a hand!” We take the time to build up the story in order to put them in a mindset where an irrational fear can take hold despite what they know to be “real.”

Presenting magic in the immersive style is a similar concept, just coming from a more benevolent place. If we put in the energy to do so, we can take advantage of the fact that emotion trumps logic and use that to put people in a situation where they’re compelled to engage with the irrational. But instead of doing so in a way that makes people feel like they’re in a scary scenario, we do it in a way that makes them feel like they’re in a wondrous, mysterious, or enchanting one.

Gardyloo #79: Halloween Edition

/

Happy Halloween, my groovy ghoulies!

I’m going to murder you all.

vintage-halloween-decorations-1900.jpg

One of the most successful projects I’ve ever been involved with (somewhat tangentially) was a mixture of magic and horror. It was a piece of viral advertising for the Carrie remake in 2013. I still think it’s pretty brilliant. There’s a great buildup to the way the effects all unfold.

I’ve done a lot of creepy/spooky tricks in the past, but I think there was only one time when I truly terrified someone with a magic trick.

I was with two friends of mine who are married and I mentioned that I was learning a technique to control pulses. Not my pulse. Other peoples. So I had my friend take her husbands pulse as I attempted to speed it up and slow it down through some gestures and intense concentration.

It wasn’t working.

Her husband started giving me shit and he was being relentless about it. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I gave him one of these gestures…

IMG_5788.GIF

And his pulse stopped and he slumped over in his chair.

His wife thought we were playing around but then she realized his pulse was really gone, and she started screaming at me to “fix him.”

Yes, it was the old pulse stop trick, just done with a stooge.

This, by the way, is why I always recommend magicians get involved with their local theater group in some capacity. You will find a bunch of people who will be more than happy to assist you with any crazy idea you want to do. Yeah, actors can be insufferable to be around. But more often than not they’re just fun, outgoing people who are happy to play along with all sorts of nonsense.

If you’re into horror movies at all, Eli Roth’s History of Horror on the AMC channel is a really great show.

It’s a seven part series and they’ve aired four so far (they’re available on demand).

They have interviews with almost everyone you would hope to hear from. It’s amazing. I’ve watched a bunch of horror documentaries over the years, but never one with so much access to all the big names in the industry.

There is some level of horseshit when they try to read too much into these movies. One dope said about a movie that featured a possessed female, “The horror genre is the only one that will address this truth: Society is terrified of women.” Or something like that. It was moronic because she seems to have forgotten all the horror films where men are the monsters.

But other than that sort of thing, it’s a great series.

One of my favorite people and Jerx resident artist, Stasia Burrington has a new project she’s working on that I want to inform you about. It’s a Deck of Many Things which is some sort of D&D nerd thing that I don’t know anything about because I’m sorry but I’m not into WITCHCRAFT. I guess I didn’t think it was “rad” and “dope” to turn my back on Jesus and celebrate the occult.

No, I’m kidding. Although as it is Halloween, I hope some of you will be disappointing some kids by handing out the Dark Dragons Chick Tract instead of candy.

I won’t be picking up the deck to use in any D&D games, but I know I’ll get some use from it regardless. As it says on the kickstarter page, the deck can also be use as:

  • An alternate mini-tarot tradition deck

  • A storytelling device

  • A roleplaying game character generator

  • A random number generator

For me, I will definitely find some uses for it in a magic context. I’m a big fan of using various types of cards as a small way of helping to differentiate performances. And I just find it easier to capture people’s interest initially with a deck that doesn’t look like anything they’ve seen before.

Here is the Kickstarter page where you can support the project.

One of my favorite Halloween traditions is watching this video that some friends of mine were partially responsible for. it’s got one of the dumbest premises: The Monster Mash that we know and love (?) is actually the result of the record company re-writing and toning down a graphic song about monsters having sex.

Catching Up On Some Stuff

/

If you want to guarantee yourself a copy of the next Jerx book, Magic For Young Lovers, this is the last week to order. I’m only having printed as many as I’ve sold.

There will likely be some available as “overage” printed by the publisher, but I can’t guarantee that. Of any overage that is printed, half will be made available for sale and the other half will be packaged up with the rest of the items in my back catalog for the occasional person who comes late to this site and wants to get everything.

Don’t feel any obligation to buy the book if you’re not really inclined to. The more limited it is, the better, in my opinion. But at the same time, I want to make sure everyone who does want a copy has the opportunity to get one. So if you want it and you haven’t ordered it yet, now is the time to do so. You can purchase the book, which comes with the second Jerx Deck, 4 issues of the X-Comm newsletter, and the Jerx app (if you don’t already have it) here.

A small update to the Jerx App should be appearing in the app store in the next week or so.. A number of people have requested the ability to store multiple drawings in the app for the drawing swap section, so they don’t have to make a new drawing each time they want to perform a different tricks. That functionality will be in this update.

I don’t look at the analytics for this site very often, so I didn’t notice that about a month ago the RSS subscribers for the site fell overnight by like 90%. I’m not sure what caused it. I may look into it if I get a chance, but regardless, if you did subscribe via RSS you may need to redo it.

In regards to last Wednesday’s post, I got an email that said, “I understand what you’re saying about presentations that are more ‘immersive’ in nature, but I think you underestimate how many people just want to sit back and watch a magic trick.”

Well, I don’t disagree that many people would enjoy that, but I think it’s a rare person who would prefer that to something that felt more interactive, in a social situation. Similarly, I think people enjoy hearing jokes, but they would rather have a funny conversation. People like watching the Food Network, but they’d rather eat a great meal. People enjoy jacking off to YouPorn, but they’d rather fuck. (Maybe not magicians, but normal people, I mean.)

As the possibility of someone having real magic powers has faded, magic has become about the interaction between performer and audience. Take a look at the magic tv shows that have gained traction in the past 20 years, they are all about the magician and the people watching the magic. It’s about Blaine performing for the wealthy and also the downtrodden; it’s Carbonaro peforming for people who aren’t even aware they’re seeing a performance; it’s the magicians on Fool Us performing for Penn and Teller; it Justin Willman performing for people in casual settings, it’s the Got Talent magicians performing for the judges; it’s Criss Angel performing for stooges and bad actors.

Will we ever see another Copperfield or Henning type of special where they’re performing out towards an amorphous “audience”? I kind of doubt it. The next magician who really makes a name for him/herself probably isn’t going to do so because their tricks are so impressive, but because they’ve found a new type of audience to perform for.

This is why I think the idea of just sitting back and observing magic is a concept that is well on its way out. The interaction is what people are drawn to these days. And in a social situation, the interaction they want is one which includes them.

Congratulations to Steve Brooks on the 12 year anniversary of his most recent post on “My Side Of The Screen,” his special section on The Magic Cafe dedicated to his “Thoughts and views on magic, the internet and anything else that’s on [his] mind.”

Screen Shot 2018-10-29 at 2.19.48 AM.png
Screen Shot 2018-10-29 at 2.45.37 AM.png

Wait… hold on…this might not be the cause for celebration I thought it was. Now that I think of it, 12 years is kind of a long time to go without having a thought. And certainly no sane person would set up a special section on a website if he only had six ideas for posts chambered, right?

Has anyone checked on Steve recently? Like, say, within the past 12 years?

Just a minute… I hacked into his webcam many years ago. Let me see if I can time-lapse the footage between then and now.

IMG_5785.GIF

Aw crud. That’s not good. Steve’s dead everyone. RIP you glorious son of a bitch.

Gardyloo #78

/

Once early December rolls around, I hope you will take a moment and remember the “day that will live in infamy.” No, I’m not talking about Pearl Harbor. I’m talking about another senseless tragedy.

brookslecture.jpg

That’s right, you can stop your clamoring, your prayers have been answered. Our old pal, Brooksy, is having a magic lecture.

Here is the facebook event post.

I know you’re thinking, Oh, what’s your angle here, Andy? Are you going to say Steve won’t be teaching his Bill in Lemon trick because he keeps eating the lemon?

How dare you. I’d never say that.

Were you going to say that this line from the ad:

WARNING: Due to the hands on nature of this workshop seating will be limited to the first 20 PAID reservations.

Should really say this:

WARNING: Due to the hands on nature of this workshop bring a deck of cards that you don’t mind getting chicken grease on.

No! Knock it off. I won’t tolerate such disrespect.

All I want to say is that I hope Steve’s lecture/workshop goes well. And if there are any Jerx supporters in the area of Haines House of Cards (Norwood, OH) who would like to go, I will reimburse you the cost of your ticket. You just have to send me a pic or some other proof you went. I’m completely serious. I want to pack the place for Steve.

We got some big news from our brothers at Vanishing Inc. this week.

Screen Shot 2018-10-25 at 3.11.55 PM.png

I was hoping we would finally get the news we all know is coming, that Josh is carrying Andi’s baby. Sadly, that wasn’t the big announcement. This was:

“Effective immediately, Joshua Jay and Andi Gladwin (on behalf of Vanishing Inc) are pleased to announce the purchase of Art of Magic and all its content from Dan and Dave Buck.”

Okay, that’s a little less #exciting than I had hoped, but whatever. They’re two quality organizations and I think they’ll mesh well together. It’s a good acquisition for them.

Speaking of…, if Vanishing Inc. or anyone else is interested, The Jerx is also for sale. $84 OBO.

In the fall issue of the X-Comm newsletter, I mentioned Michael Weber’s Charge Card effect and its use with Marc Kerstein’s ChargeMe app.

Well, Marc informs me that ChargeMe is no longer available in the app store because Apple didn’t like an app that mimicked the battery charging aspect of the iPhone. So if you were going to get the Charge Card to use with this app, then don’t.

Marc may try and come up with some workaround for the app that Apple will approve of, or we may bury it somewhere in the Jerx app. I’ll keep you updated if either of those things come to pass.

In response to Monday’s Witch’s House post, reader Daniel Lee suggested doing a version of the Trapdoor Card with a Stranger Things style of presentation. So one side of the page would have a relatively normal, colorful drawing, and the other would have some ominous image in black and grey representing the “Upside Down.”

I think it’s a good idea when presenting the effect to someone who is familiar with the show. I haven’t done it myself, and I don’t see myself saying, “Here’s a trick about Stranger Things!” But I might perform it and approach it more obliquely. “Have you seen Stranger Things? My girlfriend’s sister teaches elementary school and apparently they have a kid who acts out in the same way as the kid on that show. Like he freezes up and when he snaps out of it he implies he’s seen some other plane of existence. But not in those words. At first I thought she was saying that he’s imitating the kid on the show, but then she told me it was something he did before the show even aired. She gave me this picture he drew….”

I would probably experiment with not showing the other side of the paper first. That way, when the other side is revealed, their first instinct will be, “Oh, well you just turned it around or something.” Then it will dawn on them that I couldn’t have just turned it around since they were holding it the whole time. 

More Friends of the Jerx with some notable accomplishments in the sphere of magic for the general public’s consumption…

First, famously non-pregnant magician, Joshua Jay, is going to be on the Tonight Show tonight, October 26th. Set your DVRs. Or, if you don’t have anything better to do, watch it live.

But here’s the thing, if your life is at the point where you feel you don’t have anything better to do than stay home and watch Joshua Jay on the Tonight Show on a Friday night, then you actually do have something better to do. It’s called suicide.

✿✿✿

Last week I mentioned Justin Flom’s new book for kids who are interested in magic. At the other end of the age spectrum, we have Allan Kronzek’s new book, Grandpa Magic. This is a book for people who want to use magic to entertain their grandchildren. What a good idea. I read the preview on Amazon. It looks like it will be a pretty fun read.

61LcetUtCML._SX450_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

If nothing else, the cover and illustrations are so much more pleasant than Allan’s previous magic book for the public.

51VGR2CVsEL._SX328_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Who is the monster that designed this hideous book cover for young magicians? Has he never met a kid? Or does he just hate them?

Dover always had the bleakest covers. If you saw this book from across the room and couldn’t read the title you’d say, “What’s that? A book on what to do with your loved one’s possessions after watching them die from gallbladder cancer?” No, no. This is a book about magic aimed at young people.

How does Dover choose the color palette for their magic books? Do they just mix a giant vat of shit and vomit together until they capture the color of chronic depression?

Chris Grace in an actor and comedian who I haven’t met before, but I have seen him do improv in NYC a few years ago, as we have a couple of friends in common. He stumbled on this site recently and I’m glad he did because he makes me laugh. He sent along the video below which has him re-dubbing the demo for Cameron Francis’ trick, Captivated. As I mentioned on Wednesday, I hate the brand of patter Cameron uses in that trick. Here Chris ratchets the stupidity of that type of patter up profoundly and it’s actually much more entertaining, in my opinion.

My friend Stasia, who is the illustrator on the forthcoming book (as well as JV1), has been doing “Inktober” on her Instagram. This is a drawing challenge where people draw one ink picture per day in the month of October based on some prompt words. Here are some of my favorites…