Gardyloo #84

Look what came in the mail today.

It’s the Jerx Deck #2. What does it look like? All will be revealed eventually.

The first Jerx Deck was produced by The Expert Playing Card Company, and that was a great experience. This year’s deck, however, is a blatant rip-off of a design that’s owned by Bicycle and I didn’t want to cause any issues for the EPCC by asking them to take part in this nonsense.

Just to be safe I did print the fair use/parody section of U.S. Code on the side of the case. So don’t get up my ass, Bicycle.

So this deck is self-produced. The quality is probably not as high as it would be with EPCC, but the good news is that no one is getting a Jerx deck to do cardistry or intense sleight of hand with, so it’s not that huge of an issue.

Each deck comes with this phony rank of poker hands cards prop for one of the tricks in the book. If you got the book you’ll get an additional one of these cards (so you don’t have to open the deck if you’re one of those nerds). If you didn’t order the book but are a supporter at the deck level, I’ll send you a pdf with that trick from the book so you can use the card too.

So now we’re just waiting on the book. The most recent date we’ve gotten from the publisher is that we should be receiving them on January 8th. And then they’ll go out over the course of a couple weeks. Meaning right about one year exactly from when Season 3 was announced. I’m on top of my shit.

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Poor Justin Flom. I have it on good authority from his wife that he spends 50 minutes every morning getting his hair just right, meanwhile his young daughter is so effortlessly charming and steals the show every time she’s in one of his videos.

AAAAHHHHH what a little ball of sweetness. I can feel my ovaries fluttering. Justin, please tell me this was severely edited and that she’s a total pain in the ass 95% of the time.

Is there some sort of service where I can be a dad for like, 40 minutes a week? I think that would be my speed. Meet up once a week. Toss the Nerf around. Go to a ballet recital. Something like that? Hmmm…. I think I’m describing a shitty divorced dad.

By the way, if you ever want a reminder of how stupid humans can be, remember that some people got upset at Justin for “sawing his baby in half.” Others felt the need to “debunk” it.

This is a good way of determining if someone is a person you want to let into your life.

If they watch that video and say, “Oh, that was cute and fun,” they’re a normal human who might make a good friend or lover.

If they say, “That’s abuse!” Or, “He’s exploiting his child for youtube views!” Then you know they’re someone who takes great joy in being offended by things. Soon that will turn on you.

If they say, “That’s not real. Here’s how it’s done…,” then you know they’re practically braindead and not someone you want to spend time with. “You’re saying the youtube video of the guy sawing his baby in half with Dr. Seuss books isn’t real? Hold on. My head is spinning. I need to get some fresh air.” Walk out and never come back.

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This is an interesting trick. A freely named celebrity (or anything else) is predicted on the bottom of a coffee cup.

As someone who finds himself performing in coffee shops multiple times a week, this definitely calls to me. It’s essentially a Koran’s Medallion type of effect, but with a coffee cup. You say you used to work in a cafe and you would always try to guess people’s drinks before they ordered. You tell the person to think of any drink and you claim you’re going to guess what it is. You ask them where they would drink this and to name a famous person they might drink it with. You write something down on a napkin and put it face down in front of them. “Would you be amazed if it said your drink on the other side of the napkin?” They admit they would be and when they turn the napkin over it literally says, “Your Drink.” Ha? You then reveal that it wasn’t about the drink, it was actually about the name of the person they would enjoy this drink with and you lift up your coffee cup to show that person’s name written on the bottom.

As I said, I like the idea, but I don’t like the corny joke in the middle of it. The “Your Drink,” joke is both hokey and hack-y. You can get away with it in a “show” because shows are filled with that sort of pretense. But your life shouldn’t be. It’s sort of like what I mentioned Monday, about “borrowing” a dollar bill and then putting it in your pocket. If that doesn’t stand out to the person you’re performing for, they must think you regularly make lame jokes.

I have some alternate uses for this technique that I’m going to try out over the next few weeks. If any of them pan out then I’ll write them up in the final X-Communication newsletter for Season 3.

If you want to do the original version of the effect, here would be my recommendation: Ditch the joke, just make a guess on the drink. Maybe you’ll be right. And if not you can just be like, “Yeah, they fired me from that cafe after two days. I was not good at that job. I always got people’s drinks wrong. I wasted a lot of product.”

Or I would just get the drink spectacularly wrong. That, to me, is funnier and more in line with my personality than making some played-out joke. So I would look at them. “Imagine yourself drinking this drink. This is something you’ve had a lot yes? You really enjoy the taste of this? You maybe even crave it sometimes, don’t you? I think you like this hot… but maybe not always. Yes… I’m getting it…,” I write something down and put it in front of them. “Name your drink,” I say.

“A chai latte,” she says.

“I was a little off,” I say. They turn over the napkin and it says, “Half a gallon of horse ejaculate.”

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There’s nothing I can add to all the chorus of praise and remembrances that have followed the passing of Ricky Jay a couple weeks ago. I was a huge fan of his work as a magician and an actor. In the pre-internet days of my youth, I would go to the library and they had these reference books where you could look up any topic and they would tell you what magazine articles were written about that topic. Then you would have to get a bound collection of that magazine and track down the article (that seems like a wildly inefficient way to do things to my modern mind). I would look up “magic” and read the occasional article on the subject that appeared in a major magazine. In that way I found the New Yorker article on Ricky Jay and I probably read it 20 times over the years. I got to know him that way before reading his books or seeing any of his performances.

But, as I said, there’s nothing I can add to what’s been said about what he meant to magic. I didn’t know the man and he undoubtedly would have found this site idiotic, so it’s not my place to eulogize him.

Instead, let me turn your attention this video that I was sent by JH. It’s Ricky Jay on the Sally Jessy Raphael show.

Obviously there are 100 other videos that would be better at exhibiting Ricky’s talent, but this one is a pretty fascinating time capsule. In fact, it’s not really Ricky I want to draw your attention to here. It’s actually something else we’ve lost. Something that’s faded from our lives in a way so subtle that perhaps we didn’t even notice it. Something we probably didn’t appreciate enough when we had it.

I’m speaking, of course, about the black-booted, puka-shelled, shirt-undone-to-the-navel look of Jeff Mcbride in the back there. He’s got to bring that look back. I don’t care if he’s 60. Go to the five minute mark in that video and see a young fan melt over Jeff’s dreaminess. It’s adorable. That girl's poor panties. They didn’t stand a chance with Jeff in the room.

Wonder Room Variants

Do you know what Funko Pops are? They’re a line of 1000s of collectible cartoonish vinyl doll/figurine type things with big heads. They exist for almost anything someone might be a fan of.

Horror Movies

Comic Books

Star Wars

Cereal Mascots

Seriously, almost any sort of pop-culture genre you can think of is represented in some form in these Funko Pops.

Early last year, after I had written about the Wonder Room performance style, I was contacted by someone who wanted to hire me to create a series of effects that he could build into his display of Funko Pop figurines. This seemed like a fun(ko) idea, and he actually had the money to hire me to do it, and so I got to work designing a display and series of effects for him that combined his interest in magic with his collection of figurines.

The effects ranged from the simplest type of multiple out prediction effect to a much more complex transposition effect that was built into the display itself. In all there were 12 varied effects that he could perform. Including one with a custom Houdini Funko Pop.

My favorite was one where a “blank” Funko Pop…

would transform into a figurine of the spectator him/herself. Obviously this requires a lot of prep time and a bit of an expense(search Etsy for custom Funko Pops). But it was really strong magic (and could be played as slightly creepy, this doll is absorbing your essence) and it made an awesome giveaway.

The Wonder Room concept is the idea of building a repertoire of tricks into some sort of permanent display that people can look at and engage with. It could be something that is supposedly non-magic related, or it could be a collection of “strange objects” or something else that is intended to be overtly magical.

The ideal (in my imagination) would be an entire room with floor to ceiling shelves where people could peruse these odd objects, find one that appeals to them and then say, “What’s the story behind this?” But it doesn’t need to be so elaborate. It could just be a single shelf with some “odd” books you found (each book being special in some way to allow you to do some feat of magic or mind reading).

This summer, the guy who hired me to work on the Funko Pop set-up asked me to create a new display for his house. Now, I can’t tell you exactly what I worked on for him, but I can give you the basics and you could create something similar for yourself.

The display consisted of an 8 X 5 grid of small shelves. So 40 little shelves in total. On each shelf rested an object. Perhaps some sort of little toy or knick knack. (Does the phrase “knick-knack” translate for my international readers? A knick-knack is sort of like bric-à-brac. Hmm… that probably didn’t help. I know… a knick-knack is like a gewgaw. Eh… fuck it… that’s a word not destined to be translated, I guess.)

When people come in they see this display and it’s kind of inherently fascinating, all these little objects, but it’s not immediately known what this is supposed to be. They don’t really look like collectibles or any known type of trinket. What are these things exactly? So they ask, and then he tells them…

“Well, you know I’ve had an interest in magic since I was a boy. Most tricks, of course, are done with some type of sleight of hand or something like that. But over the last 45 years or so I’ve encountered some tricks that aren’t done that way. It doesn’t happen often, maybe once a year or so. These are tricks that fooled me and continue to fool me, because I’m not quite sure how they work. Yet somehow they do. My new hobby is to track down these tricks that fooled me throughout the years. And that’s what these are. Go ahead, pick one that looks interesting.”

So now there is a place to put all those gimmicky gizmo tricks that intelligent magicians have avoided as being “meaningless.” They are meaningless, individually, but together they’re not. In this context they they become a collection of little mysteries. Putting them on display makes them seem like something of importance, not something you hid away until someone happened to come over.

The guy who I created the instillation for wrote me once to say, “People who used to suffer through a single trick that I would bring out from another room, will stand in front of the shelves and practically demand to see trick after trick.” That’s the power of putting these sorts of tricks in context.

As I said, I can’t tell you the specific details of the display I was hired to create. But I can tell you about a similar one that I’m putting together with a friend now.

Eventually it will consist of 40 (or more?) of these display ledges by 3M.

On each little shelf will be a trick. What kind of trick? Well, ideally something that is examinable and self-contained. It doesn’t need to be 100% both of those things, but that’s the ideal.

(The display case I helped create this summer was rigged to hold out any additional props/gimmicks that might be needed. So, for example, on one shelf there might be a little rubber ball on a stand (part of a bounce/no-bounce ball set). In the process of reaching for that ball, the magician is able to load the no-bounce ball secretly into his hand.)

My friend is going to be using a number of Tenyo tricks and other similar effects in his version.

If you’re into magic, then half the fun will be doing the research, tracking down tricks, and coming up with your “display repertoire.”

You don’t need to go that route. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a display of tricks that (supposedly) fooled you. It could just be a display where the object on each shelf is something that leads into a trick. A small sealed envelope. A nest of boxes. A mini deck of cards. A red sponge ball. I’m not sure that has quite the same intrigue as a shelf of weird knick-knacks, but at the very least it presents another way to get into a performance where people can kind of peruse these shelves and be drawn to something and then you can take it from there. This is a nice position to put the spectator in. Often, with magic, the audience is just trying to catch up with a performance the whole time. The Wonder Room style allows them a choice, which—at least in a small way— allows them to lead the interaction for moment of time.

Douche Your Show of These Three Things

If you’re currently doing any of the three things below, I would recommend you stop. These are things that are used more often by professionals than amateurs, so you may think I’m in no position to comment on them. But they are all overt, audience-facing techniques, and you don’t need to be a fellow professional to see these don’t work.

“Can I get a bill from someone? Oh, thanks! [Puts bill in pocket.]”

Look, I get it, you need to switch the bill, and jamming it in your pocket seems like just about the easiest way there is to do so. The problem is, this is wildly transparent to people. I briefly mentioned in a post a few weeks ago that this was one of the first things we tested in the earliest days of the focus group testing, back when it was very informal and done for just a small amount of people. When shown a trick using this type of switch, the overwhelming majority of the group (it was either 7 or 8 out of ten) mentioned that moment as either being suspicious or being a likely part of the method in their written feedback to us.

Of course they did. In what context would borrowing something from someone and putting it in your pocket not arouse suspicion?

“I do it all the time and it fools people.”

Wanna bet? If you want to fund it, I’ll put you in touch with some of the people who help conduct the testing and you can come in and perform for a group of random people live (or do it on tape). I guarantee over half of them question the part where you put the bill in your pocket.

In fact, you should hope they question it. Here’s why: it’s not a funny joke. It’s maybe a 2 out of 10 as far as being funny goes. If you make this “joke” and it doesn’t stand out as being particularly lame, that means the rest of the “funny” lines in your show are equally as shitty.

What you should do instead: Beats me. I would say it depends on the trick you’re performing. One would think any sort of switch that doesn’t involve something going in your fucking pocket would be an upgrade.

The Dumb Mentalist

The conceit behind mentalism is that it is some form of advanced mental acuity so it always makes me laugh when—in the midst of an effect—the mentalist becomes briefly mentally retarded.

I wish I could remember the exact performance I saw (if it rings a bell for you, let me know) but it involved a mentalist reading the mind of a spectator who was thinking of an object and the performer said, “I’m getting some sort of vehicle… and it’s… on the water I think.” Now, instead of saying “It must be a boat,” like any 5 year old would in that circumstance, he still had his face contorted and felt the need to put together some more pieces. “I’m getting the sense of a triangle shape up here.” Yeah, dummy, it’s a sailboat. “And some other longer shape down below.” Still a sailboat, moron. “Is it maybe… a boat? A sailboat?”

What made his struggling even stupider was the fact that the person was thinking of one imagine from a number of different images provided by the mentalist. You could be mostly braindead and have a good idea it was a boat if you saw a triangle shape or knew it was a vehicle and you were the one who provided the 20 or so images they could choose from.

I’ve seen something similar when someone draws a house. The mentalist will be like, “I see a triangle on top of a square.” Okay, well every non-mentalist in the audience understands that’s probably going to be a house, so why are you still struggling?

What you should do instead: When using your “psychic vibrations” to discern something, don’t let the audience get a step ahead of you. You’re supposed to be the smart and intuitive one here. Instead, say things that are true but that wouldn’t obviously reveal the word or object they’re thinking of. There should be a leap in logic between the details you “see” and the thing you ultimately reveal.

For example, if they’re thinking of a sailboat you could say, “I’m getting a sense of motion…. I’m not sure if it’s the object moving, or something around the object. There’s something up in this area with a number of corners. Is it a kite? No wait… it’s a sailboat.” This way you’re still getting hits but there’s still a sense of revelation or surprise when you ultimately name it.

That is a much more satisfying structure than over-hitting to the point that it’s obvious. “It’s an animal. And it’s pretty small. I’m not sure what it could be… It has long floppy ears and a big bushy tail. And it eats carrots. And…hmmm… I’m sensing this is something a magician might find in his hat? Is that right? Okay, don’t tell me what it is. Is this something that might visit you on Easter? Okay… it’s coming to me….”

The Forced Standing Ovation

“Now, if I get this card right, I want everyone to jump up and applaud.”

Stop this sort of thing. It’s obvious and pathetic and it’s not fooling anybody.

“But if the booker sees the audience standing for me at the end of the show, then they’ll hire me again.”

Uh, was the booker’s brain recently pulled out through her nose like they used to do when prepping Egyptian mummies? Is that how fucking dumb she is? Are you really going to structure the climax of your show on the off chance the booker is half-paying attention and does notice the people standing at the end of your show, but doesn’t notice the fact that you told them to do so?

Have you never put yourself in the position of the audience to think how corny it would feel to be forced into giving someone a standing ovation?

What you should do instead: Create a show that generates an actual standing ovation, goofball. Don’t you want to be able to judge the strength of the show based on actual feedback rather than something you coerced them into doing?

Or just go the other way and string up our audience like marionettes and you can make them stand, clap, and stomp their feet at your whim. Apparently it’s all the same to you anyway.

Gardyloo #83

Some updates:

We have just under one month left in Season 3 of the Jerx. As initially stated, this season will end around Christmas. After that my focus will be on sending out the Season 3 rewards packages and completing the final X-Communication newsletter for this season. And then I’ll be figuring out how Season 4 is going to work. As I mentioned in this post, the site will be changing somewhat as we go into the next season. You can read the details about it there, and I’ll be sharing more info about the changes to come soon.

I was in NYC this past week. Part of that was for the testing on card controls which I’ve mentioned in the past. It will take some time to go through the results. My hope is to have a post written up on the results before Christmas.

I just received word yesterday that Book #2 is scheduled to be delivered to my distribution center (i.e., my friend’s garage) on New Year’s Eve. Deck #2 should be here in a couple weeks. And some of the props that go along with the book are rolling in as well. Unfortunately, one of the boxes which contains specially printed cards for one of the effects in the book is seemingly lost in the mail. It was supposed to be delivered a couple days ago. Now the USPS tracking info just shows “On route to its next destination,” but it hasn’t been scanned anywhere in days. Oh well. I’ll figure it out.

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In last Friday’s post on the least essential magic products, I forgot to include the product that gave me the idea for such a list in the first place.

Friend of the site, Sean Maciel, wrote in to draw my attention to this indispensable product for the modern magician. The Playing Card Jean Bag.

The name doesn’t begin to describe how incredible this is. It’s a little bag for your playing cards that’s made out of jean material. Actually….no… I guess the name does kind of capture what you’re getting here.

I find the ad copy confusing…

Here's a way to "WOW" your audience even before they see your cards! Remove them from a cloth denim bag!

Why would this “wow” my audience?

Did they mean, “Here’s a way to ‘HUH’ your audience.” Because, “Huh, I guess that’s a thing,” seems to be a more likely response. Or maybe, “Wow… that’s stupid,” is what they were suggesting.

The sentence, “Remove them from a cloth denim bag,” should never end with an exclamation point. Even if you were like, “The guy showed me JFK’s missing brain and seven of the lost Imperial Faberge Eggs! And he removed them from a cloth denim bag!” The first thing someone would say would be, “Well, that second sentence shouldn’t have an exclamation point.”

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Reader, KM, wrote in to ask how long Josh and Andi have been signing off their emails in this manner.

“With”? I have to admit I’m not familiar with this construction. What happened to “Andi Gladwin and Joshua Jay”? I’ve gotten the “with” credit on things I’ve worked on when I haven’t been in the same room as the main writers. So it will be something like, “Written by X and Y with Andy.” But that’s for like real stuff, not an email marketing letter.

I’m just worried distance is coming between Andi and Josh. I’m scared. I don’t want anything to come between my magic daddies. I’m worrying the next emails will be signed, like:

By Andi Gladwin, with special guest, Joshua Jay

By Andi Gladwin, additional contributions by, Joshua Jay

An Andi Gladwin Joint. (Based on characters created by Joshua Jay.)

By Andi Gladwin. In loving memory of Joshua Jay.

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Here’s an actual dumb Houdini quote.

The fuck are you talking about, Houdini?

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The GLOMM Elite membership holiday special is back. You can send your loved ones to this link where they will receive one penny off the regular order price and I will throw in not one, but two pieces of tinsel in with your membership kit. The kit comes with the shirt, membership card, enamel pin, and two exclusive PDFs. Sizes are always very limited (since I only print a few in each size at a time), so if you’re interested, make sure your loved one places their order soon.

Should you become an elite member of the GLOMM? Sure, if nothing else then at least for the shirt. Look what an absolute vision our friend Jerri is in the shirt..

Now look what a total disgusting wreck she is outside of the shirt…

Now just imagine what it could do for you.

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Speaking of “very limited,” I hope you weren’t interested in getting Flash Cash from Penguin magic. Or, if you are, I hope you’re prepared to rush over there and order soon. They only have 1181 units available.

Go get your copy now. You don’t want to be person 1182.

Dear Jerxy: Establishing the Public Face of Your Relationship to Magic

Dear Jerxy: You write in a few posts that your "image" is one who has an interest in magic, rather than a magician. You don't give off the impression to friends that you work really hard to accomplish technical gambling moves but rather you belong to a secret circle of magicians with ancient rules and culture, or you met this cool person who can do ACAAN over text, or get nicely wrapped gifts from an overweight Santa figure. 

However, this immersive style of magic you also say you only do 1/3 of the time; the other times you do backstage "let me show you what I'm working on" or traditional presentations. So I'm sure many of your friends know you as a magician, from these traditional presentations. 

When you use cards in some of these "weird" presentations, like the Time Traveler's Toilet, or the torn up card a la intercessor for the trick where you take your friend digging for buried treasure that she never buried with you, does that telegraph that "oh it's just a card trick?" After all, cards are never usually used for such a situation involving toilets -they're used for playing card games. "Why not test it with another object, rather than one historically associated with magic tricks" is a thought that the spectator might think.

Hope that made sense. I think there were two thoughts there, one concerning an image of "the magician," and another concerning the usage of cards and their respective interference with the immersive performance style.

Befuddled in Berkeley

Dear Befuddled:

Okay, I think I might not be clear when I say that my goal is to come off as someone with an interest in magic as opposed to a “magician,” so let me try to clarify.

I think as a social magician, you need to come up with an understanding of how you want people to view you and your relationship to magic. I was watching a Peter Turner video the other day and he says that he never lets the people he’s dating know that what he does isn’t real. He tells them that his abilities are a product of his keen intuition, not tricks. That would be an exhausting way to go through life for me. I want to feel comfortable in my own skin, not like I’m playing a part when I wake up with my girlfriend.

So, what then do I want to project to the friends and family I see all the time? I don’t want to claim special powers. I don’t want to pretend I don’t have an interest in magic and that weird things are just happening around me (you can only keep that up for so long.) But I also don’t want the dullness of, “Yeah, my hobby is magic and these are tricks 1 million other magicians could show you.”

The “story” I tell people is this:

1. When I was a kid, magic was one of many hobbies I had. As it is for many kids. (This is 100% true.)

2. I took that interest further than most kids and I would go to magic stores and lectures and conventions when I was young. (This is mostly true.)

3. My initial interest was in traditional things like tricks with cards and coins, but as the years have passed, I’ve been following many more arcane branches of the art. This had led me to discover all types of strange people, techniques, rituals, objects, etc. This is stuff that you can’t find in the library or on youtube. It’s not supernatural, it’s not witchcraft. It’s just some of the more obscure aspects of magic that most people don’t have access to. (This is mostly untrue.)

So the public face of my relationship with magic is that I’m someone who has an interest in magic that is intense enough that I’ve pursued it far past where most people with a casual interest have and therefore I can show them some things they would be unlikely to see anywhere else. It’s never a matter of me being special. I’ve just come across these weird things and other types of magic because I’ve devoted the time to it and was lucky enough to make connections with people who showed me stuff “beyond sleight-of-hand and gimmicks.” I never really explain what I mean when I say something like that, I just like to imply there’s some other kind of trickery beyond the things they know.

I’ll be getting back to your question, but I’m trying to lay some foundation first.

I will tell you a mistake I made. I used to like performing tricks for friends and family, but I didn’t really want them to associate me too much with magic. I didn’t want to be saddled with the baggage of people’s notions of cornball magicians. So I wouldn’t talk about magic. I would just occasionally show people tricks. They liked the tricks, everything was fine, but they were just disconnected incidents. There was no momentum to the effects; they didn’t mean anything in concert.

Imagine if someone occasionally danced for you and it was really impressive, but they didn’t want to be known as a dancer, didn’t want to be associated with dancers, didn’t want to talk about dancing. They would do this three minute performance for you and that would be the end of it. That’s fine, you’d enjoy the performance, but there would never be a way to connect with that person through this experience.

Over time, I realized that by opening up about my interest in magic, I could give the tricks a broader context and it wouldn’t be just isolated moments of entertainment. The big breakthrough I had was when I realized that I could let people into a fictionalized world of what it meant to have an “interest in magic,” and no one has a problem with that. I didn’t have to embrace all the cheesy aspects of the reality of learning magic. Because magic is inherently fantastical, people are okay with a story that’s not rooted 100% in reality at all times.

Some of the contexts I’ve put tricks in ring true, some don’t. Once people understand that I’m not seriously trying to convince them of anything untrue, they’re usually more than willing to just go along with things. “Did he really find this object in his grandfather’s attic?” At a certain point they realize it doesn’t matter.

Getting back to the original question: how do I reconcile the bigger immersive tricks and the smaller scale “let me show you this trick I’m working on” sort of presentation? The answer is that I don’t have to reconcile them. The relationship with magic that I’ve established is one where I have a history with, and an interest in, classic sleight-of-hand tricks. But in later years I’ve pursued some stranger sorts of things. So it’s a cohesive story no matter what type of effect I perform. I haven’t painted myself into a corner. I can do sponge balls, I can read their mind, I can do a Tenyo trick, I can do a three day trick where I leave a little satchel of dried flowers under their bed and it ends up affecting their dreams (see, “Send Me a Pillow, The One That You Dream On,” in the upcoming book). I can do any of these and they’re all part of the same narrative.

The same goes for the other part of your question: Does using cards telegraph that it’s a trick? Maybe. But that doesn’t matter to me. “I’m never seriously suggesting it’s anything other than a trick. My presumption is that the audience always knows it’s a trick. And my goal is never to disabuse them of that knowledge. My goal for a trick is for it to elicit one of the following reactions.

• They know it’s a trick… but it’s so strong and convincing that they’re forced to briefly consider some absurd presentation I’ve attached to it because that momentarily feels more possible than the idea that it was a trick.

• They know it’s a trick… but it’s such a well thought-out and engaging interaction that they choose to let it wash over them as if it’s real, just because it’s more fun that way.

• They know it’s a trick… but they don’t quite understand the nature of the trick. The trick may be a ball disappears. No modern audience will ever ask, “Did the ball really disappear?” If your goal is to convince them it did, you’re doomed. But you can still generate mystery by getting them to question the nature of the trick via the presentation you establish. “Did he really hypnotize me not to see the ball?” “Is it really some kind of mechanical gimmick and he doesn’t know how it works either?” “Is there really something called, sleight of energy,’ that would allow a manipulation in how I perceive the ball?” “Is this really the first time it’s ever worked for him?” “Has he really been working on this for six weeks?” “Was there really never a ball at all?” Im not trying to convince them of something that isn’t real (the ball really disappeared), but I want to create mystery by blurring the lines in regards to where reality crossed over into fiction.

• They know it’s a trick… but so what? It was an awesome trick and they had fun.

Introducing the Dumb Houdini Store

Last year I stumbled on a shirt with this stupid Houdini graphic on it.

That quote makes no sense. Brain and mind are synonymous in that context. It would be like saying, “I get the best ideas from my thoughts.”

As it turns out, that’s not an actual Houdini quote. Someone just half-remembered something Houdini once said and thought, “Eh, I guess I’ll make a shirt out of that.” You can read more about all this on my original post.

Now, look, I don’t know if Houdini was actually dumb or not. I think to do the things he did you maybe have to be a little dumb (or at least a little crazy). And I do think the last phase of his career—the “I'm going to test spiritualists to see if I can find one who can get me in touch with my mommy” period—perhaps doesn’t suggest the sharpest mind in the world. I don’t see much difference between this statement: “Is this woman actually producing an ectoplasmic hand from her vagina? We shall never know unless we conduct the proper testing!” and this one, “I can’t know if leprechauns exists until I’ve consulted all the peer reviewed research.”

And as I said in the original post, I think calling yourself Houdini because your hero was Houdin is kind of a dumb thing to do.

But whether he was actually dumb or not, I think it’s fun to imagine him as being an idiot. All the old pictures take on a different perspective when you imagine him being a total moron who didn’t intentionally get himself in these situations.

I literally can’t look at pictures of him now without imagining him as a little goofball dum-dum. I see it in his face. I see it in the faces of the people around him.

In my previous post, I joked about a line of t-shirts with fake stupid quotes by Houdini on them.

Well, now they actually exist and just in time for Christmas. The perfect gift for everyone on your list. The Dumb Houdini Collection at the new Dumb Houdini Store.

Yes, this is real. The purpose behind this is two-fold. The first is because I think it’s funny. The second purpose is because I have some projects I’m working on that I care about and I’m trying to figure out if I’m going to use a print-on-demand type of service like this or if I’m going to do what I’ve done with the GLOMM shirts, i.e., use a traditional screen printer, have the shirts shipped to me, and then do the actual shipping out to you myself (or via someone who is helping me out). That’s obviously a more involved process and it means having to try and keep sizes in stock and all that which is a minor pain in the ass.

So the Dumb Houdini Collection is a test of this type of service to see how it works for my needs. If you order a shirt (or sticker) and you have any issues with the service or the quality of the goods, send me an email and let me know. (You don’t need to let me know if all went well. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll just assume that.)

The Dumb Houdini line comes in three different styles, depending on how willing you are to have something stupid on your shirt.

There is the simple Dumb Houdini logo shirt (black).

There is the Dumb Houdini Brainmind shirt (white or light blue)

And the Dumb Houdini Chains shirt (white or stone grey)

To be clear, this is a real thing, and I will be happy to see anyone in a Dumb Houdini shirt in the future. But this is not like a “call to action” type of thing. If you’re not inclined to buy it, don’t feel like, “Oh, I should buy one anyway because I like his site and I should help him out.” Don’t you worry about me. I have everything taken care of. If I make enough to cover the cost of the artwork, I’m good. If I make a million more dollars than that, then I’ll be very good.

Buy this because you want to attract people with your keen sense of fashion. Or buy it to be the envy of the next magic club or convention you go to.

The Dumb Houdini Store will possibly be an outlet for other magic adjacent items in the future, but I’m not making any reference to The Jerx on that site. That way, if someone stumbles across the site or you send them there, it won’t link them back to this site.

Also, Threadless has free shipping for Cyber Monday on orders over $45 in the US or $80 internationally (code: FREESHIP11a87779 ). If you spend $80 on Dumb Houdini merchandise, congratulations, you must have a ton of expendable income, or you are, in fact, as dumb as Houdini.

The Jerx 2018 Least Essential Magic Gift Guide

We always get round-ups of the best gifts to buy someone for the holidays. We don’t need another one of those. So instead I’ve gathered here a few of the least essential magic gifts to put on your wishlist or buy for your magic friends.

Appearing Mop

Guys, please, whatever you do. Don’t tell me how this works. Please! You promise you won’t, right? Not that you’re going to have any idea anyway. I just don’t want someone to spoil this mystery for me. It’s not often that I get to feel truly enchanted by something but this is just the definition of magical.

This is, perhaps, the only trick I’ve ever seen where—if you didn’t tell someone you were doing a trick—they would have no clue that’s what you thought you were doing. “Oh, he pulled a shitty looking mop with a telescoping handle out of a decent sized box. Okay.”

Chocolate Break by Tenyo

I may do a round-up of the 2019 Tenyo line at some point if I get my hands on them all. But here’s a sneak-peek: this one is dogshit. An obviously fake bar of chocolate that can’t be looked at in any manner by the spectator. It might make some sense if you appeared to bite the piece off, but you can’t do that convincingly either.

The only thing of any potential interest in this is the secret, and even that isn’t very interesting.

So you have a fake looking prop that can’t be looked at before or after. This is the type of trick where the best thing you can hope for is total indifference by the spectator because if they take any interest at all in what you’re showing them, the trick will fall completely apart. The second they realize it’s not real chocolate (which is the second they look at it), they will know that it’s just a plastic gimmick and realize if they had one moment to look at it, they’d figure it out. In some Tenyo tricks, some suspicion of the props isn’t a bad thing. With Burglar Ball, for instance, I want them to think this is some little toy and an “obvious trick,” because when it turns out they can examine everything at the end, that fools them extra hard.

With this, they think it’s just an obvious plastic gimmick (which it is) and the moment they say, “Wait, let me see,” your only defense is tell yell NO, tell them you’re not okay with it, and run the other way. Quite literally, you have to treat them showing any interest in the prop as you would a potential sexual assault.

Michael Ammar Poster

I like Michael Ammar quite a bit, but I’ll be honest, they’d have to pay me a lot more than $40 to hang a poster of him on my wall.

Wait…

Hold on…

They want me to pay the $40? Yeah, that’s going to be a hard pass on that one I’m afraid.

As I said once before:

“[Having that poster in your bedroom] would fuck you up. He may have some Easy to Master Card Miracles, but frankly, I think it would be a Miracle if you find it Easy to Masturbate in the presence of that gleaming melon of his.“

As that link shows, I’ve officially been making fun of the idea of a Michael Ammar poster for 14 years now. It’s a rich life.

Solo Jazz Playing Cards

In the 90s, this depressingly shitty pattern was used on Solo cups. In 2015 their was a brief resurgence in the popularity of the pattern as people went though a “hey, remember this shit?” period with it. The pattern was put on shoes, t-shirts, and sweatshirts. Then, with typical magician timing, three years after the revival came and went, someone released a deck of cards with that pattern on it.

Of course, if you have an affinity or nostalgia for this pattern, there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s always funny to me to read something as in the ad for this deck which says “Limited Edition of 6000.” If you had asked me, “How many people are there who would want a deck of cards with a pattern on the back that looks like an old paper cup?” I would have said, “Somewhere between three and six?”  The fact they made 6000 of these things is mind-boggling to me. But good for them. I hope they sell every one.

Bolt Prediction

As reader L.J. wrote when he proposed this product to me as being one of the least essential: “When magicians do predictions we want something that really touches people on an emotional level. What better than predicting which bolt a spectator unscrews from 5 numbered bolts affixed to the upper portion of a 17cm aluminum plate?”

So true. This hits people right in the heart because it deals with something people actually care about. Bolts and aluminum plates. Surely you’d want to lug this around for the opportunity to show someone a 1 in 5 chance. There’s no response to an effect a magician likes more than, “Oh, so does everyone say ‘3’?”

I like to up the emotional resonance with this fun patter line. “I want you to imagine your child died in a plane crash. This is a piece of the wreckage. The plane crashed because a crucial bolt was missing. How many times do you think your son screamed your name as the plane went down? Three? Well, believe it or not that’s the one that’s missing.”

The video makes this look even more magical than you’re imagining it. The magician only has to fiddle around behind the metal sheet for 20 seconds before doing the reveal.

The nice thing about is, when someone say, “What is the point of the top row of bolts anyway? Why not just have the numbers and the five covered bolts below them? Is it because you had to do something in the back while you were pretending to unscrew the bolt?” The prop is the perfect size and weight to pick up and smash them in the skull with.

Combustible Hat

For my money, there is no better way to accidentally set fire to your head than with the Combustible Hat by A House of Fire.

I realize “Combustible Hat” sounds like a joke product I would make up. It’s not.

I encourage you to visit A House of Fire to check out their other products. There’s genuinely nothing but compliments about this guy’s stuff on the Cafe. I just don’t trust myself with a combustible hat.

Be warned, the website looks like it hasn’t been updated in 30 years. But that’s before websites existed. Yeah, that’s my point.

But it’s worth the visit anyway. This guy is a great character. Like out of a Tim and Eric sketch. He has a new fan in me.

That’s it for this year’s list except for one more least essential item—perhaps the very least essential— that I’m putting out and which will be announced on this site next week. Just in time for Christmas. Stay tuned.