The Return of The Jerx

First… do you think this Valentine is too obscure?

While most people (close enough to 100%) are familiar with magician U.F. Grant, probably only 90% of the population would recognize that illustration as being from the cover of his book, Illusion Secrets I. And of that group, maybe 85% would recognize him as the guy who marketed the Cheek to Cheek deck originally. So probably only, like, 3/4s of people will really understand it.

And furthermore, how many people are familiar with the cheek-to-cheek sexual position where both people get on their hand’s and knees, smoosh their buttocks together, and the male threads his penis back betwixt his legs to enter the female?

Is it even worth me sending this out to every woman in my contact list in hopes of finding a willing lover for tonight if only, like, half of them will truly understand the reference? And of that half, it’s probably only going to be about 80% who are really super turned on by it. So I don’t know if it’s worth the effort. Eh, I’ll give it a shot.

Gonna try and get some “bodies in orbit” tonight, if you know what I’m saying.

(The tricks in this book really do sound like sexual positions. Although “Self-Rise” is likely the only one you’re familiar with.)

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Heyyyyyyyy all! The bitch is back!

It’s good to be writing you again and I hope you’re all having a dope-ass start to your year. Mine has been great so far. The new book came out and everyone was creaming their jeans over it. And after wringing the cream from said jeans, many people went out and tried the material and reported back to me with their experiences (you can read some of that feedback in the Winter X-Comm newsletter which came out at the end of January).

With the book release and new season support emails going out, there have been a lot of emails going back and forth. It’s very possible I’ve mis-filed an email or two. If you were expecting to hear back from me about something in the past few weeks and you haven’t, get back in touch.

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Supporter Slots

As I mentioned, the email went out to 2019 supporters earlier this month to see if they wanted to do another season. We easily reached the threshold required to do a 2020 season, so that’s why we’re here again. There are a few full supporter slots that weren’t claimed and those will be available on Wednesday the 19th at noon, New York time.

There aren’t many slots. If you’re interested, make sure you check back on that day.

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New Content

A year ago I wrote a post titled Delineation. “Things are going to change around here,” I said. And then not a goddamn thing changed.

The changes I mentioned last year actually will go into effect this year. The site content is going to be fun stuff, timely stuff, or ideas that can be stated succinctly. Some posts may just be a couple sentences, or a single image.

The stuff that is a little more valuable or fleshed out will appear in the newsletter to supporters which is going from four times a year to 10 times a year.

Then, of course, the physical publications will include the content that has proven to be most useful to me over time.

So what type of stuff will you see here:

• Jokey bullshit

• Commentary

• Mailbag stuff

• Preview and Abstracts of stuff that’s coming in the Newsletter

• Non-Magic Posts

• Shit-talking

• Dumb tricks

And by “dumb tricks,” I don’t necessarily mean bad tricks. I’m going through a phase where if a trick is just a moment of impossibility that I can’t find a way to build off of in some way, it just feels dumb to me. It feels especially dumb in social situations. But my mind still comes up with these sorts of tricks, so this will be my repository for them.

As I said in a previous post, I want to try and funnel content into the outlets that feel most appropriate for them. I want the stuff on the site to feel breezy and easily digestible. The stuff that requires a little more focused attention will go in the newsletter, so you can carve out some time once a month when you’re in the mood for that. And then the books are for the fully polished ideas and material.

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New Schedule

Posting will be sporadic for the rest of this month.

In March I will start a new posting schedule that will look like this:

The 1st through the 20th of each month there will post every day.

Every weekday?

Nope. Every single day, including weekends. (Weekends will probably be non-magic-related posts.)

Then I’ll be off the rest of the month and the newsletter will be released to supporters at the end of the month. And that pattern will continue through December.

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Monday’s Post

I need to have something that marks the end of the previous era of the Jerx and the start of the new one. So Monday’s post will be the true delineation mark between the two.

Over the weekend I’m going to work on coming up with the dumbest piece-of-garbage post you can imagine. Then I’m going to try and get dumber and dumber until I’ve condensed it down to a perfect nugget of worthlessness. The post won’t be interesting, provocative, or funny. The only noteworthy thing about it will be how spectacularly bad it is. It will be a post so shitty that some of you will remove this site from your bookmarks.

That will set a new benchmark for stupidity on this site which will readjust your expectations of what to expect (and then leave you pleasantly surprised with the relative quality of the posts which will follow it).

For the next 72 hours I will be sitting at my workbench, tirelessly honing the epitome of an awful magic blog post in order to lower the bar. See it here Monday.

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Announcements Announcement

Yo Dawg, I hear you like announcements. Well, here are some upcoming ones.

Feb. 6 - 2019 Supporters will get an email seeing if they want to go ahead with a 2020 season.

Feb. 10 - If 90+% decide they want to support another year, then on Feb. 10th there will be an announcement on when the new season will start.

If less than 90% want to go another year then there will an announcement that the site is going to wind down.

Either way, you’ll know the future of the site on Feb. 10th.

Mid Feb - If another year is commissioned by the supporters, then any available support slots will be announced here in mid-February. (There is no waiting list. There will be announcement here of a date/time when they’ll be available and you’ll be able to sign up at that point until they’re gone.)

Later.

Updates 1/27

As of the end of today, all the 2019 rewards packages will have shipped. That means if you’re in the US you definitely should have yours by the end of the week. Outside of the US it’s always hard to tell. You should have it sometime between next week and Easter 2026. I don’t really understand how international mail works. Apparently there are times when they’ll just set your package aside and stare at it for a week and half or so before sending it on to its destination.

On Friday, the final X-Comm newsletter for the 2019 Season will be sent to subscribers.

In early February I’ll reach out to current supporters and see if they want to sign on for another year. If so, we’ll start up again Mid-February.

Updates 1/20

Everyone have fun at Magifest?

I was a little skeeved out by Josh standing outside this room, wearing a propeller beanie and little shorts, licking a giant lollipop. When I tried to get a peek in the room he pushed me away and said, “No adults allowed! This is a place for us kids to be naughty.” Uhm… okay. Sure thing, dude.

For Supporters:

• Reward packages continue to go out, they will all be sent by a week from today.

• The final newsletter for this season will arrive on the 31st.

• The digital appendix is live. Info on that was sent in an email last Thursday.

For Everyone:

• The site will return in mid-February. The exact date will come soon.

• Some people have asked about supporting for 2020. Those slots will be offered to 2019 supporters first, and any unclaimed ones will then be made available here around mid-February.
  

Updates 1/13

If you’re a supporter of the site you should have received an email on Saturday with the shipping details for your rewards package. If you don’t think you got this email, check your spam. If it’s not there, you’re probably not in the email account that associated with your paypal, which is the default where I send such emails. So check that email address too. (If you don’t find it there, email me.) I can’t send you your package until you complete the steps there, so please do so when you can.

I’m also in the process of reaching out to people who emailed me to be on the waiting list for the 2019 support package for some of the “overage” copies printed by the book printer. I’m going to work through that list chronologically until those copies are gone.

Today I want to offer you a sneak peek at The Jerx Deck #3, which will be coming in your 2019 reward package.

It’s a deck 16 years in the making.

In 2004 I wrote…

I read an effect once and the effect required you to do a bit of fishing in order to figure out which card a spectator was thinking of. At one point in the effect you had to ask, "Was it a cherry-colored card?" And I've seen people use this line at least a couple of times in my life. In the effect I was reading it said that women will most often think of red cards so this is a pretty safe line if used on a woman, and if she didn't think of a red card there is an "out." The "out" is that you say, "Well, there are black cherries." 

Now, it's one thing if you consider that a joke (I don't, because I think jokes should be funny), but is it in any way an out? An "out" implies something subtle that makes something (a prediction or a statement) that is incorrect seem correct. But there's no way that cherry-colored shit could be considered an out in my mind. Why not just do this: Someone chooses a card and you say, "Was it a red card?" If they say "no," your out is "Well, then it was a black card." That's just as clever an out as the "black cherries" thing.

In 2016 I came up with a shockingly brilliant improvement of this concept.

Just use a deck with pink and brown suits, instead of red and black.

Then, if you are an American, travel to England. If you're British, travel to America.

Then, when you need to fish for the color of the card, you say:

“You picked a fanny colored card.”

This cunningly capitalizes on the fact that Americans use “fanny” to mean butt. And in England they use it to mean berginuh.

Hold on, let me spell check that…

Sorry… vagina.

So, for example, as an American in Britain, I would say to my audience:

‘You picked a fanny colored card!’

If they say yes, then I know it’s a pink card.

If they say no, then I say. “It wasn’t a brown card?”

They’ll admit that it was and then say, “But you said it was fanny-colored.”

Then I say, “Oh, how silly of me. I forgot where I was. You know that in America ‘fanny’ refers to the butt. So I meant the card was brown, like a butthole.”

It’s simplicity itself!

But we’ve lacked the deck needed to do it correctly.

Until now…

Introducing The Jerx Deck #3.

My Favorite Music of 2019

[Brief Update: If you were a supporter of the Jerx in 2019, you will be getting an email this weekend to get your shipping fee and address. We’re ahead of schedule with the rewards packages and they should start going out sometime next week.]

As I’ve done in years prior, today I’m posting some of my favorite songs and music videos from last year.

If you haven’t seen these posts in the past, my taste in music leans towards indie-pop, rock, garage, punk, rap, and sub more obscure sub-genres. I won’t be listing a bunch of radio hits here. Any good ones you already know.

I like sharing music because I know not everyone has the time to make it a priority in their life like maybe they did when they were young. So if that’s you and our tastes overlap at all, here’s a chance for me to share some stuff you otherwise might have missed.

I purchased 90 new albums in 2019 and sampled many hundred more. Here were the songs that made an impact.

Favorite Punk Album of 2019 - Morbid Stuff by Pup (Toronto, Ontario)

Not hardcore punk, more pop-punk, but still with a bit of an edge. I love the energy of this album. And they came out with a couple of great videos as well. There was one for the song “Kids,” which is kind of like a janky episode of Black Mirror.

The video below I like even more. The concept is great. They sent out a song for people to cover before they had released the song. So they gave them the lyrics and the general chords, but nobody really knew what the song sounded like when they were covering it. The video starts off with their attempts before transitioning into the actual song.

Favorite Jangle Pop Song of 2019 - 4am by the Maureens (Utrecht, Netherlands)

Great harmonies in this one.

Favorite Dream-Pop Song of 2019 - Shangri-La by Fox Grin (Atlanta, Georgia)

This has a late 90s feel to me. It may be the video though. Pretty song (and pretty video).

Favorite Song I Would Have Put at the End of a Mix-Tape for a Chick I Liked in High School - Your Hand In Mine by The Bedside Kites (Tampa, Florida)

I feel bad for you kids who don’t get to make mix tapes and CDs anymore. That was like a major way of connecting and flirting in my day (much in the same way I’m connecting and flirting with you now). it’s not the same to send a playlist. The only time I really ever think that I’m living in a computer simulation is when I think that humans have been around for a couple hundred thousand years and it just so happened that my youth coincided with the 20 years that mix-tapes and CDs were a thing? That seems unlikely.

You didn't want to make your mix-tape all love songs, or you come across as a little needy/corny. The first song should send some kind of message and the last song should always be a sweet little number where you’re essentially saying, “This is me talking to you.”

This is the song that would have ended my 2019 mixtape if I was crushing on you in 10th grade. A simple, summery, sweet number called Your Hand In Mine.

Well I waited around
For  you to come around
And  I am thinking about
The way your hand fits in my hand

Favorite Throwback Song - Rushing the Acid Frat by Stephen Malkmus (Portland, Oregon)

If you liked the sound of Pavement in the 90s, this new song from Stephen Malkmus could have been pulled from one of those old albums.

Favorite Psychedelic Song of 2019 - Paint Euphrosyne Blue by the Lucille Furs (Chicago, Illinois)

Straight 60s style psychedelic-pop.

Favorite Depressing Tune of 2019 - Northsiders by Christian Lee Hudson (Los Angeles, California)

Favorite Power Pop Song of 20919 - A Place in the Sun by Telekinesis (Seattle, Washington)

A great song. But it’s probably my top power-pop song this year because of the video. I like watching people dance by themselves.

According to iTunes, My Most Played Song of 2019 - Blackout Control by Spendtime Palace (Costa Mesa, California)

I don’t know if this was my favorite song of the year, but it’s definitely up there. The chorus flows in a way I find very satisfying, and the video cracks me up.

Favorite Album of 2019 - Don’t You Think You’ve Had Enough? by Bleached (Los Angeles, California)

Bleached is probably in my top five current bands, and this album achieved something rare for me in that every song on it was added to my main playlist. Usually, even when I really like an album, there are a couple songs I never need to hear again and I douche them out. But with this album, everything made the cut.

Throughout their catalog of music you will hear the sounds of the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. But they always feel vital and of this time for me.

They pumped out a bunch of videos for this album. Here are a few below.

This next song isn’t a typical rock song. It’s 2:45 worth of build-up to a 30-second, fuzzed-out payoff. And, although it’s not very ambitious, it’s a one-shot music video. Something I always enjoy. And I like how you see clues that they’re setting up for something bigger throughout the opening portion.

Other Favorite Music Videos of 2019

Museum District by Minor Poet (Richmond, Virginia)

I really like this song by Minor Poet and the video makes me laugh because—for a reason I can’t quite figure out—they’re re-making Good Will Hunting.

Vossi Bop by Stormzy (Croydon, UK) and Boasty by Wiley (London, UK)

Both of these videos were directed by Henry Scholfield. I find his use of motion really mesmerizing. Both the things on camera, and the motion of the camera itself.

Everyday by Weyes Blood (Los Angles, California)

I came to this song late in 2019 and it’s been really growing on me since I found it. It mixes a beautiful song that sounds like it could have come straight from 1970 with the esthetic of early 80s horror flicks. It’s pretty great.

Other favorites from this year:

Ex-Hex - Rainbow Shiner
White Reaper - Might Be Right
V.V. Lightbody - Car Alarm (Put it on your make-out mix.)
Holy Now - All the Time
Deep State - Time Unrivaled
Telekinesis - Cut the Quick
Holiday Ghosts - Thinking of You
that dog - Old LP (I love when rock bands try something big and orchestral. The song starts around 6:15, but you may want to watch the rest for context.)

Here’s a Spotify playlist of these songs and albums for those who get their music that way.