As a Man Inketh

Site supporter, JAJ, got a GLOMM inspired tattoo recently.

This, as far as I know, is the second GLOMM tattoo in existence.

It’s both flattering and a little unsettling when someone you don’t know gets a tattoo based on something you’re responsible for. Part of me thinks, “Shouldn’t you put your son’s face there or something?” But mostly it’s just nice to see. I mean, look, no one is inspired to get an Ellusionist tattoo. Or to get branded with a Vanishing Inc logo.

So it’s kind of an honor, but I also like that it’s rare. If it becomes too common, you’re in for a surprise. I will change the GLOMM from the largest magic organization in the world—and the only one that won’t allow sexual predators in it—to an organization that only allows magicians who are convicted pedos. “The blindfolded rabbit represent the blind eye we turn to our victims,” the website will say.

Then people are going to see that tattoo, wonder what it means, do a little research, and come back to you with clear concern in their voice: “Can you tell me why you have a tattoo on your arm for the Grabby Legion of Molesting Magicians?”

“No, wait,” you sputter, as your girlfriend is packing up her belongings. “It actually used to be a group that was the opposite of that. And then he changed it to screw us people with the tattoos!” You sound like a raving lunatic. Your life falls apart while I’m here giggling like a maniac.

If you’re willing to deal with that potentiality, then this version of the logo which was on the GLOMM postcards in the “elite” membership package would make a dope tattoo.

The Poking Machine

Here’s a heads-up on a non-magic product you might be able to find a use for in your magic performances. It would be especially good for any type of seance effect. Although I could see it having many other potential uses.

Imagine you’re around a table with a couple friends, asking for the spirit to show you a sign he (or she, these days women can be ghosts too) is present in the room. Moments later a framed pictures falls off a bookshelf or a glass topples off the counter in another room.

That could definitely be a pants-shitting sort of moment in the right scenario.

The product is called Fingerbot.

It’s essentially an automated finger press so you can control non “smart” devices with your phone or voice.

It’s meant to turn on your lights or your coffee maker or whatever. But it seems like the sort of thing you could easily rig up to push something or drop something. And depending how cleverly you set it up, they wouldn’t be able to trace the fallen object back to this little plastic box nearby.

I’m also thinking of having it set up on top of a (non-moving) ceiling fan blade, ready to knock a coin or some other object off of it. That way I could take a coin, do some sort of complete vanish with it, then have it “rematerialize” and fall from the sky into my hand.

It’s about $35 on Indiegogo. I’m going to pick one up. I’ll let you know if I end up coming up with anything particularly interesting to do with it. And if you have any ideas, send them my way.

Dumb Tricks: Two Fish, One Fish

I said in a previous post that the site (as opposed to the newsletters and books) would be a a place for “dumb” tricks. This trick is one of those. I don’t think it’s a bad trick. In fact, if I compared it to a list of “new releases” in magic, I’d probably prefer this trick to at least 50% of those tricks.

I call it a dumb trick because it’s just meaningless impossibility. It’s fun to perform, uses interesting objects, and gets a good reaction, but it doesn’t really fit my style. It will fool people, but because it’s inherently kind of frivolous, it’s not the sort of thing that’s really going to capture their minds long term.

For that reason, I think the best way to perform it is to undersell it.

“Oh, check this out. This is kind of funny….” That sort of attitude.

You need a box of Swedish Fish candy. The ones that are different colors. Not just all red.

You take a fish and bite it in half, leaving just the head or the tail.

You have your friend do the same with a different colored fish. Leaving the opposite of what you left (so if you ate the head and left the tail, they would eat the tail and leave the head). For the purposes of this description, you ate the tail.

So you hold your fish head in one hand and take their tail in the other. You concentrate for a moment and then bring the two pieces together where they form a new whole fish.

Method

Swedish Fish now makes a product called Heads and Tails that has fish with different colored heads and tails. Most normal humans don’t keep up on all the hot Swedish fish news, so most people will be unaware of this. You have one of these fish in your lap. Let’s say it’s a red/yellow one.

You wait for your friend to grab a red or yellow fish from the normal Swedish Fish. You stop them from eating it. “Oh, check this out. This is kind of funny,” you say, or words to that effect.

You grab a red or yellow fish (the opposite of what they have) and bite off and swallow the piece that’s not on the bi-color fish. (For the sake of this explanation, you have the red fish and they have the yellow fish.)

So you have a red head in your hand. You tell your friend to bite off and chew the head of their fish, leaving just the yellow tail.

Lean in a little to monitor their work. “Just nibble off a little more right there,” you say. As the focus is on their yellow fish, your hand with the fish head goes out of view and drops the head in your lap and exchanges it for the bi-color fish which you hold in your left-hand in a way that hides the other color.

You take their tail from them.

What you’re going to do is vanish the tail while revealing the other half of the whole fish in your hand. To make the tail disappear, you’re going to do that old bit where you vanish something stuck to the back of your fingernail (a match, or a piece of paper, or whatever). But here you don’t have to use anything to stick the item to the nail. You just press the freshly bitten area to the back of your thumb as you hold it. It will stick automatically. Then—as I said—you’ll vanish their piece while revealing the whole fish.

You can sort of push the pieces together as in the gif above. Or toss one piece at the other, like this.

As you hand the “restored” fish to them, your dirty hand falls to your lap or your side.

It’s fun. It’s eye candy. (hahahah, oh Andy, you devil.) But it’s not much more than that.

Could it be?

Theoretically, yes. There is a way it could be a life-long memory type of effect. If you could find a real fish that matches the fish you create together and transform the Swedish fish into a real fish at the end, that would be pretty amazing.

The closest thing I’ve found is a bicolor dottyback fish. They seem to be more purplish-pink than red, but it’s pretty close.

2020 Season Support Slots — Closed

The 2020 Supporter Slots are all filled. Thanks to everyone who signed up.

Lowering the Bar

Criss Angle

---

There we go.

The dawn of The New Jerx is here.

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.)

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---