Joyful Noise #1

Sundays are for off-topic posts.

In this series I’ll mention some of the little things that have been bringing me joy recently. Now, the fact of the matter is, I’m a pretty light touch in the joy department. It doesn’t take much to make me happy, and my tastes lean towards the unsophisticated. I won’t be recommending my favorite scotch here, for example. Or what cigars I’m smoking these days. I’m not smoking any cigars and my favorite scotch is no scotch.

Here’s some stuff I’ve been enjoying:

Podcast Episode

Reply All tells all sorts of stories. Technically the stories are supposed to be about the internet, but pretty much anything is about the internet if you try hard enough.

Here’s the description of this episode:

A man in California is haunted by the memory of a pop song from his youth. He can remember the lyrics and the melody. But the song itself has vanished, completely scrubbed from the internet. 

It sounds like an unambitious episode of Black Mirror, but it’s a true story. And one of the main “characters” in the tale is Christian Lee Hutson, whose song, Northsiders, was my favorite depressing song from last year.

I found the story really fascinating. I listen to almost all podcasts on 2x speed, but for the first time in my life I slowed it down to normal so it would last longer. The episode is self-contained. You don’t have to be a regular Reply All listener to follow it. Here it is.

Youtube Video

I bet there’s a decent sized overlap between fans of magic and fans of special effects (practical effects, not CGI). So there’s a good chance you might enjoy this compilation of special effects genius, Tom Savini on Late Night With David Letterman from the 1980s.

Reading Material

The only subscription I have to any physical media is to Archie Jumbo Comics. I can’t really say for certain why. It has never once made me laugh or even crack a smile, but for some reason I have great affection for it. The stories are all just disconnected nonsense, and a a lot of them are reprinted from 20 or 40 years ago so they seem out of place in the current day (Archie can’t find his Walkman!) but I still get a weird kick out of it. I like that Betty and Veronica are rivals but also best friends. I like that Archie is constantly on the search for pussy. I like that Jughead’s primary character trait is that he likes hamburgers. The writers thought that would be enough to sustain a character for decades. And apparently it was.

And I like that the monthly digest always has a direct connection to the time of year. Archie is always getting ready for school or halloween or spring break or whatever. Once a month, when I get the issue, I use that as my reminder to make sure to sit down and schedule out some seasonal/time-specific activities in the coming weeks. (I’ve mentioned why I think this is valuable in this post, How to Slow Time).

But mainly I just like how dumb it is. Here is a page from an issue a couple months ago.

It’s not part of a larger story. There’s no purpose to it. It’s just a page of Archie in different jackets. Huh? It’s like some sort of wholesome anti-comedy. It makes me happy.

The Juxe: My Favorite Live Music Performance

On Saturdays, during the posting window (the 1st thru the 20th of the month), I’ll be writing about music. What does this have to do with magic? Nothing. I just like sharing music with people and this is my site, so I get to do what I like.

The Juxe is like, I guess a play on a jukebox mixed with the name the Jerx? It works well enough, get off my back. Unless you have a better idea.

My taste in music is primarily in the genres of indie pop, indie rock, power pop, garage rock, punk, surf, with some rap, electronic, and folk music as well. I listen to a lot of modern music with mid-20th century influences.

But today, rather than talk about something new, I’m going to talk about my favorite live music performance which is quite old.

It’s The Who performing A Quick One (While He’s Away) from “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus,” which was shot in December 1968. This was a special that was supposed to be released on the BBC, but the Rolling Stones had it canned. The reason for that, some say, is that this performance by The Who made their performances look like shit in comparison. That story may be apocryphal, but I kind of buy it.

I’ve never been a huge Who fan (although the album, The Who Sell Out is a favorite of mine). And I generally don’t like songs longer than four minutes. And I’m usually underwhelmed by live performances. But despite all that, this is one of my favorite videos on all of youtube (which, I’m told, has upwards of 10,000 videos).

Roger, Keith, and Pete are all great showmen and that marries so well with this song that goes through multiple “movements” on its way to the electric finale. The energy from about 6 minutes on is particularly crazy, and the film editing is some of the best I’ve ever seen at capturing that energy. The whole thing is great from the opening a cappella bit to the weird clown at the end. “Oh, that’s marvelous!” Agreed!

Book Of The Year

I woke up today to a few emails telling me that all references to my book, Magic For Young Lovers—which had apparently been the leading vote getter to this point for the 2019 Book of the Year award at the Magic Cafe—had been removed by Cafe staff from the thread tallying those votes.

Obviously there is no better email I could receive. Yes, it’s very nice to hear that a book that was released over a year ago, as a limited edition, with no advertising or marketing, that was not even allowed to be discussed on the Cafe, had more votes than any other book released this year. That’s very flattering.

But what’s more flattering is that the Cafe staff, notably Tom Cutts, Dave Scribner, and Steve Brooks are so helpful in going out of their way to carry on with the fiction that my thoughts and opinions make me such a troublemaker that they need to muzzle people from spreading the word about this site.

This is the dream team.

I know what you’re thinking…, “Those guys have the power to remove posts from the Cafe, AND, on top of that, they look like a bunch of friggin’ magazine models?!” It’s true. Some guys have it all. However, while you may just see three guys with superstar good looks, I see what is essentially my guerilla marketing team.

For example, if you ask Tom Cutts why you can’t mention my site on the Magic Cafe, he will give you some line about how I’ve done things in the past that show me to be a dangerous guy with an incredibly dark temperament. What does he base this on? Beats the fuck out of me! I think he’s just a sweetie who’s intent on keeping my reputation as magic’s unstable, iconoclast, rebel intact. Thanks, Tom!

The fact is, I haven’t been very good at maintaining that image. I’m the most prolific writer in magic and while my material may have an “edge” compared to the standard magic writing, that doesn’t change the fact that my output is primarily about using magic in a manner that takes the focus off yourself and brings joy to others. That’s pretty uncool, I know. But thankfully my boys at the Cafe got my back and are doing what they can to maintain my bad-boy cred.

New readers here are likely confused as to why mentioning this is site is banned on the Cafe. It goes back to 2003 and my old blog. That blog started as a response to the Cafe and the weird way it operated back when people still used that site. Steve Brooks would wield his “power” in what many felt were questionable ways and then I would go on my site and call him fat. Not because I have any issue with fat people. All the best people I know have a tendency to put on weight. I just did it because it got under his (considerable) skin.

It really made him angry. Maybe—and this seems unlikely—but maybe he wasn’t aware he was fat? Is that possible? I would have thought he had a clue simply based on the increased frequency with which he found himself holding up a pair of ruined underpants, saying, “They just don’t make elastic waistbands like they used to.” Or from that interaction with the stewardess where she said, “Shall I make it a double?” And he said, “The gin and tonic?” And she said, “No, the seatbelt extender.” He’s seen his body, right? Surely he must have caught his reflection in a mirror; or in the cracked surface of a particularly glossy glazed doughnut as he raised it to his lips; or—at the very least—in his wife’s sad eyes.

Here’s the thing, the one innate gift god graced me with was an unsettling proficiency for shit-talk. And while it’s maybe annoying to have some dude making fun of your weight, it’s a whole other situation when he does it with such panache and unabashed glee.

And I pretty much garnered folk-hero status because I was pissing off Steve and his cohorts. It’s not that people liked me making fun of someone just for the hell of it. They felt that Steve wasn’t listening to them. Even valid concerns about the site would be met with a response from Steve along these lines: “Well, this is MY Cafe, and I make the rules. And just like any other cafe, if you don’t like the rules, you don’t need to come.” That attitude annoyed and frustrated people so they gravitated towards what I was doing even if it was immature or vulgar because at least I was getting the Cafe to pay attention.

Things went from bad to worse between us when a whistle-blower inside the Cafe started leaking the staff’s private messages to me. In those messages they talked about contacting the blog host to get my site shut down. I would have loved to see that attempt:

Dear Blogspot,

Please take this site down because we don’t like it.

Signed,
A group of fucking morons who has no idea how anything in the world works.

When they figured out they couldn’t just have a site taken down because they didn’t like it, one of them suggested reporting me to the authorities for child porn. Seriously. I think the idea was maybe they could accuse me of that and maybe that would be a heinous enough accusation to get the site taken down even if it was based on absolutely nothing. And not a single person in that Cafe staff discussion was like, “Wait, what? That’s fucking insane.”

Ah, but I’m the dangerous one with the dark temperament.

Now, I never had any real animosity towards Steve. I wrote my old blog when I was bored at my day job. It was just a way to pass the time. I didn’t think Steve was an evil person, he was just someone who stumbled into some power for the first time in his life and he got off on using it. Unfortunately for him, the success of the Cafe was more a matter of timing than skill. And when the only thing you have to offer on your site is other people’s content, you need to do a better job of listening to the people who provide that content. Steve’s attitude was, “This is my Cafe.” And to continue that metaphor, it was his Cafe, but the people there were responsible for cooking and serving their own food. And if you take them for granted, they’re going to find somewhere else to go. Which is exactly what happened.

At any rate, I forgive Brooks for the sketchy shit he tried with me all those years ago. But if he gets something out of holding a grudge, I don’t want to deny him that.

The truth is, I prefer people find this site because a friend tells them about it or because of a fortuitous google search. Not because of a post in a public magic forum. So I’m happy you can’t talk about this site there.

And here’s the thing, if they hadn’t interfered, and MFYL had won book of the year, what good would that do me? The book sold out in January 2018. I have no more copies to sell. I guess there’s some degree of pride I could take in winning the magic book of the year, but I’m not really wired that way. In fact, I take much more pride knowing they were willing to invalidate their whole contest to keep me from winning again.

I just feel bad for the authors of the other books. They’re denied the full sense of achievement they could take if their book wins because it will have an implied asterisk next to it from anyone who’s paying attention. It would be like if you were taking part in a 500m sprint and halfway through a sniper took out the guy in the lead. You’d feel like a bit of a fraud saying, “I won!”

Just so the Cafe management doesn’t go and botch this again next year, I am officially removing anything I write from awards contention in perpetuity. Okay? You’re welcome. Problem solved.

The Bubble: Cliffs Notes

Last week’s series of posts has generated a ton of interesting feedback. It’s a subject I will return to from time to time, so I want to have a short version I can reference, which is what this post will be.

The Bubble represents the range of a person’s ability to appreciate something done in its purest form, on the scale of their appreciation for all experiences.

Example: Let’s say I go to the ballet.

I don’t have a great appreciation for ballet in general. I’ve seen quite a bit of it, because I dated a ballet dancer for a while, but it’s not something I really connect with.

There are some ballets I’ve seen that I would rate a 5, and some that I would rate a 9. That’s rating ballets against other ballets. But if we put that scale—that bubble—within my list rankings of all experiences, then the rating for the “5-Ballet” might be a 5.2, and the rating for a “9-Ballet” might be a 5.8.

It might be easier to think of negative example.

Let’s say you’re getting a root-canal. You may have root canal that’s horrible. You rate it a 1 on a scale of root canals. Then you may have one that’s relatively pain-free. It’s a 10 on your root canal scale. But on your scale for all experiences the “bubble” for your root canal experience is going to be somewhere between zero and 1 (for most people, unless you have some weird dental fetish).

The things most magicians fixate on and spend time working on, are things that generally only affect people’s rating inside their bubble.

Better sleights, better gimmicks, better technique, more impossible tricks… these things will adjust people’s score within the bubble. But even a big change in their rating inside the bubble won’t have a drastic effect on their overall experience.

You’ve probably all encountered a situation like this:

You do your one in eight prediction and people really like it.

Well, if they like that, wait until they see my Rubik’s Prediction. A 1 in 43 quintillion miracle!

And while they may like it somewhat more, their reactions are not orders of magnitude greater than the 1 in 8 effect. That’s because greater impossibility doesn’t get you outside of their bubble for magic trick appreciation.

Patter and routining—as we traditionally define them—are not going to enhance a spectator’s experience too far outside the bubble.

Anything that feels like it’s part of a magic trick is going to fall within the magic trick bubble. Funny or interesting patter may make a trick better for the participant, but it doesn’t take the experience beyond a magic trick.

Here’s a typical stumbling block for people understanding what I’m trying to say.

A couple conversations I’ve had about this topic went something like this:

Me: For example, do you like ballet?

Them: Not really.

Me: Okay, so for you, your '“ballet bubble” might be between a 5 and a 6.5 when placed amongst the range of all experiences. So even the finest ballet in the world, which you recognize as being a 10-level, A+ ballet, would likely still only be a 6.5 relative to other experiences you could have.

Them: I don’t know about that. I can imagine a ballet that I would rate a lot higher than that.

Then I’ll ask them to describe such a show and they’ll go on to imagine some sort of fantastical ballet that is based on their favorite movie and the women are super sexy and are grinding on the guys like it’s a strip-club and there are pyrotechnics and there’s barbecue served during the performance. And they’ll paint this picture of a ballet that would be a 9 or 10 experience for them.

And I say to them, “Yes, you’re making my point. What pushed the experience outside of the bubble wasn’t the ballet dancers getting better or more intricate choreography, it was other elements that were added to the traditional ballet to make it feel like something very different for you.”

This is how we push magic past the spectator’s bubble as well. We add other elements to the performance that allow us to reach them in ways that go beyond what they associate with a traditional magic trick. These elements don’t have to be as blatant as barbecue and lap-dances. They can just be small changes that defy the audience’s expectation of the magic trick experience.

Nice Package

Dude, how bad do you feel for Ellusionist?

You know what I’m talking about. You know exactly what I’m talking about.

Ellusionist put out that box of mentalism late last year. The one that was supposed to help you get your dick sucked or something like that? I don’t really remember. But I do remember they were really proud of their high-quality box and the “secret” second layer and all that jazz.

I’ll admit, the box itself was good quality. It was well-made with a nice sturdy cardboard and featuring the one design element that appeals to every virgin magician: a skull. (What would magicians do if they couldn’t put skulls on shit? “I can’t put a skull on the back of these playing cards? Okay, that’s no problem at all. I’m sure I can think of something else. Let’s see…Hmmm… oh! I’ve got an idea. What if I put a big skull on it? No? That’s the same thing? Well then… what do I put on it? Is there something else that exists besides skulls? What’s left for me to put on this…. just the inky black void of space itself?”)

It is completely unsurprising that the imagery that magicians most identify with is an empty head.

So Ellusionist puts this packaging together and was likely very proud of themselves.

Then what do I do, like the nasty little bitch that I am?

I send out my 2019 supporter reward featuring the most glorious packaging in the history of magic.

Sorry, Ellusionist.

Look, this isn’t a competition between us. Yes, I poke fun, but it comes from a place of affection. But let’s be honest, when it comes to the magic packaging game, ya just got your ass handed to you on a platter.

The Jerx Q&A

This is a new feature I’m testing for the site.

You can submit short, simple, magic-related questions and I will pluck some out and give you short, simple, possibly magic-related answers from time to time.

Things to note:

• Keep it short, you have 150 characters.

• If I don’t answer your question, it doesn’t mean it was a bad question, or that you’re a bad person who isn’t deserving of love and attention. It just means I didn’t have a good answer for it.

• The questions will be attributed to anonymous or by the initials you provide. If I let you use a name everyone would just be writing, like, “Why is my weenie so small and stinky? —Joshua Jay” Don’t bother with joke questions. They will be filtered out before I get to them.

• If you have longer questions or feedback, you are—as always—free to email me. The Q&A form is more for the circumstance where you might have something quick to ask and it saves you from having to put that question in the context of an email asking me how I’m doing and telling me what a genius I am and all of that.

• The Dear Jerxy-style, long-form reader mail will now be handled in the newsletter.

You can submit your questions below.

Justifying Selections

In last week’s Bubble series I mentioned a trick of Andy Nyman’s called Windows. The trick uses cards with emotions written on them. The spectator chooses one and you’re able to determine what emotion it is.

A friend of mine asked how I justify the cards. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to just say, ‘Think of an emotion,’ and then take it from there?”

This is a potential issue with many mentalism tricks, of course.

“Why did I have to pick a card? Why couldn’t I just think of a card?”

“Why did I have to look at a word in a book? Why couldn’t I just think of a word?”

While this is a question that could theoretically apply to many tricks in mentalism, I don’t really find it’s something that comes up too often with actual people. Even when going over tricks with them after the fact, I rarely hear people question this small bit of procedure. Perhaps if I did a lot more straightforward mentalism, this would be something I’d hear more often.

Here is the language I use in the rare circumstance that a question of this nature does arise.

“Why do I have to choose a playing card? Why can’t I just think of one?” they say.

“Hmm… okay. I think I see what you’re getting at. I suppose what it comes down to is the difference between asking myself, ‘What card is she thinking of?’ vs, ‘What card would someone like her be likely to think of?’ When you actually pick a card at random, I can just focus on the thought itself. But if I asked you to imagine a card, then it becomes less of a process of thought transmission and more of an exercise in personality assessment or a guessing game based on statistics. That’s not really the sort of thing I do.”

The idea is to frame it in a way that having them physically select something is actually more difficult because I can’t base my guess on “personality or statistics.” I’m not saying they buy that completely but it’s an explanation that sounds feasible.

What I would also do is come back a few weeks later…, “Remember when you asked why you needed to pick a card? Why I couldn’t have you just think of one? Well, I’ve been working on a different technique—it’s new to me—that might allow me to do just that. Can I get your help trying it out?” And then I’d show them a trick that didn’t involve them making a physical selection. This way I’m letting a question from a previous trick hurl me into the next performance and tie those tricks together.