Killing the Time Occupiers

On this non-magic Sunday, I have a small piece of life advice that is probably only useful to a tiny percentage of you. But it may have broader implications as well.

One of the wisest decisions I ever made for myself was to remove most games from my phone. Puzzle games (like Candy Crush) and word games (like Wordscapes) are designed to be addictive. And yet, for me at least, they provide absolutely no long-term pleasure.

I’m not anti-gaming. I just want to avoid games that are simply addictive time occupiers. I can look back and remember enjoying Mario Odyssey. But I don’t have a single memory of the hours of my life I wasted on fucking Candy Crush. It never happens that someone looks over to me and sees me smiling wistfully, asks what’s on my mind and I reply, “Oh… I was just remembrering Level 1512 of Candy Crush. What a joy! My favorite part was when I crushed the candy!”

I’m not suggesting that all gaming is worthless (I’ll give you a game recommendation at the end of this post). And I’m not saying that you have to always be doing something productive with your time. But I feel like if you’re doing something for pleasure, then it should be something you can look back on and say, “That was fun.” That’s not been my experience with these types of games.

I’m not lecturing you. I’m lecturing myself. I spent way too much time on these games. I didn’t learn anything. I didn’t experience anything. They didn’t make me laugh. They barely made me think. It was just a waste of my goddamn time.

If you can limit yourself to a few minutes a day, then it probably doesn’t matter. But if you find yourself getting sucked in and suddenly an hour has passed, I recommend just deleting it from your phone. You have a few minutes to kill? Read an ebook. Pull out some cards or coins and work on something. Magic is a hobby that you can indulge in while requiring very little pocket space—it’s not, like, archery or something—might as well take advantage of that. Worried you might look like a dork practicing your Elmsley Count while waiting for your prescription to be filled? Get over yourself. No one cares about what you’re doing. Yes, if you’re sitting in a bar by yourself, executing card flourishes for attention, you look like a douchebag. But if you’re minding your own business and working on your own shit, nobody really cares.

Now, what did I mean at the top of this when I said it may have “broader implications”? Well, you can extrapolate out from this mindset beyond video games. Are there other things in your life that are time occupiers but you don’t look back on with any sort of fondness? Do you drink every night because you really enjoy it and you’re having an absolute blast getting tipsy and raucous with people you care about? Or are you—as that Modest Mouse song says—trying to “drink away the part of the day that you cannot sleep away”? When you look back on the past month with your wife, do you remember enjoying it? Or is she just some woman you liked 18 years ago, and now you’re miserably muddling through life together?

“Hey, I don’t come onto a magic blog to be reminded of how miserable I am!”

I get it. I won’t push the subject.

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One game I’ve enjoyed recently is Sayonara Wild Hearts on the iphone (and maybe elsewhere). They call it a “pop album video game” and it is just as much an album as it is a video game. If you don’t like the style of music (a kind of ethereal dream pop) it doesn’t make much sense to play it. But as a combination album/game/surrealistic experience, I find it to be very enjoyable.

One tip I would have is to change the settings on the game so that the controls are extra-sensitive. I find it makes the game much more playable.

The Juxe: Family Tree - that dog.

Family Tree is a Juxe feature I may or may not return to in the future, where I start with one band I like and then spin-off and talk about some related groups/musicians.

We’re going to start with the 90s band that dog. (That’s how they would write it. Lowercase, with a period, but I won’t keep that up through this.)

That Dog was a mid-90s rock group from LA with punk and power-pop influences (especially in their early records), What differentiated them from most of their contemporaries were stunning harmonies and the fact that in the four-piece band, one of those pieces was a violinist.

The band consisted of Rachel Haden (on the left), Anna Waronker (in the middle), and Petra Haden (on the right). And a guy. But nobody was listening to the band for the guy.

The only thing close they had to a breakout hit was the song Never Say Never in 1997. The video features that bold, late-90s music video color palette, and Anna Waronker looking—to me, as a horny young man at the time—like she had been plucked from some forgotten wet dream. What a fox.

You can hear their harmonies particularly well on this cover of Midnight at the Oasis. A song which was a hit in the 70s for Maria Muldaur and was produced by Larry Waronker, Anna’s father.

During this time in the 90s, the Haden sisters were also regularly performing with The Rentals. In the video for the song, Waiting, Petra Haden flies in at the 2 minute mark for her violin part.

In that video you also see another member you might recognize, future Saturday Night Live star, Maya Rudolph. Maya is the daughter if Minnie Ripperton who was famous for the song “Lovin’ You” in the 70s. (Maya was also the original drummer for That Dog.)

The quirky blonde, Cherielynn Westrich, who was the main female vocalist on The Rental’s first album had a decent mid-90s band called Supersport 2000 for a minute. And now she, apparently, builds cars and RVs and appears on shows with names like “Overhaulin’” and “Rock My RV.”

The Rentals were lead by Matt Sharp who was the bassist for Weezer’s first two albums. Bringing it back to That Dog, Rachel Haden sings the lead on the Weezer song, “I Just Threw Out The Love of My Dreams.” One of their early songs that is most beloved by their hardcore fans.

That Dog broke up in 1997 (they reunited recently). The girls went on to work on a number of different projects. My favorite is Petra Haden’s a cappella work where she takes a song and does all the parts herself (both the singing and the instrumentation). Below is a Bach Prelude and an amazing version of the Beach Boys, God Only Knows (her vocal version of the flutes trilling always gets me).

Petra and Rachel Haden have two siblings. One, Tanya, is their triplet (and Jack Black’s wife). They also have a brother, Josh Haden, who leads a group called Spain. Put, “Nobody Has To Know” on your make-out mix. I don’t know what it is about this song, but I’ve had more than woman pause when this comes on and be like, “Oh…who is this?”

The drums on that song were played by Joey Waronker, Anna’s brother. He also played for Beck and REM, but you don’t need me to tell you about Beck or REM.

The Haden triplets have a band as well called, unsurprisingly, The Haden Triplets. They play stripped-down Americana/old-time country music.

Okay, I’m about to bring it all around now. The Haden’s father is Charles Haden. A famous jazz bassist, and also a country and folk musician. He passed away in 2014. At the memorial service they played his song, Shenandoah. Anna Waronker, who was at the service, was very moved by it and ended up writing a song inspired by it called Old LP.

Last year they put out a mini-documentary about the recording of that song. I’ve always liked watching things about session musicians and studio bands, so I enjoyed seeing the group they put together to record this song.

Here are some more That Dog favorites. One from each of their four albums.

Family Functions from their first album, that dog.

Ms. Wrong from their second album, Totally Crushed Out!

Gagged and Tied from their third album, Retreat From the Sun (the title track is great as well).

Drip Drops from their latest album, 2019’s, Old LP. (Violinist, Petra Haden is no longer in the band.)

Dustings of Woofle #24

The ebook was sent out around 5:30pm ET yesterday. See yesterday’s post if you expected to get it but didn’t, or if you have no idea what I’m talking about and you want a copy.

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Mac King has always been known for his brilliant comedy magic and his bold sartorial choices. Recently he demonstrated both in a livestream lecture where he wore his GLOMM Elite membership t-shirt.

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David Milne, who made the Ostin Clip suggestion in Monday’s post, writes in with this idea, which I think would be a pretty impressive video chat effect. Below is his write-up.

So, you’ve done the prediction using the Ostin Clip. They liked it, and a couple of days later you’re on another Skype call. They’re wondering if you’re going to do a follow up? The clip isn’t there but there’s a small thin parcel (about the size of a folded over playing card). You ask them to think of a drink, but nothing fizzy. You asked them why they chose that drink, and then calmly produce it out of the impossibly thin package.

This is a reworking of Eugene Burger’s shot glass surprise (you can find it in his Chicago Visions and From Beyond). You have eight different liquids, packaged up in shot glasses in front of you. [“In front of you” off camera, he means.]

1. Tea (works also as whisky)
2. Coffee with milk (also works as tea with milk)
3. Orange juice (covers mango juice)
4. Water (works as gin & vodka - just have a lemon ready to put on the side)
5. Red wine
6. White wine
7. Tomato juice
8. Milk

I use 5” Qualatex balloons with their ends cut off, but if you’ve got someone working with you, you can have the drinks on a separate table with no pre-prepping and a virtually unlimited possibility of drinks!

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So it’s a shot glass production combined with an Any Drink Called For premise. That would be hard to do in person, but over webcam it seems very doable.

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Good job, guys.

Beggars' Blessings Ebook

Beggars’ Blessings, the ebook that collects the trick recommendations from the Better With Weber contest will be sent out by the end of the day today.

The ebook contains 280 trick recommendations from other Jerx readers as well as a couple bonus items plucked from some older releases by Michael Weber himself.

As he describes them:

The first is an experience where the real magic happens over time and distance. Something you give your participant transforms after he takes it home.

The second is a great (and very fair feeling) little swindle that allows you to have an associate get the money out of his pocket and pay for lunch.

If you don’t receive the ebook then one of these things happened:

1. I screwed up. Let me know and we’ll sort it out.

2. You didn’t follow the rules of the contest as delineated in the post on April 2nd. In which case, your email was probably filtered out at some point along the way. Ask yourself, “Did I provide him the information he asked for?” If the answer is “No,” then that’s why you weren’t on the ebook mailing list. If you’re in this group that did respond, but just didn’t do so correctly, you can still get a copy of the ebook by sending me an email with the subject line: I’m a big dumb dummy. And in the email explain what you did wrong. The point of this is not to shame you. The point of it is to make you jump through at least as many hoops as the people who did it properly jumped through. If you got the same reward for screwing up that the people who did it right received, that wouldn’t be very fair to the people who did it right.

3. You didn’t contribute a submission to the ebook. In which case, why would I assume you’re interested in it? If you’d like one you can buy a copy for $5.

(“Oh, so this was some money-making scheme?” Yeah, that’s right. You figured it out. My big money-making scheme was to give away $600 worth of magic products. Then spend a couple days of my life collating and formatting a 300 page ebook that I gave away free to anyone who expressed an interest in it over the course of eight days. Then, so as not to completely shut-out the few people who would want the ebook but missed those posts—while at the same time keeping the “bonus” aspect of this for those who did contribute to the ebook—I’m making it available for $5. Hold on. Thanks for reminding me. I need to call my bank and tell them to clear out some space in the vault, so we’ll have room for all my new monies!”)

You’ll have the ebook later tonight. If you expect it and don’t see it, check your spam. If it doesn’t show up by tomorrow, then you can contact me.

On the Shores of Camp Pickacarda

In the beginning of this site there was an issue that I struggled with. I wanted to demonstrate to people how strong some of these different presentational techniques could be, and so I wanted to put up some videos of performances. Not just performances, but also the aftermath of performances. But I could never think of a way to do this.

It’s not that I was concerned about preserving my anonymity. I could have friends do the performances. The issue was with the spectators. If we recorded the performances as if we were doing a product demo, that would completely change their reaction. Especially if we said we were recording their reactions to then show other people. It would likely cause them to over-exaggerate the response they would assume we wanted.

And it would probably tamp down what I would actually hope to capture, which is the greater level of interest, engagement and connection I feel the style of performance I write about can generate. You can’t really capture it on film because the act of filming it would get in the way of that type of interaction. It would be like saying to your partner, “I want to show people how passionate our lovemaking is, so I’m going to record it.” Even if they were okay with that idea, you’re not going to get a real sense of what happens when the camera isn’t there.

If I could just secretly record it, I thought, then maybe you’d see how this sort of thing goes over. But, of course, secretly recording people to show on your magic blog is the action of a sociopath.

Then I thought maybe I could secretly record it, but then afterwards explain to the person that I had recorded the interaction and get their permission to show it. And I actually went to the effort of setting up a camera and secretly recording a meetup with a friend. But halfway through, I realized it was going too well and there was no chance I was going to be like, “Hey. Funny thing about what just happened… I was actually recording the whole thing to show other people.” That’s the thing about social magic: the tricks that go really well are the reactions you’d most want to see, but they’re also the ones that would be weirdest to share.

Eventually I did stumble upon a solution for the issue. And the solution was simply that I stopped feeling any desire to try and convince people about the strength of this style of performing. If you don’t instinctively resonate with the audience-centric/conversational/social style, then it’s just not for you. If you’re drawn to a more professional style (whether you’re actually a professional performer or not) then I won’t be able to change your mind, nor do I want to. I used to want to bring people over to this type type of performing. But now I just want to serve as a resource for people who are naturally drawn to it.

With all that said, I actually do have a video of someone’s reaction to share with you today.

Friend-of-the-site, Kyle O, is a magician in the social style and he did capture a reaction to a trick in a somewhat unusual way.

Kyle’s performance utilized two things I’ve written about on this site and in my books to create a memorable experience from a meaningless trick. Specifically those two things are the concept of using time as a tool to strengthen simple effects, and the concept of using buy-ins so your spectator has more invested in the effect.

He took these techniques to the extreme and his experience really shows the power of these techniques. First, he took the dullest effect you can think of—he had someone remove a card from a marked deck and then he revealed it—and then he stretched that effect out for weeks.

Kyle was working at a summer camp last year. One day he had a girl he knew from camp select a card from a deck and shuffle it back into the pack. If he had said, “It was the five of diamonds,” she would have said, “Yup. Neat.” Instead he spent weeks “figuring out” the card she took through a series of interactions. She kept a log of these exchanges that I was able to read. It was a good combination of things that felt like psychological tests and personality assessments, as well as physical activities like going paddle boarding and tossing pieces of card into the lake and noting their orientation to apparently discern certain qualities about her card. They would also do things like talk about books and music and he seemingly used this information to help him narrow down the options.

The details of each interaction don’t really matter. The point is just that he took a 30 second trick and made it go on for weeks. The trick was a framing device for a number of different activities and conversations.

Some people will scoff at this sort of thing. “Just do a trick. Not everything has to be some big event.” As if that’s what I’m suggesting. It’s not, of course. I’m saying this is the sort of opportunity you do have with amateur magic, so why not take advantage of it from time to time?

As the summer and their time together was coming to an end, it came time to wrap up the trick. He met up with her and had two envelopes. He had narrowed it down to two possibilities. One last choice on her part eliminated one of the options which proved not to be the right card.

He sent her off with the remaining envelope with one card inside to open by herself. She decided to record herself opening the envelope, which she shared with him (and both have allowed me to share here). So we get to see her very sweet, charming reaction to a trick that—in its most basic form—many of us wouldn’t even consider performing. But by using social magic techniques, it was turned into something quite strong and memorable.

A Strange Video I Found

Guys, I’m kind of freaking out a little. I found this weird thing online last night and it really has me unsettled. I was just doing some mindless clicking around, looking at some old defunct magic sites. Thinking maybe I would find something dumb to post on here. I was watching tv at the same time, so I wasn’t paying too much attention. I was clicking random ads on some old magic blogs and I found myself at this site that looked like it was from the early 2000s.

I couldn’t figure out what language the site was in. It didn’t use normal letters. It looked maybe… runic or something? If that’s even possible.

I didn’t give it too much thought. I recognized a bunch of old products from about 15-20 years ago. So it just seemed like a strange old magic website. But it’s hard to get too creeped out when you’re seeing ads for sponge fruit or pictures of David Regal. That’s about as unthreatening as a thing can get.

Then I saw an ad for something and the thumbnail for the video said, “Social Distancing Mask.” I was like, Huh? The site was clearly old. And I was wondering if somehow this was a targeted ad that was being populated from somewhere else. Or maybe that’s a term that had some other meaning 15 years ago, and it was just a coincidence that I was seeing it in the middle of all of this.

So I took the ad copy and put it through Google Translate. It said: Language: Unknown. But it also gave me a translation. How is that possible?

The translation for the ad was this:

“2020 may seem like a long time from now. But as sure as the peacock strums the guitar [What?], that year will come. And when it does, you will wish you had bought this mask to help you deal with our virus [Our?]. This mask is guaranteed to keep people 15 feet from you at all time. It will repel people as sure as the peacock strums the guitar. “ [Again with the peacock thing?]

And here is the video that was in the ad. Don’t watch it if you’re alone. I had to turn all the lights on in my house and couldn’t get to sleep all night.

Now, that’s definitely mid-2000s era Penguin music and graphics, but then it says “Available at Vanishing Inc,” which didn’t even exist at that time.

And that mask is of modern-day Joshua Jay, right? I’m not going crazy here, am I?

I downloaded the video and I wanted to link to the site, but when I went back today I got an error message that said, “This site does not exist. In fact, it has never existed. Quit looking into it.” That seems super sketchy.

I’m not sure what’s happening. This is a weird time and things just seem to be getting weirder.

My Italian Grandmother Boiled, Peeled, and Mashed All Those Potatoes... for This?

Okay, fine. I’ll stop making this sort of joke. (Only because I can’t think of another variation.)

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Friend of the site, ML, has passed along a helpful nugget for anyone interested in playing around with anagrams.

Open a google spreadsheet. Put the alphabet along the top row, and the words you want the anagram for along the left column, then, in all the other spaces, put this formula:

=IF(REGEXMATCH($A2, B$1), "X", "")

There will be an X in the box if the word contains that letter and it will be blank if it doesn’t. Then you can take it from there. In a previous post I described the process I use when I want to create transgressive (as opposed to progressive) anagrams.

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Reader mail:

I know that you don’t particularly like ReaList [Andy’s note: ReaList is an app by Greg Rostami that let’s you force something into a position from a list on a website] as there is friction in the selection process but it can be performed over the phone. I am fascinated by your routines and I was just wondering how would you perform ReaList over the phone? —CE

You know, I’m stuck on this one. I still haven’t bought the app, but my friend has, and I’ve talked with him a little trying to crack something really cool to do with it, but I haven’t had much luck. My primary problem with ReaList, as I mentioned in this post, is that it’s a better way to do the worst things that people are doing with Digital Force Bag. “Name a number, and I’ll predict the thing that lies at that number.” Is not something that I find inherently that interesting. It’s not a bad trick, it’s just a bland trick.

And it’s sort of an illogical trick. Pick a number. We’ll map that number to some other object (in a way in which you have no say). Then I’ll show that I predicted that other object. Huh? Why didn’t I just cut to the chase and write down the number on my prediction in the first place? That would have saved us time and been the exact same trick.

“You said 14? Okay… now scroll through the list. What’s at number 14. Goodfellas? If you had said 13 it would have been something else. If you had said 15 it would have been something else as well. Scroll all the way through, there is no other Goodfellas on the list. Now open my prediction… It says Goodfellas!”

Why didn’t it just say “Fourteen”? I mean, ultimately, that’s what the trick is. It’s not a trick about movies, it’s a trick about a number (that was then translated to a movie). If it was a trick about movies, I would have said, “Think of one of these movies.” (This is why I like the Xeno app. That trick is about whatever the list is about.)

That’s why with DFB, none of the routines I’ve written about are that direct in the way things are predicted. “You said that number, and that number means this thing, and I predicted this thing.” That just doesn’t appeal to me.

As far as doing the effect remotely, it’s nice to have that option, but if I’m going to do something over video chat or something like that, I want to do something that feels very analog. You already have the distance of the webcam between you and your spectator. I think—ideally—that should feel like the only technology in the equation. I want there to be something tangible in all of this. I don’t want to be on video-chat, have you look at something on a website, and then text you my prediction. That’s just my personal preference.

I’m not trying to shit on this app. I have a feeling it does what it does well. I just haven’t thought of a use for it yet that I really like and would warrant me purchasing it.

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And, frankly, since video chat allows you to do a prediction of anything very cleanly using this method, anything less than that seems like a step backwards.

By the way, DM wrote in to suggest using an Ostin clip for the webcam predictions (search around, there are a bunch of different variations available). I don’t believe I’ve ever used one, but that certainly seems like it would work. Hang it from the ceiling by a ribbon so it’s in the shot the whole time and you’re good to go.

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The free ebook for the people who entered the Better with Weber contest should be coming later this week. I’ll make a post here when it’s ready.