Better with The Jerx Contest

April is over. Those who entered the Better with Weber contest were asked to identify some goal they were going to achieve during the month. Did you do it? I bet you didn’t! Wait… there was a real sing-songy delivery to my skepticism there that I don’t think was conveyed.

🎶I bet you diiiiid-n’t! 🎶

Hopefully that captures my attitude.

Look, it’s hard to keep to a goal if you don’t have a strategy in place. And it’s also hard to figure out a strategy when it comes to productivity and goals because different things motivate people differently. (Some productivity books will tell you to keep your goals a secret. Some will tell you to broadcast them publicly so you can be held accountable. Neither is right or wrong in general. But one is probably right or wrong for you.) So if you didn’t achieve your goal for the month, change your approach and try again.

But if you did reach the goal you committed to in the Better with Weber contest, then you can now take part in the Better with The Jerx contest which I mentioned back on April 7th.

Here’s how it works

1. By 11:59 PM ET, May 11th—a week from today—send me an email with the subject line: Better With You

2. In the body of the email reiterate what your original goal was.

3. And include the best proof you can offer that you achieved this goal. Or at the very least that you put in the required effort to achieve this goal. You can attach documents or pictures. Ideally if it’s a video you should upload it to youtube (unlisted if you want) and just send me the link.

4. I will rate your evidence on a scale of 0-10. Zero means I’m not convinced at all by your proof and 10 means I’m fully convinced. Whatever number I rate your proof as, that’s how many entries you’ll get in the drawing for the next prize package. (What is completely convincing proof? That would depend on what your goal was, I guess. Essentially it would be something that I—if I were in your position—couldn’t fake. I may have a couple judges who would be willing to contact you over video chat if it’s something that needs to be demonstrated in real time. You can submit a video of your spouse vouching for you, but if it has a real Taliban vibe to it, it won’t be that convincing. Hey, I gave you ample warning this was coming so you could try and figure something out.)

The winner will receive the 2020 Jerx Supporter Rewards Package. If you’re already a supporter I will refund your money or you can bestow the package to someone else. It’s up to you how you want to handle it.

Note: Nothing about your goals or the proof you provide will be shared here or anywhere, or with anyone else. (Unless it turns out to be interesting or relevant to this site and you give me your express permission to share it.)

The drawing will be held sometime next week. I think you have a pretty good chance of winning if you enter with convincing proof. 250 entered the original Better with Weber contest. This entry pool can only be a subset of number. How many will have achieved their goal and will go to the effort to submit proof of that? 10-20% maybe? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll be surprised.

The Juxe: Favorite Newish Music - May 2020

[I have a very convoluted system for processing new music, so it often takes me a while to get to new releases. That’s why this series refers to “newish” music, i.e., stuff from the last year or so.]

Divorce by Alex Cameron (Alternative Pop/Rock, Singer/Songwriter - Sydney, Australia)

I’ve never been divorced, so I’ve never had an acrimonious divorce. I don’t know if that makes me more or less capable of appreciating this song.

Listen for: That first line in the chorus. I like when things don’t sound like song lyrics. That sounds like something you’d overhear from a couple arguing in a booth at Applebees.

Party Animal by Phantom Planet (Rock - Los Angeles, California)

Listen for: The stupid but catchy chorus. “Part animal, part party-animal,” is a great way to describe yourself in a job interview or in your online dating profile so people know you’re a cool dude who likes to party.

Search for Life by Dirty Projectors (Experimental Pop Folk - Brooklyn, New York)

Listen For: The moment the backing vocals go from “Ooh” to “Aah.”

The strings on the studio recording are nice, but this live version really emphasizes the backing harmonies which are gorgeous.

The Vanishing

For the second time in the history of this site, the draft message that contained all the ideas I had for future posts—in the neighborhood of 400+ post ideas—was somehow deleted. And I say “somehow” because I guess I deleted it, but I have no memory of doing such a thing. And deleting draft messages is not something I regularly do, so I can’t see myself doing it on autopilot. But hey, what’s done is done.

But here’s a note to my google-employed readers, of which I know I have a few: What’s the rush to make my draft message vanish from the face of the fucking earth? Why doesn’t it go to the trash where I can recover it should something like this occur? If I delete a message from Old Navy telling me of their Wacky for Khaki Summer Sale, I have 30 days to ruminate, second guess myself, change my mind and retrieve it from the trash. Do I really want to get rid of this meaningless junk mail informing me of their BOGO sale on mid-rise board shorts? Well, don’t worry, because I have a goddamned lunar cycle to mull it over.

But if—mistakenly, or in a moment of pique—you delete that draft love letter you’ve been working on for 6 weeks to that woman you’ve been pining over for two decades, or that draft of a letter of reconciliation between you and your father that you’ve been carefully crafting since his cancer diagnosis, or that draft of your revised will, or that draft of 400 blog post ideas… well, you’re fucked. It’s been <GLORPED!> into the void. Vanishing like a dream. Without so much as a, “Are you sure you’d like to delete this draft?” Which is strange because I would suggest that, on average, people’s drafts are more important to them than whatever random emails they happen to receive (and which they have a month to retrieve if they get deleted).

That being said, I don’t blame Google. Even if it was some sort of bug or random quirk. I should have had a better system in place. Especially since it happened to me once before. I now do have a better system. Well, better in the sense of “less likely to have everything disappear.” It’s mildly less convenient, but that’s the trade-off I guess.

I’m not worried about the lost post ideas. This incident happened back in mid-April. Of the approximately 400 or so that were lost, I was able to remember a couple hundred over the course of the next few days. Another 100 were probably stupid or ones I was never going to get to anyway. 50 more will probably come back to me in time. (One way you can help: If you sent me an email about something and I said, “I’ll cover this on the site sometime,” or something along those lines, feel free to write in and remind me about it, because it may have been one of the ones that slipped my mind.) So that accounts for most of them.

The only thing I’m mildly bummed about is that there were definitely some ideas in there that were just brief flashes of inspiration that I’ll probably never remember/think of again, and they may have been the sort of thing that would grow into something worthwhile.

Oh well! It doesn’t matter. I’ll come up with better ideas than the ones that were lost.

Have a good weekend.

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month. You probably knew that. It’s the only thing that’s been in the news recently.

I have a resource for you. It’s a poem. I mean, in the sense that anything is a poem.

This post is a poem.

Especially if
I take the time
to break it up
and write it
like this
so gentle, and pure
as the orchid bud in June

Huh? What the fuck does that mean?

Hey, it’s poetry, baby! It don’t mean shit. In fact, you’re still in the poem right now. This part, where I’m telling you you’re in the poem is still part of the poem. So is the rest of this.

Here is a poem you might get some use from. It’s called A Jar of Balloons or the Uncooked Rice by Matthew Yeager. I’m not going to copy and paste it here as you will understand why when you see it. It’s just a series of questions. Hundreds, at least.

It starts off like…

And then it goes on and on and on.

What does this have to do with magic?

First off, it’s valuable simply as a resource of questions and concepts that may be interesting for people to talk about. In turn you can build on those ideas to suggest different avenues to explore with people presentationally.

Or you can just use the poem as I have done as something of an Unknown Personal generator.

The nice thing about it is, this is a poem that exists. It’s a thing in the real world. You can say, “There’s this poem I found recently, and I think it’s pretty interesting. And I want to try something with it and you in particular. I’m not sure I could do it with someone else.” And it is a real poem, from a real poet, with a real history. It’s not some made up magic-y thing.

Since we’re still quarantining at this moment in time, I had my friend go to the poem and scroll down and stop and read the first question she saw.

Was your Christmas tree (if you had one as a child) fake or real?

Answer: Real

We did this four more times. Her scrolling around and stopping wherever she wanted and reading the first question that came up. I had her make note of the answers on a piece of a paper as she went.

Who is your wealthiest relative?

Answer: Grandpa William

Do you own, currently, and furniture you’ve found on the street?

Answer: No

How many people from high school do you keep in touch with?

Answer: 6

Do you ever mess with the button inside the fridge that makes the light go off and on, just press it flat a few times?

Answer: Yes

Obviously each question brought out some level of discussion as well.

At the end she had a list:

• Real

• Grandpa William

• No

• 6

• Yes

“Now, look, I probably could have gone and researched any one of the individual questions in that poem to see what your answer would be. But I couldn’t have researched all of them. And even if I could, I couldn’t have known you would randomly stop on these five questions, in this order, out of the thousand questions in the poem. ‘Real, Grandpa William, No, 6, Yes’ is like a code, completely unique to you. Like your DNA. It’s something neither of us could have predicted before all of this. You know me. You know I’m not psychic. I don’t even believe in psychics. And that’s why this is so crazy to me….”

I drew her attention back to the little clear box I’d pointed out when we first started and I revealed what was inside.

As you can probably imagine, this was a real mindfuck. She told me she immediately went back and rewatched the recording of our interaction because she was certain I must have distracted her at some point to put the piece of paper in the little box. Of course she found nothing of the sort. That’s the reason I had her record the process—to eliminate that Easy Answer.

I had been somewhat concerned she would just get 5 yes/no questions. My plan was either to tell her to go to a non yes/no question for the fifth one, or just add a parenthetical to one of her answers. For example if she had the question, “Were you allowed to watch R-rated movies as a child?” And she said yes and that her dad let her watch Friday the 13th and other horror movies. I would have written: Yes (Friday the 13th). Or something along those lines.

As I said, I think the poem has value as just a general resource as well. Things to talk about, ideas to explore, things to predict. And it doesn’t need to be just a video chat trick like described above.

That’s it. End of poem.

Nope… now it’s over for real.

The end.

That was part of it too.

In the May Newsletter

Sometimes, if I find myself in the company of someone who I will never meet again, I will just flat out lie to them about myself the whole time I’m talking to them. I figure, why not give them a good story to take with them?

So I’ll tell them stuff like, “Yeah, I was the baby in Three Men and a Baby.”

Or, “What do I do for a living? I’m in Slipknot.”

(This guy.)

Or, “I played the oboe on the Final Jeopardy theme.”

In the May Newsletter (coming tomorrow) I’ll be discussing a subset of tricks I’ve been aggregating for similar situations that I call One Night Stand effects. I’ll give you my rationale for why I perform these tricks the way I do (which is sort of the inverse to the way I perform for people I’ll see again), I’ll review an effect I use in this situation and give you my scripting for it.

In addition there will be a long-ish review of Marc Kerstein’s new app and the way I will be using or have used the four effects that come with that.

Supporters should find it in their email boxes between Thursday evening or Friday morning at the latest.

The New Normal?

Do you feel like this is the new normal? I feel like we should start optimizing all our magic for webcams/social media. I don’t see us going back to regular performing, even once this is all over. —SK

No, this isn’t the new normal.

At least not for the social magician. (I can’t speak for cruise ship magicians, restaurant magicians, trade show magicians, etc.)

For the amateur magician, there will be opportunities to perform in person in the not too distant future. There will be travel and parties and dates and gatherings and holidays and trips to coffee shops and bars. If anything, this situation is reminding people how much they appreciate interacting with people in the real world.

Performing over skype/facetime or whatever should go back to being a novelty. If it was just as strong as performing in person, I’d be all for it. But it’s nowhere near as strong.

My estimates of the mathematics of the impact of a trick are something like this:

Let’s say someone’s reaction to a trick you post on instagram is x.

Doing that same trick over a webcam “live” and one-on-one for someone will easily get a reaction of 5x or so.

Doing that same trick in person will usually get at least a reaction of 10x. But it could be much more than that. It could be 100x or 1000x, because some tricks that would be almost impact-less if presented generically on video, can be very powerful in person.

So… is this the new normal? Let’s hope not. Or else we’ll be confined to a much less impactful means of sharing magic.

The Foreground Prediction

Friend-of-the-site, Seth Raphael, posted a cool video chat prediction effect on his patreon account. (It’s free to watch.) And in that same video he also previews something he’s working on with other friend-of-the-site, Marc Kerstein. This site has some fucking smart friends.

Check out the video here to familiarize yourself with it, then I’ll give you my thoughts.

…

You’re back? Just a minute.

Sorry, I was eating a turkey leg.

Okay. Here’s what I would do. It would be the same set-up as Seth has in the video but with two additional things. First I’d have a piece of double-stick tape on the front of the prediction. And I’d also have a Sharpie on me.

I’d say,

“Here is my prediction. It will never leave your sight. Now, if you were here in person, I would have you put your finger on it, so you’d know I don’t switch it or do anything funny with it. But since we can’t do that, we’ll put a sort-of virtual finger on it.” I’d ask them for a two digit number or a simple shape or something and I’d draw that on the back of the prediction card. That’s their virtual “finger on the back of the card.”

Then I would go through with the effect as Seth lays it out.

This fully justifies bringing the back of the card up to the camera. “As you can see, this is the prediction that was in view the whole time with your crescent moon shape on the back. And on the front… the card you named, the two of clubs.” The mark justifies the handling and the presentation justifies the mark. There are no loose ends here.

And the double-sided tape allows you to toss it in the air and handle it very freely.

If your intention is to predict a card over a webcam, this is pretty damn good.

You could also probably do it with a business card and have any word or number predicted.

Everyone thank Seth for being a nice boy and sharing his idea with the class.