Until June...

Okay everyone, this is the last scheduled post for May. I’m officially implementing the 1st-20th schedule that was supposed to start a few months ago. I know it’s going to be hard without me here holding your hand. But the truth is… you don’t need me anymore. You never needed me. The power was in you all along. Fly! Fly away, my beautiful babies!

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Actually, that’s not completely true. There is one more post coming this month. There is going to be a special announcement on this site, this coming Sunday. It’s important. Check for it then.

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I really enjoyed today’s video and seeing everything people accomplished last month. Explain this to me: I frequent and support a couple other magic sites that strive to build a “community” but I don’t feel any real connection with them despite regularly scheduled online interactions. But I have a very warm spot in my heart for the Jerx community even though I’ve never met another fan in real life or communicated with one online. —GF

I don’t know the other sites you’re referring to, but the goal of creating a community is sadly almost doomed to fail. A sense of community is something that comes as a byproduct of something else; a specific common goal or pursuit. Just liking something as broad as magic in general is not going to foster a true sense of community.

This site, on the other hand, is not intended to have a broad appeal. There isn’t even a target audience. I just write what I feel like and that connects with a small percentage of people. If you find yourself in that small percentage, then it makes sense you might feel a connection with others in that group, even if you don’t know them. It’s a community of the mind.

It’s like this… if you like hamburgers, you don’t feel a connection to other people who like hamburgers. Lots of people like hamburgers. But if you like cum-based meals, and you hear of other people who do too, then you feel like you’ve found other people on your wavelength. This site is the semen tartare of magic sites.

I’m not trying to build a community here because I don’t think magicians are lacking places online to talk about magic. If I wanted to encourage anything it would be to get magicians off their computers and having more fun performing and experimenting with magic for the people in their real lives.

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Friend-of-the-site, Max T., has passed along some Zoom backgrounds for when you’re jamming with magicians. They will have a special place in your heart if you came to magic in the late 90s or so.

First you have your L&L crowd.

Steve Wyrick on World’s Greatest Magic, part way into making a plane appear.

Lance Burton’s classic (?) roller coaster track escape.

And this one, which apparently comes from a video where Michael Ammar teaches rubber band tricks in a swimming pool. I’d never heard of this before. But now it is the only magic video I ever want to see ever again.

By the way. Max is also working on a line of jigsaw puzzles with a magic element. They have an illusion built into them. Here’s the kickstarter. I haven’t bothered to click on that link, but my good sense tells me that magic-related puzzles will be a spectacular failure. So maybe take a look and help a fellow Jerx fan out.

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There is a video going around of a magician showing people magic on the streets of New York City in the midst of the coronavirus.

A lot of people are getting on his ass. Not just for his “dull tricks” which are “poorly performed” by someone with “either no personality or a severe mental disability.” But because he is putting himself and others at risk for the sake of street magic, generally considered the lowest of all art forms. (And that includes this one. (Don’t click that.))

Well, I hate to break it to you “geniuses” but actually you’re wrong. His performances aren’t hot dog shit. They’re actually really, really good. AND he’s performing a vital service at the direction of Governor Cuomo himself. That’s right, you critical idiots. Governor Cuomo has asked him to get out there, entertain the people, and spread the word about the coronavirus. He says it over and over. “This is a hot zone.” He’s trying to save lives. Now don’t you feel dumb?

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Okay. As I mentioned, I’ll be stopping by this Sunday for an announcement, and then I’ll return to regular posting June 1st.

Issue #3 of the of the newsletter will be with subscribers somewhere around May 31st.

Stay safe. Enjoy the warmer weather.

Bye for now…

Better With The Jerx Finale

The Better With The Jerx contest has wrapped up and I will be determining a winner based on the NY Lotto numbers drawn on Wednesday night. I’ll let the winner know by Thursday. (So if you don’t hear from me by then, you’re out of luck.)

As a reminder, the only way for people to enter the Better With The Jerx contest was to send in some level of proof that they achieved the goal they set out for themselves during the Better With Weber contest. (A goal they made before they knew I was going to be following up on it.) About 250 people entered the Better With Weber contest originally. I figured about 10-20% would enter the Better with the Jerx contest, as it required some more effort. In the end, there were about 93 entries. So about 35%.

Everyone had to provide proof, which I would rate on a scale of 1-10, depending on how convincing it was that they achieved their goal. Each point they received was an entry in the contest. I didn’t give anybody a 10 but there were a lot of 8 and 9s. The average score was about 6.

About half of the goals for the month were magic related. The other half were all over the place. For example:

• write a book

• publish an academic paper

• get in shape

• learn a language

• create homeschool curriculum

• get professional certification

• write a poem

• start a podcast

• reconnect with old friends

• clear an airstrip of buffalo and horse shit

• clean the basement

(And how dope is supporter, JN’s, newly cleaned pinball basement?)

As a final wrap-up, here is a little of the film and video proof that came in over the course of the contest…

Xenoglossy

I got an email recently from supporter Colin Robinson that was inspired by the trick, Shutterlock, from The Jerx, Volume 1. That’s a trick that uses two different peeks for two words on the same business card. And it justifies the word placement on the card presentationally so there is absolutely no question as to why the words are being written where they are.

Colin had come up with a couple presentational ideas to use along with peeks that were both interesting in their own right, but also helped justify the placement of the word to be peeked.

I’m going to give you one of those ideas today and another next month when I’ve had some time to play around with it a bit more.

The first idea is to be used with the Acidus Novus peek. This is a good peek that is taught in many places. The one weakness of the peek is that you only get a peek of the area in red below.

There are some good justifications for having the spectator draw or write their word there. And there are some terrible ones. Probably the worst one I’ve seen is when the performer will use up the other three quadrants to demonstrate how someone might write something down on a piece of paper.

“In a moment I’m going to have you write something down on this paper. It could be a word like mouse. Or a shape like a star. Or a number like 78.” And as he’s saying this, he writes those things in. Leaving only the right bottom corner blank.

That’s not a normal way to treat a person. “Hey, I’m going to have you write something on this small piece of paper. But I think you’re too stupid to understand that concept. So I’m going to demonstrate it. Not just once. But three times. So hopefully that will sink into your stupid brain.”

Colin’s idea gets the peek word into that position with 100% justification.

Here’s the basic idea from his original email to me…

Presentation: I ask the spectator to create a new word, from a new, fictional language. They write down both the new word and the translation into English on the inside of a business card and fold it up. The only hint I ask is that they pronounce the new word for me. I proceed to ask them several things about the word, like the part of speech and the history of it, who created it and when. I try to spell the word at one point, and then end up revealing I've discovered the translation. 

Method: I fold up the card for the Acidus Novus Peek, and then when I write on the back I put "New Word ___________" on the top half of the card, and "Translation ________" on the bottom half, so the line with the translation ends up in position at the bottom left for the peek. After they fold it up I immediately have them put it down and start asking questions. When I attempt to spell the word, I write my attempt on the folded card and when I pick it up to ask if it's correct, I do the peek then.

I’ve expanded on this idea slightly, but it’s still more or less Colin’s idea.

What i do is I say, “Let’s try something. I’m going to have you create a new language. And even though it’s complete gibberish, I will attempt to learn your made up language. What should we call the language?”

Let’s say she says, Flurrpti.

I write this on a business card.

If you ask your spectator to come up with the name of a fake language and they say, “Ugghh…. I don’t know. I can’t think of one.” Tnen they’re either to dumb, uncreative, or disinterested to use this presentation with. Just say, “Oh, okay. Never mind.” And end it right there.

I go on…

“I want you to think of a word in Flurrpti. Anything you want. And write that word in that language here. Then write the english translation of the word here. Then fold it up into quarters and set it on the table. To make it more difficult, don’t pick something that’s in this room.” I turn away while she does this.

Imagine she writes

Flurrpti: Gorzum
English: Horse

I turn back to her. “What was the word you made up? Not the translation, but the word in your language.”

She says, “Gorzum.”

“Okay. Gorzum. Hmm… wait. In your imagination is Flurrpit like an alien language or an ancient language or a language that some isolated tribe speaks or what?”

I take whatever she says and nod as if that’s important.

“Okay. Okay… gorzum. Gorzum. Let me think. Gorzum. ‘I went to the gorzum.’ Hmm… I don’t know. ‘She was feeling very gorzum.’ Huh. That doesn’t sound quite right. Let’s see…,” And I continue this muttering and trying out the word in different scenarios. I don’t do it to the other person. I do it as if I’m talking to myself, for my own benefit.

I then point to the table and say, “What would the word for ‘table’ be in your language?” She says, “Hamlicker.”

“Hmm. Interesting. Table is hamlicker. Okay. This is coming together.”

I then pick up the business card and either say:

1. “Ok. What about this? What would you call a business card in your language?”

2. Or I’ll pick a word from the front of the business card and ask them the translation for that in their language. So if the business card says “phone” in the visible quadrant, I might ask how they say phone in their language.

Either way, this is the point where I get the peek.

I think Colin’s idea of getting it while you try and spell the word on the outside of the business card is good, but when I tried it, it didn’t really work due to their being too much printing on that side of the card I was using. Plus I didn’t really like having such a concentrated moment of my focus near the card. I wanted something that felt a little more casual.

So let’s say she tells me the word for “business card” in her language is “ludz.”

“Okay. ‘The ludz is on the hamlicker.’ That makes sense. ‘We’re sitting at the hamlicker and the ludz is on it.’ Okay, yeah.”

The idea here is that I’m familiarizing myself with the language and that’s going to allow me to interpret the word she gave me.

“So if the ludz is on the hamlicker, then the gorzum would be… hmmm…. it’s a noun. I’m pretty sure of that. It’s a thing. It’s not a place… I don’t think.”

“‘I’m going to eat some gorzum.’ No. Maybe? No. ‘I’m going to drive the gorzum’? That’s not quite it. Let’s see… ludz is business card… hamlicker is table… gorzum is… Oh! I got it!”

I concentrate for a few moments, as if I’m checking my math.

“Okay. Tell me if this makes sense. ‘I’m going to the stables to ride my gorzum.’ Yes?”

This presentation is essentially in the same family as my trick, Cryptophasia. It’s sort a simplified, one-phase version of that trick. Which is good, because that’s a fun trick to perform. And this is similar but completely impromptu.

Thanks to Colin for letting me share it with you. Next month I’ll share another idea from Colin that helps justify the word placement and the tearing in a center tear.

Sunday Productivity, Part 1

The productivity systems I have in place are so convoluted that they would require a full book to explain them. And they’re so idiosyncratic that it would make no sense to ever write such a book. However, I wanted to give you one element of one of my systems that you might benefit from, but to do so I’ll have to lay some groundwork in this post. Then in a future post I’ll give you the details on the specific technique that has been very helpful to me.

Most people split up their day in this manner: work and home. Even if you work from home, you tend to think of things as work time and personal time. Broadly speaking, work time is spent doing things that make you money and personal time is spent doing things that don’t.

I split up my day slightly differently, into three parts:

1. “Work” time

2. Productive personal time

3. Unstructured personal time.

I’ll define the two outer categories first.

“Work Time”

“Work time” is anything that is mandatory for me that day. It’s not necessarily stuff I’m getting paid for, but it’s stuff that I’ve decided is non-negotiable. For me, the “mandatory” items that happen most days are:

• actual work, i.e. a certain number of hours working on writing for this site and the related projects (books, newsletters); meeting up with people to test new concepts or effects; writing/consulting for other non-magic projects

• exercise

• listening to new music releases

• any necessary errands

Now, obviously exercising and listening to music aren’t “work” in the sense that I’m not getting paid for them—I don’t teach a Zumba class—but they are things that are important enough to me that they fall into the mandatory “work” category.

Unstructured Personal Time

This is time where nothing is scheduled, and for which I have no set goals. I can do whatever I want during this time. I certainly can do something productive, if I’m really in the mood to. But the time is intended to be a period of relaxation. For me, this time is usually spent watching tv, hanging out with friends, or wasting time on the internet.

Productive Personal Time

This is the time I use for anything that isn’t mandatory (which is why it’s not in the “work” category), but it’s also not totally fruitless waffling. None of these things are particularly pressing, but they are things that I think are beneficial to me in some way, in the short or long-term.

The sorts of things that are in my productive personal time are:

• Reading

  • magic books

  • magic magazines

  • fiction

  • non-fiction

  • comic books

• Writing

  • novel

  • screenplay

• Watching magic lectures/videos

• Practicing magic

• Cleaning

• Various athletic activities

• Various artistic activities

• Learning/practicing musical instruments

• Learning computer programs and computer programming

And probably a dozen or so other things. Things go on and off the list. If I think, “I’d like to learn how to decorate a cake,” then I throw cake decorating on the list until the point where I’m not interested in it anymore.

Some of those things on the list may ultimately be useful in my working life, but they’re not work itself at this time. They are not projects with a deadline.

The way I organize my day is that my “work” time just takes however long it takes. It might be two hours, it might be twelve. These are the mandatory things I do before moving on to personal time. ThenI’ll have a set time at the end of the day when my unstructured personal time kicks in. And I fill whatever time is between those chunks with productive personal time. (Of course this basic schedule doesn’t account for things like meals and socializing, but you just work those things in as they come up. This is the basic structure of my schedule, assuming nothing else comes up. But if someone calls me and says, “Hey, want to go see a movie?” I don’t have to work that in my schedule. I just say sure and go and then get back into my schedule when I return home.)

So if I get done with my work at 4pm, and I plan on shutting things down and going into unstructured personal time around 9pm. Then that five hours in-between will be filled with productive personal time.

Here’s why I think this is beneficial. If you just have two categories—work time and personal time—then where does learning a second language, restoring a classic car, learning to code, writing a novel, yoga, or practicing tomahawk marksmanship fall? Assuming those things aren’t related to your job, then they fall in the personal time bucket along with masturbating, watching Netflix, eating fudge, napping, peeping in windows, getting drunk, crying, etc. So then you have to rely on your own motivation to ever do something productive in your personal time. But if you create separate times in your day for productive and unproductive personal time, then you only need to be committed to keeping to the basic schedule you set out for yourself.

The hard part can be deciding what to do within your productive personal time. How do you make the most of that time and not just revert to whatever the easiest or most fun thing on your list is? Well, I have a solution for that. And in Part 2 of this post (coming in a couple weeks), I will tell you the automated system I use to guide my productive personal time in the most efficient way possible.

The Juxe: A New Beatles Album

It seems to me like The Beatles have been very inactive for a while now. Perhaps they’re in the studio working on a new album, but if so, it must be really complicated because it’s taking forever. In the meantime I’ve put together an alternate universe Beatles album for you from songs released in the past couple decades.

Why Not Me (Why Can’t I Be You) by Locksley (Madison, Wisconson)

Thank You by The Redwalls (Deerfield, Illinois)

She’s Going Down by The Red Button (Los Angeles, California)

Please Don’t Go by The Ugly Beats (Austin, Texas)

Girl by Cupid’s Carnival (London, England)

Future Perfect by The Spongetones (Charlotte, North Carolina)

Time by The Jetbeats (Grand Rapids, Michigan)

Finer Things In Life by Pugwash (Dublin, Ireland)

So Far From My Heart by Frank Lee Sprague (Wichita Falls, Texas)

Find the One by The Orgone Box (Sheffield, England)

Serenading, Part 2

Okay, here are some examples of the Serenade style of performance I wrote about a couple of days ago.

I mentioned two primary orientations for performing in this manner.

1. Close-up, but with a window between you and the audience.

2. They’re outside, maybe on a porch or balcony, but they’re some distance away.

The first situation is pretty straightforward. You can just do any sort of close-up effect you might normally do in-the-hands, that doesn’t require physical interaction with the spectators. But you might as well take advantage of the situation and do something that’s not examinable. Those gimmicked decks or gimmicked packet tricks that can be very suspect in a regular performance work much better in this situation. I mean, people may still suspect there’s something fishy about them, but at the very least the fact that they can’t examine the object makes some sense. Whereas in real life it makes zero sense.

If the idea of doing gimmicked magic through a window sounds familiar, it may be because I recommended that sort of staging years ago in the post Youtube Magic in the Real World.

There’s an idea I mention in that post that I had forgotten about. You take a dry erase marker and make a circle on your side of the window. Then you display an object (a card, a coin, a pack of gum) outside of the circle, but when you move it inside the circle it changes in some way. If you had something that could change back and forth easily, here’s what I would do… Let’s say it’s a card. Outside the circle it’s an ace. When you move it in the circle it’s a Jack. Pull it back out it’s an ace. Put it back in, it’s a jack. Now, while it’s still in, you erase the circle from the window. And now the card is permanently a jack. As if you were opening some sort of portal and then you erased the portal leaving the card in its altered state.

When it comes to tricks to do at a distance, I prefer not to do tricks that were designed to be performed that way. What I mean is, I wouldn’t do a rope trick, because most rope tricks are perfectly well suited to be done from 20 feet away. I wouldn’t do a platform style trick. I want to do a close-up trick where the distance becomes an added element to be dealt with.

One trick I’ve done a few times is Gemini Twins. I will call the person and ask if I can stop by and show them a trick “from a distance.” I tell them to get a deck from their house and start mixing the cards and I’ll honk my horn when I’m there and they should come outside. When I arrive, they come outside with the deck and I walk them through the procedure. I have them spread through the cards while they’re facing me so I can “see what cards I’m drawn to.” I stay as far away as possible. I would guess at least 30 feet or so. I use the camera on my phone to zoom in so I can identify the indexes of the cards. I’m yelling. They’re fumbling. They may have to squat to deal the cards in a pile on the ground. Or they deal onto a bench or the hood of their car or any flat surface. Cards are sliding. Cards are blowing. It’s all a bit of a clusterfuck, but that’s what makes it so good. I’ve often done Gemini Twins without touching the deck myself in a normal close-up situation, but for some reason it seems to hit even harder when I’m so far away. There’s no logical reason it should, but it does.

For a mentalism sort of thing, what I’ve been doing is something like Wiki-test or Xeno. But I start the effect remotely. From my house. So they have a thought in their mind that I apparently couldn’t know. I concentrate, but fail. I ask them to go outside their house and I’ll go outside mine (to get a stronger mental signal). That fails. I tell them not to forget their thought and ask if I can come over. “I won’t come inside. I just need to be closer. I thought I might be able to do it from here, but I’m getting nothing.” I drive over. They come out. I’m standing as far away as I can without being in the road. I ask them to concentrate. I’m still getting nothing. “What the hell? Are you seriously even thinking about it?” I ask. I walk closer and closer. When I’m about 15 feet away it comes to me. As if I’ve finally entered into their “thought radius.” At this point I don’t struggle. I don’t go letter by letter or anything. It’s just obvious. “Oh, you’re thinking of fish. Tuna fish.” Or whatever.

I like this because it feels like how mentalism should work. It should be that there’s some distance at which you can perceive thoughts, and at a greater distance they’re out of reach. We tried something from our respective houses; that didn’t work. Then we both went outside; that didn’t work. We got closer and closer until finally I was able to pick up on the thought. That seems reasonable. It’s fun to try and make something feel both fantastical and logical. And it gets people thinking away from the actual method.

I think there are endless variations you could come up with of ways to play off the physical distance in your performances. When I first started doing this and I was performing for people on their balconies at my apartment complex, I would have them write the word they were thinking of on a piece of paper, fold it up into a small packet and then dangle it down at the end of piece of string or thread (one person hooked it on a fishing line) so I could get close to it but not close enough that I could touch. So here I’m “sensing” what’s written down (not reading their mind) supposedly. But I just need to get closer to the paper itself. The staging adds so much to the trick. Them leaning over the balcony, fishing the word down to me; me with a hand reaching towards the sky looking up at them, and then somehow divining the word that’s still suspended out of my grasp. The trick becomes tied to the staging, and the staging is tied to this moment in time. And that’s a structure you can use to make your magic stronger and more memorable in or out of a pandemic.

Introducing: Friends + Astronauts

There was a time, in the 80s and 90s, when people used to get all excited for the premiere of a new video on MTV. It would be hyped for for a week and then, at like 10pm on a Wednesday, your sister would hijack the tv and make everyone watch the premiere of the new video off Duran Durans’s Seven and the Ragged Tiger album.

Sadly, many of you are too old or too young to have enjoyed this phenomena. But today I get to be your Martha Quinn and premiere a new magic venture.

Supporter, Eric Hu has created a site with this stated goal:

“I got some friends to help with a simple project for a great cause, and this is it. We’re gonna teach magic tricks for free (all previously unpublished) in support of each other, the magic community, and COVID-19 relief efforts.”

The site is called Friends and Astronauts.

He’s releasing material in “collections” so a few ideas will go up at a time, stay there for a bit, and then he’ll remove them and put up the next collection. (At least, as of this writing that’s his plan.)

I was shocked to see that all the the contributors to the first collection of material were current or former Jerx supporters. The odds of that seem astronomical to me. Like when all the guests at a mysterious dinner party realize they all played a part in the tragic accident that disfigured that young boy 20 years ago. “We didn’t win a contest. We weren’t randomly sent these invitations. We were brought here for a reason.” It could be a coincidence. Or maybe it was done to entice me to mention the site. Well, it worked.

I won’t spoil the material—you can check it out on the site. It’s not the sort of stuff you see much here. It’s more quick, visual ideas that could be incorporated into some larger effects.

I don’t usually think too much in terms of multi-phase routines, but Ryan Plunkett offers a sleight where one ace turns into two, then three, then four progressively as it’s turned over. I think it could be cool to incorporate this as a finale to a Universal Card effect. Four people select cards which are then lost in the deck. A joker is introduced which becomes each persons card, one at a time. In the end, you secretly switch the normal joker for the set-up with the selections at a point when people believe the trick to be over. Then, as a last beat, the “joker” dissolves into the four selections as it’s turned over in the hands. It would take some work to come up with a handling that allows you to routine that all together, but I think it’s doable.

Check out the site for some other cool ideas. Support the performers and/or the charities mentioned. And keep an eye out for future collections.