The Juxe: Discography - Oranger

Oranger was an indie-rock/pop/neo-psychedelia group out of San Francisco, from around 1997 to 2006. Great hooks, great harmonies, and some interesting and off-kilter melodic elements made them one of my favorite bands of the time.

The closest thing they had to a “hit” was this cover of Mr. Sandman, as featured in the video game, Stubbs the Zombie.

It’s a fine cover, and people who played that game tend to love it, but it’s nowhere near their best work.

Below are some favorites of mine from their full discography.

Eggtooth from Doorway to Norway (1998)

The earworm organ part and trading off on lead vocal made this the first track on their debut album to really grab me.

Suddenly Upsidedown from The Quiet Vibration Land (2000)

The album title comes from a Who song, it was recorded on a tape machine once owned by the Beach Boys, and it features a number of Beatle-esque touches. This album definitely showed their influences throughout. This song has a bit of an ELO influence and features a flanged guitar sound, bopping beat, and some great harmonies.

The Writer (H.F.) from Shutdown the Sun (2003)

Hard to pick a favorite from this album. I went with this song to mix it up a little. There is something of a southern twang to it with some nice pedal steel guitar thrown in. And, again, great harmonies. I think it’s about a guy who kills himself? That’s either really obvious, or I just made it up. I’m not sure.

Circle Gets the Square from From the Ashes of Electric Elves (2003)

Packaged with the previous album was a 34 track collection of b-sides, live songs, and other unreleased material, including this song, one of my all-time favorites. The cascading vocalizing at 1:25 just always gets me.

Sukiyaki from New Comes and Goes (2005)

For their final album, they ditched some of their sunnier psychedelic influences for a crunchier power-pop sound with some Weezer and Pavement influences. And, while I’m usually a little bummed when a band I like changes up their sound, in this case they went from one genre I like to another, and they nailed it. This is perhaps their most solid album top to bottom.

Here is Sukiyaki, a great 2 minutes indie pop song with driving piano and drums.

Squared Anagrams

Okay, so continuing on from yesterday’s post. I’m going to talk about Squared Anagrams. This is a way of getting a lot more information from seemingly fewer questions. Today I’ll describe it as you would use it with a Ouija board as your oracle, and then probably next week I’ll explain how you’d do it with no props and a more typical mind-reading presentation.

Back in 2004ish, on my old site, I wrote about using a Ouija board as the source of the letters in your anagram routine. And I gave the basic information on a routine I use with a hand-drawn Ouija board and a pen as the planchette. At the time I wrote:

“This will take some thought, but you can finagle it so that when the pen points to a letter it is slightly askew so that a miss on that letter can be explained away by your own misinterpretation of where the pen is pointing. For example, if the next letter in the progressive anagram is an T, the pen can point to it in sort of a cockeyed way so a hit will be taken at face value, but a miss can be corrected by stating, "Maybe I'm wrong, perhaps it's pointing to the G behind the T. There must be a G in your word." So when you figure out the construction of the board you can make it so any miss will point in the general direction of a letter that IS in the word that a miss would indicate what the thought of word is.”

The idea was that you could build your anagram and draw your Ouija board in such a way that you could do an anagram without any apparent misses, because a miss could be explained by the inexactness of where the pen was pointing.

15 years ago, I didn’t like the idea of getting a “No” response. I’ve come around on that completely. Now I like “No” responses because they feel like they’re not giving me information and they give me an excuse to change tactics.

Once I stopped caring about NOs, I realized that each move of the planchette that covered more than one letter could give us four pieces of information. Not just two.

If the planchette is split between A and B and I say, “It looks like it’s indicating an A… or maybe a B.”

I can find out :

• There’s an A in your word

• There’s a B in your word

• Both letters are in your word

• Neither are in your word

By doing this twice, we get 16 options rather than just the four you’d get with two purely binary guesses.

By adding another “clarification” type of question on top of that, we get 32 options from just two movements of the planchette.

There are a few other ambiguities a Ouija board allows, insofar as the orientation of the letters compared to the orientation of the planchette (which can change) and the orientation of the letters compared to each other (which doesn’t change). By using these two different orientational ambiguities, I can suggest the board is working uniformly in both letter guesses. (This will make more sense if you dig into the the details later on.)

So I’d have you look at the poem (the one posted yesterday) and have you think of a word. Maybe I say that this poem was written by a guy who passed on, and one of the ways to connect with his spirit is to concentrate on one of the words in the poem and repeat the word in your mind until it becomes a metaphysical doorway for his spirit to walk through. Or whatever.

So you think of the word “lasting.”

I tell you that the way it works is that the spirit moves the planchette while we touch it gently, whatever the hole is over is the letter the spirit is trying to send us. “Restless spirits—the kind that are contactable on a Ouija board—usually communicate in something known as ‘devil’s tongue.’ They will jumble up the order of the letters in the word. So that makes it a little more complicated.” When people use a Ouija board, they expect it just to spell out the words. You need some rationale as to why it’s not doing that here. I say something like, “That’s just how it works on TV.” The implication being that that’s fake, but this is real.

So you’re thinking of one of the words, the first move of the planchette is here:

Let’s say we’re both facing the board and I’m on the right.

“Hmm… it’s kind of between those two. From my perspective it’s an S. Is there an S in the word?”

“Yes.”

“And a T?”

“Yes.”

The planchette then moves to here.

“Okay, again it’s kind of splitting those letters. I mainly see an L. Is there an L?

“Yes.”

“And an M too?”

“No.”

“Okay, so this seems to be drifting to the right a bit. We’ll keep that in mind go forward.”

I now know your word is either “constellations” or “lasting.”

“Let’s try something different. Is the word you’re thinking of an object you can picture in your mind? Or is more of, like, a concept?”

“A concept, I guess.”

I now know the word is “lasting.”

“Okay, that’s going to make this more difficult.”

[If the word is something a person can visualize, then I’d have them focus on that image (to justify why I asked the question).]

From here, now that I know the word, I could continue with the Ouija, change it up and go into “automatic writing,” or maybe just become possessed and start screaming the word from deep in my throat.

So that’s how it would work for one of the 32 words. The 31 others would be slightly different. But for the most part, my process would follow these rules.

• If I get a “neither” in the first position, I would stop and say, “Okay, he might not have come through yet. Let’s stop and read the poem out loud as an invitation to him.”

• If I get a “neither” in the second position, I would abandon the Ouija board as “not working” and go into automatic writing (where they hold my wrist and my hand moves in scribbles and the word is found in those scribbles).

• If I get one letter in the first position and one letter in the second, then one of these things will be true:

  • Both letters were on the left side of the circle.

  • Both letters were on the right side of the circle.

  • Both letters were on the point side of the planchette

  • Both letters were on the round side of the planchette.

  Once I determine this “pattern” the ghost is speaking in and how the planchette is oriented, then the rest of the letters (which I now know) can follow the same pattern

I’ve written down all 32 ways this could play out here, so you can see how I’d handle each possibility if this is unclear. You wouldn’t need to memorize what to say (it would be obvious), but you’d need some sort of crib somewhere for the possible outcomes.

But again, this was just a demonstration effect, not one I’d expect anyone to use. I just wanted to explain the concept of the Squared Anagram. (If this idea already has a name, let me know.)

At first I thought it might be obvious to the spectator that you were “double dipping” with each guess, but my friend who has his own routine using this technique says he hasn’t found that to be the case. The planchette stopping between letters might feel more like a truly random happening than something you’re purposely manipulating, I don’t know. Like if you had a poster with the letters of the alphabet on it across the room and you threw a dart at it. If the dart landed between some letters, I think that would feel somewhat innocent, but would still allow you the chance to say, “Well I guess it’s closest to either this one or this one.” And that would seem pretty fair and natural.

I’ve seen my friend use this technique, with a Ouija board and without, and he’s been getting great reactions. At the very least, two paired guesses can’t seem any more suspicious than four single guesses.

The downside of this style of anagram is you really have to generate your word list working backwards from two different letter pairs. You’ll have to establish the conditions and then find things in a certain category that meet those conditions. You’re unlikely to just stumble upon a category of items that would work with this.

This whole thing isn’t quite a polished concept yet, obviously. That’s why it’s here on the site rather than hidden in one of my books. But I think it’s something that has merit. I’ll share some more ideas with it next week sometime, including a way to use it without a Ouija board.

A Really, Really Good Poem, I Don't Care What You Try and Say About it Otherwise

Tomorrow I’ll be posting about a Progressive Anagram technique that came out of a project I worked on with my friend Andrew. Neither of us are encyclopedias of mentalism, so it’s possible something similar to this technique is already in the literature. I’m going to hint at it today, so if we’re on a path that’s already been trod, perhaps someone can let me know. The closest thing to this technique that I know of is something I wrote long ago on my old site.

What it allows you to do is vastly increase the number of potential possibilities for a spectator to think of in a PA, while seemingly keeping the number of guesses very low.

For example, usually an anagram with two guesses would only allow you four possibilities.

Think of a Beatle.
OK
He’s in the rhythm section.
Yes.
He’s dead.
No.
You’re thinking of Ringo Starr.

The technique I’m going to write about tomorrow is limited in certain ways, but it’s a way of to get a lot more options with what feels like just two “guesses.” (Although it’s not quite really.)

As an example of the process, I’ve written this really, really good poem. If you were to pick any word from the poem that resonates with you in some way, I could tell what you’re thinking of with what feels like just two conjectures. (If you think you know how that would happen, write me before the end of the day. If you’re right, I’ll give you $1.75.)

More on that tomorrow. Today, just bask in the beauty of my poetry…

The astronomer sees the stars in the constellation as mystical talismans
Or possibly as balls for the circus juggler
The astronomer's thoughts are of young romance
Glorified misery, lasting eternally
As a match sets his heart aflame
The emotional pressure prompts a look in the mirror
In his heart he is the coyote in the moonlight
yet in the mirror he sees something meaningfully different
He resembles a marshmallow in a latex mask

The Associative Memory Imp

I really like David Britland's Cyclic Aces. Easy to do, clever and fooling:

http://cardopolis.blogspot.com/2005/04/cyclic-aces-this-idea-was-first.html

Mark Elsdon recently praised the trick in one of his Hidden Gems ebooks as well.

Guy Hollingworth had this idea once of reciting a poem whilst he cut to the aces. So - if you think about it - this trick is sort of like a Universal Trick. The idea is that cutting the aces looks more impressive if you are doing something else at the same time.

I think this concept has a lot of potential. Since you can pretty much say anything you want, as you cut to the aces. So, I am just wondering what would be a good Jerx approach to this idea?

I just thought you might enjoy thinking this one over. The 'Cutting The Aces' trick - using this presentational framework - allows you to pretty much recite anything you want.—JM

Usually I’m not really into the idea of reciting anything, to be honest. It feels too performative for me.

But after thinking about this idea for a little bit, I did come up with a way to use it alongside an effect that would otherwise seem like a “show-off” type of moment.

I finally got an opening to try it last week when my friend Lena was visiting.

She saw my high school yearbook in my bookcase and that got us talking about high school and the classes we took and what we remembered. She mentioned her daughter was taking a high school class in “The History of Comic Book Art.” I was annoyed her daughter wasn’t suffering through the same boring classes I had to go through.

As we were having this discussion about classes and what we learned or failed to learn, I said, “Oh, you just reminded me of something I haven’t thought about in ages. It’s a little bizarre. Hold on. Let me see if that still works.” I looked around and grabbed a deck of cards off the end table. I shuffled a couple times and spun out a card from the middle of the deck. It was the 2 of Clubs. I shook my head and put the 2 back in the deck. I tried it again and it was another random card.

I pulled my focus back to my friend. “Uhm, so yeah. When I was in 11th grade I had to memorize a poem for English class. It’s called Invictus. Do you know it? It goes…,”Out of the night…,” uhm, “Out of the night it comes to me.” I think. I’m not sure. Anyway, I had to memorize that poem and I was spectacularly bad at it. So I spent like two weeks just drilling down on it constantly.

“Now, at the same time, I was also trying to learn this magic trick where you are able to produce the four aces from a shuffled deck of cards. It’s like a classically difficult effect that requires a ton of practice.

“And I was practicing these two things literally simultaneously. I’d sit on my bedroom floor, with the poetry book open at my side, and the deck of cards in front of me. And I’d repeat the poem as best as I could while I worked on the machinations of this trick.

“When the day came that I needed to recite it in class, I was fairly confident. But when I went in front of the class I realized I couldn’t remember the poem if I wasn’t doing the card trick. Fortunately, my teacher was cool about it and let me grab the deck I had in my backpack and do the trick while I recited the poem.

“The weirder thing is that I learned a few days later that not only could I not recite the poem unless I was doing the trick, but I also couldn’t do the trick unless I was reciting the poem. The muscle memory required for the trick and the actual memory required to recite the poem were so enmeshed in each other that I couldn’t separate them. I haven’t tried it in years, but I’m curious if it’s still the case. Here shuffle these up.”

Understand the concept? Sometimes your words and actions become so closely associated that you can’t do one without the other. If you’ve ever acted in something you’l find that you sometimes need to be up and moving around as you would in the scene in order to remember the dialogue. This just takes that idea a little bit further.

Okay, so she shuffled the deck. Unknown to her, the aces are out of the deck at this point. I palmed them back in when I got the deck back. 

The ace production I use is just a series of somewhat flashy moves I collected over time. Nothing original. I put it together years ago, when I was dumb enough to think anyone would possibly be impressed by one’s ability to produce the aces in a flashy way. 

So at this point I had the deck back into my hands and eased my way into the poem, shuffling and cutting during the stanzas.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

[I produce an Ace]

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

[Second Ace produced]

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid. 

[Third Ace produced]

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
[I cut to and turn over random card. Seemingly a mistake. I turn it over and give it a little one-handed spin on my middle finger.]
I am the captain of my soul.

[I turn over the “random” card to reveal the last Ace.]

I gave my friend a look. Not a look like, “Hey, aren’t I something special?” But more of a look like, “Isn’t that strange?” 

I was very pleased by how well this went over. I used to do the ace production a lot when I was younger. As I said, it’s nothing original, just whatever moves feel right in the moment (one-handed cut where the bottom card gets dragged out by the fingers and produced, Benzais spin-out move, hot-shot cut, pop-out move, or just turning over the top card after a fancy-ish multi-packet cut), followed by the “mistake correction” ending. It’s the sort of thing that’s fun to practice and do, but any trick that is solely a “look what I can do” trick, just feels too desperate to me.

Adding the recitation to the trick should make it seem like even more of a show-off thing because now I’m doing two difficult things. But oddly, it has the reverse effect. Because the story is that I don’t have mastery of either of these things. It’s just in the circumstance that I do them together that I can do them at all. 

This is the sort of thing people can find understandable and relatable while at the same time finding it to be unreal and amazing. In all my work—and especially in the next book which is kind of devoted to this subject—that’s the sweet spot I try to shoot for.

Mailbag #33

Did you see Ellusionist’s “big” announcement? —JP

I did.

Listen, no matter how inconsequential you thought that announcement was going to be, Ellusionist managed to make it more so.

If you didn’t catch it, the big announcement was pretty much that they redesigned their site and gave it a black background.

And that’s because “a black site evokes mystery, secrecy, and power.”

As an Ellusionist fan, I feel bad that this was the best idea they had to celebrate 20 years in business. It’s too insignificant to even make fun of, unfortunately.

---

You mention peek wallets frequently in your work. I wanted to know, what is your go-to wallet/handling. And what is your go-to reason for having the information written down and placed in the wallet. —KG

Okay, my go-to wallet is this peek wallet from Secret Tannery. I’ve bought a lot of peek wallets, and the Jaks style of wallet may be the least clever of them all, but I find it to be the most useful, most deceptive, and offer the most handling options. And it’s essentially examinable. I’ve bought some wallets with very ingenious peeks built in, but I never use them.

My go to handling is to return the card to the wallet while I’m mostly looking away. Fold the wallet with the peek on the outside of the wallet (head still turned away). And then get the peek as I ask someone to hold out their hand and I place the wallet in their palm. And then I have them place their other hand on top.

I don’t justify the writing or placing the card in the wallet. If I do, then it would be a trick-specific justification, not a general one. But more often than not, I don’t say anything about that part of the procedure. My reasoning as to why I don’t can be found in this post

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Apparently, the iridium flares ended last year. Only now that i was thinking of doing something else i noticed.

Are there any other kind of satellites you have found you are able to use for magic? (Thats a phrase I didnt think I would ever say) —JFC

Sadly, I don't know of anything else that works. You might be able to use the International Space Station, depending on if it matches the look you're going for.

What JFC is referring to is a trick that appeared in the JAMM #6. It’s one of the strongest tricks I’ve ever done (or that anybody has ever done). But sadly the satellites that allowed for the effect to happen have been decommissioned, so it doesn’t work anymore. In the trick you make a shooting star appear (or a moving pixel in the simulation, in an even more mindfucky variation I wrote about). And what made it so strong is that the spectator seemingly determined where the star would appear.

I still use the forcing procedure from that trick (which forced a certain area of the sky) for other purposes, but nothing quite that strong.

If you’re interested in reading about the trick just to see what you once could do, I’ve excised the trick from that issue and you can read it here.

While We Were Out

A couple days ago, Ellusionist’s website went offline as well as much of its social media presence. At some point today, they’re supposed to post “an important message” on their Youtube channel.

Now, there’s no legitimate reason why it would be necessary for them to shut their site down and not give people any warning and/or immediately communicate the reason why. So we’re forced to assume the reason is illegitimate: some sort of bumbling marketing ploy that wasn’t quite thought through very well. Instead of generating excitement of any kind, the only response has been, “Hey, am I going to be able to download the videos I paid for from your dumb site or what?” Unfortunately, there’s just not enough affection for Ellusionist as a company for a move like this to generate the response they were hoping for, which I’m guessing was excitement rather than annoyance.

It’s kind of sad. Ellusionist is like a girlfriend who—in a desperate attempt for her boyfriend to focus more attention on her—stops replying to his texts or calls. And the reaction of their customer base is like the boyfriend saying: “Hey, I don’t know what’s up with you. If this is the end between us or whatever. But are you going to let me get my softball mitt from your apartment or what?”

---

A week ago there was a 4-day “virtual magic convention” with 100 different magicians, lecturing for 100 straight hours.

I didn’t check it out, so I don’t really have anything to say about it. However, I was definitely moved by this message on their site…

Finally! Someone has the goddamn balls to come out and speak the truth! All you ever hear on the news is some bullshit about first responders, or the world economy going in the toilet, or the increases of suicides and overdoses from the lockdowns, or that the corpses of the elderly are being stacked up like pancakes.

Fine. I’m not saying those issues are unimportant. But what’s with the total media blackout on those who have “suffered the most” through all of this: young magicians?

Here in the U.S., I watched the presidential debates just waiting for them to address this subject and somehow it never came up.

The World Health Organization doesn’t even mention it on their site.

Is anyone even taking this seriously?

I applaud the organizers of this event for highlighting the terrible toll this pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns have had on young magicians—a group that is most well known for the fact that they spend all their time sitting in their rooms alone and not socializing. I’m sure it’s been very hard on them.

---

Bart N., passed along the following web apps for me to share.

Almost Real Prediction Generator: https://almostrealprediction.bartnijs.be/

Forcing Matrix Generator: https://forcingmatrix.bartnijs.be/

Keyword Progressive Anagram Generator: http://keywordprogressiveanagram.bartnijs.be/

Progressive Anagram Generator: https://progressiveanagram.bartnijs.be/

As it says on those pages, “If you don't know what this is for, don't ask.” For those who do work with these effects/techniques, you’ll likely find something of value here.

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I picked up the new Oculus Quest 2 VR headset while we were away.

It’s the sort of thing that’s really amazing for the first 30 minutes you have it, but I found there to be a pretty steep drop-off in enjoyment afterwards. I like some of the rhythm games and using it for light exercise, but beyond that I don’t get too much out of it.

If there’s something you like doing in the real world, I can’t imagine you being satisfied with the VR version of that thing. And if you don’t like doing it in the real world, I can’t imagine you wanting to do it in virtual reality.

I like snowboarding, but I want to be on the mountain in the cold.

I like sex, but I want to share it with a warm body with a personality. Not…

You might say, “Okay, it might not fully replicate real experiences. But it’s still got to be fun for gaming, right?”

Maybe. I don’t know. It might be a generational thing. I think I’d rather just look at a tv screen in most cases. I want to be able to eat doritos and check my phone and look around the room. I don’t need to be running in place through a fucking pac-man maze.

I’m not saying I don’t find it enjoyable. I do. But it’s probably telling that in the past few days I’ve only picked it up a couple of times. And that was to use the headset to show people Steel Cubes Under the Butthole from the JAMM #3. (Which this is great for.)

I have some other magic ideas brewing in my head for use with it as well. If anything comes from those ideas, I’ll let you know.

The Benefits of Lying to Yourself

I’ve written in the past (I think—I’m 1000+ posts in here, I don’t really remember what I did or didn’t write) about using the technique of lying to myself for the sake of impulse control. I don’t know if this works for everyone. You may have to be sort of dumb for this to work on you. Or you may just have to believe it will work.

It’s a technique you can use when dealing with a desire for something that your “higher self” doesn’t actually want you to indulge. This can be anything from “eating ice cream” to “strangling prostitutes.” Rather than debating with yourself about whether you’re going to do this thing or not, you just say to yourself, “I’ll do that tomorrow.” This ends the debate and—for me at least—satisfies the part of the brain that is pushing that desire

Of course, the idea is that you satisfy that part of the brain by always saying you’ll do it “tomorrow.” When the next day rolls around you just again tell yourself, “Yeah, we’re definitely going to do this tomorrow.” And what I’ve found is that the dumb part of my brain never catches on. It never says, “Hey, you said that yesterday!” It only looks forward, never back. So it’s satisfied just by thinking that “tomorrow” is coming. It’s like a moronic Annie.

Recently, I’ve found another circumstance where lying to myself seems to work, and that’s when dealing with impatience.

It’s specifically been helpful with household chores, which typically I would rush through and do an adequate job, rather than take my time and do a good job. My mind is always so focused on being done with this thing I have to do, and getting to some other thing that I want to do.

So, for example, imagine there are a bunch of dishes piled up in the sink. My usual feeling upon seeing that would be a low level dread. And I would either spend the 30 minutes it took to clean them feeling restless and wanting to do something else. Or I’d do a rush-job and get the dishes “clean enough” in half the time. Neither situation seemed ideal.

Then I started lying to myself. I’d say, “I’m going to take the next five hours and wash these dishes.” I’d pick up a pan and think, “I’m going to spend 15 minutes getting this pan completely clean.” These would both be wild over-estimates, but I found that going in telling myself it would take an absurdly long time ended up making the time it did take feel much less cumbersome.

I’ve been using this technique when learning new things as well. For example, I like to learn to play different instruments. And what I do when I pick up a new instrument is tell myself, “If I practice this half an hour a day, in five years I’ll be able to play a song. This mindset gets me past the hardest thing about learning something new: the frustration that comes with a lack of skill and progress.

In fact, I have a whole new mindset i use when learning new things. I imagine we live in a world where progress doesn’t exist.

There is no such thing as progress. You just pay your dues by doing something poorly enough times and then you’re gifted the ability to do it well. Like the flip of a switch.

So let’s say I’m learning the second deal. I don’t say to myself, “If I do this 20 minutes a day, I’ll have the basics down in a week. In a month I’ll have something that works well for most circumstance. And in six months I’ll have something that will even fool magicians.”

Instead I tell myself, “I’m going to do this poorly for 20 minutes a day for the next 700 days. And then on day 701, I’ll be able to do it well.”

Learning something is just about repetition and time. So this mindset emphasizes those things while taking the notion of progress off the table.

Of course, it doesn’t take 200+ hours to learn a decent second deal. I’d have a workable version of the second deal in a fraction of that time. But I just tell myself that’s not how it works. It’s not that I don’t want progress, or that there won’t be progress. It’s just that the thing that is most likely to sabotage you efforts when trying to learn something new is feeling a lack of progress. So rather than give progress any weight, I just like to allow it to be the inevitable byproduct of repetition and time.

As always, this is just a way of thinking that has been useful for me. I don’t expect that it’s universal in any way. But perhaps some of you will find some value in it.