Dustings #28

As I mentioned previously, I won’t be using this site for non-magic posts anymore. There still may be some posts on productivity or mindset stuff that I’ve found works for me—as I don’t see that stuff as completely disconnected from what I write about here. But for music/tv/horror movie recommendations, and things like that, I will be using this new site. I’ll probably post at most a few times a month. There’s no need to follow it too closely unless you’re particularly inclined to. Once a month or so I’ll give a heads-up here about whatever new posts are there, so you can check it out if you’re interested.

The reason for separating out these posts is two-fold. First, to keep this site more focused, as I’m presuming most people are here just for the magic content. Second, to keep people without an interest in magic from stumbling on the site after they google some obscure band I’m into or something like that.

The blog is called Dispatches from Marmalade Falls, which is a reference to something I used to do in the old JAMM magazines.

It’s written from the perspective of an enthusiastic man who takes joy from a lot of things and who has just moved back to his hometown of Marmalade Falls to help take care of his recently widowed mother.

The “enthusiastic man who takes joy from a lot of things” is a pretty accurate self-assessment, but most of the other personal details on the site are made up.

You can find the site here.

The first three posts up now are:

A welcome post
Some favorite songs from 2020
How to enjoy TV watching more

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Congratulations to Joshua Jay on the release of his new book, Dream Machine, which is a book designed to be used with young children as part of their nighttime routine before they go to bed.

This is a great addition to the Joshua Jay series of books that put you to sleep.

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As that was my first shot at Joshua Jay in the new season, I want to make my annual point that I actually like Josh. I’m a fan of his. He’s a fan of mine. We get along perfectly fine. He’s just my go-to person to talk shit about because he can take it. (I think he can, at least. I mean, maybe he spends his nights crying into his Dream Machine book.)

My old blog, back in the mid-2000s was much more confrontational and shit-talky. Lots of people enjoyed it like that. I enjoyed it too. But now that I’m the voice of a generation of magicians, I have to be careful. They say: With great power comes… hmm… I don’t remember. Is it something about fudge? I forget what it is exactly. But I know they say something.

Anyway, with my old blog there were a bunch of fucking nerds who would want to start shit with me because I said something they didn’t like. And then I’d have to pretend like I gave a shit about them one way or the other and we’d have some public back and forth, and it was always a bloodbath because they couldn’t formulate a compelling thought to save their lives. So then it became the equivalent of them setting a ball on the tee for me, and me crushing that shit half a mile over the outfield fence. Then they’d get all mad and threaten to beat me up, threaten to get the site taken down, tell me I was going to get cancer, tell me they were going to sue me, or have me thrown in jail. (Scroll way, way down to the MCJ Advent Calendar I did on this site in December 2015 for a trip down memory lane.)

At the time, I was writing MCJ when I was working a day-job in the field of medical copywriting. So bashing some magic dullards was preferable to thinking about whatever mysterious bacteria or new breed of herpe I was supposed to be writing about. But now my time is my own, so pretending to care enough about some goof in order to write about them is just not a rewarding way to spend my time. Instead I just want to write about the things that get me excited, not pointing out how lame some other magician is. That sort of thing only works when you’re low down on the totem pole, not when you’re the Tipsie Award winning person behind the most acclaimed writing in modern magic. If I attack almost anyone it would be seen as punching down. Who can I go after? David Copperfield. Hmm… maybe, I guess. Derren Brown? That’s guy’s my puppet.

But, that being said, I do still like the artistry of some well-constructed shit-talk. So I just use Josh as the go-to butt of my jokes. That way I don’t have to deal with some angry-worded email from some other magician who didn’t have friends growing up and thus they take every silly joke as if it’s an attack.

But hey, look, if you’re someone who is known in the magic world and you’re okay with me taking shots at you as well, just send me an email with, “You have my permission to roast my ass,” in the subject line. (It would be particularly helpful to me if you’re at least somewhat fat.)

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Speaking of magicians being delicate little babies who can’t handle criticism, there used to be an excellent twitter account called Magic Transcribed. This account would post video clips of magicians and transcribe their performances. That’s all the account did. They didn’t comment on the performances, they just posted them. The site was removed from twitter a few weeks ago.

I tried to figure out why and I reached out to the young lady who ran the account and a couple JERX: UK members who are also part of the Magic Circle. I had heard the Magic Circle had issues with the account and were trying to get it taken down for “bullying.” That’s a fascinating definition of the word “bullying”: posting—without comment— performance clips that were available online. There are some real fragile-ass dudes in the magic community.

Anyway, the twitter account had that going on and some DMCA strikes against it and ultimately it got removed from Twitter. But now she has an instagram, which you can find here. I’ve told her if she wants to give a more detailed explanation of what went on with the account that I’d post it here.

I’ll also post the Magic Circle’s side of the story here as well, because I guarantee you it would be hilarious.

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I received a major award recently. It was quite unexpected. It just showed up in the Jerx PO Box. I don’t live in the area of the PO Box, and I didn’t know I had anything coming, so I hadn’t told my friend who monitors the box to be looking for anything. So it came as a surprise to both of us when he randomly checked the box, found a package, and when I told him to open it up and tell me what was inside, he said, “A golden thumbtip.”

But not just any golden thumbtip. A Sarah Trustman First Annual Tipsie Award Golden Thumbtip.

I’m no metallurgist, but the front of the award features what I believe to be a 24k gold thumbtip. The engraving on the back (done using a very expensive process that mimics the look of Sharpie marker) reads:

Sarah Trustman’s
First Annual
Tipsies
Awarded to Andy Jerxmann
For advancing magic by writing truth
2020

I didn’t know Sarah before receiving this, but it turns out she is an author, artist, mnemonist, and—I think it’s fair to say because I received this award—a keen judge of genius.

So thanks to Sarah (and Dan Harlan). With this and my Tarbell award, I am just one award* away from achieving magic’s Triple Crown!

* (The Goshman Golden Sponge Ding-Dong for Excellence in Genital-Centric Magic.)

If there’s something you’d like to send to me via mail, the address is:

White Wand
PO Box 2026
Liverpool, NY 13089

Don’t put “Andy” or Jerx on there, just use that address. It’s best if you email me to let me know something is on the way, or else it may be some time before someone picks it up.

Salvage Yard: Summit

Is there any chance you could give some thoughts/ideas for the new Patrick Kun/Other Brothers effect, Summit? Like an idiot, I purchased it without doing much research, and now after doing a deeper dive into the effect I’m somewhat regretting my purchase. Did you buy this? Or do you have any thoughts on it? —FJ

Okay, to get everyone on the same page. Here is the trailer for Summit.

The effect is that a “thought of card” appears in a Sharpie marker.

At first I was interested in the trick, not because I thought that a card appearing in a Sharpie was inherently a good effect, but because I thought it might be a self-contained trick. And the convenience of just being able to have this Sharpie in my bag appealed to me. After doing a little research, I realized that wasn’t the case. You have the Sharpie and you also have an index that takes up one of your pockets. So that made it not for me. I wouldn’t walk around with an index in my pocket in order to perform this casually. And if I’m doing a planned performance, I feel I have tricks with plots that are much stronger. So it just doesn’t really fall in any of my sweet spots. It’s not convenient enough to be performed casually and I don’t like the premise enough to perform it in a planned scenario.

That being said, I don’t think it’s a bad trick. And I do have some thoughts that may be of some value.

“No Equivoque”

One of the issues people had with this effect was that the ad stated “No Equivoque.”

This is a claim that is sort of true. The fact of the matter is that you need to get the spectator to name a court card (it can be any one). There are perfectly good ways to do this with equivoque. And my understanding is that they do go over an equivoque version in the instructions.

They also offer a totally dopey way to do it without equivoque. And that is to ask the spectator, “Name a card that represents yourself.” Since no one is going to respond to that by saying, “I’m really a five of clubs type person,” it is very obvious—even to laypeople—that their choice is quite limited here.

Even more-so if you’re performing for a female. They only have four good options and probably 80% of the time it will be the Queen of Hearts. This should have been an obvious short-coming of that method to anyone who regularly performs for women.

And that was probably the issue in the development of this effect. I mean, look, I love the guys, but let’s be honest, do these two look like they spend a lot of time in the company of females?

No, of course not. In fact, now that they’ve removed Aunt Jemima from the syrup bottle, these two probably won’t even see a woman for months at a time.

But I digress. The point is this, if you think asking someone to “name a card that represents themselves” is in any manner a fooling way to limit their choice, then good news, you don’t even need this trick. Just roll up a Queen of Hearts, put it in a marker, perform for a lady, and you’ll hit more often than not.

The other problem is asking someone to name a card that “represents themselves” makes zero sense in the context of the routine. If you asked them to name a card that represented themselves and that card appeared in a picture frame that previous held their picture, that would at least make some sense. But what is the logic here?

“Name a card that represents yourself.”

“Uhm… the Jack of Clubs.”

“Yes. Yes… And haven’t you always sort of felt in some way that you—that your essence—has been trapped inside of a marker?”

So just use equivoque. All you need is to get them into the court cards and then it’s free choices all the way after that. I’ll give you the wording I would use in a moment, but first…

The Premise

The other issue with this trick is the premise.

If you showed the marker empty and then the thought of card appeared inside, that would be a magic trick.

If the marker wrote one moment and then the next moment it didn’t, and the card was found inside, that too would be a magic trick.

But in this case, the card in the marker is just a needlessly complicated place for you to keep your prediction. The impossibility of the trick itself is no different than if your prediction was on the table in front of you. So what’s the point?

There isn’t one really, but if you build it up a little presentationally, then you can at least add some cohesiveness to the plot.

Imagine I used a forcing pad or something like that to force the words “bowling ball” on you. Then I said, “open the refrigerator and look inside.” And inside was a bowling ball. You might be amazed, but the trick would feel disconnected. Why was it in the refrigerator?

Now, imagine this. You walk in the living room and there’s a gallon of milk on an end table. “Why is the milk out?” you ask.

“Oh,” I say, “I needed to make room for something in the refrigerator.”

Later I force “bowling ball” on you and we open the refrigerator and there it is.

Revealing the ball there is still illogical, but it’s also satisfying in some way because it answers a question (Why was the milk removed from the refrigerator?).

And by answering a question and creating a full-circle moment, you kind of get some of the same benefits you would if the trick made logical sense.

So, with this effect, I think introducing the non-working Sharpie early on is better than doing it seconds before the reveal. That way the card appearing there isn’t completely arbitrary. “Ah, that’s why the marker wouldn’t write earlier.” It feels like a missing piece of the puzzle that you hinted at earlier, rather than just the card appearing in a completely random location.

How I Would Do This

I’m not planning on doing this trick. But if I were to, this is sort of the direction I’d go with it.

On the table is a card box and a marker.

“There’s this great trick I learned with a marker and a deck of cards. Unfortunately, I just can’t do it right now. So I’m going to have you imagine yourself doing the trick. And it’s still going to amaze you.”

This opening does a few things. First, it creates a little mystery that is at least mildly intriguing. Why can’t I just do the trick with this deck and marker in the real world? Why are they here if I’m not using them for the trick? How am I going to amaze them with something that happens in their imagination?

Second, it puts the marker in play as an important piece in the “first act.”

“The trick is pretty cool. Imagine this: Anything that gets drawn on with the marker disappears. So what happens is, you draw a line on 51 of the cards, causing them all to vanish completely. Then you snap your fingers and the remaining card disappears from the table and reappears in a completely impossible location.”

“So, as I said, we’re going to do the same trick, but just in your imagination. And you’ll still be amazed.

“The first thing we have to do is vanish 51 of the cards completely. We’ll do that in stages.”

The Equivoque

“To start, which do you prefer, the picture cards or the number cards?”

This is a type of equivoque I wrote about in The Jerx, Volume 1. It’s something I use a lot. It’s a perfectly normal English sentence. But it has two important words in it, and depending on how they answer the question, I will emphasize one of the words going forward, giving the sentence one of two different meanings.

Here the important words are “start” and “prefer.”

So I say, “To start, which do you prefer, the picture cards or the number cards?”

This can have two potential meanings. It can mean, “Tell me if you’d rather start the process of making cards disappear by vanishing the picture cards or number cards.” Or it can mean, “To start the process of making cards disappear, first tell me which group you prefer.” And then it makes sense that you would proceed in such a way that the final card remaining would come from the group they prefer.

So let’s play out the two scenarios:

Option A

“To start, which do you prefer, the picture cards or the number cards?”

“The number cards.”

“Okay, we’ll start with those. I want you to imagine I’m spreading the number cards across the table, and then I want you to imagine drawing a line along the cards. And—having been touched by that ink—every number card vanishes.'“

Option B

“To start, which do you prefer, the picture cards or the number cards?”

“The picture cards.”

“You prefer the picture cards? Okay, then we don’t need the number cards. In your imagination just draw a line along the row of number cards and see that magic ink causing the number cards to vanish.”

(I would likely give her the marker at this point in order to pantomime along with the process.)

From that point on, the selection process is free and the same regardless of how they started…

“Now we have three piles left here. The jacks, queens and king. Decide which one you want to get rid of and draw a line through those cards.

“Now we have the jacks and queens. Again, decide which ones you want to make vanish and draw a line along those cards in your imagination.

“So, just the jacks remain. I’ll split the jacks into red jacks and black jacks. Use the marker and make one of those pairs vanish.

“Finally, draw a line on either remaining jack. Leaving us just one card.

“Now, I want you to imagine snapping your fingers and the final card disappearing. But it doesn’t vanish completely like the other cards. It reappears in an unexpected place.

“And that’s what my trick looks like. Isn’t that a good trick? Are you amazed?”

They are either confused or gives a sarcastic, “Sure.”

“I get the sense that you don’t believe I can do that trick? I really can. And I would. I just don’t have a marker and a deck of cards.”

The other person notes the marker and cards on the table.

“Oh, those? Oh, I can’t use those. Because there are no cards in here.” I open the card case, showing it empty. “And there’s no ink in that marker.” I take the marker from her, uncap it, and draw on my hand, showing there’s no ink.

“You see, last night I took the deck that was in this box and this marker. And first I drew a line along all the number cards making them disappear. Just like you did. The Aces, the 2s, the 5s, the 8s—all the number cards— they just vanished completely.

“Then, like you, I drew a line along the kings making them disappear. Then the queens. Then I separated the jacks into black and red and vanished the red jacks. Then I drew a line on one of the remaining black jacks, causing it to vanish. That left me with just one final card. And I snapped my fingers and that card disappeared and jumped to an unexpected location.”

I slowly draw my attention to the marker and shake it a little. “I told you there was no ink in this marker, right?” I open the marker, showing the rolled up card. “Now, remember when you were down to the two black jacks? The club and the spade? You drew on one of them, causing it to disappear. Then you snapped your fingers causing the other card to jump to an unexpected place?

“What was the final card? The one that jumped to the unexpected place?”

They say the Jack of Spades.

I unroll the card showing the Jack of Spades. “Yeah, that’s how it worked with me too.”

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What I like about this is that it’s no longer framed as a prediction, which we all have enough of. And it’s not really a magic trick either. I mean, it is, but it’s not. They see the end-result of a magic trick that they just imagined. I think that’s an interesting way of framing the effect. And, as often happens with these posts, I may have just convinced myself to get this trick.

Blowing the Dust Off the Ol' Blog

I’m back, bitches!

Yes, much to the chagrin of my critics who said, “He’ll never blog again.” I’m back, and better than ever, baby. In fact, I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but you might recognize a familiar name at the top of People Magazine’s, 50 Hottest Magic-Bloggers Under 50 list which comes out next week. (Eat shit, Amazing Carl of Amazing Carl’s AbracadaBlog. After nearly 6 years, you’re in my rearview mirror. Get used to it)

Today I need to get some housekeeping out of the way before we pick back up with regular posting.

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First, thanks to everyone who has written in with their feedback on the newest book. The response has been really amazing, which is especially gratifying considering this is likely the most “out there” book I’ll ever write, and I really had no clue how it would be received. So thanks for all the positive feedback.

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Just to reiterate from a previous check-in post, the schedule going forward will be the old schedule of new posts on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays throughout the month. Non-magic posts will no longer be on this site. So you can easily avoid the music posts or other recommendations that you might not be into. The site for those posts will launch on Friday.

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Important dates coming up for supporters and potential supporters.

Feb 25th: Current supporters will receive an email with details to see if they want to sign-up to support for another year. If at least 90% say yes, then the site keeps going. (This keeps me from overstaying my welcome with this site.)

March 1st: If the consensus is to keep the site going, then any unclaimed supporter slots will be made available at noon, New York time, March 1st on a first come, first serve basis. See this site at that time to sign up if you’re interested.

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If you do any type of large mailings, I want to recommend pirateship.com to you. It’s shipping software, like stamps.com. But it has a couple distinct advantages. First, it’s completely free, unlike stamps.com, which cost me $250 a year or so. Also, it’s not complete garbage, unlike stamps.com.

Stamps.com would do things in the past like just swap names and addresses on orders randomly. Or they’d tell me an address didn’t exist. We’d double-check the address with the person who placed the order. They’d say, “Yup, that’s my address.” And there was no way to over-ride stamps.com’s objection to the address.

And stamps.com would constantly crash on us. That’s doesn’t feel like something you hear too much about anymore: websites “crashing.” But stamps.com managed to do it about a dozen times when we tried to get it up and running for this year’s mailing.

Pirate Ship has had none of these problems for us. It’s a little more of a pain to get the orders into the system. (It takes a couple minutes as opposed to being automatic like stamps.com.) But once the orders are in, it’s easily 20 times faster to do what you need to do to print out the postage. The customer service is super easy to deal with as well. (Although, be warned, they chat in “pirate speak,” which seems like one of those business decisions that is not long for this world.)

I haven’t noticed the postage from Pirate Ship being any cheaper than the alternatives, but as a service it definitely seems to work better.

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For the first time since this site became reader supported five years ago, no supporter died over the course of the year. All my supporters made it through 2020. Interesting. Especially when it was supposedly such a “deadly” year with the “virus” and all of that. Hmmm…

Are you saying you don’t believe in the coronavirus?

No, dummy. I’m saying that—from all the available evidence—it looks like supporting this site keeps you safe from the coronavirus. In fact, I think it’s probably fair to say this site is a cloak that protects you from all the horrors of the world.

That’s why it’s so good to be back.

Final Check-In

That day is a week from today.

Monday, February 15th. The Jerx Returns.

Monday Check-In #5: Hic Sunt Lepores

Book #4 is here and will ship to supporters over the next couple of weeks. (There was an email sent on Saturday to collect your shipping fee/info. If you didn’t get it, make sure you’re checking the right email account (the one the newsletters have been sent to) and check your spam folder as well.)

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In the book you will find:

• No tricks.

• No sleights.

• No illustrations.

• Nothing that is immediately usable in a professional setting.

• Nothing to fool magicians

• Nothing that is good for social media.

What you will find are dozens of techniques that I use to add depth and interest to any given effect. And an exploration of using those techniques in concert over time to create a different approach to the presentation of amateur magic which I call the “world-building” approach.

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The inspiration for the book’s theme…

From Wikipedia:

“Here be dragons" (hic sunt dracones in Latin) means dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of a medieval practice of putting illustrations of dragons, sea monsters and other mythological creatures on uncharted areas of maps where potential dangers were thought to exist.”

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The final product…

Monday Check-In #4

Here’s the final Monday check-in for January.

I will be reaching out to the book printer today to make sure everything is still on schedule. [UPDATE: So I’ve been in touch. They are hoping to ship the books to me later this week, which should mean I’ll get them early next week. Once I have them in hand and can weigh the rewards package to get the shipping weight/fee calculated, then supporters will receive an email from me to get their shipping info. And I’ll also know if there are any extra rewards packages available for those of you on the waiting list.]

In mid-February the new season of this site will begin and we’ll be back on a regular schedule.

I know you’re all sitting there wondering, “Oh, I hope Andy has been productive with his time while away and working on interesting and exciting content for the site.”

Yes. I have. Don’t worry.

For example, there’s this version of the 21 Card Trick that you can find on Penguin called, 21 Card Fooler. It’s purportedly a “magician fooler” version of the 21 Card Trick. That may be true, but I’m an idiot and even I can tell what must be going on. (In the traditional 21 Card Trick, they can think of any of the cards. In this version the selection isn’t that free, which sort of clues you into the method.)

But, whatever. If you want to do the 21 Card Trick for magicians, this might be a good option for you. I can’t imagine why you’d ever want to do such a thing, but hey, it’s your life. To me it sounds like a Twilight Zone ironic twist you’d get from an evil genie. “Your wish is to perform magic for people? Your wish is my command. You may now perform magic! … The 21 Card Trick… for magicians! Ah-ha-ha-ha”

But as I said, I haven’t just been sitting here idly doing nothing these past weeks. I’ve been doing really important work.

For example, I took the demo video for 21 Card Fooler and edited the video so it’s just the parts of the demo where someone is saying, “OK.”

How long could that possibly be?

Amazingly, over 45 seconds.

OK. See you soon.

Monday Check-In #3

Hey, hey! How are you doing, Jerx-keteers!

That’s right…Jerx-keteers. I’m going with some new branding for the readers of this site. You see, I think it’s important that we stop seeing ourselves as just disparate magicians across the globe, but what I really want to do is foster a sense of community.

I’m just busting your balls. I don’t want a community with you goons. I’ve just noticed a lot of magic enterprises popping up talking about “developing a community.” A community? Of magicians? That you talk to online? Is that really what’s missing from anyone’s life? Isn’t there a soup kitchen you could be volunteering at? Is all the litter picked up in your town?

I get it. There’s the coronavirus and people are more isolated than ever before and these online communities are helping to keep you sane. That’s fine. But it seems like we may be dealing with more than just a temporary coping mechanism. It sometimes feels like the hobby of magic will more and more become magicians performing for other magicians from the safety of their homes. It’s kind of the most cowardly way to perform and engage with magic, which is why I’m guessing it appeals to so many magicians (who are notorious cowards).

I’m not trashing online lectures or groups or things like that. I think they can be a great resource if you’re taking that information and synthesizing it in a way you can use in your own performances. But it seems pointless to me if they just become another way to accumulate more information and more tricks without getting you out performing.

Also, “let’s create a community” is like sitting next to a stranger at the bus stop and saying, “let’s be best friends.” Friendship and community are things that are built out of a special connection between people or a group. Trying to create a sense of community from just anyone who has an interest in magic and $25 a month, or whatever, is a doomed enterprise.

All that being said, I’m really exited to introduce…

For just $85 a month, you can be a member of this exclusive Jerx Community.

Benefits include:

• Nightly Dinners: Fuck your family, come eat dinner at your laptop with the Jerx Platinum Community. We’ll share recipes and discuss variations on classic tricks which no normal spectator would be able to differentiate from one another.

• Jerx Sleepovers: Once a week, we’ll get together for a late-night virtual slumber party. We’ll braid each other’s hair, tell ghost stories, talk about what boys we think are cute, and read a chapter from Erdnase.

• Texting: You will get my personal cell phone number, from which I will sext you pictures of my penis once a day. [Jerx Platinum Plus (an additional $10/month) will also include my balls)]

• Custom Windbreaker

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A lot of the emails I’m getting recently are about schedule stuff. So just to clarify, here is the upcoming schedule (to the extent I know it at this point).

End of January - The books for the 2020 Rewards package will come in. At that time I’ll know if there are any extras and, if so, those will be offered to people on the waiting list for the 2020 package.

Beginning of February - 2020 Rewards packages ship.

Mid-ish February - The site starts back up again.

Late February - 2020 Supporters will get an email to see if they want to sign up for 2021. If we reach the sign-up threshold, then I’ll do another year.

End of February - Any open supporter slots will be made available on a first-come, first-serve basis (that will be announced on this site at that time.)