Dustings #40

---

I was talking with someone over email about places to hide a crib. “Ah,” I said, “You smothered your baby to death and now you’re trying to remove any evidence you ever had a kid. Smart. What I like to do in that circumstance is—”

No, he explained, not that kind of crib. Like a crib-sheet that holds information you don’t have memorized or information for which you’re not 100% comfortable relying on your memory. The order of a stacked deck, say, or a progressive anagram. Sometimes you’ll have this sort of information mostly memorized but you’re not completely confident to do a trick with it because you don’t want to find yourself frozen with no option if you just completely blank on what card is at position 36 in the deck. So you might take that information and write it on a tiny piece of paper you can palm, or have it printed in small letters on the barrel of a Sharpie or—most retardedly—on the outside edge of a watch bezel.

But if you’re performing a trick that isn’t magician-centric (i.e. a trick that isn’t focused on your own “powers”), you can often “hide” the crib in the presentation.

What I mean by hiding a crib “in the presentation” is having a presentation that allows you to access a crib in a perfectly logical way where the action doesn’t need to be concealed.

In magician-centric presentations, where the power behind the effect is supposedly concentrated in the performer, it can be difficult to justify openly looking at something else.

But imagine your presentation is related to “something I saw online,” “this weird ritual I read in this book,” “this dream I had where we went through this strange procedure,” or “something this guy I met at a party showed me he could do” or something along those lines. In those cases you can refer back to that thing you read online, open up the book, take a look at the notes you scribbled down after your dream, or text that guy you met at the party. And in the process of any of those things, you can get a good long look at your crib.

You might think people would be quick to assume that you’re looking at something that is helping you for the trick, but that hasn’t been my experience. If your action is motivated by the premise of the trick, then they may believe you’re really doing what you’re saying, or they may feel the action is just “theater.” But I’ve found they’re unlikely to think it’s theater for the purposes of doing something sneaky. (This is not just my experience, but also based on some testing we did years ago that I will post about if/when I can track down the data.)

So they might think I was really texting some magician friend on the phone who told me where their chosen card was in the deck. Or they may think I was just pretending to text my magician friend to find out where their chosen card was in the deck as part of the story of the trick. But they don’t seem to make the leap where they say, “I bet he’s pretending to text his friend so he can reference something else on his phone that helps him with the trick.”

---

On a related note, if you’re ever in a position where you can snap a quick picture of a shuffled deck (either in a face-up fan or face-up spread), then you can do some stuff you would normally do with a stacked deck. And using the premise of communicating with “the magician” over text, you can pull off a very strong, simple trick.

So, for example, the person you’re with cuts the deck beneath the table a few times and then pockets, sight unseen, whatever card they cut to. The rest of the cards are put back into the case (where you get a peek of the bottom card). In the process of apparently texting your magician friend, you look at the picture to figure out what card followed the card you peeked from the bottom of the deck (in other words, the card now in the spectator’s pocket). Then you can pretend to have a phone or text conversation with someone to reveal that information. (Or have an actual phone/text conversation if you have someone really helping you out.)

How to get the picture of the deck? Well, that’s going to depend. This is something i don’t do with my own deck. So I’ll do it at a card game when there is a break or when the games have wound down for the evening. If no one else is in the room I’ll spread the deck on the table and take a quick pic. If others are around but people aren’t paying too much attention, I’ll be playing with the deck absentmindedly and at some point I’ll fan the deck and put it under the table edge and then I’ll take the picture. From the perspective of anyone looking over who hasn’t been watching me the whole time, I’m just looking at something on my phone.

From there you have the crib for your “stacked” deck. And any premise that involves using your phone can be used to hide the fact you’re looking at your crib.

---

In a recent post I mentioned using spaced repetition to build up your repertoire and keep the tricks fresh in your head.

On this page you can find an incredibly well done explanation of the concept of spaced repetition that goes into it in much more detail.

Even if you have no interest in applying it to your magic pursuits, give that page a read and you’ll see how useful it can be in other areas of interest.

---

I guess the most common question I get here at the Jerx is:

Andy, what’s it like to have sex with you?

Great question. But sadly, despite my mastery of the English language, I’ve found it a little difficult to put that experience into words. Some things simply cannot be captured in text. We may need to add a few more letters to the alphabet before you can accurately describe the dance with the divine that is a sexual encounter with me.

Fortunately, I’ve found a video that puts you right into the experience of being opposite me as we engage in rigorous coitus.

Making love to me is just like this clip from Bobby J. Gallo’s promo video from 1996.

• I play that exact song.

• The expressions I make are IDENTICAL (A combination of self-satisfaction and self-amusement, with a little bit of “oops, did I do that?” mixed in.)

• It lasts 26 seconds.

• And at the end I shoot all over your face.

Past-It Notes: The Past-Tense Svengali Force Pad

In the Dustings of Woofle post before I went on my break, I made the point that a Svengali pad made to look like a pad of Post-it notes doesn’t make a ton of sense, because people don’t write on Post-it notes when they’re still in their pad form. In fact, people use Post-it notes for the sole purpose of writing on the top sheet and then discarding it. Therefore it makes it particularly hard to justify why you’re carrying around a “filled out” Post-it pad, unless your performance character is, “Guy Who Doesn’t Know How Pads Work.”

Then Benjamin from ThoughtCast emailed me an interesting idea. What if the Post-it notes weren’t on the pad? What if it was a stack of used Post-its? As Benjamin wrote, “This way it seems like a collection of post it notes you’ve used over time instead of buying a fresh pad and writing on each still stuck note like a psycho.”

So this is a Svengali Post-it “pad” that you will make yourself. But it requires no cutting. Your force sheets will all be set back a millimeter or two, and all your non-force sheets will be forward a little bit. Either straight or at an angle, it doesn’t really matter. This is meant to look like a stack of used Post-it notes. So you’re absolutely not going for something neat looking. It’s supposed to be messy and the Svengali principle is hidden in this messiness rather than in the precision cutting of a professionally made Svengali pad.

For the purposes of illustration, I’ll use blue Post-its to represent a sheet with the force information on it, and pink (salmon?) sheets to represent the sheets with non-force information on them. In practice you would want to use all the same color, or all completely random colors. I’m using the two separate colors here just for clarity.

So first you put down a force sheet, then you stick a non-force sheet on top, but have it jutting forward a little.

Then you will put another force sheet on, pretty much squared with the previous force sheet. Then a non-force sheet sticking out, and so on. It works best if your force sheets are generally in the same position. You can go wild with the non-force sheets, but if they’re too all over the place, it makes it difficult to flip through the stack.

When you’re done you’ll have something that shows only non-force sheets as you casually flip through it.

But will only show force sheets if you direct someone to open up the stack anywhere and get a look at what the Post-It says.

Of course this is much subtler when all the sheets are the same color.

If this is something you think you’ll want to actually use beyond just playing around with the idea, then you may want to do something more permanent than just the standard Post-it adhesive that’s on the pages. Once a page has been peeled and restuck, it doesn’t really maintain it’s stickiness that well. So someone opening up the pad might “break” the pad at that point. Which isn’t necessarily a problem, unless you feel it is for your purposes. If so you’ll probably want to glue the sheets together where the adhesive would be.

Now how might you use such a thing? To force a playing card? No, let’s not do that. Let’s think…in what context might Post-its be used?

Maybe you were using Post-its to identify which items in your garage you wanted your son to bring to the dump.

Okay… that’s my fault. I asked a bad question. I should have asked: In what context might Post-its be used… and there’s a chance a reasonable person would hang onto those used Post-its?

I’ll give you three possible themes. These are probably not quite useable as is, but they may give you an idea of a direction to pursue.

Love

Everyday your wife (or husband/child/significant-other/inconsequential-other) leaves a little love note for you on the bathroom mirror so it’s there when you’re getting ready for work. You’ve held onto a bunch of your favorite ones. People can’t really read minds, you tell your audience, but they can tap into intense emotional frequencies and the items attached to those emotions. And you can use these notes to demonstrate that phenomena.

Someone flips open the stack of notes, reads one, and then tries to imagine themselves saying the sentiment on the note to someone they care about. You’re able to pick up on this.

Hate

You’re standing on stage at the Magic Castle. You toss a stack of used Post-its on the table.

Every day, at your old job, you would come back from lunch and find a whiny, passive-aggressive note from your boss on your computer monitor. At first it was an annoyance. But then it grew to be symbolic of everything you hated about the job: the mindless busywork, constantly having someone looking over your shoulder, having no autonomy. As soon as you got back from lunch you’d take that note, tear it up and toss it in the trash.

But then you changed tactics. You decided to use the notes to finally motivate you to pursue a job you were actually passionate about: a career in magic. You started keeping the notes. Letting them pile up on your desk. You’d read through them over and over, building up your annoyance and anger.

First a few days passed, then weeks. The pile grew larger. You still felt frozen in your career. Then you gave yourself both a challenge and a deadline. And you told yourself the moment you had mastered the trick of knowing which note someone was thinking of, that would be your sign that it was the right time to quit your job and go into magic full-time.

“And here I am today!”
blah-blah-blah
”Take a look at any note in the stack.”
blah-blah-blah.
”You’re thinking of a note that says… it’s something about… oh this is the one where he said I’m only allowed one personal item at my cubicle so I either had to get rid of the picture of my wife or the picture of my daughter. Correct?”
blah-blah-blah
”Pursue your dreams.”
blah-blah-blah

Magic

“See that book on the book shelf. The tall thin one with the white and red lettering on the spine? That was the first magic book I ever bought with my own money. I read it over and over and marked it with Post-its to make a note of everything I found interesting in the book. I would write quotes or ideas from the book on the notes and then stick the note on the page where that quote appeared. I didn’t want to highlight or underline the pages themselves, because I was so protective of this book since it cost me almost all the money I had at the time.

“Some years later I removed the Post-its, but I just found them all stuck together in a box with a bunch of other old junk. I wanted to try something. Peel up a corner anywhere in the stack and take a look at whatever note you open to.”

You try to read their mind, but aren’t getting anything clearly.

You pick up the pad and flip through a few of the options to see if any jump out at you. But again, you’re not having any luck.

“Maybe it will help if I have the book,” you say. You pull the book from the bookshelf and there is a Post-it sticking out from the side. “That’s weird. I thought I removed all of them.” You open the book to the marked page and say, “Uhm, okay, this is a long shot, but are you thinking of the phrase: You will need to obtain two plastic, glue-on eyes?”

Your friend says that yes, they are.

“That son of a bitch! He beat me to it.”

Monday Mailbag #44

Yo, yo. It’s great to be back. I had a nice break and I’m re-energized and ready to kick off this post(ish)-Covid, return of the roaring twenties, white boy summer.

Things here in the northeast U.S. are “more normal than not” almost everywhere. And even though we’re not completely out of the woods quite yet, I’ve found people to be considerably more sociable than they were at any time I can remember. If you’ve been wanting to engage in more social performing, here is your opportunity. Not only are people more open to it, but you have an ideal lead-in as you discuss what kept you occupied over the past year+. “I kind of went back and picked up a lot of hobbies I had been involved in as a kid… origami, magic, juggling…” or, “I ended up getting really interested in reading up on these obscure psychological phenomena,” or, “I started looking into how to read tarot cards, but ended up going down all these weird rabbit holes into other forms of divination and rituals. It’s really sort of fascinating and some of the stuff is weirdly unexplainable.” Or whatever your presentation might be.

Okay, let’s get to your letters…

Oh, Great Jerxy, your wisdom is needed on this Magic Cafe thread. It’s for a trick called Stamp by Joe Deng. A silver ball is placed into a little brass cup and smooshed down and it becomes a quarter. The thread has erupted because some people are concerned that the brass contraption that supposedly “stamps” the coin should have the imprint of heads and tails side backwards or else the trick makes no sense. You couldn’t print a coin from a stamp that looked like this

That would print a backwards coin.

Nate Kranzo comes to the thread and doesn’t do himself any favors by pitching a fit because people are pointing out this inconsistency.

What do you think? Will people notice? Will they care? Is it worth a purchase? Is there a presentation that covers the issue? —FE

First, I agree that Nate doesn’t come off great in this thread. The issue is legitimate and saying, “Put it away and go on to the next trick,” is not really an answer. The nature of the trick is that you’re asking people to show some interest in the prop and what it does. Having to whisk it away at the end is completely incompatible with that type of interaction, which of course will raise suspicion in some people.

If Nate had said, “We did it this way on purpose” and gave a reason, or, “Yeah it was a mistake, we screwed up. But here’s why we don’t think it’s a dealbreaker…,” he could have put the issue to bed, at least to some extent. Flipping out over people pointing out the problem just comes off as defensive and puts more focus on the issue than there would be otherwise.

But it’s also understandable. I’m sure he’s got boxes full of these things to sell. And if you put the time and money into putting out a trick and the first thing that happens is people start pointing out a flaw with it, that’s got to be a huge bummer.

Getting to your questions:

Will people notice? Yes. Especially if they have the quarter and the stamp in their hand at the same time. It will be clear that stamp couldn’t make that quarter (not only is it backwards, but it’s embossed when it should be debossed). So I would try to have them look at the items individually. Some people will still see the problem, but certainly less than if they’re looked at together.

Will they care? I don’t know if “care” is the right word. But it’s not a non-issue.

Is it worth a purchase? I actually think it is. I will probably get one despite the flaw.

And that’s because—while the orientation of the imagery is a discrepancy—with the right presentation, it doesn’t need to be a discrepancy that spoils the trick.

Now, look, if your presentation was, “I have super human strength, and I’m going to squash this silver ball into a quarter with this device,” then yes, the reversed quarter would be an issue because it completely undermines that presentation.

And just saying, “I’m a magician, so it doesn’t have to make sense!” is a pretty bad way to handle it too. Sure, it ends the conversation, but It’s also completely unsatisfying for the audience. If someone asks why something is the way it is, and your justification is “because I’m a magician,” it might as well be, "because fuck you, that’s why.” And I hate to break it to you, but bringing out a little brass gimmick to smoosh a ball doesn’t exactly scream, “I’m a magician!” It screams, “I went to the magic store!”

The easy way to handle all of this is just to take your “powers” (physical or magical) out of the equation altogether.

For example, I might say, “Check this out. It’s a reproduction of an early 20th century counterfeiting machine I picked up at a flea market the other week. I never heard of such a thing, but the guy who showed me how to operate it. You drop a ball bearing in here. Then just by pressing down on it you can make a quarter. Look, you don’t even have to press hard. Just gentle pressure. Isn’t that crazy? I don’t really quite understand how it works. These days, it doesn’t make financial sense to use it because quarters are worth so little and you have to buy the ball bearing. But apparently 100 years ago you could make a lot of money doing it.”

Now, let’s say my spectator says, “That didn’t print the coin. It would be backwards if it did.”

Then I would just act low-key confused and look at the trick and mutter. “Huh… wait… yeah you’re right! But that means… what does it mean? The ball just… disappeared? And was replaced with a quarter somewhere? That can’t be. Well…. shit… now I really don’t get how this works.”

If you introduce the gimmick as an unusual object you’ve come across, then the discrepancy doesn’t have to undermine the experience. You can actually use the discrepancy to make the trick more mysterious, if you play it right.

---

With the world opening back up I was thinking of taking an acting class to help improve my presentations. Do you think that’s a good use of my time/money or would you recommend something else? —GC

Hmmm… I feel like if you have a latent acting talent, just waiting to be released, then taking an acting class might be good for you and your performances. But if you don’t have that natural ability and you just think taking a couple acting classes will be good for your magic, I doubt that’s the case. I think it would likely just put you up in your head and cause you to be less present than you would be normally. In a close-up, casual magic setting, the ability to be you and to be present is the most important thing. Acting is playing a role. When I engage in even the most fantastical types of presentations I do, I don’t think of myself as “playing a role.” I just think of myself as lying. But it’s not in a malicious way because everyone knows I’m lying.

I would recommend an improv class rather than an acting class. Improv focuses on getting out of your head and being in the moment and not over-thinking your instincts. I’m sure you get some of that in acting classes too, but it seems like it would be less fun.

---

Have you ever stopped yourself from posting something because you were worried it would hurt someone’s feelings? Or do you have any stories about posts that you intended to publish but then thought better of and decided not to? —BR

My initial thought was: “No. There’s nothing like that.” But I’m sure I’m wrong about that. There are likely posts I wrote up but never hit the publish button on and ended up deleting. But I don’t have any memory of them because it’s the sort of thing I’d forget about immediately. (There are 1200 posts on this site, I don’t really remember the stuff that didn’t make it to the site.)

In fact, I can say with certainty there is at least one post I wrote up that I thought better of publishing. But the only reason I remember it is because it happened just a couple of weeks ago.

The new issue of Genii came out with this cover:

I had written something for one of the Friday posts that was an email, purportedly from Joshua Jay, expressing that he was furious about the new cover of Genii magazine. At first it sounded like he was upset that Genii was glorifying this nazi magician. But then the twist was that he was mad at Richard Kaufman for stealing the design of his upcoming book and the performance identity that he was trying to establish for himself: Hitler’s Magician.

I decided against publishing it not for Josh’s sake, but just to spare myself emails from people who don’t quite understand how jokes work who want to lecture me about comedy. I can usually count on one or two of those any time something I write about touches on a taboo subject. And at the time I wasn’t feeling in the mood to deal with that.

Dustings #39

Hey boys,

I’m taking next week off for a late spring break. Regular posting will resume on June 7th.

Jerx Hot Tip: If you’re looking for some more online magic content while I’m away, go to the site “google.com” and put the word “magic” in the search bar. You will get dozens of results.

---

From an email I received:

I found this lying on the sidewalk yesterday when I was out walking my dog. It's really weird, like some kind of experimental shield thing.

Actually, it's just a simple presentational construct for a Lubor's Lens but it fits me nicely. —DK

That’s great. The Reality Twister/Lubor’s Lens thing was pretty underappreciated in my opinion.

Here’s a Magic Cafe thread of a bunch of people not getting it.

“It’s just an optical illusion!” they say. Yeah, no shit. That was the point. The point was that you would use this weird lens thing to make objects distort or vanish when viewed through the lens. And just when people are thinking, “That’s an interesting optical illusion,” you do something with it that seems to actually affect some object in the real world.

The misunderstanding was that it was the optical illusion part by itself that was supposed to be amazing.

Another dumb thing people did with this was even done in the ad for the effect:

Your friend holds a pen on her open palm as you hold a clear "Credit Card Protector" just above the pen.

Why call it a “credit card protector”?

Because, Andy, magic with everyday objects is stronger.

Okay, sure. And how exactly is a clear “credit card protector” an everyday object?

Magicians get so caught up in the “everyday object” concern they think they can just make something an everyday object by claiming it is. That’s not how it works.

Not only that, but it’s a dead end presentationally.

“Behold the magic I create when you look through my credit card protector!”

The simple alternative is just to say. “Look at this thing I found. I have no idea what it is, but check out this strange thing it does.” That’s a perfectly fine default presentation: The object is a mystery and it does something impossible. Sometimes that’s all you need.

DK’s idea above of tossing it in an envelope and adding some obscure labeling to it in order to enhance that presentation is quite a good one.

---

Some say I’m responsible for both Penguin and Vanishing Inc having better shipping deals becausewithin weeks of me suggesting it in this post, Vanishing Inc came out with their VI+ program that offered free shipping with no minimums, and soon after that, Penguin started offering the same thing. Was it the Invisible Hand Of The Jerx that puppeteered these titans in the online magic industry? Perhaps.

So now I’m proposing another benefit one of the major magic companies should offer…

There’s nothing quite like buying an expensive book or trick and then three weeks later seeing it for 40% off. If there was a company that offered some sort of “purchase protection” where they would give you credit for the difference between what you paid and the sale price (within a certain amount of time, not eternally) they would have my business. And this would be something that is not just good for the customer. It would be good for the company that adopted this policy as well because it’s a policy that would be especially attractive to people making high-dollar purchases.

---

Through A Layman’s Eyes

I encourage my friends to not let me get away with stuff in a magic context. I want them to “go along” with the presentation, but I don’t want them to “go along” with the process of the trick if they think there’s something suspicious or questionable going on. I want to be able to sand off those suspicious or questionable moments, and I can’t necessarily spot them without their help. So I encourage people I know to call me out on stuff. This doesn’t always go so well when I introduce another person who does magic to my unforgiving friends.

A couple years ago one of my friends who does magic was performing for some of my non-magic friends. I forget what the exact trick was but it involved a Svengali-style pad that was made to look like a pad of Post-It notes.

When it was over, one of the people he was performing for said, “It’s a trick pad.”

Are my friends assholes? Well, no. I mean, some of them are, but that’s not what was happening here. They’ve seen me perform a bunch and I’ve asked them to be critical. I tell them it helps me. So that’s what they were used to.

When I asked my friend why he thought it was a trick pad, his girlfriend chimed in and said something like: “Because that’s not how you use Post-Its. That’s not the sort of pad you write on every page. He probably needs the pages to stick together for the trick or something, so he used post-its.”

Now, she was wrong about the method. But that’s not what matters. Their point still stands. You don’t use a Post-It pad to write on every page. You write on a page, pull it off and stick it on something or throw it out.

“That’s not true, Andy. I knew a guy, and every morning he would take his first bowel movement and microwave it and record how long it took to melt and he kept that information on a Post-It pad, and he never pulled the pages off and he kept all the pads like that until the day he set himself on fire.”

Okay, I get it. I’m not saying no human in history has ever used a post-it pad in that way. I’m saying it would be unusual. And in magic you want to limit the unusual things. Especially unnecessary unusual things.

It’s already somewhat unusual to ask someone to think of something from a pad (rather than from their head). Unless you can justify the pad, of course. And you would justify a pad by using it in a normal, human way. “I’ve been practicing my drawing and doing a daily sketch.” “I’ve been writing down a highlight of each day to try and be more present.” “I found this notebook my dad kept of the women he banged. It has their names, measurements, physical attributes, and rates them on scale of 1-10. Notice they’re all different. I want you to think of one of these women and I want to see if I can pick up on a psychic thought of my dad fucking them…. Okay… yes, I’m seeing a large breasted woman…red hair….” Etc. Etc.

It would be very difficult to make pulling out a pre-filled post-it pad feel natural. It would feel solely like a prop for a trick.

And there’s no reason to use the post-it version when they make perfectly good Svengali pads that are like the little spiral notebooks people do actually carry.

“But my pocket space!”

Ah yes, the true concern of the magical artiste. Okay, fine. If your primary concern is how much junk you can fit in your pocket, go with the post it notes.

---

Chris L. writes:

Just wanted to share this with you. Google has a morse code trainer that is spectacular.

https://morse.withgoogle.com/learn/

In literally ten minutes you can learn the full alphabet, just from using this website and installing the morse code keyboard on your phone. It might be a useful tool for people who fear that it might be too difficult to learn.

It’s a really good program. I didn’t bother downloading it on my phone, but I played around with the online version and it’s definitely one of the easier ways I’ve seen to learn Morse code. Thanks, Chris.

---

Okay, see you back here on June 7th.

Until then, I hope your next week is pure…

Portrait

Portrait by Stasia Burrington

This is one of my favorite two person code effects. Not solely based on the strength of the effect. But because it’s kind of equally fun for everyone involved: the sender, the receiver, and the people watching. It’s silly but can be very baffling as well.

You won’t like the method but… tough shit.

Imagine

I’m with my friends Charles and Juliana. (They’re not a couple, just friends.)

“Charles, have you shown her that thing you’re doing with the portraits?”

Charles demurs. “Oh, nah. It’s not that interesting.”

“It is!” I say. “You have to see this,” I tell Juliana. “He draws these portraits that are just so unbelievably rich and realistic, that you can sense so much about the subjects that you seemingly shouldn’t be able to know. It’s freaky. You should show her.”

We get some paper and a marker.

“Think of any profession,” I say to Juliana, “and he’ll draw the face of someone in that profession. It’s uncanny.” I step away from the table. “Actually, I don’t want to know what he’s going to draw. I want the experience of it dawning on me when I see it. So you two figure it out.”

I take a couple more steps and turn my back to them. Charles has Juliana whisper the name of a profession in his ear. From this point on he never says anything, he just starts to draw. As he draws, I tell Juliana to tell me when he’s done.

He takes his time. Pausing as he goes to make sure the image is coming together perfectly. After a few moments she clues me in that he is done. I turn to the two of them and Charles shows me this stunningly detailed portrait.

“Ah! The quintessential portrait of a lawyer!” I say, the moment I see the drawing.

Charles takes a small bow. “Do you want to see it again?” he asks Juliana. She says she does. I turn back around.

Charles gets another profession and draws this portrait.

When he’s done I turn around.

“Oh wow,” I say, impressed. “Uhm… that’s not some kind of doctor is it?” Juliana shakes her head.

“It’s strange. Because there’s something about the eyes that says he does something with the human body and deals with injuries or something like that. Oh wait! I see what it is. I didn’t pay enough attention to that smile of his. He works with his body, and the injuries are his own. He’s a football player!”

At this point, Juliana is truly losing it. She’s trying to figure out what’s really going on.

“Wait,” I say, “Can you really not see the knowledge of the law expressed in this man’s features? Or the abuse the body has taken reflected in the eyes of this picture?”

Given that the pictures are pretty much identical and look like they were drawn by a 6-year-old, no, she can’t quite discern these details.

She suggests Charles must be doing something in the image to signal what the profession is. Maybe writing something in the hair? I tell her to look closely, there’s nothing there. I point out that I’m across the room. How could I see anything even if it was there?

Charles suggests that we do it again. He’ll draw the image but they won’t show it to me. Instead Juliana will draw her own copy of Charles’ drawing. So she knows there’s nothing secretly hidden in the drawing.

We go through this process. Juliana shows me her drawing. “It’s a baker,” I say. It is.

Now Juliana wants me out of the room when the drawing is being made. I go down the hall into the bathroom while Charles draws. When I come back there is a new drawing on the table. I sit down and examine it.

“Let’s see. Hmm… this is a little more nuanced. Is it a mechanic? Or someone who does something with cars?”

It’s a mechanic.

For one final test I go into the other room. Juliana whispers (just to be safe) a profession to Charles. He draws a portrait. She copies the portrait and brings it to me in the bathroom. I open the door. I take her drawing of Charles’ drawing, of a completely nondescript person, that is identical to all the other drawings they’ve already done. I look at it for a moment. “This guy is stressed,” I say. “Look at the anxiety in those eyes…He’s an airline pilot.”

He is.

A few weeks later the three of us are meeting up for coffee. I take a look at a book Charles is reading and a business card sized bookmark falls out of the book. Drawn on it is another one of those portraits. I notice the image. “C’mon, Jules. You can do it. What is this person’s profession?”

“Oh, it’s obvious,” she plays along. “He’s a carpenter.”

“Hey! How about that! She got it. The ears give it away. See? I told you there was no trick to it,” I say.

I slide the bookmark to Charles. He takes it and passes it across to Juliana. “You keep it,” he says. “It’s my gift to you. Hold onto it. There’s actually been a bit of a buzz about my portraits in the art world recently. It will be worth some money some day.”

She picks up the card. Looks again at the picture. “I’ll cherish it,” she says.

As she goes to put the card in her purse she notices something written on the back…

Method

Here is the image of the lawyer being drawn. If you want to try and figure out what’s going on, don’t scroll any further. Watch the video before reading the rest of the post.

The secret?

It’s Morse code.

The receiver listens for the sound of a long line, which is the sender drawing the outside of the face. After they hear that line, they know to pay attention. The morse code is done while scribbling the hair.

There’s no need to do the full word, just enough letters to give the other person the idea of what it is. For “lawyer,” my friend just had to code L-A-W.

So “L A W” in morse code is:

L = ⚫ — ⚫⚫

A = ⚫ —

W = ⚫ — —

For the sake of this demonstration video, I had my friend use a fat black marker to exaggerate the sound. You don’t need to. A sharpie works fine.

Go back to the video and just listen to the sound once the marker starts to draw the hair. Don’t pay attention to the lines the marker is drawing, just listen to the sound.

You’ll hear:

short, long, short. short

pause

short, long

pause

short, long, long

You might think, “I’d never be able to hear that!” But once you become familiar with Morse code, it’s very easy to pick up on these differentiations. And when drawing, the person can make the “long” sounds very long, which means the short sounds don’t have to just be taps. The general rule we use is that if it sounds like it could be a single line it’s a dot, if it sounds like multiple lines back and forth it’s a dash.

So now I’ll walk you through the the beats of the trick above, because we sort of switched it up as we went.

First Phase -

Charles sent the letters L-A-W. I knew that would be “lawyer.”

Second Phase -

Charles sent the letters F-O-O-T. Now, ideally we want to send letters that signal the actual name of the profession. But in practice we found that sometimes it was easier to send the letters that spelled what they worked with. So when I got “FOOT” I had three immediate thoughts:

• Football player

• Podiatrist

• Shoe salesman

I discounted the last one, because I figured he would have sent SHOE for that, which would have made me say “shoe salesman” or “shoe designer” or something like that. And I probably could have eliminated “podiatrist” as well, as he would likely have sent PODI for that. (If he just sent POD I probably would have said “podcaster.”)

But with both podiatrist and football player in my head, I did a little fishing. While it can be hard to fish between the Four of Clubs and the Queen of Diamonds in a way that seems innocent, I have complete confidence in myself that I can dance my way between any two different professions and find some connection between the two.

Third Phase - Charles sent BAK. He probably should have gone ahead and sent BAKE, as that would have been completely obvious. But after a few seconds thought, I figured that BAK is Baker.

Fourth Phase - I left the room and when I came back I sat at the table with them both. As we sat together there, Charles tapped MECH on my foot. “Mechanic.”

Fifth Phase - This was just a real cheat. As Juliana brought me her copy of the drawing, Charles quickly texted me what it was. Isolated from the other phases, this might have been an obvious conclusion for her to jump to. But I think laypeople are less likely to assume you’re using multiple methods. So since she knew he wasn’t texting me anything in the previous phases, I think it didn’t jump out as an obvious solution in this phase.

The bathroom was far enough away from where we were hanging out that he had the few seconds he needed to text “pilot.” But just to be sure, I had locked the door. If she had showed up before I got the text and put away my phone, I was going to wait for the text, then flush the toilet, as if I had just taken the opportunity to take a leak while I was waiting. So there was no chance of her coming in before I got the text.

We had worked out a bunch of possible contingencies in regards to how he would signal the letters or the word to me beforehand. Charles is one of my friends from back in NYC, so we have been doing this sort of thing together for years and can usually improvise our way around any possible challenge. We also both use sign language, so I knew I could get the letters by surreptitiously looking at the way his hand was resting on his leg, if it came to that. And we had another way of transmitting the Morse code where a picture frame in the hallway reflected the a mirror in the dining room, which reflected the living room. So one of us could flash our camera’s flashlight in the living room and the other could get the signal three rooms away with two walls between us.

Sixth Phase - This used another technique I use frequently with a wingman: lap-writing. Charles had two business-card sized pieces of blank card. Each with an identical face on it (similar to the face he drew for all the other phases). And his signature and the year 2021 on the back. One of these cards was in his lap, the other was in his book. I took that card and showed it to Juliana and asked her what the profession was. When she named a profession, I spent a few seconds congratulating her and pointing out the subtle signs she picked up on. As I did this, Charles wrote that profession on the back of the card in his lap as if it was the title of the picture. There was no rush. It’s one word. And she was distracted.

I slid the card we’d been looking at over to Charles, he pulled it towards him, lapping it, and in the same motion brought out the other card. This sort of switch can be pretty much invisible even if someone is paying attention. And in this case there was no reason to be paying attention to that moment, so it completely flew by.

That’s it. While learning Morse code and working with a partner is a lot of work for one effect. These are things that I consider part of my “toolbox” for creating effects. So I don’t look at them as being part of one effect, but a useful building block for many.

Learning Morse code and practicing signaling the information back and forth should be an enjoyable process. So don’t pick someone you have to drag into this because it does take some effort. You can be competent enough in Morse code to do tricks with it—starting from no knowledge—in about an evening. There are online trainers you can find for Morse code, but the truth is that’s all kind of overkill for the purposes of magic. You just need to know the letters and symbols, you don’t need to know them with any speed. Even the slowest speed you see on those trainers is much faster than you ever need to use the information in performance.

But again, learning this stuff should be fun. If the idea of ordering some pizza and inviting your magician friend or wingman over and working on this stuff doesn’t seem like an enjoyable way to spend a few hours, then of course it would be stupid to spend your time doing so. But if you are into it, and you find someone else who is intrigued by the process of learning and practicing this type of thing, then definitely put the time in to learn some two-person coding. I find Morse code to be the best because it’s the most useful. You can signal Morse code through any sense: touch, hearing, sight… you could even do it with taste or smell, theoretically. But even if you just learn some simple party-stunt type coding tricks, I think you’ll still enjoy yourself. Appreciating the deviousness of a magic method is usually a solo pursuit. It’s nice to be able share that with someone.

Monday Mailbag #43

Your six year anniversary is coming up [Note: It’s today, actually.] Congratulations. I’ve been reading from the beginning. You may not remember, but I wrote you in June of 2015 saying I was shocked and impressed by your ability to write consistently for a full month. And now it’s six years later and you’ve added newsletters and books to your output and yet I’m less surprised that you’ve maintained your publishing schedule these days than I was back then. So that shows you what consistency gets you.

In all seriousness though, thanks for keeping the site going as long as you have. You’ve become a fixture in my magic world and I appreciate knowing the site is here, especially as an escape from other things in life that are frustrating or depressing. We all need those things that are just purely positive, and that’s what your site is for me and many others I’m sure. —SD

Okay, normally I don’t post positive emails about me or the site, but I’m posting this one as a stand-in for the other kind emails I’ve received about this site’s anniversary (and the ones that typically come this time of year). Thanks for the nice words. I’m glad people are still enjoying the site.

---

There is a big report coming out next month that will confirm the existence of UFO's.

I wonder if this could be a new context that magicians can make use of?

Instead of claiming magic powers - or being experts in psychology - we can claim to be... aliens. —JM

I don’t know how seriously you intended this suggestion, but I for one would definitely be intrigued by seeing someone who claimed to have powers because of having an alien ancestry. I’d certainly rather see that than another person who is an expert in “psychology and persuasion.”

Although it wouldn’t work that well for the amateur.

For the amateur performer, these all have the same issue:

“I have magic powers.”

“I’m an expert in psychology.”

“I’m an alien.”

They are all proclamations about the performer. So all the tricks become “performer-centric.” And because the amateur is generally performing for friends and family, he is performing for people who know none of these things are true. So the first thing he’s asking them to do is treat him like a character, not as the person they know and (hopefully) love. I find that to be a fairly off-putting way to present magic.

I’ve found people to be incredibly comfortable with the idea that the story and the situation you’re spinning is a work of fiction… so long as they know that you’re you and your relationship with the person is your relationship with the person.

It’s when the fiction extends to you playing a “character” in a social situation that it can become unsettling and/or pathetic.

That’s why my identity as a performer is essentially: “someone who is interested in magic and the mind and strange things.” It’s just an interest I have, and I get to share these things with people, and it’s not all about me. There is usually some sort of fictional element to what’s going on, but that’s just for fun. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything. In my experience, that’s just the right mixture of reality and fantasy, clarity and mystery.

So while the coming alien announcement (which is certain to be a dud) might influence some of my presentations, I don’t see myself going full-on, “My name is Blaggorn-X, from Cygnus A. One time while orbiting Alpha Lyrae, a Glöörptian hustler asked me if I wanted to play a game using cards with red and blue diamonds on them.”

---

So, here's a side effect of being in the Jerxian orbit for a few years now. It really saves me an absolute shit tonne of cash. There was a time when my interest in methods and deception meant I was buying a lot of tricks and books. Nowadays, whenever I see the new hotness, I still get the "How did they do that?" urge - but it doesn't have anywhere to go after that because almost everything is bullshit in terms of an actual effect, for the sorts of casual magic I do.

Maybe that would have come in any case with a maturation of the performing I'm doing, but it's a very conscious process now. I often find myself thinking "Is this the sort of trick where I send Andy an email to say 'Hey mate, I just spent $150 on this cube that goes into a bottle and ... I just don't know why that would be interesting. Can you do something with this?"

Once I start thinking about the story, and the reason I might actually want to push a puzzle into a jar it doesn't fit in, I end up in a very different place. And generally I realise I don't need that particular prop to tell that particular story. It's a much healthier relationship to magic, as well. —MJ

Nice. I will be the scourge of magic dealers everywhere as the logical conclusion of my preachings drive people away from meaningless magic purchases.

But probably not though, considering I still make a lot of meaningless magic purchases myself. So clearly my message can’t be that powerful.

The big difference for me is that I no longer feel like I’m chasing that perfect trick. I spent a lot of years performing magic that felt, at best, 80% great. And I kept thinking maybe this next trick I buy might turn out to be the one that’s really 100% great. But what I now understand is that 80% is really the limit for a trick by itself. It’s when you can take that trick and incorporate it into something that feels meaningful or personal and somehow bigger than “just a trick,” that you get the 100% great experience.

One thing I used to think is that you just needed to start with the strongest effect you can, and then you build on that with presentation and context to maximize the power of the effect.

But what I’ve realized is that some tricks are actually weaker than others, but they might be better as the raw materials for a magical experience.

Spectator Cuts the Aces may be a 6 out of 10, in regards to the strength of the trick by itself. But I have so many ways I’ve come up with to present the effect that easily allow me to make it a 9 or 10 experience for people.

Cube in Bottle may be an 8 out of 10 by itself—stronger than spectator cuts the aces—but it doesn’t offer much to build upon. So you’re kind of stuck at an 8 out of 10. That’s still a very powerful effect, of course, but if people have become accustomed to seeing something from you that offers more than just an impossible moment, then showing them something that is “just” an impossible moment can make it feel weaker than it really is.

Here’s an analogy I’ve found valuable: Impossibility is like beauty. When I was a kid, the girls I were into were essentially just the prettiest girls in school. I wasn’t concerned about their personalities, or if they were fun to be around, or if we had good chemistry. If they were hot, that’s all that mattered. But as an adult, I’ve been in the company of world-class beauties that I wanted nothing to do with after an hour together.

Physical beauty is the most immediately seductive component of attraction. But if that’s all you have, you might feel a lack of connection with that person.

Impossibility is the most immediately seductive component of a magic trick. But if that’s all you have, you might find the trick doesn’t connect with your audiences as you would like.

This is especially true for the audiences you perform for as an amateur. Seeing something that’s “just” impossible is probably enough for someone who never gets to experience close-up magic. But when an audience becomes accustomed to seeing you do the impossible, then you will find that you eventually need to give them something more than that in order to keep them enthralled.

Dustings #38

Just some administrative stuff to start with. The first issue of the subscriber newsletter went out last month on April 20th. You should have received it then if you’re a subscriber. If you didn’t, send me an email and we’ll sort it out. It likely went to the email associated with your paypal address, so if that’s different than the one you normally use, check there. The newsletters come out every other month. The next one will show up some time in mid-June.

The cover for last month’s April 20th “420” issue featured this scandalous pic of David Copperfield

---

Just a heads up. I almost never use the twitter account for this site, but people still try and communicate with me there. You’ll get a much quicker response if you email me.

In fact, I use twitter so infrequently that I have now cut my “follows” down to just two essential accounts.

So unless you’re one of those two, I probably won’t see what you have to say if you don’t reach out in a more direct way.

---

Through A Layman’s Eyes

One of the most useful skills for a magician to have—and one of the most difficult to maintain—is to be able to see a trick from a lay-person’s perspective. You would think this wouldn’t be too difficult, since we were all lay-people at some point in time. But for whatever reason, it’s damn near impossible. I used to think I was good at retaining my “layman eyes,” but it was really only when I started the focus-group testing of tricks and occasionally breaking down tricks with people in my personal life that I really felt I got that strength back to about 90%. (It’s probably impossible to get it back completely). Many magicians seem to have lost it completely.

Through A Layman’s Eyes will be a recurring segment here at the Jerx, where I will remind you of the flaw in magic effects that is obvious to the layman.

Today we have “Between Layers” from the Online Magic Store.

These are stickers of Bicycle card backs that you can use on blank backed cards.

“Between Layer is the perfect gimmick pack for anyone who loves object to impossible location. In particular coin or card corner inside a full size card routine.  

For anyone that doesn't want to do the card splitting or are not good at it, Between Layer is perfect for you. Simple put the small flat item on the card and put on the sticker and you are done. It clean and it's fast. No need split cards again and no more mess with rubber cement.”

So they’re referring to the trick where you vanish a coin or the corner of a playing card and it reappears within the layers of the playing card. It’s a fine trick.

Usually it requires you to partially split a card and then have it ready to be reassembled in the course of the trick with rubber cement. The set-up is a little bit of a pain in the ass, but there’s really no way around that.

Until now!

Now you can just use these stickers on the back of a blank card rather than splitting a card and going to all the trouble of the usual set-up.

What is the problem when we look at this through the layman’s eyes?

Laymen are perfectly cognizant of the concept of “stickers.”

It does not require higher learning to know how stickers work. In fact “sticker technology” is really most well understood by girls between the ages of 4 and 8.

So when people see you peel a sticker off a card to reveal their signed coin, they will think, “Oh, I guess he slipped my sign coin under that sticker at some point.”

That is not a substitute for an effect where a coin appears entombed in the paper layers that make up a playing card. That’s a very different effect.

That’s the difference between the impossibility of a dollar bill appearing in a lemon and a dollar bill appearing in a bowl of lemon Starburst. It’s not comparable.

Stickers with a card back on them may have some potential uses, but this ain’t it.

---

Here is the current leader in the clubhouse for the strangest amalgam of just-barely-Jerx-related minutiae I’ve ever been sent. I received it recently from reader George B.

The building blocks were this post where I recommended learning Morse Code.

And my suggestion that we all get this tattoo to secretly indicate to other Jerx-readers that you know Morse code.

Also this post where I suggested readers hum “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” when at Magic Live to signal to others they read the site. (This was nearly six years ago, when being aware of this site was even rarer than it is now.)

And this video I’ve posted a few times of Craig Petty not doing a great job at acting amazed by a trick.

For some reason—known only to him and his god—George felt the need to combine these elements into one video.

So he drew a picture of Houdini.

And he gave him a face-tat. (It says, “Morse-understood,” (for Morse code) instead of Misunderstood.)

Put it on video with “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” remixed with the audio of “What? What? No” from Craig Petty.

So, on the off chance you woke up this morning and were wondering why such a combination of these elements doesn’t already exist, wonder no more. Now it does.