The Future of The GLOMM

Five years ago I created The Global League of Magicians and Mentalists (scroll down this page to June 2016 for a few posts about the formation of The GLOMM). The GLOMM is the largest magic organization in the world because there are no membership dues and you don’t have to apply to be a part of it. If you’re interested in magic, then you’re in the GLOMM already.

Originally, the GLOMM was sort of a joke. You see, the GLOMM had two rules for membership:

1- Don’t be convicted of a sex crime.

2- And don’t be an asshole to me personally.

Anyone who does one or the other gets removed from the GLOMM. You can see them on this list where I didn’t differentiate between someone I think is an asshole and someone who was convicted of a sex crime. That was kind of the joke. (Although it was more of a threat than a joke, because I didn’t end up putting any assholes on there, even when I should have.)

Then in 2017 I made this post trying to find details about an Australian magician who was convicted of raping multiple underaged girls. (For whatever reason, Australia doesn’t (or didn’t at the time) give the names of convicted pedophiles.) Due to some detective work by a reader of the site, we found out his name was David Drowley aka Twister the Clown.

Then in 2018 I received an email from the father of one of the victims of this sack of shit. He wrote:

Thank fuck you banned that cunt from your organisation. Excuse my language. Actually, no, my language is too kind for that pedophile.

My daughter was one he brutally raped when she was a child, and she was too fucking scared to tell me for two fucking years. 18 kids have come forward with information about that fucking cunt. 18 to my knowledge, anyway.

Get the word out there to make sure David the fucking cunt Drowley never touches another child. The problem is he will get out of prison, and will return to birthday parties cos he doesn't know any other kind of work. I want to make sure what my daughter had to endure never happens to another child.

He would visit my house in the middle of the night, completely drunk on bourbon, and I let him sleep on the couch. I had no idea what he was doing. He threatened my daughter to scare her out of telling me or authorities what he had done, I only found out when, at age ten, she decided to run away incase he visited again. Thankfully she returned that night, and police investigated. My daughter told them what happened. We put him in prison.

It was then that I decided that whatever may happen with this site, The GLOMM will continue on indefinitely.

If he’s not already, Drowley will be getting out of prison soon. And when he does—if he’s hoping to continue on with his magic “career”— I’ll make sure his history always catches up with him. He’ll undoubtedly try using a different name, but I trust Jerx: Australia will keep an eye out for him. “But he paid his dues to society!” Well, tough shit. I don’t know what to tell you. He didn’t pay his dues to the GLOMM because, as I said, there are no dues. However there is a rule: keep your little dick to yourself.

Look, I don’t know if there are a greater percentage of perverts in magic than there are in any other field, but that’s certainly the impression that you get. At the very least there is a public perception that magicians/clowns—especially ones who perform for children—are more likely to be creeps. Who knows. But it doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing any “real” magic organization is going to keep on top of. If you expose the thumbtip to someone, you might get kicked out of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. But expose your penis tip to someone? Hey, no problemo. Don’t worry, you feckless dummies, the guy who writes the stupid magic blog will pick up the slack for you when it comes to policing this shit.

(Also, I would like to announce that going forward, profits from the sale of GLOMM Membership Kits will be going to a related charity or charities. (Not sure which yet. If you have a recommendation, send it my way.)

We’re currently restocking a couple different shirt sizes for the membership kit. But that usually doesn’t take more than a few weeks at most, and those orders will ship when the new stock is in. See the membership kit page for details.)

Monday Mailbag #54

I know this probably gets me labelled as a “basic bitch” but Anniversary Waltz is one of my go-to wedding effects. All your talk recently about “google-ability” had me wondering how you think this trick holds up and if there’s anything you would do to “protect” this effect if possible.

I’m particularly protective of maintaining the reactions and feelings this trick creates, because it’s such a powerful effect.. If you have any advice on this, please pass it along. —JA

Okay, JA, I don’t know if you’re performing at these weddings in a professional capacity or just as an invited guest. I will answer from the POV of a guest at these sorts of things, and maybe you’ll find a way to use the information if you perform professionally as well.

Here’s what I would do. This is just off the top of my head, so it’s a little rough. But the fundamentals used here are things I’ve used before in other effects and I know they work. They allow you to take an effect that can be found online and still perform it in a manner where it wouldn’t matter if they tried to find the secret out afterwards.

First, I would perform the effect with just myself and the couple, if at all possible. One of the huge benefits of performing as an amateur is the ability to perform for one or two people at a time. One of the strengths of Anniversary Waltz is its highly targeted emotional resonance. You can’t get that from many other tricks. But that resonance is mostly felt by the primary couple you’re performing it for. You don’t want some nerd nephew searching shit on his iPhone to spoil the moment later on. So yeah, I’d pull the couple aside during some downtime in the days leading up to or after the wedding. (Obviously if you’re a professional magician, that’s not an option.)

Now, one of the ways of defusing a future google search is to anticipate it and mention it. Here’s what I mean by that. I would want Anniversary Waltz to feel special and for that feeling to remain as long as possible. If they feel this is just a generic trick, it’s going to lose that specialness. But they will undoubtedly find out some information about the trick if they were to google something like: two cards become one magic trick. So I can’t suggest that the effect itself is unique because there is too much evidence that it’s not.

So here’s what I’d do. I’d do a version of Anniversary Waltz with one person choosing a card from a red deck, and the other from a blue deck. And then I’d use a red/blue double-backer for the extra convincers. I’m not going to do a full explanation here, but briefly, I’d force the two normal cards that match my double-facer. They’d be placed back to back on top of one of the decks, and, as I go for the marker, I’d flip over the entire deck, switching in a double-facer and red/blue double-backer.

As the signing is under way I’d say something like “There’s a classic effect in magic that I wanted to show you today. If you looked it up online you’d find that originally the trick was done with some kind of fast-drying adhesive. But when you do it that way you can only do it from a distance, because up close you can see and feel and smell the glue. And then a few decades ago they started doing it with specially printed cards. And that’s fine. That’s how it’s usually still done. But that way doesn’t allow you to do it with two normal cards from clearly different decks. Like we’re using today.

“I was thinking of you two a couple of weeks ago and I thought there might be a way to do this classic effect with a completely new method. Not with glues, or special cards… but with something a little more ethereal… the connection that is unique to you two.” Blah, blah, blah…or whatever corny words you have to that effect.

You see how this would frustrate any potential google search, yes? Now they would expect to see references to such a trick online. I already told them this is a classic effect. And they might even dig deep enough to find a method that works. But I already mentioned that method too. And I’m suggesting that method doesn’t adequately describe what they’re seeing here. (And it doesn’t. Because they’re clearly seeing two separate cards from different decks in play. This is slightly more advanced than the traditional AW.)

I would have to play around a little with what I say and when I say it and what I emphasize and what I don’t emphasize, but that’s essentially what I’d do. I’d do it for just the couple (probably the most important step). I’d anticipate and poison the ground for what they might find with a google search. And then I’d use a method that goes beyond what they’re likely to find online.

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How about doing the Invisible Deck as a trick that a mysterious stranger apparently does for you via post?

That way you can secretly control the outcome for the spectator - whilst giving the credit to the mysterious magician friend. —JM

I think that’s a decent idea. I would choreograph in a deck switch for a normal deck.

And then I’d have the letter that comes with the package say something like this at the end:

If the trick worked for you, put a smiley face next to your address on the reverse side. Then gather up the deck, reverse any one card in it, and send it (along with this letter) to the next address on the list.

And on the back of the page would be maybe 15 addresses in a column with a different smiley face next to the first 10 or so (up to my address).

So that way the story goes a little beyond, “Someone performed a trick for me by mail.” Instead you’re creating this history and future in which this deck of cards is being sent along as part of this weird chain-letter magic trick where somehow the previous person keeps accurately predicting what card the next person will think of.

Dustings #49

Wait… what the fuck!!!!

Look at this BULLSHIT from Joshua Jay’s Instagram.

Hmmm… your first book? Really, Josh? YOUR FIRST BOOK?!?!?!

Jason Alexander (who I’m sure will be relieved to know that Joshua Jay considers him “wildly talented”) wrote the intro to Josh’s book, Magic The Complete Course.

Gee… let me do just a base level of research.

Huh… well… would you look at that. Now look, I’m no math expert but even I—without busting out the calculator—am fairly certain that 1999 comes before 2008.

WHY IS JOSHUA JAY TRYING TO MEMORY-HOLE THE MAGIC ATLAS?

Look, it’s bad enough that he’s completely dismissing what’s generally considered the “bible” of pubescent magic: A Teen’s Routines.

But okay, I can understand why he might not consider that his first “book,” because it was a comb-bound manuscript. And maybe it’s no good. (Admittedly, I’ve never read it. I was upset that Josh stole the title of a book I had written describing my teen “routine” of masturbating six times a day. (If you squint enough at the picture on the left, even his cover looks similar to mine.))

However, The Magic Atlas was a real-ass book. And it deserves RESPECT. And that book will not be forgotten so long as this truth-telling blogger lives and breathes. Sorry, Josh.

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A few people emailed me to let me know about a debate on facebook in regards to “googleability” and magic effects. I’ve said pretty much everything I have to say on the subject in recent weeks. Here’s the thing, these are both viable positions to take:

• “I do what I can to make sure my magic is un-googleable.”

  and

• “I don’t worry about people searching out my effects online.”

What is not a viable position is, “People only google effects if you’re not good.” That’s not reality. This is beyond obvious to anyone who is paying attention. Do a boring trick in a boring way and nobody is going to care to try and find out how you did it. Do a strong trick and a certain percentage of the audience will feel a need to try and figure it out.

Magicians—who often don’t tend to have the highest self-esteem and self-worth—have to convince themselves of the opposite. “No one ever tries to figure out how I did my paddle trick because they are so charmed by performance!”

If your argument to why people might try to find out a trick’s secret is that the performer isn’t good enough, then you’ll have to explain why every performer of note has people online (non-magicians) trying to figure out how they do what they do. Is no one a good enough performer?

This is not a new disagreement. It’s an extension of the same things people would say before the internet about examining objects. “People only want to examine objects if you’re not a good magician.” In what world would that fucking be the case?

“This guy just changed a red deck of cards to blue. And it was so good, I have absolutely ZERO INTEREST in taking a look at the blue deck!” This, they tell themselves, is how the human mind works. And then they wonder why people treat magic like it’s something for kids. Well… perhaps because you’re expecting a child’s level of discernment? Tell a charming story about a fairy who gives money for teeth that have fallen out and a kid will just believe it. Tell that story to an adult and they’re probably going to at least want to see some night vision surveillance-camera footage before they’re really amazed by the idea.

That being said, I don’t think you have to be concerned with google-ability if it doesn’t bother you. Ultimately this is just people coming at magic with different end goals in mind. If you see yourself as an “entertainer” primarily, then I can understand why you wouldn’t be overly concerned with people googling a trick afterwards. As an amateur magician though, my goal isn’t purely “entertainment.” I can entertain my friends and family with a conversation, I don’t need to pull out a deck of cards. When I perform magic for someone it’s because I want to entertain them specifically with an impenetrable mystery. And for them to have an impenetrable mystery, they have to try and penetrate it. When they probe the trick, when they ask to examine an object, when they try to find an answer online—these are all steps that make the magic stronger, if it survives these tests. Yes, people can be so delighted by an performance that they don’t care about the secret of the trick all that much, but that’s not usually a sign of really strong magic.

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A very adorable notion in the facebook debate mentioned above is that people were saying, “Don’t use the name of the trick if you don’t want people to google it.” That’s how out of the loop they are on this issue.

People don’t google names of tricks. Laymen don’t even necessarily know tricks have names. They google what they see.

Below you’ll see how the most basic description of the Ambitious Card autocompletes a ton of similar searches, most of which would give the person a workable method for what they saw.

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I’m always happy when I find an optical illusion that is particularly deceptive to me, and I found this one to be particularly strong when I first saw it. (I think it works better on a computer screen than on a phone screen.)

It looks like two somewhat different perspectives from the same vantage point. But really it’s the exact same picture next to itself.

It’s not magic, of course, but anything that can be used to get people to doubt what they’re seeing can easily be used to transition into a trick.

How to Be Blown Away by A Layman's Card Trick

I met a guy named Jason recently. Jason found out I have an interest in magic and offered to show me a card trick. I borrowed a deck from our mutual friend whose house we were staying at. I took out the cards and handed them to Jason to show me his trick. He dealt out 21 cards into a pile and had me think of any of the cards. Then he dealt them into three columns of seven cards and asked me which pile my card was in. He gathered up the piles and dealt them into three new columns and again asked me which pile contained my card. One more time he gathered the cards up and dealt them into three more columns.

“Which column is your card in?” he asked.

I looked through each one carefully. “Wait…,” I said. “Where is it?”

I poked through each column a little to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. The card wasn’t there. “What the?!”

Jason looked at me, confused. “Which column is it in?” he asked again.

“Uhm… I don’t know… what do you mean?” I said. “None, I guess. I mean it’s gone. Where did it go?”

Jason was still confused. “What card did you think of?” I told him the 4 of Diamonds. He pushed through the cards on the table himself. “You couldn’t have,” he said.

He picked up the rest of the cards on the table and spread through them. The 4 of Diamonds was genuinely gone.

“Dude that’s crazy,” I said. “But seriously, where is it?” I looked under and around the table. “Is it behind you?” I looked through the cards again and behind and under some objects on the table. I checked under the card case, there was nothing. But wait… There was a slight rattle in the case. I paused and my mouth fell open. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked. I slowly opened the case and dumped out a card. The 4 of Diamonds. My dropped jaw was frozen, my eyes were wide and searching around for an answer. After a few moments I snapped out of my shock paralysis. “That was one of the coolest tricks I’ve ever seen,” I told him.

---

When a layman offers to show you a card trick, there aren’t a ton of great ways to respond to that.

You can put them off and say, “Well, I probably already know it so there’s not much point to really showing me something.”

Or you can let them show it to you and not really react because you know exactly what’s going to happen. You can just let the trick end and say, “Ah yes, that’s a classic,” and leave them feeling like, Why did you let me go through the whole thing if you know it?

Or you can let them show it to you and pretend to be amazed by it. In the past that seemed like the best option to me, but that has its own problems associated with it. If they catch on that you’re pretending, that can come off as very condescending. And even if they believe you, if you end up showing them a trick afterwards, it’s likely to be so much more impressive than what they did that it will become clear that you probably weren’t fooled by their trick and were just pretending to be. Which, again, can come off as a little infantilizing.

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Here’s a fourth option…

Leave a card in the case when you remove the deck (or find a way to get one back in there at some point, if you’re playing cards or something like that). Then at the point of the trick where you’re supposed to name your card, you just name the card in the box. This works for most of the standard card trick laymen know.

21 Card Trick - As illustrated above, you just claim you can’t find the card the last time you’re supposed to be looking for it in the columns.

Key Card Trick - If they ask you to name your card, you name the one in the box. If they don’t ask you to name it, but just ask you to confirm your card after they remove it. Then you just say, “No, that’s not it." They will always ask you to name what it was (so they can see how they screwed up), and it’s at this point that you name the card in the box.

That Trick Where they Slap the Cards Out of Your Hand - You know, the one with the glide. Here’s what I’ll do (this also works with key card tricks too). When they ask me to pick a card, I’ll say, “I’m thinking of one. Do I have to pick one out?” Of course they’ll say yes, because laymen don’t tend to know tricks that start with a freely thought of card. At the end of the trick they’ll usually (not always) ask for the name of the card. I name the one in the box. They slap the cards in my hand leaving only one card. I turn it over. It’s not the one I named. Then I say, “Wait… that’s the one I was thinking of at the beginning of the trick!” And act amazed. Again they will look through the cards to find the one I named and see what got messed up. It’s here that we find the card is gone and the point where I get super impressed.

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This little gambit works far better than I ever imagined it would. Here’s why, I think:

1. The people who offer to show me a trick tend to be people who haven’t seen me perform much, if anything. So they’re not on guard for some weird subversion of a card trick.

2. I do not play this tongue-in-cheek at all. I act genuinely impressed and amazed by “their” trick.

3. When someone shows me a trick, they might be prepared for me to fuck with them a little to screw the trick up. But what they are absolutely unprepared for is the idea that I would fuck with them in some way that makes their trick seem more amazing, and makes me look more fooled. Since they don’t know me very well, that possibility just doesn’t seem to come to them as they try and decipher what happened.

Sometimes people will take credit for what happened.

Sometimes they explain to me that they really didn’t make the card vanish, and they’re not sure how that happened. I’m always like, “Hmm… okay, sure. I guess the card just got there by ‘MaGiC,’” I’ll say, and wiggle my fingers like I’m casting a spell. I act as if I’m momentarily “playing along” with the idea they didn’t do it. Then I’ll slap them on the shoulder, “Seriously though, that was dope.”

Sometimes I’m sure they probably question my role in what transpired, but I just don’t let that idea take purchase. I just act fooled and impressed by what I saw. I’ll call a third party over and describe the awesome trick this person just did. Or I’ll just sit there quietly, staring intently like I’m replaying what I just saw in my head, and hopefully getting them to question exactly what just happened in the trick they showed me.

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This has been my go-to way of handling laypeople wanting to show me a trick in one-on-one situations for a few years. To me it just feels better than brushing it off or sitting there pretending to be fooled. It adds some mystery but it doesn’t shift the focus onto me. That’s about the best I could hope for.

Monday Mailbag #53

I think you like hearing stories of people trying pieces in the Jerxian style. If you'd like to read such a tale, read on.

I have a friend who is very used to seeing me practice and perform tricks. While she wouldn't describe herself as a magician, she grew up with a few magic books in the house and has significantly more knowledge than a typical spectator. The cross cut force is a no-go. Classic forces are instinctively resisted. She enjoys being fooled, but she'll instinctively try to reverse engineer everything first.

I'm a pretty mediocre performer of magic, though I practice a lot and end up performing in casual situations from time to time. I overfocus on technical skill and visual stuff. I love flashy flourishes. 90% of the time I just perform a somewhat overly difficult ambitious card routine, almost entirely as a visual piece of eye candy. I'm that guy. Darwin Ortiz fan, reporting for duty.

I'm one of those people that read The Jerx enviously, thinking "I could never pull that off".

But I finally tried your amateur at the kitchen table style, smearing the edges of a trick and trying to be just a bit more audience-centric. The context leading up to the trick was this friend and I were both just a bit stoned (Canadians, sorry) and on the couch when she grabs the cards, which are out not because I put the cards out and wait for somebody to ask about them, but because we'd just finished watching a movie and she's used to me noodling with cards quietly by myself like a weirdo.

After the movie, she grabs the cards and starts messing with them and shuffling idly. I start teaching her different shuffles, probably mansplaining up a storm, but she's into this kind of thing. I say some stuff about a faro shuffle, mixing fact and fiction a bit. Then, after she has mixed the hell out of the cards, I try to perform Joshua Jay's handling of Shuffle Bored for the first time. I've forgotten what he calls it because he gave his version a dumb name. He's this little known magician that nobody likes anyway. ;)

There was something completely disarming with this approach. We stumbled into it. We were playing around with cards. It didn't have that "shift into magician mode" moment that is always implicitly there when you're launching into a trick, where their guard goes way up. In terms of presentation, I had no script and made it a "peek backstage" where she was under the impression that I was teaching her a trick as we went into it. Presentationally I take as little credit as possible and instead try to sell it as a coincidence that we arrive at through shuffling and working together to remember the cards.

The weed 1000% helped give it a haphazard and bumbling feel as I improvised my way through. It probably helped enhance her reaction too, let's be honest, but it was still different from even strong reactions in the past. It was like she had nowhere to even start searching, so she just went for the ride the whole time. The magic was finally interactive and in the moment the whole time.

I know this is the babiest of baby steps into the Jerx Performing Style. All of this is very out of my comfort zone, and it's harder to get the nerve to shift into than you might think. As you can probably tell from this email though, I had a lot of fun with it. —KM

This is similar to a number of stories I’ve heard about people’s first experience with the style of magic I write about on this site. It starts off unplanned and almost unintentional and it’s only in retrospect—often after an unusually strong reaction—that they realize their performance was in line with a “Jerxian” performance philosophy. It makes sense that this happens a lot because it’s how I came to this philosophy myself—by backwards engineering the things that seemed to lead to stronger reactions. And those things weren’t more tightly scripted patter or better routining between effects. It was almost always the opposite—an effect that seemed unplanned and unscripted and just arose from the natural interaction.

When I first started playing around with this idea I thought that everyone had to believe what they were seeing was really spontaneous. But after experimenting, I found that wasn’t the case. I realized you could push the effects into more fantastical and more fictional realms as long as you kept the feeling of something that was an interaction and not a “performance.” I found that people are much happier to play along with the magic experience in informal and social situations, so long as you don’t force them into the role of “spectator” whose purpose is to validate the performer via their response to the trick.

So if you want to get into the “Jerxian” style, follow KM’s path: go get fucking baked and stumble into some performances and see how it goes.

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I’m on [Michael] Weber’s mailing list (based on your recommendation) and just got his email with your endorsement of his effect “C.” Did you change your policy that you wrote [in this post] about how you won’t do endorsements/reviews? —SB

Yes. Michael Weber (along with Tim Trono) offered me $400,000 to promote their releases. Before the ink was even dry on the contract, Michael pointed out part of the fine print that said I was to be paid in something called “Weberbucks.”

I was at first confused, then angry. My lawyer silently shook his head when I asked if there was anything we could do about this. Then Michael skipped away, knees pumping up to his chest, as he gayly laughed over his shoulder at me.

Uhm, no. I didn’t change my stance on endorsements. The quote that was used in that email came from a previous newsletter where I briefly mentioned the trick. I don’t specifically write endorsements, but if I say something positive about an effect, I don’t have an issue with people using it in their marketing.

Michael Weber and Tim Trono are kind enough to send me many of their releases. We don’t have any agreement in place that I’ll mention those releases on the site or in the newsletter. In fact, most of the time I probably don’t. But, I’m obviously more likely to than I would be otherwise, simply because the first step to me talking about something is owning it. And if someone is sending me something for free, then I obviously would then own it.

What the post you mentioned was indicating was the idea that I don’t want to be indebted to anyone, and for that reason I wouldn’t want anyone sending me something under the idea that they think I’m likely to review it or talk about it. If people want to send me stuff, that’s great. But it’s just as well if they want to send me an email telling me about their new release and I’ll pick it up with my own money if it seems like something that would be for me.

If you’re doing the math, assume there’s a 90% likelihood I won’t mention whatever you send me. That way you can decide if you still want to send it my way. Of course, you may decide to play defense and think, “Well, I’ll send it to him, and while I probably won’t get any free advertising out of it, at least he probably won’t trash it either.” That’s a good point. I’m human. I probably wouldn’t.

If you definitely want to get your release mentioned here, then these are the only ways to do so.

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Okay it’s a year and a half into the pandemic, what are you thinking and hearing about Zoom shows? Are they here to stay? Is it worth investing my time in coming up with one now?—TK

Hmmm… when the Zoom shows first started up I was somewhat skeptical, but then I heard from a few different people that they were making a killing on Zoom shows. More than they had ever made with live shows. I reached out to them recently after getting your question and heard back from a couple of them and it sounds like the interest in virtual shows has fallen off quite a bit. At least for the people I’m in contact with. I’m sure there are some people who are still doing well with them, but it’s probably not the gold-rush it was at the beginning of the pandemic (if I had to guess).

I can’t tell you what to do with your own time/energy. But personally I wouldn’t be devoting a ton of time to working on a Zoom show. There’s this thing people say about the pandemic, that it sped up changes that were already going to happen. Like it made working from home much more common, and that was a change that was probably going to happen anyway at some point. Many businesses around me went cash-less, and that too is probably something we may have expected to see ten years from now regardless. But, I gotta be honest, I don’t think “magic shows over the computer” is something that was ever going to be the future of the art. I think it’s something we did out of necessity.

New Release Roundup

NOTE: I’ll be out next week for my end of summer break. Regular posting will resume on Sept. 6th. For supporters of the site, the next newsletter should be with you by the end of the months. Mwah, mwah!

As requested in a mailbag recently, here are some initial thoughts regarding a few new and upcoming releases. These are just my first impressions, feel free to tell me where I got something wrong. I’m not going to be linking to the products anywhere, because nobody’s paying me and you’re smart enough to use google.

Ellusionist’s How to Control Minds Kit

If you had fun imagining Ellusionist’s typical, barely-pubescent customer stumbling their way through some mentalism after the release of their “How to Read Minds Kit,” you will be absolutely delighted imagining them trying the pseudo-hypnotic effects in Ellusionist’s new release, How to Control Minds.

It’s a kit that comes with a “Collector’s Engraved Brass Pen” for fuck knows what reason. It’s for “collectors”? Yeah, for me it would be for my trash collector, because that shit’s going straight in the garbage.

Of course, you need to understand they have to have something to put in the box. Most of these effects don’t require props, so they were kind of screwed. Trust me…when one of their selling points is having “50 Billets” in the box (i.e. 50 small blank pieces of paper), you ain’t getting anything good in that box.

The bigger problem is that you’re going to have a lot of dorks buying this thinking, at best, that these are “easy” to do as the kickstarter claims, or at worst that they’re REALLY going to be controlling people’s minds. The ad purposely plays down that these tricks require someone with Peter Turner’s performing abilities (which are legit for this style), and are that these effects are helped greatly by the spectator feeling the pressure from an audience (and in this case a camera crew). And still most often the target person will realize that they were sort of just playing along. Which makes it terrible for one-on-one casual performing. (If you don’t believe people know they’re playing along, contact me and we can set up some testing with real people. As long as you cover the costs. I’m not paying for testing I already know the answer to.)

But Ellusionist knows what they’re doing. That’s why this is a kickstarter. Their ridiculous “goal” for this kickstarter was $10,000. Like… huh? You don’t have 10k in the bank, Ellusionist? You couldn’t swing that yourself? Do you want a loan? I can cover you. Pre-selling through kickstarter is insurance against how disappointed their customers are going to be.

The ad says:

Copy what we share with [sic] you'll be able to "just do it". 

• You don't need to be dexterous.

• You don't need to be a showman.

• You don't need to "know it all" before you can start wowing your friends.

People say you can't buy talent - but this kit proves them wrong. 

Okay, good luck with that!

This is odd too…

First, if your son or daughter is lacking confidence. they probably won’t find it as they’re getting a wedgie surgically removed after they fall on their face trying to impress their classmates with these tricks. These types of effects rely on confidence to work. They don’t create it.

Also…you forgot to get your nephew a Christmas gift? Bitch, it’s August. You’ve got time.

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Renaissance Square by Max Giaco

This came out a while ago, but it was just recently "re-released" in Murphy's Magic "The Vault" Series.

It looks like a pretty clever collection of principles being used here. I'm just not sure how interesting Leonardo da Vinci is as a presentational subject. That might need some modification. I'll probably pick it up and play around with it. If I do go with the da Vinci presentation, then I will change the reveal on the back of the page so that it looks like illustrations of cards taken from da Vinci's notebook. If you're going to go with the theme, there's no reason to bail on it at the end.

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Infinity Watch Version 3

The newest version of another watch that allows you to predict the time someone thinks of. I continue to like the idea of the effect and can think of a couple different interesting presentations for it. But I can’t get over the idea that there's going to be a non-negligible part of the audience who says, "Oh, is that like one of those watches you can set with your phone?" I discussed my reservations in this post which is now, somehow, almost three years old. Since then I've heard from probably two dozen people who use one of these watches in a magic effect. I would guess about 2/3rds of these people have told me they've been busted at least once because someone in one of their audiences was familiar with the technology and the other third said no one ever busts them (at least not to their face). So who knows.

A smart company would release a watch that functions in this way, but that looks 50 years old. That way people aren't thinking of modern technology. If it's scratched and rusted and clearly dead. Then you tell the story of your great-grandfather and how he passed away and his watch stopped at the exact moment he died, which the spectator is able to name. Or whatever.

I'm fascinated by this bit of stupidity. One of the issues that people had with the Turner watch was that it said "Turner" on the watch which was very easy for a spectator to google and realize it's a phony magic watch. The people over at Infinity watches said, "Uh-uh-uh... we won't make that mistake!" And in their ad it says:

UNTRACEABLE: The watch brand is renamed to "BLUTHER" purposely so that spectators cannot find it online.

Guess what? Now they can because you just put the name of the watch in the ad, you dingbat.

[UPDATE: C.K. wrote in to point out what a bad decision black hands on a black watch face is. He’s 100% right, of course. I totally missed that. If you’re looking for this response from your magic— “And I predicted your thought of time!” - “Huh? Wait… I can’t… hold on… let me get my glasses…

… okay… yup… looks like you did. Neat!”—then definitely go for the black on black watch.]

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Genesis System Project by Adam Wilber

This looks like a lovingly created “system” of color changing effects by Adam Wilber. But I have bad news for you. You cannot fool people with a color-changing anything that changes color based on temperature. Laypeople know such things exist. In fact, this is pretty much the only thing they know that exists that might account for an object changing in color.

I have not put this in front of the Virtual Focus Group yet, but anytime I put anything that changes color in some way in front of them, “the color changes with temperature” is a hypothesis they offer that is nearly universal. This goes for cards changing color, ink moving or changing, color changing knives, color changing sponge balls, color changing anything.

So, for me, this is just not a methodology that works for a magic trick. It would be like using magnets to do a trick where one thing sticks to something else. If there are effects in this kit that don’t use the color change overtly, then there might be some effects here that are more usable, but I don’t know if that’s the case.

It’s a bummer because it looks like a lot of thought was put into this, and if it really left people at a loss for an explanation, then I’d be all for it. But I think it plays into one of the few explanations a non-magician has at their disposal.

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How Magicians Think by Joshua Jay

Josh has a new book coming out for the public called How Magicians Think…and Why Magic Matters.

I’ll save you some time…

How Magicians Think - “Oh please, oh please like me because I can turn $1 bills into $100s. Please?!?!?! Fuck… please!!!! Pay attention to me! Uhm…. I can read body language!!! Okay, okay… what else… I know I seem like my personality is kinda junk and all, and in the rest of your interactions with me I’m a total zilch with no confidence, but I can actually influence people to do what I want, just with a few simple words. I SWEAR TO GOD!!!”

Why Magic Matters - It doesn’t, really.

But I don’t really want to talk about Josh’s book. Instead I want to talk about my crowning achievement on this blog. And that is the introduction of a new feature to this site called, The Wit and Wisdom of the Jay Brothers. I learned recently, that Joshua Jay has a fat identical twin brother named Fat Joshua Jay. And in this recurring segment I will highlight some of their thoughts/advice on magic and life.

Joshua Jay

“Don’t run when you’re not being chased!”

Fat Joshua Jay

“Don’t run.”

Finishing Touches: The Jerx Ose False(ish) Cut

I really like testing ideas and experimenting with little touches to tricks in order to see how they affect the spectator’s reaction. This is like, a sub-hobby of mine within magic. Kind of like how you might like setting fires to derelict houses, but you also enjoy the sub-hobby of killing hobos.

In my experience, small presentational changes can lead to an obvious and significant impact on the spectator’s reaction. But small changes to the techniques and methods used in a trick generally have effects that are much more difficult to spot and interpret. It usually requires the spectator to specifically mention something about the change I’ve made for me to be certain it’s had a specific impact on their reaction, and that I’m not just reading into a response that I hope to see. (Seeing things you hope to see but aren’t really there is the basis for most magic theory.)

For example, for a long time, if I had a trick that required a small set-up on top of the deck, I would just shuffle the deck in a way that retained the top stock. Then, as an experiment, I started to palm those cards in and out so that the spectator could shuffle the deck at the beginning instead. I didn’t know if this would register with people as meaningful or not. My shuffles already seem pretty sloppy and chaotic. And when just retaining a small top stock, you can be pretty open with the fairness of your shuffle. So I wasn’t sure if having them shuffle would make a big difference. My initial impression was that it was generating a stronger reaction. But again, I thought maybe I might be seeing something that wasn’t really there. But more and more I was finding that it did make a significant difference and that was evidenced by the people who would say something like, “Wait… but I shuffled that deck,” which seemed to dash the hopes for whatever explanation they were formulating in their mind. Or I’d be recapping the effect (“And you could have stopped anywhere. And the cards were in the order you shuffled them.”) And their reaction to that reminder convinced me that this was, indeed a change that meant something to them.

Recently I’ve been playing around with a change to the Jay Ose false cut that has had a similar positive impact.

Here’s Jay Ose.

Apparently he’s a real guy who really existed and not—as I assumed—the result of a very white magician (an Andi Gladwin type) mispronouncing and misattributing a false shuffle by a guy named José.

For those who don’t know, the Jay Ose False Cut looks like this.

There’s no secret action going on there. It just looks as if that should disturb the order of the deck, but it doesn’t. Since there isn’t a secret action there, performers have realized that you can have the spectator do the actions of the cut themselves. You have them cut off a third of the deck. Then another third to the right of the packet they just cut off. Then they place the final third to the right of both. You gesture for them to pick up the packets from left to right and they have just done a full deck false cut for you.

I believe the first time I saw a trick where the spectator performs the Ose false cut was in The Art of Astonishment by Paul Harris in Chad Long’s effect, The Shuffling Lesson. Since then I’ve seen the idea used quite often.

If there’s a weakness to the technique it’s that you have to tell them how to cut the deck and how to reassemble the deck. It’s not a huge deal, although on occasion someone will cut them oddly or reassemble them in not the right way and you have to step-in, which doesn’t make complete sense if this is supposed to be a “random” cut.

I was working on a trick several months ago and I realized that often this technique isn’t used with a fully stacked deck. It’s used to keep a top or bottom stock intact. And when that’s the case, you have a lot more freedom with how they cut and reassemble. That’s when I came up with

The Jerx Ose False(ish) Cut

This cut retains a small top or bottom stack. The benefit of this over the traditional Jay Ose False Cut is that it is more random seeming and more memorable. The potential downside (that I was wary of) is that maybe it would draw too much attention to the cut and the deception at play would be noticed. I found that not to be the case. This is a technique you would use when you want the cut to be remembered. If you don’t want that, then stick with a different false cut.

What makes this particularly deceptive, I think, is that there are some genuinely free actions, followed by a couple genuinely free choices.

Here is an example of what it looks like. Well… sounds like.

Magician: Cut the deck into three piles.

[Spectator freely cuts the deck into three piles in any orientation on the table.]

Magician: Pick up any pile.

[Spectator has a free choice of any pile.]

Magician: And drop it on any other pile.

[Spectator drops their chosen pile on any either remaining pile.]

Magician: And drop that combined pile on the remaining pile.

You can probably figure out what’s happening here, you’re essentially just going to direct them to reassemble the deck so that your top stock (in this example) is maintained. But you’re going to do it in a way that suggests some freedom on their part.

I’ll walk you through what the process would be to maintain the top stock. This shouldn’t be something you actually have to think of and process in the moment when you’re doing it. It will just be sort of obvious what to do. But for completeness, I’ll write it out.

The spectator cuts the deck into three packets. Top, Middle, and Bottom. (Top is the “target” pile, Middle and Bottom are the non-target piles.) They don’t need to cut in a nice line. They can just cut however they like, so long as you keep track of the top packet.

You say:

“Pick up any pile.”

• If they pick up the Top pile, then you say, “And drop it on any other pile. Now take that combined pile and drop it on the last pile.”

• If they pick up the Middle or Bottom pile first, then you say, “Take any other pile and place it on top of the cards in your hand.”

  • If they pick up the other non-target pile, you say, “And place the final pile on top of those"

  • If they pick the Top pile, you say, “And drop those cards in your hand on the pile that’s left, so the deck is complete.”

I think the key moment that makes this deceptive is that free choice in the middle. Where they either drop the pile in their hand on either remaining pile, or they drop either remaining pile on the cards in their hand. This is a moment that can apparently only exist if you don’t care about the order of the deck. (Which you don’t, you only care about one card (or small group of cards). But the spectator doesn’t know that. So this feels quite free.)

Strangely, as the Jay Ose cut proves, once a deck is cut into three parts, people don’t seem to be able to follow what packet started where. Now, that being said, I still wouldn’t immediately say, “Turn over the top card, that will be your selection.” This would be part of a selection or forcing procedure that I would remind them of later on. “The deck was shuffled. You cut it into three piles, anywhere you wanted. Then reassembled the deck in any order you chose,” etc.

You can figure out how to maintain the bottom stock yourself, right? I think so. It’s the same thing as the top stock, but just the inverse. You’ll figure it out.

Two Person Variation

I find this works nicely with two people. The first person cuts the deck and swaps the packets around while the second spectator looks away(to “keep it 100% fair”). Then the second person reassembles the deck, “however they want.” This is, obviously, overkill if you’re using it as just a false cut. But as part of the process of a “randomizing procedure” or something like that, it makes sense.

As I mentioned in the beginning, I wasn’t sure what, if any, effect this would have on the impact of the routines I was using it with. But in recapping the effect with them, it seemed to be something they were zeroing in on. I would say something like, “Before you dealt out these hands of cards, you saw me shuffle, and you saw the cards genuinely mixing. Then I gave you the deck and never touched it again. You cut the deck into three piles wherever you wanted. And you reassembled the deck in any order you wanted. Had you cut in different places or reassembled it in a different way we would have different cards on top of these piles, but your actions gave us these four cards….” And when I get to the part about them cutting and reassembling however they wanted, there is often a comment or an acknowledgment that the moment did carry some weight with them. And it’s the sort of acknowledgment I’ve rarely gotten with the traditional Ose cut when I remind them, “And you cut the cards.”

But again, it’s a matter of time and place. If it’s a pacing thing, and you want to get through it as quick as possible, then the traditional version would work best. But if you’re happy with emphasizing that moment, I’ve found this to be a nice finishing touch.