I Blame Myself Week: Day Three

The big day is here! What follows (below the robot emojis) is the first magic blog post written using AI (artificial intelligence)!

The company that created this technology is called Writesonic. Their marketing material says, “Say goodbye to writer’s block. With Writesonic's AI-powered writing tools, you can generate high-performing Ads, Blogs, Landing Pages, Product Descriptions, Ideas and more in seconds.”

A “high performing blog” is precisely what I’m looking for. After 6+ years of the middling performance blog I’ve churned out, I’m happy to turn this over to the computers to run.

Here we go! As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the first paragraph was written by me, but everything else is going to come from the AI as it sifts through all of human knowledge on the internet and crafts what will undoubtedly be a compelling piece of writing. My only concern is that it might be too brilliant for our mere human minds to comprehend. But hey, that will just force us to evolve our thinking faster, right?

If this goes as well as I’m expecting, these words I’m writing now might be the last words typed by human hands on this blog. I want to thank all of you who supported this site up to this point, and I’m sure you’re going to love Jerx 2.0.

What comes next is genuinely what the AI provided to me as a blog post about magic tricks and performing as an amateur magician. I haven’t read it yet myself, I’m going to read it along with you….

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Confessions of an Amateur Magician: How to Perform Magic Tricks at Home

I'm an amateur magician, and I'm going to share with you my dirty little confession about how I perform magic tricks at home. The professional magician has a stage to perform from. That gives him instant credibility. As an amateur, I don't have a stage. I've got the part of my room the futon is in, and the part of the room the tv is in. And then I have the kitchen that I share with Trent. But he doesn't like me performing magic in there. So really I just have the futon and TV area. And I CERTAINLY don't have Trent's room. That's off limits. So here's how I perform magic tricks at home.

The Amateur Magician

Stand in one of two corners of the room. Stand in one corner, in the vicinity of a chair or couch. Put your hands down. Raise your hands to your face. Have an expectant smile on your face. When you get a look from your neighbor, immediately lower your hands. When you can look back up, proceed to show them the trick you just performed. The Professional Magician Stand in one corner, not too near a chair or couch. Stand on a chair, or a table. Put your hands down. Relax into a smiling look. Ask your neighbor if they mind if you perform a magic trick. Have an expectant smile on your face. When your neighbor says no, have your hands down again. If they do want to see the trick, it's yours for the taking. The Amateur Magician Lay flat on the floor face up. Get comfy.

How to Perform Magic Tricks at Home

The first thing I do is grab my pocket knives and attach one to my arm and one to my belt loop. I then I load a pair of jingly keys into my pocket. I know how to do the quick change so I can undo my pants and put on my pants and tie my boots back up. And then, since I have jingly keys in my pocket and jingly keys in my pocket, I can easily and quietly remove my pants and boots. So I do that. And this time I don't jingle my keys because I don't want to ruin it. But if I need to jingle the keys I can do it in a safe, quiet place where no one can see me. I don't know why I decided to remove my boots instead of my pants but that's what I decided to do. I do the quick change and then I stand at the bottom of the stairs. I'm holding my pocket knives and jingly keys at the bottom of the stairs.

Conclusion

This doesn't sound like it's going to work, but it works. But like all good magic, it's not easy. I can do this in front of Trent, but only if I'm comfortable with his reactions. And that's tough. He has these great, sharp ears and they pick up the slightest change in me. So I have to use it. I'm going to be in front of him with my own recorded video and I'm going to ask for his reaction. Then I'm going to walk away. I'll ask him to be honest and tell me if he thinks the thing I just did is magical. Or if he thinks it's boring and isn't worth paying attention to. Then I'll wait. And I'll start performing the trick again. This time I won't hit pause. I'll have him keep his eyes on me. And he won't be able to see me on the screen. So I have to have a good visual on him.

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Huh…

Hold on everyone. I have to check something.

Okay. I’m back. So, according to the doctor, I’m not having a stroke.

I went back and read the article and I’m honestly a little confused by some of it. A lot of it actually. I’m not sure if it’s the situation where—as I mentioned previously—it’s just too advanced for my mind to understand. But I don’t think that’s it.

You know what? I blame myself. In yesterday’s post I mentioned how I was given the option to choose which outline to use for my AI generated article, and I chose the most open-ended one. That was a mistake. Of course AI is going to require a little more guidance in order to give us the really good stuff. What was I thinking? Haha. Okay, my bad.

Take two.

Tomorrow is when the dawn of a new era in magic writing truly begins and the AI tackles this outline…

This looks like it’s going to be a much more fruitful article. You’re going to get a card trick, a pocket trick, a coin trick, a disappearing coin trick, a vanishing or appearing handkerchief trick. Just by looking at that outline I can tell that this material might almost be too good for the free site and should maybe just be for supporters. But I think I’ll throw you a bone and give everyone the goods. (You’re welcome.)

See you back here tomorrow when the real future of magic content begins!

Cautiously Optimistic Week: Day Two

Okay, so we’re continuing on the journey to transition this site so that it is completely written by artificial intelligence. The first step was signing up with the company that has created this incredible technology. (I’ll give you more details on the company later this week.)

One of the services this company provides is if you type in any subject, it will give you ideas for different “listicles” you can write on that subject.

So, the first thing I did was type in “magic tricks” and here are the ideas that it gave me.

Hmmm… okay. Well…, I’ll be honest. That’s not the most inspiring start. I mean, for being automatically generated, I guess they’re alright. But it seems like they couldn’t even really crack five ideas with this. Are the five best tricks to amaze my friends really that different than the five best tricks to impress my friends? The first and the third idea also seem kind of similar as well. It seems like it’s just about plugging adjectives and an arbitrary number of minutes into a sentence. The last idea is fine, but there’s no chance of me sifting through youtube videos to write such an article.

So I wouldn’t call this the most scintillating start. But that’s okay, this was like a free bonus feature on the site. What you have to pay for are the actual fully formed articles.

To do that, you start by buying ten article ideas. Here’s what we got:

Now, I admit that nine out of those ten article ideas sounded very similar. Again, it seems like they just swapped in different numbers and descriptors. If I’d known that’s all it was going to be, I wouldn’t have paid for it. I feel like I can do that much myself.

• A Dozen Magic Tricks to Amaze the Stupid

• 5 Magic Tricks to Steal your Dad’s Girlfriend

• 20 Tricks To Make Your Aunt Ask If You’re Involved In Some Weird Devil Shit

That’s fairly easy to do. I was hoping for some ideas with a little more substance. But I did find one topic in that list that was made for this site.

Confessions of An Amateur Magician: How to Perform Magic Tricks At Home

Perfect! That’s an idea that’s right in line with the ethos of this site. “Confessions” suggests the same candidness that I try and bring to this site. “Amateur Magician” is the perspective I write from. And “Home” is one of my primary performing venues. Amazing!

The next step was determining which artificial intelligence-generated outline I wanted to use for the article. Here were the options they gave me…

Now, while I was intrigued by some of the more detailed options, I thought it might be interesting if—for our first go around—we went with the most open-ended choice. Which is clearly choice number 5.

There was one more step before the article could be generated. I needed to write the intro.

So that’s how it will begin. Tomorrow I will roll out the first in what I’m guessing will be 1000s of AI-written articles about the subject of magic. We are about to enter a golden-age of magic content and/or the beginning of the dullest Walter Gibson novel ever created. Cross your fingers.

This Just Got Easy Week: Day One

This week is an experiment. There will be new posts every day, Monday thru Friday. And if this experiment works, there might be a lot more posts than that.

Look, I’m gong to be honest with you, it’s not easy to write this site. And when you add on all the new content for a bi-monthly newsletter and a book every year, you go from “not easy” to “damn near impossible.” If I was writing about the life-cycle of ferns or something like that, I would have blown my fucking head off by now. Fortunately, magic is a fun and multi-faceted subject, so even though all the writing is a bit of a challenge, it’s at least an interesting one. And because of the supporters of the site, I don’t have to write about any one specific thing and I can go from whim to whim and write about whatever happens to be interesting me at the time. That’s great. But regardless, running this enterprise requires a ton of time, energy, and writing.

Until now…

Guys, I am so excited. My heart is racing, my breathing is rapid, and my testicles are slamming back and forth into each other in my scrotum sack, as happens to all men universally when they’re excited.

You see, I’ve discovered something that’s going to make this job easy as shit…

A company that uses artificial intelligence to produce content for blogs!

Do you know what this means for us? It means I won’t have to write the posts anymore and you can get a lot more Jerx posts than you currently do. Daily posts. Hell, maybe I’ll have them crank them out on the hour for you. It’s just a matter of how good these AI produced articles are. Are they going to be really good? Or are they going to be amazingly good? I’m not sure yet. But it’s definitely going to be in the really good to amazingly good range. It’s not like there would be a business out there that charged money to create AI based articles that were just grade-A gobbledygook, right? Of course not. This experiment is going to be a success. It’s just a question of how much of a success.

Come back tomorrow as we dip our toe into the first AI Jerx content and I—once again—redefine the art of writing about magic, and bring magic blogging into…

Dustings #50

I can’t believe we just passed the 20th anniversary of 9/11. I didn’t mention it on the blog earlier because it just seems so difficult to really capture the importance and the horror of that day while still honoring all the people who lost their lives during the attack.

I heard a lot of religious and political leaders commemorating the anniversary, but their remarks sort of left me feeling hollow. They didn’t really seem to understand the gravity of that day. Or perhaps it’s just the case that there’s nothing you can say or do that really approaches the significance of that event.

In fact, there is only really one tribute I’ve ever seen that adequately addresses everything that happened that day, and goes some way in consoling humanity for everything we lost.

And that tribute is when—for the month of September—the Magic Cafe puts this at the top of their homepage.

Wow. Powerful stuff.

I know a woman who was 12 years old at the time of the attacks. She lost both her parents when the towers collapsed. She told me, “Andy… of course I’ll never be happy my parents died that day. But that stunning memorial gif goes a long way to filling the hole in my heart that they left.”

Thank you, Magic Cafe, for doing so much to heal our crippled nation.

Perhaps the only other tribute that would be as moving as that gif is if you created a solemn version of this emoticon…

where—instead of dancing—the dots are reflecting in quiet dignity on the lives lost that day.

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Daniel Rumanos has been kicked out of the GLOMM.

Daniel is a magician, writer of dull science fiction, and a “pro-contact pedohebephile.”

This means he’s into girls aged 11-14. And no, he’s not tortured by these desires. He’s proud of them!

You can read more about Daniel at this site. I especially enjoy the page of deleted tweets which includes this gem.

You’re damn near braindead when your justification is, “No, no. I don’t just want to fuck a 12-year-old. I want to be in a relationship with one!” Uhm, bad news, that makes you more fucked up. Do I #KnowTheDifference? Hmmm… let me see if i can figure this out. Well, I can at least understand the sexual desire as some misguided biological instinct. Indulging that instinct makes you evil. But wanting to be in a relationship with a 12-year-old makes you evil and fucking pathetic. Generally you’d want a relationship to be with someone who is at least close to being an intellectual equal. If you want to talk about Minecraft or how hard it is to multiply fractions, then I understand why you might want to be in a “relationship” with a 12-year-old. But for a normal adult male with half a brain in his skull, that sounds like a nightmare. So yeah… I mean… I guess I “know the difference.” Although I’m not sure, “Hey, I’m not just a pervert. I’m also a moron!” is quite the defense you were hoping it was.

Here’s another great tweet. He definitely thought he had a really salient point here…

Okay, let’s give that a shot.

“I don’t think pedophiles should rape children.”

Aha! But would I ever say, “I don’t think Jews should rape children”?

Hmmm… yeah, actually that’s a perfectly reasonable sentence too. It’s like a Mad Lib, you can fill that sentence with literally any group of people and it still rings true.

If you find it funny when dumb people speak with conviction, I encourage you to check out more of Daniel’s thoughts and writing at the site above. It’s a gold mine.

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The Wit and Wisdom of the Jay Brothers

Joshua Jay

“Henning Nelms said that if you could make a sandwich appear in a hungry man’s pocket, that would be a very powerful trick because it would be magic with meaning.”

Fat Joshua Jay

“I always carry a sandwich in my pants. And I fill my watch-pocket with ranch for dipping.”

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.