A Sincere Apology

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January has been my month off for the past few years. And this year it’s not really time “off,” it’s time where I’m writing the next book which is coming out in a few months.

But had I known Ellusionist would be releasing a non-functioning watch that you stick special coins to in order to make them disappear, I would have put the next book off for another year, so I could devote this month to making fun of this goofball product.

So I owe you all a sincere apology for not being here for you as I should be during this time.

Walking around with a non-working “generic smart watch” for the purpose of vanishing a special coin is not a healthy, robust approach to performing magic. It feels more like a cry for help. Personally, I would be depressed every time I looked at my fake watch. “What am I doing with myself?” I’d ask. In general it’s a bad idea to have a physical reminder of your own inadequacies that you see frequently.

It’s like owning a fake-vagina, “male masturbator.”

Does it feel better than just using you hand? I don’t know, maybe. But at least when you’re done with your hand, you can go and get on with your life. You don’t have to wash, disinfect, and store a giant set of silicone hips for your loved ones to discover when they organize your possessions for the estate sale. When you’re done using your hand you don’t have to end up looking at this monstrosity (as you would look at the phony smartwatch) and think, “Is this what I’ve been reduced to?”

My point is, if you want to vanish a coin, just use your goddamn hands.

The truth is, the vanishes with this watch just don’t look that good. That’s why they don’t show you them in the trailer. It looks like something sketchy happens with the coin and your watch. Then you have to point out that the coin isn’t under your watch. So from the spectator’s perspective what is supposed to be happening here? “He said he was going to vanish the coin, and then he did something a little odd. I thought it was under his watch. But then he removed his El Fako Brand, non-working watch and I didn’t see the coin there. Maybe I missed something? At any rate, then I ended up finding a coin in my pocket.” Like I just don’t think that structure has anywhere near the cleanliness and beauty of a coin vanish that you can get with sleight-of-hand or something like the Raven.

But hey, it’s $30. Ellusionist is usually pretty fair on their pricing when they think they have something that’s not quite a home-run. Look, if there was a way to cleanly vanish a coin, away from the body, without sleeves, and without skill, in a manner that wasn’t inherently weak or suspicious, I guarantee you it would cost more than $30, because that would be the holy grail of coin magic.

You already bought this? Okay, I think your best bet here is to lean into the weaknesses. This isn’t going to be a great tool for a super clean coin vanish. Since it looks like your watch is involved, it makes sense to make that the focus of your presentation. You’re going to “teach” them how you first learned to vanish a coin. “You take the coin, and when people aren’t looking, it goes under your hand and is secretly placed under your watch.” You flash both sides of your hands to show the coin is “gone.” You can even admit, “This isn’t even a real watch. It’s just a cheap hunk of shit I picked up to practice with.” You go on, “Of course, some people know this secret, so with them you have to use a more advanced technique.” And you remove the watch and show the coin is gone completely. They now ask—or you goad them into asking—where the coin is. “Under the watch” you say. They look back to the watch to figure out what you’re talking about, “Oh, no. Sorry. Not my watch.” And the coin has reappeared under the spectator’s watch. So the vanish would just be a part of a coin under spectator’s watch type of routine. (You can find at least a couple versions of this plot on Penguin for $5).

I would guess others have probably already suggested combining these two things. I’m not saying it’s the greatest idea in the world, but it is a nice full-circle sort of effect. So you don’t have an awkward vanish, followed by the weak “no it’s not under my watch” moment, followed by a reappearance in a random place. Instead you have this thing that starts off as a kind of “exposure,” which gets ramped up with a magical moment, and then a climax that is surprising but in its own way “logical” within the presentation. And you wouldn’t even have to wear this gross looking thing on your wrist all night. You could openly put it on before going into the trick as part of your explanation on this “method to vanish a coin.”

While I think that’s a reasonable use for this prop, I don’t think I’ll be picking one up. The question I—and all serious magicians—will now have to ask ourselves is, “Do I want to be able to vanish a coin or do stack work with cards?” Because, brother, until they combine these two awesome tools into one, you simply can’t do both.

Checking-In

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Whaddup, whaddup, friends? It’s 2022. The double-deuce. Is everyone’s year as sweet as mine is so far? The first week of my year has been spent… working on writing a magic book. If you’ve never written a magic book, or any book, and you think you’d like to, here’s a little inside tip for you: It’s not fun! You know that magic book you heard about five years ago and it still hasn’t come out? That’s because writing books sucks balls. I spent a year creating material, performing material, testing different variations, and outlining and drafting stuff for the upcoming book—none of that is easy. But the real hard part is sitting down at that desk and trying focus and get everything down on the page. Yes, yes, I know your job sucks too. Give me a paragraph once a year to moan a bit. Jeez.

Do you build stuff, craft stuff, design stuff, or have any other skill that might be useful to someone like me? In the past I’ve tried to make note whenever someone says something like, “Hey, I could make a gimmicked wallet for you if you ever have an idea you want to try,” or things like that. But I never had a good system to keep track of such offers, and most are lost somewhere in my email. So if you’ve offered something in the past, or have some skill you think I might find useful in the future, go ahead and send me an email and let me know (again or for the first time). And if you can link to some examples of your work, whatever that may be, that might help inspire some ideas as well. I’m going to try to do better at keeping track of the resources I have amongst the people who regularly read this site. (Of course, you’d be paid for any work you did on a project. I’m not asking for free work or anything like that. I’m not a creep.) Thanks.

If you’re a supporter of the site, the next issue of the newsletter should be in your email this weekend.

If you’ve got a Grindr date with either of these two, I have a good idea how it’s going to end.

“Nope.”

Really?

Well now I’m kind of fascinated to find out what things this guy does know.

A Dusting of Christmas Snow

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This is the final post (most likely) for this year at the Jerx. In January I will be completing the next book, so there will just be a few posts here and there on this site. Then I’ll be back to regular posting sometime in February. Soon after that I will be introducing a new support structure for the site which may or may not work. We’ll see how that goes.

William Daly Harrington has been kicked out of the GLOMM for being convicted of distributing child pornography. Harrington was a former police chief and part-time magician, as per this news report:

In September 2020, Harrington came under scrutiny after a deputy for the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s Offices followed up on a tip that a Facebook Messenger account associated with the police chief had disseminated child porn in correspondence with another account.

Harrington, who used a “fictitious” Facebook profile — and the pseudonym “Stella Carlson” — to send images of minors engaged in sexual acts, was caught after investigators linked the email associated with the fake account to an entertainment company Harrington owned. At the time, Harrington, who served as East Helena’s Police Chief, and also performed at events as a stage magician, owned “Magic Man’s Mobile Dj,” charging documents show.

As of now, this website still lists his entertainment services. It states: All shows are considered "G" or “PG” rated and are suitable, or customizable, for all age groups.

So, unlike his computer hard-drive, all his shows are PG at worst. And can be customized for all age groups. The ad is written in such a way that he desperately wants you to know that you CAN bring your pre-teens to the show. This was our first clue the guy was a creep. You know what magician I’d trust around my kids? The one who’s like, “Nah, my shows are for adults only. I’m not a fucking clown.”

I like this bit of info too:

Wow. 10 whole miles? That’s some real commitment to the job. You know for a fact this guy would drive 12 hours to install a hidden camera in the bathroom of a cub scout jamboree, but if your gig requires more than a half a gallon of gas to get there, he’s not interested.

The best way to force something on any site is to use the Inertia app by Marc Kerstein. It’s so simple and so straightforward. It exactly matches the way you might “randomly” select a something on a website if you were doing it for real. With no preparation you can go to any site on your phone (as long as that site involves some scrolling) and force a line of text or a picture or whatever. (Check out this video to get an idea of how it works.)

I don’t know if Marc has launched this officially, but you can now get Inertia Pro in the app store which adds a bunch of new features, including an integration with his app Xeno that allows you to do the Inertia force on Xeno sites on the spectator’s phone (either remotely or in person).

You’ll need the Xeno app to do a spectator’s phone version. But Xeno is absolutely another app of Marc’s worth having. While Inertia is a forcing app, Xeno is an app that allows you to know a spectator’s free choice. In recent months, a user named Dan R. has added a bunch of interesting lists to the Xeno app which give you a number of intriguing subjects to “mind read” (including one related to the What3Words site I mention in this post). If you have Xeno and haven’t checked the additional lists out recently, you should do so.

If this sounds like a commercial, it’s not. Just a heads up. I believe Inertia Pro will be going up $15 in the near future. So if you’re interested in it, hop on it now.

I really like the look of The Giraffe Switch by Kyle Littleton.

I doubt I’ll get it because I hate learning hard shit, and this is apparently at least somewhat difficult. But I thought it deserved a shout-out because it looks really good.

Speaking of that, I made a decision a few years ago not to bother with any sleight that requires more than 10% of my concentration. While this cuts a lot of sleights and tricks out of my repertoire, it doesn’t make a dent in the thousands of tricks I can still choose to do. I think the worst thing that can happen when showing someone a tricks is when they realize that for a brief moment you’re not present—that you’re focusing on something else. So I try to eliminate that possibility from my performances by not having sleights or moves that will take me out of the moment.

This is not a cool thing to admit in magic. You’re supposed to get off on mastering hard moves. But I hate practicing. I like performing. You don’t need to apologize for that if you feel the same.

And speaking of sleights. I had mentioned many years ago that I was looking for a good lotion to give my hands a bit more tackiness when executing card sleights. My hands have very little moisture to them, and sleights that used to be simple when I was younger (and, apparently, dewier) can be damn near impossible. For the first time this year I tried Chamberlain Golden Touch. This was apparently Dai Vernon’s recommendation for the dry hand issue, and that guy was pretty much made of crepe paper by the time he passed away, so if it’s good enough for him, I figured it was worth a shot. And I have to say that it’s probably the best thing I’ve found so far for the issue. It doesn’t work as well as I would hope, but it works better than anything else I’ve tried so far. I think it all comes down to your own personal chemistry, so it might not work for you, but if you have dry hands you may want to give it a shot.

Sometimes if I’m watching a lecture by a left-handed performer on my computer, my brain doesn’t feel like flipping everything around in my head. I know left-handers have to do this all the time with right-handed performers, but I don’t, so I’m not used to it. So when this happens, I just flip the video instead.

Here’s how you do that using the VLC media player (which is really the only media player you need to have).

From the menu bar go to Window

Then:

Video Effects
Geometry
Transform
Flip Horizontally

And you’re all set.

Obviously this reverses everything on the screen, so it’s not ideal for learning certain effects. But for card tricks I find it to be helpful.

I’m not someone who “believes” in mystical or occult subjects. But they’re fun to use in performance because concepts such as “fortune telling” or contacting the spirits or whatever are so well understood by the general public. So you don’t have to really lay any groundwork. You’re playing with ideas they’re already familiar with.

Here are a couple products I’ve had some fun using in performance since I purchased them earlier this year.

Blue Bird Lenormand Fortune Telling Cards

38 Cards that combine fortune telling, numerology, an oracle deck, and some standard playing card elements as well. That’s a lot of types of information, and a lot of options on each card. And I like that they’re standard poker size.

Tabula Mortem

This combines a Ouija board/spirit board with pendulum work. And it adds some additional symbolism you may find a use for as well.

Just be careful. These boards are nothing to play with. If you don’t know what you’re doing you might unleash a lot of negative spirit energy.

Just kidding. Do whatever you want with them. If fucking around with these things without knowing what you’re doing was really dangerous, my ass would have been possessed about a dozen times already.

Both these items can be found on Amazon.

This is going to sound psychopathic, but it’s something I’ve been doing this year and enjoying in a way I hadn’t expected. This has nothing to do with magic, but you may get something out of this idea regardless. What I’ll do is I take a movie and—instead of watching it all at once—I watch it over the course of a couple weeks. The first day I watch one minute, then next day I watch the next two minutes, the day after that I watch the following three minutes. And so on, adding a minute each day. Most movies can be finished within 15 days at this pace.

If you say this sounds insane, I wouldn’t disagree with you. And it’s certainly not how the person who made the movie intended it to be watched. But it gives you a lot of time to process and think about the movie. And the movies I’ve watched this way have stuck in my mind much more completely than the ones I’ve watched straight through. I don’t know that that’s really any justification to do this, but I thought I’d mention it as maybe one of you will find some pleasure in this as well.

Hey everyone. Have a great Christmas and New Years! Holy hell, 2022 is almost here. I hope for all of us it’s our best year ever.

Two Early-Stage Ideas

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Here are a couple routines I will be trying out over the holidays. The ideas are still in the early stages. But there’s no reason these shouldn’t be workable.

First is a variation on my trick The Look of Love, which I wrote about here and here.

Instead of the patter used in that trick, I’m going to tell about my friend who is a painter and who likes to have his paintings named via the intuition of a stranger. (Or something like that.)

Then I’m going to have the person for whom I’m performing blindly come up with a name for the most recent painting he worked on by combining a noun with a visual adjective.

Then I’m going to text my “painter friend” to see if he accepts this name for his new work

His reply is going to say something like, “I think that’s the perfect name. Check out the photo I gave you.” Then I’ll take an envelope from my wallet, tear it open, and remove a photo of a painting where the chosen name seems to fit incredibly well.

To do this, I’ll be using the same basic method as The Look of Love. But to create the image I’ll be using an app called WOMBO Dream. This is an app that uses AI to create artwork based on a title you suggest.

Unlike the AI writing rabbit-hole I fell into earlier this year on this site, AI created paintings are bad in a way that aren’t too distinguishable from real art.

I will either use a wingman to help with this trick, or, during the course of “texting” my painter friend, I’ll create the picture (takes 5-10 seconds). Download it and crop out the “Dream” branding. Then print it in preparation for the wallet load. It sounds like a lot, and maybe it will feel that way. If so, I’ll get a buddy to help me out, so I can do it without going on the phone at all.

Sometimes you have to do a little work to see that the artwork works well with the title. It’s not completely obvious every time. But I don’t think that’s a negative.

Here is some of the artwork created by the app, based on some noun and adjective titles.

Green Volleyball

Tall Blender

Golden Monkey

Another thing I plan on testing is a trick using this tactile illusion as the jumping off point. (Thanks to JM for tipping me off to this)

I will start with the illusion part, which I think will be pretty interesting on its own. And then I will take it a step further with a more impossible conclusion.

So this illusion creates a connection between this slime hand and their actual hand. I will follow that up with some version of ashes on palm. I will tell them that now that their mind is “primed for a connection” between a fake hand and their real hand, we can manifest some more intense phenomena. Cigarette goes under the slime hand. “Do you feel the heat?” Blah, blah. Turn the slime over, showing the ashes underneath. Then reveal the ashes on their own hand.

Sometime in the new year I’ll let you know how these turned out.

The Gift Raffle

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I want to start this post by noting that this coming Wednesday is going to be the last regular post on The Jerx for this year. January I am off, but I will stop in occasionally with some updates or to make fun of whatever goofball shit Joshua Jay is up to.

For supporters of the site, a reminder that the new schedule for the book release has the book coming out in springtime. I’m guessing April-ish, but I will keep you updated. Also, there are two more issue in the current volume of the newsletter. One will come out at the end of December or beginning of January, and the last one in the late February/early March time period.

Joe Mckay sent in this idea for a Christmastime effect. I like it.

Have a present addressed to somebody.

Then wrap that present inside more wrapping paper that has no label on it.

Gather a bunch of friends and/or family.

Have the present covered in Post-It notes. Each Post-It note has a different name of it (of one of the people gathered in the room).

Remove the Post-It notes and fold them up.

Place them inside a Karrell Fox Switching Envelope to mix up the names. [Joe suggested an envelope mentioned in Karrell Fox’s book, “Another Book.” But you can use any type of switching envelope, bag, box, etc.

Have a name chosen at random(?).

This is the force name of the person who the present is actually for.

They open the wrapping paper and find inside a present inside that is addressed to them.

The only changes I would make is that I would have everyone remove their own name from the present and drop them in whatever the switching vessel I’m using is.

And rather than having a present labelled specifically for the person I’m forcing, I would try to have a present that would only make sense for the person I’m forcing. To me it’s slightly more magical if your 14-year-old niece wins the “gift raffle” and the gift just happens to be a signed t-shirt from her favorite band, or something like that.

In that way I feel like the mentalism aspect is actually stronger because it feels less presentational. There is no, “Aha! The random slip matches my prediction!” They’re not choosing a slip to see if it matches the tag on the present. They’re choosing a slip to decide who gets the present. And just by coincidence it’s the perfect gift for that person. If, afterwards, one of your big, burly 55-year-old uncles asks you, “If I had won, what exactly did you expect me to do with a size-small, signed BTS tour shirt?” Then you just tell them you don’t know. That you just had “a feeling” that was going to be the perfect gift for whoever won the raffle.

Or you could play up your “powers” to a more absurdist level. After your niece’s name is drawn, you rest a hand on the still unopened present and act like you’re concentrating deeply for a moment. After a little bit you snap out of it. “Okay,” you say, “it’s ready for you now.” As if you are somehow changing the gift in the box to match the chosen recipient.

If someone asks anything about how you did it, you ask them if they really want to know, and then you pull them aside and say dead seriously, “You know that song, ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’? Well, it’s based in reality. Santa loves the ladies. My mom didn’t just kiss him though. She fucked that fat slob silly. He’s my dad. And I have some of the Christmas magic in me. That’s how I did it. Please don’t tell anyone.”