Dear Jerxy Week - Day 1: YouTube

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I have a big backlog of questions in my email. So this week I’m going to burn through one each day, now through Friday.

Are there any youtube reviewers or other magic channels that you follow? —KB

Short answer: Nope.

Longer answer: I don’t subscribe to any magic channels. The magic channels that are made for laypeople are completely unwatchable to me. David Blaine turned the camera on the audience and it was revolutionary. But now so much of it is just obviously fake reactions. Like, look at this dipshit who has coached people to react to a trick that they can’t see from where they’re sitting.

Magic is already fake. Watching people fake reaction to fake tricks makes zero sense to me as a form of entertainment.

As far as the youtube channels that are geared towards other magicians, I don’t have any that I regularly watch, but I’ll check some out from time to time.

I find most of the magic review shows kind of useless. I don’t get the sense that many of them have actually tried the products they’re reviewing. They don’t seem to have many insights that come from performing the trick.

The reviewers who are more deferential to the magic companies seem to get more products to review. So it incentivizes reviewers to be positive. I don’t mind positive reviews. I have a monthly newsletter that is only positive reviews. But the reviews in that newsletter come from digging through new and old releases and trying things out and seeing what people are responding to. Not from a quid pro quo with the magic company.

A review channel with live performances has the potential to be the most useful, but I don’t think it helps when you’re performing for the same one or two people each time. First, it burns them out on magic. Second, they learn their “role” is to be the astonished person. So it can be difficult to tell if they’re genuinely very fooled or if that’s just what they think is being asked of them.

Ideally a review show would have live performances performed for random people. Of course, that would be a ton of work, which is why nobody (that I know of ) does it that often.

So yeah, I’m not a huge magic review consumer. If I want someone else’s opinion, I'll usually look for some sort of consensus on the Magic Cafe.

Here are some channels I check out now and again:

Lloyd Barnes - Lloyd is a super creative guy and a master at creating gimmicks that produce amazing looking effects. I feel he’s in a bit of a difficult spot because I believe he has a real love for the art, and I think he’d also love to have a really big social-media following. I’m not sure those things go together. To get a following on social media you usually have to expose tricks (even if you don’t, people will do so in the comments). Is there anyone who has built a big following just performing tricks? I don’t really know.

I think Lloyd does his best to walk the line. Yes, he “exposes” a lot of tricks on his channel, but from what I’ve seen, it’s mainly tricks he’s created himself. And often they're tricks that were almost designed to be exposed. They might require a set-up that would be difficult to get into in an actual performance, or a gimmick that wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny in the real world.

I enjoy checking out his site from time to time to see the work of someone who is creative in a way that I’m not at all.

Craig Petty - If there’s a trick you’re interested in and you want to see a performance of the trick other than the official demo, Craig’s youtube is a good resource for that. Craig reviews a few tricks a week and almost always demos the trick (or his son does). Whether you agree with Craig’s take on a trick or not, getting an un-cut performance that’s not officially sanctioned by the people putting out the trick is valuable. So searching his archive for a trick your considering is a good way of getting another perspective on it.

Murphy’s Magic - To keep up with the mainstream new releases.

They also post an effect on Saturday for free although I haven’t taken a deep dive into them yet. The control I mention in the last post is great. Lloyd Barnes’ effect from this weekend where he turns sugar into instant coffee is fun too.

Unbiased Magic Reviews - I don’t really have similar taste to this guy, and our performance styles and personalities could not be any more different. But he puts more thought into his reviews than most and he digs deeper into more obscure resources. So even though we’re not necessarily on the same wavelength, I still enjoy hearing his thoughts and will check out his channel from time to time.

Carl Irwin - I recently came across Carl’s channel after featuring a couple of his magic offering’s in the newsletter this past year as well as reviewing his $TNR effect earlier this year. I’ve only watched 8 or 10 of his videos so far. They’re not the type of thing you’re going to binge. Carl has a number of longer-form videos on effects and techniques that are of interest to him. He’s not chasing viewers and trying to do what’s popular. I think that’s probably what I enjoy most about his videos. Watching someone discuss their areas of interest is soothing to me. Watching people discuss what they think other people want to hear about turns me off. His philosophy doesn’t exactly overlap with mine regarding everything in magic. He’s more focused on traditional performing situations. But I don’t mind that. I probably prefer it. I like hearing about the paths people are on with their magic regardless of if it has anything to do with what I’m writing about. As long as they’ve given it some thought and they’re just not thirstily following some trend.

There you have it. If you know of any other worthwhile youtube channels, especially any niche ones with a unique approach to things, let me know.

Two Dope Freebies

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Here are two free items that you should definitely check out if you haven’t yet..

The Novara Control by Ollie Mealing

This card control from Ollie Mealing is really great. The selection is tossed into a spread of cards. The cards are gathered up, and the selection is on the bottom of the deck. I think this looks just about perfect. It’s very casual and hands-off (to an extent) and relatively easy to perform.

If you gather the cards inward and pull the deck off the table towards yourself, you could let the bottom card flip off your thumb into your lap and hand the deck out for shuffling (leaving you free to fold the card into quarters, stuff it in a wallet, or whatever).

This would have fooled me. Not that I’m some genius or something. But I usually have a good radar for something happening. Watching this control, my radar wouldn’t have gone off.

TimedOut by Marc Kerstein

TimedOut is an iPhone only app that can be used as an “index” of up to six outs. These outs can be something that was apparently written/drawn in a drawing app, or they can be photos or screenshots. The out can even even appear in your real camera roll (back dated up to a week ago).

You could, for example, tell someone your baby is demonstrating psychic powers. Ask them to think of an ESP symbol, and then show them that you took a picture of your child a few days ago, and smeared in feces on the wall near their crib is the ESP symbol they’re thinking of. “I need to smother him with a pillow before his powers become to great.”

The cool thing about TimedOut is that you don’t have to touch the phone after the out has been identified. So the phone can be on their hand, face down. And then you could… I don’t know…ask them to imagine blood spurting out of one of the holes in their body: eyes, ears, nose, mouth, anus, penis or bergina (spelling?). When they turn over the phone, there is a photoshop mock-up of them with blood shooting out of that orifice.

And, unlike the examples I’ve given here, TimedOut can also be used for effects that aren’t related to stuff coming out of people’s bodies.

You don’t need an Apple Watch or another phone or a remote control or anything along those lines. The phone is out of your hands and you don’t touch it again. There’s no voice recognition or anything like that.

TimedOut is a cleverer version of the Draw Cycle function on the Jerx App. It was, in fact, what inspired Draw Cycle. Draw Cycle is a simpler idea and you can use more outs, but it requires you to be holding the phone and be able to see the screen. TimedOut has definite advantages and it’s fucking free!! Grab it..

E.D.A.S.

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I’ve received a few emails asking about the first trick I’m releasing that I mentioned in Monday’s post.

There’s not too much to say at this point, but it’s going to be the first in a series that will be known as E.D.A.S.

E.D.A.S. is a combination of a couple of different ideas.

In the past, I’ve written about the Wonder Room concept. A “Wonder Room” is any type of permanent display that can lead into a performance. In Book #4 I wrote about 10 or so different types of displays you might have in your home. One of the simplest ones was a display of different decks of cards. If you have some interesting decks out on display, then perhaps someone you’re with will be drawn to one and from there you can segue into a trick. This is, perhaps, the simplest “Wonder Room” concept, it can be taken in much more interesting directions as covered in that book.

I mentioned in a previous post about a friend of mine who has every deck on display stacked in some way so someone can bring him any deck and he can immediately get into a very stack-heavy trick. While laypeople do understand the idea that a deck can be prearranged in some way, I think they’re less likely to think this randomly chosen deck is prearranged. So this is a way to take advantage of people’s belief that you probably wouldn’t go to the effort to have dozens of different decks prearranged in some way.

I had my deck display set up in this manner for a couple of years. And I would have people go grab a deck that looked interesting to them. Then, if I felt like it, I could go right into the trick that the deck was stacked for (and if not, I could go into something else).

But what I noticed was that people were rarely drawn to anything that looked like a normal deck of playing cards. So if I had 40 decks in my display, they were almost always bringing me one of the same four or five boxes that seemingly housed something more unusual than a standard deck of cards. “What are these ones?” they’d ask, and bring me over something unusual. They wanted the story behind the cards and why I had them.

For example, I love the cool mid-century aesthetic of the Fulton line of playing cards. But as much as I like them, the average layperson isn’t drawn to them asking themselves, “What’s this all about?” They know the story behind those decks already. They’re just playing cards.

Noticing the sort of decks people were drawn to, I began to consider the idea of stacking my display with only such decks.

It would be a different kind of Wonder Room deck display. Instead of a bunch of regulation decks of playing cards, each stacked for a different trick. It would be a bunch of interesting decks of cards of some atypical type. Each deck could prompt the question, “Why do you have this?” The decks wouldn’t just be set for a trick, the decks would be set for a story.

E.D.A.S - Every Deck A Story

So someone might go over to my display and pick out a deck of stock photography samples, and I could tell them the story of the subliminal influence of visual imagery that this guy demonstrated for me with these cards. And we could try it out and see just how imperceptibly they could be manipulated too.

Or they might pick up a deck of children’s flashcards and ask me why I have them. And I can tell them the story of how I first learned the basics of mind reading. And how, just like when someone is learning to read words we break it down to the fundamentals, you essentially do the same thing when learning to read thoughts. These cards are a way to practice beginner-level mind reading, do they want to give it a shot?

Or perhaps they’re drawn to a raggedy-looking nudey deck of cards. I can tell the story of finding those cards in the woods when I was a kid. And how normally I wouldn’t hang onto something like that into my adulthood. But there’s something really unusual about these cards.

The trick I’m coming out with later this year is going to be the first in the Jerx: Every Deck A Story series. Each deck is going to be something other than a standard deck of regulation playing cards. With the tricks I’ll be releasing, as well as other effects that are commercially available that fall into this category, you could have a whole array of these unusual decks. And rather than having a display of dozens of decks of cards which you use to do random tricks. You’ll have a display of dozens of different stories. And each one will allow you to pull your friend into the story by demonstrating the particular weird phenomena that’s only possible with these unusual cards.

A Note to New Readers

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As usually happens, I got a bunch of emails over the holiday break from new readers. I’m not sure why it works out that way. Maybe people just have more free time which leads to them stumbling over this site. Or I know some people find the site through Joshua Jay’s, “How Magicians Think.” So people who get that book for Christmas or Hanukah often end up here. Whatever the reason is, new readers come to this site and there is just a mountain of content and they’re like-

So they write me an email and ask me where they should start, and I don’t really have anything to say besides, “Start at the beginning and read until you’re sick of it.”

But I decided maybe I could write a post about where this site is 7.5 years in that I could direct people to in order to see if taking the plunge into the site will be a worthwhile endeavor for them. I had one guy write to me once and tell me he spent 5 hours a day over the course of a few weeks working his way through the site. I wrote back to tell him that I hope it was a good investment of his time. Never heard back from him. Oh well!

For new readers, I would say the heart of this site is one person’s exploration of concepts related to Social Magic. There are, of course, many tangential topics covered here, but that’s the main thrust of it.

What is Social Magic?

You could say Social Magic is defined by the audience and the setting. Social Magic is an unpaid performance for friends, family, or people you’ve just met, done in casual environments.

You could say that, but it’s not really accurate. Lots of people perform for Aunt Becky at the dinner table and do so like they’re in the parlor at The Magic Castle.

What I’m talking about with Social Magic is an attitudinal approach where the magic is presented as part of an interaction (real or fictional) and not so much a PERFORMANCE.

I don’t think this social magic style is the “right” way to perform for friends and family. It’s just the way I’m comfortable with.

Is it right for you?

Consider these two scenarios:

Scenario One

We’re hanging out at my place. I say, “Hey, I want to show you a trick. These are three Morgan silver dollars. You know they say ‘Time is Money’ and also ‘Time Flies.’ So that must mean money flies as well. With just a click of my fingers, a coin goes from my left hand to my right.” And then I make the silver dollars jump back and forth between my hands.

Scenario Two

We’re hanging out at my place. Three Morgan silver dollars are sitting on my coffee table. “What are those?” you ask.

“Oh, they’re called Morgan silver dollars. They’re over 100 years old. I was testing out this concept I read about once in an old magic book. This guy I know let me take a look at it, but I couldn’t make any notes, so I don’t really have it down perfectly. It’s this coin trick, but it doesn’t work with pennies or quarters. Something about the weight of these coins and the composition of the metal…the way it reflects?…I don’t fully understand it. Actually, maybe you can help. Tell me if this looks unusual from your perspective.” And then I make the silver dollars jump back and forth between my hands.

Scenario One is a traditional type of close-up performance. Scenario Two ramps up to the trick in a way that feels more natural to me. And I find people tend to be more receptive to this sort of thing—at least the type of people I hang out with—than they would be if I were to tell them straight off, “I’m going to perform a magic trick,” and then I use a bunch of canned patter.

But the most important thing is your comfort level. If you’d feel more comfortable with a traditional performance style, then do that. For me, that sort of performance feels stilted and misplaced in casual situations. But if you feel more at east with that, I’d stick with it.

Scenario Two is a sort of rudimentary example of a few of the techniques I’ve shared on this site, somewhat clumsily jammed together. (Specifically those techniques are: Hooks, Peek Backstage, Cast, presenting yourself as someone with an interest in magic, and eliminating certainty). If something like Scenario Two feels right to you, then you might be interested in the concepts I have related to performing socially. If not, then you may still enjoy going through the site, but I don’t know if it’s worth the time investment just for the other goofball content.

Another thing I’m a big believer in is straddling the line between fiction and reality. This is something that seems to throw new readers off and lead to a lot of questions. When people perform magic in casual situations they usually fall into one of two camps. They take things very seriously and try to come off as if there’s something legitimately special about them or their abilities. Or they play it off like they’re just screwing around and this is all trivial. I think the former position is corny. And I think the latter position keeps people from really connecting to the experience.

I prefer an attitude that suggests, “Yeah, we’re just screwing around, but let’s still fully engage in this moment.”

Often readers don’t get this. Why put effort into something you don’t really want them to believe? Why would you seduce someone you don’t want to fuck?

It’s called “charm.” You’re creating a fantastical moment. Not so it can be believed. But so it can be enjoyed to the fullest. That’s the reason you’re putting the energy behind it.

If this approach to magic doesn’t speak to you, that’s perfectly fine. But if that’s the case, you don’t need to do a deep dive into this site. I would just check it out every now and again and see if you’re connecting with the particular topic being discussed.

However if you are on a similar wavelength, get reading, you have a lot to go through.

Mailbag #78

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I was reading one of your recent articles on the "everyday carry," in which you wrote:

"But if [the psychologist] starts pulling out little props and objects from her pocket that were only there so she could demonstrate these things, would that not feel a little different to you? Wouldn’t you think, “Oh…she really wanted to do this thing. She was prepared.” Would that strike you as mildly desperate?"

When you break into story (receiving packages from your white wand book club that knows which book you subconsciously want), and it's clear during (and definitely after) the trick that it's prepared, why doesn't this come across as "you really wanted to perform this, you went to the trouble of mailing packages" - mildly desperate as well?—RK

Think of it like this, imagine I just met you and I said, “I want to read you a poem I wrote.” That could easily come off as weird or pathetic.

But if we were dating and I said I’d written you specifically a poem, that would have a completely different energy to it.

This is the Duality of Advanced Preparation. I wrote about it back in 2018.

When we talk about our Every Day Carry, we’re generally talking about the things we have on us that allow us to perform in a spontaneous-seeming manner. (That’s not how everyone uses the term “EDC,” but that’s the useful way to use the term. Because if your only definition of “EDC” is that it fits in your pocket, that’s not a super helpful designation.) To maintain spontaneity you don’t want to seem overly prepared for the moment.

But the “Romantic Adventure” style is designed to feel like an immersive fiction. When performing in that style for friends and family, the preparation can be a benefit.

As I wrote in the post linked above:

The duality (and dichotomy) of advanced preparation is that—when performing for strangers—it minimizes their role in what’s going on (i.e. “well, he was set to show this to anyone he happened to meet tonight”). But—when performing for friends and family—it can emphasize their role in the effect and their importance to the experience.

I was home for the holidays and had access to my parents pool table and was able to perform Dead of Night Pool three times. Growing up with a pool table in my house I performed every different pool trick I could over the years DoNP is definitely the best of the batch. The first time I performed it I got a really strong reaction. But the 2nd and 3rd time when I performed it for [my friend and my cousin] they totally flipped and the reaction grew the more they thought about it. I’m surprised you didn’t save that for the book.

I also used the bar bet you mentioned in the last mailbag post. That went over really well too. Any chance you’ll write more on those kinds of bets/scams in the futures? —RC

Cool, I’m glad you got a good reaction from Dead of Night Pool. You’ve now performed it more times than I have. Since it requires such a specific performance environment, it wouldn’t make a good trick for the book.

I’m not a guy who has a bunch of bar bets ready to go at all times. I do have a few favorites. I tend to like the ones that have more of a “joke” feel to them. Where the satisfaction of the bet feels kind of like a punchline, but one that gives you a similar satisfaction to what you might get seeing a trick exposed. I don’t really like the ones where you’re moving around coins or toothpicks too much. I might do an issue of the newsletter that covers my favorites if I feel compelled to. I’ll think about it. The truth is, I don’t have that much to add to these types of bar bets, so my only contribution would be compiling my personal favorites. If there’s interest in it, I’ll do it.

What do you think about this new Ellusionist release from Aaron Alexander? Do you ever perform these types of tricks? —VC

I’ve played around with these types of effects in the past. I enjoyed performing them and people enjoyed experiencing them. But I don’t really do anything like it these days. It just doesn’t fit my style.

For these types of tricks to work, the spectator has to willingly go along with what you’re doing. Even if they’re not consciously making the choice to do so, on some level they realize they’re allowing the phenomena to occur.

When I perform for people, I want them to play along with the premise, but I actually want them to fight getting fooled. I think the strongest tricks are the ones that enchant people despite them having their guard up. This type of trick doesn’t allow for that type of good-natured antagonistic energy. So it’s not something that I would perform with any regularly, but I definitely see the appeal for people who perform a different style of magic.

My 2023 Magic Goals

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Well, here we are again. Another January has rolled around. Did you make any resolutions? Mine is not to strangle any more hobos down by the railroad tracks. Well, that’s not quite accurate. It’s actually to strangle fewer hobos down by the railroad tracks than in previous years. Progress, not perfection, people.

(And yes, you figured it out, I am the notorious RTHS - Railroad Track Hobo Strangler. The one you listened to that podcast about. Surprise.)

Here are my Jerx-related goals for 2023 (beyond the usual goals of getting the posts and the newsletters out on time).

Book #6

Book #6 comes out in October of this year. I’ve pretty much finished creating, performing, and testing the content for it, but nothing is written yet. I will be writing it over the next four to five months. And then another four to five months where the content goes from word documents on my computer to a fully composed and illustrated hardcover book ready to be shipped.

I’m going to do my best to meet that October deadline. I know that I’ll be able to hold up my end of things as far as getting all the components together. The unpredictable thing is the actual book printing, the supply chain, the shipping, and all of that. I’m pretty confident I’ve built in enough time even if those things are running slow, but I’ll keep you updated should there be any holdups.

Trick #1

2023 will see my first separately released physical trick. This has been harder than anticipated to get in the pipeline. And it’s not because the physical prop itself is difficult to produce. It’s more a matter of figuring out the logistics of how to go about pricing, producing, and packaging the product.

For the most part, any physical product I release that falls into the purview of the work I do on this site is going to be a limited edition that’s only available to supporters for a short period of time. So I can’t have the props made in advance because I have no clue how many I’ll need.

So what will probably end up happening is there will be an ad for the product in the monthly newsletter. People who are supporting at that time will have until the end of the month to buy it if they’re interested. At the end of the month, orders will be cut off. There will then be some waiting period while the props are manufactured and shipped on my end. So it may end up being like the products on TV when I was a kid: Please Allow 4-12 Weeks for Delivery.

Expect more details about the first trick release in an upcoming newsletter.

The Amateur At the Kitchen Table Reprint

The only book of mine I ever said would be reprinted was the softcover version of the Amateur At the Kitchen Table.

The expanded hardcover version is going to go from 40 pages to about 200. It’s going to collect the original manuscript and some related posts from the past seven years of the site. I plan to work on that later this year and release it in early 2024 for any supporters who are interested.

As far as my own personal magic goals, I have a backlog of about 160 tricks that I’ve purchased and never tried out. I know I’m always going to be somewhat behind on processing these tricks, but by the end of the year, I’d like to have no more than a dozen that I haven’t either dismissed (the majority) or added to my repertoire (and written up for the newsletter).

There are some other goals I’m hoping to accomplish as well, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise just yet.

What are your magic goals for 2023… put them in the comments below!

(I’m kidding. I don’t have comments. )

Until 2023...

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This is the final post until January. The supporter newsletter goes out on the 1st, as always, and posting resumes here on Monday the 2nd.

Chris Rawlins is giving away a short pdf with a trick that would be good for the holidays (or any time of year). It takes a classic technique that’s used to force a time and broadens it so you can force any number of things with it.

There’s a line from his scripting that I like, “Even if youʼre picking a gift for yourself, it should still be a surprise.” That justifies the process involved (or any process used to force a “gift” for someone).

I may not use this exact presentation described in his effect, but I can definitely see myself using the general concept in the future.

For details on how to get it you can check out this Magic Cafe thread.

I used to do the occasional feature here called Non-Magicians Talking Magic. I think it’s important to seek out what laypeople actually think, because so much of traditional magic wisdom is self-delusion. You have people saying things like, “Well, no one ever asks me to examine the deck, therefore, nobody is suspicious of the deck!” That’s like saying, “No one ever called me ugly… therefore I must be handsome!”

The whole idea behind testing tricks was an attempt to get people’s real thoughts on various tricks and techniques. As opposed to getting the nice response they’re conditioned to give as an audience member.

Another way to get some good insight into how they think is to listen to non-magicians talk about magic when no magicians are around.

With that in mind, my friend sent me a couple of clips from the ActionBoyz podcast. It’s a podcast that covers action movies from the 70s through the 90s, primarily. But they started off a recent episode discussing a trip to the Magic Castle.

This first quick clip talks about something I’ve hit upon a lot in the past, and that’s the notion that performing magic in a magician-centric way puts the audience in this awkward position where it seems like you’re looking to them for validation. It’s an unpleasant feeling to give an audience and it’s reason enough alone to avoid magician-centric presentations.

This next clip is just a good example of what really happens when people are used in an instant stooge capacity onstage. If you don’t think they’re immediately going back to the people they’re with and talking shit about what you did, you’re mistaken. Perhaps you’re okay with that in order to fool the rest of the audience, but you do know there are techniques you can use that will potentially fool everyone, yes?

I received an email asking me if I was going to be updating my non-magic recommendation site soon. I legitimately had no idea what they were talking about at first. And then I remembered I started a site called Dispatches From Marmalade Falls where I would write about non-magic stuff I enjoyed.

The reason I forgot about that site is I just have too many writing outlets. I have three related to magic alone (this site, the newsletters, and the book). Then I have two other regular writing outlets I do outside of magic, and another semi-regular one. Those are all professional writing obligations. So there is always something that takes precedence over just totally goofing off on that site for an audience of ten people or whatever.

But if I think of a way to schedule more time to write things up for over there, I’ll let you know.

Okay everyone, enjoy today’s winter solstice. For those who celebrate, have a great Christmas. Do something special for New Year’s Eve and start 2023 off right. I’ll see everyone back here in January.

Big, passionate Christmas kisses to you all.