A Quick-Start Guide to Entertaining Kids

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I’d rather have a job squeegeeing a slaughterhouse than have to work as a professional children’s entertainer. I like smart, chill people. Kids are the least smart, least chill version of people that we have. I get annoyed by an adult who looks at their cellphone when I’m talking to them or showing them something. Kids are far more easily distracted. And not necessarily by something as innocuous as a cellphone. They get distracted with seeing how loud they can scream, or the smell of their finger after sticking it knuckle deep in their buttcrack.

One or two kids at a time, I’m great with. But when it comes to groups, I can really only handle adults.

But I do know what kids like. And the thread that follows is a great quick-start guide to making kids laugh. Sure, you can read a full book by Silly Billy or Danny Orleans and really get into the weeds on entertaining children. Or you can just get a Forgetful Freddie and that trick where the peanut butter and jelly switch places and absorb the following concept and you’ll be 90% of the way there. The key is simply to act dumber than them. (This works for adults too.)

The Key to Jerxian Magic

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I will start this post with my standard refrain that I don’t like the term “Jerxian.” But I also realize that there’s not a better term at the moment to describe a style of magic that’s not really espoused in a lot of other places other than a blog called The Jerx.

If I had started blogging to discuss my ideas or philosophy regarding magic, then I would have come up with a label for the framework that didn’t reference me or this site. But that wasn’t my intention when I started this site.

Some people like my more humorous presentations (although most of what I do in real life isn’t necessarily intended to be “funny”), some people like my ideas about performing socially rather than in a theatrical manner, some people like the concept of immersive magic, or long-form tricks. And when they write me, they’ll use “Jerxian” to apply to all those different aspects.

I don’t consider any of those things to be my exclusive domain, of course. And it’s probably only some combination of those elements that is unique to me.

And thematically, I believe in having the broadest possible type of repertoire. Short tricks, long tricks, visual tricks, cerebral tricks, funny tricks, serious tricks, scary tricks, romantic tricks, tricks presented in an almost scientific manner, tricks presented in a fantastical manner, tricks that happen because of me, tricks that happen despite me, and tricks that I supposedly have no clue why they’re happening.

But there is one thing that is more or less universal to the magic I show people.

And that is this:

Seek congruency over believability.

I’ve talked about this in a lot of ways since the start of the site. But never so succinctly.

For example, just a couple of weeks into the start of the site I wrote:

If you want people to think what you're doing is real, you're a sociopath. Seriously, I think that's a pathetic mental disorder and I feel bad for you and worse for the people you perform for. And it's a poisonous attitude that has held back magic for centuries. If coming off as "real" is a priority for you, then what you're saying is, "I want to dupe dumb people and look ridiculous to smart people."

My goal is never to have them believe. My goal is to have them intrigued and enraptured and swept up in the moment, despite knowing it's not real. 

I think the audience who gravitated towards my site understood the first paragraph easily enough. Of course those weird incels who want people to think they have actual supernatural powers or even just superior skills of perception and psychological manipulation are fucking dingbats. And of course they reflect poorly on magic.

But that second paragraph is important to me too. How do you get people “intrigued and enraptured” in magic if you’re not going for believability?

You do this through congruency. You make the experience of the effect congruent so that people can get lost in it.

If you’re making coins travel between your hands, and trying to present this as something interesting and impossible, then making a bunch of corny jokes and accompanying it with a story about birds migrating or something is incongruent.

That’s not the way you would show someone something that was really interesting and impossible. You wouldn’t add in jokes or a story

That type of presentation might entertain people in the moment… but will it “intrigue and enrapture” them? In my experience, no.

The humorous element or the jokes should be intrinsic to whatever it is you’re showing them. If it’s not, I don’t think you should add those elements in.

If you can’t think of a context that makes sense for why you’re making the coins move between your hands, you don’t have to concoct some garbage about Star Trek and your hands being little transporters.

Instead, you can give a sort of “meta-presentation” about wanting to show them a trick. “There’s this classic technique in magic. But I think it may be more of an urban legend than a real thing. It’s supposed to make it look like small objects can go from hand to hand invisibly. I’ve been practicing it, but I can’t tell from my perspective if it’s legit. Will you take a look and let me know if it really looks like that?”

That’s a simple presentation, but it has the power to actually make people wonder what’s really going on. Can you (the magician) really not perceive this? It’s just sleight-of-hand, right? Or is there possibly something more to it?

If that sounds duller to you than the version with the Star Trek analogy and the hacky jokes, I think you have to ask yourself if you actually like magic, and if you think coins going from hand to hand is magical. Because what does it suggest if you think something is improved with a lame premise and bad jokes?

If you want to do funny tricks, the best thing to do is to take absurd premises very seriously.

“My dog can read my mind and it’s just… I don’t know… It’s really getting on my nerves. I mean, it bugs me that he can do it and it’s clear he thinks he’s so much better than me. Beyond that, it’s also just damn frustrating that no one believes me. But I can prove it. I’ll show you….”

That’s absurdist, and potentially funny (the more serious you take it, the better chance it has of being funny) but it’s still congruent with the situation where your dog can read minds. This is so much stronger than...

“My dog can read minds. That’s right… he can do… the imPAWSible!”

It’s not only a shitty joke, but it’s not something you would say in the “reality” of you having a mind-reading dog. So you’re undercutting the premise you’re trying to establish.

Forced humor is just one type of incongruency that undermines casual magic. Un-contextualized processes, props that look like they came from the magic store, props that are supposed to look normal but don’t, saying things with your tongue in your cheek, tricks that are easily searched online, unexaminable props, memorized patter—these are all things that are incongruent with whatever your premise is. They might not prevent you from fooling someone. But they’ll prevent people from getting wrapped up in the premise.

When someone makes a horror-comedy film set in the 1970s, they don’t want to have a bunch of continuity errors, bad CGI, boom-mics dangling into the shots, extras staring at the camera, choppy editing, zippers showing on the back of the monster’s costume, and modern cars in the shots. They eliminate these things not because they’re trying to convince people they’re making a documentary, but because these incongruencies take an audience out of the movie. The people making the movie don’t say, “Ah, it’s not a serious movie. No one really believes there’s a wise-crackin’ werewolf terrorizing Idaho, so what difference does it make?” No. They do what they can to pull you in despite that.

Eliminating incongruencies in your magic is not about being “believable.” It’s about giving people the best version of the trick. Not one where they constantly have to forgive the holes in the story you’re telling. But one where this unbelievable experience almost begins to feel real despite how impossible or fantastical they know it to be. If there is a Jerxian style of magic, this is the key to it.

Mailbag #102

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[Re: Visual vs. Cerebral]

Dig the framework you talked about here when thinking of presentations for tricks.

I definitely have encountered the issue of trying to hang too "meaningful" or cerebral of a presentation to a visual or quick trick.

Made me think about some nuance to the framework and some exceptions as well - the first example that came to mind was your presentation for David Stone's Hologram effect [See Love Letters #5]. You hung a pretty cerebrally heavy presentation around that very visual trick. But the nuance I think is that the visual moment was just one component of a larger series of effects and moments that fit within the premise. It's like a really visual moment can be really strong as a climax punctuation that's set up by more cerebral moments leading up to it and around it. —JT

Yeah, when it comes to visual magic, the simpler it is, the more you can rely on the visual itself to carry the weight of the performance without much additional presentation. Money appearing, a cigarette disappearing, a candle changing color, a chewed piece of gum going back to its unchewed and wrapped state—these are all so fundamental in their nature that you can probably only screw them up by hanging a cerebral presentation on them.

Those tricks tell the story by themselves. At most, they require maybe a sentence to tell the tale:

  • “Damn, I wish I had a dollar for the vending machine.”

  • “I’ve only found one way to keep myself from smoking.”

  • “These candles don’t go with this decor at all.”

  • “Can you believe I’ve been chewing the same piece of gum for 14 years?”

David Stone’s Hologram involves a sticker appearing on the back of a card, and then that sticker changes color.

It’s two really solid visual effects, but they’re both kind of devoid of any meaning unless you come up with some sort of purpose for that moment. And that’s likely going to require a lot more than a single sentence.

Once you’ve gotten out of the single-sentence realm, you’ve already sacrificed the power of a clean visual piece of magic. At this point, a cerebral presentation may be required to save the visual moment from seeming arbitrary. You may need to come up with a presentation that suggests something other than, “Well, I guess he has a special card that can make it look like a sticker appears and changes color.” (Or whatever the case may be.)

I was watching Ben Earl's "Brilliant Basics" and in the tips for card forcing section of the tutorial he mentioned an interesting piece of psychology. He mentioned when forcing a card on someone: saying that "it's OK if I see the card because it's not that type of trick" is a disarming ploy. Laymen might not know why else you'd need to "make them '' pick a card if the plot of the trick is not immediately obvious. 

I wanted to ask you what you thought about it/if you agree, and when you do the reverse psychology force for crazy reveals etc, do you look at the card or look away when forcing? —AFC

That’s interesting. Off the top of my head, I’m not 100% sure how that would be perceived, because I don’t know what spectators think when you say, “it’s not that kind of trick.” But I can sort of see where he’s coming from.

I will occasionally do something similar.

I used to force a card and then say something like, “And what did you get?” My theory being that me asking to see what they got only made sense if I didn’t know what they’d chosen. So, on some level, this was reinforcing the idea that the card was a free choice.

The issue with that is that sometimes, after the climax of the trick, a spectator would say something like, “Yeah, but you saw what I picked.”

Now, that shouldn’t make a difference if I have 100 tealight candles in the shape of the card they chose in the other room…

But still, you know if you actually perform for regular people, they will sometimes pounce on what they think is a weakness, even if it doesn’t really explain what they saw.

I think part of their thinking is, “Well, since he saw the card I picked, he knew if the right card was revealed in the other room.” And they see me knowing the card as me having the option to not complete the trick or to switch gears and do something else.

So what I might have been gaining psychologically with some people by asking to see the card, I was losing with other people who saw that as me now having more information than I should.

These days, if I want to use a line like that, I say something like, “And can I see what you got? Actually… no. Don’t show it to me yet. I want to be surprised.”

That way, I still get to plant the seed that I don’t know what the card is. But by stopping them from actually showing it to me, they can’t think back later and say, “Oh, but he knew the card,” and see that as some sort of flaw or weakness in the trick.

Coincidentally, I received two emails this week talking about the WikiTest app and both asked what I would do if the spectator noticed the word they thought of is not in the article. (Those who have Wikitest will know what I’m talking about).

I haven’t done WikiTest regularly for at least a couple of years now, and I never remember having that issue when I did. But, I think this could be a way to go if you’re concerned about it…

You have your friend look up their subject. Then you tell them to look at you and scroll down a little bit towards a random spot in the middle of the page. (You’re having them look at you so they’re not paying close attention to the layout of the page. But your rationalization to them is that you don’t want them reading too much and getting a lot of jumbled thoughts.)

Tell them to look at the phone and pick the first big word that jumps out at them, and then put the phone away.

You go on to reveal the subject they searched. Then it’s time to discern the word they’re “only thinking of.” Start with the first letter.

“It starts with an… N, I believe. Yes?”

“No.”

“Hmm… what did it start with?”

“An R.”

Look confused. “Okay… uhm… focus on the word again.”

Concentrate.

“Okay, I think I may have rushed you earlier. I’m sensing a disconnect of sorts. You might have misread a word. So I’m not sure if you’re actually thinking of a word from the article. But that’s okay, it doesn’t really matter. Just focus on whatever word you thought you saw.” You then reveal to them the word they’re thinking of.

If they go back and look at the article and they don’t see their word… well now it’s an even stronger trick. You didn’t read their mind of something they read. You read it of something they misread. A word that didn’t exist on the page. It only existed in their mind.

The weakness becomes the strength.

By having them scan to a random point on the page without looking, and then rushing them a little when they think of the word on the page, it’s unlikely they’ll notice the page is different later on. And by delaying that revelation until after the first one, there is even more time for them to forget any other details besides the word they saw. And, in fact, the idea that maybe they misread something or misremembered it won’t seem too far-fetched at that point. On top of that, having to ask for the first letter is almost justified because of this “disconnect” of the way their brain processed what they “actually” saw.

Dustings #97

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When it comes to the suit order for a stacked deck, a lot of magicians stick to the CHaSeD order—Clubs Hearts Spades Diamonds.

Some magicians go for the SHoCkeD order instead.

Those are both fine, but a little dull.

I would like to formally declare the suit order used by The Jerx and all subsidiary properties for stack work going forward is going to be CHoDeS.

Ollie Mealing has started a new free magic membership group.

You can sign up for it here.

Ollie’s material is always worth checking out.

He also has another project devoted to magician foolers which you can learn about here.

I guarantee more time has been spent these past few weeks debating about card indexes online than actually using a card index to entertain people with magic.

Sometimes the internet magic community is so fucking corny.

My Application for the Psychic Entertainers Association

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I received this email recently from Joe Diamond…

I loved your recent essays on the Haunted Key. I agree, it needs to be a spooky moment BEFORE moving on to something else.

That’s how I felt when I created this routine: 

It’s also why I felt it was fair game to teach online. The key is in Martin Gardner’s Encyclopedia of Impromptu Magic, and OTL is so old it goes back to slate writing in seances.

Well, within 3 days of being accepted into the “Psychic Entertainers Association” I was kicked out for making that video BEFORE I became a member… (they eventually let me back in and I eventually quit due to similar ridiculousness)

What was more baffling to me is how many of these crusty old men actually thought that some people in their audience would/could believe the Haunted Key is genuine PROOF of spirit contact, and my video could make their audiences hip to their con.

I’ll admit that I do feel like I get stronger reactions than the effect should normally get, but I also know I have a better handling of the effect than 99% of other magicians.

Especially with the drawing changing, it’s two things that add up something greater than the sum of its parts. And it’s been a worker for me, I’ve even done it over radio, and it sold over $2K worth of tickets from that single appearance (details in my Penguin Lecture).

But I’m STILL not going to be like these PEA weirdos who think that my audiences see it as anything OTHER than a spooky visual, as you said. I see it as a pendulum. Yes, it’s AMAZING when it moves in other people’s hands, but everyone has a feeling of what’s happening.

So yeah, it just went to show me how much I did NOT want to be in PEA…

—Joe

I do think that’s a better version of the Haunted Key. Having them hold the hand is a nice touch. I don’t think it eliminates the obvious solution, but it gives them a little more to consider at least. And Joe does a better job than most of making it look like the key is moving against gravity.

I’m not surprised the Haunted Key works well over the radio. In fact, the less you actually see the effect, the more impressive it sounds. Hearing, “The key moved in his hand without him touching it!” is much more impressive in the imagination than in reality. Just like hearing, “There’s a woman with really large breasts in the radio studio,” might conjure up images of this

Rather than this…

Now, I suppose if the P.E.A. has a rule of “no exposure,” that you can’t complain if they get upset with a youtube video that teaches a trick. No matter how non-secret the secrets may be.

But actually, Joe’s letter reminded me of a successful prediction I’ve made and I’d like to use this post as my application for the Psychic Entertainers Association.

Remember when people used to be worried about the youtube channel Scam School? A guy teaching simple magic tricks over the course of 15-20 minutes. First he would show a live performance in front of real people and then he would break it down and teach it. Exposure!

Oooh, don’t we all just long for the days of that type of exposure? Sure, you can debate that some secrets might have been “too good” or “too advanced” or “too not-public-domain (which is valid)” to share with the masses. But at least there was some effort and thought put into teaching the content. And someone watching would have to invest some time to absorb the secret. Brian Brushwood wasn’t literally just showing a trick and then showing the workings, as you often have people doing today.

And that is where my application for the PEA comes in. Over five years ago, I wrote that soon a day would come when using the idea of using magic to create a sense of wonder and mystery would be gone: “Or at the very most it will be this very brief moment that happens before the secret is immediately revealed.  Magic tricks will be almost like the set-ups to jokes. And learning the secret will be the punchline.”

At the time I wrote that, I received a bit of feedback saying that was nonsense. Saying that people got into magic to make it look like they could do something others could not. And that by immediately exposing the trick, they would be undercutting that notion.

But here we are, just a few years later, and there are numerous magicians on tik-tok and instagram and in other places who literally just perform a trick and then show the workings.

Thus, I have made a genuine psychic prediction and should be made a member in good standing of the Psychic Entertainers Association.(And my dues should be waived.)

A Torn Tweak

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Torn, by Daniel Garcia, is probably the best Torn and Restored card of all time. It’s a signed torn and restored card that looks nearly perfect and ends examinable. (A torn and restored anything that isn’t examinable at the end isn’t a “Torn and Restored” it’s a "Torn and Sort of Looks Restored.” Laymen know this.)

It’s not easy, but it’s not crazy hard either. It’s just some new movements for your hands to get used to, and there’s a lot of them because it’s a piece by piece restoration.

Here is my tip for learning tricks such as this. Don’t sit down one night and say, “I’m going to learn Torn tonight,” and try to force your way through it all and get it down in a night. It will look like shit, and you’ll be frustrated. Instead, tell yourself at the beginning of the month, “I’m going to learn Torn this month.” Then, every day or two, sit down with a cup of coffee or Ecto Cooler or whatever your relaxing drink of choice is and work your way into the routine just up until you get to something new to you. Then learn that one new movement or moment and end for the day. This way you get to build up the routine piece by piece, and you don’t get overwhelmed having to stick a dozen new “things” together as you learn a trick. You just learn it bit by bit.

I find this to be a relaxing and enjoyable way to learn more complicated tricks. It gives you a more intimate understanding of the material, too. It probably won’t take you a full month, but going into it with that in mind—and getting it done sooner—is a better approach than thinking, “I’m going to figure this out tonight,” and getting annoyed when you don’t.

[Note, supporters will be receiving my newest book soon. I also think this is a good way to go through a book. A chapter a day. Taking it slow and savoring it. Although, to be honest, I have a hard time doing that with a book I’m really enthusiastic about.]

Okay, here’s a tweak you can use for Torn that gives it some depth that goes beyond just the standard impossibility of a T&R trick.

On my coffee table sits this card…

My friend sees it and asks what it is. “Oh, just something I’ve been working on. Here, add your signature to it.”

I then perform Torn with this multi-signed card. Obviously, the gimmick used matches this card where necessary.

The idea being that I’ve been tearing and restoring this same card over and over again.

This has a practical benefit in that it gets them to sign in the area where you want them to, just because it’s the most clearly empty area of the card.

But it also has the benefit of giving this card some history. Like it’s been repeatedly destroyed and restored. And my friend is now part of the lineage of people who have witnessed this.

Usually when I perform magic for people, I want them to think it’s something I’ve never done before. But when the subject of the effect is destruction and reformation, I think there is something to be said for the idea that this happens over and over again.

You might think, “Okay… but doesn’t this suggest that maybe it’s some sort of special card? And that’s why you’re using this one card over and over?” Maybe, I don’t know. Even the concept of a “special card” would still be pretty magical. What would this “special card technology” be that allows paper to reweave itself together? I understand that issue, but for me, it isn’t a real deterrent to doing this.

Later, you can add a bunch more signatures to the card and then put it on your refrigerator. There it will serve as a Rep and a reminder of the trick for the person you performed it for (and it will look like you did it many more times). And it will also be a Hook for you to perform Torn for someone else. “Oh that? I’ll show you. But let me start with a fresh card. That one is getting pretty full.”

Visual vs Cerebral

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The most common question I get in my email is, “How would you present [insert some new trick that recently came out].”

Today, I’m going to talk about one of my first considerations when thinking about coming up with a presentation. My approach, generally, is to start by asking myself if a trick is visual or cerebral.

Visual - Coins disappear, cards change color, billiard balls multiply

Cerebral - The card they named is at the number they named, the Rubik’s cube they mixed matches mine, I predicted the word they merely thought of.

Of course, to a certain extent, most tricks are on a spectrum. The Rubik’s cube trick certainly has a visual element to it. It’s a trick where you are appreciating the effect with your eyes. But the impossibility of it is really something that takes place in your brain. Metal bending is mostly visual, but not completely so. An implied penetration (where you don’t see the object going through the object) may be right down the middle.

The best way to identify if a trick is purely visual is to ask, “Would this fool a monkey?”

If yes, then you have a primarily visual magic trick.

You don’t often have a monkey who is like…

Often, when people are getting into the style of magic I write about here, the mistake I see them make is they take a highly visual piece of magic, and they try to add a cerebral presentation to it. In my experience, it’s hard to make this work.

Visual magic is appealing to a very primitive aspect of our brain. Putting a cerebral presentation on top of it—which is appreciated by a more advanced part of our thinking—doesn’t really go together. It’s like getting a blow job while someone reads you a really good short story. It’s hard to appreciate both simultaneously. And you’re probably just going to be able to concentrate on the more instinctual pleasure.

For the most part, if I have a quick visual trick, I will not burden it with a “deep” presentation. That’s sort of the idea behind the Distracted Artist style. To eliminate the pretense of presentation entirely.

That said, if I do want to add some substance to a quick visual moment, I will do that by “front-loading” the presentation, so I can get it out of the way and the visual moment of magic can be undisturbed. For example, if we were going for a trail walk I might say, “Do you mind if we take a little detour. There’s supposedly an area a little ways off where some weird gravitational anomalies occur.” I get that part out of the way early, so later we can just walk a couple of minutes off the path and when I get there and a pinecone floats between my hands, I don’t need to give a big introductory presentation. This is also a better way to extend the magic of that quick visual moment, by setting it up hours or days earlier. This gives some more meaning to the trick but without dragging down the magic in the moment.

To be clear, I still think a presentation or context is absolutely necessary for cerebral tricks if you want them to be memorable. Visual magic is so primal in its impossibility that you don’t need to add too much for it to be memorable. But if you deal four aces into a square on the table and cover each ace with three indifferent cards and the aces go from each packet to gather at a central packet… that’s not something that’s going to be meaningful and memorable to people long-term unless you make it conceptually interesting by giving it a context they can relate it to. Otherwise, while they may enjoy it in the moment, the only thing they’re likely to remember about it a couple of weeks down the road is, “I saw a card trick.”

(One thing this post doesn’t address is a long-form, visual trick. Like a multi-phase coin trick where coins are appearing, disappearing and changing into different coins. I don’t have a ton of thoughts on these types of tricks because I just don’t like them that much. I think they diminish the impact of the visual magic by repeating it over and over. And I don’t think they work well with more immersive presentations either. Most of these tricks (not all) are in a kind of no-man’s-land for me where they don’t align with either the targeted visual tricks that I like or the intriguing cerebral ones.)