Emerge & See Contact

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This is a bad idea that you probably shouldn’t do. It comes to us by way of Eli “Quarter Horse” Bosnick.

Long ago, I posted another trick you should never do: Bill to Woman’s Vagina. That’s something I didn’t think anyone would actually ever try—most magicians can’t get close to a woman, much less a vagina—but I still put the disclaimer not to do it just so I didn’t get sued by some dumb oaf who tried it and ended up getting a bill riddled with god knows what up the vagina of the prostitute he pays to pretend to be his girlfriend.

This is an idea that may already be out in the magic community, but I haven’t seen it, nor has Eli. And, while I don’t think you should ever use this technique, I’m putting it out because at least if you read it from me, you’ll be reading it from someone who is straight-up calling you a creep if you misuse it, rather than someone who is like, “Here’s a good idea. Go nuts.”

Here’s the idea as Eli wrote it up to me…

So this peek/preshow thing is for a very specific situation that mentalists/magicians find themselves in quite a bit. You ask to borrow an  iphone, praying to whatever dead gods you worship that it picks up the nfc chip you hid wikitest or inject in only to discover that the phone is locked.

Now what usually happens at this point is you go “Oh it’s locked. Can you unlock it?”, they say “If you're a magician can’t you just guess the password” and then you fake a laugh while trying to kill Myke Philips with one of your three wishes. [A comment so inside magic that even I don’t get it.] Well THIS is what you can do instead. 

You swipe up. Tap “Emergency” in the bottom left corner of the screen, then tap “Medical ID” in the same place. You’ll be presented with a screen that looks like this:

Now I should point out a couple things: 

  1. That black spot is the emergency contact’s phone number. I’ve blacked it out in the screenshot for obvious reasons

  2. What you're seeing here is about the MINIMUM amount of information you’ll see here. Most med ID screens also include blood type, medications, allergies etc. The vast majority will also include birthday.

Best of all the chances that MOST iphone users don’t have this on their phone are relatively slim. Med ID is part of new iphone set up that very few people skip. Of the 10 people I called after figuring this out every single one of them had some information on there. 

There you have it. Any time you’re alone with someone’s phone, or you have some excuse to be futzing around with it in front of them, you likely have access to some information about them.

That information might be pretty basic. For instance, if I got a peek at Eli’s info I could later “intuit” his age, his wife’s name, and that he weighs as much as 1/4 of a horse.

Getting this info is, I think, sort of ethically ambiguous. But the problem becomes that the info could possibly veer into stuff that’s clearly none of your fucking business.

Here are the fields people might fill out in the Medical ID section…

  • Legal Name

  • Date of Birth

  • Medical Conditions

  • Medical Notes

  • Allergies & Reactions

  • Medications

  • Blood Type

  • Organ Donor

  • Weight

  • Height

  • Primary Language

  • Emergency Contacts

A more fully filled out ID screen might look like this:

Now, the truth is, you probably wouldn’t be very interested in the more sensitive data here anyways. At least, you wouldn’t be interested in those things for magic purposes. You probably wouldn’t be saying things like: “Yes… yes… it’s becoming clear to me now… I’m getting the sense you… hmmm…you take… Prevastatin. It’s all coming into focus for me now. You put it…wait, no… you don’t shove it up your asshole… you put it in your mouth, I’m sensing.”

So if you could control yourself and just do this to peek someone’s birthday and maybe get their spouse’s name or something like that, then I think that could be morally justifiable. That information is publicly available, and if you were to research someone to find those things out for the sake of a trick, I wouldn’t see an issue with that. So I don’t really have a problem with obtaining that information this way. But that’s assuming you can keep your eyes on those things and not go digging through their digital medicine cabinet.

Thanks to Eli for sharing this and empowering creep magicians everywhere!

Twenty Years

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20 years ago this week, a plucky, handsome, young upstart named me, went onto Blogspot, chose the worst color palette they had, and started a blog called The Magic Circle Jerk.

You can read the full story of that blog by scrolling wayyyyy down on this one to December 2015. That month tells the full story of that site through a daily advent calendar structure. (The old blog itself no longer exists.)

When that site started, a lot of my content was making fun of The Magic Café. That’s back when the Café was relevant. Well known magicians would post there and do monthly Q and As. There were other message boards devoted to magic, but none were as big as the Café. It was a perfect subject to write about because it was relatively popular and it was a total clusterfuck of a place. I don’t know that we’ll ever see the likes of it again.

At the time, my issues with the Café were always handled publicly. Their issues with me weren’t handled publicly. They weren’t even handled with me. They only talked about me and got hysterical in their private Café Staff section of the message board. Which is just as well. If Steve Brooks had ever written me an email and said, “Believe me… no one knows better than I the failures of the Café. You’re right that we shouldn’t have arbitrary standards that are applied haphazardly.” That probably would have been the end of The Magic Circle Jerk. And this site never would have happened. I never would have become the most prolific writer in the history of magic.

No, if that had happened, I’d probably be working at Cold Stone Creamery. Smoking fentanyl. Mixing the fentanyl into the ice cream with those little spatulas like I’m busting up a Heath bar.

Yeah, I’d probably be blowing any guy in the Cold Stone bathroom for $5 who says the secret phrase (“What that mouth do?”). Cold ice cream and warm spunk drying together on my apron.

Look, there’s no doubt things worked out for the best. I’m just saying things could have easily gone another way.

One of my favorite stories about the types of intellects behind the scenes at the Café is the Pornolizer Story. I don’t know if I’ve told this one before.

On January 5th of 2004, I was mentioning my New Year’s resolutions and I wrote:

My other resolution is not to make fun of Steve Brooks and The Magic Cafe so much. They look like they've made some recent changes that make the site actually pretty good. Take a look.

And “Take a look” was a link.

Now, to explain the joke, there used to be this site called The Pornolizer. (There still is, in fact, it just doesn’t work all that well these days.)

What the pornolizer would do is take any URL you put in it and spit out a version of the same site with a bunch of dirty words in it.

Here’s what this site looks like when pornolized.

The pornolizer no longer works very well. It was really designed around 2003 internet conventions. And at that time, it worked pretty well. All the links would work, and the design stayed consistent. But it was also just randomly putting in dirty words, so it was kind of clear there was no human thought behind it.

Now look, I’m going to make an exception, if you were born and your parents accidentally put your head in one of those machines from the 70s that scrambles an egg while it’s still inside its shell, and your brain has been whipped into a frothy lather, then MAYBE you would look at the “pornolized” Magic Café and not know that this was something done automatically and arbitrarily. But even then, you probably wouldn’t be fucking dumb enough to think I had gone in and edited every post on the Café. And yet that’s exactly what some of the staff there thought happened.

In their secret back-room forum, back in 2004, genius Scott Guinn wrote:

That’s right. He literally thought I had gone and “stolen content” and “made my own site” and not only edited every post on the Cafe, but also every site that was linked to from the Cafe. What a perfectly reasonable assumption.

Harry Murphy, a member of the Cafe “Staff” (and no-doubt Mensa as well) gives us his take…

Oh, come on, Harry. Be fair. With a quarter of a million posts on the Cafe at the time, if I had spent just 30 seconds reading and editing each post, then I could have gotten the whole site done in just 86 days of working 24/7.

Fortunately, “Grammar Supervisor,” Jon Gallagher comes in speaking some sense…

Actually, this was more insulting to me. The idea that I might spend three months of my life working on an alternate “dirty” version of The Magic Cafe from scratch makes me insane. But the idea that it would take me a fucking half hour to copy and paste a URL makes me sound damn near braindead.

Jon wasn’t done. He reached out to his lawyer.

That’s right! He suggested trying to get my site taken down as “child pornography.” Let me see if I can understand the logic here… Because the Cafe sometimes “refers to kids” then me putting the Café URL in this third-party site that randomly inserts words like “muff-muncher” and “finger-blast” into websites MIGHT fall under child pornography laws.

“Hey… what are you in for?”

“Me? I’m a pediatrician and I took naked pictures of my patients and sold them online. You?”

“I made a video of myself drugging and raping the little league team I coached. Hey… guy in the corner… what did you do?”

“I pornolized the Magic Café.”

What kind of person offers that as a suggestion to take down a magic blog? I would have loved to see someone try to take this to the “district attorney.”

But don’t fret, his “lawyer” had another idea if the child porn angle didn’t pan out.

Sadly, it never came to pass that any Café staff tried to “beat the holy snot” out of me. I would have loved to see that crew try.

To be fair to Steve Brooks, he never seemed to entertain these moronic ideas. There were a number of calls by the Café staff to sue me over my old site. But if he ever looked into it, nothing came of it. He probably just used those people to know what not to do. There are some people who are so dull and unsavvy that you’ll sometimes look to their advice to know which path to avoid. And I’m guessing anyone who volunteers their time to correct grammar for a magic message board falls squarely in that group.

So happy anniversary to Steve, the Café staff, and those of you who were there 20 years ago and somehow found me again after a ten-year absence.

Mailbag #103

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Hi Andy.  If you haven't seen The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar on Netflix, I highly recommend it.  I think it's something you would enjoy.  

In the film, the title character learns how to see "through" cards so that he can cheat at a casino.  There's a timeline in the film which could make for a great presentation for a marked deck.  Admittedly, 18 months to 10 years is a LONG time for the payoff, but it might just be the most extreme example of lengthening out a trick that you have often discussed in order to make the experience more wonderful and engaging.  

I won't actively use this framework, but if someone ever mentions the film in casual discussion, I will definitely be telling them that I've been working on something similar, but am only in my ________ month.  Much later, I could then show them that I have achieved the ability to "see without my eyes". —JR

Yeah, this is a great natural Hook that’s out there at the moment, especially if you have a Wes Anderson fan in your life.

“It’s based on a Roald Dahl story. But that story is actually based on some real techniques that were used by gamblers and psychics and stuff over 100 years ago. I’m looking into them now myself.”

A marked deck is probably too obvious a solution to use for such a routine. But there are plenty of other routines with a normal deck that you could frame as your ability to “see without your eyes,” I’m sure. Shuffle-Bored, for one.

And, in fact, Liam Montier was working on this 20 years ago with his release, Henry Sugar.

Of course… stopping at playing cards would be juuuusssst about the dumbest thing you could do with this premise. That’s where you should begin.

Ideally, you’re showing them various tricks from time to time that fall into this over-arching narrative. Then a few years down the line you hit them with a blindfold drive or some other “big” effect like that.

I'm not even sure if you're the right person to ask about this, but I feel like it's a situation you’re likely to have encountered so I'll give it a shot. I've been visiting a coffee shop near me pretty regularly for a few months now. Every time I go it’s the same barista and we’re friendly but just on a customer level. I know she's open to interacting with customers on a deeper level because I've seen her do it. But I haven't even asked for her name or anything and it's been months now and it feels weird asking for it now. I feel like if I could get past this point this would be a good place to perform for people occasionally. It just has that vibe. Any idea how to cross that boundary and ask for her name without it seeming weird that it's coming out of the blue now? Or how to avoid this in the future? When do you ask for a name usually or try to make a personal connection in these sorts of situations? —BM

If there's a coffee shop or a bar or a place along those lines that I see myself going to frequently, I'll usually ask someone's name the second time I see them. Asking for it the first time you interact with that person feels odd to me (unless you get engaged in a long conversation). But the second time I see them, my thought process is, "Well, if we're going to be bumping into each other, I might as well know your name." 

As for as how to ask for it, it would be strange to say, "I'll have a vanilla latte. And what's your name?"

Here's a good template... Ask for their personal opinion on something related to their role there. Then introduce yourself and get their name.

So, at a coffee shop, I might look at the menu and say, "Hmmm... I don't know what I'm in the mood for. What's your favorite drink here?"

The iced mocha.

"Ooh, that sounds good. I'll take that. Thanks... What's your name, by the way? I'm Andy."

Boom. Done. Simple. 

But now you're months deep and you're right, it might seem weird to ask for her name at this point. 

I'll tell you something I said once in a similar situation that worked well.

It was at a cafe in Brooklyn that I went to frequently. The barista I saw most often was this super cute Mary-Elizabeth-Winstead-looking girl.

I had been going there for maybe half a year, but this was at a time in my life where I wasn't as social, so I hadn't thought to get her name when I started going there. One day, I finally said, "I can't believe I've never asked, but what's your name? I feel I should know it. I see you more often than my girlfriend."

I didn't really plan out that statement, but it worked well. Mentioning "my girlfriend" suggested I wasn’t trying to pick her up (which I kind of was, because I wasn't really dating anyone at that point). And saying "I see you more than my girlfriend" implied a sense of closeness to the relationship—even though it had just been a standard customer/barista interaction prior to that. In the end, it worked. It cracked the seal and our interactions got friendlier going forward. We casually dated for a few months before she left to move across the country for some botany career. I don't really remember. 

So perhaps something like that might work. At the same time, you don't need to overthink it. You can just say, "Remind me of your name again?" This suggests you knew it at one point but it slipped your mind. Just don't be an obvious creep and you'll be fine.

What is the meaning of Rich Uncle Millionaire? I'm not getting something about that name. [For the higher level of support at the site.] —RC

You’re not missing anything other than it’s a semi-inside joke based on a misremembered reference by a friend of a friend 12 years ago.

My friend was in an improv group, and they were coming up with a name for the group. And while they were pitching names, one person suggested Rich Uncle Millionaire, which he thought was something he heard on the Simpsons. But he misremembered.

There was a character mentioned once called Rich Uncle Skeleton.

And they had the Monopoloy man on once, Millburn “Rich Uncle” Pennybags.

But he had confabulated the name Rich Uncle Millionaire. They thought the name was funny because of the redundancy. And so they would use it to refer to people who did any unnecessary expenditure of money, big or small. If you ask for the parmesan crust on your steak at the steakhouse, they might say, “Ooh la la, look at Rich Uncle Millionaire over there.” And that became something I picked up from them.

Now, when you’re naming your supporters, there are a couple different avenues you can take. You can choose a name that suggests a closeness and a relationship between everyone: The Family, The Crew, The Posse, The Brotherhood.

Or you can choose a name that suggests “we’re a bunch of badasses,” like: The Outlaws, The Mafia, The Renegades.

Or you can go with a pun name, based on the name of the site. “At the Jerx, our highest supporters are known as our Jerk-Offs.”

But I’m pretty anti-Online magic communities, so I came to the conclusion I didn’t want to use a name that suggested that sort of bond. And I think it’s corny when groups try to choose a badass name for themselves, like, “We’re the Marauders. We get together every Sunday to play role playing games and eat pizza.” And I didn’t want to call supporters Jerk-Offs.

The quality I wanted to emphasize in the naming of that tier was the one thing I know for certain about that group: these are people with $25 a month—the cost of dinner at a chain restaurant—to spend supporting a magic site. They’re able to afford a tiny luxury. Hence: Rich Uncle Millionaire.

Until November... [Updated]

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This is the final post of October.

This is also the final post of Season 7 at the Jerx. The final newsletter for Season 7 will be sent to supporters on the first of November.

If you’re a current supporter, you’ll also receive information in your email about staying on to support Season 8 (which will entail just keeping your subscription going) or cancelling your supporter slot (which will entail… well… canceling your subscription payment—it’s pretty straightforward, I guess). Season 8 will operate the same as season 7 did with the same rewards structure and scheduled releases.

If you’ve been on the waiting list for one of the full supporter slot for some time now (say, six months or more) you’ll almost definitely have the opportunity to grab a full supporter slot next month. As the end of the season is really the only time people drop off. I’ll keep you wait-listers updated on that.

Let’s see… what else. Oh if you’re a Rich Uncle Millionaire-Level supporter and have an ad for the final newsletter of this season, try to get it to me by the 28th.

New posting, and Season 8, begins on November 6th (remember, the new schedule is that posting begins on the first Monday of the month, not necessarily the 1st of the month).

Season 8 will again be an 18 months season and will take us to Spring 2025. Which will be… impossibly… the 10-year anniversary of this site.

If you planted an acorn on the day this site started, by the time the end of Season 8 rolls around, the tree would be… well… it would still be pretty small actually. That’s not a great example of the passage of time.

If you had a child when this site started, by the time the end of Season 8 rolls around, it would be “too old” for, like, half of the people kicked out of the GLOMM.

Crazy.

[Added Oct. 22]

If you’ve ever tried to learn Morse code, but struggled with it because the dots and dashes are so non-intuitive, reader Atticus X. has an interesting technique to learn it that is unlike any method I’ve seen before. It’s not the most direct method because it adds an extra “translational” step into the process. But I have a feeling it’s the type of thing—like memorizing a deck with songs and rhymes—where the material that supports the memorization will eventually fall away, and you won’t need it anymore. The method is in the form of a pdf of a children’s book.

He’s giving it away for free if you join his Propless Mentalism facebook group before November (it will be a few dollars afterward). You know I don’t just promote anything someone happens to be giving away for free unless I think it’s good. In this case, I think it’s probably a good learning tool. Although it’s hard for me to say, became I already know what it’s trying to teach. But I get a sense this could be useful for people who find it hard to learn Morse code because it’s too abstract—and it may be an easier way to get a non-magician friend on board to learn it.

This is odd. I found this strange piece of paper outside of Joshua Jay’s apartment the other day. It seems like a note he was writing to himself about something?

I wonder what it means. 🤔 Well… I guess we’ll never know.

I received a lot of positive feedback about the WikiTest idea I posted in Monday’s mailbag. A couple of people have already put the idea into use and it seems to be working for them.

I hesitated to put that idea up because it was one of those things where I thought, “I bet someone else has already thought of this. Probably wrote it up on the Cafe or the WikiTest facebook or something.”

That sort of thought often keeps me from posting something I think might be useful.

To keep the ideas flowing freely in the future, I would like to offer:

The Jerx All-Purpose Disclaimer

I’ve never stolen an idea in my life. Once, that I can remember, I read an idea, forgot it, and then it came to me some time later, and I believed it had come from my head. And there are times I’ve independently come up with an idea that already exists in the literature.

But I’ve never read something and thought, “Hmmm… I think I’ll write that up as my own idea!”

So if you read something here that seems like it came from somewhere else, please, let me know about it. If the idea is similar enough, I’ll happily credit and link to where people can read more about it. And if the idea is essentially the same, then I’ll reach out to the person behind it and ask them if they’d like me to credit them or remove the post entirely.

I am, admittedly, not well-read in the world of magic. To spur my own ideas, I don’t read other people’s magic theory, I don’t participate much in the online magic community, I barely even watch instructional downloads for tricks I’ve bought past the point where I know how to do them. So I sort of rely on people who are better stewards of magic wisdom than I am to keep me in the know when there’s something they think I’d be interested in, and to let me know if anything I’ve written has a direct precedent. So don’t worry that I’m going to get weird or defensive if you say, “That idea is very similar to this….” I enjoy making those connections. I just don’t have the knowledge-base to necessarily make them myself.

Hey, this looks pretty interesting…

It looks like Joshua Jay is giving an interview where he discusses three things.

  1. His favorite person.

  2. His favorite place.

  3. His favorite thing.

If you’re in New York on October 27th, you should check that out.

I wonder what he’s going to say!

See you all in November. Have a great Halloween! I recommend one-upping the houses on your block that give out the full-size candy bars and instead giving everyone who comes to your door one of these three pound gummy worms.

Enigma Follow-Up

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An email from supporter, Mike L.

Did you ever settle in with a way to perform [Christian Grace’s] Enigma? I’ve had varying degrees of luck with it myself sometimes getting a good response and sometimes they seem to understand that I’m somehow figuring it out based on the information they’re providing. Did you work out a way around that?—ML

When I first started working on this, my goal was to hide that they were telling me directly the positions of the vowels. How could you do this? Well, my initial bad idea (which would hopefully lead to a good one) was to have two stones or two coins or two other small objects. One would be for vowels and the other for consonants. And I would tell the person to take them under the table and focus the energy of their letters one at a time into the stone and then hold it out in a fist in front of them. Hold out the consonant stone for consonants and the vowel stone for vowels. Now, if one of those stones is magnetic, then I could use a “which hand” magnetic coin detector to tell if they were thinking of a vowel or a consonant without them knowing I know.

That method might “solve” one problem, but it creates others. It would slow down the effect a lot. It would require you to carry stuff with you (the great thing about Enigma is you just need your phone). And it still doesn’t address why they have to differentiate between consonants and vowels in the story of the effect.

I realized that what I really needed for this was a reasonable “why” for that differentiation. If you don’t offer them some semi-logical rationale, then the only potential reason you’re giving them is that you need to know this information to figure out their word. Which… you do. But you don’t want toe emphasize that for them.

So I took a two-pronged approach to this that I think helps justify the need for them to differentiate vowels and consonants, while also seemingly diminishing the importance of that information to you.

Part One

After they think of the word, I tell them they’re going to try and project that word to me letter by letter. And I tell them that they’re going to sort of push the thought of each letter to me while imagining the sound the letter makes. And I mime like this.

“Vowels are very difficult to pick up on, because the sound they make can be so amorphous. So I want you to push the vowels at me with two hands, which will give me a better chance of picking them up.”

This is the “reasonable why” that I’m offering up. In a world where I’m picking up on some kind of “energy” from the letters they’re thinking of, it makes sense that vowels might be more difficult because (in English, at least) the same vowel can be pronounced in many different ways.

“So, if I was going to send across your name, it would be like this: L - A -U - R - E - N.”

Part 2

After making sure they understand what’s requested of them, I have them start sending me the letters. After a couple of letters, I stop them.

“Okay. Hold on. I’m getting distracted by visual elements. I just want to focus on the energy. Start over.”

I now tilt my head down and shield my eyes.

Do you see what I’m doing here?

I’m suggesting to them that I don’t need to see what they’re doing (that I don’t need to see when they’re indicating a consonant or vowel, or how many letters they’re sending).

But I’m not saying, “I’m going to cover my eyes so I can’t see.” That would be too easy for them to question. And not easy for me to prove. So I don’t try to prove.

Instead of saying, “I’ll be able to pick up on your word, despite covering my eyes.”

I’m implying: “I’m covering my eyes to make it easier for me to pick up on your word.” (By blocking out distractions.)

Why would I lie about doing something I’m suggesting makes it easier for me? You see? It becomes a trickier thing for them to deny in their mind.

With my head like this, I can still see down and out a little bit, and I can still see if they’re sending a vowel or a consonant.

When they’re done, I wait a few beats. They will usually wait a second or two and say, “I’m done.” They have to “inform” me because I’m apparently not looking. If they don’t say anything after a couple of beats, I say, “Are you done or did we lose connection?” This statement works with the “reality” of me not looking, but also me being able to pick up on the energy they’re sending.

After this, I can reveal what they’re thinking as per the original.

The benefits of this are, as I said, it justifies the differentiation of consonants and vowels, while also downplaying your need to know one from the other. On top of that, it doesn’t require the person to touch you at all. So there’s no potential awkwardness or hygiene issues which can arise depending on who you’re performing for. And also, “sending” the letters in that way just feels good. It feels better than “dealing out letters into the air” or touching fingertips or whatever. Shooting out thought energy from your hands feels powerful and feels “right.”

Best case scenario, they believe they didn’t directly give you any information about the length of the word and location of the vowels. Worst case scenario—even if they don’t buy into any of this—they still haven’t given you any more information than you’d get from them performing Enigma the standard way.

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.