Jerx Christmas - Justin Flom - 7:25 AM

Guy’s I’m super excited. All night I’ve been trying to wrangle this trick out of Justin Flom.

He was hesitant to give it up at first. But I think the combination of sleep deprivation along with gallons of mulled wine, dozens of christmas cookies, and a nearly lethal dose of holiday cheer have warmed his heart to the point that he has decided to share it with us.

As Justin presents it, it’s already a strong trick. But if you personalize it, I think it has the power to be a strong and emotionally resonant trick.

Before we get to that, let’s let Justin explain.

After Justin recorded that, we went and looked up how difficult it is to create those one line drawings yourself. So you could do this trick with anyone’s image. Your girfriend’s beloved grandfather. The president of your company. The four-year old who got dragged off by that falcon at whose memorial service you’ve been inexplicably asked to perform magic.

Honestly, it doesn’t look that difficult. It looks pretty easy, actually. Although I’m sure it’s not really that easy. But it seems like the sort of thing a capable artist would be willing to do for you custom for pretty cheap. Or you could muddle through it yourself.

But imagine taking it a step further…

You come out with a completely blank deck of cards. Blank on both sides. Cards are distributed out to people and they’re also given a marker to do a random scribble in the manner you tell them. The line should start on one side of the card and go off another side or the same side. They can make a little loop or other simple shape, or just keep it a curve or straight line. Something simple. And you gather all the cards together and mix them, and now their own random doodlings combine to make the bride’s face, or whatever.

You’d have your 16 card set-up that’s blank on one side, and 25 (or however many) more fully blank cards. Start by giving them a few truly blank cards and showing them how to do the random scribbles on one side. Then take them back. You’re handing out a few at a time, so they’re not really sure how many there are altogether. Once all the cards have scribbles on one side, you pass everything out again to have them scribble on the other sides as well.

With cards going in and out, being scribbled on by multiple people, it would not be difficult to hide the fact that 16 of them started out with scribbles on one side. What would be difficult is making sure you distribute them and re-collect them in a way that keeps your stack in order.

It may just make more sense to swap in your stack at some point when you’re collecting up the cards. Either way, I love the idea of the collective unconsciously creating this image of someone special.

Even if your one line portrait wasn’t super smooth and crisp, that doesn’t matter. If it even hints at the portrait of someone important, that’s a miracle.

Jerx Christmas - Spidey - 6:57 AM

Welp… another crazy thing just happened. I went out on my back deck to enjoy the last few moments of the night and who do I see out there but Spidey.

And spread out all ove the deck are playing cards with weird shit smeared on them: dijon mustard, hot sauce, shampoo, acne cream, toothpaste, ben-gay. And so on.

“Spidey,” I say, “What the hell are you doing?”

“It’s going to happen. Something’s going to happen,” he said. He had a crazed look in his eye. “Look what I discovered,” he said.

And I was caught somewhere between being sort of impressed that he discovered this and a bit perturbed about how he discovered it. And I was like, “That’s cool, man. But I really don’t think you’re just going to stumble over some other crazy combination that has some bizarre effect. Would you mind putting my condiments and toiletries back?”

Immediately, he snapped out of it. “Oh, jesus, man. I’m sorry. My life has been taken over by smearing stuff on playing cards. I’m fucking losing it!”

“It’s okay, dude, seriously. Calm down.”

He gathered himself. “I feel bad,” he said. “I can’t believe I took all your stuff. As an apology… please take this and share it with your readers.”

I like that a lot. It’s reminiscent of something I posted recently. I like any force where the spectator is making clear choices that affect the outcome, and they can see those repercussions in real time.

When I pick a piece of fruit from a fruit bowl, I’m seeing the fruit I’m selecting, and I’m seeing everything I’m not selecting. For a force to feel like an actual choice, that’s the sensation the spectator needs to have. That’s why I like about this, they’re seeing the results of their choices as things get (seemingly) fairly discarded.

I think I would handle the ending just slightly differently. Instead of asking for a number, I’d say: “You’ve eliminated all but these 10 cards. We can stop here and go with the top card as your choice, or we can eliminate that top card.”

If they say they want the top card to be their choice, you can do a double and turn it over.

If not, you turn over the top card and use the handling you described. But instead of counting to a number, you’re slowing things down even further. And they get to choose card-by-card to eliminate cards until they finally settle on one.

When they eliminate one, you turn it over. “If you had stopped their you would have ended up with the 4 of Clubs.” So they’re immediately seeing the consequences of their choices. They’re repeatedly seeing the alternate paths they could have chosen. That makes for a strong force.

When they say they want to stop, you just gather up the face-up cards and set them aside, leaving the force card in place.

I like it. Thanks, Spidey. Don’t worry about using up all my chocolate syrup.

By the way, while Spidey was high on calamine lotion fumes, he let it slip that he and Richard Sanders have a packet trick coming out soon through Murphy’s called King Con. As a huge fan of Richard Sanders, it’s something I’ll definitely keep an eye out for.

Jerx Christmas - Matt Mello - 6:29 AM

From the other room, I heard the front door bang open and loud bellowing voice saying, “Let’s get this party started, baby!!”

What the hell? I thought. It’s after six in the morning.

And I went in the other room to see Matt Mello.

“Matt,” I said, “I wasn’t expecting you. You didn’t RSVP that you were coming.”

“You asked me like a month ago,” he said. “I have know idea what I’m doing a month out. I’m like the guys in The Fast and Furious… I live my life… a quarter mile at a time.”

I just shrugged like, what in the hell does that mean.

“It’s good to see you,” I said. “What have you been up to recently.”

“Well, I just released a hard cover version of my totally propless effect, Thought Control, on my site The Outer Mind.”

“That’s great,” I said. “That’s one of the few pieces of strong, pretty-much-sure-fire, propless mentalism effects that I’ve come across. I’m glad it’s getting a hard cover release. But… uhm… things were just winding down here so….”

“Really?” he said. “My night’s just getting started.”

Just getting started? What is this guy on? I wondered.

“Hey, before I leave,” he said, “Can I share something on your blog?”

“Go right ahead,” I said, and he typed out the following.

107 by Matt Mello

Effect: The performer removed his watch, his business card and a marker, placing them on the table. He wrote something on the card, rolled it into a cigarette and placed it down. Picking up the watch, he said, “I’m going to show you how our subconscious mind can be influenced. Watch the hands as they spin around and around, trying to get a sense of how much it moves on every turn of the dial.”

The performer turned the watch towards himself now and continued to spin. “Allow your subconscious to keep track of the dial. Don’t think about the time, that it could be one or seven, just watch the spinning dial.”

After a few moments he handed the watch to the participant facedown. “Keep spinning it and stop whenever it feels right.”

Following a few more turns of the dial the participant stopped.

“Turn it over and let’s see how you’ve done.”

The watch read 1:07.

“It’s amazing how our subconscious minds can be influenced by things we see only subliminally.”

He unrolled the business card to reveal: Set the watch to 1:07.

Reactions ensued and as they died down, he said, “Do you think your subconscious followed the movements of the marker? Did it react to me saying, ‘it could be one oh seven’ when you thought I said, ‘it could be one or seven’? Or did it react to the flash of this image just before I picked up the watch.”

He placed the watch back onto the table between the rerolled business card and the still open marker. The participant noticed the card created a one. The watch sat in the middle, a perfect zero. And the uncapped marker created a seven.

Method: I’ve always been a fan of random objects spelling out a word as a reveal, but it always felt awkward carrying cards with pictures of objects rather than using organic objects in the performance space. I’ve created a lot of these in English for close-up and stage, and the trick is to not pull a pair of handcuffs out of your pocket to form the number 8 or pull a banana out of your pocket for the letter I, etc. Unless being kinky is part of your character, you want to use objects that feel natural.

This is my presentation for the classic double pin watch force, and the workings should be obvious, so I will mostly cover the choreography.

We start by taking off our watch and placing it on the table. Remove a business card and a sharpie from your pocket. Pull the cap off the marker and place it to the right of the watch.

Write (Set the watch to 1:07) and then place the marker down at an angle near the cap to form the seven.

Roll up the business card and place it to the left of the watch. Leave it for a second and then pick up the watch. It is during this moment that the image of (107) is supposedly being “subconsciously” implanted.

We now perform the classic time force using the double pin feature, ideally with a borrowed watch if you can find one. I set it right in front of them after having them watch the spinning hands. When I’m getting a couple hours from my predicted time, I turn it to myself for them to subconsciously track the time as I set it to 1:07.

All that remains is to work our way through all the supposed implantations of 107 and then place the watch back in the center for the big finish.

And if you can perform the effect and time it to actually end on 1:07 pm during the day, or if you perform it on January 7th , you have an extra bonus to really take it to another level.

Jerx Christmas - Josh Jay - 6:01 AM

While stopping by the kitchen to get a glass of water, I noticed someone peeking out the blinds. I couldn’t see who it was in the shadows, but when I got closer I realized it was Josh Jay.

“What’s going on, buddy?” I asked.

“Nuffin’,” he said. “I’s waiting.”

“Waiting for what, pal?”

“Santy Clause!!” he screamed and jumped up a down.

“Uh, first of all, it’s December 23rd, ding-dong. Secondly, aren’t you fucking 40 or something? What’s going on with you?”

Out of the corner of my eye I see Andi Gladwin give me one of these gestures…

and wave $40 in my face. And I got the hint. So I just said, “Ah, never mind. You know what I hope Santa brings me this year? I hope he brings me the revamped version of your Prism deck. That’s a great trick.”

“My own magic!” Josh shouted.

“That’s right, buddy. That is your own magic. I’m also looking forward to you putting out your Particle System book, covering your stack and your card work. But you’ve been telling me that’s been coming out for years now. You guys bind the books at Vanishing Inc by hand or something? What the fuck. Sorry. Sorry. I lost my temper.” But it didn’t matter. Josh was distracted by his zipper.

“Did you have something you wanted me to share on the site for Christmas, big guy?”

“Yeah!!” he screamed, no doubt waking everyone dozing off in the other room.

What’s this going to be? I wondered. Some shit smeared piece of construction paper? Jesus Christ.

But I just kept remembering that sweet $40. “Oh yeah, what do you want me to share with the people?” I asked.

And then he airdropped to me the following two videos of an outstanding trick he calls Nameless Ship which he hasn’t shared anywhere before.

Jerx Christmas - Angelo Carbone - 5:33 AM

Well… I just had a really awkward experience with Angelo Carbone.

He asked me to go with him into the corner, hold his hands with mine, and close my eyes.

Oh shit, this guy wants to kiss me! I thought.

And then I thought, Eh, whatever. It’s late. Might as well.

And I leaned in and he was like, “What the hell are you doing??”

And I go, “Well, I was about to make your night, if not your year. Why? What’s going on?”

“I wanted to show you a trick,” he said.

And I had to play it off like I knew it all along.

Anyway… he held his hands about shoulder width apart, palms down. With a shot glass full of whiskey held in his right fingertips. He had me hold his wrists so his hands couldn’t move. Then he asked me to close my eyes. I did this. His hands didn’t move. And yet, when I opened my eyes, the shot glass was now in his left hand. Incredible.

Here’s the explanation as taken from Angelo’s upcoming book. (Don’t hold your breath. He first told me it was coming about 5 years ago.)

(If you want something from Angelo you can reliably look forward to, his rising card effect Notion of Motion is supposed to be released this year by Vanishing Inc.)

DARK TRANSPO

The Wonderment:

This is a bit of fun which can work with one other person or even two people.

A small object which is unique or borrowed is held in the right hand. A spectator stands in front of you and holds on to both your wrists which are about 2 feet apart. The spectator is told to make sure that your hands never move towards one another. The spectator is now instructed to turn their head away or close their eyes and to shout out if the hands are moved towards one another. After a few seconds they are told to open their eyes and look back at your hands. The borrowed object is now in the other hand.

WonderMatter:

• Any small object that can be hidden in your hand and has a flat bottom (e.g. a wedding ring, a coin, sweet, matchbox, USB flash drive etc)

• Double sided tape (optional)

WonderWork: 

You need to be quite agile and have a good sense of balance. However if your balance is an issue, it may be easier if you perform this effect while your back is leaning against a wall or table.  Having said that, when your spectator holds onto your wrists, you will also get some stability from them and therefore balance should not be a problem.

Have your spectator stand in front of you – face to face. Borrow a suitable object from your spectator or use a coin and have it marked. Hold the object in your closed right fist. Do not grip it too tightly and have your fist loosely clenched.  Extend both your arms in front of you with your closed fists in line and at the same height as your hip bone. Your elbows are slightly bent and the backs of your clenched hands should be uppermost (Photo 1). The height you hold your hands out should be  such that when you raise your knee, your knuckles automatically end up touching your knee without having to move your arms downwards. Make sure your hands are at the right height to start with. Practice beforehand and memorise the correct height your hands need to be at.

Ask the spectator to grab your wrists from above and to not let go. State that if your spectator feels your hands moving towards one another (demonstrate this by moving your hands towards one another under the tension of your spectator’s grasp), then they are to shout out and say so. Ask your spectator to look away AND close their eyes until you tell them to open them. 

As soon as their eyes are closed, raise up your right knee at a perfect right angle and bring it directly below your right fist. By carefully opening your right fist and without moving your forearm, place the object on your knee (Photo 2). Immediately swing your right knee carefully to under your left fist, whilst still balancing on one leg (Photo 3). Be careful not to make the object fall off your knee. Pick up the object from your right knee without moving your left forearm and then lower your leg back to starting position.

Now ask your spectator to open their eyes and ask if your hands were ever moved toward one another. The answer will be no. Then ask how on earth did their object get to the other hand, and open your left hand to show the object.

WonderNotes:

Do not balance the coin or object on the very end of your kneecap where it is rounded as the item can slide off. Instead, position it more towards you, where your knee starts to get flat.

If you use your own coin, you can have some double sided tape on the reverse so when you place it on your knee, it will not accidentally slide off due to the friction. Just have the coin stuck to the inside wall of your pocket along with some loose coins. When you go to your pocket to find a coin, just remove it from the wall and hold it out to be signed by using the same left hand grip as a French Drop (held from below).

To make sure your spectator grabs your wrists from above and not below, hold your extended arms much lower and only when they have grabbed your wrists do you raise your hands to the correct position.

You may want to clench and unclench your fists slightly (massaging the object) while the eyes of your spectator are shut. This is to disguise your forearm muscles from being felt as you open and close your hands slightly. 

To perform with two people just get one spectator to stand on your left and hold onto your left wrist and another spectator to stand on your right and hold onto your right wrist.

It is also possible to perform this effect while seated. Sit opposite you spectator who is also seated and perform the effect exactly as above. Just make sure your extended fists are a few inches above your knees and yet you can still raise your knee up while seated. This is much easier to do as no balancing is required. What makes the seated version even easier to do is  to seat yourself on a swivel office chair. This allows you to pivot your hips easily while keeping your raised fists  in exactly the same position in the air.

Instead of asking your spectator to close their eyes for the magic to happen, just ask them to close their eyes and as soon as they have done so, execute the move as you say “Would you like to keep your eyes open or shut?” Normally they would say open. By the time you ask them to open their eyes, the move is done but apparently the effect hasn’t happened yet. Now just do some magical massaging gestures with each hand as if that is the moment it will start to happen. Sneaky huh?

Finally, you can also perform this with an entire audience watching and a spectator on stage. Just before doing the secret knee move, wink towards your audience. At the end, ask the audience if your hands went towards one another and they will shout out “No”. This effect is in the same category as ‘Corinda's Power of Darkness’.and the ‘Paper Balls Over the Head’ effect where the audience are in on the trick, but not the spectator.

This was first published in Genii Magazine, March 2010.

WonderHow:

For this trick I started with the effect but had no method. I held an object and asked myself how I could get it to the other hand. I did think of invisible thread but hooking up was not practical. Then somehow it just dawned on me to use my knee. This of course meant I could not fool an entire audience and would only work one on one. I lost balance a few times practicing until I got used to it. I realised sometimes it was easier to secretly lean against something behind you. Also I had to experiment with a few objects as they would fall off my knee. Sometime later, Dark Transpo was born.

Jerx Christmas - Caleb Wiles - 5:05 AM

I walked over to my bookshelf to join someone who was standing there. It turned out to be Caleb Wiles.

Caleb picked up my copy of Scarne On Card Tricks.

“That’s one of my all-time favorite magic books,” I told him. “I bought it at a Wegmans grocery story in Central New York, back when Wegmans was good.” (Sorry guys, Wegmans sort of sucks now. You sure as hell aren’t going to find Scarne On Card Tricks there anymore.)

“Yeah, this is a great book,” Caleb said.

I took it from him and flipped through the pages. I landed on a trick called Quadruple Coincidence.

“I love this instruction here:

The performer now instructs the spectator that the success or failure of the experiment depends upon being able to follow out orders, and should the spectator fail to follow orders, the trick cannot possibly work.

What’s more magical than ‘THIS TRICK WON’T WORK UNLESS YOU FOLLOW MY GODDAMN ORDERS!’”

Caleb said, “You want to know what makes this a quintuple coincidence?”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I actually have a version of this trick that I came up with that you do with one deck.” (The trick in the book requires two.) “If you want I’ll share it with your readers.”

Of course! Here’s Caleb and his buddy Matt…

Caleb is the president of a non-profit called Magic For a Cause. Their mission is in three parts, per their website.

1. We organize magic shows to raise funds for charitable causes. All proceeds go straight to the charity... we never take a cut.

2. We provide magic instruction to empower young people to develop social skills and confidence.

3. We engage in community outreach to perform magic for underserved groups (such as children’s hospitals, foster care group homes, etc.)

If you are interested in donating, please check out the site at the link above.

Caleb also says… “I'm also looking for people who are interested in helping with the project overall (graphic design, website design, custom print services, submitting easy-to-do tricks, etc.) If anyone is willing to contribute, they can reach out to me directly at caleb@MagicForACause.org “ Do it!

Jerx Christmas - Marc Kerstein - 4:37 AM

Hot damn! I’ve got my second wind. In fact, the whole group seems to have. We all took ecstasy and we’re going to rave until dawn.

I’m just busting your balls. The only thing we’re high on is the Christmas Spirit.

A little while ago I had a burning question I needed to ask my old friend Marc Kerstein.

I went over to Marc and said, “Hey man, I gotta know. I know you work with Blaine a lot. When he did your trick with Margot Robbie, did you get to meet her or what?”

“Meet Margot Robbie?” he said. “Oh… no. I wish. That would have been nice.”

Then he sat back in his chair and sighed. “Truth be told… I’ve never even met Blaine. Worked for the guy for years but he won’t interact with me one-on-one. He says it ‘dullens the mind’ to interact with common people like me. He says, ‘You can talk to me in person when you’ve stood on a pole for two days.’”

“Geez,” I said, “That’s harsh. What do you do? Just email each other?”

“Oh no, it’s not like that,” he said. “He has a guy who’s his ‘personal puppeteer.’ That guy has a Marc Kerstein puppet, and I give that guy a script to read to David as if it’s coming from me through the puppet. David responds to the puppet and then I get a transcription of his response that I then have to respond to and the cycle starts over again. But don’t tell anyone I said this. According to my NDA, I’m supposed to refer to him as a ‘great guy’ who’s real ‘down to earth.’ Whatever.”

"Yikes,” I said, “I had no idea. What a nightmare. On a different subject altogether… can we release the PK Video update as a gift for the people with the Jerx App?”

And Marc gave the okay so now I can tell you about this.

Today we’re adding a feature to the Jerx app that will allow you to do a really strong version of PK Touches. It was inspired by something Seth Raphael mentioned to me back in 2019. But we took it in different directions. I’ve had the exclusive on this for over three years, I think. I didn’t know if I was ever going to release it. But hell, it’s Christmas.

Traditionally in a PK Touches routine you touch one spectator and another spectator on the opposite side of the stage feels the touches.

What we have here is a close-up, impromptu version of PK Touches that you do for one person.

I’ll give you the most basic presentation. Next month I’ll mention a much more interesting way of using the trick as a finale to a three-part presentation.

Here’s what it looks like.

Imagine

I’m with my friend and I ask her if I can try something out with her that I’m working on. I have her stand up and face away from me and hold her hand behind her back.

I tell her I’m going to touch her hand in a moment and I want her to try and really focus on how I touch her—how many times, where, in what manner, etc. And I tell her I’ll record it on my phone.

I get my phone out and start taking a video and tell her to pay attention to what she feels. The video is quick. Maybe 15 seconds.

When I’m done, I recap with her what she felt.

“I think it was three touches,” she says. “On my middle finger. Like… two taps. And then a long swipe down the finger.”

“Interesting,” I say. “That’s crazy. You’re like hypersensitive. That worked way better than I expected.”

I open my phone and go to the last video in my camera roll and open it and either play it for her or send it to her phone. Either way, when we watch the video, this is what she sees…

Method

Okay, what the app does is it takes the audio from one moment and lays it over the video from another moment. So, for example, if you open the app and hit record, it will start recording video. When you hit record again, it will start recording an audio clip that is as long as the video clip it just took.

Then it will automatically and instantly stitch together that audio clip and that video clip and shoot it into your camera roll.

There is no real rule for how to do this trick, but I find it helps to have a template to follow, so I pretty much do the same thing each time, which makes the final product more convincing.

So here's what I do:

I have my friend stand facing away from me and hold one hand behind their back.

I've already given them a preamble. That I'm going to go behind them and touch their hand in a specific way and I want them to try and concentrate on where I touch their hand and how I touch it, etc.

As I'm behind them, I go into my phone and into the app. I start the app and hit record. At this point, they don’t know I’m recording.

At 3 seconds in, I aim the camera at the back of their head and say something like, "Just a second..."

At 5 seconds in, I aim the camera at their hand and say, "Gotta get my camera ready..."

I then point the camera at my hand and at exactly 10 seconds I tap my thumb against the tip of my middle finger twice and then slide it down my finger a little, while I say, "Here... we... go...."

I then hit the button around 15 seconds, which makes the "ding" like I'm starting taking video. Actually, this stops the video recording and starts the audio recording, the clock starts over so I can now match what I say to what I shot earlier, and I say.

"Okay, here we are..."

At 3 seconds, "There’s you,"

At 5 seconds, "There's your hand..."

"And I just want you to pay attention to exactly what you feel right... NOW." The word NOW should occur at exactly the 10 second mark.

I tap her middle finger twice and then drag my finger down her middle finger.

"That's it."

Hit stop.

It doesn't matter what you aim your camera at during the second portion, because that video isn't used. (But for your own sanity, it's best if you go ahead and aim it at what makes sense.)

Here is what my camera actually captured during the recording of the video above.

If you go back and watch the original video, you can see how it all comes together.

You'll see that what makes this particularly convincing is the way what I'm saying lines up with what I’m shooting. So having those benchmarks as you shoot is important.

Obviously, before I show them the video, I debrief them a little. "What did you feel? Where did I touch you? Your middle finger? Okay... and how exactly? How many touches?... Two taps and then down along your middle finger. Great. Okay... let's look at what really happened."

You’ll want to practice this so you get the feel for it. Don’t bother with a real person. Trace your hand on a piece of paper, cut it out and stick it to the wall. You have to get a feel for the choreography. It can take a few times to really get it down. I just try to focus on 3 seconds, 5 seconds, and 10 seconds. And I remember that during the first portion I’m focusing on what I’m doing and the second time I’m focusing on what I’m saying.

There are undoubtedly other uses for this app that people will come up with (one of the people testing it had an interesting idea to use it as part of a “spirit” routine). I’ve been so focused on the PK touches aspect that I’m sort of blinded to the other possibilities, but I’ll make sure to post any other interesting ideas in the instructions.