A True Story That Really Happened

I can’t believe we’re over ten years into this site and I’m just now telling this story.

I guess… well… I guess I was a little embarrassed to tell you all. It doesn’t reflect well on me. I was young and dumb (and yes, full of cum, as they say).

I was in my car, in the parking lot of a Papa John’s, when the cops rolled up and took me in. I was arrested on two counts: prostitution and solicitation of prostitution. (I was paying myself to masturbate.)

So they throw me in jail and say I’ll be there all weekend before seeing a judge. What’s worse, Monday was Labor Day, and Tuesday the judge had to get her dog groomed, so I wasn’t getting out until Wednesday.

The holding cell got crowded, so they decided to send me to state prison for a few days.

Now look… prison isn’t like the movies. The black guys are here. The white guys are there. There are sexual assaults in the showers. Prison riots. A wise old lifer who dispenses cryptic advice and mentors the newbies. An evil warden. A heartwarming game of football where a ragtag bunch of inmates beat the guards.

So yeah, you can tell from the details in my story that I really, truly know what prison is like, from first-hand experience.

Now, I knew I had to do something to make an impression on these prisoners, or risk them breaking my spirit and my anal hymen.

So I spot this group of black guys playing Spades, and I walk up to them and say, “Give me that deck.”

They say, “Uhm… we’re in the middle of a game.”

So I sit quietly for fifty minutes until the game ends. Then I say, “Give me that deck!”

I proceed to entertain them with card tricks for thirty-nine hours straight (one pee break) without repeating a single trick. To be fair, one of them was an eight-thousand-phase Ambitious Card.

When I finally finish, everyone claps and says, “Hooray for Andy!” They declare me an honorary “soul brother.” One guy walks up with a tear in his eye and says, “Your tricks taught me a little about magic… and a lot about life.” Then he hugs me.

They carry me on their shoulders into court Wednesday morning, and the judge says, “You must be the handsome boy-magician everyone’s buzzing about.”

“No,” I say. “You are.”

Then I set off a smoke bomb, and when the air clears, I’m in the judge’s robe up on the bench—and the judge is in handcuffs, sitting where I’d been moments earlier.

“The case against you is dismissed!” I shout, banging the gavel. Then I switch back with the judge, and after several hours of consulting law books, it’s determined they have to let me go because there’s nothing in the law that says it’s illegal to corporally switch with the judge and dismiss the charges against yourself.

Yeah, I guess it’s a pretty crazy story. But you can see why I was embarrassed to tell it—it makes me look so bad… winning over the entire prison population with my incredible skills and charm, etc., etc.

Some might say I’ve stolen David Blaine’s origin story.

But when it was pointed out to Oz Pearlman that he stole David’s story, he said, “Well, it happened to me too!” Which, honestly, makes it more believable that it also happened to me. A lot of things happen once. A lot of things happen a lot of times. But it’s really rare for something to happen exactly twice.

In fact, I’m guessing most magicians have their own version of that story: the weekend jail stint, the deck of cards, the black guys in the corner, the hearts won through sleight of hand.

Go check Thurston’s diaries; I’m pretty sure it’s in there too. (Though, fair warning, the words he used for “the group of black guys” probably haven’t aged great.)

A Private Note for Oz Pearlman

Guys, this is a private note for Oz Pearlman. If you’re not him, do the polite thing and bail now.

Hey Oz. I don’t have your email—and I’m not on Facebook—so this is the only way to get this to you. I was listening to your Joe Rogan appearance and, around the 45-minute mark, you launch into the story about going to jail and saving your ass (maybe literally) by doing card tricks for the brothers for eight straight hours.

Here’s the thing: the story has a real “first draft energy”: wobbly timeline, fuzzy logistics, movie-logic jail dynamics. I’m going to help you tighten it for the next time you need a spicy anecdote to punch up your otherwise beige backstory. We’ll go through it beat by beat…

Oz: This is a good story for my book that I’m writing right now. So—I end up in jail for a weekend. It’s a long story. I was in jail one weekend—stupid weekend—but I walk in there by myself. I should have been out that day, but I got stuck all weekend.

And I’m watching these guys playing cards, and it’s like I had trained my whole life for this moment. I walk up—record scratch—to like forty dudes and go, “Can I see those cards?” Everyone’s looking at me like, “What’s this guy about to do?”

And I just did card tricks for the next eight hours. When I went to take a shower, I’m thinking of the show Oz, like, Oh my god, right now I need protection. I went to shower—Mecosta County Jail in Michigan—and literally had people being like, “Go take a shower, we got you, bro.”

Joe: What did you go to jail for?

Oz: So stupid. This almost derailed my whole career. Drunken idiots. I go up to visit a buddy in college, and we steal from a Papa John’s. God, don’t ask me why. A broken phone at a college Papa John’s—just being idiots.

I paid for the pizza, but there was a broken phone on the counter, and, you know, this is me, sleight-of-hand style. I’m like, I’m just stealing this thing. Gone. It’s in my jacket.

To be clear: in your book, you explain that it was a landline phone you stole. You write:

“At Papa John’s, they had a bank of about twenty phones on the counter; this was before it was common to have one phone with dozens of lines. So there were these red phones that the employees were constantly answering, thanks to their brisk delivery business.”

“Before it was common to have one phone with dozens of lines.” Huh? Multi-line business phones have been around since the Nixon era. In the early 2000s, they were practically antiques. The story’s already collapsing and we’re only two sentences in.

Papa John’s didn’t have a “bank of twenty phones” on the counter. They don’t have one now, and they didn’t then. The Jerry Lewis Telethon didn’t have twenty phones on the counter.

Also, I’m not sure picking up a phone and jamming it in your jacket qualifies as “sleight of hand.” I get that you want to make yourself sound like the world’s smoothest magic thief, but what exactly are you implying here? Did you French drop the Papa John’s phone? Spider vanish it? Sleight of hand is about manual deception when people are paying attention to you. Quietly pocketing a broken phone off a Papa John’s countertop when no one is looking means you’ve mastered the ancient art of petty larceny, not prestidigitation.

Oz: Then I tell my buddies, “You guys gotta get something too.” So they go in the bathroom—which doubles as the employee locker room—and they take three dirty shirts. Dirty shirts from a laundry bin.

Lol, Oz, you adorable goofball.

Look, I get it: your story has to get you to jail, but you don’t want to invent something where you’re like, “My friends and I raped a drifter and set him on fire.” So you’re trying to pick a story that makes you look not too bad. But… um… I’m guessing you never worked in fast food?

The bathroom doesn’t double as the employee locker room—that would be a health-code violation (several, actually).

And Papa John’s doesn’t launder employee’s shirts for them, you bozo. You go home and wash the shirt yourself. Or do what I’m guessing most Papa John’s employees do: wash it once a week once it’s fully saturated with garlic butter.

Oz: We bring them back to my buddy’s house like idiots. We wear them at the party. I barely remember this—I was blackout drunk—like, “Papa John’s! Who wants a pizza? Who wants a pizza?”

I end up going to sleep on his futon around 2 a.m. At 4 a.m., someone comes in and says, “Yo, the cops are here.” I’m like, “Dude, it’s not my house. What do you want from me?”

I find it a little unbelievable you were invited to a party, but let’s pretend, for the sake of narrative flow, that you were.

As you know—because you possess super-human mentalism powers!—people tend to slip on the tiny details when they’re making things up. Saying you were “blackout drunk” and still remember crawling onto a futon at precisely 2 a.m.? That’s one of those continuity errors that gives the whole game away. You’ll want to pick a lane here between omniscient narrator or sloppy drunk.

Joe: Did you guys post the videos?

Oz: No, this is pre-social-media, man. No, no. Somebody ratted us out. Somebody’s roommate—I found this out way later—called and said, “Yo, bro, there’s a bunch of dudes here with a broken phone from Papa John’s.”

I didn’t know any of this, but someone comes in like, “Yo, the cops are here.” I say, “They’re here for you.” They go, “They’re here for you.” I’m like, “Here for me? What do you mean, they’re here for me? I don’t live here.”

The cops come in the room, and I’m wearing aggressively small underwear—like tighty-whities. This couldn’t have been more of a bad perp walk. They go, “You’re under arrest.” I’m like, “For what?” They go, “For stealing from Papa John’s.”

Mmm-hmm… let’s think about this for a moment. First, you’re wearing the fucking dirty shirt to bed, you disgusting slob? 🤮

And let me get this straight—you’re saying a third party, not even a complaining witness, called the cops on you? “There’s some guys here with a broken phone from Papa John’s”? To what end? Did people find you that dislikable that they’d really call the cops in the middle of the night on you for this?

And then what did the cops do? Wake up the manager of Papa John’s in the middle of the night to see if he wanted to press charges?

This is a believable story to you?

Joe: What night was this?

Oz: Friday night.

So, let’s review: it’s Friday night—the busiest shift of the week—and the local cops, instead of dealing with drunk drivers and bar fights, leap into action over a missing broken phone from Papa John’s. At four in the morning.

Sure. Forget the assaults, the DUIs, the domestic calls—we have rape kits piling up for years—but yes, let’s mobilize the entire department because we have a hot lead on a busted landline.

Honestly, removing a broken phone from a Papa John’s isn’t even a crime, it’s a service. They should’ve thanked you. “Hey, appreciate you getting that eyesore out of here, kind citizen.”

Joe: How old were you?

Oz: I was twenty years old and just about to get an internship at Merrill Lynch. While this story’s hilarious now—it’s a funny chapter in my book—it was like, God help me, did I avoid everything.

When I went to jail—yo, scariest, one of the scariest days of my life.

Joe: How’d you get out of everything?

Oz: I had a clean record. I was a pretty upstanding citizen. And, not to get in the weeds, but there’s something called the Holmes Youthful Trainee Act—I wonder if they still have it—where it was expunged from my record. Didn’t have to report it to the Wall Street firm.

How convenient—your imaginary arrest just happened to be wiped clean by the state!

Here’s the issue: the Holmes Youthful Trainee Act isn’t an instant delete button. When granted, you’re placed on a kind of probationary status. There’s no conviction, but the record isn’t immediately erased. Only after successful completion (which can take years) does it get fully expunged.

So the arrest still would have been on your record for that upcoming internship.

Also, I’ve read that part of the book. If anyone told you it was a “funny” chapter, they were fucking with you.

Oz: Then they separated us when we went to general population. And it’s not like the movies—you know, it was wild. When I went in there, I just knew, This is my cheat code. Like everything in life had prepared me for this moment.

The jail was very segregated—the white dudes are here, the Black dudes are here—and I didn’t know what to do. I’m five-foot-nothing, a buck-forty dripping wet. How do I make friends right now?

You’re not going to be put into gen pop while you’re on a weekend hold for stealing a broken phone. I mean, none of this story is true, but even if it were true up to this point, that’s not how it works.

You don’t get the Shawshank experience for petty theft. You’d be in a holding cell, waiting for Monday morning paperwork, not navigating a racially divided prison yard like it’s American History X.

It’s funny that you say, “It’s not like the movies,” and then describe it exactly like the movies, because that’s the only frame of reference you’ve got.

Oz: The jail was very segregated—the white dudes are here, the Black dudes are here—and I didn’t know what to do. I’m five-foot-nothing, a buck-forty dripping wet. How do I make friends right now?

Then I see the Black guys playing spades, and I just walk up. You gotta make your move. I’m like, “Let me see those cards.” And that was it—I didn’t stop for hours, didn’t repeat a trick. I know tricks encyclopedically. I just went all day.

“The jail was ‘very segregated,’ so I went up to the black guys to make friends.” I’m not quite sure I understand the logic there. You know you’re not black, yes?

But honestly, now that I look back on it, I’ve been a bit too critical. This is such a great story. Getting arrested on some trumped-up charges and being stuck in jail over the weekend until you could get things taken care of. So you see all the black guys playing Spades, you go up to them, entertain them all, and win everyone over with card tricks.

Do you know what this reminds me of? That story in Blaine’s Mysterious Stranger. The one where he gets arrested on some trumped-up charges, stuck in jail over the weekend until he can get things sorted out. So he sees all the black guys playing Spades, goes up to them, entertains them all, and wins everyone over with card tricks.

Now, I did notice in the book re-telling of this story you’ve changed some details to avoid some of the obvious inconsistencies and made-up stuff from your appearance on Joe Rogan. But now I think it’s even worse because now you have both versions floating around—different timelines, different “facts”—so it seems even more fake.

Of course—who cares, right? Magicians have been fabricating colorful backstories for centuries. It’s part of the tradition. But remember, you’re trying to convince people you’re a master of the mind, a human lie detector who can pick up on the tiniest details—read micro-expressions, catch every twitch, every hidden tell…and then you spin this half-baked, instantly debunkable story?

You built your brand on noticing the details, and you missed all of them here. It doesn’t just weaken the story, it guts your persona.

And it looks extra corny because it’s a clearly fake story that you thought made you look cool. “I crossed the color barrier and charmed the homies with my sleight of hand!” When you tell the story in your book, you even have the judge saying something like, “Are you the magician everyone’s talking about?!” lol. It’s essentially autoerotic fan fiction for how much you’re blowing yourself here.

As a professional writer (something you might consider employing), here’s the new story I suggest for you going forward:

Okay, actually the story I told on JRE and in my book was fake. I lifted parts of a Blaine story and sprinkled in some other bullshit to sound cool because, truthfully, I didn’t have any good anecdotes for my book.

Well… there is one story, but I was embarrassed to share it. My friends and I had just left Papa John’s when we saw a drifter we decided to rape and set on fire. I went to jail for it, but the black guys said I was their hero for doing card tricks. They also protected me in the shower. And then I used my incredible knowledge of body language to get the judge to dismiss the case and erase all evidence that anything ever happened.

Mailbag #153

I bought Eject by Trick Trick Boom and it’s a great bit of kit, but do you think there’s any way to make it feel like something other than I bought a little machine that shoots out a Sharpie?

So far it definitely gets a little shock and a laugh, but everyone seems to know what’s going on. Thoughts? —IC

Thoughts? I guess… what did you expect, exactly? When a Sharpie comes shooting out from an area people aren’t allowed to look into, yes, they’re going to assume there’s something in there that shot the Sharpie out. That’s what you would presume, correct? You should have known this when you bought it.

Could you incorporate it into something that was truly fooling? Yes, probably. You could do the teleportation bit, but have the Sharpie signed, then do some sort of sleeving switch and drop a different Sharpie in the first bag. Then catch the marker that shoots out of bag number two, and do some other switch again with their original Sharpie coming back into play so they can confirm their signature. It’s possible if you’re great with flipstick/sleeving-type stuff with markers it could look really great. But I don’t know that “teleporting Sharpie” is a premise that’s worth all that much effort.

If I owned this thing, I’d be looking for the most fun way to use it, not the most mystifying. I just don’t think it’s that well-suited for that sort of thing.

Unless maybe you used it as a non-visual moment. For example, you have someone examine a room in their house and lock the door to that room. You make a Sharpie vanish in another part of the house, and when they go back into that room, the Sharpie is sitting on the floor (because you have the gizmo hidden somewhere inconspicuous where it can shoot the marker into the middle of the floor or whatever)

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I recently got a marked stripper deck and found it incredibly useful—but not in the traditional way. Stripper decks are typically considered beginner gimmicks, and there's not much information online beyond basic beginner tricks.

I'm not using it as the main method for tricks, nor am I pulling cards from the deck (the typical tell). Instead, I use it as a tool to create a "crimped" card on the spot by simply reversing a card in the deck. This lets me cut directly to the key card.

Another use: marking the stack portion I need to keep separated. For example, in Shuffle Bored, I reverse the last card of the stack so I can naturally cut to exactly the portion I need during performance.

I've found the combination of marked deck and stripper deck to be an incredibly versatile tool. It allows me to get into the right setup for normal tricks (not typical stripper deck effects) much more easily and naturally. For some tricks, it even allows the spectator to freely shuffle the deck.

So I wonder—why is there so little discussion of stripper decks? Why are they mainly considered magic-kit gimmicks for beginners?

The only theoretical concern is examinability. But I don't think laypeople will notice it, especially if you're not pulling cards from the deck. My sample size is small, though. Do you have any insights, ideas, or data about stripper decks being identified by laypeople? Or why magicians use them so rarely as a tool? I couldn't find a single mention on your website either.—TH

I can only speak for myself, but perhaps this holds true for other magicians as well.

For me, the stripper deck was one of the first magic gimmicks I ever owned. It was something that was sold in normal toy stores.

Now, when I was eight or ten or whatever, I found it to be awkward, difficult, and inconsistent. That could be because the decks weren’t made well, or it could just be because I was a little kid and didn’t have the dexterity to use the deck well.

Either way, that left me with the impression that stripper decks were awkward, difficult, and inconsistent, so I never really bothered with them again in the decades to come.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this was true for others.

Maybe I’ll make it a little project to revisit the gimmick as an adult. If someone can really sell me on a use case for it (other than stripping out the cards for OOTW), I may give it another shot.

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just stumbled over this article:
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/mathematicians-just-found-a-hidden-reset-button-that-can-undo-any-rotation/

At reddit there was an ELI5, that explained it enough for me to think there could be a trick in it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1ob8dvx/comment/nkf6qg2/

Maybe you could "demonstrate" this effect by doing a triumph or by shuffling cards back to new deck order or something. —SS

It’s interesting, but I’ll tell you my experience with this sort of thing.

If I have a trick with a backstory—something a weird guy showed me at a convention, or something strange that happened with a kid I knew growing up—I can hold people for ten or fifteen minutes just on the lead-up.

But if I’m showing people a demonstration of some strange concept, they don’t want a dissertation. They don’t want to struggle to understand the basic concept.

If the concept itself is confusing and they’re also puzzled by the method, that’s just confusion stacked on confusion.

If I’m introducing people to a new concept, I want to be able to do it in just a few sentences: “Apparently our eyes have a kind of built-in heat sensitivity. With enough training, you can learn to sense what’s on the other side of a wall—almost like seeing a faint heat map, or even a low-grade version of x-ray vision.”

Something like that.

But with the concept you mentioned, even the “Explain Like I’m 5” version runs several paragraphs. So it’s likely too confusing to be good for most spectators.

Until November...

Happy Halloween, boys and ghouls.!

[Oh shit, that’s such a hack pun. I need to come up with something original that showcases that signature Jerx wit.]

Happy Halloween, Ladies and Gentlemontresors! Ladies is pronounced with a long “I,” like dies—and Montresor recalls the narrator for Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado. A scary book. Or so I’m told. I’m not much of a reader.

[Haha. Good one, Andy. You nailed it.]

This is the final post for October.

Schedule:

November 2nd - The next Love Letters newsletter for supporters goes out.
November 3rd - Regular posting resumes.
Sometime in the next couple of weeks - The Aug-Oct Juxe Mix goes out.

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Apparently this is a trick that has gone viral a few times in the past 10-15 years, but it’s my first time seeing it.

Story-deck tricks have officially only become worse since Sam the Bellhop (a bland shit-fest in the first place).

Not a laugh-line, clever bit of scripting, or even a corny pun in sight in this one.

@zackofalltrades_ The best storytelling deck trick you’ll ever see!!! #cardmagic #magictrick #magician #magic #cardmagician ♬ original sound - ZackOfAllTrades

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Oz Pearlman will be peddling his dopey nonsene on 60 Minutes this week.

If you’ve stumbled over this site looking for how you too can “read body language” like Oz Pearlman… well… I’m not supposed to give away these body language secrets, so please don’t tell anyone. But let’s say you want to tell someone what movie they’re thinking of. Ask them to think of any movie. Then notice which direction they look towards. Then use this simple “body language” key to know what movie they’re thinking of.

1 is Star Wars
2 is Rush Hour
3 is On Golden Pond
4 is Rush Hour 2
5 is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
6 is Bloodsport
7 is Untitled Innarritu/Tom Cruise Movie [Releases Oct. 2nd, 2026]

And that’s how you use “body language” to know what someone is thinking. Stay tuned and I’ll teach you how to use “influence” to get someone to say the 5 of Hearts.

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Have a good Halloween everyone. See you back here in November.

If you need a good horror movie recommendation, here are some of my favorites that I watched in the past year. As with most horror movies, the less you know going into them, the better.

Heretic
MadS
Strange Darling
Final Destination: Bloodlines (If you enjoy the franchise.)
Weapons
Sting (Nothing revolutionary here, but I thought it was fun. It’s not too dark, and there’s nothing crazy inappropriate in it. So it could be good for a young horror fan.)

Later dudes. I’ve got a halloween party to attend.

Making Space

My favorite YouTube reactor, Coby Connell, recently reacted to the 1978 movie Magic, starring Anthony Hopkins.

There’s a performance lesson in this movie (at 17:30), where Hopkins gets truly worked up while doing a key-card trick—the first trick many of us ever learned. He invests so much into the presentation that Ann-Margret can’t help but fuck him in the next scene.

Now, you might say, “Well, Ann-Margret is getting paid to act like she’s really affected by the trick.”

True—but you can see how effective that scene still is as Coby watches this nearly 50-year-old movie and sits in rapt attention during that trick.

Most of us would look at a simple key-card trick like that, not get a great response with it, and think, Ah, well, it’s a beginner trick. I just need a stronger trick, with a more clever secret, and then I’ll get the sort of reactions I want.

But it’s often not the trick itself that elicits the reaction. It’s the magician’s investment in the trick that tells the other person how interesting, exciting, or stimulating this experience is—and thus dictates the type of response you’ll get.

Hopkins gives a great example of a casual performance here (performance in a casual setting, that is—the performance itself is intense). It’s one-on-one. There’s no apparent “patter.” The performance of the effect is the story he’s leaving with her; he’s not adding a story to the trick. And he leans heavily into the one-step process for more engaging presentations… he eliminates certainty.

Most of us would look through the deck and find the other person’s card. The end. It’s too certain and too pat. There’s nothing to it. Watch Hopkins’ performance, watch Ann-Margret’s response, but most importantly, watch Coby Connell’s reaction to it all. She’s enraptured, appalled, scared, and happy. (This is not a post you can really “get” unless you watch the video.)

And don’t forget the fact that this is an absolute beginner trick. There are no sleights. There are no expensive gimmicks. There’s nothing that most magicians are pursuing with their interest in the craft. There’s just his intensity, which suggests what they’re doing is something significant or consequential in some way.

But, Andy, he’s a murderous psychopath in this movie. And his intensity makes him come off like a lunatic.

Yes, you’re right. I’m not telling you to mimic this specific energy. I’m telling you to mimic his commitment to the bit.

Because the thing is, he’s not really crazy in this scene. He purposefully failed the first time. He’s acting upset. And he’s pretending like he needs her to focus. We know that as magicians because we see he’s following the key-card procedure. He’s committed to the bit that the success of the trick is based on their focus and connection. And that gives the person he’s performing for the space to believe it too.

But you don’t need to echo that commitment in order to trick women into bed with you.

You can just be committed to the belief that what you’re doing is fun, or interesting, or spooky, or intriguing, or wondrous, or surprising—or whatever the experience you’re crafting is.

Most magicians won’t even commit to that much. They won’t even commit to the idea that what they’re showing the other person is interesting. “What if they don’t like it? Then I’ll look dumb for presenting it in a way that suggested they should care.”

But the most likely way to get them to care is to present it like they should.

This is “making space.” You make space for their reaction by committing to the vibe you want them to feel. They can then step into that space to experience that energy.

This is how a beginner’s key-card trick could realistically be used to lure a woman played by one of the hottest actresses of all time into bed. He made space for the moment to seem significant by acting as if it was significant.

If you commit to the idea that what you’re going to show them is fun, unsettling, mind-boggling—whatever it is—you’ll make space for them to feel that way too.

Does David Copperfield Care About His Show? — Introducing Claudette Merrow

I don’t see much live magic. It’s just not my thing. Just because I love sharing tricks with people in real life doesn’t mean I want to sit in a theater and watch someone else do it. I don’t know why this surprises some people. It would be like saying, “You like making jokes and laughing with your friends, right? Well, then you must want to go see Sister Act: The Musical!”

That said, I do enjoy reading about shows. As long as it’s a legitimate review and not some Genii puff piece.

I’m not interested in hearing someone trash a show just for the sake of trashing it, but I do like to get a genuine feel for the experience.

With that said, I’d like to introduce a new voice to The Jerx: famed theater critic, Claudette Merrow.

Claudette has been reviewing theater for fifty-five years, her work appearing in more publications than you can name. Many of us fondly remember her most famous recurring columns: Under the Lights, Curtain Call, Center Stage, The Footlight Files, Scene & Heard, Notes from the Balcony, Two Drinks into Intermission, Coughing in the Mezzanine, I Lost My Virginity to Mandy Patinkin, The Concession Stand Is Out of Bit-O-Honeys, and, of course, There’s Cum on This Seat, her uncomfortably thorough coverage of Times Square’s porn theaters.

I met Claudette at a Mennonite orgy last spring and told her she could write magic show reviews for this site if she ever felt inclined. I don’t know if this will be a one-off or the start of something recurring, but here’s her take on Copperfield’s current Las Vegas show.

[For anyone who has seen the show, please scroll to the end for a quick poll.]

In September I visited Las Vegas for the first time in my life. My married friends Emily and Greg wished to renew their wedding vows and wanted to do so in a kitschy way, and Vegas seems the perfect place. It was really more like a group vacation that happened to have a wedding element, and served as a reunion for some friends we hadn't seen in person for quite a while (one going on almost ten years).

Being people who mostly resist the kinds of things Las Vegas is known for, we decided to indulge in stereotypical tourist activities for the experience. We went to the Bellagio fountains, had our pictures taken with showgirls, ate at several buffets, played (and lost) at several gambling tables, and took in some big Vegas shows. And Vegas being the home of many big name magicians, the obvious choice for a magic show was David Copperfield.

Now I raised my kids on his TV specials, and I even saw him live once when he was on tour back in the 90s. His style of magic is not to my particular taste, but I always appreciated his enthusiasm for what he was doing, cheesy as it may have been. I went into this new show thinking it would be a fun throwback, not amazing but certainly worth the time spent. I came out thinking something else, which is the title of my review:

Does David Copperfield Give Even the Littlest Shit About His Show Anymore?

Upon first arrival, the answer to that question would appear to be yes, given the number of signs that prohibit photographs and videos, and add the unnecessary note that the show and its contents are copyrighted. Before the show starts there is a verbal announcement, warning us that we will be ejected if we are caught with a recording device. Everyone is instructed to turn off their phones and place them into boxes located at our tables. This is to keep them out of sight and prevent us from using them at all during the evening. That sounds like something that someone who cares about and wants to protect his show would do, but that feeling changes right away.

Just before David is brought on stage, we are asked to turn our cell phones back on and send an email to a special address with our hometown so they can populate a map of the audience. Making us go through the trouble of putting our phones away only to immediately ask us to use them is very disrespectful. I'm already bothered at this point and literally nothing has happened yet. Their rules are no pictures, but nobody said anything about writing a review.

David arrives via his appearing motorcycle illusion. This is a great start, and exactly what I came here for: a magician hopelessly stuck in an era long past. I know that sounds disparaging, but I'm being honest. I want that nostalgic cheese. It's the purpose of the entire trip.

But the show itself has a nostalgia theme, and that's clashing with what I came for. David is looking back on his life, telling us about his childhood and his relationship with his father, which is sweet and all, but it's not "hey I think I'm still cool enough to ride a motorcycle."

And I'm willing to follow him on this journey into his personal past, but the way he addresses the audience prevents this. He speaks quietly, often mumbling, and very fast. The impression I get is that he is running a tech rehearsal of the show. "Say my line, say my line, point, cue illusion, take a bow, stagehands set up the next illusion, repeat." He does have interactions with the audience, but it really feels like he's running on autopilot. It's as if spending so many years with high tech illusions has caused him to change into an automaton himself. There are only two moments where he seemed to be alive and present, which were jokes about tariffs on China and one about RFK, Jr - I feel it's because they are the only new jokes to be added in years (the next newest jokes are about Covid, and everything else is solidly vintage). I'd be all for the old tired jokes being used if they were delivered with strange enthusiasm instead of tired apathy. I pretty quickly got the sad impression that David doesn't love magic anymore.

As for the tricks themselves, they are competently executed, but the variety is lacking. Appearing motorcycle, appearing car, appearing spaceship, appearing dinosaur. Each is impressive, but they are all essentially the same trick. There are three tricks which are a prediction on printed matter. Not even a mentalist would do that in a show. And then there's a transposition trick using an audience member.

Sorry, that needs quotes: using an "audience member."

Obvious plant is obvious, and there are quite a few used in the show. At some point David learned that if you want to use a duplicate person, it's good to dress them up in very recognizable clothing, like a loud Hawaiian shirt. That's great for duplicates, but not for regular stooges. Even the people who are only there to encourage the crowd by calling out suggestions when asked, or clapping, or leading a standing ovation are blatantly attired.

The bulk of the show is dedicated to an alien, which I will say right off the bat is a highly impressive bit of technology. But the script for that section is incredibly schmaltzy, even by Copperfield standards. It feels like someone wrote a spec script to get hired as a Disney screenwriter, was rejected, and repurposed it for this show. It might work better if David delivered his lines with any kind of motivation that is not "get to the next part."

Everything about this show is preprogrammed to run exactly the same way every time, and it feels like a Disneyland ride more than a magic show. It's just so fake. Even moments that should seem real - like when he shows photographs of his parents - end up becoming obvious actors hired to play the part. The audience did not seem particularly enthusiastic, apart from the plants of course. I think if it were actually an amusement park show that community theater kids run every hour audiences would appreciate it more. But as a DAVID COPPERFIELD EXPERIENCE, it is sorely lacking.

If he happened to be ill the night I saw him I'd understand, but I've spoken with many people since and everyone who has seen the show the past few years has had the same experience.

All in all this is a terrible disappointment, and just sad, particularly because he is clearly not happy to be there. That made two of us.

—Claudette M.

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Ouch, Claudette! That’s harsh. Personally, I only have positive memories of David’s live performances. But I haven’t seen him in 30 years.

But, I’m curious, have you seen Copperfield’s current show? If so, what’s your take?

I just want to get a sense of what the general consensus is. Is it worth the trip to Vegas? If 90% of people say it’s great or terrible, I’ll probably go—I’m always up for seeing either a masterpiece or a trainwreck. But if it lands somewhere in the middle, I’ll probably skip it.

And look, to be fair, if the show isn’t that good—well, he’s a 70-year-old billionaire. It wouldn’t shock me if he’s lost a bit of the hunger to create something truly transcendent. And Vegas tends to turn a lot of performers into people just coasting toward the finish line.

But I’ll always have a soft spot for David. His yearly magic specials were one of the few sources of magic we had back then. Think about that. You could easily go a whole year without seeing a single other bit of magic on TV, or anywhere else for that matter. No wonder those shows meant so much to those of us who were young and interested in magic at the time.

For that reason, I hope Copperfield doesn’t go out with a whimper. Come on, David! Scrap the current show and start fresh. Build something new and take it to Broadway for a few months. Put some pressure on yourself to perform in a city where people actually care about the theatrical experience.

“But I’m old, and winding things down.”

No! Stop it. That’s nonsense and I don’t want to hear it. You’re just going to give up? What…a 70-year-old with more money and success than he knows what to do with can’t reinvent himself? Can’t find the inspiration and drive to create the best, most relevant work of his life? He just has to fade into irrelevance? Why? Because that’s the way it always goes? Disgusting. And here I thought you believed in magic.

Spirit Coffin

Penguin and Nate Kranzo released a new effect called The Spirit Coffin.

The ad copy says:

“The Spirit Slates have been a traditional prop in spiritualism and bizarre magic for decades, but modern audiences have little reference for chalkboards in an age of screens.”

Good point.

And in the video for the product, Nate says:

“The Spirit Slates have always been a kind of unnatural prop for me.”

Yes! Finally we can replace those weird old Spirit Slates with something more modern, more relatable, more in tune with the times.

Something like… hmmm… I don’t know… a mini chalkboard coffin?

Now, look—I think this is a fun idea for a prop. But let’s not pretend this is a more normal or organic upgrade to the typical Spirit Slates. Sure, maybe small chalkboards aren’t as common as they were 100 years ago, but they’re infinitely more common than a mini coffin you write in with chalk. In fact, most people would say the latter isn’t something that exists.

Some of those endorsements are wild, too. The essence of most of them is, “Ugh, finally someone upgraded those stupid Spirit Slates and put them in a coffin like we’ve all been hoping for.”

Marc DeSouza says this is “such a natural prop.” Ah yes, so “natural.” Honey, the magician just pulled out a mini chalkboard coffin. Like the ones we use at the veterinary clinic to give the hamsters a proper Christian burial.

Again, I don’t dislike the prop—I just think trying to advertise it as more relatable than the normal Spirit Slates is dumb.

Maybe they figured they couldn’t get away with saying, “It’s like the traditional Spirit Slates, just even less recognizable.”

Here’s the thing…once you start pulling out a coffin of any size to do a trick with, we can stop pretending that relatability is the quality you’re trying to maximize in your performance.

You’re doing some goofball magic nonsense. At that point, just own it.