Gardyloo #15
/If you're a Jerx completist, there is an effect of mine in the latest Penguin Magic Monthly.
It's not a new trick. You can see it here.
Just to emphasize what a savvy marketer of my material I am, I received an offer a couple weeks ago from a magician you all know asking if he could buy the rights for that trick and have me take it off my website. It would have been a nice little payday, the best this site has provided to this point. Instead, I had already given that trick to Penguin to put in their magazine for which I received... I don't think I received anything! I have to spend $50 if I even want to get a free copy of the magazine! And there's nothing I really want to get until the Milk to Light Bulb is back in stock.
It's a good thing I'm part-sociopath or this sort of thing would probably get to me. Instead I'm just delighted that one of the strongest, most direct effects in the history of magic is now hidden away to be forgotten about in Penguin's free monthly magic thingy.
Speaking of marketing. If you're a pro who does close-up gigs, you'll probably want to check out Andi Gladwin's second At the Table lecture. While it has a few tricks in it, the main selling point is the tips on marketing and crafting your website. It's like 8 bucks, so you don't have much to lose and the advice is really sound.
And it's always funny to watch Andi and Josh attempt to suppress the true nature of their relationship in public.
Here's a throwback.
I used to use the effect "Milk to Light Bulb" as a punchline on my old site. It's such a stupid idea for a trick that more than one person thought I had made it up as a gag. No, it's a real trick.
(When I started this site I didn't mention Milk to Light Bulb much because I realized there was an equally arbitrary trick that people had convinced themselves was good: bill to lemon. It's not good. It's meaningless impossibility. Like so much of magic. )
At any rate, I found a couple old pictures in a defunct email address with the label "funtime" on them. They're pictures of a friend of mine dressed up as Steve Brooks' old profile picture on the Magic Cafe. They were taken for a post on a fake product I had created called "Light To Milk Carton." Sadly the other pictures and the post they go along with are lost to time. And those pictures included my friend in his Brooks get-up pouring milk all over himself, and the money shot of the light pouring out of the carton. He has his suspenders tucked into his underwear because he didn't want to get back on the subway with milk drenched jeans. Understandable.
In fact, here is the first mention of Milk to Light Bulb from the old site:
Thursday, November 20, 2003
World's Dumbest Magic Trick?
Why does this trick exist?
I don't get it. It seems so arbitrary. Milk to light bulb? Why not have an effect where a steel-toed work boot fills up with ravioli? Where's that effect? Why don't they sell an effect where a barbecue grill magically overflows with hooded sweatshirts?
It would be one thing if you could make a light bulb in your friend's house fill up with milk. It still wouldn't make any sense, but it would be very puzzling. But when you bring a lamp somewhere, turn it on, and then show that the light bulb is filled with milk, I think the natural reaction would be, "Hmmm, I guess he's a got a lamp that looks like it's lit even when the light bulb is filled with milk."
In fact your only defense would be to say, "Hey, if I was going to spend $275 on a magic trick, do you really think I'd buy one that caused milk to appear in a light bulb? That doesn't even make any fucking sense! So it must be real magic!" Although that logic is a little suspect as well.
What amazes me is that they claim to be better than all the other models on the market. There are other models!
Take a look at the pictures on that website. The guy pours the milk from a pitcher into a cone of newspaper, the milk vanishes, appears in a light bulb, which he pours back into the pitcher. Hey asshole! You should have saved us the time and energy and just left the milk in the pitcher to begin with!
If there is a more nonsensical trick out there, please let me know.