Beggars' Blessings Ebook

Beggars’ Blessings, the ebook that collects the trick recommendations from the Better With Weber contest will be sent out by the end of the day today.

The ebook contains 280 trick recommendations from other Jerx readers as well as a couple bonus items plucked from some older releases by Michael Weber himself.

As he describes them:

The first is an experience where the real magic happens over time and distance. Something you give your participant transforms after he takes it home.

The second is a great (and very fair feeling) little swindle that allows you to have an associate get the money out of his pocket and pay for lunch.

If you don’t receive the ebook then one of these things happened:

1. I screwed up. Let me know and we’ll sort it out.

2. You didn’t follow the rules of the contest as delineated in the post on April 2nd. In which case, your email was probably filtered out at some point along the way. Ask yourself, “Did I provide him the information he asked for?” If the answer is “No,” then that’s why you weren’t on the ebook mailing list. If you’re in this group that did respond, but just didn’t do so correctly, you can still get a copy of the ebook by sending me an email with the subject line: I’m a big dumb dummy. And in the email explain what you did wrong. The point of this is not to shame you. The point of it is to make you jump through at least as many hoops as the people who did it properly jumped through. If you got the same reward for screwing up that the people who did it right received, that wouldn’t be very fair to the people who did it right.

3. You didn’t contribute a submission to the ebook. In which case, why would I assume you’re interested in it? If you’d like one you can buy a copy for $5.

(“Oh, so this was some money-making scheme?” Yeah, that’s right. You figured it out. My big money-making scheme was to give away $600 worth of magic products. Then spend a couple days of my life collating and formatting a 300 page ebook that I gave away free to anyone who expressed an interest in it over the course of eight days. Then, so as not to completely shut-out the few people who would want the ebook but missed those posts—while at the same time keeping the “bonus” aspect of this for those who did contribute to the ebook—I’m making it available for $5. Hold on. Thanks for reminding me. I need to call my bank and tell them to clear out some space in the vault, so we’ll have room for all my new monies!”)

You’ll have the ebook later tonight. If you expect it and don’t see it, check your spam. If it doesn’t show up by tomorrow, then you can contact me.

On the Shores of Camp Pickacarda

In the beginning of this site there was an issue that I struggled with. I wanted to demonstrate to people how strong some of these different presentational techniques could be, and so I wanted to put up some videos of performances. Not just performances, but also the aftermath of performances. But I could never think of a way to do this.

It’s not that I was concerned about preserving my anonymity. I could have friends do the performances. The issue was with the spectators. If we recorded the performances as if we were doing a product demo, that would completely change their reaction. Especially if we said we were recording their reactions to then show other people. It would likely cause them to over-exaggerate the response they would assume we wanted.

And it would probably tamp down what I would actually hope to capture, which is the greater level of interest, engagement and connection I feel the style of performance I write about can generate. You can’t really capture it on film because the act of filming it would get in the way of that type of interaction. It would be like saying to your partner, “I want to show people how passionate our lovemaking is, so I’m going to record it.” Even if they were okay with that idea, you’re not going to get a real sense of what happens when the camera isn’t there.

If I could just secretly record it, I thought, then maybe you’d see how this sort of thing goes over. But, of course, secretly recording people to show on your magic blog is the action of a sociopath.

Then I thought maybe I could secretly record it, but then afterwards explain to the person that I had recorded the interaction and get their permission to show it. And I actually went to the effort of setting up a camera and secretly recording a meetup with a friend. But halfway through, I realized it was going too well and there was no chance I was going to be like, “Hey. Funny thing about what just happened… I was actually recording the whole thing to show other people.” That’s the thing about social magic: the tricks that go really well are the reactions you’d most want to see, but they’re also the ones that would be weirdest to share.

Eventually I did stumble upon a solution for the issue. And the solution was simply that I stopped feeling any desire to try and convince people about the strength of this style of performing. If you don’t instinctively resonate with the audience-centric/conversational/social style, then it’s just not for you. If you’re drawn to a more professional style (whether you’re actually a professional performer or not) then I won’t be able to change your mind, nor do I want to. I used to want to bring people over to this type type of performing. But now I just want to serve as a resource for people who are naturally drawn to it.

With all that said, I actually do have a video of someone’s reaction to share with you today.

Friend-of-the-site, Kyle O, is a magician in the social style and he did capture a reaction to a trick in a somewhat unusual way.

Kyle’s performance utilized two things I’ve written about on this site and in my books to create a memorable experience from a meaningless trick. Specifically those two things are the concept of using time as a tool to strengthen simple effects, and the concept of using buy-ins so your spectator has more invested in the effect.

He took these techniques to the extreme and his experience really shows the power of these techniques. First, he took the dullest effect you can think of—he had someone remove a card from a marked deck and then he revealed it—and then he stretched that effect out for weeks.

Kyle was working at a summer camp last year. One day he had a girl he knew from camp select a card from a deck and shuffle it back into the pack. If he had said, “It was the five of diamonds,” she would have said, “Yup. Neat.” Instead he spent weeks “figuring out” the card she took through a series of interactions. She kept a log of these exchanges that I was able to read. It was a good combination of things that felt like psychological tests and personality assessments, as well as physical activities like going paddle boarding and tossing pieces of card into the lake and noting their orientation to apparently discern certain qualities about her card. They would also do things like talk about books and music and he seemingly used this information to help him narrow down the options.

The details of each interaction don’t really matter. The point is just that he took a 30 second trick and made it go on for weeks. The trick was a framing device for a number of different activities and conversations.

Some people will scoff at this sort of thing. “Just do a trick. Not everything has to be some big event.” As if that’s what I’m suggesting. It’s not, of course. I’m saying this is the sort of opportunity you do have with amateur magic, so why not take advantage of it from time to time?

As the summer and their time together was coming to an end, it came time to wrap up the trick. He met up with her and had two envelopes. He had narrowed it down to two possibilities. One last choice on her part eliminated one of the options which proved not to be the right card.

He sent her off with the remaining envelope with one card inside to open by herself. She decided to record herself opening the envelope, which she shared with him (and both have allowed me to share here). So we get to see her very sweet, charming reaction to a trick that—in its most basic form—many of us wouldn’t even consider performing. But by using social magic techniques, it was turned into something quite strong and memorable.

A Strange Video I Found

Guys, I’m kind of freaking out a little. I found this weird thing online last night and it really has me unsettled. I was just doing some mindless clicking around, looking at some old defunct magic sites. Thinking maybe I would find something dumb to post on here. I was watching tv at the same time, so I wasn’t paying too much attention. I was clicking random ads on some old magic blogs and I found myself at this site that looked like it was from the early 2000s.

I couldn’t figure out what language the site was in. It didn’t use normal letters. It looked maybe… runic or something? If that’s even possible.

I didn’t give it too much thought. I recognized a bunch of old products from about 15-20 years ago. So it just seemed like a strange old magic website. But it’s hard to get too creeped out when you’re seeing ads for sponge fruit or pictures of David Regal. That’s about as unthreatening as a thing can get.

Then I saw an ad for something and the thumbnail for the video said, “Social Distancing Mask.” I was like, Huh? The site was clearly old. And I was wondering if somehow this was a targeted ad that was being populated from somewhere else. Or maybe that’s a term that had some other meaning 15 years ago, and it was just a coincidence that I was seeing it in the middle of all of this.

So I took the ad copy and put it through Google Translate. It said: Language: Unknown. But it also gave me a translation. How is that possible?

The translation for the ad was this:

“2020 may seem like a long time from now. But as sure as the peacock strums the guitar [What?], that year will come. And when it does, you will wish you had bought this mask to help you deal with our virus [Our?]. This mask is guaranteed to keep people 15 feet from you at all time. It will repel people as sure as the peacock strums the guitar. “ [Again with the peacock thing?]

And here is the video that was in the ad. Don’t watch it if you’re alone. I had to turn all the lights on in my house and couldn’t get to sleep all night.

Now, that’s definitely mid-2000s era Penguin music and graphics, but then it says “Available at Vanishing Inc,” which didn’t even exist at that time.

And that mask is of modern-day Joshua Jay, right? I’m not going crazy here, am I?

I downloaded the video and I wanted to link to the site, but when I went back today I got an error message that said, “This site does not exist. In fact, it has never existed. Quit looking into it.” That seems super sketchy.

I’m not sure what’s happening. This is a weird time and things just seem to be getting weirder.

My Italian Grandmother Boiled, Peeled, and Mashed All Those Potatoes... for This?

Okay, fine. I’ll stop making this sort of joke. (Only because I can’t think of another variation.)

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Friend of the site, ML, has passed along a helpful nugget for anyone interested in playing around with anagrams.

Open a google spreadsheet. Put the alphabet along the top row, and the words you want the anagram for along the left column, then, in all the other spaces, put this formula:

=IF(REGEXMATCH($A2, B$1), "X", "")

There will be an X in the box if the word contains that letter and it will be blank if it doesn’t. Then you can take it from there. In a previous post I described the process I use when I want to create transgressive (as opposed to progressive) anagrams.

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Reader mail:

I know that you don’t particularly like ReaList [Andy’s note: ReaList is an app by Greg Rostami that let’s you force something into a position from a list on a website] as there is friction in the selection process but it can be performed over the phone. I am fascinated by your routines and I was just wondering how would you perform ReaList over the phone? —CE

You know, I’m stuck on this one. I still haven’t bought the app, but my friend has, and I’ve talked with him a little trying to crack something really cool to do with it, but I haven’t had much luck. My primary problem with ReaList, as I mentioned in this post, is that it’s a better way to do the worst things that people are doing with Digital Force Bag. “Name a number, and I’ll predict the thing that lies at that number.” Is not something that I find inherently that interesting. It’s not a bad trick, it’s just a bland trick.

And it’s sort of an illogical trick. Pick a number. We’ll map that number to some other object (in a way in which you have no say). Then I’ll show that I predicted that other object. Huh? Why didn’t I just cut to the chase and write down the number on my prediction in the first place? That would have saved us time and been the exact same trick.

“You said 14? Okay… now scroll through the list. What’s at number 14. Goodfellas? If you had said 13 it would have been something else. If you had said 15 it would have been something else as well. Scroll all the way through, there is no other Goodfellas on the list. Now open my prediction… It says Goodfellas!”

Why didn’t it just say “Fourteen”? I mean, ultimately, that’s what the trick is. It’s not a trick about movies, it’s a trick about a number (that was then translated to a movie). If it was a trick about movies, I would have said, “Think of one of these movies.” (This is why I like the Xeno app. That trick is about whatever the list is about.)

That’s why with DFB, none of the routines I’ve written about are that direct in the way things are predicted. “You said that number, and that number means this thing, and I predicted this thing.” That just doesn’t appeal to me.

As far as doing the effect remotely, it’s nice to have that option, but if I’m going to do something over video chat or something like that, I want to do something that feels very analog. You already have the distance of the webcam between you and your spectator. I think—ideally—that should feel like the only technology in the equation. I want there to be something tangible in all of this. I don’t want to be on video-chat, have you look at something on a website, and then text you my prediction. That’s just my personal preference.

I’m not trying to shit on this app. I have a feeling it does what it does well. I just haven’t thought of a use for it yet that I really like and would warrant me purchasing it.

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And, frankly, since video chat allows you to do a prediction of anything very cleanly using this method, anything less than that seems like a step backwards.

By the way, DM wrote in to suggest using an Ostin clip for the webcam predictions (search around, there are a bunch of different variations available). I don’t believe I’ve ever used one, but that certainly seems like it would work. Hang it from the ceiling by a ribbon so it’s in the shot the whole time and you’re good to go.

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The free ebook for the people who entered the Better with Weber contest should be coming later this week. I’ll make a post here when it’s ready.

Joyful Noise #2

Here are some little things that have made me happy recently.

Reaction Video

In last Sunday’s post I mentioned reaction videos. I also mentioned how there is a bizarre amount of reaction videos for the Righteous Brothers, specifically for “You’re Lost That Loving Feeling.”

What follows is maybe my favorite moment from all reaction videos.

Modern Renaissance Man is watching the Righteous Brothers who, at the start of the video, are singing in silhouette. The lights go up on the singer. “A white dude?!” MRM says. Moments later the light goes up on the other Righteous Brother. “Two white dudes!” he says with astonished glee. His delivery is perfect.

The video below starts at 1 minute in. But watch until at least 1:45.

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Horror Book

I found The Troop by Nick Cutter to be a pretty enjoyable read. Some people were grossed out by it, but I didn’t find it that bad. It came out a few years ago, but I just read it last year. If you like horror, I would check it out.

I’m going to spoil it a little in the next few paragraphs so skip to the next section if you think you might read it.

Ok. Let’s wait a minute for everyone to skip this paragraph. I’ll put a line from that Righteous Brothers song here to add some space before I tell you about my favorite scene in the book. You never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips. And there's no tenderness like before in your fingertips. Okay, that should be enough. So the book is about a genetically modified strain of tapeworms that are extra ravenous and fairly quickly cause you to waste away because they devour anything you eat—you can’t possibly eat enough to satiate them. So soon your body is infested with these things and they are essentially eating you from the inside out. I want to share my favorite image in the book. It takes place on an island where boy scouts are on a weekend excursion. The scouts get infested. They only brought enough food for the weekend and they’re stuck on the island (for reasons that don’t matter for what I’m telling you). Because the tapeworms are absorbing anything they can from the body, the kids are withering away. The scene I can’t get out of my head is about this one kid. His gums are receding because of the hyper-malnutrition, and all but one of his teeth fall out. But, he has braces. Here is how it’s described in the book.

“The fleshless pinworms that were his lips skinned back to disclose a dizzying grotesquerie: his gums had been eaten back from his teeth, and all but one—his left front incisor—had loosened and fallen from their gum beds; yet they remained connected by Kent’s braces, gray teeth linked like charms on a gruesome bracelet, clicking and clacking in the dark vault of his mouth, all hanging by that one tenacious tooth . . . which, as Shelley watched, slid from Kent’s gums with a slick sucking sound, a bracelet of teeth bouncing over his lips, his chin, tumbling to the cellar steps. Kent stepped on them, oblivious to his own teeth shattering like ribbon candy.”

Supposedly they’re making a movie based on the book. I hope that scene is in it.

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Live Performance Highlight

I’ve talked in the past about identifying particular moments of experiences that resonate with you.

Because this is the way I try and look at things, I tend to get caught up in specific small moments in things.

So I’m going to share with you one of my favorite moments from the Talking Heads concert film, Stop Making Sense, a film I watched recently for the first time in a while.

It comes in the song, Once in a Lifetime. There’s a part near the end of the song where David Byrne isn’t singing. He’s sort of moving to the music and begins to lean back, limbo style. As he moves back his movements slow and become out of sync with the music, and his back is almost parallel to the ground. As this musical break comes to an end there is a drum fill, and in time with that drum fill, Byrne rises and whips the microphone out of the mic stand in one perfectly timed motion. Simultaneously the camera shot changes and we see that not only was Byrne doing that lean-back thing, but so were his back up singers. And we see these two singers slowly rise back up, almost as if they’re floating back into place. And there are two keyboard players coming out of the darkness above them. It’s a very striking moment. If you just saw a snapshot of it, you could maybe mistake it for an image from an old spiritualist ceremony.

It’s a great moment. It starts a little after 4:00 in to the clip below. But watch the whole thing, it’s worth it.

The Juxe: "In No Time At All This Will Be the Distant Past"

I’m not a huge Father John Misty fan, but the songs of his I like, I really like.

The title of this post comes from his song Ballad of the Dying Man. It’s a sentiment I try and keep in mind. When times are good it reminds me to be present and to enjoy the moment while it’s here. When times aren’t good it reminds me that those times will soon be over.

The song itself isn’t really about that idea, necessarily. But it’s a really good song. There’s no real music video for it, and the live versions are nowhere near as pretty. So here is the official audio from the album itself.

Here are some of my other FJM favorites.

Hollywood Forever Cemetary

The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment

The next couple of songs sort of go together. They’re from his album God’s Favorite Customer. It’s an album he wrote while holed up in a hotel for a couple months dealing with depression and delusions. The song, “Mr. Tillman” (Father John Misty’s real name is Josh Tillman) is kind of an amusing/creepy look at this time (with an amusing and creepy video as well). “Please Don’t Die,” is a more raw, vulnerable take on the same time, with the chorus coming from his wife’s perspective as she was dealing with him during this period.

And the Winner Is...

It’s time to announce the winner of the Better with Weber challenge. There was no judging. This was just a random draw from all the entries to the contest.

Here’s how it worked, so you know I just didn’t fix it to let one of my friends win.

I labelled every email that came in for the contest with the label “Contest” in gmail. So far, so good.

In the end, there were 247 entrants.

(There will be slightly more trick recommendations than that in the ebook, since some people came in after the cut-off point.)

But who could be trusted to pick the winning entrant? I went with the man himself, Michael Weber. He used random.org to select a random number and sent me this screenshot.

So now it was just a matter of seeing who submitted the 35th entry into the contest.

Counting up from the bottom in this next image (which is the first 40 or so entrants) we see that the winner is Richard I. Congrats, Richard I! I’ll be contacting you soon.

Now here’s something a little strange. The winner, Richard, was number 35. If you look below him, it’s someone named Michael. That’s Michael Weber. He entered a contest for his own material! Ain’t that some shit? And he almost won! He was number 34 and the winner was 35.

When I told him this he said, “Turn your laptop around.” And when I did I saw, scrawled on the back, “Off by one.” He Kenton Knepper’d my ass!

No, that’s not true. Well, everything is true up until that last paragraph.

So, thus ends the contest. Get your submissions in by the end of today if you want the ebook but haven’t yet given your recommendation (see Tuesday’s post).

And just a reminder. All of you who entered the Better with Weber contest are now on the clock for the Better with the Jerx contest. You have a much better chance of winning this one as I would guess most people will flake out when it comes to accomplishing their goal. We’ll see.