Alphablocks and Mind Reading Dice

A little while ago I posted a trick called Ascrabbological Sign. It was a “proof of concept” idea where you would be able to tell what astrological sign someone was thinking of based on having them concentrate on “random” scrabble letters picked from a bag, without you ever actually seeing the letters.

I never did anything with it, I just presented the concept. Well, Warwick H. has created an online tool that is kind of amazing (to me, at least). You can dump any list of (up to 16) words into it and it will shit out letter groupings you can use to do the same Ascrabbological effect with any words you want.

So, for instance, you could play a game of Scrabble with someone and take a picture of the board when you’re done. Later in the evening you could have them look at the picture and think of one of the words there, and then you could determine what they’re thinking just by having them concentrate on some randomly selected tiles.

Or ditch the scrabble tiles altogether and use the tool with slips of paper that you’ve written letters on or alphabet cards or something like that.

I’ve only played with this a little bit, but I have a feeling people are going to come up with some good uses for it. It’s sort of got a progressive anagram feel to it, but they never tell you the letters you got right. You just need to know how many you got right. So the key to creating a trick with this method is:

1. Having them think of some subset of words

2. Have some way of delivering them two “random” groupings of letters.

3. Have some way of determining how many letters in those groupings are in their words.

So, here’s an example.

1. They think of one of these cereals

2. You have a small, clear switch bag filled with Alpha-Bits cereal. You shake it up and dump a few random pieces into their cupped hands while you look away.

3. You tell them to eat any letters that appear in their cereal’s name and put the other ones aside. You do a second round of this as well. Then you have them spit in your mouth and you tell them the cereal they’re thinking of. (I didn’t say it was a good idea.)

So, to do that you would just plug the cereal name into Warwick’s tool. And you’d get this result…

Then you’d have your gimmicked bag set up to deliver them H-A-N the first round and E-L-G (or any other un-used letter) in the second round. And you’d need some sort of crib that tells you:

0 - 0 = Trix
0 - 1 = Reese’s Puffs

And so on.

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I wanted to take advantage of the ability of using the tool in real time to do a trick over the phone with someone. So I called a friend of mine and I spun a story about going to a little magic gathering the previous week. “It’s almost like a magic farmer’s market. People come with tricks they’ve created and set up little folding tables and demonstrate them and sell them.”

I tell her how there’s this one guy who’s really well known for his interesting creations, but he won’t demonstrate them, and they’re really expensive and he only makes a couple of each trick. Usually he’s sold out by the time I get to his table. But this year I got there very early and they limited the number of people because of covid, so I was able to snag one of his tricks.

“I have a feeling I was totally scammed, though. The trick is called ‘Mind Reading Dice’ and it was $180 and it came in just a small paper lunch bag that was stapled closed. And when I got it home and opened it, it wasn’t some hand-crafted artisan magic trick. I swear to god, I think he just sold me some Boggle dice for $180.”

I tell her that before I make a big stink about getting my money back I want to try it out. I say that I have the instructions but it requires a somewhat long process to “calibrate” the dice and I ask if she has a little while to help me test it out. [Note: The trick doesn’t really take that long, but I wanted to set that expectation.]

I start by asking her to list some of her favorite words. Words she likes the sound of, or likes the meaning of, or just words she likes for whatever reason. Her list of words is:

SPARK
AROUSE
MEANDER
VANILLA
THIGHS
COAX
CARESS
ESPIONAGE
SERENDIPITY
PLEASE
LOVERS
PINGPONG
COCKSUCKER

As she is giving me the words, I’m silently typing them into the tool.

When she is done I tell her to think of any word and change her mind a few times before settling on a final word.

“Okay,” I say, “So now I have to remove a random number of dice and roll them. I’ll read to you the letters that come up and you just keep in mind how many of those letters are in the word you’re thinking of. We’re going to have to do this a bunch of times. Maybe 15-20. So try to stay with me.”

She hears me dump a bunch of dice on the table.

“Okay, Round 1. The letters are: I… N…O…U…Y. How many did we get?”

“I-N-O-U-Y? Uhm, just one.”

Shake. Roll.

“Round 2. The letters are C-E-L-R. How many this time?”

“None.”

“Ha. We’re getting worse. Great. These are clearly just Boggle dice. I can’t believe this. Whatever. Here we go. Round 3.”

Shake. Roll.

“Okay… so we’ve got a… holy shit! Was this?… This was one of your words! [quietly] You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. [normal voice] If this is what you’re thinking of I’m going to lose my shit. Hold on. Let me take a picture.”

I take a picture of the dice I just rolled (wink-wink) and text it to her. “Wait,” I say. “Before you look at the picture. What word were you thinking of?”

“Thighs,” she says.

“What the fuuuuccccckkkkk,” she hears my voice slowly fade away as I run away from my phone, like a Blaine spectator.

On her end, she looks at the picture and I can hear her scream coming out of my phone from across the room.

I wasn’t expecting a huge reaction to this, but it went over surprisingly well. Here are, I think, some of the elements that made it work so well.

• It used her own words that she came up with.

• I said that we were in for a long process. I didn’t say what that process was, but the implication was that whatever was going to happen was going to be some time down the road. So the fact that the dice “read her mind” so quickly made it extra surprising. The idea that you could find some pattern in the letters of the words over many rounds of this game, isn’t very far-fetched. But with just two rounds, and their words, I think it becomes much more impossible.

• I pinned the magic on someone else. It wasn’t me reading their mind. It was a trick that we were experiencing together.

• The sound of dice hitting the table—even over the phone—is very distinctive. It’s very easy to “see” what you’re hearing. A lot of things look random and haphazard, but dice hitting the table sounds random and haphazard. So I think that helped paint the picture that I’m calling out random letters.

I did, in fact, use a set of Boggle dice for this. I had a small handful of dice that I was rolling for the sound, then I had the rest of the dice with common letters on top in alphabetical order off to the side. That was to help me quickly assemble her word once I knew what it was. Sort of the way a typesetter would have the letters in front of them ready to go.

I was prepared to stall after round 2 and bitch about how much money I wasted as I assembled her word on the table. But in this case, she thought of one of the shorter words and it didn’t take me long to find the letters so I was ready to go pretty quickly.

This was fun to perform. The story of maybe getting suckered at some weird magic flea market is a pretty good one. And the process of having them name their favorite words is rich territory for interaction. And the unexpectedly early conclusion is strong.

If you have any ideas using this technique and Warwick’s tool, feel free to pass them along.

For now I’m calling this technique Alphablocking (because it uses blocks of letters… clever, Andy!). What I’m wondering, however, is does this already have a name? Did I make up this technique? I doubt it, because it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing I’d be the first to come up with. But while I can see a relation to other techniques used in magic/mentalism, I don’t think I know of something that’s exactly the same. If you have some credits/history for this, let me know.

And finally, thanks to Warwick H. for creating this online tool. Unlike you and I, Warwick is one of those smart guys. If you have an idea in mind that your dumb ass can’t really take any further, Warwick made this kind offer in an email to me….

“Since I enjoy working on solving these kinds of problems/puzzles so much, I'd like to make an open invitation to your readers to get in touch if they need any similar problems solved for their magic (I'm mostly thinking of the kind of thing where a computer chugging through combinations in a smart way might be expected to have an advantage over a human, but all enquiries welcome). Contact details are on the website.”

Monday Mailbag #40

I’m trying to picture this: You’re sitting in a coffee shop and someone you don’t know is sitting next to you. Do you really just turn to them and ask them if they want to see a magic trick or ask them to “help you with something you’re working on”? You’ve inspired me to perform more and I’ve had a lot of success using your ideas with my friends. But how do you start something with a stranger in public? —HH

I’m sure it has happened, but it is very, very rare that my first words spoken to a stranger would be asking them if they want to see a magic trick.

A lot of the issues magicians have with the concept of “social magic” are really just an extension of their issues with social interaction in general. So let’s forget the “magic” aspect for a moment and just talk about how to initiate an interaction with someone you don’t know.

Since you brought up a coffee shop, I’ll talk about that environment. If I want to try out something with a stranger, this would be my approach. I’d go sit in their general vicinity. When they look up—as people generally do when someone enters their surroundings—I’d make eye contact. Smile or nod my head in acknowledgement. And then say, “How’s it going?”

When I break it down, it sounds stupid. And I don’t really think of it in these steps. This is just normal human interaction.

Now, asking how someone is doing can either be just a casual greeting or it can be an opening for a conversation, depending on how they take it.

So if they say, “Good. Thanks.” Then that gives me some idea of their openness for engagement.

If they say, “I’m good. Finally getting a chance to enjoy some sunshine. I thought it was going to be cloudy all week. How about you? Did you get outside today?” That would obviously indicate that they are much more open for a conversation. Then, at some point after we’ve been talking a while, it’s not too difficult to transition into a trick. “Hey, I was reading about something,” or, “Hey, my friend just taught me this weird thing that I’ve been wanting to try out. It’s like a magic trick, sort of.” I don’t try to be too clever about it.

And even if the other person does just give you a sort of cursory, “Hey, I’m good. Thanks.” response to your initial hello, you’ve at least cracked the conversational seal a little bit so it’s less awkward if you turn to them later on and ask them a question.

In a coffee shop you need to take notice of what the person is doing. If they have their headphones on and they’re banging on the laptop, then I’m not going to bother them. But if they’re sitting at the counter just enjoying their coffee, then I find, more often than not, they’re looking for some kind of interaction.

You should also make it a point to get to know the baristas (assuming you’re not somewhere that is just a constant stream of customers). Very often my conversations with new people start as conversations between me and the barista, then some stranger joins in, and then I break off and continue with the stranger.

I could go on, but I’m getting away from my original point which is: Don’t think of it as, “How do I get into a magic trick with a stranger?” Think of it as, “How do I start a conversation with a stranger?” And you do that simply by putting out a welcoming vibe and saying hello.

Once the conversation is in full swing, a good way to get into a trick is to build off something they say about themselves. This is something I use a lot. If they tell me they’re an artist, then I’ll ask some questions about the type of art they do, and look at some examples on their phone or whatever. After that—almost as an afterthought—I’ll say, “Oh, wait. Can I try something with you? You’d be perfect for this. I’ve been wanting to try this with someone with your type of artistic skills.” And now I’m pulling out a business card for them to draw on. Of course I could do something similar if they said they were studying math, an athlete, a writer, or whatever.

Tying something they say or something they’re interested in into a trick you want to perform is a skill in and of itself, but it’s a pretty easy one, in my opinion. The big moment of friction is to get that conversational ball rolling. Once you do that you’ll be fine.

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[Referring to this post about online exposure.]

I think you’re underestimating the harm that the exposure of tricks on facebook/tiktok/instagram etc is going to have on magic. I realize that you’re coming at this from an amateur’s perspective, but as someone who makes his living performing tableside and bar magic, it’s terrifying to see classic magic tricks and methods exposed so casually. —CF

I understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t think I’m underestimating it. I think the traditional magician-centric manner of magic performance is more or less doomed, if it’s not already dead. And it’s death is due to the internet which makes it:

• Easy for people to see magic whenever they want

• Easy for non-magicians to track down the secret of a trick (or at least track down that it is something with a secret that can be learned—and not some unknowable mystery)

• Easy for non-magicians to be exposed to secrets unintentionally

These things are all very bad for magic as it was traditionally performed, in a manner that usually stressed the magician’s power and the secret. So yeah, I’m not underestimating the destructive power of the the internet on that style of magic. In fact, a lot of the ideas on this site and my entire last book was about alternative presentational techniques to give your magic performances some elements that can’t be undermined by something the spectator sees online.

Yes, there’s a lot more you need to navigate these days if you want to create a long-lasting, powerful experience for people. It’s not just a matter of having access to a book that 99.999% of the world don’t have access to, as it was 30 years ago.

But I will give you two positive points you may want to take with you:

#1 - Regarding magic exposure on Facebook et al., I think there’s a good chance that people don’t remember this stuff as much as we would think they would. I’m specifically referring to the type of casual exposure you stumble across in a facebook video (not something the person specifically searched out). Have you watched any cooking hack or life hack videos with their clever solutions to common problems? I’ve probably watched 556 hours of them. And I don’t remember anything I saw in them. I would not be surprised if—for people who don’t care that much about magic—any particular magic method they stumble across doesn’t fall into this same sort of “clever solution” memory hole. It probably just doesn’t mean enough to those people to remember. Admittedly this is more of a personal theory than a fact I can prove.

#2 - You are performing for people live and in person. You should be able to find limitless opportunities to do things that just cant be replicated online. Things that should feel more personal, and vital, and relevant to the spectators. If the experience of seeing you live table-side is the same thing that they’re getting watching facebook videos of magic, then you’re material needs a complete overhaul.

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Fantastic trick idea today Andy. I’ve been thinking about it and I’m curious about something.

Would you class the overall effect as being able to produce a ‘randomly’ selected loved one? Or something weirder?

The way in which you seem to change into Cousin Greg means it could work as a transposition instead, where you swap places with him and the pay off is phoning Greg’s wife and you’re there in his house. —JS

Yeah, I gave that some thought. I think it’s all going to depend on who the person is that you’re “producing.”

The question you would need to ask yourself is: What is the bigger surprise? Is the bigger surprise that you changed into this other person? Or is the bigger surprise that this person is here at all?

If you’re just changing into a random buddy from your bowling league—someone who lives in town and who your target audience sees frequently—then go ahead and build up the trick aspect. Make it more of a transposition. Climb out the window and leave. Have your friend act confused like they were literally just transported to your house from theirs. Is there a way to play a pre-recorded video over a video call as if it’s happening in real time? If so you could record something at your friend's house at an earlier point and then make it seem like you’re calling from your friend’s place moments after you disappeared.

Maybe have your friend’s wife call and be furious because you transposed with the person when they were in mid-sexual intercourse. And you ended up busting a nut in her.

(That’s just one way you could go with it.)

My point being, if your spectator’s focus is going to be on the trick, then feel free to extend that as long as you want.

But, if the spectator’s focus is going to be on the person—if you’re doing this as a way to surprise them with someone they care about who they haven’t seen in a while—then just do the change and be done with it. The trick isn’t the important thing after that.

Dustings #34

I mentioned this in passing before, but given the number of emails I’ve received, I didn’t put a fine enough point on it. The first newsletter for this year’s supporters will be going out later this month. Probably around the 20th give or take a few days.

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Magician’s Timing

The term “big dick energy” gained prominence about three years ago as we can see on this Google Trends graph where the searches shoot up right at the end.

Guess at what point some magicians put out a show called “Big Trick Energy”?

Timely!

You might think that’s a terrible name for a show, but I’m sure the executives at TruTV (where it’s airing) were just like, “Name it whatever the fuck you want. As long as it’s not as convoluted a name as ‘The Carbonaro Effect,’ then we’re good.”

And the guys behind the show were like, “It’s called Big Trick Energy! You know, like big dick energy. But we substituted ‘trick’ for ‘dick’ because we do magic tricks. (And because our penises are just adequate at best, if we’re being 100% honest.)”

TruTV Exec: Sure. Whatever. Fine. Call the show Abracadouchebags if you want. As long as we don’t have to spend 45 minutes explaining it every time it comes up, we cool.

Here’s an ad for the show…

BUCKET LIST: Using RUN DMC on my TV show promo!! @truTV #bigtrickenergy pic.twitter.com/enqybaep7i

— Chris Ramsay (@chrisramsay52) March 24, 2021

I wish them the best of luck. I’ll be curious to see how the show does. A prank show with four magicians where they “mess with each other” may sound like a great idea, but it seems like it would be really difficult in execution. I think what people love about prank shows, or things like the Carbonaro Effect, or even just a David Blaine special is that they have this fake thing—the prank or the magic trick—but we get to see people’s genuine reactions to that fake thing. If the reactions to Blaine’s tricks didn’t feel legitimate, he never would have had a special in the first place.

But from the clips I’ve seen, when it comes to this show, everything seems fake. The tricks, the reactions, even their reactions to the reactions. And, of course, they would have to be fake. If we’re a bunch of magicians on a show together and you “crush my car with the power of your mind” then my real reaction is going to be, “Huh. Would ya look at that.” I’m not going to be freaking out, because I know we’re magicians on a tv show.

So it’s this weird situation where you have a phony reaction to a phony scenario. My gut tells me that’s going to make it difficult for people to connect to the show in any real way. But what the hell do I know? You have that same situation with fake reactions to fake situations all over facebook and the videos have millions of views. I’m just not sure how well that will translate to tv. For their sake, I hope it’s a hit.

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I have to say, watching that commercial reminded me of how much more powerful magic is when it’s not in front of an audience or someone holding a tv camera. I really think magic for just a small group (ideally 1-on-1) in a casual/social situation is the most powerful magic there is, everything else being equal. There’s a moment in that commercial above where a woman breaks a plate-glass window with her mind and her reaction is about 20% of the reaction I get when I have someone knock a pen off the table with their mind in my apartment.

That’s not a reflection on me as a performer. That’s just the difference of someone experiencing something in an intimate interaction as opposed to one that’s meant to be broadcast to the world.

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Andy’s Bible Updates

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’ve started reading the bible. And now it’s time for my bible update.

But this is supposed to be a magic blog!

Beat it. This is my blog. My magic and bible blog now. If you don’t like it, hit the bricks.

The particular bible I’m using is this one, where the bible is broken up into a reading program that lasts the course of a year. Each day you read some of the old testament, some of the new testament, some of psalms and proverbs.

The entry for April 3rd was a particularly bonkers day in this bible. We’re in Deuteronomy and Moses is wrapping up with the Israelites and letting them know some of the rules they need to follow. (If you thought the 10 commandments were the only rules to follow, you’re incredibly mistaken.)

Here are some highlights from the April 3rd entry…

Honestly, that would feel like the least of my problems at that moment.

Ok, fair enough, Moses. But actually, if the concern is about me being “defiled,” I think I’d feel much more defiled walking around all day in the desert sun with the dried jiz flaking off my stomach. Any chance I can take that bath in the morning?

And finally, here is one of my favorite excerpts of the bible so far. It’s a longer one, so I won’t use a photo, but it’s worth the read…

Deuteronomy 25:5-10

“If two brothers are living together on the same property and one of them dies without a son, his widow may not be married to anyone from outside the family. Instead, her husband’s brother should marry her and have intercourse with her to fulfill the duties of a brother-in-law. The first son she bears to him will be considered the son of the dead brother, so that his name will not be forgotten in Israel.

“But if the man refuses to marry his brother’s widow, she must go to the town gate and say to the elders assembled there, ‘My husband’s brother refuses to preserve his brother’s name in Israel—he refuses to fulfill the duties of a brother-in-law by marrying me.’ The elders of the town will then summon him and talk with him. If he still refuses and says, ‘I don’t want to marry her,’ the widow must walk over to him in the presence of the elders, pull his sandal from his foot, and spit in his face. Then she must declare, ‘This is what happens to a man who refuses to provide his brother with children.’ Ever afterward in Israel his family will be referred to as ‘the family of the man whose sandal was pulled off’!

Okay guys, you hear that? Is it clear to you? Hey… look…you’re not being pressured into anything. You have a choice. You either fulfill your brother-in-law “duties,” and bang your brother’s widow or this business about the sandal is going to come out. And buddy, let me tell you, it’s going to be all over Israel. Everybody is going to hear about it. So if you’re thinking, “Oh, well, gee, it probably won’t be that bad. It will blow over soon enough.” No. Don’t get it twisted. We’re going to be talking about that sandal thing ever afterward.

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Usually when a magician becomes famous there are numerous copycats that come out of the woodwork Blaine created a number of street-magic clones. Derren Brown spawned a bunch of “psychological illusionists.” David Copperfield had his followers, complete with the wind-swept hair and the Peter Gabriel soundtrack.

Yet, for some reason, nobody that I know (other than myself) has run with this style of performance and presentation which—in my opinion—is the finest in the history of magic.

For those of you who are curious what it’s like to see me perform, it’s pretty much this. I look like a total creep, but I sing the catchiest song you’ve ever heard. And my audiences are primarily composed of pre-pubescent future serial killers.

Also, I’m not too proud to admit I was fooled by the balloon trick. This commercial is a mix of real magic and fake bullshit, so I don’t really know if it’s possible. Is there some sort of tubing system allowing this to happen? Is it just a clip run in reverse with him lip-syncing backwards? I admit, the Marvelous Magical Burger King has fooled me with that one.

Untested: Homecoming

This is the start of a new series of posts for ideas I want to put out that are untested by me for one reason or another. Usually because I haven’t been in the position to perform the trick or because it’s an idea I have for a venue or setting in which I don’t perform.

Homecoming

Why It’s Untested: I actually like this idea quite a bit and I’ve been sitting on it since a reader, JP, sent me an email with the basic concept in March of 2020.

It sort of requires a specific situation for you to be able to perform it, and I haven’t really encountered that situation in the past year. But as the world progresses more towards normality over the next few months, you may come across an opportunity to perform this, and I think it would be a big hit.

I will describe a somewhat “idealized” version of a situation in which you might use it, but you’ll easily see how you could vary the presentation to be used in a different scenario.

This is sort of a strange trick because I think the best use for it would be over video chat with someone who is in the same house as you. It’s not necessary to do it that way, but that’s how I’ll describe it, because that’s how I’ve been imagining it.

What it looks like: You tell your spouse, “Hey, so the people at work are bugging me to do a magic trick for the corporate office over video conference tomorrow. I have something in mind, but I need to test it out. Would you mind sitting through it and giving me your thoughts?”

You go to a different room of the house and fire up a zoom conference with your wife in the living room.

She can see you sitting a your desk and in the background, on the wall, is large manilla envelope with a question mark on it.

“Okay,” you say, “so the idea is you’re going to choose a random number to select something from this numbered list on my phone. When I do it tomorrow, they’ll be randomly choosing one of the light bulbs in our line of high-quality, long-lasting light bulbs. But the trick sort of works better if it’s something you care about. So instead I’m going to have you randomly select a member of your extended family. Give me a number between 1 and 42.”

Your wife says 20 and you open up a list you made on your phone of members of her extended family. You scroll down to the person at #20 and it’s her cousin Greg.

“Okay, perfect, cousin Greg. That was a free choice, yes? If you had chosen #19, you would have had Aunt Virginia. If you had chosen #21 you would have had Grandpa Bill. Now check this out.”

You get up out of your seat and walk to the back wall and remove the large envelope with the question mark on it. You walk back towards the desk and sit back in the chair, open the envelope and—holding it up to the camera—you slide out an 8x11 picture of cousin Greg’s bit fat head.

Your wife reacts and after a beat or two you pull the picture aside and reveal that you are now cousin Greg. That’s right, you’re transformed into the randomly selected family member. Cousin Greg can now go downstairs and reunite with your wife who he hasn’t seen in over a year.

Method: This is based on those classic stage illusions where the magician is wearing a mask for whatever weird reason. Then at some point he walks behind something and switches with someone in a matching mask. That person now acts as the magician for a little while as the real magician runs backstage and around the theater and up to the balcony so that when the faux-magician on stage vanishes, the real one can jump around on the balcony, “Here I am! It’s me! Mr. Magician!”

Here’s Copperfield doing it with a motorcycle helmet instead of a mask. But you get the idea.

The beauty of doing this over video chat is you can do it without a mask. You just need a brief moment out of frame to switch the two people, and then to block the person’s head with something until the change is revealed. That’s not hard to do. You can block out your head with a quarter if you hold it close enough to the camera.

And in this case you have something much better than a quarter. You have a large envelope and the large prediction you pull from it.

Here is an overhead look of how, generally, I see the choreography working.

So, you see, the natural walking path you’re going to take is going to take you out of the field of vision as you walk to the prediction and back to the desk with it. (It’s the “natural” walking path because your chair is directly behind you, so it makes sense you would veer around it rather than just trampling over it like a moron.) It’s as you return with the prediction, in the brief moment you’re fully off screen, that you’ll switch with the other person (with them either taking the prediction or already having a matching envelope in their hands ready to go).

From the point that the other person enters the camera’s field of vision, they will be holding out the envelope so it blocks their face. This isn’t unnatural. It makes sense that “you’ would be putting that front and center.

Ideally the other person would be in matching clothes, or at least something similar. If their body is vastly different than yours, they may need to block more of the image than just their head, but that pretty much goes without saying. They will hold out the envelope to the camera, remove the image of their face, then slide that image off to the side to reveal that it’s them holding the image now.

Obviously you’ll need to force the person at the beginning of the trick, but it really doesn’t matter how you go about doing that. You can use DFB, or a svengali pad, or names written on cards that you riffle force to, or whatever. No one is going to care about that part of the trick by the time it’s over.

You could, of course, do the trick for anyone over video chat. It doesn’t need to be for someone in your house. It doesn’t even need to be someone the person watching even knows. You could force one photo from a group of photos, then reveal your prediction matches, then reveal you’ve changed into that person. That would work too. However, the reason I wrote it up the way I did is because, as a trick, I think it’s pretty good. But as a way to surprise someone with the appearance of a loved one they didn’t know was in town, it becomes a capital-M, Magical moment.

The Penguin Magic Monthly Interview That Wasn't, Part 2

Continuing on from this post, here is Part 2 of the Penguin Magic Monthly Interview That Wasn’t…

It seems like you could easily make magic your fulltime career, but you don’t. Why not? Do you just love your day job? Are you nervous that if magic was your fulltime job that you’d get sick of it?

The other work I do outside of The Jerx is all writing/consulting work. So I just consider it all sort of the same thing. In magic I write and come up with ideas and outside of magic I write and come up with ideas. It wouldn’t make sense to solely focus on magic, because the other projects I’m involved in are as enjoyable and probably more lucrative if I broke it down on an hourly basis. And it’s not like I have some great love of magic or something. I’m only passionate about it in the manner that I incorporate it in my own life and in my own interactions. I hardly ever watch magic on TV or online. I don’t sit at home and think, “Ah, I know want I want to read…a biography of Thurston!” So it’s not like I’m looking to enmesh myself more in the magic world.

You have shared a lot on your blog, most of it for free. Is there anything that you regret sharing? Is there anything that you wish you could have kept for yourself?

Yeah, there are a few things I wish I hadn’t shared, but I’m not going to mention what they are because that would only bring more attention to them, when I’d rather they fly under the radar. Some things I’ve removed from the site completely because I realized I wanted less people potentially doing them. Almost everything that makes it to the books I find myself wishing I hadn’t released at some point. That’s probably because I tend to look back on the actual experiences of performing the trick and I want to keep the “magic” of those moment for myself. It would be like if you wrote a poem for your wife and she really loved it and then you said to people, “I’m going to put this poem in a book so you can give it to your wife.” That would be weird.

But I wouldn’t have the time to explore and create and perform magic without the people who support the site. So as much as I feel like there are things I’d rather hold onto for myself, they are part owners of the material, in my eyes.

What’s the best worst idea you have ever had? What’s an idea that seemed really promising but just fell flat?

I very rarely think, “this is promising,” only to have it fall flat. Sometimes a trick will need some tweaking but I hardly ever overestimate a trick. I underestimate tricks all the time. That why I made the rule when I started doing reviews in the newsletter that I wouldn’t give a trick a proper review without performing it at least a couple times first.

I can’t think of a “best worst idea.” But I’ll give the story of a trick I put a lot of effort into that just got an exasperated shake of the head in return. And that was when I ate my friend’s throw pillow. (I mentioned I was going to discuss this trick wayyyy back in 2018, but forgot to.)

My friend had this small, ugly, red, vinyl-ish throw pillow with black Chinese characters on it that always looked very out of place on his couch. It seemed like whenever someone was over his place when I was there, they would comment on it.

So one day when I had unfettered access to his place I took the insert out of the pillow and replaced it with white cotton candy. And when I was in the company of my friend I unzipped the pillow, emptied the “stuffing” out, folded up the cover up and set everything in my lap and began eating the elements of the pillow.

Inside of the pillow, along with the cotton candy, were a few squares of red fruit roll-up that I had another friend paint the pattern of the throw pillow on with edible paint. So the folded up cover of the throw pillow somewhat resembled this packet of painted fruit roll-ups. At one point while eating the cotton candy, I pushed the actual throw pillow cover, which was in my lap, between my legs. Leaving the duplicate edible cover visible under some of the remaining cotton candy stuffing. As I got down to the end (which went somewhat quickly because I was drinking water and dissolving the cotton candy as I went), I picked up the fruit roll-up packet—masquerading as the red, vinyl pillow cover—and I shoved everything in my mouth and chewed it up and swallowed it.

I think the extent of the reaction was him saying, “What are you doing?” As I went, “Mmm-mmm-mm!”

So I went to the hassle of special ordering white cotton candy and edible paint, and having a friend paint on fruit roll-ups to do a “trick” with no purpose. The only reason I thought to do it was because my friend had this bright throw pillow on his couch and one day another friend of ours said, “That pillow looks like a fruit roll-up.”

This was many years ago and I’ve become much better at giving these weird moments context.

What products do you recommend to other magicians (Your own products excluded)?

Outside of the recommendation I make in the newsletter, I don’t really.

But let’s pretend I do. If I were to recommend stuff, I’d recommend utility devices over individual effects. I like multi-taskers. If you buy “Grandpa’s Floating Top” then you’re just floating grandpa’s top like everyone else who bought it. However, if you buy a good IT system you can work on various effects and mix it up more.

Some of my most-used multi-taskers are: a Jak’s style wallet, Xeno app (to know a free choice), DFB or Inertia App (to force things), Loops, Vernet-Band writer, a thumbtip, and Quinta.

What do you think about magicians who take your amateur presentations and adapt them for their professional work?

It’s cool but a little strange because 99% of the material I’ve released came out of performing for friends. So seeing someone perform a trick of mine on stage is a little bizarre, but it’s interesting.

Unfortunately for the professional magicians, the best ideas I have—ideas about alternative ways of presenting tricks, getting in and out of tricks, extended the experience of the trick beyond boundaries of the effect itself—tend to be the things that don’t really translate to stage.

How do you find so many opportunities to perform in amateur settings?

If I’m doing something for my own benefit then I’m really kind of lackadaisical about things. But when the site became reader-supported, then I owed it to the people who were funding the site to schedule time to perform. So that’s what I do. I make sure I’m performing a certain number of times a week. Mostly my own material and ideas, but also trying out new releases for the review newsletter.

To perform social magic a lot—without wearing out the same people with magic tricks—you need to maintain a large social circle, meet up with them regularly, and put yourself in positions to interact with strangers. I make a lot of plans to see people, and I work in public places like coffee shops or co-working spaces. So I have a pretty good influx of new and old people to try things out on. I’ve become a lot more chatty with people since starting this site, simply because I need to be to meet new people and get new feedback.

Obviously Covid changed how I went about all that, but I’m gradually easing into a return to more regular performing.

If you want to see a numerical breakdown of a typical performing month pre-Covid, you can find that here.

As time goes by your blog moves more and more out of the “underground” and becomes more and more popular. What do you think of this popularity? Do you like that you are becoming more popular, or do you prefer obscurity?

I have no interest in being “popular” and, at the same time, I’m not trying to be “underground” or “obscure” either.

In my utopia, only the people who really like the site and feel they get value from it would bother visiting the site. This isn’t something I’m doing for a mass audience. If this site brings something positive to people, then I’m glad that they find it and enjoy it. But if people don’t like it, I’m perfectly happy with that too. I don’t need or want more readers.

Dustings #33

I’m so angry!

After making my big announcement yesterday, I went to the bank with the $600 check that Vanishing Inc., gave me to buy this site and the check bounced! Apparently they didn’t have enough money in their business account to cover it. And when I brought it up to them they were like, “Can we pay you in Vanishing Inc Points?” When I refused that option they stopped returning my phone calls and emails. They had changed the password to get into my squarespace account for this site too, but I was able to guess what they changed it to (magicboyz69) and recover the account.

So it looks like I’m going back to running the site myself. Ignore everything that was said yesterday.

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Supporter Jon S., sent me this article about an advertising campaign that used images secretly hidden in a block of color that are only revealed when you adjust your filter settings in Instagram.

I can definitely see some presentational uses for such a thing, but I have no understanding of how one might go about creating such an image. Is it a simple step-by-step thing you could do in photoshop? Or is it a more complicated process?

If you know how it’s done—especially if it’s something that’s doable by the average person—send me an email and let me know.

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Second Helpings: Cyanotypes by Elisha Ott

In the pdf here you will learn the second best thing from Elisha’s ebook, Cyanotypes.

If you’d like me to post the second best thing from your book/lecture/multi-trick download, etc, then you can find the details about doing so here.

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I just did an unintentional trick at the grocery store about 30 minutes ago. It’s probably not something I could pull off again if I tried, but it just so happened to work out tonight.

Sometimes when I’m in the grocery store and I’m pushing the cart and I want to do something on my phone real quick—like change what I’m listening to or reply to a text—I will push the cart so it rolls away from me at about the same pace as I’m walking behind it. So the cart is moving in front of me, but I’m not touching it, and my hands are free to do something on the phone.

So I did that maneuver in the store just a little while ago, and I walked passed the end of an aisle. A woman who was in the aisle saw me walk past and said, “Hey!” and ran up to me. I thought it might be someone I knew, but I couldn’t really tell because everyone is masked up. So I was like, “Oh… hey?” And she looked from me to the cart to the phone in my hand and she said, “We’re you controlling your cart with your phone?” From her perspective, she just saw the cart moving without me touching it, and me doing something on my phone behind it. Like they would make an app to steer a shopping cart.

Had I understood what she was saying immediately, I would have joked around with her. “Yes. Of course. Wait… you’re not still pushing your shopping cart these days, are you.” But I had no idea what on earth she was talking about, so I said, “What on earth are you talking about?” She explained she saw the cart moving in front of me and I wasn’t touching it and eventually we got it sorted out. It was a strange exchange. But also an enjoyable one. So I got her number. I’ll let you know if it turns out she always makes the least probable assumptions about things, or if this was a one-off situation.

The New Jerx!

Hey, everyone. So I have some big news to share. As the announcement video above explains, after almost six years as an independent magic blog, the Jerx has been acquired by Vanishing Inc., and is now part of the VI family.

Josh and Andi have a lot of ideas for the future of this site and I’m really excited to see where they take it.

That’s not to say I won’t be involved going forward. I’ll still be here, mainly in a behind-the-scenes capacity. I will still have a monthly post here, but in the future the site is going to rely primarily on user-submitted content and funny memes found on facebook.

In July this site will be going behind a paywall. It will be just $15 a month to read the site (and the archives) or $150 for the year. Or you can have access to it with the Vanishing Inc+ plan which is only $70/month and includes Masterclass: Live; Vanishing Inc.’s Showtime; free shipping; and Vanishing Inc. Presents, The Jerx, A Magic Humor Blog™.

(This is a separate fee from the supporter fee paid a couple months ago. The rewards package for that is still set to be released in 2022. The book that will be coming out at that point will be called Magic is Fun. It’s a collection of essays Josh wrote for his local IBM ring when he was 8.)

As was mentioned in the video, the Vanishing Inc team is going to be going into the archives and deleting any posts with curse words or sexual innuendo, so if you’re interested in any of those posts you should go and make a copy of them for your own records. I understand why Josh and Andi want to make this a “family friendly” site, and I look forward to the challenge of working within those confines. (The truth is, dirty words are a crutch. As some critics of this site have said in the past, I only use them for “shock value.”)

And, as a commercial entity, it doesn’t make sense to have posts that are too critical of other magicians or their products, so those posts will be removed as well. As Josh repeatedly said during our negotiations, “It’s fun to be funny without making fun!” He wants that to be our “guiding principle” for the site.

I know some details about the future schedule for the site, but not everything has been finalized yet. I know my posts will appear here on the first Thursday of every month. So check in then to hear from me.

On Fridays, there will be a new feature called, Josh’s Joke Book, which Josh describes as, “A silly celebration of japes and guffaws to tickle you ribs and your brain. My ‘joke book’ will shine a spotlight on humor in and out of magic, and will feature some of my favorite comic voices of all time. From Cosby to Garfield!”

So that sounds fun.

On Wednesdays, Andi will take the reins with his column, “Things I Should Have Said.” Here’s how Andi describes it: “Things I Should Have Said is going to be a column that will include excerpts from my notebooks of clever comebacks and devastating heckler stoppers that I thought of well after the incidents that inspired them occurred. Whether dealing with a jerky spectator, an angry spouse, or a group of teens making fun of you on a bus, you’ll never again be at a loss for words because you’re flustered or crying too hard to put together a sentence. These clever retorts will allow you to turn your Sad Losses into GladWins!” Andi says he has material to fill this column for “at least the next decade.”

Just so you know, I no longer have access to the inner workings of the site itself. I will write my posts in email and send them to VI to upload them onto the site. If there’s a link that doesn’t work or something like that, please contact the Vanishing Inc staff to get it fixed.

Don’t expect much to change with the look of the site. One of the great things about going into business with Josh and Andi is that they’ve assured me the VI partnership will be as unobtrusive as possible. This site won’t just be some lame marketing tool for Vanishing Inc. I think they may end up putting a small banner ad in the sidebar, but beyond that, the aesthetic of the site should remain the same. Which I really appreciate.

There you have it! A new age begins for The Jerx. It’s been great running this site as a one-man operation for six years. But it’s also exhausting to be the sole content creator for the site, the newsletters, and the books. So I’m really happy with this deal I’ve cut with Vanishing Inc. I can’t wait to see where the site goes next and I’m proud to have a 2% stake in The New Jerx.