The Child - A Halloween Horror Trick Idea

The idea was inspired by this email from MC.

[Y]our return to the polaroid printer (which I loved at the original time you posted it and still love) reminded me of something which occurred to me after you suggested getting a photo of a child in a timeless outfit, creepy stare and prediction laid out. I don't recall that you've wrote about this before but there's a slight extra option which would also be available for some people who are in a similar position as me - I have a nephew who looks uncannily like I did at that young age so with some expired film or a smartphone filter, I can have a bespoke childhood photograph of me and 'this weird picture I just kept drawing over and over until we moved house' (or whatever). 

As a potentially much bigger project, I've also been looking at my own actual childhood photos and thinking about whether there is room to start photoshopping something into the background at select points at different years - "so you'll see in the photo there's a framed picture above my brother with an abstract design, almost like a pentagram right? Well my parents keep saying that they don't know what must have happened to it and can't remember who even gave it to them, but I've spotted it here on that library book cover in this school shot as well as on this guy's t-shirt when we were on holiday". With some planning, it could be begun to be included in real photos over a period of time so that those photos find their way onto the spectator's own camera roll. It'd be overkill to try and force it into countless photos but a sense of "isn't that weird, such a unique design which keeps cropping up?" could be an interesting positioning. —MC

Those ideas (which I think are great) got me thinking about photos and predictions and led to the idea for this performance piece that I’ll simply call…

The Child

You need something like Promystic’s Color Match or the Picasso Pro app. (That’s this trick, if you’re unaware.)

You’d offer to show your friend a trick. Have her color in the picture. When she’s done she has a kid wearing a blue hat, a red-striped shirt, green shorts, yellow sneakers, orange socks. You haven’t seen her picture yet. You pull out your prediction… and it couldn’t be more wrong. You didn’t get anything right. You ask, “How’d I do?” and she’s like, “Eh, not great.”

She turns the picture around and you’re like, “Damn, what the hell was I thinking. Wait that’s—” And you pull away, with fear in your eyes.

She’s uncertain what’s going on. You’re speechless for a moment. “Sorry,” you say. “It’s nothing. Uhm… never mind. Do you want to watch that movie or…?”

Maybe you try to move past whatever just happened. But after a few minutes you realize you can’t.

“Okay… I guess I should just show you.”

You bring your friend over to a picture of you with your family on the boardwalk in New Jersey when you were 8. Maybe the photo is hanging on the wall, or framed on an end-table. In the photograph, off to the side, there is a kid. He’s wearing a blue hat, a red-striped shirt, green shorts, yellow sneakers, orange socks.

“Okay, weird, right? But who cares? It’s probably just a coincidence, right? But check this out….”

You grab a photo album from your bookshelf and open it and flip a few pages, until you get to a photo of your graduation party. There, in the back… it’s a bit of a blur…is a kid running. It’s hard to make out any details but the blue hat, red-striped shirt, green shorts and yellow shoes are fairly clear. “This was 10 years after the last photograph. You’re probably thinking it’s a different kid in a similar outfit. I would have thought that too.”

You flip to another picture. It’s a group photo from your company picnic, taken last year. There’s the kid, same outfit, hand raised as if waving hello, a creepy smile on his face.

“This is the most recent one. But it was actually the first picture where I really noticed the kid. He felt familiar to me but I didn’t know why. I asked around the office and no one knew whose kid it was. Then, a few months ago, I noticed the kid in the boardwalk photo. I didn’t think too much of it originally. I just thought it was similar kids in similar outfits. But then I found that graduation party picture. And flipping through other photos at my parent’s place, I saw other pictures with that kid in it. Not as clear as these pictures, but maybe a flash of a red-striped shirt or the yellow sneakers. And then you color in the exact same kid here? It’s really starting to freak me out. When I showed my mom the photographs she said there was a neighbor boy who died in weird circumstances on the day I was born and that-”

<BAM BAM BAM>

A violent rattling shakes the sliding-glass door leading to the backyard. You and your friend look over… and there’s the kid pounding on the glass!

How dope would that be? And it doesn’t matter if your spectator knows immediately that you’re setting them up for something. In fact, I’d prefer they did. I’m not trying to pull a practical joke, I’m trying to create an immersive fiction. That’s what I go for in most of my “big” effects. The spectator knows it’s not real, but the story of the effect itself still captures them.

Ultimately, it’s just a prediction trick with the prediction removed. It’s wouldn’t be that complicated to set up. You would need to have access to a younger kid who would play along with this. And you’d need someone who’s good a photoshop and can put the kid into a few old pictures of yours. (If you don’t know anyone, you could probably find someone online who would do it for $20.)

If I had Promystic’s Color Match, I would definitely do this. (As I said, you could do it with Picasso Pro as well, which is much more cost effective. But I’d prefer to do it with physical markers and paper.)

If you end up doing any creepy photo stuff this Halloween season, send along the pics and let me know.

Monday Mailbag #30

I have a big backlog of mail to get through, so you’ll probably see some reader submitted questions leading off most of the posts this week.

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Do you think you would be able to write a post on your blog about how to perform for people and dealing with nerves?

Not a lot of people know I perform magic and I only show tricks to my family every now and again. I can think a few reasons why I don’t perform a lot but I feel like it is a waste of time of me practicing magic when I end up not even showing them to people.

It will be interesting to read of how you would approach this challenge and it may help others on your blog that are in the same situation as me. —CE

First, I don’t really get nervous when I perform, so my insight there is limited, but I’ll give you some basic thoughts in a moment.

Second, you’re absolutely right that it’s a waste of your time to practice magic if you’re not going to show it to people. A lot of people do go this direction, however. “I’m just a scholar of methods.” Blah, blah, blah. I don’t buy that. I think they probably had a couple bad performances where they flopped and it scared them off from showing tricks to regular people. Look, no one has to perform if they don’t want to. But as someone who went from performing rarely to performing almost daily, I can say that you’re denying yourself the best part of magic if you’re not showing it to other people.

So let’s talk about nerves.

In magic you could be nervous about two things, primarily.

1. You’re nervous about your ability to skillfully execute the sleights/moves.

2. You’re just generally nervous about speaking/performing in front of others, regardless of the difficulty of the effect.

#1 should never be an issue. There is so much good magic that doesn’t require much technical skill that there’s no reason to ever go out and do something that you’re not sure you can pull off. There is nothing crueler to do to an audience then to perform a trick without confidence in your handling. Making people feel sorry for you when they think that you think you’re doing something that should impress them is a nauseating feeling for people.

#2 is something altogether different. But the good thing about those types of nerves is that you can just choose to ignore them. That’s how I think the world works. Everyone gets the same amount of nerves about things at first. If you take action despite those nerves, then they lessen the next time you’re in that situation. If you indulge the nerves and allow them to prevent you from doing something, then you strengthen the nerves the next time you’re in a similar situation. Nerves, anxiety, stress—these things are all just habits that you either give in to, or you fight. The more you fight, the less powerful they are over time.

My philosophy is to treat everything like a habit (whether it’s true or not). So I don’t say, “I’m lazy,” or, “I’m weak,” or, “I’m a crackhead.” I say, “I’ve gotten in the habit of being lazy,” “I’ve gotten in the habit of being weak,” “I’ve gotten in the habit of being a crackhead.” When you think this way, you never have to get discouraged over what you are. Because you don’t have to see yourself as fundamentally anything. You are just a series of habits. And habits can be broken.

So if you get nervous before performing (and it has nothing to do with your technical ability to pull off the trick) then just choose to fight through it. Same as if you get nervous talking to a girl or asking for a raise. Just ignore the nerves for a few minutes while you do your thing. Now, I’m sure there are techniques you can use to calm your nerves, but I don’t know any of those. The only “technique” I know is that you can feel nervous and still choose to act despite that feeling. You don’t need to get in the habit of deep breathing or positive visualization. The only habit you need is the one of ignoring your nerves.

Eventually you will just become a person who isn’t affected by nerves in these situations. You won’t even think of them. That’s not to say they won’t still be there, they just won’t affect you. It’s like if you had to walk a narrow path with a sheer 1000 foot drop-off on one side along a mountain. The first time, you would be scared. But if you forced yourself to do it, you’d be a little less scared the next time, and then less and less, until one day you wouldn’t think about it at all. That’s not to say the steep drop-off isn’t still there. It just doesn’t affect you anymore because you have a history of staying on the path.

Now, to be completely fair, some of the presentational ideas I’ve talked about in this blog are kind of advanced. And you shouldn’t necessarily try those unless you have a foundation of performing simpler concepts with confidence. That’s just a natural progression that goes with trying anything new. But there’s nothing that should prevent you from asking a friend or family member, “Hey, I’ve got this thing I’ve been working on, but I sort of need an outsider’s perspective to see if it works like it should. Can I try it with you?”

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If I’m referencing you in a video or a book release, how do you prefer to be credited? Andy? The Jerx? —SU

I’m not overly particular about it. You can just say, “Andy at The Jerx.” Or you can give more detail if you want to do so for the sake of your audience, e.g., “Andy, the anonymous author of The Jerx magic blog, the greatest writer in the history of magic,” etc. etc., that’s fine too. But my preferred way would probably just be to say, “Andy Jerxmann.” That way people who know the site will realize you’re referring to me, but people who don’t won’t be directed to the site. It’s not that I’m against people spreading the word about this site to other people who they think might like it. I just don’t need general, un-targeted, mentions of this site.

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I'm in the process of creating my wonder room and as I was looking at the various things I have round my house it occurred to me that a game I have called "Dropmix" had all sorts of magic possibilities. I don't know if you've heard of Dropmix before? It's made by the people behind guitar hero and is kind of like a DJ/card game where you lay down cards that have part of a songs riff on them (drums, vocals, bass etc) and the game mixes them together. It's really clever and a lot of fun with friends. The fact the little loops of music are on cards made me think there are some magic applications for it. Predicting the weird random song someone creates in an unusual way? A bit like the connect 4 trick. The cards all have the same backs, each type of loop is colour coded as well and I have over 100 of them now. My first thought was using something like R.Paul Wilsons C3 to force the required cards. I figured as you have an interest in music this might be up your street. Here's a brief overview in case you wanted a look (it's only a few minutes long):

DropMix Review

This looks very cool. I don’t have the game myself, so I can’t say for certain if/how I’d use it, but it definitely seems like something that has potential.

My advice to anyone incorporating a game into a trick is to find people who actually want to play the game. Then after you play it, you can transition into “trying something else” with it. That’s especially true with this game where you’d want someone to have a good understanding of what the game is and what it does and doesn’t do. The mistake is to just say, “Hey, here’s a cool game. Watch as I show you a magic trick with it.” That’s no good.

Related to that, here’s a post about my friend’s “Board Room” which is the Wonder Room concept in a display of games that can all be used to transition into effects after.

Here is Dropmix on Amazon for anyone who is interested. It looks like the price has come down considerably since its release.

Sunday Spookiness

We’re now a few days into October. I love this time of year. Well, I love most times of year, to be honest. (Except February 13th. I loathe February 13th. Eat my ass, National Tortellini Day.) But as a fan of horror and cooler weather, this is a particularly fun time. I usually watch a horror movie every night in October. I just got done watching Blood Rage (aka Slasher aka Nightmare at Shadow Woods) from the 80s (shot in ‘83, but released in ‘87). It was… not good. But not abysmal either. Unless you’re a hardcore 80s b-movie fan, you can steer clear of it. This recap of the kills in the movie might still be a fun watch and will give you a feel for what you’re missing.

In a future post I’ll let you know my favorites from this year’s horror movie month.

But today I’ll post some other recent horror finds that I’ve enjoyed.

Host

This is a short film that was written, shot, and released all during quarantine. You can find it on Shudder.com. It’s got a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (if that means anything to you). It’s a horror movie that takes place over a zoom call. I wouldn’t say it’s the greatest horror movie of all time, by any means. But it’s a very enjoyable way to pass an hour, especially given the limitations within which they were working. And there’s really no better thing to watch at this time of year in this particular year when it is (hopefully) more relevant than it will ever be.

This Vintage Halloween Music Video on Youtube

If you’re into that mid-century sound, this is a great playlist of seasonal tunes.

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

This book won the Bram Stoker award for best horror novel in 2019, so it’s hardly a hidden gem. It’s not exactly a “Halloween-ish” type of horror novel either. But the tension in the story is really pretty incredible. In the opening “scene” a stranger walks up to this girl playing outside of a remote cabin and it quickly establishes an unsettling tone that carries on through the rest of the book. It’s a very different kind of horror story.

I think whether you end up liking the book or not, it’s one that will stay with you.

This Picture of An Old Halloween Party

There is an urban legend that the guy in the black mask killed seven of the party-goers. It’s not true. But it doesn’t have to be true for this photo to make you shit your pants.

The Juxe: Make-Out Mix Part I

“I need a copy of this playlist,” is what I hear 9 out of 10 times I spend an evening with someone in a romantic scenario for the first time. Yes, it’s nice to be complimented on my taste in music, but I’d sort of rather them turn to me and talk like the old lady in Titantic

I’ve put a lot thought into my “make-out mix.” Sometimes it’s so successful that women do even more than make-out with me. Not to brag or anything. But have I felt a boob? Hellz yeah. A couple, in fact.

In this new series I will help you build your make-out mix with some categories I look to for inspiration and some specific examples. Then you can build up your mix and, with any luck, think of this website when you’re getting down.

I lean towards slower tempo songs. Even if things are getting pretty frantic and hot & heavy with someone, you can still make that work with a slow tempo. But the opposite doesn’t work. A slow, seductive moment doesn’t work well if you’re playing, like, Turkey in the Straw in the background

I tend towards female singers. But not always.

The only rule I have in place when making a make-out/sex mix is don’t use songs that are overtly about sex. I mean, a lot of music is about sex. Maybe most music is. But you don’t want to use songs like, “Sexual Healing,” or “Let’s Get It On.” That’s like if you were a baseball player and your walk-up music was, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” You want music that suggests a mood, first and foremost. Not music that’s a literal description of what you’re doing.

Today’s Category:

Slowed Down Covers

This category is good for the make-out mix because it takes songs that people are familiar with and puts them in a style that is more conducive with hooking up. So there’s a familiarity with the music, but the songs aren’t completely fucked out.

Taken by Trees covers Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns and Roses

Cowboy Junkies cover Sweet Jane by The Velvet Underground

Today Kid covers We Belong by Pat Benatar

Lykke Li covers Unchained Melody by The Righteous Brothers

Madge covers In Too Deep by Sum 41

Harvest Time Part Four

Each year at the Harvest Moon I take some time to assess the state of the site and what is going to happen with it in the next year.

The main thing I learned this year is that I’m not capable of filling this site with just short posts.

In the past few years I have continually said I’m going to focus less on creating content for the site. Last year’s Harvest post said that in 2020 the site’s content would be reserved for “shorter and stupider” posts. But the posts have pretty much remained the same length and are no more or less stupid than they always were. For whatever reason I’m having a hard time transitioning the site to just goofball shit, despite my stated intentions.

And—as I mentioned in a previous post—I’m still not sure why I thought going from 12 posts a month to 20 and from 4 newsletters a year to 10 was going to cut down on my workload. Like, I literally haven’t a fucking clue where I was even coming from with that idea. I guess I was thinking it was going to be 20 really short posts a month? I think that was the plan.

The only reason this scheduling ended up working this year was because the time I would normally spend performing was cut off drastically due to coronavirus. Probably by at least 80%. Fortunately this didn’t impact anything I had planned too much because this year’s book for supporters doesn’t really include new tricks. Instead it’s a collection of presentational techniques—ones that I’ve worked on for years. So I didn’t have to workshop much of anything new.

We also haven’t done any new testing this year since the coronavirus situation, so that has freed up many hours that hopefully won’t be free next year.

But the lack of performing and testing has led to a backlog of tricks that I’ve created in the past 6 months that I haven’t been able to put in front of people yet. So when things do get more back to normal I will have to devote a larger chunk of time to performing in order to catch back up.

I know most of you are like, “That’s fine, Andy. You do what you need to do when you need to do it.” I receive almost no pressure from the supporters of this site, thankfully. The reason I write these posts is more to help myself better understand where things are, than to try and justify it to anyone else.

So if the supporters fund another year of the site in 2021, the only change will probably be in the posting schedule and the newsletter schedule. Exactly what that change will be, I don’t know yet, but I will be pulling back a little on both to free up more performing and experimenting time that wasn’t needed this year.

To answer the question I get most often:

“Will you be adding more supporter slots?”

No. A small number of slots are added every year organically because the book printer always prints a certain number of books over the number I request, just to make sure they have enough copies to deliver should anything go wrong. And any extra books are offered on a first-come/first-serve basis to people who have emailed me and asked to be on the waiting list. Buying one of those “overage” copies, also opens up a supporter slot for them. But other than those few that come about naturally each year, I will not be adding more slots.

As for the 2020 rewards package, everything is coming along nicely. The next book should be finished in about 6 weeks and then ready to ship to supporters in early 2021. And I just got the first rough sketches for what the next Jerx deck #4 will look. It’s going to be really stupid!

While We Were Out

MW wrote in to bring my attention to a video that Alakazam recently sent out for the trick, Influencer by Astor.

The video promises that the trick delivers a “fanny beginning.”

I know this is confusing to some people, but it’s actually just a simple misunderstanding of British vs. American English. In America this trick would be said to have a “fanny ending.”

I hope that clears things up.

That email from Alakazam also had a review for a trick called Executive Suite. I’m fairly certain this review was written by the mother of the guy who designed the packaging.

Yes… but what about the most important thing with any magic trick… the packaging?

If you had told 13-year-old me, buying tricks from the magic store that came in mailing envelopes and (if it was a fancy trick) ziplock sandwich bags, that someday people would care about trick packaging, I would have been very confused. “Huh? The part you throw out?”

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September 21st passed while we were away. If you don’t know the story of Demi Adejuyigbe and what he’s been doing on the 21st of September for the past few years, I encourage you to check it out here. It’s the sort of thing I love. I remember back when I was writing the old site in 2004-ish people used to think it was an insult to write me and say, “You have too much time on your hands.” That’s always been the corniest criticism as far as I’m concerned. The type of art I’m most drawn to is the stuff that people say that about. So I never took it negatively. What interesting piece of art/entertainment have you ever seen and thought, “Wow, this guy must have been really busy with other stuff when he did this!”

Having time on your hands allows you to do some fun shit. And Demi’s 9/21 bit is excellent.

Although nothing will beat this tweet of his, as far as I’m concerned. (Sound on)

pic.twitter.com/1lhB1cnq0o

— demi adejuyigbe (@electrolemon) February 25, 2020

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I found a trick while sorting through some stuff over the past week, and I don’t know what it was. I’m hoping maybe one of you can help identify it. It was just some props in a small clear plastic bag, so there was no branding on it. I should have taken a picture, but I didn’t think to at the time, and now I’m not in the location where the trick is. So instead I will paint a picture in your mind. Imagine me, and my taught, nubile body sorting through a box with some old tricks in it—wait, sorry, I’m focusing on the wrong details. Okay, so the props… the props consisted of a couple blank cards and some card-sized transparencies with cards faces printed on them. There were two transparencies. I think it was a 2 and a 3, but it might not have been. If you held the transparencies over the blank card it looked like a normal card. I can sort of see what you might do with this, but I’m curious to know exactly what the trick was. If you have any ideas, let me know.

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Joshua Jay made a very sad (but in its own way, very brave) Instagram post while we were away.

View this post on Instagram

Best convention perk ever! Running Magifest means we are on our feet from 6am to 2am for four straight days. So as a secret treat we have the hotel install two beds backstage. We have the only thing better than a front row seat. We watch shows and lectures in bed!

A post shared by Joshua Jay (@joshuajaymagician) on Sep 22, 2020 at 10:02am PDT

Of course what makes this so heartbreaking is that Josh and Andi are now doing this in separate beds. If those two can’t make it, what hope do any of us have? I realize they have to live their truth, and I don’t expect them to stay together “for the kids” (that is, us magicians). But still, it’s so sad.

What’s most devastating about this is that it’s very clear from the picture whose idea the split was, and who is handling it well, and whose heart is shattered. And while I’m proud of Josh for feeling strong enough to be honest about the dissolution of their relationship, I’m not sure this was the best photo with which to do so, as it sort of cruelly juxtaposes how painful (or not) the situation has been for both of them.