Dustings #121
/As mentioned Monday, I will be off next week, but there will be two more weeks of posting after that, the 17th through the 28th.
For those who have downloaded the Jerx App update, check the top of yesterday’s post for some info from Marc.
There has been some call for a dedicated facebook page for the app, that’s not going to happen. I’m fine with you talking about the app generally on facebook or elsewhere, but as far as a place to discuss issues or new ideas, I prefer to have them channeled directly to me. I know most other apps have facebook pages. But no other app has the person behind it communicating with you directly three weeks out of the month and a monthly newsletter.
Trust me, having to keep my eye on a facebook site would bum me out. The reason this site is still going after 10 years is because I’ve avoided the things I don’t like about producing magic content in the 21st century. Things like marketing and social media and begging you to smash that like button.
I just prefer direct communication. Look, if it was up to me, I wouldn’t even have a blog. I’d stop by each of your places every evening and we’d sit on the porch and have a drink or a slice of pie and talk. But I’ve run the numbers and this isn’t feasible.
Be glad I have an email address. I was thinking of getting rid of it and making you have to call me on the phone if you wanted to communicate.
Nice to see the endorsements for sale in action.
Magic Negativity Index
Amelia Dimoldenberg from Chicken Shop Date interviews Jesse Eisenberg.
Synopsis: Amelia talks about going to the Magic Castle. Jesse Eisenberg asks if it had been a date, if she would have asked the magician to create a trick “based on her” (whatever that means).
Magic is: “Underwhelming” and she couldn’t see herself dating a magician because they might make her disappear.
Magic Negativity Index Score: 7.6
Calling magic “underwhelming” and something you’ve “never had interest in” is actually one of the tamer—and more understandable—critiques of the art. Stating a magician might make you “disappear” carries along the idea that maybe they’re going to murder you. But there’s also the suggestion there that the magician could actually accomplish something and isn’t totally impotent. It could be a lot worse. Hence, 7.6.
I was reading one of the collections of Apocalypse magazine and there was a trick in there that Harry Lorayne was praising for its “logic.” He uses the word four times to describe the trick and the moves in it.
The premise of the trick that he fawns over for its brilliant logic?
“When I tickle the deck, your card rises to the top.”
He then goes on to say that sometimes when the trick is over, the spectators will tickle the deck themselves and wonder why their card isn’t coming to the top.
Sorry, ghost of Harry Lorayne, this is something that has never happened.
Oh, I’m sure some spectators have put their card in the deck, tickled the end, and then said, “Hey, why didn’t my card come to the top.” But they’re not confused. They’re fucking around. They’re mocking the dopey premise.
Magicians are such hopelessly self-serving social dunces that they misinterpret every interaction with normal people in the most flattering way possible, no matter how nonsensical. “They thought the tickle brought the card to the top!” Sure they did, sweetie.