Dear Jerxy: Enchantment's Expiration

[Schedule note: The next two posts this week will be on Thursday and Saturday. For supporters, the final newsletter of the season will be coming in approximately two weeks.]

Dear Jerxy: So, reading about your evolving interest in enchantment, it occurred to me:

Who are you/we doing these things for?

I love long jokes with oblique punchlines. Everyone who knows me well knows this. Most of my friends, when I start telling a joke, start laughing, not because anything I’ve said is that funny yet (obviously) but because they know I like long jokes. They’re laughing at/about my indefatigability (for want of a better word.) They know what’s coming. Over time, this makes the delivery chapter more fun, and the punchlines progressively less satisfying. You just can’t do something for/to/with a person that many times and have it achieve the same effect. It’s like dropping acid. At some point, it’s like, “I just want to go to sleep."

So, there’s this category of effect your talk of enchantment made me imagine: effects to do for people you’ve done a lot of effects for in the past.

It’s one thing to short-circuit the typical magician/rube model on a stranger or new friend. But how do you extend and grow this thing…?

No matter how inventive your long con is, “I’m a person who’s interested in the blurry edges of our experience,” it has to increase in intensity, it seems to me. That intensity can take unexpected forms, but it makes total sense that Houdini gravitated towards seances and spiritualism — what can’t possibly be a trick?

…

I’m at a point where I can pull off an “I started with card tricks, but look what I found…” and it will seem credible for me, i.e., I can go from fooling to enchantment or eeriness. But once you’ve done that transition, the clock is ticking. Even enchantment is just “enchantment" the third time.

Signed,
Alliterative in Altadena

Dear Alliterative: I’m going to start with your last line and work backwards.

Even enchantment is just “enchantment" the third time.

I think this isn’t quite an accurate statement. But I think it does suggest the problem of making “fooling” people your sole goal in magic.

Feeling “fooled” is a neutral emotion. It can be positive, negative, (or neither) depending on the context of the fooling.

It’s negative when someone fools you to take advantage of you—to steal your money, or your time, or your anal virginity, for example.

It’s positive when it’s used in the context of entertainment, like a twist-ending in a movie.

The mistake that I think we make as magicians is thinking that being fooled is an inherently positive thing. It’s not. It’s easy to convince ourselves that it is though, because we may show someone a very bland trick—a trick that offers nothing more than being fooled— and get a nice reaction from it. We see this all the time in demo videos—a trick that seems sort of average gets a fully freaked out reaction. Well, in part that’s because these people have a camera in their face, and that “inspires” a good reaction in certain people. And it’s also true that being fooled tends to be a positive experience when it’s novel.

If you’re an amateur, and you perform for the same people somewhat regularly, the novelty of simply being fooled can wear off pretty quickly. Sometimes after maybe just a few tricks—even when spread out over time. After that, they can still be fooled, but it can be a much more neutral experience because they’ve become accustomed to that feeling of seeing something inexplicable.

So if you have a trick that just fools, you’re going to want to hope that your spectator isn’t someone who has burned out on the novelty of being fooled.

But enchantment is not a feeling that diminishes, in my experience. It’s inherently positive. At least as we use it in relation to magic tricks.

So saying: Even enchantment is just “enchantment" the third time…

Is like saying, “Even a delicious meal is just ‘delicious’ the third time.” Or, “Even an orgasm is just an ‘orgasm” the third time.” Or, “Even rolling on the floor with laughter is just ‘rolling on the floor with laughter’ the third time.” I don’t think any of that is true. Because these are explicitly positive experiences.

“So you’re saying if you were ‘enchanted’ once every hour of the day for six months, that the enjoyment of that wouldn’t wear off?”

No, I’m saying you couldn’t be enchanted that much. That’s not how the experience works.

You could, however, be fooled every hour of the day for six months by a magic trick. And before the end of that first day, that feeling would cease to truly excite you.

The concern that they could “burn out on enchantment” is, I think, unnecessary. True enchantment (which is different than just being entertained and fooled simultaneously) is such a difficult thing to generate that I don’t think you have to worry about overdoing it.

Now l want to address this sentence:

“No matter how inventive your long con is, ‘I’m a person who’s interested in the blurry edges of our experience,’ it has to increase in intensity, it seems to me.”

I don’t think this is the case. The analogy I’ve used before, because it’s the one I think about most often, is that performing amateur magic should have all the range of a sexual encounter. You can have a romantic, lingering love-making session where your souls intertwine, over the course of an evening until it becomes morning. Or you can slide your hand down her pants in the back of a movie theater. It doesn’t need to always increase in intensity to be memorable and pleasurable. Variety of experience and intensity is probably more important than just constantly leveling up the experience. Magic is the same way.

When I’m lucky enough to really nail someone with a super-strong, immersive trick that takes them on a wild ride over 40 minutes and they’re legitimately questioning their own judgment regarding what’s real or not, I don’t feel the need to follow that up with something even stronger the next time. In fact, I might intentionally show them something that’s just like a neat optical illusion on the back of a business card or something. I want them to feel like they can’t be sure what to expect when they find me moving into a trick. And I find that refractory period is helpful to reset their expectations. Constantly trying to top yourself can be draining and it can make the experience more predictable. So mixing up the intensity is a perfectly valid way to perform, in my opinion. And that’s just one variable we can use to create different types of experiences in amateur/social magic. (In an upcoming post I’ll be going into some others.)

You asked the question “Who are you doing this for?” For me it’s because I’m doing these things with the spectator in mind that I don’t worry about making each moment bigger than the last. I don’t see the trick as a reflection on me. It should hopefully be something worthwhile for the spectator. And because it’s a “gift” in that sense, I don’t need to raise the stakes each time. For the same reason I don’t feel the need to get my girlfriend a nicer present each time I give her a gift. And if she said, “Hmm… I don’t like this. This isn’t as nice as the last thing you got me.” I’d say, “Beat it, bitch,” and find someone else to be the recipient of my efforts.

In Defense of Tom Stone

So, the subject that has been cluttering my email box continues to be the GLOMM discussion and what exactly is going on with Tom Stone on facebook. His issue with me creating a list of magicians who have been convicted of sex crimes based on publicly available information is striking some people as bizarre, bordering on creepy.

I fully understand why his response weirds people out. If someone says, “Here’s a list of people in our industry who were convicted of sex crimes,” and someone else says, “The real problem here is the list itself!” That’s going to make you feel a little…

I admit, it’s not a great look for Tom. But before moving on from this subject, I want to defend Tom and say that I don’t believe his weird stance on this is in any way motivated by a lack of care for the victims of sexual crimes, or because he himself is any type of secret sexual predator or whatever inferences people may come to. I don’t know the guy personally, I can’t vouch for him. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on.

However, I do think I can clarify what’s behind his postings and why they seem so nonsensical.

Originally, when the GLOMM list was first posted on facebook, he called it “vigilanteism” and he would go on to express a concern that maybe there were people on the list who shouldn’t be on there. The “vigilanteism” claim is, of course, moronic. But the concern that maybe there were people being labeled as sex criminals who weren’t is valid. In my opinion, falsely accusing someone of a sex crime is on the same spectrum of heinousness as committing a sex crime. But, it was a misplaced fear as everyone on the list was a convicted sex criminal. Not only did I come out and say it, but it was easily verified too.

In fact, A GLOMM elite member even went to the trouble of creating a spreadsheet of the people on the list and detailed their crimes with links to supporting evidence. “Well, that must have put the issue to bed, yes?” No, it literally had no effect on Tom. He was still bothered that such a list exists. And it’s at that point where I believe people started to think, “Wait… why exactly is Tom so against a now verified list of convicted sex criminal magicians?” This is the point where it goes from a “weird hill to die on” to “do we need to check Tom’s hard drive?”

But I’ll reiterate again that I don’t think that’s the issue.

Because his initial claims/concerns were found to be total garbage, his new stance is that me even joking about maintaining one list that included both pedophiles and assholes is the issue.

He writes: “An anonymous person who think it is a funny joke to add innocent names to a list of horrible criminals should not be seen as an authority in the matter. […] Did he add those innocent people like he said he would? I don't know. Maybe he did, and later removed them? Who knows? I'd be a lot more at ease with it, if there were an actual person signing the document, and that the person was someone who didn't consider pedophile smears to be amusing.”

“Did he add those innocent people like he said he would? I don't know. Maybe he did, and later removed them? Who knows?”

This is kind of a weird statement from someone who claims he’s concerned about unfounded accusations.

Use your head, dingbat. Would I just add someone to the list who I thought was an asshole and never mention that I did that on this site? You may not read the site, but 1000s of other people do. Wouldn’t they have some memory of me doing this? Or do you figure I was doing it for my own secret thrill? Just adding and removing people for the fuck of it?

“I'd be a lot more at ease with it, if there were an actual person signing the document, and that the person was someone who didn't consider pedophile smears to be amusing.”

Okay, Bob Smith wrote the list. Okay? This is Bob Smith. He wrote the list. I promise you. He finds “pedophile smears” (even the ones that never occurred that you’re so concerned about) to be just awful. Not amusing at all. If you’re going to pretend that’s what your issue is, then I’m going to solve it for you. Problem solved. Now you can move the fuck on.

I guess maybe I’d be a little more sensitive to Tom’s concerns if so much of what he wrote wasn’t complete horseshit.

I’m fascinated by this description of my site and you, the audience who reads this site…

“As I recall, a lot of his material was modeled in ‘pick-up artist’ style. The book ‘The Game’ also have an audience, and I don't trust that audience either.”

Mmhmm…. okay. Sure, sure.

WHAT THE FUCK IS HE TALKING ABOUT?!?!?

Oh, you all know that material I have that is modeled on the “pick-up artist” style, right? Yeah, so much. “A lot” of my material, according to Tom, at least.

Except…I don’t write about using magic to pick up women at all other than to make fun of the idea. So what dull recess of his brain did he pull that out of? Is it just that he is so socially and interpersonally awkward that he interprets me telling a story about showing a trick to someone I’m dating, or someone who happens to be female, to be a story about me using magic to “pick up” women? Now, look, I can’t say for sure what is going on in that head of his, but it’s indisputable that he’s fantasticating “a lot” of my material being about “picking up” women. So why would he do that? I mean other than the fact that he’s desperately stumbling around trying to support an argument and failing at every turn.

It might just be a generational thing. We think of that old-school magic as being a bit of a boy’s club, but that’s just because a lot of those dudes were scared of women. That attitude still exists today with an older set of magicians. Some magicians are too busy infantilizing or sexualizing every woman they see and can’t quite wrap their head around seeing a woman as a robust equal who you might casually show a trick to for the fun of it. So if I write a post about performing for a female, they interpret it as, “I guess he just was doing that to fuck her or something?” Am I doing too much work to justify where his comments come from? Maybe. I guess he could have just been intentionally lying.

(By the way, if you’d like to see an example of the sordid and skeevy “pick up artist” content on this site, here is a post called “What Women Want” where I give my insight into the topic. My advice is that if you’re trying to meet women you should be normal and you should try to exude a positive energy. And then once you get that down you should attempt to add a little bit of mystery to your personality. Such sleazy advice, I know. No wonder Tom “doesn’t trust” this audience. You’re a bunch of sick fucks.)

But here’s where I get to defending Tom Stone, because I want to help him out of the corner he has painted himself into where he seems much more concerned with his own imagined flaws about the list rather than that there are enough names to make a list in the first place. I’m not saying this is his intention, but It comes across as someone who is trying to sweep things under the rug. But I don’t think this is an issue of Tom protecting sexual predators. I think Tom just doesn’t like me specifically. And so, if I’m doing something that goes towards holding sex criminals accountable in some small way, then Tom is forced to walk a tightrope where he is against what I’m doing without trying to come off as pro-sex-criminals. So he ends up being caught in this sad, goofy dance of trying to find something to be bothered by.

“There shouldn’t be an anonymous list like this! It’s vigilanteism! He could put anyone on this list.”

We looked and they’re all convicted sex criminals.

“Okay… well… yes… but… maybe he put innocent people on the list and removed them!”

To what end? There’s no evidence of that.

“But he said he might!”

And he’s come out and clarified that he wasn’t serious about that.

“Well… you shouldn’t joke about these things!”

And that’s the point we’re currently at. What he’s claiming to be upset about now is his own misunderstanding of a joke that I never actually followed through on.

He got so desperate for something to complain about that when someone came in and created a spreadsheet with information about the crimes and links to further information, this was his response.

Yeah, dude? Why didn’t you post this before the site even existed and before most of these people had even committed their crimes?

By the point where he was complaining about people not documenting pre-crimes, it became clear his arguing was a bit disingenuous.

The sad irony is, the original threat of the GLOMM was that I was going to associate asshole magicians with convicted sex criminals. While I never actually did that to anyone, Tom ended up doing that to himself.

I think Tom got tunnel vision because he doesn’t like me. Why doesn’t he like you, Andy? Oh, because one time I said Tommy Wonder’s advice regarding misdirection was terrible when applied to performing in casual situations.

Wait… really?

Yes, that’s my understanding. I heard from a couple people at the time that Tom was upset by that.

And that’s why he’s being so weird about this list?

I know it seems insane, but yes, I think so. 🤷‍♂️

If Tom wants to clarify any of these issues, I’ll happily publish his response (or I’ll keep it private if he prefers).

The List is an Absolute Good

Wednesday, a post on facebook got some traction about The GLOMM. Specifically the boot list of people who were kicked out for being convicted of sex crimes.

A couple people had issues with the list. It wasn’t complete enough or it was meaningless because it was “anonymous” or whatever.

I wrote this reply and asked one of the people who had informed me about the discussion to post it.

Some background on the GLOMM can be found in this post on my site:

https://www.thejerx.com/.../9/14/the-future-of-the-glomm

Everyone on the list has been convicted of a sex crime. At the beginning I claimed I was going to throw people I didn't like on the list as well. But I was screwing around.

The list is not exhaustive because it's community generated. I'm not scouring the microfiche machine looking for magic pedophiles. But I update the list frequently with new names when people send them to me with the proper documentation.

By the way, if you have an issue with someone posting a list of magicians who have committed sex crimes (mostly against children), that's not a great look. You might want to keep it to yourself.

There used to be two rules to be in the GLOMM: Don’t be a sex criminal. Don’t be an asshole. Because the “asshole” thing can lead to some confusion—especially for the people who stumble over the GLOMM site and don’t get there from here—I’ve simplified the rules to just: don’t be a sex criminal.

Here is the GLOMM Code of Ethics from the GLOMM site, because some people in the Facebook thread seemed confused.

Code of Ethics

The ethics espoused by magic organizations can be full of complexities. The traditional magic organizations take a hard-line stance against "exposure" of magic methods. But where does teaching end and exposure begin? Surely exposure is most often a negative thing, but what if it is done so artfully it creates a greater love and respect for magic? Should we not ban bad performers from magic organizations if we're looking out for magic as an art? Don't they put it in a worse light than someone teaching the beauty of a method (something all magicians enjoy themselves)? These are thorny issues. And ones that are more a matter of personal conscience than something a magic organization can truly police.

For that reason there is one primary rule to be a member in good standing of the Global League of Magicians & Mentalists.

Don't be convicted of a sex crime. 

If you've been convicted of a sex crime, you're out of the Global League of Magicians & Mentalists. We're not talking about the consensual relationship between an 18-year old and a 16-year old, or getting caught peeing on the street, but those sex crimes which take advantage of the innocent and/or damage another human physically or mentally. (Shockingly, this doesn't seem to be in the Code of Ethics of other magic organizations. They're more concerned if a magic trick is taught on the back of a cereal box. Here at the GLOMM, we have our priorities in order.)

Of course it's impossible for our organization to know all potential sex criminals. So if you are looking for a magician you will need to do your own due diligence. 

Simple, right?

Well, not simple enough for some. So I’m going to further explain things for some of the commenters on Miss Perry’s post. People whose first instinct—when presented with a list of sexual predator magicians—is to take issue with the list. “That’s a strange impulse,” you might say. It sure is!

I’m not sure what I’m asked to do here.

No one asked you to do shit. If I thought the feckless magic community was going to do something I wouldn’t have started the list.

I don't know anyone on this anonymously written list. Of the names I recognize, none seem to have many friends left. […] If someone I don't know claim that someone else, that I don't know, have committed a crime against a third person, whom I don't know... what am I supposed to do?

I find this a bizarre attitude. “Hey, if I don’t personally know the toddler, the guy who raped the toddler, or the person reporting on the guy who raped the toddler, then—as Houdini once said—my hands are tied. What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know anyone on this list!” So fucking what? He seems disappointed by that. Tom, it’s a good thing you don’t know them. You don’t want to see a list of sex criminals and think, “Hey, it’s my Christmas card list!”

Holding our colleagues and communities to a higher standard... that sounds admirable, but how do I do that in practice?

How do you do that? Well, I’ll tell you how NOT to do it. If someone tries to broach the subject and your first inclination is to throw up your hands and say, “Nothing we can do about it,” while simultaneously trying to baselessly undermine the information they brought to the table—it doesn’t quite feel like you’re taking their concern or the issue seriously. So maybe avoid that.

Will you hold the arms of that person, while I cut their face with a broken bottle - while we assume that the first person actually got it right? Because vigilantism never gets it wrong, right?

Huh? I’m not sure that sentence quite turned out the way you were hoping. I appreciate the botched linguistic flourish… but you know we’re talking about a bunch of pedophiles and other creeps here, yes? Maybe not the group worthy of your weird metaphoric (?) defense.

And what exactly do you mean by “first person"? You think I’m the “first person” in this equation? No, I would guess the “first person” to identify these scumbags might be the 8-year old they’re fondling or the 14-year-old they’re sending pictures of their dick to or the person being filmed in the bathroom or the woman that got raped. I’m pretty sure in this equation they would be the “first person.” Then, I guess the next person would be a parent, spouse, or other loved one that they fortunately had the fortitude to tell about the situation, then the authorities would be the next person, a lawyer, a judge, maybe a jury (so 12 people there), then a news outlet, then whoever sent it to me, and finally me. So, I’m not quite the first person. I’m actually the very last person. All I did was throw their names on a list after they were convicted of a crime. My part comes pretty late in the game.

And vigilanteism? Gathering a list of sex criminal in our industry is vigilanteism? Okay, that’s one way to look at it (a fucking moronic way). Another way to look at is literally the least we could do to attempt to hold people accountable in this industry.

So that seemed to be a few people’s concern—that the list itself was flawed. Not the individuals whose actions got them on the list.

Okay… so each name should be an “active link” to a news story. Otherwise it’s just an “anonymous hit list.” Got it. But… why stop there? Why don’t I come to your house and gently whisper each news story into your ear? Apparently it’s up to me get the information into your thick skull. Is your Google broke, sweetie?

How would you handle someone posting a list of restaurants in your area that had been cited for having fecal matter in the food? Would you demand you know the name of the person who compiled the list? Would you march down to the closest restaurant on the list and start shoving an order of refried beans in your fat face because there wasn’t an “active link” to the health department report? Personally, I might google a couple of restaurants to verify the list’s legitimacy, but after that I wouldn’t complain about the list or the person who posted it to facebook. I’d probably be like, “Hey, is there anything that can be done so there’s not so much shit in our food?”

The back and forth continued on that post…

Look, I know this looks like Richard Kaufman is falling all over himself to let people know watching child porn isn’t the worst thing you can do. But I’m sure that can’t possibly be what he intended. We can all agree it’s not great to watch child porn, right? Okay, sure, if you feel the need to rank the levels of awfulness, there are more evil and destructive thing one can do. But as far as defenses go—”Hey, I didn’t rape that kid. I just jacked off to someone else raping the kid.”—is awfully weak. Yes, there’s a difference between the East Area Rapist and someone who got busted for watching kiddie porn. But I don’t think you want either of them showing their Hot Rod to your kids some Friday night at Fuddruckers.

I would like to explain why the list exists for anyone who can’t quite manage to wrap their head around it. As I’ve said in the past, I have no clue if there are a greater number of pedophiles and other creeps in magic’s ranks than there are in other professions. I’m sure there are plenty of shitty people who are plumbers too. But I’m not a plumber. And, more importantly, I haven’t heard too many stories of guys grooming kids for sexual abuse with their plumbing skills. I don’t think anyone ever said, “Hey, birthday boy, go sit on the plumber’s lap while he snakes the drain.”

I made the list for the sake of creating at least some accountability that doesn’t exist in the magic community otherwise. Why it’s up to this goofy bitch to do this, I don’t know. As I said, this seems like the very least we can do. I’m happy if someone wants to step up and do a better job than I’m doing. If something like this already existed, I wouldn’t have had to put it together.

The other big issue some seemed to have was that the list was anonymous. But, like, who gives a shit? The information in the list is easily verifiable if you take 1/10th of the time you put into posting about it on Facebook to do a simple google search. I didn’t say, “Here are some people I’m pretty sure are sexual predators.” I said, “Here is a list of convicted sex criminals,” and gave their name and city/country where the crime occurred. Obviously there’s going to be a paper trail. You can’t carry the ball into the end zone from there?

The fact of the matter is, old news articles often get deleted eventually, or may not even mention the perpetrator’s magic connection. I created the list so there is some accountability for these individuals who have inflicted damage on others, frequently using magic as part of the process of doing that damage. If you don’t particularly give a shit for the human toll of their actions, can you at least get behind the idea that this doesn’t look good for the art?

Since I launched the GLOMM five and a half years ago, I’ve heard from a few people on that list who are upset with me. Are they upset I kicked them out of made-up magic organization that they didn’t know they were in? No. They’re upset that someone searching their name in relation to magic might learn they were convicted of a sex crime. So…. good! My plan is working. You’re welcome.

Monday Mailbag #61

A couple further Quantum Deck emails:

I think it's very impressive but there's no presentation at all. For a layman, the invisible deck would be better because the cards are "normal" and the premise is straightforward. [After watching the demo] I now know what laymen feel like when they are both baffled and bored. — BB

This email originally came in when the trick was first released and the demo showed Craig Petty doing the same trick a few times. That trick is that there’s a blank deck with one printed card in it. The spectator names “any” number, and the printed card is found at that number.

Now, I think since the time this email came into me, it’s better understood that the Quantum Deck is intended to be a tool, rather than just one effect. And in that sense I think it can be a useful tool. I’ve ordered one. I haven’t quite hit on how I’m going to use it just yet, but I’ll come up with something.

But, to the point of the email, yes, I wouldn’t call the trick that is performed in the demo a good trick. It’s not a bad trick either. It’s just an average trick. This is easily proven. Just describe the trick to someone. “I have a deck of cards that is blank on both sides. In the deck there is one printed card. You name a number. I count down to that number. And the printed card is found at that number.”

I promise you—as someone who has described more tricks to laypeople than anyone else in the history of the universe—their response will be something like, “Oh, okay. That’s neat.” Their response will not be, “Oh, my goodness. [Clutching their heart.] How incredibly magical! A printed card, you say? No… for real? Such a wondrous marvel I have never even dared to dream!”

I wasn’t being facetious. I do believe I’ve described more tricks to people than anyone ever. It’s part of my process. And a regular tool I use when testing ideas. And I’ve done it 1000s of times. I find that tricks that grab people with just their description tend to be the types of tricks that have lasting reactions. Now, to be fair, no mere description of a trick will get the fantasy response I described above. But you can certainly tell a trick that would really connect with people from one that would merely fool them by how they respond to a description.

I don’t think Craig was demonstrating what he thought was the best trick with this particular gimmicked deck. I think he was just demonstrating a simple, unadorned trick you can do with it, to give people the general idea.

Here’s a trick I’m thinking of doing with this deck… it’s not something you could do in every circumstance, but I’m fortunate not to have to cater my repertoire to tricks I have to do in every circumstance. I will doctor up the deck so it’s covered in colorful scribbles and simple drawings. I will give the deck to my friend and have her hold it between her hands while I text her something. When I’m done I’ll have her name a number. I’ll slowly count down to her number and end up on one particular card. Maybe it’s got a bunch of shabby hearts drawn on it, or a janky cat, or just some abstract lines. I’ll turn the card over and it’s got her 3-year-old’s name written on the back in his childish scrawl. When she looks at what I texted her, it’s a video of him earlier in the day drawing this particular picture for mommy.

I’m not sure quite how everything would unfold within the trick. I think I wouldn’t want them to know that one of the pictures was done by their kid until the climax. So it wouldn’t be like, “Name the number where you think you’ll find your child’s drawing.” It would be more like, asking them to hone in on a number they feel drawn to for some reason. Then the surprise at the end is that they were drawn to that number because it was an image done by their child. And, of course, they’d have the video and the card as the rare examples of meaningful souvenirs in magic.

So now it’s not about finding a random playing card, it’s about somehow tuning into the one drawing done by their child from a full deck of random kid’s drawings. I will have to devote one Quantum Deck to this premise. But it’s something I can do for anyone with young kids as I’m just replacing their kid’s artwork each time. (I’m not sure if refills of this deck are available, but they should be. $40 is a fair price for the full package, but to get additional decks for different premises, there should be some significant discount.)

Now, the truth is, most people who get this will probably be using it to count down to the one printed card in a blank deck of cards. It’s a perfectly okay trick. But I don’t see that as the type of trick that will really grab people.

I believe the reason this trick is getting people talking about it so much online is because Craig and Murphy’s did a good job of hyping it up. For many days they told us there was something big and exciting coming, and when the trick came out, people treated it like it was something that was worthy of being talked about. Even if the effect itself wasn’t wildly different from dozens of other tricks in magic. Personally, I have no problem with this kind of marketing.

And it should be a lesson to you, because this sort of thing works on spectators too. I’ve written about this all over the place on this site and in books. If you can build up your trick before someone sees it, that can turn a good trick into a great trick in their mind. If you text someone a few days in advance and tell them about something really strange you’re working on that you’re excited to show them, that’s going to generate a stronger reaction than just apologetically rushing through a trick without any buildup, the way most magicians do. (It won’t turn a bad trick into a good trick, however. So make sure you’re saving this technique for something good. If you hype a bad trick, your audience will be confused or annoyed.)

---

Do you agree with Justin Miller’s assessment that the Quantum Deck will replace the Invisible Deck? —AM

No.

I mean, first, keep in mind that Justin Miller thought this look would replace having a beard.

Second, I can’t say for certain, but my instinct is that for a spectator, being able to know the identity of a playing card is stronger than knowing the location of a random card. A card’s location in a deck is a seemingly much more easily mutable characteristic than the identity of a card that is turned face-down and sandwiched somewhere in the middle of the deck.

But, going back to the last question, either of these gimmicked decks could be used to do something really strong, or just to do something that is just “alright.” So it’s not a matter so much of one being better than the other. It’s just a matter of how you choose to use the deck.

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You mentioned you have been out of the loop the past few weeks.

Well - here is a suggestion.

This seems like the sort of trick you would like. I don't own a copy but it seems to be getting good reviews on Facebook from Steve Faulkner (a youtube magic reviewer). —JM

I think the look of the card appearing in the bottle is great. I think the logic of a card appearing in a bottle is not so great. I don’t quite get the point of making something a card trick that doesn’t need to be a card trick.

I would be very interested in a version where just a normal rolled “note” appears in the bottle. Then, either by a force, an index, or some sort of secret writing, you would have an effect where you could make a note appear in the bottle and then unroll it to reveal a message that was apparently directly related to a choice the spectator made or something they said.

If/when he makes that version, I’ll be interested.

Here Come the Jerx: The State vs. Craig Petty

Here Come the Jerx is a feature I did once before, over six years ago, and promptly forgot about. At that time I wrote:

I'm the best person to settle magic disputes. Why? Well, I'm smarter than most of you. I have more common sense. And I don't know or care about any of you personally.

These days I’m smarter than I was, have more common sense, and care even less, so my judging abilities are reaching Judge Judy-ian levels.

When I asked in my last post for people to write in with anything I might have missed from the past month, the thing I heard about them most was that people wanted my feelings on the controversy over the trick Quantum Deck by Craig Petty.

Now, I was aware of this trick and the issues surrounding its release because people had been writing me about it for a couple weeks. Here is one of the emails I received that covers the basic issue people are having with the marketing of this trick.

I wanted to call your attention to what I think is a very deceptive piece of advertising: Murphy's trailer and ad for Craig Petty's Quantum Deck. They say the deck is "examinable," and Petty repeats that claim to a number of well-known magicians who profess themselves baffled, gobsmacked and clueless. (He's performing for them over zoom so they're taking him at his word.)

To their credit, Vanishing Inc. added a pretty striking disclosure about what "examinable" means in their description:

The concept is quite clever, even brilliant, and allegedly totally original. But the suggestion that everything is examinable means all the notable magicians shown watching Petty perform it on zoom (many of whom probably correctly discerned the method, more or less) were perhaps manipulated into believing they were totally fooled by his claim that that everything was examinable at the end. And became inadvertent endorsers of a trick that perhaps when all is said and done maybe didn't really fool them.

Neither Petty nor Murphy's ever actually say the cards are "normal" but I still find the wording quite disingenuous.

I do think the "examinability" flies for laypeople (since a deck of blank cards isn't really much of interest to examine, and they're unlikely to detect a secret they don't even know to look for). And Petty does detail a way to make a somewhat more examinable version that would definitely fly past some magicians. But still...VERY iffy claims in the trailer and in that Murphy's description.

So maybe this can serve as a nice example of the difference between an ethical and a (somewhat) unethical trick description? —JS

Before passing any type of judgment on this, I should put my biases on the table.

I once called Craig’s former review show with David Penn, “everything that is unlikeable about magic.” And referred to them as “two charisma-free dimwits.” Now, I admit, in some circles that would be considered an insult. But actually, in magic, charisma is frowned upon. And being a dimwit is a step up from your typical magician who is a total nullwit. So, see? I was kind of complimenting him.

Okay, it’s true, I was busting his balls. But I still feel I can give this situation a fair assessment.

The truth is, since he returned from his exile from the magic community a few years ago (there was a debacle with him releasing a trick that wasn’t his), I have been impressed by the work and effort he puts into creating content for his youtube channel. I’m not particularly interested in watching other people talk about magic, so I haven’t watched a ton of his videos. But I’ve certainly watched some of his content and I appreciate the effort he puts into it, even if I don’t particularly resonate with his style or intentions with his magic.

The person I feel worst for at the moment is David Penn. Craig used to do reviews with David. But these days he does them with his son who is like 6? 12? Shit… I don’t know anything about kids. At any rate, Craig’s son is a fidgety, sputtering, ball of kid-energy who gives every trick he partially likes a 150 out of 100. And yet… the review shows aren’t particularly any less insightful with Craig and his son than they were with Craig and David.

The real value in Craig’s reviews (from what I’ve seen) is he almost always demos the trick. And an unvarnished performance of a commercially available effect performed by someone other than the person releasing the effect, is very valuable. Why you would do a video review of magic products and not demonstrate the trick—as many of the youtube reviewers fail to do—is mind boggling to me.

But whatever, that’s not what we’re here to talk about. Today I’m here to judge if Craig Petty lied in his promotion of his new trick, The Quantum Deck.

Here is the 8 minute and 20 second promotional video for the Quantum Deck?

(8 minutes and 20 seconds?

C’mon, Craig.)

You don’t have to watch the full demo. If you watch the first 2:30 you’ll get what you need to see.

People take an issue with what he says to Adam Wilber in that opening demonstration:

Craig: “If you were here, you could examine them.”

[…]

Adam: “And that deck really is examinable?”

Craig: “It’s examinable.[…] It’s genuinely just a double-blank deck of cards.”

Now, as your honorable judge, it’s not easy to make certain pronouncements about this deck of cards in regards to examinability. And that’s because examinability isn’t binary. Examinability is a spectrum.

I will say, as someone who is particularly averse to getting busted with gimmicked stuff, I would be very comfortable handing this deck to a layperson. Judging by my own experience and what people are drawn to, I don’t think most people would be that interested in an unprinted deck. Yes, it’s more unusual than a standard deck, but not in a particularly interesting way. So I think few would care to examine it. And the sort of thing they would be looking for after the effect (extra printed cards) isn’t what they’re going to find here. So my first judgment is that it is fair to call this trick examinable in a general sense.

But is it examinable by magicians? This is where my personal bias does factor into my opinion. Guys, you need to stop performing for other magicians. You’re like a bunch of prostitutes paying each other to fuck. If you want to work stuff out with other magicians, that’s fine, but it’s a very weird end goal. We act like it’s some noble pursuit to try and fool magicians. But really it’s just easier than performing for laypeople. It’s a way to perform without putting yourself on the line to really entertain or enchant your audience. At best it’s about fooling them, but sometimes even that isn’t even really the goal.

Do I think the trick is examinable by magicians? If they have an idea what they’re looking for I would say, “No.” To be fair, Craig apparently has a way to make it more examinable for magicians. But there’s clearly some sort of trade-off there, or that method would be the method.

While the question of examinability by magicians is somewhat up in the air, I think the most clear untruth in the trailer is when Craig says to Adam, “It’s genuinely just a double-blank deck of cards.” It’s definitely not “genuinely” just a double-blank deck of cards. At least not in the sense that you could replace it with any other double-blank deck. So I think it’s fair to call that misleading. Do I think Craig felt he was actually “lying” in that moment? Probably not. I don’t know. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. When Adam Wilber asked, “And the deck is really examinable?’ Was he asking, “Examinable by me? Adam Wilber, professional magician?” Or was he asking, “Examinable by the average spectator”? I can’t really say for sure, but if it’s the latter I’m sure Craig’s thought process was. “Yes, it’s examinable and it’s [seemingly] just a genuine blank deck of cards.”

Here’s the thing, Craig should have realized this would be misinterpreted. He spends a lot of time critiquing magic trailers, so he should have seen how his own trailer could be easily misunderstood. And the ad should have been written more clearly. So for that I find him GUILTY. But the crime is a misdemeanor, in my opinion. His punishment is that his son should spank his naughty bottom on an upcoming video. Okay? Does that satisfy everyone?

(Now, if any of the magicians in the video do feel duped and manipulated to give the type of reaction they did, then I think that would be a more serious violation of standards. But until one of them comes out to say that, I’m not going to get too worked up about it.)

The truth is that there are a lot of magicians who don’t particularly like Craig for one reason or another. So they are going to be poised to jump down his throat. And whoever put the ad together didn’t do Craig any favors by making this an issue when it didn’t have to be. And Craig probably could have put the issue to bed just by saying, “I wasn’t trying to mislead people, but I see where it could be confusing. We’ve added some clarification to the ad,” or something like that. At least that’s how I would have handled it because I would just want to get on with my life and be done with the issue. Which is sort of how I feel about this now. I may have more to say about this trick in a future mailbag. But for now, I’m done.

My 2022 Focus

Hey all, The Jerx 2022 has officially commenced. It’s good to be back (although the return may be somewhat short-lived depending on certain factors I’ll discuss later in this post.)

Around the time of the new calendar year, and certainly the time of the new Jerx year, I like to consider what my focus is going to be for the next year when it comes to magic and/or this site. Frequently I don’t have a specific focus, but this year I have a few.

Re-Socializing with Social Magic

Whatever the future of the coronavirus situation is, it seems that the majority of people—at least in the circles I travel in—are ready to get back to normal. I’m not even sure another variant that is more severe would cause the pendulum to swing back the other way. I’ve probably thought this before at other points along the way, but now it definitely feels to me like most everyone is feeling, “Ah, fuck it. Let’s get on with our lives.”

Now, I’ve kind of been in this frame of mind for a while now. Not because I don’t believe in the severity of the virus or anything like that. I just don’t take many precautions with my own safety in general. So it’s pretty common for me to play fast and loose with my health, while still respecting other’s desires to be a bit more cautious. But now it feels like people want to get out there and live and interact. And those that don’t want to… maybe just don’t want to in general. And the pandemic has just been a reasonable excuse for not doing something they never much liked doing in the first place.

But for me, I’m happy that things are loosening up, people are becoming more open, and conversations are flowing more easily between people—even strangers.

I look forward to getting back into the flow of introducing magic into casual situations and interactions more and more. That’s primarily what I’m excited about this year.

Enchantment

In my post on December 10th I wrote that I see tricks generating three types of broad responses in spectators.

They can feel fooled by the trick.

They can feel entertained by the trick.

They can feel enchanted by the trick.

(Thanks to Jack S. for leading me to the correct word for that last category.)

These aren’t either/or propositions. They’re just different potential responses to a trick and any given trick can be ranked somewhere along a spectrum in all categories. Just like if you were online dating and you were ranking your potential options on looks, sense-of-humor, and intelligence. Someone could be smart and funny. Or average in every category. Or beautiful but stupid. Or—like me—a perfect 10 all across the board.

In magic, almost all of our focus is on finding tricks that are more fooling. In our minds we’ve equated a trick being fooling, to a trick being magical. But I’m not sure there’s even any correlation between the two.

In that previous post I wrote, “[H]ardly anyone is talking about the dreamy, romantic, mystifying, ‘magical’ feeling that certain tricks/presentations can generate.”

Starting this year, I want to focus more on what I can do to increase a feeling of enchantment with an effect. The issue is, I don’t know that it’s something that is easy to test and quantify. It’s easy to ask someone how fooled they were, and then find out if they knew exactly what was going on, if they have some ideas, or if they’re completely lost. It’s also simple enough to ask people how entertained they were by something and to get a useful response back.

But I don’t think it’s really that easy to get a sense of how magical or enchanting a trick was for a person. It’s not the sort of thing you can ask about, because asking about it just pulls the rug out from under that feeling. It’s just the sort of thing that you need to try and be perceptive to without deluding yourself into seeing it when it’s not there.

Exploring this feeling more is going to be a personal focus of mine going forward. I don’t know to what extent I’ll be able to capture any ideas here that are useful generally, but if I find out anything, I’ll let you know.

I think the starting point can be found in the Jerx Calamity Sentence, which I’m modifying here to say:

“The feeling of enchantment is created by the gap between what the spectator knows to be true and what feels real to them in the moment.”

This is why a good levitation effect will generally be more “magical” than a similarly strong ACAAN. Spectator’s have a firm, innate understanding that things can’t float. So when something seems to be floating, that gap is very apparent. But people don’t KNOW that a card they name can’t appear at a freely named number. Yes, it’s unlikely, but it doesn’t go against some firmly held belief. So it’s hard to create that gap between “what they know to be true” because “what they know to be true” is kind of a nebulous concept. “It’s unlikely that a freely named card would be at a freely named number,” isn’t the sort of profound truth that leads to an enchanting experience (even if you can generate a fooling trick out of it).

I want to keep working on techniques that help create that gap and broaden that gap with effects that might not otherwise generate those types of feelings with an audience.

The Future of the Jerx

There’s this thing that Howard Stern does every time his contract is about to be up. He starts talking like he wants to retire and that he’s ready to walk away from the gig. He’s been doing it for at least 20 years. He does it as a negotiating tactic.

And every year around this time I say something like, “If the supporters are interested in keeping this going for another year, the next season will start next month. It’s perfectly fine if this has run its course. I’m happy to do other things, so don’t feel the need to support unless you really want to.”

Now, I’m not saying that to make you think, “Oh no. He’ll walk away from this if he doesn’t reach the number of supporters he needs!” I’m saying it because most of the current supporters have been with this site for over 6 years, and some were even readers my old blog that I was doing almost 20 years ago. So I feel a personal relationship to a lot of these people even if they don’t know who I am. And I want everyone to know they’re free to not sign on year after year unless they’re getting something from this.

For the past number of years I’ve been fairly certain that the site, the newsletters, and the books would carry on because I essentially had the same or similar support structure in place, and a long waiting list to grab a support slot.

However I can’t say for certain that things will continue going forward past the time of the next book release in a couple of months. In about 6-8 weeks I’m going to be rolling out a new support structure for the site. And if people aren’t on board for this new structure, then this site will be on an indefinite hiatus, while I devote more time to my non-magic work to pay the bills. Again, this isn’t a threat or a plea. It’s just a mathematical equation that takes into account the size of the audience I want to write for (which is small), the amount of time it takes to generate the content and then write the 100s of thousands words a year that fill the book, newsletters, and site; and the financial support the audience is willing to provide to pay for that time. If the math doesn’t work, then I will happily shift gears to my non-magic opportunities which are also things I enjoy working on. So you’re not fucking me over either way. If my work outside of magic involved tarring rooftops, or cleaning bed sores, or perhaps even tarring bed sores at the world’s worst nursing home, then I would be begging you to sign up under the new support structure. But that’s not the case, so the only concern you need to have is whether you feel it’s worth it to you.

More information regarding that in a month or two.

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Hey, while working on the book the past month and half, I was sort of out of the loop. If there’s anything I missed that you want to bring to my attention, go ahead and send me an email.

My New Project

Watches…

You can print a memorized deck on the bezel of them.

You can stick a gimmicked coin to them to make it vanish.

But can we do anything else with them? Well… maybe I’m just a crazy dreamer, but I submit that we can!

That’s why I’m so psyched to talk about my next project with Ellusionist.

When they put the Aronson Stack around the edge of a watch, and then decided the best way to not draw attention to it would be to model the watch after a $12,000 Rolex, we all said the same thing: “Genius.”

When they suggested a good idea to vanish a coin would be to stick it to a “generic, non-functioning smart watch,” well, frankly, most of us just stood and applauded.

Sometimes brilliance like this stifles our creativity. It makes us feel “lesser than” because we don’t see ourselves as the type of people who could come up with such things. But what if, instead of feeling diminished by greatness, we were inspired by it?

That’s the road I took when I recently came up with a new project that brings this outside of the box thinking and sexy style to a different genre of magic—the gentleman conjuror’s genre: Sponge Ball magic.

Let’s break it down for you.

It all started with this simple, yet powerful, sketch.

Six months and $18,000 later, we had this professionally made blueprint.

After dozens of prototypes, we now have the working final product.

“Okay, I don’t get it, Andy. What are we looking at? Just some great looking watch?”

Actually… there’s a hidden secret that’s going to blow your goddam brains out the back of your head.

You see, the face of this watch is actually a sponge ball. The minute and hour hands are drawn on by artists to mimic real watch hands.

The ball sticks to the watch via a piece of genuine Velcro. That’s right, the material that was created by a Swiss electrical engineer. No expense was spared when making this product.

It’s brilliantly simple to get the ball into play in your magic routine. Simple show your hands empty. Point to something in the distance. And remove the ball when everyone’s heads turn.

And now you’re ready for your favorite sponge ball routine. (Personally, I like the one where the balls disappear and go from hand to hand.)

But, Andy, theres a giant flaw in your product. When the sponge ball is removed, the watch face changes color from red to white.

And that’s where things go from good to great. Your package doesn’t come simply with the watch and the hand-crafted sponge ball gimmick. It also comes with a 22 ounce container of Hershey’s Strawberry syrup.

Before your performance, simply apply a healthy amount of the syrup to the watch and wrist. Now, when people look at the watch face before or after the gimmick has been removed, they’ll simply say to themselves, “Oh, I guess he spilled some strawberry syrup on his arm. These things happen. Let me not be distracted by this common occurrence and instead give my attention to his magic effect.”

That’s right. We’re actually hiding this ingenious gimmick in the everyday situation of spilling strawberry syrup on your arm. The Hershey company has formulated an extra sticky syrup for us that will dissuade anyone from poking around your arm too much.

There you have it!

Looks cool? It is cool. Coming soon from The Jerx, Ellusionist, and Hershey’s.