The Jerx App

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Hey guys, if you ordered the book and you have an iPhone then the Jerx app is available for you.

Some things to note:

1. This is free for the people who bought the book. You'll probably eventually be able to find it in the iTunes store as well, but it's going to have some absurd price on it.

2. Rather than try to hide the app behind some phony financial app or something, it's hidden behind itself. If someone tries to go into the app or asks you what it is, you can open it and it will show L'il Jerxy and his magic trick or tip of the day. These are just going to be stupid bits of "advice" or tricks. The real app is hidden behind this opening screen.

3. The app has one main purpose  (Codename: Chocolate & Vanilla) that is not currently listed on it. I'm waiting to release that functionality until the book comes out because it goes along with one of the effects in the book. But it's much bigger than that too. In a sense it's a utility gimmick. It does one very simple thing, but the simple thing it does can be used for a variety of different effects: close-up, stage, magic, and mentalism.

4. While the purpose of the app is the Chocolate & Vanilla capability, there are going to be other mini-tricks on it as well for you to screw around with. The first mini-trick that's loaded on the app right now is Wish List. Wish List is a version of this idea that I mentioned last summer. It's a way to get into a five item equivoque. You go to your friend's house and tell them you want to try this psychological test but it requires 5 very specific items. "You might not even have all these things," you say. You open your phone to get the instructions for the test and then rattle off the items you need. You and your friend then notice those are the exact 5 things sitting on your friend's kitchen table. "What a coincidence," you say. She doesn't believe you but you can immediately show her the directions you copied earlier into your phone that have those as the required items and those five things are listed throughout the brief instructions. You tell her you don't want her to read the whole thing because you don't want it to affect the test. So you send a screenshot of the instructions to her phone to check later. She selects an item through "process of elimination" (wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-wink) and when she opens the the photo of the instructions you sent her it states that item is the one that will be selected when those group of items are laid out in that particular order. 

It's a weird trick because the magic moment doesn't come at the end, but the beginning. And then everything that happens after that is meant to legitimize that moment including the "trick" itself.

5. Eventually everyone who buys the book and who has an iPhone or iPod touch will get the app. But be patient because we're limited by how many we can give away at one time before we update it and things like that. "Why not just make it a free app?" I don't want it to be free. I want it to be free for the people who support the site by buying the book. Everyone else can go screw.

6. Have an idea for a magic app? Hire Marc Kerstein to build it. I don't even know if he's looking for those types of gigs. But if he is and you could use his services, definitely check him out. He can probably do non-magic apps too. That one to track your period, for instance. But again, I don't really know. He didn't ask me to say any of this, I'm just saying it because he's handled the creation of the Jerx app for me. And I'll say, "Hey, can you make it do this?" And then 13 minutes later there is a new build of the app with that feature. 

Catch you on the flippety-flappety, Flappy-pants-pappy.

The Look of Love

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Imagine

I'm out getting a late-night meal with a group of friends. It's a pretty low-key affair. There are maybe 8 of us. A few different conversations are going on. I'm just screwing around on my phone waiting for my loaded potato skins. One of my friends who also does magic is trying to make a move on one of the girls there that he just met that night.

"Did you ever do the soulmate test?" he asks.

"I don't think so," she says. "What's that?"

"My grandfather told me about it," he begins. "Apparently it was big in the 50s. Guys would carry a picture in their wallets of a random object, then when they'd meet a girl they'd ask her to name any object in the world. The closer the girl got to the object, the better suited they were for each other. Supposedly. It was created by some psychologist back in the day. It's probably horse-shit but I guess it got popular because there was some 1950s dating show called The Look of Love where people were paired up, in part, based on a similar type of matching pictures thing. It was apparently a big deal because it was like the first dating show ever and it was maybe a little scandalous at the time. Do you want to try it?"

"Sure," she says. But the positive kind of "sure" not the dismissive kind.

"Okay," he says. "Think of any object in the world. Something in your home. Something in your school. Something at work. Or just anything out in the world at all. Got one?"

"Uhmm.... okay... a basketball."

"Really? Now... okay... wait. Uhm... just for the sake of... of... getting a clear mental picture, I want you to imagine the basketball is a particular color. It doesn't have to be basketball-color. What color is it?"

"Green," she says.

"A green basketball." He sits there quietly for a moment, nonplussed. "I mean... I've asked maybe 50 girls to do this and none of them even said anything sports related in any way. Much less a ball. Much less a basketball. This is just.... And green! I mean, I only made it green so it could be definitive and not ever just be a lucky guess. But I never thought it would actually work. Oh... sorry," he says, stopping his rambling.

He reaches into his wallet and pulls out an envelope that says "Soulmate Test" on it. He rips off the end and dumps out a photo onto the table.

A photo of a green basketball.

Method

Look, I'm not saying telling people which hand holds a coin is a bad trick. I have dozens of types of interesting little moments in my repertoire. I love those things. But sometimes you don't want to make someone scratch their head, you want to make them drop their jaw. You want to make their heart skip a beat. 

When I was originally going through my unpublished effects for inclusion in the Jerx Book, I thought I would put a bunch of my most practical routines in there. Borrowed deck stuff, impromptu stuff, because I figured that would be what people wanted: things they could perform a lot. But after talking with some magic friends I decided that the only criteria I would use is what gets me the best reactions. You guys have more than enough resources for hyper-practical routines if that's what you need. Buy John Bannon's books and you'll be set for life. Hell, buy Easy To Master Card Miracles and you'll have more than enough routines to do entertaining magic. We're not lacking in practical magic effects.

I think there is something of a dearth of breathtaking magic effects. Effects that really rattle spectators in a personal and overwhelming way. You can't perform these effects one after another for someone. It's just too much. It would be like if you did some staggeringly romantic gesture every night for your wife. The first few nights she would be swooning, but then it just becomes standard. Much better to just be a low-key romantic guy on a day-to-day basis, and then do something over-the-top every few months. You'll get more credit. 

Here is, I think, why magicians sometimes seem to neglect or overlook the need for powerful effects in their repertoire. Let's say you're 12 and you start seriously pursuing magic. And you have all these ideas in your head for the type of bold effects you want to do. "I'm going to make a dozen roses appear for this girl." "I'm going to levitate in front of the school." "I'm going to make Tony disappear." Your brain at this point in time is mostly layperson-brain. So the effects you want to do are big and powerful. But as you grow in magic, you grow your magician brain, and your magician brain knows that everything is fake and is more interested in the process of fakery than the outcome of the fakery. It's just as interesting to fake doing something dull as it is to fake doing something spectacular, because the process is often very similar.

It's like if you were an artist capable of creating photo-realistic drawings. And for you, the process is fairly similar whether you're drawing an apple or drawing Aubrey Plaza 69'ing Alison Brie. They're both just exercises in light and shadow and color. But for an audience, one is a nice picture of an apple and the other is going to move them (to jack off).

This goes back to the audience-centric approach to magic. You need to fall out of love with methods and back in love with effects, like you were when you first started magic. Especially now that you have the knowledge to pull off some harder-hitting effects. 

Quit dicking us around. The method?

Okay, this is an effect I love, but it didn't make the book because it requires a couple things not everyone is going to have access to. The first is something I just mentioned the other day, the Polaroid Zip printer. The second thing you need is me, hanging out with you, pretending to play Candy Crush, but secretly listening in to the conversation and sending a picture to the printer that's in your lap. (The printer, if it's not clear, is the size of a cell phone.) Or if not me, some other competent person you trust.

Your confidant listens in, does a google image search for whatever is named, sends that picture to the printer. Maybe 30 seconds after the object is named, a perfectly-palmable photo of it is being silently printed right into your hand. And you just load it into your card-to-wallet wallet.

And yes, you can add any color to any object in the world and google images will have a picture of it. 

Brown rose
Yellow dolphin
Green stapler

You can't stump it, so don't worry about that.

This effect has multiple layers of deception: the secret use of a non-standard technology, a secret accomplice, and the card-to-wallet technique. And while any trick using only one of those layers might be easy to unravel, together they present a fairly impenetrable mystery. The spectator doesn't know to break up the trick into the component parts. She just sees the end result, so it's very deceptive. You know the elements of the trick. You know that you need to get a real photo printed mid-trick, you know you need to have someone else to send it to the printer, you know you need a way to load it into an envelope in a wallet. Spectators don't break down tricks like this.

On top of the deceptive methodology, it's couched in a kind of gentle presentation that doesn't encourage someone to "debunk" you. It's not, "I was graced with the power to predict the future. Earlier today I put a photo in my wallet...." They'll fight that presentation. Here you let them choose the narrative. Maybe it's just a crazy coincidence. Maybe there is some kind of connection between you two. Or maybe it was just a cool magic trick. 

Even if you don't use this effect, you can still reference the old tv show, The Look of Love, in a drawing duplication presentation or something like that. They really did used to pair people up on that show based on similarities in random drawings and things like that. 

Ok, no, that's not true. No such show ever existed. But you can picture it can't you? Young people being put through the paces and subjected to tests and games to be paired off on innocent 1950s dates? "Calgon presents, The Look of Love, with your host, Bud Collyer [orchestra swells]" 

Postscript:

I could probably write a book just on effects I've used that little printer for. But I won't because that would make a dull book. But here are two more quick ideas.

1. Want to do the above effect in the context of your stage show or your ABC hour long special? You could rig the printer up inside your jacket so it hangs down and the photo falls right into your CTW wallet. Imagine, any person or item named, you reach into your pocket with empty hands and remove your wallet, remove a sealed envelope from your wallet, and inside is a picture of that person or thing. Your offstage assistant just needs to send the photo to the printer. Easy. 

This is one of those ideas that no one will do because I'm giving it away for free. if I had packaged the printer with a CTW wallet and sold it for $750 it would be used in every Magic Castle parlor performance until California falls off into the sea.

2. This also requires a secret helper, but they don't have to do much.

Effect: You ask your wife to get your photo printer from upstairs. While she's gone you take a picture of your friend Dave. When your wife returns she hands you the printer and you print out the photo of Dave. Then you burn it or cut it up (you can't tear the photo really) and restore it. 

Method: So your wife goes to the other room to get the printer You take a picture of Dave and immediately send it to the printer. Once it prints out she places the photo under the printer, and that's where it is when she hands it to you. Dave gets the sense that he's watching you print out a one-of-a-kind photo of a moment that just occurred and then destroying it. But you have a duplicate to swap in as the restored photo. 

  

Non-Starters

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So I have a list of ideas for posts for this site in an Excel spreadsheet. Every time the list gets over 200 items I go in and clean out 50 of them. Here are some of the ideas that I recently cleared out that you won't be seeing on this site.

-- Joshua Jay's Big Magic For Little Penises

That's all I had written down. I don't really know what my intention was with this. I think I was just going to photoshop the cover of this book so it said penises instead of hands, maybe? Oh, and I was going to turn the kid around so he's facing Josh's crotch. But I don't have the photoshop skills for either. Very little is too dumb for me to invest my time in, but this was.

UPDATE - Well, that didn't take long. Thanks to MK. Come on, guys, knock it off. This is just immature.

-- The Magic Starbucks

Back when I wrote my old blog, the Magic Cafe was a big subject of conversation. 10-12 years ago it used to be relevant. So when I started this site I thought I'd end up writing more about the Cafe, but it's always way down on my list of priorities. One of my ideas before starting this blog was to start a message board in conjunction with it called The Magic Starbucks. As I wrote in an email to a friend of the site:

I considered starting a new forum called The Magic Starbucks (as in Starbucks coming into towns and putting Cafes out of business). But I have no desire to manage a message board and it wouldn't get any traction anyway. The Cafe is too established. And you need volume for lively conversations and there just isn't really a large number of magicians I would want to have discussions with. I'm fortunate that because of my site I have people writing in and discussing ideas and things like that, so I've managed to side-step the whole issue.

-- Magically Delicious

This was going to be a Field Report but the post never came together because it didn't pan out in real life the way I wanted it to. And I realize I could just lie and say something happened that didn't. Hardly any of you know who I really am, and even if you did there's no way you would know if something didn't actually happen. But I'm pretty adamant about avoiding that type of thing. When I was writing my old blog people would often complain that my anonymity prevented them from getting to know me. But I get that less now. I think now people realize it allows me to be more open and authentic than I might be able to be otherwise. And my feeling is that --regardless of whether you like me or the site or not-- you're getting a genuine sense of who I am. (Which is pretty incredible when you realize this site is written by 20 people. There is no "Andy." This is all part of a viral marketing plan for Tannen's Magic. Tannen's Magic: Feel the RUSH!)

So when I was a freshman in college I dated a girl named Amy. One day at the dining hall, I was having breakfast with her and I was eating Lucky Charms, because I appreciate a finely crafted artisan cereal. "One time I picked all the marshmallows out of a box of Lucky Charms and just ate a bowl of those marshmallows for breakfast," Amy told me. "Later my dad poured himself a bowl of Lucky Charms and it was just the dull brown kibble part and he threw a fit. I was 'grounded' from sweet cereal for three months. But it was worth it."

She tells me this story and it goes into my brain where it is lost in the flotsam of anecdotes from everyone I've met in my life.

Eight years later, Amy is visiting me in NYC for a weekend. Saturday morning I pull out a box of Lucky Charms for breakfast and she tells me the story again. It was a story I never would have remembered unprompted, but once she started telling me it, it came back to me. And when you hear a story like that twice from someone it somehow seems significant even when it's not a significant story.

So when I was getting ready to pack up from Brooklyn I met up with Amy again. This was many years after the last meet up. For some reason the cereal story was rattling in my head. I was sure she would have no recollection of telling it to me the first or second time. Why would she? So I thought maybe if I brought out a box for breakfast I could prompt her to tell it to me again. And when you can get someone to "spontaneously" bring something up that they don't know you know... well, you're in a very good position to do something incredible.

I'd purchased a box of Lucky Charms, and I went online and bought a couple bags of cereal marshmallows. Yes, you can buy them separately. That fact alone may make this whole blog post worth it to you.

I gently unsealed the box and then the bag inside, dumped out the cereal and replaced it with all marshmallows. Then I re-sealed the bag and the box to their original condition. The plan was to just wait for her to bring up her story. I snap my fingers, wiggle my nose, or whatever. And bam! Now this bag is all marshmallows just like she wanted as a little girl.

The morning rolls around and we're sitting in my kitchen. I put the box on the table. She doesn't mention anything. I keep waiting and delaying. I have really no non-obvious way to get into this unless she brings it up. Time passes. She talks about everything else other than the goddamn cereal. Eventually I realize it's not going to happen. I open up the box and say, "What the hell... this is all marshmallows?" 

"That's crazy! One time I picked all the marshmallows out of a box of Lucky Charms and just ate a bowl of those marshmallows for breakfast," she begins.

"Yeah. I know," I say, in mostly feigned annoyance. Then I tell her about how I'd planned this moment. Flashing back to when we were both 17 and in our college's dining hall. No, it's not as good as if I got to play it off as a miraculous trick. But it's still pretty memorable in its own way. And then we got to eat big bowls of cereal marshmallows for breakfast which was fucking delicious.

-- The Seduction of Charlotte Pendragon

This was going to be a series of posts where I move to Las Vegas, conspire to meet Charlotte Pendragon, worm my way into her life, become the man of her dreams, convey to her how much I appreciate her talent and elegance and the athleticism and grace she brought to the art, and then bang her everloving brains out. 

She's 60? So what. I don't care. You know who else doesn't care? My cock, and his two buddies, my balls. 

Unfortunately, I think she's engaged or remarried now. So until she dumps that dude and hits me up, the story will only exist in my mind and in the 14-act erotic play I'm working on.

Gardyloo #9 - OOTW Edition

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Regarding Out of This World, Andrew Skinner reminded me of the Derren Brown presentation with photographs separated between living and dead. And with that in mind I will once again remind you of an incredibly versatile non-magic magic purchase, the Polaroid ZIP mobile printer, first mentioned in this post in conjunction with a Tomas Blomberg effect. I like the idea of OOTW with photos and I like it even better if we're talking about pictures that were just taken. Imagine a 60th birthday party and you take photos of everyone there, then later when things are winding down you show the person whose birthday it is an OOTW style effect with the photos. 

Maybe you have two piles "Invite back next year" and "Don't invite next year." Then the birthday-boy separates the photos and it's found that all his white friends are in one pile and his ethnic friends are in another. You give him a wink and a nod. "Good. I'm glad we're on the same page about this." you say.

You can have them separate photos face down, of course, or face-up and have something be on the back of the photos as in Derren's version linked above. Or you can have them separate them face-up with nothing on the back, but then it turns out there is some hidden aspect that all of the photos have in common, like, "Now, I asked you to just use your subconscious and separate the cards that gave you a good vibe from the ones that gave you a bad vibe." And then you give him a magnifying glass and point out that way in the background of all the "bad vibe" photos is his wife.

Whatever direction you go with it, you pop the photos in an album at the end of the effect and you have a perfect, personalized gift.

Pete McCabe thinks I should have called the electro-shock presentation, Ow! of This World.

Sorry I failed you, pun-nerds. 

Does anyone remember this hunk of shit?

Late 80s, first-run syndicated sitcoms all make me feel sick. Small Wonder, Mama's Family, It's a Living, Charles in Charge, She's the Sheriff. 

Or how about What a Dummy? I can't find any video of it anywhere. It was like Alf but with a living ventriloquist dummy instead of an alien. This is one of the few promo shots you can find online and it legit looks like it was torn from some serial-killer's inspiration journal.

If you want to up the ante on the electric shock presentation from the last post, or if the Pavlok mentioned in the previous post is too expensive, may I recommend the Eastern Delights® Elite Erotic Electro Stimulation Sex Cock Enlarge Expander Penis Ring Cock Ring Male Genital Desensitizer Delay WITH Red Pouch.

It's only $25.

Out Of This AHHHH!!!!

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One of my favorite tricks I've ever developed is my version of Out of This World. It will be in The Jerx Volume 1. And in preparation for writing it up --in fact, to see if it would even be included-- I read through every version of OOTW that I could find, including the book Best of All Worlds by Brent Geris. That book collects about 50 different versions of the effect and I read through it very tentatively at first because I wasn't looking forward to finding out my handling or presentation wasn't original. If you've ever been eating something and out of your peripheral vision you get the sense you maybe dripped something on your shirt, and then you kind of slowly tilt your head down to look -- that was how I was reading the book. I was in no hurry to be disappointed. 

But as I read, I was surprised to find that virtually all the versions were the exact same effect: the spectator somehow separates the red cards from the black cards.

Well, no shit, Andy. That's the effect of Out of This World.

Ok, that's true, but I think it's helpful to differentiate the outcome of a trick from the effect of a trick. Yes, the outcome of OOTW is that the cards are dealt into all red and all black, but that outcome can be the result of different effects. The version I write up in the book has nothing to do with the spectator's ability to separate cards. That's just a byproduct of another uncanny event that's going on. 

I bring this up for a few reasons. First, that OOTW book, while great, is also a good example of magician-centric magic. 50 different ways to tell what is ultimately the same story. It's fascinating to look at the options from the magician's perspective, but it doesn't help you entertain anyone. I've performed the most clever handlings and I've performed the basic one out of the trade paperback version of Scarne on Card Tricks that I got from a grocery store when I was 11. There isn't a huge difference in the reaction to the trick based on changing up the handling. But you can have a significantly increased reaction based on the presentation, and that, in turn, can VASTLY increase the memorability of the effect.

The big subtext of the Jerx Book is about the power of magic to make memories. As you probably gathered from this post last week about slowing time, this is a big preoccupation of mine. The unfortunate thing about magic is the things we like practicing or thinking about (new sleights and clever methods) aren't usually the things that reverberate with the spectators. I'm just saying you might want to invest some time thinking about that stuff. Or not, I'll do the thinking for both of us.

The second reason I bring this up is because I just came up with a new handling for OOTW. It won't replace my current favorite, but it's pretty damn good.

Out Of This AHHHH!!!!

I've only performed this twice, but it's an incredibly fun presentation for OOTW. I came up with this last week after a friend showed me a new gadget he had purchased. The gadget costs $200. But I have an alternative for you that's just as good and costs, literally, 1 cent. 

When most people perform OOTW the presentation amounts to, "Look, you've separated the red cards from the black cards." Sometimes they'll make it about intuition or male and female energy, or some other slapped on bullshit. Or the magician will make it about himself, "I'm bestowing upon you the power to separate cards by color without seeing them." Gee, thanks, Mr. Magician! Please don't let this beautiful dream ever end! Even if you don't explicitly take credit for you, audiences will give you the credit when the only other option is that they themselves have some unknown power. They know they don't have this power so you must have done something tricky.

But what if you could make it really feel like you were training someone to develop some low-level psychic ability. Wouldn't that be worth an investment of a few minutes? Wouldn't it be more memorable if you could truly shift the power of the effect to the spectator?

Introducing Pavlok. This is some weirdo device that you strap on your wrist and shock yourself when you want to smoke or eat sugar or beat-off to children or whatever.  This negative reinforcement will, theoretically, get you to stop doing these things. 

You're going to strap it on your spectator's wrist and shock the fuck out of them until they're psychic.

Here's what you do. First, you let them know what's going to happen. Don't be a dick and spring it on them. This thing doesn't really hurt, but it is unpleasant. Just let them know what they're getting into. You can dial down the shock so it's very mild, or if you're performing for a real tough guy, turn it up. It's the type of sensation where it hurts you but you laugh about it at the same time. 

Give them a deck of cards to shuffle. Take the deck back and hold up cards one by one with their backs to the the spectator and have them guess if they're red or black. Shock them every time they're wrong. After about a third of the deck has been dealt only shock them and tell them they're wrong every other time they make a mistake. At the midway point, stop and take a break. Pour them a glass of water. Start up again. When you're about 2/3rds of the way into the deck, only buzz them every third mistake. Don't make a mention of it. Let them feel like they must be getting more accurate. The implication here being that somehow their subconscious mind is becoming better at picking up the color of the card, or perhaps better at communicating it's knowledge of the color of the card to the conscious mind. You don't need to explain it. When you're done, pour them a little more water, have them do a couple deep breaths, mix up the cards and go into your favorite OOTW.

(Yes, this starts with a shuffled deck, but as you deal through the cards during this test phase and place the cards in a pile, just side-jog all the black cards. After the initial deal through you can strip the black cards out, put them on top and give them a false shuffle or a red-black shuffle and you're good to go. (Of course that depends on which version of OOTW you do, but at most you'll just have to do a couple cuts to get into position.))

If you don't want to shell out $200 for a shocking wrist-band, use the analogue version: a rubber-band. Have your spectator put it on her wrist and place her palm flat on the table. Each time she gets the color wrong you snap it. When you have just a few cards left in the test round, start pulling up the rubber band further and further from her wrist, until you get to the last card and you're pulling it as tight as it will go. Increase the literal and figurative tension as much as possible. If she gets the last one right, show it to her, then gently set the band back down. If she gets it wrong, don't show it to her, but imply she got it right by putting the card down and setting the band back gently.

Some old nerds are going to lecture me. "How dare you treat your spectator like that! I'm sorry, but I don't need to give someone an electric shock in order to make my magic memorable. Blah, blah, blah." To which I say: Go! Get off my site! I don't want you here. 

The effect isn't memorable because they're somehow physically or mentally scarred by electric shocks or the flick of a rubber band. What makes the trick memorable is there is an inherent narrative to it. "He put this thing on my wrist that could shock me. And he started by testing me and every time I got one wrong he would shock me. At first I was only getting half right. But after a few shocks I started getting better and better. Then eventually I was able to deal through the entire deck with no mistakes!" You start somewhere and end up somewhere new. That's a progression that affects people. That's what makes it memorable. (As opposed to how OOTW is traditionally presented which is, "Somehow you did this thing." That's essentially a non-presentation. And you can get away with it because it's such a strong trick. But strong tricks can be elevated too.)

Inform your spectator the effects of this training are sadly temporary. "If you want to do it again you'll need to train for a longer time and with something more painful. Do you have a waffle-headed framing-hammer at home?"

If bringing a little mild pain to your spectator isn't your scene, be sure to check out the OOTW routine in The Jerx book, From the Shadows of the Shallow End. It's another presentation that takes people on a journey, but this one is all positive and painless, and it leaves them with a physical relic of the effect that they will keep forever.

Spring Cleaning

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Welcome back to The Jerx.

As you'll notice, I've cleaned up all the Splooge. I mean, the posts are still there, but the design is now back to the normal Jerx site.

Some quick notes before we move forward...

I removed the Amazon and Vanishing Inc affiliate links from the side bar. I prefer the esthetic of the site without them and they weren't used often enough to merit keeping them there. As I've stated, this site is going to be around as long as people continue to support it. But the impression I get from you guys is that you'd rather do so in more pro-active, direct ways. That's cool with me. I think with a smaller audience that's probably the way it needs to be done anyway. 

You can still find the links on the Support the Site page if you're so inclined, they just won't be in the sidebar.

Regarding the Splooge post about slowing time, Marc Kerstein reminded me about this app where you take 1 second of video every day and it puts it all together into one video. 

I like that idea too, although I think pulling out your camera can sometimes be a more intrusive way to capture the highlight of your day than writing down one sentence at the end of the day. Especially if the highlight of your day was getting a blowjob from your barista or something.

I will probably end up doing both: keeping the one sentence journal and keeping the 1 second video diary. The journal capturing what's going on in my mind and the video capturing the external experience.

Also via Marc Kerstein's twitter I was turned on to Patrick Kun's youtube videos which collect his Instagram performances. They're called Unseen Magic and there are 5 up so far. Here is the most recent one.

As far as I'm concerned, this is about as perfect a representation of magic as you'll see online. Patrick is super skilled. Everything is quick and fun and visual. And it's magic for the sake of magic. It's not some bullshit "prank," it's not using magic to tell us about neuroscience, it's not some hacky interactive trick. He talks the way a normal human does to other humans as opposed to like he's trying to sell you something. The best compliment I can give is that it makes me want to get out and perform.

Hey guys, quit trying to bait me into making fun of Rick Lax. Rick got upset when I called him a "dull whitey" in this post. So I told him I wouldn't tease him anymore, and that's that.

So when people like Paul Sherman email me things like this:

Subject: How did Rick Lax do it?!

Andy,

Had to pass this along:

https://www.facebook.com/DeceptionExpert/videos/538131729702018/

Spooky, right?! I mean, how could he have known what planet or star I would think of, when the only limitation was that it begin with the last letter of the name of the first superhero I could think of?

Well, it took me a while, but I think I've finally cracked it, and now I'm working up my own routine with a similar method. Would love to get your feedback:

Quick, think of your favorite manufacturer of gelatin-based desserts.

Now think of the last letter of that manufacturer's name. Example: Knox = X.

Are you thinking of your letter?

Now think of an American President or a Canadian Prime Minister whose last name begins with that letter. So if you're thinking of "C," you might think "Jean Chrétien."

Are you thinking of a president or prime minister?

Focus.

Are you focusing?

Well I Hope you don't Change your mind, because right now you're thinking of President Barack Obama.

Like and Share!

Best,
Paul

... there's really nothing for me to say. Yes, Rick's trick is phenomenal. I suppose if you were a master of linguistics or a "deception expert" like Rick, you might be able to discern a pattern in the last letter of many of the most popular superhero names.  

Superman
Batman (and Robin)
Ironman
Wonder Woman
Spider-Man
Aquaman

Maybe there's a pattern. Is there? I don't know. Give me a minute... I'm just not seeing one. Sorry, I'm not an alphabet expert, fer chrissakes. I just don't have the time it would take to examine them that close.

And then I just think of the name of ANY planet (or star) that begins with the last letter? Such freedom!

Most people would suggest that Rick's examples give the trick away. If you're thinking of the Hulk or Thor, he notes, you'd be thinking of the letter K or R. Now just think of your favorite planet (or star) that begins with a K or R. 

Ooh... hmm... do I have to narrow it down to one? So many possibilities. How will I ever choose?

But I think it's just the opposite. And I would actually flesh out those example so people realize just how many options they have. "Perhaps you're thinking of the Hulk. And the last letter is K, so you're going through your mental catalog of stars and planets that begin with K and removing one. For example... maybe K-Pax, the home to Kevin Spacey's character in the movie of the same name."

"Or if you're thinking of Thor, your letter would be R and you might be thinking of your favorite star: RA 05:55:10.306, Dec +07:24:25.35 (2000.0)."

And the great thing is, by mentioning these common examples you make it less likely for your spectator to name them. Sweet!

Before the lifestyle blog transition, I mentioned I'd hopefully be posting a new trick on here that didn't fit in the book. As of now there's a small possibility the trick is going to be used in an upcoming tv special. So I'm waiting to hear back on that. If it is used, then I'll make a secret explanation site that will go out to the people who bought the book after the special airs. If it's not used then I will post it here in the relatively near future for everyone.

 

The Secret To Happiness

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How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke - Letters to a Young Poet

Following up on the previous post on how not to shit your pants, here is how to achieve eternal happiness.

Two caveats:

1. I'm trying to explain something that is my natural mindset, and I'm not quite sure how to do it. It would be like if you had a fetish for testicular trauma. That's not something someone talked you into, that's just how you are. So how would you try and talk someone else into it? Maybe you can't reason someone into this way of thinking. I don't know.

2. There's a chance if you adopt this mindset you'll be seen as some stepford-wife type automaton. A lot of people see happy people as superficial, or one-dimensional, or mindless. If people get the sense that you're happy most of the time, then they'll think you're an idiot or a liar. "Poor guy. He's too dumb to realize he shouldn't be happy. Or he's lying about being happy."

People can’t conceive of a virtue in someone else that they can’t conceive in themselves. Instead of believing you’re stronger, it’s so much easier to imagine you’re weaker. You’re addicted to self-abuse. You’re a liar. People are always ready to believe the opposite of what you tell them.

-- Chuck Palahniuk - Survivor

The good news is, when you know the secret to happiness, you don't really give a shit about what people say anyway. 

And it may be a mistake to call it the secret to happiness. I don't know what will make you happy. If you don't have things in your life that bring you joy, you're screwed. These don't have to be big things, they probably shouldn't be in fact. If your happiness is dependent on a perfect relationship, with a loving family, and a rewarding job; your happiness is very tenuous. That's a lot of shit that's outside of your control. If your spouse cheats on you with your boss, your world crumbles. You need to be able to find your happiness in smaller things -- that is, happiness in: finding new music, excitement for films that are coming out, friends, a really good grilled cheese, sports, sex, nature, meeting new people, a new magic book, pets, skipping work, a back massage, television, doing nice things for others, jokes, this website... these sorts of things.

This is the part of the equation people understand: you need to appreciate the small pleasures. But the corollary to this is even more important: you need to forget the big miseries.

You can't really forget them, of course, but you can recontextualize the things that lead to unhappiness: failure, mistakes, tragedy, disappointment, rejection and loss.

Why is the Basketball Hoop Ten Feet High?

That's not a riddle. I'm genuinely asking. Why is it ten feet high? You've gone out and shot baskets before, right? Wouldn't it be a lot easier if it was five feet high and five feet in diameter? Then you could just walk up to it and drop the ball in without all that hectic jumping and throwing of the ball. 

But no one would ever play that game. Not only is it not the game you would play with someone else, but it's not the game you would play with yourself. Even when no one else is around we still crave challenge and adversity. We're entertained by them. 

The Secret to Happiness: Treat Your Life Like an Auto-Scrolling Video Game

Remember the auto scrolling levels of Mario where the background moved along at a constant pace and you just have to keep going or you get crushed or pushed off a cliff or something?

That is life.

The difficulties in life are like the pits, and the bullet things, and the turtles with wings. Those are the things that make the whole process interesting. A game without them would be dull to the point of unplayable.

The mistake we make is imagining a "perfect" life as a life without difficulties. The perfect life is not a life without these things. The perfect life is one where you skillfully navigate through these things.

When you see life like this, you don't look at loss, pain, failure, mistakes, and tragedy as some kind of karmic abuse meant to punish you. They're just the obstacles that are there to challenge you and make the game rewarding. 

When you play a game and you're struck with some impediment, you're not like, "Oh, why me! What did I do to deserve this?! How will I ever pick myself back up again?" You're just like, "Hmmm... okay... now what's the best way to handle this?" And you actually become better going forward because you're constantly learning from your difficulties, not just bemoaning them. You might think you'd have to be a robot to handle the difficulties in life the same way, but I think once you view life from this perspective it just becomes kind of automatic. 

Let's say your wife got trampled to death during a terrorist attack at Wrestlemania. You might think, "I'd just be a broken man. I'd never be able to move on." Well, what good does that do anyone?  It's not an insult to your former wife's memory to feel the pain and then quickly press on. No amount of suffering is going to bring her back. There's nothing noble about being paralyzed by sorrow. So you look at the situation and say,  "Hmmm... okay... now what's the best way to handle this?" I don't know what the answer to that question would be for you, but there is an answer. 

We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. 

-- Rainer Maria Rilke - Letters to a Young Poet

When I explain this idea to people -- that I don't think of bad things as bad things -- but just the impediments that have randomly been spat out at you that you get to deal with in your life, some people have compared it to the philosophy of Stoicism. 

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” 

-- Marcus Aurelius - Meditations

Of the philosophical writings I've read, I've understood like 40%. Most of it is way over my head. But of that 40%, much of what I've agreed with does come from the Stoics. But my personal philosophy kind of veers off wildly from their's. Stoics believe you shouldn't let negative things affect you. But they also think you shouldn't really let positive things affect you that much either. 

That's not my scene. That feels like playing it safe to me. Worse, it feels like surrender. "Okay, here's the deal, universe. I won't get too high so you can't slap me back down to earth. Okay?" I think it's better to just wring every drop of happiness and get as high as possible on every good thing in your life. And fuck it if things don't work out as you'd hoped at every moment. That's part of the game. 

If you're not sure where to start with this mindset, I suggest trying it with something simple that frustrates you. Maybe traffic or those idiots you work with. Instead of being bothered or angered by every bozo who cuts you off or co-worker who screws up yet another project, just look at them like the Goombas in Mario. The goal of the game is to get through these things, not freak out about them.

(I had to learn this myself when I first came to New York City. It used to bother me to no end the way tourists would move about the streets. Stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. Stopping at the end of escalators! THE MOTHERFUCKING END OF ESCALATORS!!!! Ok, so I still have some residual issues to deal with. I would wonder how I could get more upset with someone walking slowly than I was with someone... say, stealing money from me. It was because I recognized the latter as an obstacle and those I was okay with. It was inconveniences that would really get under my skin. I had adopted this mindset on a macro level before I had it on a micro level. But inconveniences were always going to be there, so the game was going to be in how I handled them. After that realization, when someone would do a dead-stop in the middle of a crowded sidewalk so they could get a closer look at a building or a pigeon or some shit, I would no longer ask them if they'd been kicked in the fucking head by a donkey. Instead I'd swiftly swing around them, tapping them on the head gently with my open palm and saying "boop" while I went. That was my way of "killing" them in the game in my mind. And I was a much happier pedestrian.)

The goal of this attitude is happiness, but the side-effect is that you become fearless. Not brave really, because you're not acting in the face of fear. You just genuinely don't have fear of things. If loss, pain, failure, mistakes, and tragedy are just seen as the challenges you get to work around in the game of your life, they become neutral at worst. You sign up for the marathon. You ask the girl out. You quit your job and start your own business. And if these things don't work out, you just continue forward. And soon you realize that most of these mistakes and failures you were concerned about don't even present themselves as obstacles later on. You adopt the mindset that adversity is there for you to maneuver through. Which allows you to feel free to attempt things you might not have for fear of failure. And then you learn that failure didn't even present the adversity you thought it would. 

But Andy, I don't want challenges and obstacles. I don't want to overcome things. I just want an easy life. That's what would make me happy.

Okay, okay, I hear you. Do you want to know the easiest way to go through life? Be fucking braindead! You won't have to pay rent. No one will turn you down for a date. You won't have to put Christmas lights up only to take them down a month later. You can be fed through a tube and shit through a tube. It's your dream life. Go huff copier toner.

[Next Week: I bring even more happiness to your life as this site reverts to The Jerx and we talk magic.]