Until October...

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This is the final post in September. The first Monday in October isn’t until the 7th, so there’s a bit of break until then, but you’ll manage just fine. The next issue of the newsletter will come out on Sunday, the 6th.

Some follow-up housekeeping…

The only sizes of the GLOMM shirts remaining are Small and Large and the remaining membership kits with those shirts will sell out before this site returns in October, I would guess. So if you’re interested in one of those sizes, snag it now. [UPDATE: Gone.]

Also, the Amateur at the Kitchen Table hardcover monograph is shipping out by the end of the month.

  • If you’re a supporter…

  • And you purchased this back in April…

  • And you confirmed your shipping address via the email I sent you earlier this month…

Then expect an email with tracking data to come to you soon. If any of those things isn’t true. Then don’t expect it.

J.S. writes…

I was thinking about your post about Housing My Repertoire and it reminded me something I like to do that you and your readers might be interested in.  

I have been into leatherworking for several years making various small items for friends and family as gifts.  One of my favorite gifts is to make up a Yahtzee set with 5 dice and one of my leather cups. But, I always build a magnet into the cup.  Now, I may never need to use that cup when I am visiting their house, but it’s nice to know that if I want to crumple up a dollar bill and go to town on a Chop Cup routine, I can.  They're hidden in plain sight.

This definitely goes a step beyond “housing” your tricks, into the idea of planting gimmicks in different locations. It’s more ambitious than I am, generally, but I still like it conceptually. And those cups are beautiful.

Little Holes is a new trick from Roddy McGhie and Noel Qualter

I don’t have any comment on the trick itself.

What I want to ask is for magicians to keep in mind one of the GLOMM’s objectives when they’re naming their tricks: We’re trying to keep pedophiles out of magic.

Some of these trick names can end up confusing that process.

In the past, when we were at a magic convention, and we overheard someone say, “I love little holes!” We knew to keep our eye on them.

Now, if we hear someone say, “I can’t wait to get my hands on Little Holes,” we have to ask, How do you mean, exactly?

See you all back here in October. Do you have your Halloween costumes planned? Due to my love of reading and magic, I think I might be Harry Potter.

My girlfriend is going as “sexy Craig Petty.”

Housing My Repertoire: Part Two - Rotational Housing and Homeless Tricks

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Rotational Housing

In addition to the Houses I mentioned in Tuesday’s post, I have three Rotational Houses as well.

A “Rotational House” is a location that houses a single trick, but I have many tricks that could be held there. So I hold a trick in that location until I perform it, and then I rotate in a different trick.

Here are my current Rotational Houses:

  1. The coin pocket in my pants, which holds any small gimmick (And today holds Double Deception.)

  2. Inside whatever book I’m reading, where I keep a trick as a bookmark. (Which is currently Random Card Generator.)

  3. Under the cellophane of a deck of cards in my messenger bag, where I keep a single gimmicked card. (Which today is Twilight Angels.)

Now, obviously if there’s a trick I’m really excited about performing that uses a small gimmick, then that’s the trick I’ll put in my coin pocket that day. But if there’s nothing particularly calling to me, then I’ll just put the next trick in my “coin pocket rotation” list into that pocket.

Sometimes I’ll bring a trick out and perform it that day, sometimes it will sit in its “rotational house” for weeks before the opportunity comes up to perform it. That’s fine.

The goal is simply to have a system in place where all the tricks in my repertoire are in a position to be performed at regular intervals, without me having to think about it.

That’s the whole purpose of this “Housing” concept.

If this isn’t clear to you— if it just sounds like, “Have a place to put your tricks” —and you’re thinking, “So what?” It might help to understand my thinking by looking at a “homeless” trick.

Axel Hecklau has a great cap in bottle trick that’s been out for many years now.

But this isn’t a trick you can just have ready to go and do at any point in time. You have to prep the bottle and the cap.

So, maybe you prep the bottle and cap and then the trick “lives” in your refrigerator?

Well, you can’t really do that because if someone decides they want a Coke, they’re going to notice something weird going on with the bottle.

“Well, that’s okay. I live alone. No one really goes into my refrigerator but me. Even if I have people over.”

Okay, fine, but still this preparation won’t hold up to just being stored in your refrigerator for a couple of weeks or months.

So that means it’s a trick I can only do if I think to myself, “I want to do that cap in bottle trick this evening. I’m going to set that up so I can do it tonight.”

I don’t think most magicians would see that as an issue.

I see it as an issue only because I’m trying to construct a Carefree Repertoire. And that means a repertoire of tricks that are staged somewhere and ready to perform whenever the vibe is right. So all the tricks are ready to be deployed now or 8 months from now, so long as I’m in near the area where that trick is housed.

That means there are a lot of tricks I like that just don’t fit into my current performance philosophy. So I don’t bother holding space for them in my repertoire.

Outside of tricks that are crafted for a special occasion or with one specific person in mind (which wouldn’t be in my regular repertoire to being with), everything in my current repertoire is prepped and ready to go whenever I want. It’s very freeing. It means when things feel right, I can go into whatever trick is right for the moment.

A Rubik's Solve Presentation

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“Have you seen this app? It’s pretty cool. If you get your Rubik’s Cube mixed up and can’t solve it, you can use this. I’ll show you. Do you have like a paper bag or plastic bag or something?”

So, yeah, you know what’s happening here. You download any Rubik’s solving app, combine that with a one-handed solve, and there you go.

In real life, I have the person reach in and grab out the phone and then reach in and grab out the cube for themselves. It’s shocking stuff. But with a charmingly absurd premise—the idea that there’s an app that physically solves a Rubik’s cube—that I think is much more interesting to people than the standard Rubik’s solve performance.

It’s good, clean, Christian fun for the whole family!

Housing My Repertoire: Part One

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Last week I wrote about the steps to building a repertoire.

Those steps were pretty straightforward, but one of the concepts I wanted to introduce with that post is that every trick in your repertoire should have a “home.”

Every trick should be kept in a place where it can be deployed somewhat seamlessly on your end.

You should be like an irresponsible gun owner who leaves a loaded gun in his end table. If an intruder comes in, you just open the drawer and unload on him. Yes, responsible gun ownership involves keeping your gun in a locked gun-safe high up in your bedroom closet, so your kid doesn’t blow his head off. Which is great, so long as you get a five-minute heads up from your home invaders that they’re on their way. But I get it, it’s what you have to do for the sake of safety.

With magic we don’t have to worry about safety.

If your tricks aren’t “staged” somewhere, ready to be performed, then you’ll always be performing in some awkward manner where you’re excusing yourself to go get something from the other room so you can show them a trick. There’s no sense of casually rolling into a performance because all your tricks start with you digging through your drawer of magic props in your den.

Here are some homes you might consider populating with tricks.

Ungimmicked Tricks

Ungimmicked tricks tend to “live” within the object that’s used in the trick. A regular deck of cards is a home for about 30-40 tricks within in my repertoire. A pile of change is home for a few tricks. Rubber bands and finger rings also house a couple of tricks for me.

The only consideration with ungimmicked tricks is if these objects are things you encounter enough in your everyday life. If not, then you have to ask yourself if the trick means enough for you to be willing to populate your life with these items in some way.

For example, when I worked in an office, I knew a couple of tricks that used a stapler. A stapler was a common object for me to interact with in an office. I no longer do those tricks because I don’t encounter a bunch of staplers in my day-to-day life, so I would never naturally flow into such a trick. So that trick dropped from my repertoire.

Displays

[See the Wonder Room and the E.D.A.S. concept.]

I have two different displays in my house that are used for magic purposes. One is a small display of “interesting” decks that’s on a shelf with other cards and games.

The other is a small shelf on which I store some unusual objects.

For example, Andy Nyman’s Three Skulls on a Spike (or Three Skulls on a Stick, as Tannen’s URL suggests) sits on that shelf.

So sometimes people ask what it is. Other times I “notice” it myself and say, “Oh yeah, I wanted to try this with you.”

Because that trick has a place where it “lives,” I’m able to flow into the trick in a natural way. I never have to say, “Hold on. I’m going to go get something.” And then go into another room and come back with my special magic prop.

Bookshelf

I have a few book tests that use gimmicked books. These live on a bookshelf with my other regular books.

Wallet

I keep a couple of tricks (three at most) in my wallet.

Keychain

Your keychain can house a couple of effects. More than that though and you become the guy who does tricks with his keys. And instead of people thinking of you as a guy who can do strange and magical things with whatever’s around, people think, “Oh, I guess they make trick keys or something.”

The nice thing about key magic is people don’t really suspect keys. They don’t have an obvious connection to magic in people’s minds. Do a bunch of key tricks for people though, and that will change.

Brain

Certainly, my entire repertoire is in my brain. But more specifically, my brain is where my propless repertoire lives.

Phone

There is always a chunk of my repertoire which lives in my phone. I try not to go overboard with this. It would be pretty easy to make a lot of my repertoire phone tricks, given how easy and convenient most are to perform.

But I want the phone to feel somewhat ancillary to the tricks, and that can’t happen if you’re using it for everything you do.

Car Trunk

If I’m around children, it’s because I’m out somewhere at a party or an event, or at the very least, visiting someone’s house. So the few tricks I do that are explicitly kid-centric are stored in a small box in my car’s trunk. That way, the tricks are always there when I need them. Once I realize I’m at a place where there is a kid or kids, I can make sure to grab something specifically to show them.

These are just some of the houses I use for my repertoire. The idea isn’t that you need to use the same ones. The idea is that by giving thought to where the effects in your repertoire are staged, you will be much more ready to actually perform these things when the time comes. Meaning, you’re a much more flexible and dynamic performer than you are if all your tricks are in a box in the back of your closet.

Thursday I’ll finish up this subject with a couple final ideas.

GLOMM Lodges

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[As mentioned earlier this year, The GLOMM “Elite” Membership Kit is not being re-run. While there will likely be other GLOMM apparel in the future, the membership kit version with this shirt and the enamel pin and membership card will not be reprinted. [UPDATE: The only sizes remaining are Small and Large.] If you’re one of those sizes and want the membership kit, jump on it soon. If you want the membership kit and you’re not one of those sizes… I don’t know what to tell you. You had eight years to buy it. You can still buy one, but you may have to hit the gym, or the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet to make the shirt fit.]

We now have two official GLOMM Lodges.

GLOMM Lodge #2: The Mastodons
Melbourne, Australia

GLOMM Lodge #3: The Coyotes
Eugene, Oregon

How To Get Your Own GLOMM Lodge

To request a GLOMM Lodge for your area, send me an email with:

  • The names of the people who would make up this local lodge (there must be at least three)

  • Your location

  • A contact email I can give to anyone else who lives in your area who may be interested in joining your group

After I have that, I will assign you a lodge number and a mascot (which I determine by consulting a masot-giving oracle).

What’s the point of the mascot? I don’t know. Just another way to differentiate the groups beyond location and number. And it gives you branding opportunities. If the guys in Eugene want to do a GLOMM shirt with a coyote doing card fans, they’re free to.

Plus, once we have a mere 1024 Lodges, we will be conducting a 10-Round, single-elimination softball tournament. So having the mascots in place now will set the stage for that when the time comes.

What should you do with your GLOMM Lodge buddies? I don’t know or care. The GLOMM is a decentralized magic organization. It exists so I can kick people out of it. So you can get together and do magic stuff. Or eat pizza. Or go on a tour of the Celestial Seasonings tea factory. Your local GLOMM is whatever you want it to be.

Just to clarify something, the GLOMM is its own thing, separate from the Jerx. It’s not the Jerx’s magic organization.

There is no Jerx magic organization. I don’t really believe in hanging out with other magicians. I hang out with cool people.

Tense Magic

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Tense Magic is the opposite of Carefree Magic.

The performer exudes an internal tension. Or he grips his props in an unusual or tense manner. Or he speaks in a tense fashion. Or the vibe in the room is tense.

This is so common that I would call it the standard for traditional magic. Almost always, there is something that comes off as awkward or tense. If not multiple things.

One of the principles of the Carefree Magic philosophy is to perform tricks that allow you to engage with people and objects around you in a normal, human way. It’s shocking to me how little magicians seem to care about this. It often seems like the only question magicians ask themselves is, “Is this theoretically impossible?” If the answer is “yes,” they’re okay with whatever other limitations the trick has.

“Is it impossible for a peanut to appear under a bottle cap? Yes! Okay, then let’s do the trick.”

  • But the bottle cap doesn’t look normal.

  • But the peanut can’t be examined.

  • But you have to stiffly hold the cap at one unnatural angle the whole time.

  • But there’s no point to a peanut appearing under a bottle cap.

“So what? It’s IMPOSSIBLE for a peanut to appear under a bottle cap!”

Here’s the problem… Tension cancels out impossibility.

If everything you do isn’t normal or justified/contextualized in some manner, then they will dismiss what they saw as much as their mind will allow them to.

Some people will pick up on that tension and dismiss everything they saw as “just a trick.”

The good news is, this tension is SYNONYMOUS with “magic tricks” in the mind of most people.

They expect you to use some fakey looking prop, or handle objects in a strange way, or stop them from looking where they want to look, or speak in a scripted or awkward manner. That’s what they expect from a magic trick.

So when you relax back into the corner of the couch and talk casually about something, you can discuss the most unbelievable subjects and show them the most impossible things, without it feeling like “just a trick” because you lack that tension. Their mind knows, “Surely, this is just a trick.” But it feels like something else.

Years ago, I defined the magical feeling as the gap that exists when you know something isn’t real, but it feels as if it is. Carefree Magic is designed to work on the feeling of this being not a trick.

With Tense Magic, they know it’s a trick, and it feels like at trick because they sense the tension they associate with a trick.

I’ll leave you today with a great example of one of the aspects of Tense Magic: the awkward manner with which magicians handle the props they use.



GLOMM Industry Standards

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It’s long been said that the nine most reassuring words in the English Language are, “I’m from the GLOMM, and I’m here to help.”

The Global League of Magicians & Mentalists is the world’s largest magic organization. If you’re not a convicted sexual criminal, you’re already a member.

I’ve decided to start using the power of the GLOMM for other purposes. These aren’t really important issues. Not cosmically important, at least. But I believe there are other ways I can use the reach of this site and the GLOMM for the purposes of good in the magic community.

I’m going to be introducing some “GLOMM Industry Standards” (Or GIS (pronounced “jiz”)).

These are standards that I feel the magic industry should stick to.

Individuals or companies that breach these standards will be noted on this site. If a person or company has three or more infractions, they will be removed from the GLOMM for failing to adhere to industry standards.

You’ll be placed on a different page than the sex predators. So at least there’s that.

My goal is not to kick anyone out. My hope is that by creating some minor repercussions, that people will be less likely to engage in violating these industry standards if it means they’re going to be highlighted here.

So let’s start with three standards. I will add more as time goes on. Feel free to send me some.

GIS #1 - Impromptu Usage

Calling a trick “impromptu” in your ad copy means that it uses no secret objects unknown to the spectator.

Example: If a trick uses a Loop, then it is not impromptu.

Impromptu does not have to mean propless. A trick with a deck of cards, a sharpie, and a belt could be considered impromptu because all of these things could be gathered to perform in a casual setting.

If your trick requires you to carry a gimmick it is not an impromptu trick.

“Yes, but it looks impromptu.”

That’s a meaningless statement.

Exception: If your trick requires you to use something secretly that most people have on them most of the time, it can still be considered impromptu. For example, if the trick requires the secret use of your phone or a key, that could still be considered impromptu. But the secret use of a gimmicked key, would make the trick no longer impromptu.

There are definitely gray areas here that will be taken on a case-by-case basis. The most basic question is, “Does this trick require the secret use of an item that most people don’t carry with them regularly?” If the answer is yes then the trick is definitely not impromptu.

GIS #2 - Clothing Requirements

If your trick has clothing requirements, they must be mentioned in the ad copy.

The only thing you can assume is that the performer will have a shirt on and shorts or pants with at least one pocket. While that’s not always the case, it’s standard enough to assume in most circumstance.

A trick that requires:

  • A black shirt.

  • Long sleeves.

  • A suit jacket.

  • A tie.

Anything like that needs to be mentioned.

Why? Because some people aren’t in a situation where they can perform in that attire. You don’t want people to spend their money on a trick they can’t perform in their situation, right? Of course not. You’re a good guy.

GIS #3 - App Longevity

Magic apps should be usable for at least three years past the date of sale.

You don’t just release an app and support it until you’re sick of supporting it. You support it for at least three years after it was most recently purchased.

It’s fine if you want to pull your app from the market, but you should make sure it’s still usable for three years past the date the last person bought it.

This isn’t unreasonable. I’m not saying you have to keep it working forever. I know technology changes. But certainly it’s fair for people to think they’ll get a few years out of their purchase.

This is for your benefit, by the way. What scares people off from buying apps sometimes is that they’re concerned it’s not going to work 5 months from now. If they can say to themselves, “Well, it’s $120, but at the very least I’ll get three years out of it,” that’s going to give them peace of mind to feel more comfortable buying it.

You may include the phrase “We adhere to the GLOMM Industry Standard for App Longevity” in your ad copy to really hammer the point home.

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There you have it. The first three GLOMM Industry Standards. If you would like to take issue with one of these or suggest another, feel free to email me.

These are not going to be retroactive, by the way. I don’t want to be mopping up shit from nine years ago. But feel free to keep me apprised of any violators you notice going forward.