Talkin' Turkey Updates

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Happy Thanksgiving week, Americans! (And happy end of November, rest of the world.)

Due to the holiday and then some non-magic work obligations, there won't be another update for 10 days or so. But we are inching towards another year of the site and The Jerx Monthly. If you haven't signed up and you'd like to, you can do that at this post. (Also, to reiterate, if you don't confirm your sign-up in your email then I have no idea that you exist.)

Right now, let's give thanks...

Thanks to Kainoa Harbottle. I don't like that I have to look up the spelling of his name whenever I want to type it, but I do like the incredibly thoughtful, thorough, and positive review he wrote for The Jerx, Volume One in the December issue of Genii. 

For those of you who came to this because of that review, I should note this site is currently on hiatus, but you have more than enough to keep you occupied for quite a while.

Thanks to Steve Bryant for giving this site a shout-out in this month's Little Egypt Magic.

Steve's site is the granddaddy of magic blogs, starting at a time before blogs existed. It's always worth checking out his monthly write-ups.

Thanks to the State of Nevada for putting Las Vegas magician and hyper-creep Jan Rouven behind bars for possessing 9000 videos of child pornography. Jan, whose full name is Jan Rouven Fuechtener—one of those surnames that is based on your interests or occupation, apparently, as he was always looking to Fuech someone ten er under—is going to be sentenced March 16th.

My sentencing will take place now: Rot in hell and you're kicked out of the GLOMM.

Speaking of The GLOMM, thanks to those of you who joined up this year as GLOMM Elites. You should see the 10% Peek in your email sometime today. This is a 10-page ebook describing the introductory effect that I use when performing something for someone new (and there's a deck of cards around). It's a straightforward revelation of a peeked card, but one that does a particularly good job of disguising the fact that you ever look at the deck at all. If you don't receive your copy today, get in touch.

Speaking of ebooks, a few people have requested I make available the X-Communication newsletters as an ebook. By no means do I think this is an essential manuscript for your magic library, but I just went back and re-read some of it for the first time and it's pretty damn fun. And I do get that if you're an ardent fan of something, you want access to as much of it as possible. So I'm making them available.

X-Communication was my year-long monthly review newsletter that was sent to people who purchased The Jerx, Volume One way, way, way back in October of 2015. The newsletter contained dozens of reviews and a good amount of theory, ideas, and presentations as well. Imagine if Michael Close lost half his brain in a botched suicide attempt and then went back to writing reviews for MAGIC magazine. That's kind of what it's like. 

This 104 page ebook collects all 12 issues under one cover. The price is $24. (There's nothing new here content-wise if you already received the newsletters.) The link to order is here.

Hmmmm...

I'm just coming to the realization that in the past year I wrote a 350 page book, a 50 page book, a 104 page book, and, like 250 posts on this site. What a colossal waste of time!

Some housekeeping things. There is a new tab in the menu for The Jerx Shop. This is just a simplified way of keeping everything that's available in one place for Jerx completists and others who want to support the site.

Remember, Christmas is coming up. What better way to say, "I love you," than with a gift from the Jerx. 

Concerned your wife won't be on board with you buying The Jerx, Volume One? Buy it for her instead. When she opens it on Christmas day and is like, "What is this? A magic book? Why would you buy me this?" Get all offended, take it back and say, "Wow, what an ungrateful animal you are. Fine. I guess I'll keep it and I'll read it. If that's what you'd prefer. My god... what have you become?"

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! Enjoy your turkey and your Old Gold cigarettes. I'll catch back up with you soon.

Percent of Funding Pledged for Season 2

  • Unfunded
  • Funded
  • Unfunded
  • Funded

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder?

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(or is it "Out of Sight, Out of Mind"?)

My little sweeties, I miss you. Have you all been enjoying the internet since I've been away? It's really been a true delight, hasn't it? Lots of smart people rationally discussing interesting ideas in a calm fashion. 

Your update in regards to Season 2 is this: we're still in a similar place to where we were last time I wrote. The pledged support for another year of the site and for The Jerx magazine is right around 90%. 

A number of people have written to offer alternative ideas to fund another year of the site. I appreciate your enthusiasm and your suggestions, but you have to keep something in mind—there are not 1000s of supporters of this site. There are not even 100s of supporters. We're measuring supporters in the dozens. And that's a good thing, because I like to view my engagement with the people who support this site as a relationship, not a transaction. And it can only be that way with a smaller amount of people. But that small of an audience takes a lot of things off the table. Most physical products, for instance, are ridiculously expensive to get produced on a small scale, so you can't really do them.

Surely you'll come back if you're at 90-something percent, right? 

No. Here's the deal, I don't really have a negotiating gene, so when I was coming up with the number of supporters I'd need to do another year, I legitimately just put the lowest amount I could do it for. 

The good news, for people who like the site, I can almost assure you it will come back again someday. We're very close now, but this last 10% may take a matter of weeks or a few months. And if it doesn't happen after that point you'll still be getting a gift from me in your email, just for being cool enough to offer your support. 

The sign-up to join me for season 2 and get the Jerx Monthly and the Jerx deck is below somewhere.

If you have the Jerx App and you're not doing at least the memory loss effect, you're absolutely missing out. It's one of the most mind-fuckiest things you can do. Especially if you have someone record it on their phone and especially especially if you use the Light Lunch convincer. The fun part is coming up with ways to apparently affect their memory. I sometimes do a faux hypnotism bit, but it can be fun to just make up something on the spot. For example, last night I used "peer pressure" to affect the spec's memory. 

Another fun bit to do is to set it up as per the instructions, except instead of a sun and bird use a moon and a UFO. Then "erase" the UFO from her mind via a flash of a lighter or your phone's flashlight.

GLOMM elites! Below is the cover of the ebook you'll be receiving next Monday describing the card peek mentioned in this post. It's not a new technique so much as it is a choreography that I feel is the most invisible peek in a one-on-one situation (it can be used in any situation, I just mean that I feel it's most invisible to the person whose mind you're reading).

If you don't get it at that time and you're a GLOMM elite, drop me a line and let me know.

Until next time.

Season Two Status

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See details on Season Two and The Jerx Monthly and sign up if you're interested at the post below. I will update this chart from time to time when it's warranted.

For those who have asked via email when I think the site will return, I genuinely don't know. I think most of the people who are into this site have already signed up, so what remains will trickle in over time, probably as new people find the site.  It could be a while. You have to realize that the number of people who are interested in looking at the pursuit of magic from this perspective is tiny. While this site has a good sized readership for a site of this nature, it's mostly casual fans. I'd put the passionate fans at about 12%. 

But why would anyone expect it to be any higher? A site about magic that has an underlying ethos of taking the focus off the performer? It barely makes sense when you consider the reason most people get into magic. It would be like having a blog of vegan recipes where I promoted the vegan lifestyle so that we could be healthy enough to chase down animals on foot and slit their throats. 

I've been putting the additional time I've had from this hiatus to good use. First, I've been refining some routines that I'm pretty excited about. And second, I've been working on some test layouts for The Jerx Monthly, which will be the pdf magazine of reviews and tricks/ideas that will go to the people who sign on to sponsor year two. My stylistic inspiration for the magazine is not Genii or MAGIC or any classic magic magazine. It's actually an old magazine called Secrets. It may not influence all the content, but at the very least I'm thinking of doing the covers and maybe a feature article in this style.