The Jerx Christmas Spectacular - Introduction - 4pm

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[The following posts were written in installments over the course of 16 hours from 4pm December 22nd, to 8am December 23rd.]

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone!

It’s me, your old pal, Andy. In the calm before the snowstorm. Just putting the final touches on the big holiday shindig. The snow is falling. The tree is lit. The stockings are hung. The punch bowl is filled. The fire is… on fire. 

The sun is just about to set here in New York. We just crept past the solstice and the nights will start getting shorter… but fortunately tonight is just about the longest night of the year, because we have a lot to get to. This party is going until sunrise.

And just to be clear, yes, I’m really here blogging live all night. For the next…15+ hours.

“So I guess you probably got a lot of sleep last night to prepare, huh?”

You’d be wrong. But that’s okay. The party is going to be hopping and I’m sure that will keep me up.

Something to keep in mind… Tonight, and for the next few days… probably until after Christmas… this is going to be one crazy long post. After Christmas I will break it up into separate entries. But for now you’ll experience the whole thing in one glorious piece.

Whether you follow along live, in real time, or come back and visit over the rest of December, try to read through everything by the new year. Some of the content will disappear after that.

Cut me some slack with the grammar. I will be writing for 15 hour straight. And there’s a gigantic Christmas party going on all around me.

One concern I have is that I don’t know the limitations on Squarespace’s post length. Like, I don’t know if something that is 10s of thousands of words long, with dozens of images and videos will cause a problem. It might break my site, or break Squarespace, or break the internet. We’ll see. If I’m forced to break things up, I’ll do so. 

I’ll be sure to check my email while the party is going. So if anything comes up, or you want to say hi, you can reach me there. But I likely won’t be able to respond unless it’s particularly urgent. And when the party is done I’ll be offline for a couple of days. 

I’ll be updating this post every half hour or so throughout the night. I’ll put the time in the title so you don’t have to bother scrolling to the end if it hasn’t been updated since you last visited.

Gotta run… the first guests are arriving.

Dustings #100

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As I’m busy getting things ready for the holiday party, I just wanted to drop in and mention a few things…

New Newsletter Schedule

The supporter newsletter, which used to come out on the 1st of the month, will now come out the Sunday before posting starts for that month.

So, posts start on the first Monday of the month. Most often this will mean the newsletter will come to you on the first Sunday of the month. But, for the next newsletter—since the first Monday in January is the 1st—the newsletter will come out December 31st.

Scott Jameson has been kicked out of The Global League of Magicians and Mentalists.

Scott Jameson, seen here indulging one of his passions—playing with his balls in front of a group of kids—plead guilty in Boston last month. He was charged with one count of illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place and one count of transportation of child pornography. You can read the details here. Apparently he went to Cambodia and when he returned, “A search of his belongings found a video made during his trip in Cambodia, depicting the genitals of a young boy between 5 and 7 years old.”

It appears this was the second trip to Cambodia that he made in 2022. He had been identified as engaging in inappropriate behavior with children on his first trip by an anti-child-abuse organization and when he couldn’t stay away, they nailed him on his return in October of 2022.

Jameson performed frequently for children at libraries and schools in Massachusetts. His (now defunct) website says: “I present performances that feature magic, juggling, and other less definable bits of entertainment.”

I’m guessing the child porn was part of the “less definable bits of entertainment” he was into.

He gets sentenced next March.

Speaking of which, this year our donation from the profits of the GLOMM Elite Membership kit will go to Action Pour Les Enfants, the organization that busted Scott Jameson. I’m happy to be able to support an organization that directly took part in nailing a magic creep.

I’m happy to hear so many of you are pumped for the Jerx Holiday Spectacular, or whatever it is I’m calling it. It’s going to be sweet. Many of the contributions from our guests have already been received. But I’ll actually be writing the post in real time over the course of 15 hours. So you can come and watch it unfold all night.

Guest List

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Here are the confirmed guests who will be submitting content for the holiday party.

Matt BAKER

Brent BRAUN

Angelo CARBONE

Hector CHADWICK

Tobias DOSTAL

Mark ELSDON

Justin FLOM

Daniel GARCIA

Andi GLADWIN

Christian GRACE

John GUASTAFERRO

Dan HARLAN

David JONATHAN

Joshua JAY

Marc KERSTEIN (and Me)

Rick LAX

Ollie MEALING

Oliver MEECH

Liam MONTIER

Michael MURRAY

Kyle PURNELL

Joshua QUINN

Seth RAPHAEL

Chris RAWLINS

Patrick REDFORD

Ryan SCHLUTZ

SPIDEY

Alvo STOCKMAN

Michael WEBER & Tim TRONO

Caleb WILES

This Month's Schedule

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It’s been 21 months since I’ve had a break from working on the site. I used to take a long break every year for a month or so. And I would take weeks off during the year. You might say, “But Andy, you take the end of every month off.” Well, yes, I’m not actively writing blog posts in that time, but I am working on ideas for the blog, and writing a monthly 20-page newsletter, and creating and testing tricks and writing the next book.

You might be thinking, “Oh, wah-wah 😭. Go suck on your momma’s fat nipple, you big baby. ‘Writing a magic blog is soooo HARD!’ Fuck right off. You know what I do for a living? I work 90 hours a week in the scorching hot sun, sponging up the decomposition and rot from the interior of the carcasses of special-needs horses whose stomachs burst from consuming too much of their own feces and menstrual blood. AND I DO IT THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY!!!!”

Ooookay… to be clear, I’m not complaining. It can just be mentally a little taxing to not take any downtime. I’ve mentioned this Lawrence Kasdan quote in the past, “Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.” And there’s certainly that element of always having a “paper due.” But I’m used to that. I’ve been writing as a supplemental or sole source of income, in one form or another, for a couple of decades now. And while it would be nice to have a job I could “leave at the office” and forget about when I’m done for the day. It’s also nice to have a job that doesn’t have an office.

(I’m writing this in a small coffee shop while Brooke, the barista, handles customers. Between customers, I’m helping her hang up Christmas decorations as we discuss our favorite albums of 2023. I know that’s a pretty charmed existence. You don’t get to casually interact with people and spend time in cozy cafés when you’re teaching kids, working fast food, or power washing empty oil barrels (all of which I’ve done). I once had a job loading boxes of aluminum siding for commercial buildings onto semi-trucks. The boxes were heavy and cumbersome. 24 feet long. And I’d spend 8 hours loading one identical box after another into a truck from the warehouse. So don’t think I don’t appreciate my current situation. (As if to emphasize the “niceness” of it all, Brooke just came by and gave me a piece of toast with almond butter, sliced bananas, and drizzled honey because she “made a little extra.”))

My point is just to explain my mindset at the end of November when I thought to myself how nice it would be to have a little more time off this holiday season.

“Maybe I’ll reach out to some magicians I know through the site and see if they’d like to contribute something this holiday season: a trick or an idea or something. That way they can do the heavy lifting for a post.”

So I made a list of a few magicians who follow the site. Then I figured, “What the hell,” I added some of my other favorite magicians as well. And then I added some magicians whose work was relatively new to me but who I thought were doing interesting things. And finally I added some magicians whose work I’d always enjoyed but I hadn’t heard anything from in a while. Primarily because I wanted to see what they were up to.

So I reached out to these people and a bunch of them got back to me saying they’d be happy to submit something for the site.

So now, instead of 15 posts throughout the course of the month, you’ll get all your content on one day.

At 4pm (New York time) on Friday, December 22nd, The Jerx Holiday party will commence.

And—like the best parties—it’s not going to stop until sunrise the next morning.

For those who follow along live, you can check back every 30 minutes or so to see the post as it grows and grows and special guests stop in—all with a gift to share. It will be up in that format for a couple of days, after which I will break it down to its component parts, with each guest’s contribution being its own post.

Tomorrow I will post the guest list.

I may stop in once or twice more before the party, but really the heart of this month’s posting will happen on the 22nd into the 23rd. See you then.

Until December...

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Hey-ho!

I hope everyone in the U.S. had a great Thanksgiving. Mine was a delight. We smoked the turkey and it came out perfect. And I was in them mashed potatoes like…

This is the final post until December. The next newsletter will be sent to supporters on the first, and regular posting will resume here on Monday, December 4th and run through December 22nd.

Magicians Are Less Prone to Mental Disorders Than Other Artists

The research, published on Wednesday in the journal BJPsych Open, measured psychopathological traits of almost 200 magicians and compared the results with data from other artistic groups and the general population.

It concluded that magicians scored significantly lower than other types of creatives and “normal” folk. […]

Gil Greengross, who led the research, said it was the first study to show a creative group with lower scores on psychotic traits than the general population.

He said: “Our research shows that magicians do not exhibit higher levels of mental disorders. The results demonstrate that the association between creativity and psychopathology is more complex than previously thought.”

This is… interesting.

I do believe studying magic…the art of manipulating reality…does require a solid grounding in reality.

But I also think there’s another way to interpret the results. And, sadly, I think it’s likely more accurate.

Look again at the researchers quote: “Our research shows that magicians do not exhibit higher levels of mental disorders. The results demonstrate that the association between creativity and psychopathology is more complex than previously thought.”

Or… maybe it’s not. Maybe the relationship between creativity and psychopathology is precisely what you thought it was. Maybe your mistake was thinking that that magic is (for many performers) a “creative” exercise.

If I perform a trick I didn’t invent, with patter I didn’t write… I have fun, and the people I perform for have fun. But it’s about as “creative” as following the directions on the back of a box of cake mix.

Adding to the, “Maybe magicians aren’t as psychologically sound as that article suggests”-file, we have another sack of shit to kick out of the GLOMM.

Dewald Venter received a sentence of 13 and 1/2 years for sexually abusing three boys. See the article here.

The lowlight:

The court heard during the trial that Venter used his skills as a magician to charm his victims.

My point has never been that magicians necessarily abuse more kids than non-magicians (although I would bet my life’s savings that they do). My point is simply that magic gives people an opportunity to get close to kids. If you’re an assistant manager at Kohl’s, you’re probably not leveraging that into access to kids. But since we do have that access, we have to be better at policing our own. Not all mall Santas want to bang kids, but given that it’s a job where kids sit on their lap… it makes sense to be extra vigilant in regard to who is taking part in that activity, yes? Well, that logic holds up for magicians as well.

If nothing else, just assume someone wearing that many bracelets has fucking issues and keep your kids and yourself a safe distance from them.

Dan C., writes:

Had a quick idea with the [Half Down technique]. I tried it out today and it worked great. If they say they want to get rid of the face up cards, insert the force card face up, third from top in the face down half. For me, this is easier than going to the bottom. Then you can hand [that half] to them and do Mark Calabrese’s Red Medicine force immediately by handing them the deck right away. […] A bonus is that you can use your half as a demo for what you want them to do.

This is actually a great idea. Red Medicine, by Mark Calabrese is a really strong forcing technique. And leading into it with Half Down makes it even stronger, in my opinion. And no adjustment to the cards need to be made.

I will likely use this in the future.

  • They shuffle.

  • Half Down procedure

  • If they choose the face-up half, I can hand that to them and walk them through a Cross-Cut Force.

  • If they choose the face-down half, I can hand that to them and walk them through Red Medicine.

Thanks, Dan.

Here is Chris Rawlins’ original idea which inspired Tuesday’s trick, The Logbook of Notable Events. My trick was the same underlying method, but this is something you can do at any time. In Chris’ own words…

You are sitting with a friend and you tell them that you have something for them. You explain that in your notes application you have created a special note, just for them.

“Earlier this morning I wrote the message for you and even though its just for you I won’t let you see it just yet. I’d like you to pay close attention to that feeling inside you right now, that feeling of curiosity, of wanting to know. Whenever that feeling become too much and out weighs the acceptance of not knowing just ask me to show you the note. I’m interested to see when that feeling of curiosity will take over. Till then I will not touch my phone, In fact why don’t you place it in your pocket for now...”

At some point your friend expresses the desire to know more and you take your phone from them. You point out that it is 13 minutes past the hour and openly unlock your phone and open the notes application. You point out the top most note titled The Minute You’ll Ask and open the note.

Your friend sits in silence as they read the note and scroll all the way to the bottom of the note and then back up to the top. They are unable to believe the absolute accuracy of the prediction. It shows proof that you knew exactly when their curiosity would take over. With a smile you take back the phone, screenshot the note and email it to them as they sit there in shocked silence. The email subject reads...

Curiosity Won...

Method:

Here we are using the whole list as a chronological documentation of time. Instead of each number having a card, item, song or place next to it we place the words NOT NOW on a numerical list from 1 through to 60. These points each representing each minute in the hour. The force text becomes “Minutes past is when you’ll ask!” and by secretly inputting the correct two digits to match the minutes past the hour of the current moment you are able to create a note within your phone that looks just like what you are seeing on the right hand side of this page. Your spectator will scroll to the bottom of the note to check the legitimacy of the force text’s location.

I really enjoy screenshooting the note so that the force text is roughly centre and emailing that to them after our time together as a playful reminder of what happened and so that they are indirectly encouraged to share the story with someone else.

Great idea. Thanks, Chris!

I’m working on the next version of the Jerx Almanac, which will be mailed to supporters in January 2024. If there’s a “tool” you want me to cover in the 2nd edition of the manuscript, let me know. (Those of you with the last edition will know what I’m asking.) I may not have any thoughts on what you’re asking about, in which case, obviously, I won’t add it to the Almanac. But if I do, I’ll create a new section for it.

Okay, everyone. Enjoy the rest of your November! I’ll see you in December as we embrace the holiday season, wind down 2023, and get ready for the joys of winter.


It's A Burger King Kid's Club Thanksgiving.

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I think this may be my first ever post that actually falls on Thanksgiving.

So today you’ll have to indulge me as I thank the people who help out with the site. And also tell them which member of the Burger King Kid's Club they would be. 


Thanks to Cara W. She would be Boomer if she was in the Burger King Kid's Club. This is primarily because she's a cute, red-head. Not because she's super big into roller-hockey. Cara is my friend Nate's wife. She helps with all the physical mailings related to the site, which there was a ton of the past two months with the release of my most recent book and first trick. Cara also oversees the PO Box (which is about an hour and half from where I live at this time). When I'm in that part of NY State, I usually stay with Cara and Nate and they're fantastic hosts. So thank you both for the help you give.

Jacob H. and Anthony H. are the I.Q. and Snaps of the Jerx. Jacob is I.Q. because he's brilliant. And Anthony is Snaps because I'm weirdly attracted to him. No, Anthony is Snaps because he's a professional photographer. I don’t buy any magic directly. All the tricks I buy to potentially review are bought through other people. Jacob and Anthony (along with Andrew below) are the primary people purchasing the tricks. Jacob and Anthony perform one of my favorite services. They learn many of the tricks I buy and perform them for me so I can experience them for real before knowing the secret. This is such a luxury. It's so much better experiencing the trick first-hand rather than reading about it, or even seeing a demo. Plus it gives me the chance to hang out with Jacob and Anthony, who are both a blast. So thank you, boys.

If Michelle Martinez was a member of the Burger King Kid's Club, she'd be Wheels. Look, it's not flattering to say to a lovely, vibrant, graceful woman, "You remind me of Wheels from the Burger King Kid's Club." Hell, it's not particularly flattering to refer to a kid in a wheelchair as "Wheels," for that matter. But Michelle is super smart and, like Wheels, is great at fixing things. Michelle helps a lot with tech-related issues that creep up with this site and with other work I do. Thank you, Michelle. You make issues that would otherwise be endlessly frustrating and turn them into minor annoyances. What’s better than that?

Thanks to Stasia "Lingo" Burrington - Lingo was the artist of the BK King's Club, and Stasia is our artist. I was introduced to Stasia a decade or so ago when I saw a Tarot deck she had designed and painted for a friend of mine. Ever since then, she has handled over 90% of the artistic requirements for this site. She's not only a brilliant artist with her own distinct style, but she's also capable of mimicking any other style I ask of her. One of the most important aspects of a collaborative artist is that they're able to extrapolate what you're asking for from just a few specifics. This is where Stasia excels. I can tell her the vibe of the piece and give her a couple of reference points to work from and she always nails it. While she's proficient with dark and creepy subject matter, what I really love about her art is the combination of sweet, smart, sexy, surprising, and cute elements that characterize her work. These are elements that are frequently missing from the world of magic, where aesthetics is so often an afterthought that’s easily dismissed by saying, "Let's put a skull on it." I couldn't be happier to have Stasia's consistent contributions helping define the style of my work. Thank you!

One site describes Kid’s Club member Kid Vid this way: He loves electronics of all sorts, and peppers his speech with terminology related to video and computing. That has got to be my brother, Marc Kerstein. Marc is always saying stuff like, “Dude, you gotta debug your attitude if we’re ever gonna surf the information superhighway together. Minesweeper! Floppy disk! Netscape Navigator!” Also, he dresses just like Kid Vid. Marc oversees the Jerx app and possesses the trait I love in people more than any other: competence. You know you have those people in your life to whom you can say, “Show up in three months at noon with a screwdriver,” and never mention it again. And they’ll show up on that date in three months at 11:55 with three screwdrivers to choose from. Then there are those people in your life, and you say to them, “This is really important. I need you to show up tomorrow at noon with a screwdriver.” And you remind them later that night and in a text in the morning. Then they show up empty-handed at 1:15. “Oh, a screwdriver? I thought you said hammer.” “So you brought a hammer?” “No, I didn’t bring that either.” Marc is the former type of person. Look at the way he continually supports, maintains and updates the apps he releases. That’s pure competence, and that work ethic is almost unmatched in the app creation space, where creators regularly abandon apps when they break after 6 weeks. Marc reached out to me in the early days of the site and said if I ever wanted to do anything app-related, he’d help me out. And he went on to build and maintains the Jerx App and adds in new ideas from time to time as I come up with them. I couldn’t have been more fortunate to hook up with him rather than one of those dud app developers. But I will not thank him because he is British and doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving.

Thanks to my publisher and overseer of logistics, Andrew "Jaws" Costello. Andrew is Jaws because he’s a tall, proud, man of color. No, not really, but there are only so many Kid’s Club members to choose from. What he has in common most with Jaws is a love for Burger King. (“Bring back the BK Broiler!”) This site wouldn't exist without Andrew. My old site wouldn't have either. He was the one who encouraged me to start that site. He’s an insouciant, smart, kind, troublemaker—one of my favorite types of people. He is a writer/editor, and—since taking on the role of publisher of the Jerx in the past few years—he has started his own small publishing company. He has written an occasional post for this site as well, when something came up that prevented me from writing (any post title that starts "A Critical Examination of" is one that he wrote). If you read those posts and think, "Hey, he sounds like you!" Well, there are two reasons for that. The first is that he reads over (and frequently adds to) every post before he publishes here. So his voice has been present throughout this site from the beginning. And second, we've known each other for decades and shaped each other's humor like friends do. He also writes a good portion of the non-magic posts. Sorry. If you're upset that this site about performing magic for your friends is written by a magician with friends who take part in the site... I don't know what to tell you. While I've mentioned Andrew in the past in my books, we haven't openly acknowledged his role on the site much because he was always supposed to be the initial "fall guy" for the site. The occasional personal detail was planted that would lead to him and if you were desperate enough to follow the breadcrumbs of IP addresses or paypal accounts, you would come back to Andrew. And you'd say, “Ha! Andrew=Andy. We've found the Jerx!” And he would reply. “Aw, darn. You figured out the mystery! Oh, well.” And there your search would end with that easy solution. Or, if you dug deeper, you’d get a couple other red herrings. But as it happened, no one ever really searched too hard to find out who was behind this site. I think that reflects well on magicians.  (Andrew wants it known he remains “more than happy” to take credit for the site.) Thank you, Andrew!

There are so many others I could thank for their contributions, but so few BK Kid's club members left, so let me quickly shout out some people who have contributed this past year: Andrew S., Joe, Ben, Pat, Chris, Madison (the boy), Madison (the girl), Lauren, Tom, Eric, Mitch, Sara, David L., and anyone else who has sent along a link or an idea that I've used in some way.

And, of course, thank you to the supporters of the site who keep this thing going. You're the real heroes. Be sure to bring that up to anyone who questions you this holiday season. "Don't you know who I am? My monetary donations help a magic blog operate. So yeah, I think I will take the last piece of pie."