On Pacing

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Letterman’s youtube channel recently posted Penn and Teller’s first appearance on the show.


I’m so glad I grew up in the era that I did. With so little magic to consume on TV, every appearance became something to record and obsess over. Penn and Teller on Letterman or on their PBS special, Copperfield’s annual CBS shows, up through Blaine who was kind of the last vestige of that era of excitement.

It was really a lesson in pacing. And I try to remember it when I’m performing. If you show someone something just a few times a year, I don’t think they will ever get tired of magic.

But start showing that person something every few days and they will soon grow weary of it. Sure, the worse you are as a performer, the quicker they will be over your shit. But no matter how good you are, I don’t think it’s possible to genuinely amaze and enchant someone 100 times a year. I don’t know if you can even do it 20 times a year.

My new rule that I’m (mostly) sticking to is this:

If someone is really blown away or really affected by a trick I show them, I wait at least two months before showing them something else.

That means they will see, at most, six really strong moments of magic a year. And even that might be too much. I might switch to waiting three or four months in between.

I’m good enough that I can show someone 20 tricks a year that all have a distinct feeling to them. In fact, I could probably show someone 100 tricks a year and have each one be different and memorable in some way.

My concern isn’t that they will be come accustomed to the tricks themselves.

My concern is that they will become accustomed to the feeling of astonishment.

Theoretically, I could control that by constantly doing more and more impossible magic for them.

But in reality, I think the only way to prevent that is to regulate how much you perform for them.

Wonder, awe, enchantment, astonishment, and mystery—these emotions are most powerful when experienced sparingly. To preserve their impact, I think you must carefully control the pace at which you evoke them.

Let 80s TV be your guide here. Give people time to miss seeing you perform and build anticipation for what you’ll show them next. If you want to perform more often, broaden your social circle and spread out your performances. Don’t heap the performances on one person or group to the point that the magical becomes commonplace.

Mailbag: Insecurity/Jealousy

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Do you have any experience of dealing with insecurity/jealousy(?) when performing for a guy's girlfriend. And what do you think the best way of dealing with that is? I ask because I found a trailer for a new trick recently that really captures that awkwardness on camera.—JM

This email came to me over five years ago, so this “new trick” isn’t exactly new anymore. (Take this as a good example of why you shouldn’t hold your breath waiting on a response from me. But at the same time… don’t ever give up hope!)

The video above is pretty amusing. Even the preview image alone tells a story. Look, I can’t read the guy’s mind, but it certainly comes across as a symphony of annoyed insecurity—or at least discomfort. Lots of raised eyebrows, focus on his drink, and glances across the park. You can almost see his mind working. What would a cool guy do in this situation to show he doesn’t care? Probably drink his drink to show how disinterested he was in what was happening. Yeah. What’s that over there? A blue bicycle with a red seat? Cool, cool, cool.

Here is my advice for everyone in that video.

The Girl

You may need to reconsider this relationship. If your boyfriend feels threatened by a magician, that doesn’t bode well for your future together. It’s going to be a lot of him telling you to cover up at the beach and getting mad at you for hugging your cousin for too long.

The Guy

You were shooting for “aloof disinterest” but the fidgeting and the faces and looking all around isn’t how you express that. In the future, if you’re approached by a magician in the park who wants to show your girlfriend a trick for his magic demo (this seems unlikely to happen a second time, but just in case) here’s how you handle it. Just watch the interaction with a small, self-amused smile on your face. You’re not threatened by the pathetic clown doing tricks for your girlfriend, right? Right. So you’re just going to watch it play out. When it’s done, you say something positive, but underwhelming, like “fun stuff, thanks.” Or, “Clever. Thanks for the show.” Or, “Neat. My nephew did something similar once, I think.”

You don’t want to seem enthused, but you don’t want to seem upset. You want it to feel like your pulse rate was the same the whole time.

The Magician

JM asked if I had any experience dealing with insecurity/jealousy when performing for someone’s girlfriend. Yes. But only when I try and cultivate that. If I sense the guy is a douchebag and the person he’s with is cool, then I don’t mind making him feel small or unimportant by having a somewhat “intimate” exchange with his partner.

For the most part, though, it’s not something I deal with. I’m almost always trying to de-emphasize my confidence and certainty when performing. So I don’t come off like, “Check this out. Pretty cool, right?” My attitude is almost always, “Let’s try this and see what happens.” It’s a totally different vibe.

And unless I want to piss someone off, I wouldn’t perform “for the girlfriend” of a guy who is also there. I’m performing for everyone. The performer in this video is so focused on the girl, it’s not surprising her boyfriend is annoyed. (He only engages the guy once, to tell him to pay attention.)

If you don’t want to risk alienating one part of a couple while performing, here is a technique you can use when doing mentalism. Instead of focusing on the woman and ignoring the guy, if you know the couple has a good connection, or you sense they do, then you can suggest that you’re going to read the one person’s mind through the mind of the second person. So, the woman writes something down or whatever, and then the staging is like this: you’re looking at the guy, and the guy is looking over your shoulder at the woman. You’re going to ask some questions or make some probing statements, and the woman is supposed to respond in her head. The guy is supposed to focus on the woman and you focus on him. And because of their history and connection (or whatever), you’ll be able to sense her responses through him. So it’s just adding a supposed intermediary for your supposed mind reading.

The benefit is that it brings both people into the equation somewhat equally. You’re reading her mind, but your attention is on him. If he is potentially jealous or insecure, then he’s not going to feel like he’s being left out of the equation. Plus, the idea of reading someone’s mind through their connection with someone else is probably more interesting than just, “I’m going to stare at you and tell you what you’re thinking.” How might this one person’s thought get changed or adulterated as it passes through another mind? If nothing else, you’re at least giving the third person something to do besides drink their coffee and stare at the squirrels.

Until September...

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This is the final post for August.

Posting will resume on Monday, September 2nd.

The next newsletter will be sent to supporters on Sunday the 1st.

Got an email from Vanishing Inc. that says…

Hmmm… is it a regular sharpie?

I can’t say for 100% certain.

But it’s $300, so I really, really hope not.

Although, to be fair, if you spend $300 on this and it turns out to be a 99¢ Sharpie, you can’t exactly say they misled you. They’ve made it very clear that one possibility is that this is just a regular Sharpie. Buy at your own risk.

Regarding the Tag Question Ploy (as discussed in multiple posts), Dusty H. offers this alternative, which is no less fooling than the way people usually use this technique.

Here's how I handle it. I form it as a statement like so...

Me - Ah ha! A red card.

Them - Nope!

Me - You didn't let me finish! A red card... is what you didn't choose, you interrupting p.o.s. You chose a black card! 

Them - You're soooo goooood!

Summer is pretty much over, folks. Did you have a good one? I hope so. You can’t let these seasons slip away because it means you’re letting your life slip away.

What about autumn? What are you going to do to appreciate that season while it’s here? Write down three things and then schedule them.

For example, for me, to make sure autumn doesn’t pass me by, I will be:

  1. Going apple picking with friends (Yes, I’m a basic bitch. Don’t worry about that. Most of the ways of appreciating the seasons aren’t going to seem wildly unique.)

  2. Seeing a horror movie in October at the drive-in movie theater.

  3. Taking a hike at peak fall foliage time at Watkins Glen, NY.

Those are just three. I’m sure I’ll do other fall activities like attending a college football game, going to a Halloween party, visiting some sort of fall fair or harvest festival, going to a haunted house or hayride. And so on.

But the point is, I’m going to make sure to schedule those three things, so even if I do nothing else particularly “autumny,” when winter rolls around I will have at least these three moments that captured this time in 2024.

The goal is to not let time blur together. And you have to be proactive about it.

As I have in the past, I’ll let The Happenings take us out this month…

Mailbag: Social Magic Clubs

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So, at the university I go to, there is a magic club. Well, there used to be one, at least. It has been standing for a few decades, but it finally breathed its last breath last year, and now the club is no more.

I want to bring it back, to make a new magic club that will take the place of the one before it. Partly because I love magic, partly because I might be the first woman to run a university magic club in the history of humanity, but mostly because I know that if I don't do it, someone else eventually will. And if all my history knowing magicians is to say anything about it, the club that gets created will almost certainly teach its members the wrong lessons when it comes to being an amateur magician.

So, for the sake of all of the women these men will ever meet, I want to teach the beginners joining my club how to perform in a Social Magic style. To teach them to be creative, casual, and personal with their magic, instead of being, y'know, all the things that magicians normally are. 

You've written before about how to transition from a traditional magic style to a social magic style, but I'd like to ask you on advice on how to make Social Magic be the first thing someone learns. What would you say I need to focus on teaching if I want to take someone just learning their first few tricks and guide them towards becoming an actually half-decent social magician?

If you have any advice at all on how to go about this, I'd be very grateful.

PS - How would you feel about the idea of this magic club becoming the first "Official" "ring" of the GLOMM? —JF

I think that’s a worthwhile goal, but I think it’s something that will be very hard to achieve. What I mean is, I think it will be difficult to just happen to find a group of people at your school who are interested in the social magic style of performing.

It would be like saying, “I want to start a karate school. But I really want to appeal to people who have an interest in self-defense and self-discipline.” When really, what most people get into karate for, is because they want to hit people and break boards.

If I had to guess, I would say that about 15% of people who have an interest in performing magic, have an interest in presenting it in a Social Magic/Audience-Centric style.

The other 85% are people who want to perform in a “traditional style”—where the focus is on them. They don’t care about creating more natural moments, or shifting the focus off themselves. That’s the opposite of what they want. They want to create moments that stand out of them exhibiting a power or skill that makes them seem special.

And of the 15% who do like the social style, most of them probably started out in the other group. They just happened to have the emotional intelligence and social IQ to realize that you’re not really going to “impress” people by performing magic tricks in the long term.

So, I think any social magic groups that ever form will probably end up being sub-sets of larger magic groups which perform in a more traditional style.

If you wanted to push things in the social direction, then I think you need to make performing a central focus of the group. And not performing for each other. Most magic groups I’ve been exposed to consist of guys swapping secrets and performing for each other. They are, in all reality, ANTI-SOCIAL magic clubs.

So I would make it an element of the club that you get out and actually show people stuff when you get together. And I’m not saying you go out to a bar and say, “Hey everyone, we’re the University Magic Club, and we want to show you some tricks!” Don’t portray yourself as a “group of magicians,” but just a group of friends who are out. And then let one of the members lead an interaction with someone nearby. You guys can be bystanders, or stooges, or wing-men, but let this person take the lead. Then afterward, you can break it down with each other. Maybe it came off as too scripted. Or he wasn’t clear enough in his instructions. Or maybe it was perfect, but he didn’t let the moment breath. Having some outside parties to secretly help with the performance and critique it could be incredibly beneficial.

That’s probably the only real advice I could offer: If you want to steer a club in a social direction, then you need to make performing socially (for people outside the group) an element of the club.

And yeah, you can become the first “official” GLOMM Lodge.

In fact, anyone who can get three magicians who aren’t sex criminals together in a centralized area can be an official lodge. If you want, you can inform me who your group consists of, and I’ll let you know your official lodge number.

Puff of Smoke

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I’ve shared a lot of unpopular opinions on this site:

  • The Expert at the Card Table sucks.

  • No real humans have ever enjoyed a cups and balls or linking ring routine. At least in so much as they never think of it again the moment it’s over.

  • I think Houdini was probably a fucking moron.

Now it’s time for me to share a new piping-hot take…

Look, will smoking kill you?

Almost certainly.

But not that fast. Especially given what you’re doing.

I mean, imagine you had never heard of smoking and someone explained it to you…

“It’s a little paper tube filled with dried plant leaves and chemical additives, and you put it in your mouth. Then you light it on fire, and you suck the toxic smoke into your lungs.”

If they described that, then asked you how long smoking would take to kill you, you’d say, “I don’t know… a minute?”

Like, the fact you can get away with doing it 40 times a day for decades is actually pretty astounding.

Here’s why I want to bring back cigarette magic…

First, I feel like cigarettes themselves are due for a comeback. Sure, it will never be the 1950s again, when there would be a slot in your school lunch tray specifically for cigarettes. But I think there will be a rebound in cigarette usage. And when that happens, you’ll be on the vanguard.

But the main reason I want cigarette magic to make a comeback is that there have been huge advancements in magic methodology in the past couple of decades, at exactly the same time cigarettes were going out of fashion. The group-mind of magicians is more powerful than it’s ever been, and we haven’t turned that towards cigarette magic yet. C’mon, let’s just give it a shot for the next few years. I think we could come up with some cool shit.

I’m not suggesting the Tom Mullica type of thing where you swallow a pack of cigarettes. His routine was amazing, but disgusting.

I think you should lean into the intimate, semi-sexy nature of smoking. Cigarettes are pretty much the only thing used in magic that have that element to it. The smoke, the warm glow, huddling together in the cold with another person, wrapping your lips around something, the fact that you’re slowly killing yourself. That’s sexy shit. What else in magic offers so much seductive potential? You ever try dangling a hot rod from your lip? You look like a motherfucking imbecile!

The best thing you can do with a cigarette, in my opinion, is use a cigarette pull to make it vanish. This is so strong. When I hung around smokers more regularly, I would have a cigarette pull always installed in one of my jackets. I think making a coin completely vanish is a pretty beautiful moment. But a cigarette is even better. It’s bigger. Smoke is coming from it. And it’s on fire. It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing you should be able to manipulate.

I would usually ask for a drag, take their cigarette, ask if they wanted to see something cool, inhale, put the cigarette in my fist, blow the smoke on my fist, and open it to reveal the cigarette was gone. Always great reactions. Once in a blue moon, someone would get angry that their cigarette was gone, so I’d say, “I made it go back in time. It’s back in your cigarette pack.” Unless they knew exactly how many cigarettes were in their pack, they couldn’t get too mad at me, because maybe I really did what I said. It definitely vanished, after all.

Some cigarette tricks I’d like to see:

  1. You take your friend’s cigarette which is nearly burned down to the butt, and you pull it in a way that the cigarette regenerates to its original state.

  2. When your friend takes out a cigarette, you ask for one too. When he lights his up, you stop him for a moment. He has a lit cigarette in his mouth, you have an unlit one in yours. You bring your hands up and cup your cigarette. When you remove them, your cigarette is lit, and his is now out. So it’s like they changed places.

To show my commitment to this cause, I am launching the following campaign…

The Jerx Fund to Supply Cigarettes to All the Kids at Tannen’s Magic Camp

In the summer of 2025, I will cut a check to Tannen’s to buy a pack of cigarettes for every camper at Tannen’s Magic Camp. People will claim I’m “too generous.” But really I just love magic that much and I’m thankful to have finally found a charitable cause I can get behind 100%. My Cigarettes For Campers (aka “Smoke and Minors”) initiative will now be the primary recipient of my charitable donations.

You’re welcome.

✿✿✿

(Note: I’m actually mostly serious about this post.)

Least Attractive Hobbies

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My posts are usually scheduled at least a few days in advance, but this time I have to jump the line with this post so we can put a bullet in it and I can stem the amount of emails I’m getting about it.

This chart:

looks fake as fuck to me. I haven’t done any research on it. But I have a brain in my head.

How do you think this “unattractiveness score” was calculated? Is it a percentage? Do 90% of women think playing video games is unattractive? Or is the average ranking of “unattractiveness” for playing video games a 9 out of 10? Either way, does that seem logical to you? That it would be at the top of the list when it’s the activity that a majority of single women also take part in?

Of course, it’s all nonsense. I would guess it was made by some incel who was like, “Girls are so superficial, they find guys unattractive because of their hobbies!”

There is a tiny 🤏 segment of women who will find any given hobby inherently unattractive (except maybe “online trolling”).

If you’re a funny, charming, interesting person, you can have whatever hobbies you want—so long as they don’t wholly define who you are.

Women don’t dislike you because you “collect figurines.”

They dislike you and you collect figurines.

It’s you. Stop blaming the women. Stop blaming the figurines, the model trains, or the magic tricks.

Video games are unattractive if you spend 14 hours a day playing them.

Collecting figurines is unattractive if you spend all your money on it, or if you can’t actually relate to living beings.

Magic is only unattractive—sadly—because most magicians perform it in an unattractive, desperate manner. Not because most women (or men or whoever) wouldn’t love to see something truly impossible and amazing.

If I’m being honest, in most cases where I’ve made a super-quick romantic connection over the course of a single meeting with someone who was significantly “out of my league,” magic was a part of our interaction at some point during our time together.

So there’s nothing intrinsically unattractive about magic.

There is—I have no doubt—something unattractive (and pathetic) about trying to attract people with magic. And I’m sure magic has dried more panties than moistened them. But that’s because most guys in that situation are attempting to use magic to get something. And that’s obvious to people. That’s not seductive.

But if you genuinely have something fascinating or interesting to share with someone, and you can introduce it in a natural way, and you don’t come off like you’re trying to get something from them, then it can pretty much only serve to ignite or deepen attraction. (Perhaps not a romantic attraction, but at least a human-level of attraction.)

Either way, I wouldn’t worry about that chart above, even if it was based on real data. (It’s not.) But even if it’s just spiritually true, I don’t care.

I actually like when someone tells me they don’t enjoy magic, because it usually means they’ve seen some shitty magic. Low expectations. Good. Much easier to amaze. I just agree with them. “Yeah, I know. Most of it is pretty corny. But there’s this one thing I was reading up on recently, that has me kind of intrigued….”

If you can be charismatic and win them over by showing them something that captures their interest despite their negative perceptions, that’s actually more powerful and seductive than simply engaging someone in a conversation about something they already like.

Anatomy of a "Whimper"

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Benjamin Budzak from ThoughtCast Magic sent along this email…

“Latest release from magic live…went out with a whimper… can I get your feedback on this?”

The question of why a trick didn’t go over as well as hoped is an interesting thing to consider. (Assuming it’s a halfway decent trick.) It’s essentially an extension of my offer to tell people the worst thing about their trick.

So let’s consider why this trick might not have taken off the way Benjamin wanted. I don’t know if these are the actual reasons, but just some considerations.

The trick is a signed card to box, where the card visually appears in the box. The box used is a Trader Joe’s mint box (although it can appear as a generic mint box if you don’t have Trader Joe’s in your area).

The notion of a card visually appearing in a box is a good one. And—depending on what you’re going for—could be considered a big advancement to the standard card to box. Or could even make for an interesting follow-up to a standard Card to Box.

So if I had to guess why this version didn’t gain the traction he had expected, these would be my suppositions. These are based only on the demo and the nature of the trick itself. I haven’t handled the actual effect in person or seen how it was marketed elsewhere.

Card to Box Isn’t Sexy. These things tend to go in cycles. In the late 2010s there was an influx of Card to Box effects. This version may have come out at a non-peak time.

It’s Too Familiar. “A card appears in a mint box? Oh yeah… didn’t Danny Garcia release that?”

With so much magic released every week, it’s hard to pull eyes to your product if it doesn’t feel truly unique.

While this version is significantly different from other variations on Card to Box, that might not be completely obvious unless people really pay attention (which they might not do if they feel they already know what they’re looking at).

It’s Too Unfamiliar. What is this box? If you go to Trader Joe’s and buy the mints regularly, then this is an “ordinary object.” But that is—at most—probably 1% of the population. For almost everyone else, this is a somewhat unusual looking box.

The Demo Video Style. This style of advertising video, that’s focused on the reactions, feels somewhat dated. I think there was a time when magicians would look at videos like this and think, “Wow! Look at the reactions this trick gets. If I get this trick… then I can get these reactions!” But I think in 2024 magicians understand the reactions in demo videos aren’t a good barometer for how good the trick is. I think we still like to see reactions, I just don’t think they’re persuasive anymore.

More than ever, I think magicians expect to see something close to a complete performance on the demo video.

The Incomplete Demo. Traditionally, in a Card to Box effect, the moment people want to see is when the card is removed from the box. That moment isn’t shown at all in this demo. So most people will think: “It must not look good. If it looked good, he would have shown it.”

Some Minor Tweaks. You should have always used a red-backed card in the demo. It’s harder to see the appearance of the blue card in that video.

The appearance also needs a little finesse. As it’s performed in the demo, the card looks like it pops into the case when the case is squeezed. It looks too mechanical.

I think it’s better if it feels like the card fades into existence more than that it “pops” into existence. A smooth wave of the hand back and forth would hide the squeezing action and look more magical

Inherent Issues.

  • A card appearing in a mint tin has no particular meaning to anyone.

  • The label which covers the front of the mint tin makes the appearance significantly less visually arresting. Obviously it’s necessary for the method, but it also means that you’re only seeing a small portion of the card appear.

His Reputation. ThoughtCast Magic is known for producing tricks using phones and electronics. So the audience he has built up might not be overly interested in this style of effect. Whereas if Sankey or someone like that had put this out, it might have gotten a better response as it’s more in line with the style of his previous releases.

The Price. I think the price of $65 is completely fair—especially since the trick is a relatively small release from an independent creator. But that price is still above the $20-$40 impulse purchase price that I think most magicians are willing to take a chance on. And given that this is not really in line with the type of material he has released in the past, I don’t think he can just rely on his past releases to sell this one. So this one will need to be sold based on the strength of reviews and recommendations.

Those would be my guesses as to why this didn’t get the response Benjamin might have wanted. Some of these issues can be addressed, some can’t.

As a final note, I actually think the unedited performance he sent me a couple of months ago does a better job of selling the strength of the visual appearance of the card. So for those who are interested in this effect, here’s a clip from that video. (This is all one shot, I just sped up the middle part for the sake of the GIF.)