Dustings of Woofle #22
/This is a warning to any well-known magicians/magic creators who are supporters of mine.
There is a decent chance that when you die my acknowledgement of your passing will come right between a mention of a pedophile clown and a gif of a cartoon mailman shoving letters in his ass crack. This is just the danger of supporting such a stupid site.
Sorry, Simon.
One more quick story on the generosity/quirkiness of Simon Aronson.
When he started supporting this site, he sent an additional payment to me under the name of Mergel Funsky. Who or what is Mergel Funsky? Wel, he’s a character Simon created—illustrated in a style that can only be defined as “first day on MS Paint”—who is sort of a manifestation of the power of imagination. You can read all about him on his own website, which has to be one of the strangest sites on the internet.
I’m not sure I ever completely wrapped my head around Mergel Funsky. I once asked Simon if this was him laying the groundwork for a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder. Were we going to find a bunch of strangled runaways buried in his basement someday? “It wasn’t me, officer! I was sleeping. It was Mergel Funsky!”
I just like that this 70+ year old man was getting a kick out of doing silly photoshops. I hope I retain that spirit when I’m that age.
Back when I was asking people to destroy copies of the Expert at the Card Table (which is an ongoing request), Simon sent this along, which he entitled “Cannon vs Canon.”
What a goofball. He’ll be missed.
Here’s a fun thing to do with your magic friends. Whenever you sit down to show them a trick—whether it be an intense gambling demonstration, a jack-the-ripper inspired exhibition of bizarre magick, or a heart breaking living and dead test—before you get into the trick, do this little hand flourish and say…
Hell yeah, baby. “Let’s do ninja.” I started doing this years ago. First with my magic friends, then with my normal friends, then just by myself. Whenever i was about to initiate anything at all. Are we leaving to get dinner? Starting a game of darts? About to have sex?
“Let’s do ninja.”
From the Mouths of Laymen
I’m making an effort to keep track of more direct quotes from laymen friends. These aren’t necessarily things I agree with, but they’re comments that gave me something to think about.
After watching another friend do a word reveal using a peek from a stack of business cards, a friend of mine said, “Nobody carries around a big stack of business cards. So it has something to do with that. It was like a card trick.”
I didn’t push her too much on this. If the comment was about my own performance, I would have really dug in on it more, but I didn’t want to undermine my friend’s trick.
I have to agree with her that I haven’t ever seen anyone carry around a stack of business cards. They may have a few in their wallet, but that’s it. Even at networking events. But that may be more a function of the type of networking events I’ve been to (more entertainment people than business people).
Either way, I think her point is something to be considered. In 2019, is a stack of business cards no longer an “ordinary object”? If you’re a mentalist, and you don’t want to be associated with magic, are you undermining that by carrying around something (a stack of business cards) that is more reminiscent of playing cards/magic tricks than it is a normal object that a modern person would have on them?
I dunno. Just posing the question.
I have spies inside all of the major magic companies. My mole inside Vanishing Inc wrote to give some background on this recent photo from Joshua Jay’s instagram.
Thought you might want to hear the story behind that photo. So Josh was overheard saying he wanted to make an appearance with “the common slobs in the warehouse.” He showed up half-drunk and got to work. Or whatever his understanding of work is. He picked up a cardboard box and a tape dispenser and rubbed the HANDLE of the tape dispenser against the box for eight minutes before declaring “My tape is broke!” He’s super sensitive about being corrected in regards to anything, so one of the guys just took it from him and said, “Sure is, boss. Don’t worry. I’ll fix it.” He went in the other room and came back a couple minutes later and put it in Josh’s hand the right way. Josh proceeded to use about 45 feet of tape to assemble a small box while simultaneously getting himself all wrapped up in the tape. He started screaming like a dying pig and demanded we call 911 to set him free. We were able to calm him down by playing some Phil Collins (The “greatest musician of all time,” according to Josh. “He was doing what Kendrick Lamar did way before he did what he did.” Huh? Don’t question him about it, though. He doesn’t like being questioned.) After we cut him out of the tape he immediately started chewing on a discarded piece. “If we eat it, it can’t hurt us again,” he said. He was clearly going to make himself sick, so we distracted him and threw away the tape and pretended that we ate it.
He goes back to the box and starts wrapping it in more tape. Then he says, “Uh-oh, spaghettios. I forgotted to put the thing in the box,.” That’s right, he forgot to put the order in the box. So he starts fighting with the taped up empty box to get it open, and we were just like, “Josh, forget about it. Just use a different box. It doesn’t matter.” To which he replied, “I didn’t win the International Brotherhood of Magician’s Little Mister, Junior Magic Gentleman of 1989 by saying things ‘don’t matter.’” Okay, whatever. We let him struggle with the box for another 45 minutes, looking for the end of the tape until he tuckered himself out and took a nap on the warehouse floor.
When he awoke, the box was forgotten. He said, “Gather ‘round everyone, it’s time for your Christmas bonus.” And he took a selfie with each of us. THAT was the bonus.
Good lord. What a tale. I want to thank my guy on the inside for sharing that with me. I won’t reveal his identity but here is a pixelated photograph of him.
