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

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."