Dustings #89
/On Wednesday, I finished writing the final chapter of Book #6. It’s such a crazy feeling to wrap one of those up. All is on schedule for the October release. I don’t mention this to pimp the book. It’s been sold out for 14 months, and the waiting list easily exceeds the number of overage copies that might get printed. I just mention this to keep the supporters in the loop. Now you’re in the loop. Like this guy.
Our buddy, Stasia has her “decision-making coin” back in stock on her Etsy store. Now in gold and silver.
I wrote about it and one of the most deceptive versions of the PATEO force you can do with it in this post.
The Jerx Makes A Bet
My first instinct is that this looks great…
My second instinct is that it’s going to be a fucking nightmare of broken thread, janky electronics, and even more heat on the deck than there normally is with a haunted deck.
So even though I was ready to pull the trigger on this immediately, I’m going to bet that my second instincts are more likely correct, and that this might be something that’s great to demo for magicians, but is a pain in the ass in the real world.
Again, this is just my own speculation. I hope I’m wrong. Maybe I have trust issues because the ad says, “The performer starts and ends 100% clean.” Which is most definitely not true. You start and end with a whole fake-ass deck in your hands. Literally the opposite of clean. The fact they would include that in the ad makes them beyond sketchy in my opinion.
If you end up picking this up, email me and give me the straight dope on if you like it or not.
Joe Mckay sent along this video of Chris Ramsay breaking down some one-shot magic tricks from the television show he was on last year. They’re fun to watch. There’s nothing thirstier or more desperate than a magician exposing tricks, but in this case, what else are you going to do with these performances besides expose them? That’s what they were designed for. If I thought anyone really gave a shit one way or the other about the tricks themselves, I would say that exposing them is a net negative. But this is magic done to demonstrate cleverness, not magic done to evoke mystery. So I have no issue with the exposure in this case.
Here’s a chance to help a guy out and get seven, hour-long magic lectures in the process.
And I challenge each lecturer to really bring it, don’t just half-ass it because it’s for a charitable cause, and you figure no one will be too bothered if you just load up your lecture with your C-grade material. Don’t take our money and our time by asking us to sit through 7 hours of all throwaway shit. I’ve donated to charitable magic causes in the past and received some slapdash garbage in return. I’m happy to give my money, but less happy to give the time it takes to consume something that wasn’t intended to be that good in the first. So please, each of you, give us at least one idea that’s actually really good. In fact, it might help if you say, “Okay. Enough of the c-grade material. This idea is actually really good.”
Actually, if the organizers want me to plug this again next week, try to get a couple sentences from each lecturer about one thing they’re presenting that they think will be a highlight of the lecture, and I’ll post it here.
(It may seem like a dick thing to do to judge people’s contributions to a charitable effort, but you see, I’m trying to help out everyone involved. People on the fence about donating will think, “Gee, they might be feeling a little pressure from that post on the Jerx. I bet they do up their game and include at least one really strong trick per lecture. That’s seven strong tricks. I’ll happily donate for seven strong tricks.”)