This is the final post of 2024. Regular posting will resume on Monday, February 3rd. Newsletters will be sent to subscribers on Sunday, Janaury 5th and Sunday, February 2nd.

During January, I will check in here once a day with a quick update… like just a sentence a day. It won’t be anything interesting. It’s more for my benefit than yours. There will be one post at the top of the page that I will update daily.

What does 2025 hold for the Jerx?

There will be a new trick added to the Jerx app in February. A new reward book for supporters at the end of spring.

Oh, and it’s this site’s 10-year anniversary. How will we be celebrating. Well, I’m celebrating it right now, with this balloon emoji.

🎈

Do I have other plans for the 10-year anniversary? Not really. If I was trying to sell something, I’d use it as a marketing opportunity. But I’m not really trying to sell anything. And doing a big celebration post would end up requiring a lot of effor on my part, which feels like the opposite of a celebration. It’s like throwing your own birthday party: a lot of work and kind of sad. So it will probably be a pretty chill affair.

From the: “That’s Not It, Chief” Department of Bad Answers

A couple of people sent me the following exchange from the Magic Cafe.

There’s a new trick called Sonore, from Ellusionist.

Everyone hears you playing a harmonica, but when you pull your hands away from your mouth, you’re holding a wafer cookie which you bite into. This is just one example. It can also be used for other audio illusions.

On the Cafe, someone asked, what’s to prevent people from just assuming you have a tiny speaker (or even your phone) playing a sound?

Geraint from Ellusionist gives an answer to the question that is… not great.

Let’s break it down because I think he could use some help with the messaging.

He writes:

I think it's all about subverting expectations. The sound sells the illusion.¹ By the time the illusion is revealed and your hands are empty - and you don't have sleeves, people are either with you or they're not.²

I've seen this quite a bit lately. Magicians wondering if the method is too complacent.³

I said it on another thread. We're always going to run into a percentage of spectators who want to work it out. And the bigger majority will be those who just enjoy it.⁴

There will also be spectators who dismiss it as 'must be a trick deck' or 'maybe that other guy was in on it'.⁵

Whether it's a packet trick showing 4 aces that become queens, or whether you're making a harmonica vanish - you'll never be able to please & fool 100% of people, 100% of the time.⁶

You've just gotta pick what you love - and hope people come on the ride with you.⁷

¹ Well, the sound doesn't really "sell" the illusion. The sound is the illusion. When the trick is over, they'll be saying, "Where did that sound come from?" Not, "How did he turn a harmonica into a cookie?" This is why having an idea where the sound is coming from is so detrimental to the effect.

² "By the time the illusion is revealed" people are already "with you or they're not"? What is he suggesting here? All that has happened to this point is you've seemingly played the harmonica. Is he saying that your faux-harmonica playing will be so rapturous that they've already decided if they're going to look at the effect critically? I don't think that's how magic works.

Also, I'm not sure "sleeves" plays into the equation. If I thought someone had a secret little speaker on them, I wouldn't assume it was flopping around in their sleeve.

³ If by "lately" you mean, "throughout the recorded history of the art of magic," I agree with you.

⁴ This is such a fundamentally flawed notion of how magic works. Magic is not split between the spectators who "want to work it out" and some mythical larger group that wants to "just enjoy it." A person can only enjoy magic by trying to work it out. That's what makes magic special—that it's un-work-out-able.

If I don't show you an empty hat before I pull the rabbit out of it, you won't enjoy the trick. You might enjoy me. You might enjoy seeing a rabbit. But you won't enjoy the magic because your mind has easily created the solution which destroys the magic.

⁵ Correct. And then we put deceptions in place that make them think, "No, I guess it COULDN'T have been a trick deck." (A deck switch.) Or, "Hmm, I was wrong, there's no way that guy was in on it." (Have the audience member chosen randomly.)

This is the methodological heart of magic: adding deceptions to a trick to account for the spectator's initial theories. And we have to cover at least their most basic, high-level guesses, or else we don't have a trick.

⁶ This would be a good argument if the notion of a small speaker or your phone was something that would only occur to a tiny fraction of the audience. It's not. It will occur to everyone.

⁷ "Hoping the audience comes on the ride with you" should not be a primary part of your methodology. The way to get people to go on the ride with you is to account for their suspicions as best as you can.

I’m not saying Sonore is a bad gimmick/effect. I’m just saying the response in that Magic Cafe thread didn’t do much to sell me on it.

For what it’s worth, I tried out this effect a few times leading up to Christmas. I didn’t use this actual trick (it’s not out yet). I just created a shortcut on my phone that would play a brief audio track of a harmonica playing. The shortcut was triggered by a remote in my pants pocket.

The trick gets a nice initial moment of surprise. But after that, it played out more like a gag than a magic trick, as you would expect.

I tried a different version where I told a couple of friends I learned 30 songs this year on harmonica and I had them choose one at random from my little notebook of harmonica songs (a Svengali-style notebook with the names of songs and some notes written underneath). I then “played the song” they “chose” and ate the harmonica after. That got a much better response, as the reality of me actually playing the harmonica was established much better, since it started with me playing a freely chosen song.

I’ll probably try it out a couple of more times at least, since I made up the notebook for it, but I don’t know if it has long-term potential. As a trick, “harmonica to wafer cookie” doesn’t have quite the emotional resonance I’m looking for. And as a gag, I much prefer someone seeing me playing the clarinet only to reveal it’s actually a huge black dildo.

Tenyo Trick Alternative Presentation

Museum of Penny Alternatives

For the Juxe Music Club I told people they could affix a penny to their submission form or just any other round thing or penny alternative. Here are just a few of the notable ones I’ve received so far…

Most Nostalgic