Dustings #115

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If you ordered the hardcover reprint of the Amateur at the Kitchen Table essay, you received an email this morning telling you how to confirm your shipping address so I can mail it out to you. That email went to the email address associated with your Paypal account.

I can’t ship you the book until you confirm your address.

Speaking of books, this week, I received my third email in the past year from someone saying one of their Jerx books was stolen from their car. Clearly the value of the Jerx supporter reward books has gotten out to the gangs of smash and grab car thieves and they’re now targeting the vehicles of my supporters so they can resell the books for massive profits.

No, I’m kidding, I’m sure those books are now sitting at the bottom of a dumpster somewhere. This is just a reminder to keep your magic books—or at least your magic books from me—out of your car. I feel bad when I hear these stories, but there’s nothing I can do as I have literally no extra copies of any of the books I’ve put out.

A bunch of people have sent me this and asked me my thoughts on it, given that the idea is similar to a trick I came up with years ago…

My thoughts on it are…

  1. It’s probably not legit.

  2. If it is legit, it will probably cost a fortune.

  3. If it is legit and doesn’t cost a fortune, then it will be so well known to be virtually useless for magic purposes. Sadly.

After I made my post on reviving cigarette magic, a bunch of people wrote in to suggest that we focus on reimagining these cigarette tricks as weed tricks—especially given the much more lax regulations against marijuana these days.

It makes sense, I think I probably know more people that smoke weed than smoke cigarettes.

There’s just one problem with this idea though…. weed is corny.

I’m not saying you are corny if you smoke weed. Just that—for whatever reason—weed itself has a sort of “dopey” connotation to it. It’s not a cool look.

Smoking cigarettes is strange. It can be seen as sort of trashy. But there is also a weird elegance to it that allows it to come off as romantic or sexy for some people. It can be seen as “stylish.”

Unfortunately, smoking weed is never really stylish.

Wait…

I spoke too soon…