Until April...

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A quarter of the year has passed. Incredible.

I will see you all back here on Monday, April 7th. The next issue of the newsletter will be sent Sunday, April 6th.

The increasingly irrelevant Magic Café, which as of right now doesn’t have enough people reading it to field a baseball team…

still doesn’t allow people to mention this site, even in passing.

There were two threads on new products in the Latest and Greatest section that I had an interest in—both threads briefly mentioned something I wrote. I wonder if this will last? I thought. Nope! Both got edited.

This is 20+ years since I used to bash the Café regularly. Sure, I pointed out that Steve Brooks desperate lobbying for a meaningless FISM award is pathetic a week or so ago. But I haven’t talked about how small and disgusting his genitals are in literally decades.

I’ve convinced myself it’s not Steve making these decisions. It’s this other dunce—Dave Scribner—the “assistant manager” of the message board. I don’t have any proof of that. But in my heart, I want to believe Steve isn’t that fucking corny. I always thought the best storyline for the Jerx would involve us collaborating in some way. As I’ve said before, I have a weird affection for the guy.

But Scribner? Scribner’s a full-blown sad-sack. Sure, Steve may be a guy whose sole accomplishment in the art he loves is registering a domain name—but Dave is that guy’s toadie. Imagine being the deputy lackey to a man whose legacy is an abandoned relic of the early-2000s online magic scene. The most recent “Guest of Honor” was a tumbleweed. And Dave… he’s the man behind the man behind that.

Seriously, children—never devote your time and energy to something so pitiable it sounds like an old Jewish curse: “May he become assistant manager of a magic message board!”

I will happily amplify any message that gets deleted or censored on the Café, whether it has anything to do with me or not (assuming you’re not trying to incite a race war or something).

One of the recent posts they edited because it mentioned me was something I had written to Timon Krause about his recent book on cold reading, which was:

“I ended up enjoying this book much more than I imagined I would. I don't really have much use for traditional cold-reading, since I’m most often performing for people I know. So I loved that this book offered almost a ‘social style’ of cold-reading. There are a few things I'm going to add to my mental rolodex of techniques. Starting with the 15-second personality test.”

If you have any interest in cold-reading—whether for performing or just as a conversational technique—I encourage you to get Timon’s book. You can find it here.

The other mention of me was in a thread for Tim Trono’s Impossible magic kit. I don’t remember what the mention was there precisely—it was regarding something I wrote which Tim had the absolute temerity to casually reference without a full trigger warning for the fragile Café staff.

I’ve only recently had a chance to look through Tim’s new kit, and I think it’s great. There are a few tricks that were completely new to me, along with a bunch of clever updates, modifications, and variations on classics you probably shelved years ago, that make them feel fresh again—and well worth revisiting

While it’s marketed as a beginner’s kit, I’d keep it for myself—or only gift it to someone if I knew they had a real, lasting interest in magic. No need to burn strong material on a passing phase.

And make sure you read the book that comes with it—there are some really good ideas and effects in there that aren’t covered in the video instructions.

While I’m in the mode of somewhat endorsing things...

Back in February, I put a few endorsements up for sale. One of them read:

“When I saw that ping-pong ball get sucked up into the bottle, I was pretty impressed. But when Bobby said, ‘And you can keep that as a souvenir’—MY JAW DROPPED!!! Best trick of Magic Live.” —Andy (The Jerx)

At the time, I wrote:

“This one is pretty cheap. And it’s really only suited if your name is Bobby and you have a trick where a ping-pong ball gets sucked into a bottle. If that’s the case, you’re making out like a bandit. But even if you’re selling an e-book on the Three Shell Game, you could still buy it and put it in your ad. Maybe the sheer weirdness of the endorsement would draw more eyes to your product.”

I figured if someone bought it, they’d just slap it onto an unrelated trick and hope the confusion sparked curiosity.

But Landon Stark, in a genuine act of high-agency, bought the endorsement—and then created a trick to match it. It’s in his new book, One Trick Pony. And for something reverse-engineered from a fake testimonial? It’s… surprisingly not bad. I’d love to see if it actually plays convincingly in performance.

Here’s an addendum to Wednesday’s post…

Re. The TOXIC Force - “Wondering what your work around is for this now with iOS 18 or have you abandoned ship for now? Many of the methods seem…not carefree to say the least.” —ZA

I’ve been asked this a lot. I haven’t been keeping up with the alternatives people have come up with for dealing with this. If you know of any good options, let me know, and I’ll assemble a post (or a paragraph) about them in the future.

See you all back here on April 7th as we kick off our month-long celebration of Canine Fitness Month.

Get ready to load up your dog’s kibble with anabolic steroids, creatine, and HGH. I’m sick of looking at that bitch’s flabby ass. It’s time to get that puppy SHREDDED.