essay
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Read more: Oz and Woes
Editor’s note: Happy Juneteenth. For this occasion, we’re doing away with the PCP (Political Containment Policy). But hey, the excerpt is short. Read on if you dare. I try my damnedest to be optimistic about the future of magic. I see efforts to make the art form more inclusive, accessible, to champion performers of various…
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Read more: I Hate “In & Of Itself”
And it’s not for the weird stolen valor of the brick. Nor the strange exploitation of having someone read a surprise intimate letter on stage. Nor is it for the fact DelGaudio’s voice sounds like he’s a Muppet about to cry the whole show. No, I don’t really hate the special: I hate us. In…
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The “Creativity” Discourse
Category: essayRead more: The “Creativity” DiscourseEditor’s note: This isn’t about saying “fuck beginners”; rather it’s about saying “stop pretending intermediate and advanced magicians can only handle beginner talk.” So if you’re on page one of your magic journey, relax: this is about how bad we are at page ten and onward. I’m the kind of magician that most would call…
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Read more: Clockwork Apple
Happy New Year guys! It’s your boy, Drew. My first post of 2026! I know, there’s been other posts by me that have come out this year. I wrote those 2-3 years ago, it’s the punk-ass bitch Editor who is only getting them out now. I’m trying out a new writer’s voice. How do you…
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Read more: Let’s Move False Shuffles Out of the Grey
Let’s be real for a second here. False shuffles don’t really work. I’ve always loved false shuffles ever since my first foray into the magical arts. There are two specific shuffles I’ve always loved, the Truffle shuffle and the Zarrow shuffle. I’ve practiced both continuously for over a decade. Over time though, I realized something…
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Read more: How We Generate The Best Anagrams Around
You may have noticed a bit of a gap in “Anagram Month”…to the extent that it no longer fits in a month. We have been waiting on Jerry to post an intro to our new anagram generator. Nothing much, just a few lines. The Editor should have known better than to trust Jerry with even…
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Read more: Making Your Anagrams Commute
UPDATE: Check out the dedicated Anagram page on our site for the best anagram generator ever, among other things. Editor’s note: After introducing frontloaded progressive anagrams, which give your typical progressive anagram a couple of the perks of a perfect progressive anagram, Franklin announces the definition of a new category of branching anagram based off…
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Read more: Toward Better Progressive Anagrams
UPDATE: Check out the dedicated Anagram page on our site for the best anagram generator ever, among other things. Editor’s note: This commences Anagram August with a superior type of progressive anagram. For an introduction and anagram trainer tool, see the previous post. For some reason, at some point, someone looked at the idea of…
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Read more: In Defense of Lecture Patter
Hello from the land of surf and Spam musubi, where you tip the beach boys by day and Shoot Ogawa by night. That’s right, as I write this I’m absorbing the mana of Hawai’i. I’m not sipping a Mai Tai on the beach, unfortunately. I’m in an airport lounge punching keys on my laptop and…
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Read more: Phantom at the Magic Festival
The blog was in full force at Mystify Magic Festival. If we did our job right, nobody realized we were super cool magic bloggers, but we were taking notes. We are immensely thankful to all involved for putting on the event. There were a lot of really important discussions going on, and seeing the turnout…
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Recent Posts
- Oz and Woes
- John Raven Stacks the Deck
- Chicken Soup for the Socially Inept: Flirting for Magicians
- The Off by One Principle (Not That One)
- A Hot Rod in My Drunken Fist
- Shuffling for Virtual Audiences: Free, Fair, and Fully Fraudulent
- The Theatre Behind the Fold
- On Weight and Touch
- Chicken Soup for the Socially Inept: Narrative Ease
- Justifying the Vanishing Deck’s Leftover Joker
- I Hate “In & Of Itself”
- Rich Man’s Which Hand
- Hanging for Later
- Stop Shtooping Steve Sheraton (or, A Joyful $1)
- Hey, Doxxing Isn’t Cool, Actually
- Get Rid of the Get-Ready
- An Actual Hello From the New Girl
- The “Creativity” Discourse
- Commenting Works Again!
- The Glossary, or ‘We cannot eliminate the root causes of codes by magicians, but Oval can.’
- Support the Heck Out of Craig Petty
- Tips for a Bigger Clock
- Clockwork Apple
- Odds and Ends #10: The Perfect 10/10 Trick
- Air Remixed
- Odds and Ends #9… …#9… …#9…
- A Magifest 2026 Retrospective
- The Day The Pedophile (Un)subscribed
- The Transport Peek
- Reader Mail Number Four: Can You Believe There’s Even More?
- I Spent 25 Dollars, and All We Got Was This Lousy Comment
- The Extreme Workout Universal Presentation
- New Year’s Comments and 2026 Plans
- Franklin Assumes Dominion Over All (Things Oval) In 2026
- A Color Coded, Tailor Fitted Effect
- Let’s Move False Shuffles Out of the Grey
- The Berglas Effect That Got Away
- The Loaded Lightning Principle
- How We Generate The Best Anagrams Around
- Making Your Anagrams Commute
- Toward Better Progressive Anagrams
- Announcing Anagram August (And Presenting A Trainer)
- 21 Savant (Degaffing Petty and Barnes)
- Bits and Bobs #2: The SUMS Out
- Let’s Talk to Invisible People
- In Defense of Lecture Patter
- My Cheap Uncle: A Bank Night Presentation
- Further Notes on Halal Magic
- Phantom at the Magic Festival
- Halal Magic
- Bits and Bobs #1: On Realism and Reality
- Spaced Out Tarot
- Reassembling the Woman Sawed in Half
- Last Minute Thoughts on Blackpool
- How To Spend Your Time At A Magic Convention
- Odds and Ends #8: The Burgle Ass Effect
- Notes on the Number Forcing Stack
- New Year, New E-Mail
- The James Hydrick Presentation, or Amateur Telekinesis
- Bricking Around with Drew Perry’s “Bricked”
- Holiday Hiatus and Schedule Scuttling
- Conducting Trains and Bones
- Excessive Errata, Non-Jerry Edition
- Zen and the Art of EmotiPsychic Maintenance
- Constructing Your Own Matrix Force
- Cut Your Nails
- Decoding the Matrix Multi-Force
- The Magic Oval 101
- The Annual Company Picnic (In Lieu of Bonuses) Part 1
- Odds and Ends #7: The One About Asian Competitions
- The Poor Man’s WikiTest Approach
- A Review of Michael Kras’s Synthesis & Secrets
- Meeting of the Masterminds
- To Put Too Fine a Point on It
- The Zen of Magic: Avoiding Method Overloading
- Double Blind Control, or Move Them With Your Mouth
- Memorability: A Misguided Proxy Metric
- I Was Wrong About Memorability in Card Magic
- Mnemonic Possession: The Arc of History Bends Towards Oblivion
- Spectators as Mirrors
- No One Is Keeping Your Souvenirs
- Odds and Ends #6: Electric Boogie Licks
- History in Flames: Why Magic Needs Public Museums Now
- Reader Mail #4: The Benefits of Not Using the Same Decks
- The Stripper Fakes A Breather
- Prisoners Passing the Pat Downs
- Banachek’s Salad: Eggplant Is the New Broccoli
- Taking a Peek to the Cinemas
- In Memoriam of Katakura Yuichi, a Japanese Underground Legend
- Thinking Through Methods, Pt. 2
- Thinking Through Methods, Pt. 1
- Oops, Private Post Fixed, and An Unscheduled Update
- “Sorry, I Have To Ditch This”
- Why Do People Hate Crazy Sam’s Mind?
- Magic Mirror on the Wall, Who Has the Fairest Dribble of All?
- Curse You, Andy
- Easter Errata, and a Schedule Shift
- The Forbidden Library: A Prelude
- The Chinese Knockoff: A Presentation For Obvious Gimmicks and Other Things
- Sharing A Thank You