Intensely Magic

New Address

2007-09-04T17:49:00.001-05:00

I’m back and business and moving to Wordpress, which will be more reliable and, very simply, a better platform.

I just opened it and it’s a little lame, but you’re welcome to come by.

The address is:

http://www.intenselymagic.com

Take care.........

The Genii Cafe

2007-04-02T16:27:00.001-05:00

There’s an interesting discussion on the Genii Forum that deserves some attention. It started with the revelation the the Cafe’ actually deletes posts. SURPRISE!! Of course they do as any other forum does.

As usual with the Cafe’, it’s the way they do things, not what they do. I’ve often wondered why the Cafe’ can produce such strong emotions. There’s the usual array of Internet ass holes and forum maggots always willing to talk down to those of lesser standing, but that’s the Internet – unfortunately.

I believe that deep within most of us there’s a desire for fairness among ourselves and the Cafe’s let’s the bullies run wild and fairness is the very last thing on their minds. I don’t accept that the fat ass owner can do totally as he pleases - there’s a morality issue here and for one who spews the amount of piety that he does, I can only assume he’s a hypocrite of the first order.

Another thing that I found interesting about the Genii posts was the number of people the agree with me that the Chief of Staff is a DICK with a capital D. Look at this:

Is there any wonder he has plenty of time on his hands? A pitiful little man that seems to get his kicks from abusing people…. and he has the nerve to show a picture of himself as a doting grandfather.

Take care.........

The Layman

2007-03-08T10:57:00.001-06:00

From the magician’s dictionary (apparently):

lay·man (lā'mən)
n.

1. One of the lowest forms of the species homo sapiens. Recognizeable by the inability to show even the most elemental powers of reasoning or observation. Frequently observed to be conspicuously drooling and unable to operate a towel to wipe it off.
2. On object of pity and derision by higher forms of life, such as a magician.

Interesting, the real world sees things much differently:

Humans are also noted for their desire to understand and influence the world around them, seeking to explain and manipulate natural phenomena through religion, science, mathematics, philosophy and mythology. This natural curiosity has led to the development of advanced tools and skills; humans are the only known species to build fires, cook their food, clothe themselves, and use numerous other technologies. (Wikipedia)

Every time I hear the it just blows right by laymen, I want to scream. Just because someone is too nice to call your hand on the transparency of your latest miracle, doesn’t mean they were fooled for an instant! Make no mistake – if magic doesn’t fool it isn’t magic. Mystery is the only reason for magic. That doesn’t mean there can’t be elements of comedy and intrigue. Certainly clever and interesting patter is one of the core ingredients of good magic, but if people aren’t saying – how in the H… did he do that, then you’ve wasted your time!

Again, I must point you to b d erlands blog and today’s entry entitled Lucifer's Lawyer: Downplaying the Process. It’s brilliant. The essay studies considerations in making your magic mystifying – hiding the secret and, thereby, avoiding exposure and embarrassment. He covers the bases pretty darn well.

While he spends some time with tension and relaxation, I wish he would have emphasised framing as practised by magical geniuses like David Williamson. They are close relatives, but there are differences.

I also wish he would have used a larger font, underlined and put in bold the VERY SPARINGLY when he talked about the use of the magician in trouble plot and the multiple climax. I can think of very few times that I’ve ever bought the magician made a mistake bit and I’m quite sure very few watching it did either. Those few occasions were when a piece of the torn newspaper accidentally fell to the ground unnoticed by the magician and the restored paper was missing that piece. I also recall a bit where Lance Burton failed to notice that he dropped something in his original act and all worked out, but these are the very small minority.

The multiple climax is great, when in context. Look at Mike Close’s Dr. Strangetrick for a sterling example. Most of the time, I hear your card is the seven of spades AND my ring is on a different finger. Huh!?!?!?

Enough of my prattle – check out the essay. I should be required reading.

Take care.........

i/m in BlogLand

2007-03-06T09:43:00.001-06:00

These are, in no way, attempts at reviewing other magic blogs. I haven’t got the talent or temperament for that. These snapshots are nothing more than pointing those blogs that may be worthy of your attention.

b. d. erland's blog

I’ve never heard of the author – something which goes both ways, I’m sure. He’s from South Korea and the blog is fairly new and still has a lot of energy and vitality.

You’ll find a great collection of videos available. If your an Internet junkie, you will have seen most, if not all, of them, but it’s great to have them all in one place. His reviews are the best and most complete of any site that I know of.

My favorite features are the frequent essays. The recent multi part series titled Thoughts On Exposure should be required reading for all magicians. It’s an unfortunate title for some very provocative material.

Keep it up b. d. – whoever you are.

Take care.........

Guest of the month

2007-03-05T16:29:00.001-06:00

This month the Cafe’ was to have Jerry Andrus as the Honored Guest. The section started out with the usual welcome from Mein Brooks. This was followed by the usual array of magicians kissing his ass in absentia – each trying to out do the other is showing what close personal friends they were with ol’ Jer. It was more pathetic than usual.

Personally, I wanted to ask if he was ever going to send the book I bought and paid for over 30 years ago. He never even gave me the courtesy of a simple reply. It was damn expensive to a young man back then.

Andrus didn’t fulfill his commitment due to illness. Frankly, I don’t give a damn!

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

I guess I’m getting……

too fucking old! Today, I went to TigerDirect to pick up a case fan – I had run out. You walk in the door and they spit on you – if you ask for help they piss all over you. You wait forever to check out and then get a body cavity search before you can leave.

The amazing thing is they are very busy. No matter how I try, I can’t treat my customers that way, but it seems to be the only way to make money today. Oh – and I paid 50% more for the fan than I normally sell them for.

It could be worse

2007-03-02T11:28:00.001-06:00

Drivel & Drool

Be thankful

When we blow something all we have to do is wipe a little egg off of our red face, smile and move on.

Others aren’t so lucky:

What's in your pocket?

2007-03-01T22:02:00.001-06:00

I know the easy answer is Billy McComb’s PLUMS, but I’m talking about the items that are always available when someone finds out you’re a magician and says show me something. You must have something available. No excuse will do. Off hand, here are a few tricks – easy to carry, angle proof and foolers:

Wonderland Bill
Crazy Man’s Handcuffs
Linking Pins
Scotch & Soda
Bill Transposition
The Pothole Trick (I think it’s worth carrying a punch)

There are surely others, but the list of any time, anywhere is pretty short when you think about it.

Other ideas?

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

R.I..P. Magic Friday

I’ve written before that I considered Jamie Grant’s Magic Friday to be one of the few things worth reading in Blobbo’s Magic Site. Since Jamie accepted a position as a columnist for a new magazine, MF has been reduced to once a month or so and, frankly, since that announcement he’s pretty much just mailed it in.

The last installment was particularly uninspired. It seems the product was one from his new boss and, of course, it received 10/10. You will find some of his other posts on the Cafe followed by that clown that puts MBA under his signature – as if that was something to be proud of! Guess what – the CEO of Black’s Magic – an incestuous little circle for sure.

To bad – another good thing bites it.

Brain Dump!

2007-02-16T19:46:00.001-06:00

Whatever happened to Steve Pellegrino?

Has anyone heard from, his holiness, Stephen Youell?

I was wrong about Paul Chosse

I'm still right about Jabba and the Cafe' crew.

Paul Kozak is a PUTZ!

The Internet is slowly, but surely, destroying the magic community as many of us have known it. We're much, much poorer because of it.

Denny Haney declared the Egg Bag to be magic's perfect trip. I tend to agree.

I need to take the time and energy to learn a stacked deck. I need to just do it!!!

Why is classic palming a coin so damn difficult?

Why does gospel magic attract so many goof balls and rotten magicians. This isn't a religious comment - just the opposite actually. They do NO ONE any good.

Have you notice the Cafe' blog section recently? Makes me seem downright regular.

Bob Kohler writes the best copy since Jeff Busby.

I miss the Magic Circle Jerk.

Take care.........

Finally! A reason to do the 20th Century Bra trick

2007-02-15T15:40:00.001-06:00

News

Sigh

Carmen Electra Brings Magical Sex Appeal to New Vegas Show Vegas Pop, NV Klok (left) is one of the entertainment world's leading stage magicians. He regularly performs with some of Europe's showbusiness' biggest names and is ...

Take care.........

Le Grand David Celebrates 30 Years!

2007-02-15T15:12:00.001-06:00

News

Magic milestone: Le Grand David and his company celebrate 30 years onstage
Now that’s impressive. I believe you’ll enjoy the article.

Another Category

2007-02-15T15:05:00.001-06:00

OK, OK! I know it looks like a picture of the Cafe’ moderators dispensing their justice, but it isn’t. This is our new icon for our technology section. Magicians, it seems, are more attuned to technology than most any group I can think of. Computers are my business and I run across cool things virtually every day that would be of interest to many of our readers. I hope you enjoy it.

Our first is a link – Open Source as Alternative. Increasingly, I find myself using free software and, believe it or not, it’s not primarily driven by cheapness. Commercial software is becoming increasingly crappy with the outsourcing to Bangladesh or some other forsaken country. Add the TOTAL lack of support and the growing use of activation and other copy protection schemes and it’s crapola with a capital K. Give Open Source a try. You’ll be presently surprised.

Take care.........

My Favorite Magician

2007-02-13T16:04:00.000-06:00

News

Without a doubt – David Williamson is the best at what he does:

Greene County native creates magic in corporate America
Dayton Daily News (subscription), OH - Feb 8, 2007

David Copperfield might have walked through the Great Wall of China, but David Williamson once turned his own hocus-pocus on the Far East — he made the ...

New Feature

2007-02-13T10:19:00.001-06:00

It seems like a lot of blogs are doing little more than regurgitating various news feeds. That’s fine if that’s all you want, but I feel it’s a cheap way to do it.

Anyway, I’ve added a third section to the i/m blog where we’ll report ongoing news, if it seems worthwhile.

That gives is 3 sections. The main section which is the core of the blog – Drivel & Drool where I sound off and have an opportunity to act stupid and News where we will screen and report worthwhile or interesting happenings.

I hop you enjoy it.

Take care.........

News

I Really Hate To See This Happening

Magic shop gone in the blink of an eye
Palm Beach Post, FL - 9 hours ago

At Mr. A's Magic Shop in a flea market near Palm Springs, the magicians will show you. They help amateurs master the secrets sold there. ...

...and the winner is

2007-02-12T17:25:00.001-06:00

Man, I hate PR releases – especially the financial type, where the MBA’s and CPA’s are at their gut wrenching best. This one would knock a buzzard off a shit wagon:

Press Release Source: Barclay Road, Inc.

New Book Causing Wizards to Cast Their Spells Monday February 12, 9:00 am ET Free Speech Versus Magic Secrecy

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Barclay Road, Inc. (Pink Sheets: BCYR - News) has a new book, soon to be published by book division, Lifetime Books "Magic secrets of David Blaine: The street magician revealed" written by Herbert L. Becker follows on the very successful 1995 Lifetime Books publication, "All the Secrets of Magic Revealed."

Publication of the David Blaine secrets book has been pushed off until 2008 for a couple of reasons: first, demand for pre-release was greater than first anticipated and secondly, concern for revealing how street magicians perform their feats might cause pandemonium in the market place….. etc. etc. etc.

Oh, I get it – you’re delaying the release because it is so popular?! Also, you’re concerned about general welfare. C’mon – you guys would peddle your mother like a cheap street whore for the right price.

An easy winner of the i/m Golden Pooh award.

Take care.........

Balloons!

2007-02-12T13:08:00.001-06:00

I’m jealous. The only thing I can make in balloons is a snake. Some of these guys are incredible.

Take care.........

"Time" Is On Our Side - Ernie Haase

2007-02-12T12:00:00.001-06:00

Drivel & Drool

I Found This Compelling

"Time" Is On Our Side - Ernie Haase

When your soul is hungry you never know what fresh and soul honoring blessing or lesson is waiting for you right around the proverbial corner; and sometimes it's from the most unlikely places!

I was listening to an oldies station on the radio and a song came on by the Rolling Stones that said "Time Is On My Side." I sang along, I knew the words! Oh no, I guess my fundamental upbringing could not monitor me all the time. I must have listened to some "worldly music" at some point to retain these words, but it did get me to thinking about "time."

We've all heard the saying, "the good things in life take "time," and it's true. There's no other way around it, it takes "time" to build or create anything of quality and value. It takes time to create a painting, a song, a garden. It takes time to build character, trust, a relationship. These things don't happen overnight, and would we really appreciate it if they did? In this busy world of ours we have so little "time," but "time" can really be on our side. We need to take some "time" to let our hungry souls be fed and not be filled up with so much stuff between the "Sabbaths" in our lives.

The other day I read about a man who went to stay at a weekend retreat where only monks lived. They showed the man to his room and before leaving him to experience the solitude they said, "Please contact us if you need anything and we will be happy to show you how to live without it!"

The things that matter most in our lives take "time" to nourish. We need to learn how to say "no" and not feel guilty about it. We need to take "time" out for ourselves, our family, our friends, and above all our Heavenly Father. We need to realize that the demands and expectations put on us by other people are not our problem, we need "time" and if they cannot understand our position, just smile and move on!

I was talking with a friend the other day who had a great business deal to present me, and it was indeed enticing. A couple of years ago I would have jumped right in with both feet and called my family to tell them about the good news of how God just blessed me. (Isn't it funny how much credit God gets for the good and the bad!) It's been a hard lesson for me to learn, but I am learning to wait before I jump. After talking a bit and hearing my friend out I had to say "no." Although he accepted my answer, I could tell he was a little surprised by it. Fortunately he felt close enough to ask me the reason for my answer. I told him that it had nothing to do with him, the proposal, or money, it had to do with "time." I told him if he could buy me another day on the calendar I would consider it, but at this "time" in my life I have to say "no."

We need to learn how to say "no" and not let others make us feel guilty about it. The things that matter most in our lives take "time" to nourish. We need to take "time" out for ourselves, our family, our friends, and above all our Heavenly Father. We need to realize that the demands and expectations put on us by other people are not our problem, we need "time" and if they cannot understand our position, just smile and move on! I think at times we're even scared to say "no" but sometimes we just have to!

My friend graciously understood and we have talked since then and I'm glad about that. That's the measure of a true friendship. I think we've all had the experience of feeling a little used by someone; someone you think is your friend, but eventually find out they were your friend only because of what they thought you could do for them. That's probably why we may sometimes be afraid to say "no." Finding out they're not truly your friend is a bitter pill to swallow, but a necessary one, for when you find out who your real friends are they become even more of a blessing.

But when I think about these friends who are not really our friends, I have to ask myself, haven't we all been guilty of this at one time or another? We call on our Heavenly Father when the going gets tough, but when things are back on track we don't call anymore, that is, until things get rough again. Don't you think that God must feel a little like we feel when we've been used by someone? It really has made me more aware of the need to take the "time" to call on my Heavenly Father just to talk, even when I don't need anything! Of course He wants us to make our requests known, but how it must please Him to hear the voice of His children just "checking in" during the normal activities of the day to say hello, thank you, how do you feel about this, and most of all, I love you! I know how good it makes me feel when someone does this for me, and who deserves it more than our Heavenly Father.

We all need to take the "time" to be good stewards of the talents and gifts the good Lord has given each one of us; and we need to take the "time" to use them for His glory to the best of our ability. Our Heavenly Father did not call us to live our lives by the expectations of others nor in bondage to the demands of "time."

Remember, you can't go back again, so roll down the window as you ride down the road of life and breathe in these chances to love and live life wide open!
You will find that "time" truly is on your side, exactly the way God intended it to be!

Sleight Toolbox

2007-02-12T11:25:00.001-06:00

I've been trying to put together a sleight toolbox for beginner and advanced magicians.

Some of the members of the local magic club have suggested we devote some of our meetings to classes on basic sleights. Both cards and coins. My first pass for beginner’s card sleights is:

Simple Force – Like a Cross Cut Double Undercut False Cut – In The Hands False Cut – On The Table False Shuffle – In The Hands Double Lift

Undoubtedly, I’ll be using Paul Wilson’s Royal Road to Card Magi DVDs for guidance, as well as the Kaufman DVD. I find them both greatly under appreciated resources.

I’ll keep you posted as I progress.

Take care.........

This Is Good News

2007-02-11T13:29:00.001-06:00

Somehow, I thought we had lost Scot some time back, but I saw his review of the Columbus Magifest referenced on another blog:

Scot's Magical Mystery Tour: MagiFest 2007 Day 1 - Thursday.

This was always one of my favorites. I’ll being adding him back to my links ASAP.

Take care.........

If It Wasn't So Sad

2007-02-11T11:47:00.001-06:00

Drivel & Drool

Thanks George

This Article about the magician that closed down an airport for hours when those geniuses at TSA discovered his butane tank should be funny, but it’s not. Yeah, I know the guy’s an idiot for not declaring it and getting the rules, but this sort of over reaction is absurd.

According to the article, the police kicked down the door of a sibling’s house and closed the airport for hours. I know that the politically correct thing to say is that I’m just glad they were there doing their jobs. Bull shit!

The last time I heard of a major closing was when they found chicken soup in somebody’s luggage. This closed LAX for hours! Don’t you feel safer?

We are reaping years of our President , George F. Bush II, saturating us with terror, terror, terror. Of course we need to be careful and vigilant, but this son of a bitch has turned us into a nation of cowering weenies. Add this to all of the security experts we now have (greedy refugees from Y2K) that have a lot to gain from fear and you have a general destruction of our way of life.

I haven’t got any answers – just frustration!

Magic Clubs

2007-02-10T14:38:00.001-06:00

I spent Tuesday evening at one of the local magic clubs. We had a good time. It was more like a bunch of guys getting together for a session.

No question, though, the group is aging and there is no new blood. This particular club is devoid of the politics that infect so many groups and we still have a total inability to attract the younger crowd. As I understand it, we’re not alone.

Has the Internet totally destroyed the need for clubs. Personally, there’s nothing like personal interaction, but I seem to be in an increasingly small group that feels this way. Yeah, I know that magic clubs have historically been populated with a large percentage of jack asses, but they thrived regardless of that. What’s the difference?

I wish I knew!

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

The Old Stuff

I’ve often said that the value of a book, prop or DVD can only be determined after some substantial period of time has passed. You only have to look at the furor surrounding the release (and pre-release) of tricks like The Black Widow or Electric Touch and compare it to the number for sale at very cheap prices now to realize that very few miracles have lasting power.

When was the last time you added something new to your working repertoire?

I’m becoming increasingly convinced that Prohibition is one new item that will make it. It may even, someday, wear the classic moniker. I strongly recommend it to you. It’s an impromptu cap in bottle trick. Impromptu is not really the right word here, as it does require preparation and a gimmick, but it is well worth it.

I’m guessing that this one will be a long term keeper.

Get A Room!!

2006-11-26T21:53:00.001-06:00

Every month the Cafe' has a special guest. This month was some guy that works in a minor show at one of the smaller Vegas hotels. He brags that he's worked 3 years straight. Could be - he obviously hasn't had to take time off to attend a MENSA meeting (or even learn to use a spell checker).

I found him crass and, at times, just plain mean to the sycophants kissing his pompous ass.

Randy Wakeman managed to grovel the most:

Paul Kozak is one of most entertaining, talented individuals working today. The Great Kozak has been around, paid his dues, and not just as good as he used to be—he just keeps getting better all the time. Kozak is a true talent.
For years, Paul was the consummate comedy club headliner. I’ve seen Kozak rule the room: from the moment of his first gleeful cackle, he is instantly watchable and likeable. You can believe “it’s gonad get hot tonight” when the Great Kozak flashes his playful smile along with a menacing, slightly evil command to “Watch me work!” When Kozak grabs the stage, it is action, fire, music, magic, and most of all … fun.
It has taken a lot of years, and a lot of hard work from Paul to both achieve and maintain this level of quality mayhem, but he has sure done it. When it comes to knowing the ins and outs of the comedy club gig, Paul knows it from all sides—and knows how to make it rock. Anyone thinking they’ve got what it takes to make it in the comedy circuit world would do well to seek the counsel of Paul—he can tell you what you need to do, and what you shouldn’t do like very few people can.
The Kozak experience has long been “instant party.” From the time Kozak lets it go, those around him are in for quite a ride: a ride of fun, surprise, and action. I’ve seen it many, many times—whether just before catching a plane, or lighting up the stage. When Kozak wants to, he can fill the room like so very few performers can. Everybody likes him; the chicks always dig him. Had Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons paid a bit closer attention to Kozak, they wouldn’t have had to slather on all that make-up. Paul Kozak defines “Headliner” to me. Few can follow him; no one in their right mind would attempt such a precarious maneuver. Part mayhem, part magic, all fun, all entertaining—the Pyrotechnic Prince of Prestidigitation is Paul Kozak.
Recent years have brought the Kozak beast to Las Vegas, where his talent continues to glisten, with the addition of Paul’s highly tuned “toe-throw.” It is Vegas, baby, and Kozak is a part of it. I watch Paul do his thing whenever I get the chance.
Earlier this year, I was brought to Las Vegas for a trade show. I make it a point to visit with my good friend, Frank Zak, and of course Paul Kozak if at all possible. The “World’s Greatest Magic Show” at the Greek Isles is invariably a terrific show, with a well-balanced line-up that is just plain outstanding. Kevin James, as you might imagine, always does a superlative job—and closes the show.
The thread that keeps it all together is Paul Kozak, through multiple costume changes and toe-throws. This must be a new experience for Paul, accustomed to making his own rules as the perennial headliner. Now, we have scripting, timing, and a Las Vegas audience counting on Paul to keep it all moving, keep it all fresh, and keep it all happening. Paul doesn’t just handle it, he excels at it. Kozak shines as brightly as ever—there really is something to be said for talent, after all.

It requires less and less to be a hero, I guess.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

I Can't Stand It Any More!!

So I won't try. I really tried to lay off the Cafe', but there's just so much material there and things that need to be said.

For instance, take this quote from fearless leader:

I'm shocked that you would be so bold as to complain. I let you in my house, you sit on my couch, then open my refrigerator and complain about the free food.

Now let's examine that statement, forgetting the obvious rudeness, smugness and intolerable pomposity.

1. Can you imagine sitting on THAT couch - covered in french fries and blue-green remnants of old food. In addition, how could you possibly sit and not fall into the 2 giant cheek impressions left by his enormous bulk. It gives me the willies....like drowning in greasy quicksand.

2. Complain about the free food!! Do you really think there is an unchewed morsel in that house? I seriously doubt it.

Old Guys Unite

2006-09-27T14:50:00.000-05:00

Accuse me of age nepotism if you must, but I just finished spending a few hours with the best set of DVDs I’ve seen in a long time.

Danny Tong has issued a 2 DVD set with the most practical routines for a restaurant type worker that I have ever seen. Like me, Danny is old as dirt and I’m sure much of what he has to say will be ignored because of that. What a shame.

I strongly suggest anyone study his Egg Bag, Chop Cup and Sponge Ball routines. They show what years of performing and perfecting can do.

Much of the material can be performed without a table which is always a plus.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out a couple of negatives. Danny does use a couple of stale lines that I could certainly do without. Also, the reality is that he has put one DVD worth of material on 2 disks, but that seems to be the norm recently.

Pick these up – you won’t be sorry.

Here’s what is on the disks:

VOLUME I:

Card To Wallet: A simple no palm approach to get sign "card to wallet" effect.

Bill Matrix (coin assembly): This simple method not only produces the coin assembly effect, it provides two additional effects. (That of a color change and production of a large coin.) However, its main function is to get money on the table. One simple adjustment and you are reset.

Sponge Balls: With 2 visible balls you will perform several effects, including the classic in the spectators hands.

Ring Flight/Ring on Stick: A very strong combination of two classics that make a great closer.

Bonus:
Matrix (additional)

Bills & Bowls: It’s the classic Benson bowl routine done with borrowed bills and a sugar bowl. Like Bill Matrix, the routine was designed to get money on the table.

VOLUME II:

Malini Egg Bag: This 3 phase routine with spectator ends with the production of a glass liquid. Joe Lefler said, "This routine has to be seen to be believed".

Chop Cup: A short, fast routine with this prop that does not promote a gambling theme.

Card on the Ribbon: A slight change in the presentation of this great Jack Chanin trick creates a second effect and leaves you clean.

Thompson’s Aces: As an opener for a card routine, this in the hands, ace production would be hard to beat. From a shuffled deck, you will produce the four aces, one at a time, while cutting the cards. Combine this production sequence with "Christopher’s Red and Black Aces" (Daley’s Last Trick) and you will have an easy to follow routine that does not require the spectator to take a card.

Ropes: A rope routine that runs the gamut from C & R rope to Professor’s Nightmare to a 3 to 1 restoration. A complete act on it’s own.

Bonus:
Jack: A minor change in this old trick adds another laugh and extends the climax.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Hello….Hello.…….Hello.……Hello……….

It seems like the magic blog world is now firmly in the throes of death. I went to clean up my links section today and virtually everyone had disappeared or hadn’t been touched in months.

When you click on Magic Enigma you get:

Now I’m the first to admit that I would much rather stare at a hot blonde with serious yabos than read a magic blog, but I realized on a recent trip to Las Vegas that man cannot live by breasts alone. At the end of 4 days I was actually tired of hooters of every shape and size. Hard to believe I know.

I miss the wide variety of blogs – even the disputes as long as no one took them too seriously. Several of the older, well established blogs that I didn’t link to for personal reasons seemed to have tanked – others seem to be drawing their final breaths. I hope it doesn’t continue.

I know readership is way off and comments – even nasty ones, are as rare as truth from the White House. Certainly irregular postings must bear some of the blame, but I wonder if it is something that has just run its course.

Time will tell…….

On being clumsy

2006-09-23T11:06:00.000-05:00

Let’s define clumsy:

gawky: lacking grace in movement or posture;
awkward: not elegant or graceful in expression;
bungling: showing lack of skill or aptitude;

Does this sound like the last magician you saw? Pete Rose will give you 4:1 odds that it does……

There’s a discussion on Fat City about purposely dumbing down a performance for layman, so they think you aren’t skillful. Unless you’re performing for Cafe regulars or your audience looks like this:

nobody thinks you are creating these miracles by magic!

I’ve often thought that most, if not all, of the look clumsy proponents have no choice. They’re skilless oafs, incapable of giving a competent performance, so they excuse it with this lame excuse. Hell fellers, Dick F. Cheney makes better excuses than that!

Thinks about it for a moment. When you present a magic trick, it can be explained by ANY audience in one of 4 ways:

Real magic
Some sort of inhuman force
Skill
Some sort of gimmick available at the local shop

Anyone with an IQ of 55 or greater will probably dismiss the first 2 as improbable. That leaves skill or mechanical trickery.

What impression do you want to leaves with your audience? I would think most would prefer the former. This is what elevates the art. Unfortunately most performances are the latter. Couple that with a clumsy performance, contrived or not – add a few stale jokes and you take magic down another undeserved notch.

If you insisted on the clumsy approach, call Curly and Moe and see if they want to do a Stooges revival or get a job with FEMA, but stay away from magic!

Take care.........

John - Verse 3

2006-09-10T16:42:00.000-05:00

This is a tough review to write – at least it is for me. In every magician’s development there are certain seminal moments, events or happenings that exert a strong influence throughout his magical development. The Book of John was one such point for me.

This book, like Lorayne’s Close Up Card Magic, created an excitement in the reader. It made you want to learn the tricks and both have continued to be major influences years later. When Mendoza wrote his second book, it was apparent, even to him, that he had spilled his guts on the 1st one and had nothing left to say, but the first one was apparently a good seller and he struck while the iron was hot. Not that unusual.

Over 2 years ago John recorded a session for L&L and it has now been released in a 3 volume set simply titled – John Mendoza – My Best.

I don’t understand why it takes so long to bring these DVDs to market after the shoot, but it does. Unless Falanga is using the criminally stupid for editing, that can’t be the problem. It just may be the timing he chooses. Anyway, they’re out now.

We’ve heard little from John over the years since The Book Of John. A pamphlet or 2 and I recall a forgettable book on someone else's magic. He’s a regular seller on eBay and participant on Brooks’ site also, but that’s about it.

I’ve watched the videos a couple of times and I must say, I’m underwhelmed. I’ve seen worse, but I expected more. For one thing, I guess, I’m not a fan of lap work. I think it is grotesquely obvious to even the layman – the simpletons apparently most perform for. John stared into his lap over and over, apparently checking to see if his wang was still attached. It was disconcerting.

His approach was less than low key – he seemed bored shitless and, frankly, his chops were less than I expected. The explanations were more than adequate without being tedious.

I get tired of people excusing crap under the layman love it banner. John keeps beating us over the head with how this is his living and magic isn’t a hobby or blah blah blah. OK, John, that’s fine, but I’ll bet you have no problem taking money from the hobbyists you so publicly disdain!

Check out his post on the Cafe. If you read his stuff for long – including his auction descriptions, I believe you’ll come to the conclusion this guy is a Dick. I’ve seen worse, but a Dick, nonetheless. I’ve never understood guys jumping on the Cafe to defend their products, but they do. Admittedly, none are in Lorayne’s class - He’s on the Mount Rushmore of Dicks – right next to Rumsfeld.

Conclusion – I’m glad I bought them. Surprise! I think there is a lot to be learned from a Mendoza. His choice of material has made him a living for a lot of years and I was glad to see how some of these tricks, that I read about so many years ago, really looked. There was no real flow to the show – this may have been the fault of the editor. Much of it looked like a disjointed dealer demo. I’m disappointed on many levels, but don’t feel screwed.

Take care.........

Happy Birthday Magic Cafe

2006-09-07T11:48:00.000-05:00

Don’t you know you’d have a hard time finding a morsel of cake at that party!

Take care.........

Required Reading

2006-09-06T17:07:00.000-05:00

Drivel & Drool

Keith Olberman vs Secretary Rumsfeld

This powerful editorial was brought to my attention by PeaceLove recently. I think it is required listening.

I hope no thinking individual questions anymore that George F. Bush is nothing more than a lame lap dog in the Cheney / Rumsfeld regime. Those of us that lived through the Vietnam War have heard all of this before. It was ugly then and it’s uglier now.

2nd Again

2006-08-27T20:01:00.000-05:00

At the risk of sounding like a me too, I want to talk a little about comedy magicians. This idea has been bouncing in my head for a couple of weeks – since I returned from seeing Mac King’s great show.

Dan Mindo at Magic Uncensored is ranting in his latest post about the lame crap we pass off as comedy magic OR, my favorite, entertainment. I couldn’t agree more with his sentiments.

In a recent post, I questioned whether we are doing anyone any good by encouraging the terrible magic and jokes we see at our local clubs. There’s no good way to make it sound like anything but that really blows. It’s tough to do.

There’s no end in sight, unfortunately. I see they’re reissuing the 20th Century Bra. I can hardly wait.

Turning people off to magic one spectator at a time.

To my point. I had the pleasure of watching Mac King with my 2 adult sons. For a change I was proud to be called a magician. You can be funny, entertaining and fool people. No blue material, no cheap lines, just a smooth, professional performance. And…. he was genuinely funny. It’s probably one reason his contract was just extended for 5 years.

I sometimes wonder if these entertainers are stone deaf. Can’t they hear the strained laughter and embarrassed mumbling? Can’t they understand that this is pity applause?

Interestingly, magic, when done well, has an element of humour and whimsy. You don’t have to be Chuckles the clown. Learn to perform quality effects – well routined and develop a quality and truly entertaining script. It can be fun. Let’s move on from Robert Orben – it wasn’t that good when it was fresh and like old fish it really stinks now.

Take care.........

A trick I could do without!

2006-07-27T15:13:00.000-05:00

I see Hocus Pocus is selling Jumping Stool.

I don’t believe I want to see that. It could get messy!

Take care.........

I'm Proposing A New Federal Agency - The FMA

2006-07-22T17:24:00.000-05:00

As an old line conservative, I’m generally against government intervention into anything.

Your government (I no longer claim it) has rules that tell corporate America how much rodent dung and insect parts they can leave in our food. And…. as I’m sure anyone reading this knows, rules governing every conceivable aspect of our lives. Well, what the heck, if they’re going to try and protect us, we need a Federal Magic Administration to prevent atrocities like this from reaching the public:

To those that haven’t seen this, I can assure you that watching it is no less painful than finding out all of those brown things floating in your beef barley soup aren’t beef!

Kevin Parker has released 4 one trick DVDs which sell for $25 – $30, I believe. I’ve only seen this one and I can assure you, that’s a statement that won’t change. The trick is something you throw into a set a lecture notes as something to play with. It has a viewing angle of about 15 degrees and is impractical for repeating.

The production values for the DVD are ZERO. Apparently shot with a single home camera in the local park. I can forgive all of that if the content had any worth at all, but it doesn’t. I felt like it ran for 3 or 4 hours, but it was probably more like 10 minutes. (I’m not going back to time it – life’s too short.)

You do get the obligatory street demonstrations before the local space queens and street bums. Even the women aren't worth a second look – just like this DVD.

Save your shekels here folks.

Take care.........

Something Else You Might Like

2006-07-13T13:28:00.000-05:00

No raves or glowing recommendation here, just something for your consideration.

I should tell you that I’m a huge fan of David Williamson and his magic. His 3 previous DVDs are required additions to any serious close up performers library, as is the Williamson’s Wonders book. He is one of the VERY few magicians that are truly funny and possess world class chops.

The is a new release, as it is converted from a prior video. He does 4 tricks and then his Rocky Raccoon. The tricks are OK, but suffer from the amateurish production. The reason to get this is to see him perform, not learn tricks. His nearly throw away remarks on staging and timing are the real hidden jewels here.

I do think he does one of the best top changes I’ve ever seen and this DVD should be on your shelf for that lesson, if nothing else.

If you’re a David Williamson fan, you’ll want to add this.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

No Pit In Hell Is Hot Enough!

A friend sent this today.

By Robert J. Samuelson
Thursday, July 13, 2006
The Washington Post

Delinquency Of the CEOs

But they have contrived a moral code that exempts them from self-control -- a moral code that justifies grabbing as much as they can. They unduly enrich themselves at shareholders' expense and set a bad leadership example. Because almost everyone else sees their code as self-serving and selfish, CEOs have undermined their moral standing and their ability to be taken seriously on other issues. They are slowly becoming a threat to the very system they claim to represent.

A Real Magic Bargain

2006-07-11T11:31:00.000-05:00

I stopped by my local magic dealer over the weekend and he actually got me to pull out the credit card and make a major purchase.

I’ve been rather disgusted with a lot of magic props currently available, but once in a while I see something that gives real value.

Jerry O’Connell has been a semi-underground name for a number of years. Many people have considered him the finest magic wallet maker in the business. The wallets were only available from Jerry and certain select dealers. Apparently he has decided to make the items available to a larger audience and your local dealer can now obtain his products through the normal distribution channels. I think there are about 6 items available.

For those that like a Himber Wallet, this one is very well made. Personally, I always thought a Himber Wallet looked exactly like what it is and am surprised that it fools anyone.

I’ve always been fond of card to wallet effects and my favorites are:

Jerry Mentzer’s Mullica Wallet
The Garnier Wallet from The Camirand Academy
The Jennings Wallet from Jeff Buzzbee

Add to that list the Plus Wallet from Jerry O’Connell. This wallet is packed full of features. The ID case makes the envelope nearly passe' and will make a nice addition for the table hopper.

The Wonder Unit could be a nice addition for those performing Shaxon’s Confabulation. I would strongly suggest looking up Ron Wilson’s routine, as well as the original from Ken Brooke. Putting these three together could make someone a real reputation, I believe.

Although I haven’t tried it, the wallet should be fine for Ken Brooke’s Absolutely Impossible. A much overlooked trick.

The biggest surprise was the included DVD. I’ve come to expect DVDs included with tricks to be nothing more than coasters and they aren’t even good at that because of the hole in the middle. This DVD is a gem! Not from a production standpoint, but because the the quality of the information. The DVD is just Craig Dickson sitting at a table with a single camera pointed at him. Craig has used and carried the O’Connell wallets for many years and his knowledge is apparent. The practical tips and advice are invaluable. The wallet also comes with real instructions written by someone who has English as a first language. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a high quality prop with world class instructions like this. (I hate to say it, but that industrial grade prick, Jeff Buzzbee, was the last.)

You do, of course, have to wear a jacket to use this prop, but most of us would be doing so anyway. This is an item that deserves your consideration.

Here’s the advertising poop if you’re interested.

Plus Wallet (Large)
by Jerry O'Connell

This wallet is way ahead of any wallet in the magic world today. Not only is it a practical wallet, equipped to cater for all your everyday needs, it will also perform all the following effects too: “Card to Wallet” “Card to Sealed Envelope” “Card to ID Case” and even more effects using the “No Palm Feature”. All these wonderful effects are cleverly built into the design and will not hinder the wallets everyday use. Removing everything from the zip compartment makes these effects even more stunning and magical.

Everything a magician needs is in this wallet which has been carefully thought out to work without needing a lot of skill.

Included with Wallet:

ID Case - An accessory for the Plus wallets, it fits over the chute tongues, is used instead of an envelope.

Wonder Unit - A small note pad which fits easily into the Plus Wallets to add more stunning effects such as Confabulation and Predicta Lottery Ticket.

Bonus DVD - Basic instructions for Plus Wallet and No Palm Wallet. Also contains PDF files to envelope templates and instructions.

Made from genuine leather.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Good Luck Tom!

Tom Frank's blog, Coming Through The Haze, is certainly one of the most popular magic blogs. I don’t know Tom personally, but anyone that reads his writings must feel some degree of intimacy. Tom has very openly shared his life’s trials and tribulations with divorce, custody issues and life in general. Few of us could be so open.

Tom is moving from Seattle to Los Angeles to be with his new love and I truly hope he finds what he is looking for.

Good luck, Tom – keep in touch.

Recalling the Tom Foolery

2006-07-09T23:09:00.000-05:00

About a 100 years ago, or so, my wife took me to see Tom Mullica at the Tom Foolery in Atlanta. She was, and is, a pretty woman and drew one of the hot seats next to Tom’s close-up area. AS he husband/date I got to tag along and sit next to her.

It was one of the most magical nights I’ve ever experienced. When I discussed the late Tommy Wonder, I pointed out how far he would go to fool the pants off you. Tom Mullica was the same. Although he worked behind the Klem Kadiddlehopper persona, he was a devious performer. He had the added advantage of total control of his surroundings – lights, music, employees, layout – everything.

I can still recall staring at his face while he was stuffing it full of cigarettes and napkins. I knew what was coming, but never saw a thing. They just vanished. Real magic was the only explanation.

I recently picked up Kaufman’s book about Tom’s magic and it brought back wonderful memories, but it, in no way, captured the sheer artistry of the man.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Ken Lay Aftermath

I received several emails, critical of my comment on Ken Lay.

Get this – I make absolutely NO apologies. Ken Lay and his ilk have destroyed hundreds of times more Americans than Osama Bin Laden could ever dream about. At least Bin Laden’s victims came to a quick end, while the victims of the corporate board rooms die a slow and much more painful death than any physical abuse could ever cause. To Ken Lay I say rot in the pits of Hell you lying, stealing bastard. I just hope someone that can be trusted actually sees the body. Believe me, he can afford and is fully capable of a death scam.

A small and somewhat minor PS – While I was writing this, I saw an ad on TV from Chrysler. Now Chrysler is no better or worse than the rest, but they are a good example. They are advertising their cars and how they are better because of the Mercedes merger. Who knows, but the ad says try it for thirty days and if you don’t like it, just bring it back. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?

Do you know what those fuckers have in the fine print on the screen? I’ll tell you what – buyer is responsible for a 5% restocking fee. Restocking fee my ass. Thats well over $1,000 dollars, for their implied 30 day trial….and the sad part – not a single one of those lying corporate bastards will ever understand why this is wrong.

Save room down there for more Ken – you’re far from the only lying, stealing sack of shit in America’s corporate board rooms.

A Sad Reality

2006-07-05T20:05:00.000-05:00

Drivel & Drool

The Son Of A Bitch Got Away With It!

AP -

Kenneth Lay, the founder of Enron Corp. who ascended to the pinnacle of American business only to tumble into disgrace, died of a heart attack on Wednesday. He was 64.

I Didn't Know Tommy Wonder

2006-07-01T13:13:00.000-05:00

Maybe, someday, some famous magician will die that is not a close personal friend of every blogger and poster on the Internet, but I doubt it.

I never saw Tommy Winder perform live and he, sure as hell, never heard of me, but I felt some small connection with him through his L&L DVDs. I’ve often said that you don’t know the value of a book or DVD until you’ve had it for a while. Those that you revisit over and over are the true values. Visions of Wonder are in that class for me.

There is very little that I actually use from the demonstrations. His Two Cup Routine is second only to David Williamson’s, in my estimation, and there’s a sequence there that I’ll probably incorporate. Likewise, his Ambitious Card is different, effective and, actually, magical. A somewhat novel idea for most card tricks.

You don’t have to read this blog long to know how much I abhor silly premises, juvenile stories and stupid presentations under the guise of entertainment. Tommy used none of that, but was he ever entertaining! Tommy, in some respects, reminded me of Del Ray, in that there seemed to be no limit to the lengths he would go to totally knock the socks off the most sophisticated of audiences.

I’ll bet you never heard Tommy say – that just flies past a laymen. Implying that the layman was some simpleton, barely capable of wiping the drool from his chin on a good day. He was out to fool you and fool you badly. That he accomplished and it is his magical legacy and a wonderful legacy it is.

Adios, Tommy Wonder……..

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Independence Day

It’s time for my annual rant that we should just go straight from July3rd to July 5th, as our independence has dwindled to the point of nonexistence. Actually, no one seems to care anyway, so I’ll just say Have a Happy Fourth!

Stop Now and Go Buy This Book!

2006-06-25T21:44:00.000-05:00

I seldom seem to have the time anymore to just sit down and enjoy a magic book – at least that is what I tell myself. As my oldest son is fond of saying, people make time to do the things that are important to them. He’s dead ass right.

Anyway, I spent a couple of hours today with Jim Steinmeyer’s The Conjuring Anthology. This is a compilation of the series that ran in Magic Magazine from 1992 to 2004. There are 85 effects in 75 chapters. It’s a big book of over 500 pages.

Jim Steinmeyer is considered a genius by many that know him. I don’t personally know him, but his writings reflect a great intellect.

I pulled out the April 2006 Magic interview with the author and particularly looked up the items he pointed out as his and his readers’ favorites. What a treat. The Piano Trick with apples and oranges is worth the price – and I SELDOM say that.

This is good stuff!

Take care.........

Say It Ain't So

2006-06-19T10:46:00.000-05:00

I don’t know if this thread on Stalag Fat is true or not, but the thought scares the Hell out of me.

I think these threads are generally started to bring up some of the old venom for past transgressions, but they seldom seem to work. I’ve left no doubt what I think of this clown and the return of his holiness, would not be a good thing.

Take care.........

Happy Birthday to Me

2006-06-19T09:53:00.000-05:00

Drivel & Drool

How to tell it’s time

Today is my birthday and the older we get, the more these occasions are sad affairs, causing us to reflect on our own mortality and realizing that the time someone mercifully throws dirt in our face, is drawing ever nearer.

It’s a fact, that the men in our family tend to go totally nuts before the body gives it up. It’s damn ugly for those around them. There’s NO doubt in my mind that my father would have killed himself if he would have known the pain he caused as his mind rotted away. Not a pretty prospect at all…..

Anyway, I’ve tried to give my boys some clues to know when my time is near. Here’s the current list:

I’m driving a Winnebago
I’m spending time in a mall
They hear me say, That George Bush is one clever son of a bitch
They hear me say, those illegals are just doing jobs Americans won’t do
I laugh at Henry or Nancy
I listen to rap and / or Hip Hop and am not puking my guts out
I invest in the stock market
I think CEOs shouldn’t roast in the hottest pits in Hell

I trust they will take the necessary steps when that time comes.

The Whack Is Back

2006-06-15T14:02:00.000-05:00

If you look in the blog list, you’ll see a familiar name is back – The Magic Whack!

I’ve always enjoyed the whacky one and am glad he’s taken on a second tour of duty.

For those that are unfamiliar with his blog, be warned – some may find the language a little over the top. Personally, I no longer am offended by anything, but I felt compelled to mention it.

Take care.........

Brokeback Cafe

2006-06-11T20:59:00.000-05:00

Drivel & Drool

This is just too easy

I generally stay away from the easy stuff, but I can’t pass this up. Here’s the latest from the infamous MagicChris:

It would be nice if the Café had a gift shop where we could buy things like a Magic Café logo sharpies,Steve Brooks bobbleheads for our cars, etc. Just a suggestion.

Write your own material. I’m not going to do all the work!

Are We Doing Them A Favor?

2006-06-10T17:46:00.000-05:00

I know many of us belong to and regularly attend magic clubs. Personally, I enjoy most of the meetings and the Dick level at most clubs is fairly low, even though we must admit the government mandated minimum, I guess.

A few weeks ago, I was visiting a club and it was member performance night. To put it bluntly, many of them stunk up the room. A giant fart in a contained area. They got the requisite applause and encouragement from the other members.

I know it is damn tough to perform before other magicians, especially for the newbies, but are we doing them a disservice by encouraging terrible performances and choices of material.

I haven’t got an answer. Criticism can be so cruel, but at the same time I hate to let these people loose on the public, denigrating the word magic.

Thoughts?

Take care.........

Thanks to Commentors

2006-06-03T08:34:00.000-05:00

….and an apology.

Either Blogger’s notification system or my SPAM filter wasn’t working properly and I missed approving a series of great comments. I would suggest you look back over the past few weeks and check them out. A blog will never be totally interactive, but input from readers is valuable beyond estimation.

I’m REALLY careful about false positives and I manage all SPAM locally and don’t depend on ISP level controls and I can’t believe I would have missed this many. Anyway, I removed moderation and your comments will immediately post. I monitor the site closely and can remove unwanted SPAM crap very quickly.

The only reason I originally did this was I got really pissed off at some pompous ass and put the restrictions on. A bad decision on my part.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Should We ReBlog the ReBlog?!?!

A little more housekeeping – Speaking of being pissed off, I’m not real happy with this reblog poaching, Fortunately, this little diary was not found worthy, so i/m is not affected at this time. I have looked into establishing my own reblog and it looks like I can save myself a lot of work by just reblogging the reblog(s).

All of the defenders seem to rely on the fact that RSS allows this, so it must be OK and puts the onus on the bloggers to prevent the complete capture of the articles. Pardon me fellers, but kiss my ass! Don’t give me a lesson on RSS, I’ve been working with it longer than any of you apologists could imagine. Spare me the details.

Anyway, for a few weeks I’ve limited the feed here, but that makes if very difficult for those using readers (and I would hope most do). I’ve reverted to a full feed and will deal with any issues if, and when, they arise.

Is Your Boat Rising?

2006-06-02T12:13:00.000-05:00

President John Kennedy is credited with the following statement:

….As they say on my own Cape Cod, a rising tide lifts all the boats..

Does the success, notoriety and exposure of David Blaine and/or Criss Angel help you as a magician?

Personally, I couldn’t be further from either of them. I’m fat, white, old and bald. However, even I get questions and comments regarding their recent TV shows and people seem a little more receptive to magic. The worst possible thing I could do would be try to imitate either of them. It would be a pitiful and pathetic sight, but it does give me a fresh stage to perform.

I think all magicians are better off because of their success.

Take care.........

Someone Gets It Right

2006-05-30T17:54:00.000-05:00

I seldom buy one trick books or one trick DVDs. Generally I feel screwed when I do so and the after market value is pitiful.

I made an exception recently and bought John Born’s book Meant To Be… It is subtitled Principals and Techiques for the Sopisticated Magical Artisite. It is actually an exhaustive treatise on the Any Card At Any Number Plot. You can read a bunch of reviews at Jabba’s magic site, so I won’t redo what’s already been done. Just say – it’s an instant classic in my mind.

What I wanted to point out was Ken Krenzel’s Foreword and his description of John’s magic. I continue to be amazed and the constant denigration of magic in favour of entertainment. This has come to mean use a criss-cross force and then drop your pants so the audience can read the clever tattoo on your ass revealing the card. All in the name of entertainment.

Listen to what Ken writes:

John holds that the magician’s primary goal is to utterly amaze, drop jaws, and elicit audible gasps from your thoroughly bewildered and clueless spectators.

That’s magic, my friends. Don’t fall for the entertainment bromide. It’s an excuse for bad magic.

Take care.........

Integrity! What's that?

2006-05-24T09:04:00.000-05:00

I try to limit commenting on other blogs, because it’s trite and dumb in most cases.

There are instances, however, where I feel the subject matter is so important, that a failure to bring them to your attention would be unfair.

Steve Pellegrino at MagiCentric writes one of the most popular magic blogs and reading it is a must for many of us. Frankly, I disagree with him more often than not, but that’s OK – it’s not his job to please me. He, obviously, spends a lot of time on his posts and. believe me, writing a thoughtful, literate post is not something you don’t just rip off while sitting on the can.

Right now, go and read his post on reblogging. I share his rage. This piss ant blog isn’t worthy of reblogging and that’s fine, but it appears that MagiCentric has supplied most of the content for this new site.

I’m sure Mr. Pellegrino know how to thwart this clown or severely handicap the process, but this is at the expense of all of us that use aggregating readers for our daily blog fix.

As we continue to see our way of life slip into the toilet, it has become very obvious that so much of what we treasured in the past depended on integrity or just doing the right thing. Somehow, somewhere over the past 10 or 15 years all actions have become justifiable if legal or profitable. Old dinosaurs, like me, are laughed at if we bring morality into the equation. I look around me every day and see men, primarily, trying to keep above water that were trashed by corporate America and those the espouse the anything that makes a buck religion. For now, they have won – no doubt about it.

As we approach Memorial Day, I seriously wondered what all these brave soldiers died for.

It’s not a good time.

Take care.........

Welcome To Boot Hill

2006-05-13T16:48:00.000-05:00

Boy! The magic blogging landscape is becoming seriously crowded with defunct sites. I know some of them have disappeared under the guise of taking a break or a sabbatical, etc. etc., but in most cases they never return. It’s really too bad, we’ve lost some excellent writers and some of them I really miss.

This week, MagicCentric pulled the plug – supposedly it’s temporary – we’ll see. He also passed his mentalists’ forum to someone else. As I said before, I think he made a huge mistake in the elitist approach to membership.

As far as I know, there’s not a single forum with much vitality, except for the Cafe’. Haydn’s Scoundrels Forum really took off, but the last time I was there it was totally moribund – helped along by a series of technical snafus.

One site that I consistently enjoy is Scot's Magical Mystery Tour. Articles like his recent review of the International Battle of the Magicians in Canton, Oh, make it a spot to check out frequently.

I can say, with absolute certainty, that if you enjoy the Cafe’s alternatives, you need to let the authors know. It does make a difference.

Quote of the day:

The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Lecture – My Butt!

This week I attended a Lecture. It doesn’t really matter who it was, as he’s not the only peddling his wares under the guise of a lecture. I blame the sponsoring clubs.

There’s something wrong with paying 20 bucks or more and seeing some clown do nothing but demo his products. The only places I know that can get away with this are Sam’s and Costco. If a club wants to have a dealer come in and show his stuff – that’s fine. Just don’t deceive the attendees into thinking they are getting a lecture.

I understand it’s difficult to make a buck and we all expect a short commercial prior to the break and at the close, but this was like attending a 2 hour pitch (actually, it would have been, but I left at the break).

The Blaine Aftermath

2006-05-10T10:56:00.000-05:00

Up front – even though I’m an old coot, I like David Blaine. I think he’s a capable magician and he’s good for magic – whatever that means.

Is it my kind of magic? Generally no, but there’s a lot to be learned from watching him. The fact is, I’m not in his target demographic and my approval or disapproval is totally irrelevant.

Do I wish he didn’t use camera tricks – of course, but the day he called to ask my opinion I must have been out.

Do I wish the incredible proliferation of tricks that are on the cutting floor due to lack of time would go away? Absolutely, but that’s not his fault, just the shameless and deceitful marketing we’ve come to accept and expect.

Did I watch it? Actually, no. I went to a magic lecture at a local club. It’s on my DVR and I’ll watch it soon, as I think it is mandatory for any magician to be aware of what he performed. You will be asked about it.

As expected, the blogging world has felt compelled to write about the special. From my perspective, only PeaceLove got it right. The rest was mostly inane and predictable babble.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Political Stuff

The new poll on Bush is out today and, surprise, over 2/3 of the people think he’s a total maroon and the country is going to hell. I’m in agreement, which is hard to say for an old Goldwater conservative. The problem for the Democrats is in the last 2 paragraphs of the NY Times article:

The political situation has not helped some of the more prominent members of the Democratic Party. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who was Mr. Bush's opponent in 2004, had a lower approval rating than Mr. Bush: 26 percent, down from 40 percent in a poll conducted right after the election.
And just 28 percent said they had a favorable view of Al Gore, one of Mr. Bush's more vocal critics.

I doubt speaker Pelosi or President H. Clinton would do any better.

It’s real, real ugly folks.

Old Goats Need Not Apply

2006-05-07T16:54:00.000-05:00

There’s a thread on the Genii Forum that I recommend everyone read:

Click Here

The thread is primarily a bunch of old coots flopping around like beached flounder complaining about a new site that exposes some tricks and supposedly aids in the distribution of copyrighted manuscripts. What they say, may or may not be true. I briefly looked at the site and either everyone is named Dude or it is primarily kids (use your own definition).

One sub-thread deals with methods of stopping them through legal intimidation. Invariably someone will post a whois and someone else will post links to the copyright office and someone will suggest pressuring the ISP…blah…blah…blah. This shows a total lack of understanding of how morphable sites like this are and it appears that the proprietor is fully aware of the available options. Furthermore, if anybody thinks our crack government gives a damn about this sort of pilfering, I’ve got the proverbial real estate and bridges for sale. They’ve already been bought by the music and movie powers in Hollywood!

Some will invariably point to the moral issues. Com’n on fellers – people of this generation have less reason than ever to adhere to any moral principals. Think about it! What have they seen?:

Government corruption and graft
Corporate thievery
Parents trashed by the very institutions our generation was taught to trust
CEOs that legally steal hundreds of millions of dollars and see nothing wrong with it.

Make the case for morality, fellers. Personally, I can’t find it. As someone that was raised by a near Saint, I saw him clobbered by the bad guys. Only the bastards win anymore. Think about your own bosses. Any good guys there? To paraphrase Charlie Brown, Bastards ride – Good guys walk.

On to more practical matters. Which of the following two ads are honest:

1. The Silver Shifter is like no other coin device available. With it, you actually bend a coin right in front of your spectator. The coin bends VISUALLY, and never leaves the sight of your spectator during the bend! Once bent, you can drop the coin into their hand for inspection. It is truly astonishing! No "funny" switches. No funny palm off. No pressure. No heat. No KIDDING! At the end, both hands are shown empty front and back. This one will fool Magicians and Layman alike!You can also use the device to do a coin vanish or production.You have seen a coin melt down through someone's hand but have you ever seen a coin melt UP? That's right! With SILVER SHIFTER, you can do just that! Add a whole new dimension to your Scotch and Soda routines. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination. This is the must have coin device to add to your arsenal. Only $50.00

2. Rubber coin $50.00

I’m sure I’m not the only one that would have an additional fifty bucks in my pocket if there was a place to go to find out what I was buying. I see apologists on the Cafe’ talking about the value of magic secrets etc. The fact is, most tricks are over hyped crap and can’t stand the light. Just think of the tricks you bought in the last year and I’ll bet the many, if not most, ads went well beyond reasonable puffery into the land of the purposeful misleading.

Also, I’m sure that having your material stolen and publicly published could be devastating, but fellers, every download is not a lost sale. This is the accounting used by the music industry. It’s unlikely that more than a couple of sales might be lost. That’s the truth.

Take a reality pill and move on.

Take care.........

Oft Gang Agley

2006-05-05T08:54:00.000-05:00

Take care.........

Trumph!!

2006-05-04T22:21:00.000-05:00

I doubt that I’m the only one that gets distracted when cleaning up the magic pile. Today I was organising my DVDs and decided to take a break at look at one of the Johnny Thompson videos – #2. For some reason, I wasn’t thrilled when I first watched this series, even though I’m a huge fan of his. When I brought up the menu of performances, I was intrigued to see what Trumph was. It may seem obvious reading this, but it never occurred to me that it was a simple misspelling.

Anyway, Johnny described it as the perfect card trick. After watching him perform and explain it, I tend to agree. I’ve been using John Bannon’s Play It Straight Triumph recently, but I believe I'll go practice my Strip-Out Shuffles and put the Vernon classic back in my working repertoire.

If you haven’t seen it recently, pull out this DVD and enjoy a classic in the true sense of the word.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Everybody’s A Critic

This is my best buddy and magic watcher. I’m lucky to be able to take him to work with me every day. Normally, whatever I do is OK with him, UNTIL I pull out the wand. He’s learned, from experience, that when the old man starts practising his wand spins, the floor is no place to be.

Invariably, I find him huddled under the desk or in the corner until I’m done. He finds card tricks boring, but safer.

Unfortunately, when I start doing card tricks I find the human spectators huddled in the corner…..

A sure sign of dullness

2006-04-12T10:55:00.000-05:00

Nick Bradbury, author of Dexter and some great software (FeedDemon, TopStyle, HomeSite), probably said it best:

Of course, the surest sign that your blog is boring is when you write about blogging, so perhaps there's no hope after all.

…. but there’s a couple of posts at MagicCentric that I really think deserve major attention and probably not for the reason you may think

Steve Pellegrino has written 2 long posts, better than I possibly could, reviewing Ben Harris’ Hole In The Head. To say the least, he’s not impressed, but you can read the posts and draw your own conclusions. I’m really glad to see this type of writing from Steve, as I was fearful that the Haydn extravaganza may have scarred him forever. Fortunately that’s not the case.

Steve begins his first article with:

There is a lot wrong here and I guarantee you if someone like Steve Fearson marketed this, there would be cries of scam all across the web. You’re not going to see that because of the people involved with this effect.

and this is what I want to focus on. We see a LOT of talk about magic ethics and I strongly feel that all of this hand wringing and self righteous pontification is a total waste of time until we, as magicians, do 2 things.:

Hold everyone to the same standard – we cannot have this bifurcated morality between the ins and outs. It just won’t work.
Quit accepting crap. As I write this there are16 pages or so of posts on Stalag Cafe regarding this trick/DVD. Many of them are apologist for the creator and producer. Some of them lamely relying on the “it’s only twenty dollars” argument. I just don’t think this kind of cheek turning helps anyone. Sometimes you just plain run out of cheeks. I commend you to a prior post of mine that expands on this (Be sure and read the comments).

The original Cafe post that started the marathon thread began with:

Ben Harris is soon to release an item I consider one of the top 2 or 3 impromptu items I have EVER seen in over 30 years of magic (one of the others being the signed Coin In Soda can By Wayne Houchin) entitled "Hole in the Head". It will not be released until early April but when it comes out you should RUN to get it.

It was written by Tim Trono, who is apparently a good guy and an honourable merchant, but he REALLY missed here. Reread the enormity of his statement – one of the top 2 or 3 impromptu items I have EVER seen in over 30 years of magic. Grab a dictionary and look up impromptu and come back and tell me if this in any way qualifies. To compare it to Houchin’s marvelous trick is beyond absurd. And please spare me any heat of the moment type of apologies. He had PLENTY of time to adjust his statements.

It compares much more favourably to Brooks’ $50 rubber coin, which was going to be the centerpiece of a new religion. I also hold the long list of celebrity endorsers major accessories to the crime. Advertising puffery is one thing, but this is way, way beyond that.

As always, your comments are welcome……

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Homework

If you get a chance, check out this these posts on Genii. Most of them are just flopping around like a beached mackerel, but the subject matter is important and generally misunderstood. We’ll deal with it later.

Advice from Steve Cohen

2006-04-10T17:12:00.000-05:00

In a recent post I was urging everyone to grab Steve Cohen’s Win the Crowd, while it is cheap and readily available.

To whet your appetite for the kind of advice he offers, here are his Maxims of Magic:

Be Bold
Expect Success
Don't State—Suggest
Practice, Practice, Practice
Be Prepared

There’s nothing ground breaking or revolutionary here, quite obviously, but his approach and expansion of these ideas is eye opening. For instance, wait until you read his method on learning boldness. Quite clever.

Take my advice and run this book down.

Take care.........

A recommended book

2006-04-08T17:48:00.000-05:00

Steve Cohen’s Win the Crowd first went on sale 6/14/2005 and the publishers have already remaindered the final stock. They sure don’t wait long any more!

You can find new copies for less than $10, delivered, all over the web – half.com – ebay.com - bookcloseouts.com…..etc. I would imagine it’s also in the bargain bin at your local B&N.

Anyway, for those that are not aware of the book, here’s the publisher’s puff piece:

Would You Like to Become More Commanding, Convincing, And Charismatic?
In this book, Steve Cohen, master magician and star of the long-running Chamber Magic show in New York City, will reveal the secrets of all great showmen and magicians -- how to persuade, influence, and charm, and ultimately accomplish the things you've always wanted to do. As Cohen writes, "You'll discover how to take over a room, read people, and build anticipation to a feverish pitch so people are burning to hear what you have to say."
Win the Crowd will teach you Steve Cohen's Maxims of Magic, simple rules you can use to take charge of practically any situation, from on-the-job disagreements to dating to important cocktail parties. The Maxims of Magic will wash away insecurities and hesitations, and replace them with confidence, poise, and leadership. What's more, Steve Cohen will show you:
How to Create a Magic Moment. Capturing people's imaginations and attention so they listen carefully to every word you say.
How to Command a Room. Showing everyone in the room that you are speaking right to them, making them all feel unique -- and completely focused on you.
How to Read People. Learning to sense what people are feeling and thinking as you speak, what they want from you, and how to make them feel like they are getting it.
Misdirection. The most important trick in all of magic -- getting inside people's heads, and directing what they are thinking at every minute.
When you strip away the sleight of hand tricks, magicians are essentially masters of attracting and holding attention and impressing audiences, exactly the psychological secrets you need to be successful in life and business.

It’s a good read. Admittedly Mr. Cohen (far be it from me to assume any familiarity) is a big fan, but you can’t deny his success. He’s shoving a whole bunch of pesos in his pockets these days. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but I’ve already found several pearls. I think most magicians will find this money well spent.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Remember – Use your magic only for good!

Did you ever wonder.....

2006-04-07T15:43:00.000-05:00

Why does this hobby / business / profession / art….. attracts so many self aggrandizing, pompous and just plain mean jack asses?

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Answer

Yeah – me too.

How else?!

2006-04-06T13:37:00.000-05:00

Many, many moons ago The Great Ballantine appeared to be breaking out of his magic buffoon act and performed a beautiful floating ball effect – complete with music, hoop and graceful movements. He received genuine and appreciative applause from the audience. Towards the end of the routine, he reached in his pocket – pulled out a pair of scissors and cut the string. Of course, the ball fell to the ground. Ballantine’s statement? How else!

You can read all about James Cheung’s ripoff of Richard Osterlind’s Psychic Control in a number of magic blogs. There seems to be little doubt that he was aware of Osterlind’s creation prior to the release of Moveo.

In all honesty, “how else” was exactly the reaction I had when I saw it performed on Mind Mysteries Too – Volume 5. It was no great mystery. At least I didn’t think so. Of course Osterlind managed to wring every bit of entertainment possible out of the routine and – SURPRISE – the L&L audience went into orgasmic palpatations.

My point? If Cheung wanted to rip something off, Osterlind has better stuff than this.

If you’re gonna pilfer, man, make it worth your time. All you got out of this was a bad reputation and a copy of a lame trick!

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Software time:

I’m on the computer many hours a day and there are a few pieces of software that I find indispensable. One of these is Evernote. A random access note pad. I can’t imagine going to forums, participating in news groups and general browsing without having Evernote available. It sits quietly in the background and is ready to capture anything you like. Just right click and you send it there. Later you can classify the note in one or many ways. It’s a little hard to describe.

Drop by the site and check it out. It’s truly free. You won’t be disappointed.

I feel better

2006-04-03T17:53:00.000-05:00

As I’ve said before, most of the magic blogs are pure crap – this one included. The only serious journalism has always come from John LeBlanc at Escamoteurettes. John’s articles are always well researched and intelligently written, unlike this spittle most of us spew with little thought.

Anyway, John’s blog had not been updated for quite a while and I was afraid he’d moved on to more intellectual pursuits. Thankfully, I was wrong. His latest article just hit and it’s a beauty.

John discusses Richard Osterlind’s allegations that James Cheung stole his Psychic Control and issued the ripoff as MoveO. From what I’ve read and seen, there can be little doubt about the parentage here, but read John’s article for the full story.

From my perspective, I can definitively say Cheung is an ass hole. All you have to do is read his reply on Osterlind’s blog where he refers to him as a delusional, insecure old man to see that. Dipping into the sewage and name calling that quickly, certainly solidifies my take on his character. Cheung shows his originality, by using the clever ROTFLMAO and then If you think I ’stole’ ‘your’ idea, sue me. FWIW (see I know Internet acronyms too) I think Cheung is an unoriginal and unimaginative buffoon, but I may be just another delusional old man.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

A strange theory

I received a private email wondering why I persist in dumping on Mein Brooks at the Cafe’. It’s worth exploring, I guess.

When I was a sophomore in college, I was assigned an art major as a roommate for a semester. We had nothing in common, but got along OK.

The first thing he put up on the wall was a LARGE nude pin-up of Mama Cass Elliot – the lead singer and the sound of The Mamas and the Papas. For those that don’t know, Cass Elliot went about 3 bills. Very frankly, she was not one of those fat women that had a pretty face and would look good if the lost a couple hundred pounds. She was just butt ugly. Thank heavens she was on her stomach and it was just her large, flabby tattooed ass staring me in the face every morning. I guess it could have been worse. It was another semester before I could sexually function normally…. I still have periodic nightmares flashing back to that terrible visage.

Maybe this is where I developed my fear and loathing of large, ugly things. Possibly, but I don’t think so. I believe it is the morality passed from my father that causes me to fight self righteous jack asses that exhibit no sense of fairness in their dealings with others.

Who knows……

A good reason to go to the Cafe'

2006-04-02T16:24:00.000-05:00

My general feelings about the Cafe’ are probably best expressed graphically:

There was a time I checked into their hallowed hallways at least once a day, but over time I grew weary of that pompous ass Brooks (and that’s a LOT of pomposity) and the generally sour mood that permeated the groups. I now stop by on most weekends and browse a little, but that’s it. I no longer post – actually I can’t since I am banned – just read a few areas.

His attempt to create internal blogs, called The Buffet, has been, to put it kindly, a disaster. As I write this, Paul Chosse hasn’t posted since August, Brooks and Curtis Kam haven’t posted since early November. Even Bill Palmer hasn’t posted in over a week, which is a lifetime for him.

In January of this year Brooks added:

Magic Friday by Jamie D. Grant
Every Friday a trick will be taken out into the real world – Read here for a complete review.

I don’t know Jamie Grant, but I do know you’ll find some of the best reviews I’ve seen in a long time in his column. Not only are his reviews spot on, but his choice of material is excellent. Tricks like:

Ringer
Signed Torn and Restored Post-It Note
Torn and Restored Transpo
Hundy 500
Ultimate Three Card Monte

as well as others are covered and covered well.

Jamie, at least publicly, seems to have not caught the superiority virus that seems to afflict most of the staff. I hope that continues. It’s damn refreshing.

If you can stand the stench that is the Cafe’, I highly recommend this diamond in a pile of insufferable manure.

Take care.........

i/m is getting soft

2006-03-30T18:17:00.000-06:00

A thought on mentalism:

It seems like we are seeing more and more mentalism effects. I think there are two reasons for this:

1. The effects appear to be easier to do than straight magic.
2. It’s easier to sell to today’s audiences.

Each of these could be the basis for a long article and we may well explore them another time, but today I want to talk about prediction tricks. You know, some pretender pulls out an envelope and says I have a prediction here and the rest of the routine is take up proving the prediction is correct. I don’t know about you, but both of my cheeks have fallen asleep by the time it’s over. Avoid the simple prediction. A layman is not some simpleton, incapable of rational thought. They know where you are going and the mystery is nonexistent.

I realize that most mental effects could be considered a prediction, but delay that fact as long as possible and you’ll get a much better response from your audience. I guarantee it!

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Things and people I actually like

I know this area is reserved for my personal bitch sessions, but there are a number of things in magic I do like – some of them a lot. It’s just that it’s easier to get passionate about ignorant fuckers like George F. Bush or congenital douche bags like Mario and Paul than it is to appreciate the good things we all have around us. For better or worse, here are the some good things that come to mind:

Tim Ellis and his blog, Magic Unlimited with Ellis & Webster – I admire his energy and his honesty. His “fakers” page is must reading. I ALSO highly recommend his DVDs – even if you don’t learn anything (and you will), they are incredibly entertaining.

Glenn Bishop – Yeah, I know Glenn can be frustrating, at times, with his vanishing and re-appearing blogs, and he’s more than a little mercurial, but it his passion for what he does that I so greatly admire. I wish he would learn to ignore his critics and concentrate on his friends and fans, but I genuinely understand that is WAY easier to say than to do. Just don’t go away and stay away Glenn – magic needs guys like you.

Dick Osterlind – There are many magic books and DVDs, where I feel like I didn’t get the whole tamale. Kind of like a cook leaving out an essential ingredient in a recipe. It’s OK, but something is missing. I’ve always felt that Dick really tips in is books and on his DVDs. Like anyone that has produced as much as he has in recent years, some stuff is better than others, but it’s always will thought out and meticulously explained. You never feel screwed when you buy his stuff – and that, my friend, is a huge statement.

Jake at RNT2 – Although I consider Jake a friend, I just realized I have no idea what his last name is. If you frequent the magic boards, you know that the whole “collector class” prop business is a giant pissing contest. I long ago, quit trying to determine who’s right and who’s wrong, but I do know, I’ve always been treated well by RNT2. Jake recently had a heart attack, but he’s back at work now and I wish him the best.

Many Magic Clubs – It’s actually pretty darn easy to criticise the local clubs – inept performances, internal politics and the fact that anyone under ager 65 sits at the kiddie table. If the truth be know, it is these people that really support this hobby and the businesses trying to make a living from magic. They are there for any magic related events in the area and if you’re willing to look past the few highly visible ass holes, I’ll bet your find some great people to talk to and learn from. Give it a try.

Some of the recent magic books – I think we’ve been really fortunate on some of the recent output:

Harry Riser’s new book
John Bannon’s Dear Mr. Fantasy
The book on Paul Potassy
The reprints of many of the Kaufman “classics”

Guess I better go drink a bottle of vinegar and get back to my usual sour self. I’m not sure who’s writing this……..

He Didn't Fall Far From The Tree

2006-03-26T21:00:00.000-06:00

I recently attended a show by a local magician, Dan Sperry, held in a theatre not far from where I live. Dan is a young man with wild spiked hair and very mod clothes. It’s not really my kind of act, but I do try to support any local magic action if at all possible.

Actually, the show wasn’t bad. The audience was about half kids, I would say and even though a lot of his material was more advanced he tried to play solely to the kids. Personally, I think that was a mistake, but it was his call.

Anyway, at some point he called up a kid that I would guess was about nine. The boy was a holy terror. He totally destroyed what should have been one of the highlights of the show – his Miser’s Dream. The kid ran behind the table and was totally uncooperative. A more seasoned performer would have done a quick bit and gotten the little hellion off of the stage. Dan pressed on and on and on. When the bit was over, the kid wouldn't leave – his mother finally had to come on stage and get him.

My point? I was sitting next to some ass hole the was laughing at everything the kid did. I couldn’t understand. Then I realized it was his old man. Pitiful, just pitiful. I’m always amazed when parents will let their kids be so rude and thoughtless and make things miserable for everyone else.

I’m getting old……

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Time to award the i/m Disposable Douche Award again

As we’ve mentioned previously, the i/m DD is not given frivolously or lightly. It must be earned by continuously being a pompous jackass – a rude and boorish person, incapable of decent human emotion or compassion. In other words – a world class DICK!

Today’s recipient is a man of unquestioned qualification for this prestigious designation. We are fortunate that he so freely exhibits his dickosity to one and all. I commend to you his latest bit of rancour:

http://geniimagazine.com/forum/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=14;t=006265

Yes friends, Mario Carrandi is our honoree. As one who has dealt with Mario for many years, let me assure you that he is no johnny-come-lately to dickdom. No sirree bob, he’s been a horse’s ass since day one, only improving with age and growing in his chosen craft.

Here’s a tip of our hat and a drop of the trou to you, Mario – i/m’s latest Disposable Douche.

It's Not All Crap After All!

2006-03-23T14:11:00.000-06:00

I’ve been going through a magic funk recently, thinking there is absolutely nothing good in magic.

Clubs are dying.
New tricks are stale rehashes.
Damn few decent books.
The new DVDs S-T-I-N-K
All but a few performers are lame with a capital L

Out of boredom and nothing else to do, I went to a lecture. After attending the Al Bach lecture recently, I swore off ever going to another one. Just brutal. Anyway, Bob Sheets came through town and am I ever glad I went. It’s been a long time since a left a lecture actually enthused about the material. Material that made me want to go home and try some of the ideas.

Sheets was competent, funny, entertaining and congenial. His work with the shells is legendary and the reputation well deserved. His material shows the result of years of performance honing. He freely gave of his experience and answered all questions thoughtfully and completely.

Thanks, Bob, for putting some energy back in this old magic body!

Take care.....

Drivel & Drool

Cafe Fund Drive........

I’m surprised the needle moved at all!

Magic Wisdom From Flaubert

2006-01-24T13:45:00.000-06:00

I saw this quote attributed to Gustave Flaubert on my son's wall recently -

Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.

About the only thing that comes with getting old is you get old. Just about the time you MAY have figured out a few things, someone comes along and throws a shovel of dirt in your face and says "don't do that anymore".........

Age seems to bring an appreciation of precision and an intolerance of slop. I think the lesson for magicians in Flaubert’s quote is that any discipline requires undivided attention, free from other distractions so that our complete being can focus on the job at hand.

There was a famous card magician that always rented two rooms when he went into a town. One to sleep in and one to practice. The practice room had nothing but a table, a chair and a deck of cards. Few of us can afford that kind of luxury, but the lesson is crystal clear. The next time you start working on that routine you’ve been aiming to take to the next level for a long time, try to create a simple atmosphere with nothing but you and that single trick and I bet the results will show exponential improvement.

While I’m on quotes, I should add a long time favorite. This one is from Zig Ziglar.

Wherever you are – be there!

That says a bundle. Think about it. Really think about it.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Boy, I’m sure glad our government wrote that Anti-Spam Law

Am I just getting less tolerant or has the amount of SPAM precipitously risen recently?

I'm no programmer, but I believe I could write a SPAM filter that could catch these. (Actual emails that made it through my commercial filter):

Lesbian sisters in hot scenes
Gay Russian men in action
Four lenders want to talk with you
Canadian Pharmacy
Mexican Pharmacy
18 Million Active Members - Real Sex - No Commitment

That's this morning and these don't include the ones that dropped the F-Bomb right in the Subject line! ….and with all this great advice, I’m still dirt poor – can’t get any women and my willy still hasn’t reached my knees. Oh well – maybe in the next life.

If Only Magic Were Real

The Magazine Shelf

2006-01-23T23:05:00.000-06:00

In a previous post, I mentioned that one of the few things I collect are bound magazines. I try to limit myself to hardbound collections, but in a couple of cases I’ve acquired soft bound when it’s necessary to complete a run. I’m no expert, but here’s what I’ve located thus far. The only thing I don’t have that I know is available are the volumes of Magick, published by Collectors Workshop, I believe. I would be interested to know if anybody knows of additional published items:

Phoenix
Jinx
Richard’s Almanac
Ibidem & Aziz
Pallbearers Review
Epilogue
The Chronicles
Apocalypse
The Jinx
Kabbala
Hierophant
Seance
Swami / Mantra
Syzgy
The Magic Menu
The Compleat Invocation
Hugard’s Magic Monthly
Stanyon’s Magic
Pabular
Pentagram

Whew! That’s quite a list. Just eye balling it, I would guess that it’s about five feet of books. Personally, I think you would be hard pressed to get more magic in any other five foot shelf.

The soft bound category would include The Yearbook Reader and The New Phoenix. Both worth having. We’ll look at some of these in greater detail in the coming weeks.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

These Fuckers Are Driving Me Crazy!!

At my age, it really doesn’t matter, but I worry for my kids. The mess that will be left in the wake of the GII regime will be of such monumental proportions, that I seriously question whether this country will ever recover.

Today, FoMoCo announced the elimination of another 30,000 jobs. The kind of jobs that have driven our economy and were a center point in the rapidly evaporating American Dream. Of course, our government had a comment:

Reacting to news of the job cuts, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said: "Anytime someone loses a job we're concerned about it, we're concerned about the community."
However, McClellan said overall the economy "is going strong."

Thats right Scott, you ignorant bastard. The economy is great if you want to flip hamburgers or work in your garden. It’s great for illegal immigrants, people, like you, sucking on the public teat and those government protected classes. For the rest of us, it’s in the shitter. Pure and simple. May you all roast in the pits of hell.

This administration has turned the country over to the most corrupt entities in history, the American corporation. Meanwhile, George plays guns. What a fucking disaster.

New Resource

2006-01-21T20:28:00.000-06:00

From my perspective, one of the good guys in magic was / is Brad Burt. I assume Brad’s shop was one of the casualties of the Internet onslaught. His teaching tapes were known for their usefulness and quality.

Anyway, Brad’s been sending out a periodic news letter and recently has been dealing with subjects such as practice and fear in performing. They’re not long, but the advice is excellent. The newsletter is a way of hawking his DVDs, which, I believe, are reissues of his tapes. Probably a good investment.

Brad hasn’t quite grasped this Internet stuff and his web designer should be whipped, but he’s not alone there. I couldn't find a way to sign up for his newsletter, but his email address is bradburtmagic@yahoo.com and I would assume a brief note would put you on the list.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Two New Destinations

I see two of our most active bloggers have hopped into the forum operation business.

Glenn Bishop has started Experts At The Card Table and Steve Pellegrino has opened The Mentalist Sanctum. I wish them both the best.

I think they’ve both made mistakes that will hurt them, especially in the beginning. Number one, and I’ve seen this over and over – too damn many categories. When you don’t have a lot of members, spreading the few among 20 categories, or so, is a great way to dilute the discussions into total atrophy. I think Glenn, for instance, would be better off starting with 2 categories – routines and sleights, for example. As the forum gained momentum, categories could be added, as needed. I know Haydn has a bajillion topics at his forum, but his name is a draw and I think even there posts are declining.

Steve, also, has too many categories, but he has made a much more serious mistake, in my opinion. The Mentalist Sanctum has 2 levels of membership – basically, the blessed and the unwashed. Those in category one are by invitation only, as I understand it. The rest of us will be standing in line, behind the ropes, hoping to get a glimpse of the chosen few. One thing the Round Mound of Pomposity did right at the Cafe was creating a second level of membership after 50 posts. After the 50th post you could go behind the curtain and see all the super secret shit that was going on. Never mind that it was worthless, it creates a stir and a desire to participate. The only way to get on the inside at The Mentalist Sanctum is to sit on the bar stool and hope Steve notices our legs….. Not me!

Anyway, Glenn and Steve – I wish you the best and remember how many successful forums I’ve started when reading my suggestions.

i/m Unfair To Readers

2006-01-05T14:01:00.000-06:00

Sometimes my drive for quality gets in the way. When I see how long it's been since I posted, I'm embarrassed. I apologize to those that frequently check and find nothing.

Writing a lengthy, factual article is a labor intensive process and, at times, overwhelming.

What I will do going forward is make sure we have frequent shorter postings, interspersed with the longer items you've come to expect from i/m.

I'm also planing a worthwhile contest towards the end of the 1st quarter.

Take care.........

Short Stops

2005-12-02T22:10:00.000-06:00

I've been reading a lot about Maven's Protocols of the Elders and the furor around the exposition of the secret - I don't care.

The Gazzo / Penguin alliance is rather surprising. Then again - them that has the gold......

Losander's Thumb Tie - Decent, but overpriced

School for Scoundrels Golden Shells - Top notch product

The new Card Through Window dvd - Grotesquely overpriced

If I have to sit through one more - take an average trick and add an interesting story and presentation - lecture I'm gonna scream. These are nothing more than excuses for crappy magicians to give lectures. Try this - go home and practice. Develop some abilities that others want to see. If you want to continue with this actor bull shit, join an improv group and get the hell away from magic.

Take care.........

Learning Magic From Sam Snead and Ted Williams

2005-11-29T17:28:00.000-06:00

Prodigies and exceptionally gifted people have NO idea how difficult things are for mere mortals.

Sam Snead, the greatest natural golfer I ever saw, was once asked how he made the ball fade (move left to right). He said it was simple, just think right. Of course, to execute a draw, one merely thinks left. Sure, Sam.

Ted Williams at one point tried to coach baseball. He couldn't understand why a batter couldn't see the seams as the ball left the pitcher's hand, calculate the rotation and swing accordingly. Hell, most of us can't even see the ball. Ted finally became frustrated and gave up.

Larry Bird tried to coach basketball and didn't seem to comprehend that he could drop in the ball from 30 feet easier than you and I can hit an elephant in the ass with a 2x4.

What does this have to do with magic, you say? Well I recently had a chance to review Richard Turner's Fans, Flourishes, and False Shuffles. It was OK, I guess, but over and over I felt the descriptions were woefully inadequate. For instance, the pressure fan description was basically, put the cards in the left and spread them from 4 o'clock to 8 o'clock. No finger positioning, no tips - no nothing.

It's always enjoyable to watch a person as talented as Richard Turner perform - he makes some very difficult things look trivially easy, but I can't recall a single tip to help the learning process. There's always merit in watching a move done well and it is an aid in the learning process, but it is not teaching.

Compared to Richard Kaufman's sleep walking exhibition on his teaching DVDs, Turner is a ball of fire -- but, then again, who isn't.

The DVD is priced at the lower end and if you enjoy watching him work, please feel free, but don't expect to learn much.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

This Month's Disposable Douche This month's honored guest at the Cafe' was Al Schneider. I've watched Al for 35 years in various venues and, let's be honest, he invented Matrix. That's it.

Sure, he writes esoteric crap and looks like he's got terminal hemorrhoids, but most of it is just a tired rehash. In his Cafe' appearance, he said he didn't know who Ross Bertram was. I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. He did refer to him as the guy with the hair, when someone reminded him of the Stars of Magic.

Al seems harmless enough, although I personally, could do without his conclusion that he was better than other magicians because he drove a Jaguar. Obviously, his superior intellect was being rewarded by some sort of cosmic feng shui.

Anyway, at some point, Al mentions the derivation of a move and one of the Cafe's greats and our award winner, Paul Chosse, steps in with:

I'm surprised to read your recollections of Larry and the Detroit crew above. I've spent hours with Milt Kort and Bob Stencil, and took tons of notes. They remembered things quite differently from what I'm reading here. If you'd like me to post some of those recollections keep revising history. We'll put up both stories and let the cards fall where they may...

What's the purpose here Paul? Is this just to embarrass Al or are you just a congenital bastard, totally incapable of keep you mouth shut?

I've been around magic a long time and, frankly, I never heard of Chosse. Apparently, he's some sort of minor god that we should all listen to in hushed reverence. My first serious notice of him occurred during the St. Youell extravaganza. It's interesting to me, that his holiness blamed some of his problems on people promising material and not delivering. I'm guessing our boy was one of them. It's too bad we couldn't have more of those exciting interviews. It was like reading toast.

I don't know or care what kind of deal Chosse has with Brooks regarding his blog, but it's been nearly 4 months since he posted. He certainly has plenty of time on his hands, based on the large number of posts.

Like the IBM Gold Cups we don't award the i/m Disposable Douche very often. A person must exhibit exceptionally uncommon boorishness and a total lack of civility. This months recipient is highly deserving of the honor.

Something To Think About

2005-11-23T17:02:00.000-06:00

Blogs such as i/m sit on the edges of the mainstream. If the Internet was a newspaper we would be one of those fillers used to complete a column. You know - the average summer temperature in Sioux Falls is 70 or we would be the sleezy massage parlor ads in the back of the sports section. Hopefully, on a good day, we're the comics.

On the other hand, blogs like John LeBlanc's Escamoteurettes are the editorial page - the leading articles. Hell, I can't even pronounce it. John is a thoughtful, careful writer, generally with something to say. Even the header screams class.

In his most recent article (Click here) John takes a cut at the theoretical five foot shelf. The list shows his usual careful thinking and even gives some of the history behind this exercise.

Since I tend to collect magazine compilations, I was interested to note that his personal list was over 1/3 magazines by count and probably close to half by size. Personally, I would probably add Richard's Almanac and the bound Phoenix volumes.

John's article also reminded me that I must pick up Maximum Entertainment by Ken Weber. I've heard a LOT of good things about it.

Anyway, hop over to John's blog and add your thoughts. It's an exercise worth repeating periodically.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Have a great Thanksgiving!!

Enjoy the kids, friends and family. This magic crap is so insignificant it isn't even on the radar.

Remember the important things.

A Mike Close Perspective

2005-11-23T05:54:00.000-06:00

I believe it was a Genii reviewer that commented that after reading/viewing a Mike Close trick explanation he realized how woefully inadequate and superficial most other magic instruction is. From my perspective, nobody develops performance items better than Mike. The depth of thought is incredible and he only seems to publish what he performs. I never get the feeling that he publishes hypothetical crap. Admittedly, there's nothing he does that is extremely simple and a lot of it is damn difficult.

To those that followed Mike through his years at Magic Magazine, you know there was a period when he became disillusioned and downright cranky. Maybe looking at all the crap that comes out month after month finally gets to you. He seems to be past that now and I, for one, am glad.

What brought this to mind, was my development of some new strolling routines and I, again, read and began working on his Pothole Trick and Dr. Strangetrick. The latter is the most inexplicable and refined version of Card Warp ever created and The Pothole Trick must be one of the top 10 close up tricks of all time.

His revised Workers series - available in ebook format - and his L&L DVDs are magical treasures. If they are not on your shelf - they should be.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Things I'm Thankful for: I'm thankful that I'm not downwind from Steve Brooks after his Thanksgiving meal I'm thankful for holy men like Stephen F. Youell to monitor our morals I'm thankful for Thomas Wayne so we can all feel better about the bastards in our personal lives I'm thankful that Harry Lorayne has allowed we mere mortals to exist on the same planet I'm thankful there are so many pricks in magic that there is always something to write about

and remember....... I believe that every human has a finite number of heart-beats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises. - Neil Armstrong

I Must Be Getting Easy

2005-11-18T16:11:00.000-06:00

I'm supposed to be a cranky old goat pissing on anything new that comes along, but I've recently reviewed and studied 2 new DVD releases that I think are terrific. Additionally, the one trick - one dvd ratio seems to always be a screwing waiting to happen, but I'm highly recommending these:

The first is Tom Dobrowolski's In The Hand Wild Card.

I have long maintained the the best card effects are created by skillful sleight of hand, combined with judiciously used gaffs. Tom's routine is a perfect example of that. It's an ideal trick for walk around and table work. Combine this with John Bannon's Twisted Sisters and you've got a couple of tricks that will carry you a long, long way.

Tom's routine is the result of years of performance and refinement. There is a logical reason for everything, even bringing out the special set of cards. The spectator is never challenged, made to feel stupid or held out for ridicule. The only danger I see is some douchebag has every opportunity to drag out the no, the clean one line. You have my permission to shoot on sight.

Additionally, Tom is a heck of a nice guy. I like to see the good guys succeed.

The other one is Masterminds Volume One - Criss Angel

I really didn't want to like this. It's pretty easy for a guy like me to write off Criss as nothing but hair, tattoos and nipple rings, but this is good. Damn good!

I'm sure by now anyone reading this knows this is the long awaited explanation for Wayne Houchin's Quarter In Soda Can routine. Off hand, I can't think of a better impromptu trick. Wayne's explanation is complete and concise. It will take some work, but it's not a killer. No real finger flinging, just timing and naturalness. If you haven't seen it, watch the performance first. I'll bet it fools you.

Criss comes off as somebody that really cares and thinks about his magic and is a nice guy. I'll never like his performance style, but his magic isn't aimed at me - as they say, I'm not in the target demographic. Criss has received some criticism for making this publicly available, but I can't imagine many layman laying out 30 bucks for the secret. Hopefully, it doesn't get prostituted too badly on the net. Good job, fellers.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Our last D&D on magicians' willingness to be hosed over and over by our purveyors things magical brought a couple of public comments and several private.

Our friend Scot weighed in with:

You really hit the nail on the head with this one. But until we stop buying this crap that's out there, it will never stop.

I agree Scott, but identifying the bad guys gets pretty tough. This is compounded by many of out compatriots benign acceptance and constant public apologists. Until we accept that a failure to do what is promised and advertised is just plain wrong, we all better buy a large tube of K/Y. We're going to need it.

An anonymous poster chimes in with:

I have always been shocked by the total lack of standards exhibited by professionals in magic when it comes to undertakings such as trade magazines and newsletters. Stan Allen at Magic, I think, raised the bar by producing a timely, quality product, a standard unheard of in the magic world before the inauguration of his magazine. The "Always late but always great" Genii, for example, was a travesty until Richard Kaufman took the reins and placed it an a more professional footing. Most newsletters have taken subscribers' money and never fully delivered. I believe that once a person takes money for a performance there is a contract to deliver. All the subscribers get is whiny excuses like the dog at this issue. Where are the final issues of Ted Lesley's, Dan Harlan's, Bob LaRue's newsletters? Again, although very late, Richard Kaufman at least managed to produce all four issues of Looking Glass. The standards (and I use that term loosely) experienced in magic circles are appalling. I am sure the producers of these perennially late and incomplete publications would be first to decry a professional performer who hid not show up to a performance on time; but their own practices in failing to deliver promised issues is the equivalent on not only failing to show up on time, but also failing to show up at all AND taking payment for the performance never delivered. Spare me from the sob-sister apologists who tell us that we should be grateful that we get even the aborted subscriptions. I am not so ravenous for "secrets" that I would find this behavior acceptable. I say that if someone undertakes to do something and takes payment for it, he better follow through. If he can't, he had no damn business taking a subscriber's money in the first place. Now, THAT'S a real ethical gap.

AMEN!

A DVD I Didn't Plan To Like

2005-11-15T20:58:00.000-06:00

I saw this DVD advertised recently and bought it on a whim:

The DVD doesn't cover a lot of flourishes:

Ribbon Spread
Ribbon Spread Turnover
Double Ribbon Spread Turnover
Ribbon Scoop
Dribbling
Thumb Fan
Closing Fan
One Handed
Giant Fan
Pressure Fan
Split Fan
Two Handed Split Fan
S-Fan
Corner Spring
Middle Spring
Sideways Spring
Anti Gravity Spring
Waterfall!

but it does a better job than anything else on the market. Moves like the hand to hand spring, dribble and pressure fan can actually be learned from this DVD. Interestingly, this isn't aimed at magicians, but poker players. It sells for 30 bucks or so and your local dealer should have it.

Don't miss out here.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Fuck me - I'm a magician

I'll never understand why magicians are so prone to apologize for the lame, even criminally bad, treatment they get from various purveyors of magic apparatus, books and all other forms of selling secrets. Going back to my favorite Holy Man, Stephen F. Youell, to Cafe insider Tom Cutts and his AM/PM magazine, to Jon Racherbaumer and his unrefunded Hierophant, to the ongoing furor around the recent Martin Nash book, to....... You name it and magicians have had one shyster after another ram a dry one up their ass, yet they continue to apologize and even defend this shoddy treatment.

This isn't a matter of turning the other cheek. That's a noble thing to do. It's just an unfathomable willingness to to accept liars and cheats into the fraternity and make no mistake - that is what most of them are.

Anyway, what brought this to mind was a recent post on the Cafe. You don't have to read this blog for long to realize that I think Harry Lorayne is a world class ass - an egotistical, industrial grade tool writing way beyond the time when he had something to say. Anyway, his last last book was a rewrite of some of his earlier works. Actually, not a bad idea as the writing was somewhat lame and they could use an update. According to his advertising, the book was only available from him. OK, it's his book and he can sell it anyway he wants. This means it will not be available from discounters and if you want it - pay the full price.

After Harry milked it for all he could, he gave it to a distributor and now you can get it EVERYWHERE and for considerably less than Harry was charging. Some guy wrote on the Cafe that he was disappointed that Lorayne had backed off his original release and wondered if anyone else felt the same way. No one, not a single person, took the time to agree. Two doo rags did write to say they enjoyed the screwing. It's incredible.

Till next time----- i/m

On Developing A Character

2005-11-04T17:49:00.000-06:00

I mentioned recently that I attended Bill Goldman's lecture. One of the attendees paid him a tremendous compliment when he said I can't tell when you're talking to us and when you are about to do a trick. It was true - Bill was the same performing a trick, teaching a trick or just bull shitting before and after the show. This is the essence of what Vernon was talking about when he talked about being natural.

If you're working a party or a restaurant, then the fellow performing the magic should be the same fellow that, hopefully, ingratiated himself to his audience before the magic began. I so often feel like I'm watching 2 different people - the guy who introduced himself and the magician. I keep waiting for him to turn around and then turn back as Elvis Presley, a la Andy Kaufman. I believe it was Leipzig that said people like to be fooled by a gentleman. Certainly he lived in a simpler time, but I believe it still holds true.

However, suppose you are an incorrigible ass hole. What can you do?

There are options:

Do a mime act
Hide behind some exaggerated character
Make balloon doggies to music
Start an Internet magic talk forum
OK - before someone else says it - Write a magic blog!

Actually, there's a time an place for character magicians, but not when personal interaction is involved.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Things I find useful:

Evernote - someone recommended this to me recently as a free form database to use while browsing the Internet. Really well done and free. The web site is http://www.evernote.com/en/.

IESpell - A nice spell checker that integrates with Internet Explorer. When you are typing a message online of filling out a form, just right click and choose Check Spelling. It's as easy as that. Check it out here.

Roboform - Roboform is a Password Manager and Web Form Filler that completely automates password entering and form filling. I find this indispensable. I don't know about you, but I have a boatload of log ins to track and am constantly filling out forms. Roboform is the best at making this job tolerable. They are at http://www.roboform.com/. Oh, it costs 30 bucks. They have a free version, but it is virtually worthless.

Irfanview - Since it's free, I'll let the web site do the talking:

IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003.

It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals.

IrfanView was the first Windows graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple (animated) GIF support.

One of the first graphic viewers WORLDWIDE with Multipage TIF support.

The first graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple ICO support.

Some IrfanView features:
Many supported file formats (click here the list of formats)
Multi language support
Thumbnail/preview options
Slideshow (save slideshow as EXE/SCR or burn it to CD)
Show EXIF/IPTC/Comment text in Slideshow/Fullscreen etc.
Support for Adobe Photoshop Filters
Fast directory view (moving through directory)
Batch conversion (with image processing)
Multipage TIF editing
Email option
Multimedia player
Print option
Change color depth
Scan (batch scan) support
Cut/crop
IPTC editing
Effects (Sharpen, Blur, Adobe 8BF, Filter Factory, Filters Unlimited, etc.)
Capturing
Extract icons from EXE/DLL/ICLs
Lossless JPG rotation
Many hotkeys
Many command line options
Many PlugIns
Only one EXE-File, no DLLs, no Shareware messages like "I Agree" or "Evaluation expired"
No registry changes without user action/permission!
and many more

This is an incredible piece of software AND they update frequently. Go to http://www.irfanview.com/ and see what I mean.

There once was a man from the sticks Who's hobby was writing limericks. But he failed at the sport 'Cos he wrote them too short.

Random Spittle

2005-11-02T15:03:00.000-06:00

Not long enough for an article:

1. That sound you hear when you go to the Cafe' is death rattles from Mein Brooks' attempt to create blogs within the confines of his domain.

Didn't work Stevie! It was a bad idea from day one. Maybe you can save the posts to enter in MCJ's next "most boring post" contest. I'm not sure they'll win, but they will certainly be able competitors for the title. 2. I've been looking at Richard Osterlind's Mind Mysteries Too Volumes 5, 6 & 7. My first reaction is - he should have stopped at 4. As I've said before, the true value of a book or DVD can only be determined after it has aged a while. I'm willing to withhold final judgment. The Question and Answer Act, which is touted as being "worth the price of the whole series" is shamefully transparent. I'm a huge fan of the first 4 volumes of this series. I thought they had more good magic than any other L&L set. Maybe I'm getting jaded, but nothing in this series really excited me. Time will tell. 3. Richard Kaufman is killing the Genii forum by being such an irascible dick to participants. He's adopted Brooks' mantra of it's my forum and if you don't like it FUCK OFF! Too bad, it was the best. New messages have nearly dried up except for the incestuous babble among the insiders. Maybe he should have kept it closed after he unceremoniously shut it down in a tizzy recently. 4. I've been thumbing through Lorayne: The Classic Collection recently. This is a rewrite and revision of Harry's first 3 books and The Epitome Location. Many of us cut our teeth on CUCM and thumbing through it brought back some pleasant memories. None of them about Harry though, who has become a condescending, egotistical, industrial grade prick. 5. Favorite quote seen recently: Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one. 6. If you get a chance to see Bill Goldman lecture, it's worth the cost. It's a little disorganized, but you'll get a lot of tips on trade show magic and the types of tricks that work.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Another thing I found funny:

(On September 17, 1994, Alabama's Heather Whitestone was selected as Miss America 1995.) Question: If you could live forever, would you and why? Answer: "I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever," --Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA contest. `````````````````````````````````` "Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff." --Mariah Carey ```````````` "Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life," --Brooke Shields, during an interview to become Spokesperson for federal anti-smoking campaign. ````````````````````````````````````````````````` "I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body," --Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward. ````````````````````````````````````````````` "Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country," --Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, DC. ````````````````````````````` "I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president." --Hillary Clinton commenting on the release of subpoenaed documents. ```````````````````````````````````````````````````` "That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a jackass, and I'm just the one to do it," --A congressional candidate in Texas. ```````````````````````````` "Half this game is ninety percent mental." --Philadelphia Phillies manager, Danny Ozark `````````````````````````````````` "It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it." --Al Gore, Vice President And . "We are ready for an unforeseen event that may or may not occur." --Al Gore, VP ``````````````````` "I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix." --Dan Quayle `````````` "We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?" --Lee Iacocca ``````````` "The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." - --Joe Theisman, NFL football quarterback & sports analyst. ```````````````````````````````````````````` "We don't necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people." --Colonel Gerald Wellman, ROTC Instructor. ````````````````````````````````` "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure." --Bill Clinton, President ```````````````` "Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas." --Keppel Enderbery ```````````````` "Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 1992 because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances." --Department of Social Services, Greenville, South Carolina ```````````````````````````````````````````` "If somebody has a bad heart, they can plug this jack in at night as they go to bed and it will monitor their heart throughout the night. And the next morning, when they wake up dead, there'll be a record." --Mark S. Fowler, FCC Chairman ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

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A Recommended DVD

2005-10-31T18:31:00.000-06:00

Over the years we all hear of moves which are performed so well by certain magicians that their name becomes synonymous with the sleight or routine:

Albert Goshman - Spellbound
Don Alan - Chop Cup
Ken Krenzel - Classic Pass
Chris Capehart - 3 Ring Routine
Slydini - Lapping
Steve Brooks - His Jabba the Hut imitation

You get the idea. Paul Cummins is a name that always comes up when the Side Steal is mentioned. His work with it is legendary.

Paul does Marlo's Deliberate Side Steal better than anyone. It's been honed by years of performance and practice. It's practical and attainable. Last week Paul began shipping his new DVD - The Side Steal Declassified. I can think of no better way to learn this sleight than buying this DVD. I really felt like Paul gave us everything he has on the methodology. He performs about 6 tricks and explains the move and it's variations very succinctly. Production values were better than most.

I don't know if Paul will be distributing the DVD through normal channels or just his website at http://www.fasdiu.com.

I'm generally not a member of the camp that says if you get one good trick or idea from a book or DVD you got more than your moneys worth. Not me - I feel screwed. Be warned, there is not a lot of information on this platter, but if you want the real work on one of the most important moves in card magic look no further.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Things that really bug me:

Companies that spend a jillion dollars on a web site, yet the programmers aren't smart enough to strip spaces, periods, dashes etc. from phone and credit card numbers

George F. Bush - 1 & 2 Police departments that have so much time on their hands they do "safety" checks. Can I hear a big Bull Shit! The Patriot Act - like its going to catch anything. Names for employees, like "associates" and "partners" OR my new favorite From Sam's Club - "coach". What really bugs me most is the places that use these feel-good terms like Wal-Mart would sell their employees body parts to slave traders if it would add .01 to the quarterly income. "Disrespected" athletes making 8 figure salaries. Big Oil - I guess everyone saw that Exxon just made more money last quarter than ANY US company in history! I recently wrote about their blatant thievery and some douche bag commented that it was a supply issue - China- India and other palaver spewed out by the American Petroleum Institute. I said then - just wait for the quarterly report. If anyone thinks we got rid of all the fucking bandits and crooks when Enron and Worldcomm crashed you're fooling yourself. American business is corruption on corruption. We can no longer entrust our well being to "free enterprise". It doesn't exist. Wall Street - speaking of crooks. The Exxon quarter "disappointed" the MBAs, CPAs and CFUs and the stock went down. What a joke our financial system has become. Alan Greenspan - he's screwed up more times than George F. Bush II and no one seems to know. Escalades - the ultimate prickmobile.

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I thought this was funny

2005-10-30T20:18:00.000-06:00

Nothing to do with magic. Just a joke I liked: A husband takes his wife to play her first game of golf. Of course, the wife promptly hacked her first shot right through the window of the biggest house adjacent to the course. The husband cringed, "I warned you to be careful! Now we'll have to go up there, find the owner, apologize and see how much your lousy drive is going to cost us." So the couple walked up to the house and knocked on the door. A warm voice said, "Come on in." When they opened the door they saw the damage that was done: glass was all over the place, and a broken antique bottle was lying on its side near the broken window. A man reclining on the couch asked, "Are you the people that broke my window?" "Uh...yeah, sir. We're sure sorry about that," the husband replied. "Oh, no apology is necessary. Actually I want to thank you. You see, I'm a genie, and I've been trapped in that bottle for a thousand years. Now that you've released me, I'm allowed to grant three wishes. I'll give you each one wish, but if you don't mind, I'll keep the last one for myself." "Wow, that's great!" the husband said. He pondered a moment and blurted out," I'd like a million dollars a year for the rest of my life." "No problem," said the genie. "You've got it, it's the least I can do. And I'll guarantee you a long, healthy life!" "And now you, young lady, what do you want?" the genie asked." I'd like to own a gorgeous home complete with servants in every country in the world," she said. "Consider it done," the genie said. "And your homes will always be safe from fire, burglary and natural disasters!" "And now," the couple asked in unison, what's your wish, genie?" "Well, since I've been trapped in that bottle and haven't been with a woman in more than a thousand years, my wish is to have sex with your wife." The husband looked at his wife and said, "Gee, honey, you know we both now have a fortune, and all those houses. What do you think?" She mulled it over for a few moments and said, "You know, you're right. Considering our good fortune, I guess I wouldn't mind, but what about you, honey?" "You know I love you sweetheart," said the husband. "I'd do the same for you!" So the genie and the woman went upstairs where they spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying each other. The genie was insatiable. After about three hours of non-stop sex, the genie rolled over and looked directly into her eyes and asked "How old are you and your husband?" "Why, we're both 35," she responded breathlessly. "No Kidding? Thirty-five years old and both of you still believe in genies?"

Take care.........

It Is A Magic Show After All!

2005-10-26T13:40:00.000-05:00

Recently, I've been inundated by actors turned magicians and their clone lectures. Basically, they all have the same premise:

you can take the lamest piece of shit imaginable and through good staging and a well developed character you can have a great performance piece.

Well, if you do this you know what you've got? A lame magic performance. It might be entertaining, but it isn't magic.

If all I want is entertainment, I'll go to a good strip club, grab a gin and tonic and watch naked women with big gozangas strut around. Now that's entertainment.

(Actually many years ago - in days when I did periodically go to a strip joint, I watched a stripper, Miss Nude Canada I believe, disrobe and do a magic act - buck nekkid. It was nearly surreal and, at first, you didn't know where to look, but that was resolved quickly. Put it this way - I have no idea what the tricks were.....)

If you're doing a magic show - do good magic. There's plenty of excellent tricks. Tricks that actually fool the audience when performed well. Now, when you add staging and character attributes you really have something.

Don't ever let anyone sell you on the - there's no bad tricks, just bad magicians bull shit. There are tons of bad tricks and your audience, the laymen, are actually capable of real human thought. If you're depending on this just blows right past laymen, get a new trick. It probably won't.

Do yourself a favor and download these clips of Whit Haydn performing four terrific routines.

Notice particularly, the clarity of the effect. I'm sure no one watching was confused at any point. The magic is technically well done, the character well developed and the staging is flawless.

I still think Whit's a tool, but he's a hell of a performer.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Goodbye Glenn!? Glenn Bishop recently announced he would quit his blog(s) to focus on other things. I suspicion we'll see him back, as these damn things get in your blood.

As I have said before, I think he's one of the good guys - somewhat mercurial, but so am I. It was, apparently, important to Glenn to make peace with a couple of the Castle regulars that he had issues with. That appears to have gone well and I'm glad for him. Keep in touch Glenn! Worth A Read I'm glad to see MagiCentric back on his game. I felt the Haydn/Bush thing really blew his doors off and I really doubted his ability to come back. Recent posts have put that fear to rest. I particularly liked this Post on originality. He's one of the few to get it. I'm so tired of originality for the sake of originality I could scream. You know what I mean: ....and the third coin magically flies from the left hand to the right.....and the deck is now blue! Huh? There's no need for me to repeat what he already said so well. It's worth a read. Learning the Vernon Wand Spin I had a heck of a time learning the Vernon Wand Spin from the written directions (the spin only, not the ball vanish), until I ran across an excellent clip on Dave VanVranken's site. Check it out here. It really helps in the learning process. Thanks Dave

What the hell is a "parlor"

2005-10-21T10:25:00.000-05:00

Parlour (or parlor), from the Fr. parler ("to speak"), denotes an "audience chamber," but that is not the import of the Hebrew word so rendered. It corresponds to what the Turks call a kiosk, as in Judg. 3:20 (the "summer parlour"), or as in the margin of the Revised Version ("the upper chamber of cooling"), a small room built on the roof of the house, with open windows to catch the breeze, and having a door communicating with the outside by which persons seeking an audience may be admitted. I'm not sure a lot of us actually perform Parlor Magic, but the venues we work tend to be small areas like a living room with little control over the placement of the audience. I've been thinking about the tricks that can be performed in an environment like this. One we could call hostile - at least to a magician

McCombical Deck
Ken Brooke's Sidewalk Shuffle
Egg Bag - Sterling or Malini
Chris Capehart's 3 Ring Routine
David Williamson's Ring and Rope
Some Mentalism Routines
Billy Bishop's Wrist Tie or Jaspernese Thumb Tie

We're looking for tricks that take up very little room - are foolers - and can be performed in a chaotic environment. We can also assume no safe table is available As I've been going through this exercise, I'm finding very few tricks that conform to the way we must work today. Surprisingly, most of the stuff is rather old. We'll be going over each of these and adding others as we go along Feedback and ideas are welcome

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

I'm Afraid It's Getting Worse

(This is happening in what used to be a free country - the United States of America. Bush is having our children killed to save this and there's NOTHING we can do! By the time we "exercise our rights as free people" and vote their sorry asses out of office it may well be way too late. Way too late.)

Selina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the Secret Service question her or one of her students.

But that's what happened on September 20. Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class "to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights," she ays. One student "had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb's-down sign with his own hand next to the President's picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster." According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent. But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect. An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service. On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High. "At 1:35, the student came to me and told me that the Secret Service had taken his poster," Jarvis says. "I didn't believe him at first. But they had come into my room when I wasn't there and had taken his poster, which was in a stack with all the others." She says the student was upset. "He was nervous, he was scared, and his parents were out of town on business," says Jarvis. She, too, had to talk to the Secret Service. "Halfway through my afternoon class, the assistant principal got me out of class and took me to the office conference room," she says. "Two men from the Secret Service were there. They asked me what I knew about the student. I told them he was a great kid, that he was in the homecoming court, and that he'd never been in any trouble." Then they got down to his poster. "They asked me, didn't I think that it was suspicious," she recalls. "I said no, it was a Bill of Rights project!" At the end of the meeting, they told her the incident "would be interpreted by the U.S. attorney, who would decide whether the student could be indicted," she says. The student was not indicted, and the Secret Service did not pursue the case further. "I blame Wal-Mart more than anybody," she says. "I was really disgusted with them. But everyone was using poor judgment, from Wal-Mart up to the Secret Service." When contacted, an employee in the photo department at the Wal-Mart in Kitty Hawk said, "You have to call either the home office or the authorities to get any information about that." Jacquie Young, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart at company headquarters, did not provide comment within a 24-hour period. Sharon Davenport of the Kitty Hawk Police Department said, "We just handed it over" to the Secret Service. "No investigative report was filed." Jonathan Scherry, spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington, D.C., said, "We certainly respect artistic freedom, but we also have the responsibility to look into incidents when necessary. In this case, it was brought to our attention from a private citizen, a photo lab employee." Jarvis uses one word to describe the whole incident: "ridiculous."

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New Videos Possibly Worth Consideration

2005-10-14T13:23:00.000-05:00

I see L & L is announcing 2 new video sets:

Richard Osterlind’s Mind Mysteries Too

Mind Mysteries Too continues on from the high-water mark set by the first Mind Mysteries series, one of the best-selling video sets in magic history. Transcending the boundaries of traditional mentalism and magic, Mind Mysteries Too completes the circle of Richard Osterlind’s life work to date. You'll see Richard captivating and astounding a studio audience with his original material and then you'll go behind the scenes once again, along with host Jim Sisti, as he explains every nuance of the inner workings of each effect. What's more, each set of performances is arranged as a mini-show, demonstrating Richard Osterlind’s classical approach to routining, an invaluable lesson in itself!

If you enjoyed Mind Mysteries, as thousands did, you'll love these Mind Mysteries Too!

L & L publishing proudly presents new DVDs Featuring Garrett Thomas

Over the last few years, Garrett Thomas has quickly become recognized as a major creative force in magic, so much so that luminaries like David Blaine, Marco Tempest, and many others have retained his services as a consultant for their television specials.

In this series, Garrett Thomas tips his mitt and offers the complete details on magic that he uses to make a living — amazing effects that have had magicians merely speculating about their methods.

Welcome . . . to the strange and wonderful world of Garrett Thomas!

I'm a real fan of Osterlind's stuff, especially his magic items, such as Torn & Restored Post-It note and Signed Torn & Restored Newspaper. He also introduces mentalism within the reach of the magic performer. My only concern is whether we scraped the bottom for another set. We'll see.

The usual warning about L & L should be observed. Announcing the product doesn't necessarily means it is shipping. Call first.

Take care.........

A General Mailaise

2005-10-14T10:16:00.000-05:00

It's pretty easy to project ones own feelings on the rest of the world. Is it just me, or is the country in a deep, deep funk? Between that stupid war that G2 gave us, the hurricanes and the reaming we're getting from the oil companies, there doesn't seem much to get up for. It would seem to be a time to turn to something like magic for a diversion and pressure relief, however just the opposite seems to be happening.

The message boards, the blogs and club attendance has really slowed. I can't understand it.

Personally, I can say that writing a blog gets difficult in times like this. Readers owe an author absolutely nothing, as a blog is basically an exercise in personal vanity. Having said that, I'm sure most of us sit and write and wonder if we're just pissing in the wind. Some interaction can help.

If you are reading a blog, let the author know. Most, but not all, will certainly appreciate the effort. I know a lot of work goes into a good post and most of us need a little pat on the ass once in a while.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

The Haydn Saga Continues

Check out this Link on the Genii forum. Supposedly, this is from Doug Bush - the original author of the disputed manuscript included on the SfS DVD on the 3 shell game. I have no way of knowing whether this is actually from Mr. Bush, but it makes for interesting reading.

The only thing that came to mind is Mr. Bush was said to attend the same church as somebody in magic (Joe Turner, I believe). If this is, in fact, the real Doug Bush, he must study from the same book as my favorite holy man, Stephen F. Youell.

Actually, if everything is as written in that message, I guess I would be gloating too.......

Where Do We Do What We Want To Do

2005-10-02T20:47:00.000-05:00

I'm sure most of us really love magic. Sometimes, actually frequently, we get diverted from the performance and study of a fascinating hobby / avocation / vocation and get bogged down in crap like I cover on this blog. Few people think they want to see magic. This is unfortunate, as most people genuinely enjoy good magic - they just don't know it. When Carson ruled the night millions of people saw great close-up magic performed by performers like Goshman, Gertner and Dill. Today we just don't get that kind of exposure. It's more important than ever that we all perform only the best tricks and perform them to the utmost of our ability, which includes major practice sessions. In the coming days we'll be discussing the best tricks to have with you all the time so you can impress your audience and begin the long process of elevating out down trodden art.

Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Balancing Act

Boy, talk about Rosemary's Baby. The last two pictures I've placed on this blog have been Hillary Clinton and Steven F. Brooks. I don't even want to think about it. That'll fuck up the blog Feng Shui big time. Here's a little eye candy to balance things out:

That should put the Drool back in Drivel & Drool. Now I feel better and balance is restored in the cosmos.

I Love A Good Magic Fight!

2005-10-01T16:03:00.000-05:00

If you've got a few minutes read this thread: http://geniimagazine.com/forum/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=10;t=001794;p=1 I haven't dug too deeply into it, but basically it's all about Rings and Things 2. They have their defenders and their detractors. Maybe somebody is right. I don't know. Anyway, the thread gets going pretty good and Marcella Zimmerman, the main guru at RNT2 logs in and begins to kick ass and take names. I tell you, she pulls out the virtual shillelagh and starts swinging. What I enjoyed most is she drove head on into some of the Cafe' insiders that are used to hiding behind Brooks' enormous bulk and she spews testicles all over the Genii forum. I appreciate Kaufman letting this type of thing run. It's only fair*. It's down to a slow smolder now and may not see more posts, but it was fun while it lasted. Take care......... * For the Cafe' Gestapo: fair (fâr) characterized by honesty and justice : free from self-interest, deception, injustice, or favoritism

Criss Angel Coin In Soda Can

2005-09-29T15:04:00.000-05:00

After returning from some mind numbing business meeting last night, I totally forgot about watching Mindfreak. It's possibly surprising that I fall into the "rising tide raises all boats" school and believe Criss is good for magic. Actually, given its moribund state, I don't think anything could hurt. Criss doesn't perform the type of magic I enjoy, but I'm certainly not in the target demographic. I think there are over 400 posts on the Cafe' about the Coin In Soda Can Trick and it hasn't been released! Certainly he's creating interest. Since I missed the Coin In Soda Can performance, I was interested to see what was on the net about it. I now know: 1. It's the obvious successor to Silver Shifter as the worst trick of all time and wouldn't fool a newborn baby OR 2. Criss was taught this by visitors from an advanced civilization and he used science unknown to our race to accomplish this miracle. Which is it? Take care.........

Cleaning the desk

2005-09-29T12:37:00.000-05:00

I'm working on some longer things, but these are just random dumps for your consideration: i/m in Blogland

Blogs are kinda slow these days. Seems to be a sign of the times. I guess we're all more concerned with paying for gas and heating our homes. Don't worry, your crack Federal Government is on the case.
Magician X continues to be the best writer with a currently active blog. He seems to have his hand in his pants a little too often for this old man, but I imagine he thinks I have my head up my ass too often for his taste. Obviously well educated and insightful. Frequently updated.
Tim Ellis posts regularly and his blog is worth your consideration.
MagicCentric must be spending his time trying to run down his lost kajonies after being neutered in the Haydn fiasco. I'm questioning whether he will ever come back. The last substantive post was on how to spell his name - and they say blogs are dull! His other blog - Atom something seems dead.
I enjoy both Tom Frank's blog and The Magic Whack, but neither offer an RSS feed, so I seldom see them. C'mon fellers - that's just silly. Likewise Euan Bingham.
Glenn Bishop tends to post in spurts, but it's worth watching. He has some really good ideas.

I don't understand Google I've added Google AdWords to the site. Hey, if I can make a few pennies with little harm - that's OK. AdWords supposedly reads the page and decides on what ads would be appropriate. On this page are ten articles. The Google spider persists in picking up on the couple of paragraphs regarding shoes for cross dressing men and putting ads for large size women's shoes at the top. One last Haydn comment Whit Just Won't Catch On Unfortunately, I can't exactly quote Hopalong Haydn here, because the Storm Troopers at Stalag Brooks deleted the entire thread about the 3 shell manuscript etc. etc. etc. etc............. Somewhere in there Haydn AGAIN makes the mistake of saying he was reviled in the anonymous blogs for defending his friend Stephen F. Youell - he of the Bible citation email address - Sheesh!!! He must be a real holy man. I don't know why this is so damn difficult for him to absorb. He can perform unnatural acts with Youell 24/7 - buy billboards proclaiming how wonderful he is - name a star after him - whatever he wants. Please tell the world what a magnanimous, caring, misunderstood gentlemen he is. Feel free. I don't give a fuck and neither does anybody else. That's a fact. There's actually real merit in defending a friend through thick and thin. What is so damn irritating and unfair is Haydn virtually strutted around the Cafe, acting like some big time bad ass, knowing full well that anyone disagreeing with him would get sat on by Brooks' ample ass. In short he was a bully. He deserves absolutely no quarter for any repurcussions arising from those actions. Absolutely none! P.S. The article on the genesis of Whit's name in the October Magic is worth a read. Take care.........

Drivel & Drool

Who are these people and why are they running my country?! I guess I might as well admit it - I HATE GEORGE F. BUSH. I'm a lifelong Republican - errrr, make that Conservative. Something G2 professes to be. Barry Goldwater must be twisting in his grave. In some respects I guess G2 is not particularly worse than many of his predecessors, but I expected more. In retrospect, that was naive. I had read his father's lying lips as he was going to make provisions for our retirement and less reliance on Social Security - sound familiar? That lasted 1 year before he caved in and repealed the law. If you ever heard G1 talk about it, it wasn't the fact that he broke a firm promise that bothered him, but that he made the promise in a way people remembered it. Now I hear G2 tell us he never said imminent when talking about the Iraqi threat. That may well be true, but the clear thrust for going into Iraq was the present danger they represented. George!! Listen up!! The next time you want to play word games, make it about getting a blow job in the Oval Office and not bankrupting our country on a wild goose chase. Hell, they couldn't even get one plane in the air. What a big time threat they were! And..... you have the balls to say you would not have changed a thing if you knew all of these facts. Maybe you are as dumb as some people portray you. Now we're asked to sacrifice due to the hurricanes and the energy issues. What about your fucking buddies in the oil industry! George, you're nominally the President. You could do something! Make no mistake - big corporations, the most corrupt institutions in the galaxy, own this administration and I fear they are striking the final blow to this formerly great country as we speak. It is said by some, George, that you feel you are on a crusade. If that crusade was other than destroy this country, you have failed. Our future generations will pay for your malfeasance and sheer incompetence. Nice legacy........ Prepare for President Hillary! I think I'm going to be ill - very ill.

Does anyone care anymore?

2005-09-27T09:44:00.000-05:00

This was in the Denny & Lee Newsletter yesterday. I think many of us know the answer and it's ugly. For your consideration: We just started our lecture schedule up again for the fall and I must say, I am very disappointed at the interest in lecturers. Below is a list of great lectures and it just seems that no one seems to care anymore. It is getting more and more difficult to get magicians away from their computers, plasma screens, DVD players, and instant magic downloads from unethical websites. Magic events are poorly attended, magic shops get no more visitors, and live lectures seem to be a thing of the past. If you look at the magic on TV today and the magic that is being performed, it all seems to be highly edited, almost "unreal" and definitely not able to be performed in "real life" situations. I wonder where the young magicians of today will be in the next few years. I go through a great effort (in both time and money) to bring these fine lecturers to our studio and the apathy makes me wonder if it is really worth the effort. One of the most disappointing statements is "Well, I never heard of him." Guess what??? Somewhere in the world is the greatest plumber who ever lived and if you're not a professional plumber, then you will have never heard of him. It's the same with magic. It seems like the only reservations coming in are for the Mark Wilson lecture which is almost sold out. Below is the current schedule of lecturers coming up in the next three months. Our first one is coming up in three more days and currently we have only three people signed up for this Award Winner. This will most likely be your only chance to ever see him lecture. Oh well, the world is changing, and maybe I should learn to change also. I hope not.

Drivel & Drool

The Cafe' continues to push the bar higher and higher when it comes to raw stupidity. Bill Palmer started a thread regarding an eBay auction that he felt was misleading / overpriced. The thread is here. Personally, I think there are worse things on eBay, but that's not the point. The Cafe' gestapo removed the link. What could possibly be the purpose? It seems they are personally out to disenfranchise one and all. Actually, I was surprised to see them step on one of the more visible names.

The Big E!

2005-09-26T19:34:00.000-05:00

I'm going to talk about ethics today. Not magic ethics, in particular, but human morality as we old timers call it. Understand, the stuff people call marketing today had a simpler and more easily understood moniker in my day - lying As examples, I'm choosing a couple of magic related items, because I know them best. The first is from the Genii Forum. Kaufman generally doesn't allow comments on items for sale, but this one got through: http://geniimagazine.com/forum/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=14;t=005153 In short someone is announcing an eBay sale of: Cards as Weapons Ricky Jay s/c FIRST PRINT Richard Hatch, a knowledgeable man on these things calls the seller to task: Just a quick note, the CARDS AS WEAPONS you list is the 1988 Warner reprint, not the Darien House first printing from 1977 (simultaneously published in both hardcover and softcover). The listing should be corrected. Good luck with your sale! It was pointed out that the listing was technically correct as this was a First Printing of the Warner edition. Billary Clinton would be proud! Anyway, the response deserves a complete recitation: Usually I don't respond to people who respond to things I've posted. I've noticed that in other areas (alt.magic, magiccafe, etc.) it just becomes a meaningless dialogue that ends in someone bringing up Hitler's name (forget what that's called...it actually has a name). But I respect the Genii Forum and the people on it, so I'll respond to this. I don't feel I did anything illegal, immoral, unethical. I'm sure you're all aware that the subject line of an eBay auction is two fold: for searches, and to pique interest. The character limit is, I think, 50 or so letters, so the subject line needs to be brief. You post only that which will be in people's searches, and that which will get an interest in people. I've done both. I guess I could've put in the subject: "Warner Edition" but it wouldn't have fit and also, that's not something most people search for, not something that means too much to people. Maybe for collectors it does, but for the general population who just want this book for whatever reason (for investment, to learn card throwing, to have something by Ricky Jay, to see a naked woman) whatever the reason, *most* people don't care about Warner. So I put First Edition in the subject line to get me in the searches, and to intrigue. It is now the buyers obligation to read further, WHERE I DID PUT THAT IT'S A WARNER EDITION 1988 (nothing illegal, immoral, unethical here). If someone buys this book (or any auction) just by looking at the subject line and going no further into the description, they're fools. Anyway, I hope posting this does something positive (I never would've responded like this in any other forum (including KJ) and hope no one brings up Hitler's name. Let's look at this response. Firstly the limit is more than 50 and Cards as Weapons Ricky Jay s/c FIRST PRINT - Warner Ed. would have fit just fine. The whole Caveat Emptor mentality makes me ill. No amount of rationalization can possibly obscure the fact that a nonmisleading title was very possible and while I must agree that nothing illegal was done, I'll pass on agreeing about the immoral and unethical. Personally, I would have no problem if the title merely stated the book and author. This would accomplish what he wished for searches and not mislead people. This is assuming he stated the year,etc. in the description. I fear most people won't understand what this is about and that's a crying shame. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- One other example for your consideration. Hocus Pocus frequently sends emails with this subject: Hocus Pocus Buy One Get One Event Sounds like a Buy One Get One Free to me - how about you? Actually they left off the for 50% Off from the subject line. It's a 25% off sale - that's all. How many find the email honest? One old man doesn't..... i/m

Drivel & Drool

How many times recently have you wanted to go the the Cafe' and write "is the Magic Circle Jerk having a contest again?" If some of these things aren't purposefully boring then I can't imagine why people are wasting precious energy to post. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5-4-3-2.... Isn't it amazing, they didn't know where Rita was going to hit or what strength, but the American Petroleum Institute was prescient enough to know that the American public was about to have another one rammed up their ass. DON'T buy into this horseshit from the petroleum companies, hedge funds and our crack Federal Energy Department. This is nothing but greed. If you don't believe it just wait for the next quarterly reports to come out.

So You Want To Be An Illusionist?!

2005-09-22T12:38:00.000-05:00

I'll admit a prejudice against what magicians call illusions:

Most guys dancing around, pointing, strutting and posing while someone else does the work just look ridiculous.
Every performer that wants to add an illusion to his act so he can demand more money, seems to, invariably, go out and buy some rickety Super-X and proceeds to fool no one. The only audience interest is hoping the assistant doesn't fall off as she sways back and forth like a Jack-In-The-Box.
So often the acts look like they haven't bothered to rehearse.
I'm seldom fooled by the tricks, even though I've never studied illusions.

Recently I had the opportunity to attend a lecture by a 1st class illusionist and came away with a new appreciation for some of them:

That stuff is heavy and hauling it around and setting up is a lot of work
The magician doesn't have to look like an escapee from The Pink Dildo
Good props are very expensive, but the end product shows well. Very well.
A good assistant is probably better trained than the magician. He exposed the Mismade Girl and the work that must be accomplished in a small space and in seconds is unbelievable.
A good illusionists must spend a lot of time deciding what works for his act and not just buy a fancy colored box to prance around.

I could never be an illusionist. Actually, I could never afford it, but that aside, it's just not me. I will, however, have a much greater appreciation for the performers the next time I see a good illusionist.

Drivel & Drool

More Cafe' posts I won't read: I know some super secret, inside shit that you don't - D. Watkins Tomorrow - i/m Drops the E Bomb!

How To Float With Sexy Shoes

2005-09-21T09:50:00.000-05:00

I use Google as my home page. It's fast, reliable and easily customizable. One of the items I get is the "How To" Tip Of The Day. Some of the stuff is kinda helpful. Yesterday was a popular article on how to remove scratches from CDs. Be careful taking advice, as it is nothing more than a Wiki, which means any fool with a computer can offer advice. Anyway, recently it had How To Perform The Balducci Levitation. The description was so-so, but I believe anyone could learn it from the description. You think magic isn't popular? It's had about 50,000 hits to date. ehow.com is supported by Google ads. Basically, Google reads the page and then places appropriate ads on the right side. This ad on the Balducci page caught my eye: All Heels For Men will help you make the most of your feminine side! We offer a large selection of the sexiest heels, slippers, boots and stockings to make your legs look ladylike and alluring. We specialize in only sizes 9-17 especially for the transgendered man! Our retail store will be happy to take your order by phone at 954-748-5855 between the hours of 11am-9pm Eastern Time. We ship worldwide and rush orders are available upon request. All Heels For Men is the web's number one source for large-sized sexy shoes. If you are a crossdressing man who has a hard time finding the feminine shoes you love in large, hard to find sizes, your search is over! We have been serving the transgendered community for over ten years, and we look forward to serving you. Remember, refer to our size chart, or add two sizes to your male shoe size in order to find your female shoe size. Special requests are always welcome, and we will do our best to find just what your fantasy desires. Please email or call us!
Since the ads rotate with each access, you may or may not see this. Computer logic isn't always perfect. Then again.......

Drivel & Drool

Another Report From Douche Bag Central...... Once again, an aristocratic, pompous ands unfair reply from the Cafe staffers (minor editing for readability): ----------------------------------------------------------- Honest question posed: I have a friend who wants to sign up to the Café. BUt he is using a free email from yahoo. He got a message stating that free emails are blocked on this forum. Is there a reason for doing so? There are so many people using free emails such as yahoo or hotmail. WHy prevent them from entering the Café? Another user chimes in: My youngest son wanted to join recently, as he is interested in magic. He was disheartened and I was shocked that he was not allowed in because he doesn't have money to be able to afford an email account other than the free one. Cafe developer with basic Cafe Fuck Off Answer: I can assure you there are very valid reasons for it, but I'm not going to explain them here. Suffice to say if you ever run your own board of this size, you may eventually decide to do the very same thing, perhaps even for the very same reasons. Even if you didn't, you'd clearly understand why it's being done here. Groveling user with every bone in his body wanting to suggest that developer perform unholy act with computer, but refrains due to Cafe policies: Gene, I don't mean to be disrespectful, or even contrary, but I don't think I'd ever block some one from coming on board on the basis of their being poor. Case in point? My son. ----------------------------------------------------------- There's no earthly reason for this approach except abuse. None. The answer wouldn't have taken a minute. The real question here is does Brooks hire pompous, intolerable douche bags are does he train them in his own image? If anyone reading this has this email problem, ask one of your computer savvy friends. It's a very, very minor hurdle. There are hundreds of log ons available in the "underground". Just hunt around. Once again, we award the i/m Platinum Jackass to the Magic Cafe' and its predicatable staff

Freebie That's Actually Worth Something

2005-09-20T13:05:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, the October Genii arrived. For those of us that have subscribed since the Bill Larsen days, the first instinct is to say "which year?". Since Richard Kaufman has taken over, the publication schedule has been met with boring consistency. The magazine seems to be back on track, actually having magic in it, after going through a period when it had as much magic as the New Yorker. I look forward to its arrival every month. Included in the poly bag was a demo DVD from L&L. Included on the DVD are over 20 performances from their DVD stable and two full explanations, Mike Close's wonderful Dr. Strangetrick and the Larry Jennings' self-worker Impossible. The choice of tricks to explain is excellent. I've always considered the Close version of Card Warp to be the best and Larry's location trick is inexplicable. The performances from prior DVDs, generally, are very good. A couple, like Flip's rope trick, are painfully obvious to any but the most magically challenged. In recent months I've begun to find the L&L DVDs tiresome on many fronts - the audience, the choice of performers and too little magic on too many DVDs. Also, they were advertising well in advance of actual shipment, with no indication that the product wasn't actually ready. The recent set, starring Joshua Jay, shows improvements in all of these areas. I hope it continues.

Drivel & Drool

The latest from Stalag Brooks Sometimes I feel bad about beating up on the Cafe', but then reality sets in and I know that what they do must be exposed. Here's a classic example, written by a long time user and genuinely helpful poster with close to 1,000 posts. You'll never see it, as it was deleted within a couple of hours:

Thank you, Magic Café, for deleting my posts in this thread. I'm only a long time member (four years) and obviously don't deserve at least a short message about the WHY behind this kind of censorship. It's getting better and better here.

Isn't that pathetic? Don't let me hear any of that bull shit about it's his site and he can do as he pleases. There's right and there's wrong and this is W-R-O-N-G.

Blogger Is Driving Me NUTS!

2005-09-18T20:39:00.000-05:00

.....and I didn't have far to go. I know it's free, but today it's overpriced. I edit a post and then it tells me it can't find it - on some posts. Of course, it's not consistent. I always tweak posts and it won't let me. The last 2 posts are reversed from what they were and I lost the comments. It may be my posting software confusing the Blogger index. I don't know. I really don't want to set up my own server, as it will mean dealing with PHP or PERL, something I would prefer not to do right now, but I will if I have to.

Drivel & Drool

Go see a good guy... I've read Glenn Bishop's Blog for a long time. Sometimes he makes me mad. Sometimes I'm amused. Sometimes I'm confused. Through all of this, I've become increasingly convinced he's one of the good guys. Sure he's a little mercurial at times, but he may well have a right to be. I know he feels like his father was treated unfairly and those type of feelings just can't be surpressed. You take them to your grave and all of the good advice to move on and forget it is 24k bullshit. Can't be done. I think dealing with it is healthy. Glenn's writing tends to be a little choppy and sometimes obtuse, but this stems from his dyslexia and bubbling passion. He's making a real effort to give to the magic "community" and I assure you a lot of his stuff is well worth your time. Glenn was (is) dead wrong in his defense of Stephen F. Youell, but he's not alone there. We'll forgive him for that indiscretion. The blogging world outside of Stalag Cafe needs people like him. Keep at it Glenn.

Fool Me Once

2005-09-18T19:37:00.000-05:00

I year or two ago, I bought Silver Shifter - Steve Brooks' $50 rubber coin. I swear that's what it is. It also came with some silver colored powder and a Q-Tip, I think. If I rubbed the silver powder on the coin and I stood at one goal line of a football field and you stood at the other goal line it looks a little like a half dollar. Now I can perform miracles as long as you don't move any closer. I bought this well before I understood Steve Brooks. Those of us that have bought magic over the years have opened many packages and felt seriously screwed, but NOTHING ever compared to opening the Silver Shifter package and realizing you had just paid 50 bucks for a fucking rubber coin. FIFTY BUCKS! Supposedly, they had high manufacturing costs. Brooks promised aftermarket books and even a special section on the Cafe for purchasers. I understand it will now be a section of Cogitations II. If the man had an ounce of compassion he would have, at least, included a bottle of Vaseline with every purchase. I'm still sore. The next release from the fertile mind that is Steve Brooks was something called Free Fall. Someone gave me this over a year ago and I never bothered to break the seal. After all the initial hoopla and congratulatory posts you would think we could see it on every street corner. Hell, I thought they may even make a TV series from it. To date, I've never seen anyone do it or mention it. MagicChris, took his lips off Brooks' ass long enough to pen this: That's right! Anyone that uses Free Fall or Silver Shifter knows how his creative mind works! Yes, Chris, I believe we do! Having conquered the creative end of magic, Mein Brooks turns his considerable self to the craft of DVD production. He's a talented S.O.B. His latest effort is The Rat Pack by Curtis Kam. Peter Studebaker reviewed it in the September Magic. I won't fully recount the article. The final paragraph is sufficient: If you build a better card trick the world will beat a path to your door. This ain't it. Maybe, just maybe, I've figured out the problem. Peter's review says the performance was shot in a pool hall/restaurant. Talk about the fox in the hen house. How was Brooks supposed to concentrate when he was working surrounded by french fries and hamburgers? The DVD never had a prayer. Never! I'm told Curtis is a nice guy and a good performer. Too bad he teamed with this clown for a very visible project. I doubt the Cafe publicity offset the harm from the amateur production.

The Baby & The Bath Water

2005-09-18T15:51:00.000-05:00

OK! The title is trite - it's Sunday and I'm tired and not particularly clever or original today. Lost in all the hoopla over the Haydn/Sheets/Bush/MagiCentric/MagicWhack/MagicianX/Pinnard/Schneide/Kreskin/BabeRuth/HowieMandel.....etc. etc. uh....... controversy was the very real issue raised by MagiCentric in the original Haydn/Bush post. The lost point of the original post was there are 2 levels of accountability in magic when it comes to creation and crediting. First, there are the elite - I won't call names here as that's not the point - they can publish and produce anything and the magic world applauds. Statues are built in the park. The Magic Castle awards a fellowship and Steve Brooks gets so excited he nearly misses a meal. Then there are piss ants like you and me. We can pull a rabbit out of a hat and some pious, self-righteous jackal will quickly inform us that that was developed by Reginald Scot and we should make arrangements with his estate before performing it again. It's the ethical thing to do. Create an original idea and have it ripped off and we hear coincidence or that it was already in some underground notes privately circulated by Hofzinser and the routine was well known among the cognoscenti. Exaggerrated? Barely, if at all. It's sick and perverted.

Drivel & Drool

Is it possible? I'm about to say something I've never said before and doubt I will say again. I think the Magic Cafe may have done the right thing. OK I said it and it felt REAL strange. The giantormous thread about the 3 shell DVD is G-O-N-E as far as I can tell. I hope someone captured it. Unfortunately, I've been away and didn't have the opportunity. My gut tells me that there's something else going on here. Brooks' boys seemed to have things well in hand last time I looked. MagicianX, always on top of things, wrote about Al Schneider's posts in the thread. It may well be that the only face saving move Brooks could make was trashing the whole thread after Al called out some of that hypocritical cadre of idiots. As I often said in my years at Arthur Andersen, "if you hear the truth, it is nothing but a statistical anomaly". Likewise, if the Cafe does the right thing it is merely a cosmic accident that will shake the space/time continuum to its knees.

Posts I Didn't Read

2005-09-17T18:26:00.000-05:00

The Magic Circle Jerk's inspired contest which is rewarding a prize for the most boring post is wonderful. I'm sure all of us have tried to determine which ones they are. It's also funny to see the Cafe powers scramble - No new registrations and I've seen a number of legitimate posts trashed. Trying to find the MOST purposefully boring post is a seriously manly challenge. Anyway, this made me think of those posts by Cafe regulars that were of no interest prima fascia. There are thousands. These come quickly to mind:

How I developed my Buns of Steel - S Brooks
Brevity is the soul of wit (4 pages) - B Palmer
I'm not one to say much, but...... - J Townsend
Do you think the left side or the right side of Steve Brooks' ass is sexier? - M Chris
Humility, probably my BEST asset - P Chosse
My humility is better than Chosse's - T Wayne
Live and let live - D Scribner
Steve Brooks are a gnius - xxxxx (grammar host)
Joe Porper and I* - P Biro

* Sorry, I lost interest in this before I could finish the title.

Back To Business, I Guess

2005-09-17T13:43:00.000-05:00

Well, I guess I'm back at it. The changes I was making in this post didn't work:

The money didn't come from Nigeria
The "male enhancement" didn't
The women weren't impressed

Unfortunately, the blue pills did work so I've got to stay in and work on this damn blog.

Drivel & Drool

Apologies seem to be the blog du jour recently and I guess I'll join the party. Within the past couple of weeks The Sarcastic Magician kindly added me to his blog roll and I failed to respond. He should know:

Real life happens
I gave him what was promised
He got full value for his money
99.9 % of the people are happy with the way I handled it
He's an anonymous blogger and therefore one of the lower forms of life on the planet

OR I screwed up and it sat in my to do box longer than a reasonable time. Sorry SM - totally my fault.

A Familiar Stench In Blogland

2005-09-14T12:10:00.000-05:00

For much of my, too long, life I've been around lawyers. Personally, I consider the legal profession to be the most harmful enterprise this side of being the Enron CFO. Yeah, I know there are exceptions - Damn Few! Over the past few days, I believe I've seen this evil slithering through the blogs, extorting a serious toll. I'm convinced things will never be the same. Another notch on the bed post for the bad guys. Nothing new, I'm afraid. I'm taking a break............

More Of The Same

2005-09-13T13:30:00.000-05:00

I long ago quit posting on the Cafe, after I was banned. It's easy enough to get another set of IDs, but it's just not worth it. I have nothing I want to post, that's within the Round Man's rules anyway. I do enjoy reading the posts on a periodic basis. Unfortunately, when I read posts I remember why I detest these people some much. As I write this, there's a post in the Tech area asking about editing ones own posts. Actually, if you look, this question has been asked more than once. That pompous Chief of Staff will invariably reference something else, implying that the poster was too damn stupid or lazy to do it himself. This time he says: Here's the explanation from the rules and etiquette forum. It goes on to cite Brooks terminally boring missive and says you can only edit within the 1st 30 minutes and then only if no one has responded. There's two things seriously wrong here: 1. This rule is buried deep in the bowels of a massively dull post by Mein Brooks. Only a person that could eat raw slugs wouldn't have spit up well before reaching this point. 2. More importantly, here's the Cafe F.A.Q on the issue: You may edit your own posts at any time, unless the topic is locked. Just go to the thread where the post to be edited is located and you will see an edit icon on the line above your message. Click on this icon and edit the post. No one else can edit your post, except for the forum moderator or the Magic Cafe administrator. You see, Mr. Chief, we're not as stupid as you continually imply. FIX YOUR F.A.Q take care im

I love the Internet

2005-09-12T22:46:00.000-05:00

After doing a lot of research, it looks like all of my troubles will soon be over:

I've made contact with a Nigerian official and struck a deal to alleviate my financial problems.
I just got a bunch of pills that will have my talleywacker dragging the ground real soon.
I've found that certain magic tricks virtually guarantee I can bed a bunch of sexy women with really big yabos:

Add a few blue pills and life is good again.......... Ain't the Internet wonderful!!

The Continuing Saga

2005-09-12T11:36:00.000-05:00

Whit Responds: I've been marginally covering this story since Magician X and MagiCentric are way ahead of me on the curve. Also, I trust I've left no doubt that I dislike the Whit Haydn that appears on the Magic Cafe. He's mean, condescending and just plain rude. I can do without that. Magician X has posted the first commentary on the long awaited response here. It's a good read. Please be aware that this thread has been purified by the guards at Stalag Cafe. Unfortunately, I didn't have the foresight to grab it earlier. It's an interesting story. It will be interesting to watch it play out. I only have one comment here. Whit's blaming the blogs for the problems seems to be totally misplaced.

Drivel & Drool

One of the posts I didn't see on the revised thread were comments from a good ol' boy from Tennessee calling anonymous posters cowards. I believe this was in a couple of posts. Let's see if I can't explain this so he can understand it: Let's say you're in the cabin enjoying a chaw and you hear a noise outside. It's Pa Kettle - mad as hell, standing there with his loaded musket. He's calling you out and wrongly accusing you of messing around with Ma Kettle out behind the privy. You're not gonna take it, so you go get your gun and when you start to load it you find that Pa Kettle sent his fat, ugly brother-in-law over and took your bullets. Now you have two choices - you can walk outside unarmed and get blown to smithereens or be a coward and sneak out the cellar, so you can live to fight another day. Which one you figger you're gonna do? Get it?!

Coming Soon?

2005-09-11T20:11:00.000-05:00

Louis Falanga wrote the following in 1988 in his Publisher's Preface to M.I.N.T. Volume 1: Volumes 2 and 3 ill be released within the next year or two. Well, volume 2 was issued in 1995 and Volume 3 has never been published...... The best laid plans...... I don't even know why I'm mentioning this, but I find it interesting that magicians think they will always deliver more and sooner than they actually do. I'll bet 75% of the magic web sites I see haven't been touched in a year. I can't recall a prepublication offer that delivered on time. Doesn't anybody in magic have a calendar?

Drivel & Drool

Sometime last week the Magic Cafe celebrated its fourth birthday. Somewhere I saw Brooks wrote some self congratulatory bull shit, recounting for the 100th time the beginnings of the board and his mission to help the downtrodden ...blah....blah....blah. To be fair to this round mound of pomposity he did start something which has become quite a phenomenon in our strange little corner of this cyber-world:

Unequivocally, the Cafe is the most important destination for magicians on the Internet. For some reason the sheer momentum of the Cafe has managed to crush all competition.
No other destination attracts the large number of quality posts that he has at the Cafe.
Technically, it works. Downtime is at a minimum. Speed is generally very good. His technical people know what they are doing.

Why then do so many of us absolutely loathe the Cafe and its perpetrator? Actually, I've thought a lot about this. Is it jealousy? I certainly don't think so. Personally, I wouldn't want the headaches and I sure as hell don't want to look like him. I think it comes down to fairness. When a destination like the Cafe becomes so largethat there are no alternatives, those operating it are, rightfully, held to a different standard. This is a lot like eBay. There are hundreds of auction sites on the net - name two! At the end of the day, there's a little moral compass in MOST of us that demands fairness of our institutions. I know, I know - life isn't fair, but that doesn't stop most of us from feeling everything that can be, should be. Go to the Magic Cafe and look at the I want to see the manager section. Look around. How many open posts do you see? How many honest answers? Very few. Can a month go by and nobody have suggestions or comments? Notice how all dialog has been effectively squashed. I commend to you the following post: http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=123884&forum=40&1 Can you feel the sincere frustration of the poster when he titles his post For Pete's sake, let me answer!. Brooks' response says more than I could say in 12 pages. His total dismissal of this nice man's post is morally criminal. I'm sure Brooks accomplished his goal as the poster has left and never returned. The infamous Sweet and Sour fiasco is just another example of the cruel way Brooks treats his visitors. Frankly, closing it probably made sense. His advertisers were getting unmercifully trashed and I'm sure it was a headache. If Brooks would have closed it and made a simple explanation, many people would have missed it, but would have accepted the reality of the situation. Instead, he chose to close it for technical reasons and promised to reopen it. Of course this didn't happen and, personally, I believe it was a blatant lie from day one. His posts regarding it are an insult to anyone with a third grade education - of course, this leaves out the Cafe staff. Again, in fairness to Brooks - his mantra since day one has been - if you don't like it, Fuck you and Whit's Horse. C'mon Steve, give fairness a spin. If it doesn't work out you can always fall back on doing super market openings as Jabba the Hut. At least you won't have to wear one of those hot costumes! Everybody into the parlor for cake! ....... Oops, sorry someone seems to have eaten it. I Wonder where it went?

Another Web Tool

2005-09-11T17:20:00.000-05:00

Fellow blogger, Magician X, has taken Jabba the Brooks to task for not caring enough to even hit the Spell Check button before posting his pompous drivel. I agree. Maybe he thinks the world will change to his way of spelling. He's big on talking about rudeness and I consider this cavalier attitude toward those that read his stuff to be the height of rudeness.

Notice that I'm not talking about grammar here. Sentence construction takes a lot of time and rewriting - setting it aside and rewriting tomorrow. This is not practical for casual blogging. I see run on sentences, partial sentences, lame construction and other transgressions in my own posts, but at least I take the time to run the spell checker. This won't cure properly spelled words used in the wrong context, but it's a start toward literate blogging.

Anyway, if you need and online spell checker you might consider IESpell. It's as close as your right mouse button when you are in your browser. Another neat feature - IT'S FREE.

Blog Reading Software Recommendation

2005-09-10T14:23:00.000-05:00

I hope that most people reading this blog are using something other than a browser. Blogs and RSS type feeds are new and the software is still immature. My current recommendations are FeedDemon and Stardock Blog Navigator. FeedDemon sells for $30 bucks and Stardock has a free version, which is very adequate and a commercial version for $19.95 which adds simple authoring capabilities. FeedDemon was developed by Nick Bradbury, the author of Dexter. His 2 prior efforts were well constructed and well supported. This program has similar promise, although I'm not crazy about the company that recently acquired them. They offer a 30 day free trial for download. Blog Navigator, also shows real promise. I just began trying it and I'm somewhat concerned about the rate of new releases - very few recently and there are bugs to be squashed. Choose your program carefully, as the learning curve is somewhat steep, however, once you experience the ability to open your reader and instantly know what was updated and access them right there, you'll never go back to the browser.

Drivel & Drool

Guilty As Charged Hopalong Haydn has been writing about bloggers having an agenda when they write about him. MagiCentric and Magician X have both vigorously denied that they have one. I would guess that I do, in fact, have an agenda. Somehow, agenda has come to be something evil and underhanded. The most frequent user of agenda I can recall was Jim Bakker, founder of PTL and Heritage USA. When the story of his thefts and embezzlements began to break, it was the press and nonbelievers pursuing their agenda against him. Sound familiar? My agenda? I felt the Haydn was spitefully cruel to those that were displeased with the way Youell handled the Cogitations debacle and took advantage of his VIP status at Stalag Cafe to abuse those that couldn't fight back. I know absolutely nothing of the details about the current arguments over his publication of someone's routine, so I haven't commented. I DO KNOW how he bullied people and I find that reprehensible. He asked for it and I hope he gets it. I'm here to do my part! Take care...... im PS When I was a young boy, I can still recall how the meanest people in town prayed longest and loudest in church. Even a child can see through that. Apparently, todays version is to take a Bible citation as your email address....... Absolutely pathetic.

COMING TOMORROW!! IM CELEBRATES THE CAFE BIRTHDAY - DON'T MISS IT - WE'RE HAVING CAKE!

No WOW!

2005-09-09T00:15:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking a little more about the convention I just attended and it occurs to me that there was not a single WOW moment in three days. I saw some nice variations and some clever adaptations, but nothing that made me really sit up and take notice. Is it me, or is everything becoming a tired rehash? I think I saw 5 Silk Fountains - a nice interlude, but FIVE?! Who's doing the thinking in magic now? Anyone?

Drivel & Drool

Mine's Bigger Than Yours......... I'm not going to recount the whole Whit Haydn / Whackster thing, except to say I'm really sorry to see this kind of thing happen. Aren't bloggers just insignificant piss ants, unworthy of anyone's attention? Yet Whit, or whoever is posing as him, makes the following statement:

I am a performer, manufacturer and retailer of magic whose reputation for honesty and fairness is being impugned by this blog. It does incredible long term monetary damage to me.

Aw, c'mon. Is this type of legal hyperbole really necessary? Incredible monetary damage? No way. I seriously doubt that what Judge Whackster has to say about Whit would ever cost him a dime. Personally, I would never buy his stuff unless there was NO alternative, as I find him a pompous, overbearing bore ass. Judge Whackster's comments, good or bad, would make no difference to me. I would assume I'm not alone here. I would think much more of him if he just threatened to use those Roy Rogers boots and kick his ass. Instead we're going to play My Lawyer Is Bigger Than Your Lawyer..... Too bad!

Some Things Never Change - Thankfully!

2005-09-07T11:52:00.000-05:00

George Daily (Magicana for Collectors) has been selling magic books since.... well, since there were books. How do I know - I was there. I collect very little anymore, but I've had a hole in my small collection for some time that I just couldn't seem to fill and I saw it on his most recent list. George's operation isn't particularly high tech - just email request and confirmation. What a pleasure - properly described book, accurately graded, well packed and timely shipped. .....and this may not matter to many people, but he's a nice guy. I like to business with nice people, but it's getting harder and harder to find.