I had written a fairly lengthy post welcoming Steve Pellegrino back to the blogging world, but before I posted it his site disappeared.

Does anyone know if this is permanent?

I’m slow to pay for software. Before I buy anything I check freeware and Open Source availability and generally find something as good, if not better, than the commercial offerings.

Really – REALLY, this is not a function of being cheap. I have issues with many software developers after years of taking it where software was never meant to go.

Anyway, one piece of software that I did buy was FeedDemon – the best, in my opinion, RSS reader in existence. FeedDemon was written by Nick Bradbury, the author of the cartoon Dexter, as well as some other neat software such as Homesite.

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Henry Ford had it wrong:
01/11/2008

I read this quote today from Henry Ford:

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.

Obviously, Hank never made it to the Magic Cafe!

The new Paul Wilson Videos:

I’m actually kind of anxious to see these. Paul’s a nice guy and an accomplished magician.

I just hope there is really 4 DVDs worth of material – we’ll see.

When I travel, I take books and DVDs that have a lot of useful material in/on them. This means I find myself taking John Bannon’s stuff quite frequently. We are very fortunate that magic seems to attract a lot of brilliant thinkers – e.g. Jim Steinmeyer, Simon Aronoson, Mike Close, Robert Harbin, Alex Elmsley, Stewart James, David Williamson, Darwin Ortiz etc. It seems so many of the magic savants get the press and we tend to forget those of great intelligence and insight.

I spent a great deal of time rereading Smoke and Mirrors on my last trip. What a good book. Some of Bannon’s wisdom needs to be pointed out so we don’t forget.

That is why I consider myself a magician first, an entertainer second. This is why I do not believe a magician is an actor playing the part of a magician.. Magic should be entertaining and should contain elements of theater, spectacle and/or humor. But I think if magic has anything it can call its own, it is its appeal to the bundle of human reactions I call surprise. By choosing magic as the medium, by being a magician rather than a comedian, actor or storyteller, my aim is to provide that otherworldly sense of surprise.

Thank you, John! The entertainment at all costs mantra has gone further to destroy magic than anything I can think of.

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Here’s the marketing poop:

A tic tac box is shown empty all the way around. You take the coin and slam it on the tic tac box. You can see and hear the coin melting through the plastic and end up inside the container. Your hands are clean after the coin penetrates the box. Immediately give away the box with the coin inside to your spectator. There’s nothing to find out. Your spectators can keep the tic tac with the coin trapped inside. Forget everything you have seen.
This is: Pure.Visual. Magic.

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