Social norm?

Can somebody tell me, why in advertisement for certain magic tricks the creator is often said to be "one of magic greatest thinkers"?

It's eerie.

Also, why do so many magic trailers often show the magician walking lonely down an ally. Are magicians supposed to be loners?

Bandanas

Some costumers are just dumb.... wait, let me back up a bit.

There is this good old routine of the "Vanishing Bandana". An audio track is running. A voice is coming up telling you to teach you how to vanish a bandana. But the magicians mishears the instructions and instead tries to do it with a banana. It's a classic routine by now.



Now this gag works in English quite well. In German... not so much. Banana and Bandana are very close. The German words are "Banane" and "Bandana" So technically the routine could be done in German. Except for the fact that nobody knows what a "Bandana" is. Seriously, nobody knows. The native German word is "Kopftuch" which means "head cloth" which totally describes a bandana. And "Banane" and "Kopftuch" are clearly different words.

Now still some German magicians perform this routine using the Banane/Bandana gag and wonder why it doesn't play that well. And a German magician/voice actor (who is unable to speak proper German btw) is selling this routine.

Some costumers are just dumb.

Honesty

There are essential questions, that arise the second a member of our community decides to end everything. Questions like: Are we too harsh? If the answer is yes, then the next question, the issue of guilt, comes to mind.

Are we guilty of driving members into a realm where they cannot defend themselves anymore?

We can look for very specific cases, like Kevin's case. Or we look for a very broad scope.

Personally I have to shy away from the details and look everywhere at the same time. Never lose the whole picture!

And the first question from a wide point of view needs to be reevaluated. Are we too harsh? The answer is "No". We are the product of a community that is all, but being honest! If we were honest, harshness would not be an issue.

And I wish I would have the ability to put into proper words what is in my mind.

PS: Will the Magic Cafe Moderators finally grow some and leave the thread online? Or will they chicken out of any honest discussion as they have done some many times? We could use more honesty guys. And sometimes flames hurt. And sometimes that is a good thing. Grow up!

Tired...

Pretty much every year I took off a month between March and May. This year is no different, except that I haven't written a whole lot of articles (Winner Month) ahead of time. This is much more problematic that I would have anticipated. I was thinking: "No big deal, I write two posts on one day and schedules them so they appear two days apart from one another, giving me 4 days of no blogging before I have to write two more posts."

If you noticed: I haven't gotten around writing anything. The main reasons is that I have too much shit to do right now. I even had to put all of my other blogs on hold. I really hope that by the end of April all of the shit has sorted itself out.

So did anything exciting happen in the magic world? Well sort of.

This is a nice read on the topic of fraudulent ad's: Green Monster Link So basically Ellusionist made false claims in their advertisement. And the discussion is about if it is okay to "fluff" the advertisement.

Also talk about an Ukrainian magician with no understanding of fashion. His name is Alexander Alexander. A mentalist who claims that his powers are real. Just look at this video and cry a little. The Moscow Magic Club awarded him a medal for 30 years of "Service to Illusions". Yeah right!

So it will take a few more days to get back to proper blogging...

At least I tell you about it, unlike the unreliable bastard that goes by the name of the Smiling Mule, who quits blogging and then comes back with no mention that he in fact was travelling the world looking for someone who actually could do the correct Erdnase Top Palm!

Still Alive

I really am!