Coming Soon?

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?

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?