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.

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.

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…………

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

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.

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.

Get it?!

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?