Month: June 2018

The Magic Circle is a club for magicians located in London, near Euston Train Station. For decades the club was considered, in the UK at least, to have a special place in the world of magic. If you were a magician the first question anyone would ask is whether you were in The Magic Circle. To a degree it also had international prestige, which they use to declare themselves an international club, even though the majority of their members are located within 50 miles of the London headquarters.

A massive change occurred in the club in the 90s, when due to a huge public campaign run by and on behalf of female magicians, the club accepted women for the first time. Yeah, in the progressive wonderland of 1991 they allowed female members. Conversely the International Brotherhood of Magicians has always been open to female members, since it was founded in 1922.

The actual shift in the club though was an after effect of the campaign to open The Magic Circle to women rather than the impact of the rule change itself.

Continue reading “The Magic Circle
or The Men’s Hut”

You may have noticed that the three music related posts contain within Their titles a joke, minus the first line.

The joke is this:
Author: I’m writing a book
Critic: What’s it Sbout?
Author: It’s about 400 pages.
*Pause*
Author: They all serve the same nobleman.

The first 3 lines are a classic joke, conflating the two meanings of the word “about” the critic meaning what’s the topic and the author replying with the approximate length of the work. The additional line however re-contextualises the author’s reply, by implying that the author correctly interpreted the context of the word “about” but that we as an audience (and from the silent pause, the critic also) incorrectly interpreted the meaning of the word “pages” which could mean a side of paper in a book bit could also mean a servant to nobility. Hence About 400 Pages is a post regarding a lack of topic, a book about the properties of the book if you will. Shows which repeat the same theme over and over on the other hand, is touched upon in They All Serve The Same Nobleman, which is a more obvious reference. Then finally I ended the series on What’s it About, which touched upon how to create cohesion between effects without hanging them on a single peg, by looking for connections between different effects and creating a flow.

Because of the huge time gap between the first two and the last one I kind of lost my flow and in the intervening time my focus was drawn by… other things.

Which is why my next post will be about the Magic Circle’s exposure rule.

Whereas the two previous posts in this series have been about genres of music, this post is dedicated to the living genius Neil Cicierega, who created the three greatest albums in the world.

Those links aren’t Spotify playlists like the others by the way, those are links to download the albums, made freely available by Neil himself.

Because sometimes you gotta mix it up a bit.

Continue reading “Somebody once told me
or What’s it about?”