Tag: Consumerism

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D.I.Y. or Make it till you make it

A short time ago I gave a lecture called Things to Make and Do, a title inspired by my childhood love of books and television programs with a similar set of contents, and sometimes that exact name.

Lots of people wanted the notes so I assume it was well liked. Some people even told me they thought it was good enough for a magic circle lecture but honestly as much as I’d like to make it my AIMC exam, I would find lecturing over a live stream like that to be too intimidating.

But I think the reason why people liked it was because I showed them how to make a few home made tricks, and in a world full of products, people are tired of being sold things by supposed teachers. It’s reminiscent of an inspirational quote I van barely remember and am about to butcher: We evolved to create but we’re forced to consume.

This is why in my magical girl post I included a link on how to make gravity defying socks when mentioning the costume.

When did we stop making things?

Continue reading “D.I.Y. or Make it till you make it”

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Do It Yourself
or Sloppy Seconds

On October 15 2015 I attended a one day conventionette called Lost Patrons of the Mother Black Cap. It was hosted by Dave Forrest’s Full52, and was honestly the best magic event I’ve ever been to.

During that convention I saw Dave Forrest perform one of his signature effects REM. In REM a bunch of decisions are made by a spectator leaving an arrangment of items on the table, which is then revealed to match a photograph. When you buy the trick, you get a method and a photograph.

But when Dave Forrest performed it at the Lost Patrons of the Mother Black Cap, he had one extra prop which you don’t get with the effect as sold. That prop was a 2 foot by 3 foot painting of himself with the props arranged in front of him.

It was, after all, his signature effect and so while all the hobbyists bought it as trick number 237 to half heartedly perform in front of bored colleagues, Dave was closing his cabaret shows with it, and the painting was something so permanent, so hard to fake, that it left no doubt in the minds of his spectators that this prediction was as good as set in stone.

But now… I’m seeing a lot of these…

Continue reading “Do It Yourself
or Sloppy Seconds”

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Acting Up
or Skills not Bills

I have to squeeze out some bile, and unfortunately that means it’s going to splatter all over you, my wonderful audience. Please forgive me, it is so hateful, so cathartic, to encounter something which is so diametrically opposed to your own internal calculus that it seethes from your every pore like steam escaping a boiler on the cusp of exploding.

I am of course talking about Alakazam’s regular YouTube segment, The Act.

Continue reading “Acting Up
or Skills not Bills”

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Tortured Artists
or We don’t use that word here

This post sat in my drafts for a year, because I needed to work through some thoughts, which I did in these three posts.

A number of people have brought the following recent article to my attention:

Magicians Less Prone To Mental Disorders Than Other Artists

Given that the Magic Circle has a whole mental health programme to look after its members mental health I can’t help but feel that suggesting magic is a ticket to good mental health might be papering over some actual problems, but that’s not what this is really about.

Because everyone knows to be an artist you have to be nuts, right? You have to be so tortured by the delusional visions visiting you at night that the only respite is to capture them on canvas or in writing. The music of the damned plays in your head until you can share it with other people to alleviate the burden of being alone with forbidden knowledge.

Right? That’s what we all know about being creative, its a curse.

Right?

Continue reading “Tortured Artists
or We don’t use that word here”

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Ledger Domain
or Dan and Dave don’t know how copyright works

Sometimes I read something and wonder if I’m having a brain heammorrage.

It’s like the words in their particular order make so little sense that either I have forgotten how to read or the author of the words is insane, and I am surprisingly not egotistical enough to assume the latter every single time.

Thats the sense I had today when I was told that Dan and Dave, one of many famous sibling groupings known colloquially as the Buck Brothers, were putting all their work in the public domain, a statement backed by a post on their Instagram.

Continue reading “Ledger Domain
or Dan and Dave don’t know how copyright works”

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Vanishing Vanishing Inc
or Use it or Lose it

Fay Presto is a scuba diver.

This may come as a surprise to many readers (should they exist) as it’s common knowledge that Fay Presto is a magician, but whereas most magicians work some shitty 9 to 5 to earn the money to buy magic tricks which they perform on the weekends, Fay Presto performs magic around the world to earn money for her scuba diving trips.

She told me once about the odd economics of scuba gear, that almost every piece of scuba equipment from tanks to masks to wetsuits is far cheaper on the internet, but no experienced scuba diver would ever buy things that way. Not because the online products are lower quality or difficult to judge sizes and compatibility or anything like that, but because the one thing you can’t do online is fill up your air tanks.

On a suba diving holiday everyone’s airtanks get re-filled a few times a day, and the only place to do that is at a physical scuba gear suppliers.

However, here’s the rub: there is no money in filling air tanks. If people don’t buy their scuba gear from the physical scuba store where thry dive, the scuba store goes bust, no one can fill up their air tanks, and scuba just kinda… Ends.

Continue reading “Vanishing Vanishing Inc
or Use it or Lose it”

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[Uncredited]
or The Singularity Approaches

This entry is tangentially related to David Regal’s new tarot deck. But not entirely. Perhaps not even legitimately. I currently have a question pending on the Vanishing Inc. website which may prove that my fears are unfounded. This time.

Indeed the last time I was super concerned about a technological innovation it was NFTs and despite my fears only one magician ever released an NFT project to my knowledge, and it was so hilariously bad that he sold none of them and pivoted to passive income training course scams.

But with the launch of Phill Smiths Fusion Mosaic Phenomenon and Marc Kerstein’s Subliminal the dawn of the AI generated magic product has truly begun.

Continue reading “[Uncredited]
or The Singularity Approaches”

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Ban Hammer
or Throwing the baby out with the bath water

I was planning for my next big post to be a video of my latest routine with a further video explaining its origins, similar to the post I made for the tooth fairy act but watching back the performance, I just wasn’t happy with it yet.

Needs longer to cook.

However it got me thinking about video content and specifically about magic youtubers and such, which all led to with this video my friend and long time reader sent me.

Continue reading “Ban Hammer
or Throwing the baby out with the bath water”

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You’ve Done Enough
or stop trying to make cubes happen

For the longest time, the Rubik’s Cube did not exist. Literally the entire history of the universe until 1974. Then for a considerably shorter period of time, there were no Rubik’s cube magic tricks.
Finally in 2008 Fooler Doolers released the Enchanted Cube, and shortly after in 2013 Takamiz Usui released The Cube, and between them created the entire genre now called Rubik’s cube magic.

This was the beginning of the end.

Continue reading “You’ve Done Enough
or stop trying to make cubes happen”

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Trickbait
or Sell the Sizzle not the Sausage

YouTube thumbnails are slowly coalescing to a singular form.

I remember when the thumbnail of a YouTube video was automatically generated from the middle frame of the video itself, which led to a few years where the YouTube videos with the highest production values had a flash frame in the middle of the video of a nicely designed thumbnail image with enticing text and cover art. Now YouTube lets you choose frame from your video or even upload a separate image, which many people do, leading to the rise of misleading thumbnails. These often feature provocative statements, pictures of celebrities, titillating imagery and red circles to highlight nothing in particular.

It has long been known that the eye of a particular demographic drawn to pictures of the unclad female form, and “sex sells” has long been the motto in the marketing department of masculine products.

But magic products… You want to instinctively draw the eye of a magician you need lemons.

Continue reading “Trickbait
or Sell the Sizzle not the Sausage”