The maxim for authors is “write what you know.”  If you are a hard-boiled detective looking to break into the writing biz, it makes sense to pen great hard-boiled detective novels; tricky dames, fast cars, dark alleys.  Cowboys can write about cowboy things; roping and doggies and six guns.  Brain surgeons should stick with exciting dramas about doing brain surgery; with brain surgery like themes and items — we couldn’t think of any.

This maxim guides us here at Inside Magic.

You will note most of articles contain a combination of certain subjects: magic tricks, magic history, the hey-day of Citizens Band radio, over-the-counter personal itch cream and ointments, emotional instability, inferiority complexes, system effects of poor dental hygiene, the careers of 1970’s female television sitcom stars, federal prisons in the U.S. and Mexico, third and fourth century patristic writings, and holistic approaches to mucous reduction.

You know the saying, once you go magic, you never go back.

Britney Spears was seen with bite-marks during her short time with Criss Angel.  We always thought they were love-bites.  Nay, she was apparently bitten by the magic bug.

While the bite marks may have faded, the infection the magic bug deposited took hold and now rules her life; tainting her perception of everything so that she now sees things not as they are but as they could be if done magically.

We know what you’re thinking.  Didn’t he just start a new job?  Isn’t it somewhat soon to take a vacation?

When we began work at the now famous Hobo Hot Kakes (”HHK” to locals) eatery in the old Sun Coast Shopping Market in West Palm Beach, Florida back in 1974, our family wanted to take a long-planned vacation to Valdosta, Georgia for the annual festival of agriculture and innovation.  This is long before Valdosta became the international city it is today.

Our new boss at HHK said no vacation or no job.  Even though we had a whole ten days tenure on the HHK bus/dishwashing crew, we couldn’t take a vacation until we had worked at least a year.

Hacked!

Some have noticed that Inside Magic has been apparently dormant for a couple of weeks.  Perhaps, they thought, it was due to the holiday break or maybe Tim had gone on another bender.  Nay nay, we say.

We were hacked by someone, someone bad: Someone with too much time on their hands and technological sophistication sufficient to turn idle hands towards evil.

The site was hi-jacked by the hacker person so that the dedicated and decadent staff at Inside Magic was unable to get in.  We received a horrifying screen image each time we tried to enter and notification of our own impotence — a status about which we need no reminder, ever.

We were  first exposed to Roberto Giobbi’s Card College back when we ran a small magic business.

We considered carrying the entire series for sale but even at wholesale, the investment was more than we could swing.

Since we were working on a cash-only basis, we could not afford having expensive inventory on hand.

We bought three of copies of Card College Volume One and sold every one within five days.

The young, Australian museum curator Simon Gregg believes “the history of Melbourne as two parallel stories: one about the development of a modern-day metropolis and the other about the emergence of floating ladies, vanishing handkerchiefs, straitjacket escapes and a bottomless barrel of logic-defying tricks and illusions.”

Mr. Gregg is featured in a big way in Melbourne’s The Age for his new museum exhibit Hocus Pocus: Melbourne Magic, Mystery and Illusion.  The show starts next week, December 6, at the beautiful City Museum.   The focus is “the city’s so-called golden era of magic, from 1850 to 1950.”