An Introduction to the 2015 Advent Calendar

Starting later today and going through the 24th, you will be seeing daily posts in the 2015 Advent Calendar series. These posts will be a look back at my old blog The Magic Circle Jerk. 

MCJ was somewhat different than this site. It was more about critiquing things and less about talking about my own material and performance philosophy (although there was some of that too). And because of that there was a lot more animosity directed my way. People got pretty bothered by me. And since they just thought I was a foul-mouthed shit-starter, they would come after me, which led to some pretty great interactions with angry magicians. 

When I started this site, I decided to include some more actual material and performance advice. That tampered down the dissent that MCJ engendered because people didn't want to argue with someone who was clearly 10 times smarter than them. And when people don't start shit with me, I tend not to start shit with them.

"I'm a kind person, I'm kind to everyone, but if you are unkind to me, then kindness is not what you'll remember me for"  -Al Capone

You'll definitely find the MCJ posts much more aggressive. This is because people were constantly threatening to sue me or beat me up or try to find some way to shut my site down (including reporting it as having something to do with child porn -- this was an actual suggestion by one of the fuckups on staff at The Magic Cafe). My own personal ethics involve being nice to everyone. But if you come up to me and punch me in the stomach, then I have no problem breaking your arm. That makes us even because you dragged me into this shit. It wasn't my idea.

Much of my disdain on MCJ was directed towards Steve Brooks and the Magic Cafe. You have to understand that at that time the Magic Cafe was somewhat germane to the conversation of magic on the internet. There were only a few other magic message boards, pretty much no magic blogs, and no social media. So when people wanted to discuss magic, that was where they would go. Now no one gives a shit about it, as is evidenced by the fact that Steve is essentially begging me to go after his site these days in order to give it some relevance.

There will still be some regular posting here outside of the advent calendar, but it's going to be fairly light. Not only do I have the holidays and work to deal with, but I have decided to move out of NYC for the next year or so. I'm going to put most of my stuff in storage then find a place with less distractions where I can work on the book for the first half of 2016 and then do some traveling. Not sure where I'll ultimately end up. Probably crashing on your couch at some point. We'll see.