Non-Starters
/So I have a list of ideas for posts for this site in an Excel spreadsheet. Every time the list gets over 200 items I go in and clean out 50 of them. Here are some of the ideas that I recently cleared out that you won't be seeing on this site.
-- Joshua Jay's Big Magic For Little Penises
That's all I had written down. I don't really know what my intention was with this. I think I was just going to photoshop the cover of this book so it said penises instead of hands, maybe? Oh, and I was going to turn the kid around so he's facing Josh's crotch. But I don't have the photoshop skills for either. Very little is too dumb for me to invest my time in, but this was.
UPDATE - Well, that didn't take long. Thanks to MK. Come on, guys, knock it off. This is just immature.
-- The Magic Starbucks
Back when I wrote my old blog, the Magic Cafe was a big subject of conversation. 10-12 years ago it used to be relevant. So when I started this site I thought I'd end up writing more about the Cafe, but it's always way down on my list of priorities. One of my ideas before starting this blog was to start a message board in conjunction with it called The Magic Starbucks. As I wrote in an email to a friend of the site:
I considered starting a new forum called The Magic Starbucks (as in Starbucks coming into towns and putting Cafes out of business). But I have no desire to manage a message board and it wouldn't get any traction anyway. The Cafe is too established. And you need volume for lively conversations and there just isn't really a large number of magicians I would want to have discussions with. I'm fortunate that because of my site I have people writing in and discussing ideas and things like that, so I've managed to side-step the whole issue.
-- Magically Delicious
This was going to be a Field Report but the post never came together because it didn't pan out in real life the way I wanted it to. And I realize I could just lie and say something happened that didn't. Hardly any of you know who I really am, and even if you did there's no way you would know if something didn't actually happen. But I'm pretty adamant about avoiding that type of thing. When I was writing my old blog people would often complain that my anonymity prevented them from getting to know me. But I get that less now. I think now people realize it allows me to be more open and authentic than I might be able to be otherwise. And my feeling is that --regardless of whether you like me or the site or not-- you're getting a genuine sense of who I am. (Which is pretty incredible when you realize this site is written by 20 people. There is no "Andy." This is all part of a viral marketing plan for Tannen's Magic. Tannen's Magic: Feel the RUSH!)
So when I was a freshman in college I dated a girl named Amy. One day at the dining hall, I was having breakfast with her and I was eating Lucky Charms, because I appreciate a finely crafted artisan cereal. "One time I picked all the marshmallows out of a box of Lucky Charms and just ate a bowl of those marshmallows for breakfast," Amy told me. "Later my dad poured himself a bowl of Lucky Charms and it was just the dull brown kibble part and he threw a fit. I was 'grounded' from sweet cereal for three months. But it was worth it."
She tells me this story and it goes into my brain where it is lost in the flotsam of anecdotes from everyone I've met in my life.
Eight years later, Amy is visiting me in NYC for a weekend. Saturday morning I pull out a box of Lucky Charms for breakfast and she tells me the story again. It was a story I never would have remembered unprompted, but once she started telling me it, it came back to me. And when you hear a story like that twice from someone it somehow seems significant even when it's not a significant story.
So when I was getting ready to pack up from Brooklyn I met up with Amy again. This was many years after the last meet up. For some reason the cereal story was rattling in my head. I was sure she would have no recollection of telling it to me the first or second time. Why would she? So I thought maybe if I brought out a box for breakfast I could prompt her to tell it to me again. And when you can get someone to "spontaneously" bring something up that they don't know you know... well, you're in a very good position to do something incredible.
I'd purchased a box of Lucky Charms, and I went online and bought a couple bags of cereal marshmallows. Yes, you can buy them separately. That fact alone may make this whole blog post worth it to you.
I gently unsealed the box and then the bag inside, dumped out the cereal and replaced it with all marshmallows. Then I re-sealed the bag and the box to their original condition. The plan was to just wait for her to bring up her story. I snap my fingers, wiggle my nose, or whatever. And bam! Now this bag is all marshmallows just like she wanted as a little girl.
The morning rolls around and we're sitting in my kitchen. I put the box on the table. She doesn't mention anything. I keep waiting and delaying. I have really no non-obvious way to get into this unless she brings it up. Time passes. She talks about everything else other than the goddamn cereal. Eventually I realize it's not going to happen. I open up the box and say, "What the hell... this is all marshmallows?"
"That's crazy! One time I picked all the marshmallows out of a box of Lucky Charms and just ate a bowl of those marshmallows for breakfast," she begins.
"Yeah. I know," I say, in mostly feigned annoyance. Then I tell her about how I'd planned this moment. Flashing back to when we were both 17 and in our college's dining hall. No, it's not as good as if I got to play it off as a miraculous trick. But it's still pretty memorable in its own way. And then we got to eat big bowls of cereal marshmallows for breakfast which was fucking delicious.
-- The Seduction of Charlotte Pendragon
This was going to be a series of posts where I move to Las Vegas, conspire to meet Charlotte Pendragon, worm my way into her life, become the man of her dreams, convey to her how much I appreciate her talent and elegance and the athleticism and grace she brought to the art, and then bang her everloving brains out.
She's 60? So what. I don't care. You know who else doesn't care? My cock, and his two buddies, my balls.
Unfortunately, I think she's engaged or remarried now. So until she dumps that dude and hits me up, the story will only exist in my mind and in the 14-act erotic play I'm working on.
