I've been hearing this sentiment expressed a lot lately. Unfortunately, it runs contrary to my personal experience, which is that some effects have recently become unperformable because of exposure -- the sort of thing which indicates to me that not all of it only goes to short-term memory. Excellent card and coin routines that you used to be able to do five years ago here in Korea you can't even do for KIDS anymore.

I know my experience isn't the same as everybody else's (and I know I've repeated this same story whenever an exposure discussion comes up -- in the unlikely event that anybody's been keeping track, I apologize for the broken record impression). However, the experience was instructive enough to know that I can't endorse any publication or video that puts our principles within easy reach of the average layman. No offence meant (and I'm sure my opinion is un-influential enough that little offence will be taken), but I won't be recommending this magazine to anybody if it makes certain things too easily available.

You can get magic books from the public library that have secrets a lot of working pros use in their acts.

People are lazy, they do not want to read. This will not hurt magic at all.

To Carrie;
You said "I miss the days when magic was a terrific thing to be doing. "
It's all about engaging personality. There is no bad magic [ummmm.. ok matrix 2000] blah,blah,blah. So trite only because it's true.

If you are an interesting person, you can entertain people with anything you do.
Magic can be elevated to a high standard that people respect if we all treat our audiences with respect.
James

I would say give it a shot. Although I doubt most will buy it in retail stores, and it will most likely suffer the same fate as every other magic magazine out there did, and remain popular to only a "niche market" online. However I also wonder if this idea is not just simply meant to capitalize off the younger crowd, and newcomer in general; a tactic we see a couple of other online "vanity shops" use quite frequently. $$$ I guess we will just have to wait and see, and judge by the content.

I hear someone from the Café will be writing a column (and some other pieces) so I'm sure the content will be of a very high caliber...

;)

All the best to you but I hope you have listened to the concerns (some) of us have voiced and hope the content is NOT high caliber exposure.

Hi David,

I'm actually a writer (not the editor) so as long as you like Magic Friday then you should be happy (I hope!) with my contribution. However, in defense of James, and I mentioned this in another thread, I've found him to have very high morals and ideals and he seems to really care about our art of magic so I wouldn't worry too much. He's also planning, I believe, to have the magazines wrapped in plastic to help with the perusal concerns...

Cheerio,

jamie

Well,

You'll have to ignore my post above (with regards to my role with the magazine). I'm happy to say that I've taken on a much larger role with SM and am really excited with how things are going. I'm looking forward to everyone's comments once they see the first issue.

jamie