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I know skateboarders. I ran with a Parkour group in college. Neither one is technically a performance art. They are not forms of theater. They're sport. They're in the same category as football, and if you think for even a nanosecond that no one cares about the personalities of the players...

You're **** out of luck, then. Three weeks to prepare? I could see getting maybe 2 or 3 ready if you put your nose to the grindstone. "Many?" Yeah, no.

Magic remains the only type of theater whose primary audience is its own practitioners. You don't see a problem with that? And if there's absolutely no personality on display when they're performed, why should I care? I live in the city that is home to Carnegie Mellon University. There are...

For the sake of trying to add some nuance, it's not the DVDs I dislike, it's one particular phrase I hear from people who only ever buy DVDs and downloads: "I'm a visual learner." A little bit of knowledge in the hands of a fool is problematic. The thing is, visual learning style is a real...

Personally, barring a learning disability like dyslexia, I can't imagine why anyone would want to only learn from one medium. On the other hand, if they really want to hobble their education like that, more gigs for me.

This is a misconception. Cameras do not function like the human eye does. A camera mounted at eye level and angled down is going to generally look terrible. At best, it makes you look like a dwarf. At worst, it will cut your head out of the frame at the neck. Better to stand facing the...

I wouldn't recommend a guy try to learn guitar after listening to only five songs, all from the same band in his entire life.

This was followed immediately by this: I think we've identified the problem.

Ehhh... yes and no. Some of them don't like you stealing their thunder. Some just aren't engaged with the act. Some think you're challenging them to figure it out. Lots of reasons.

The sad truth is that you can't make people care. This is why I wrote about tangential learning. For the most part, I can't teach people, but I can facilitate learning for those who want to learn. To put it plainly, most people don't have the patience to be good at anything. More still do...

Even monkeys fall out of trees, dude. You get caught now and again. It happens. Just comes with the territory. You're really making a bigger deal of this than it needs to be.

What you really want is to talk to an expert in copyright law. Royalties-free music requires a one-time fee typically, which can be anywhere from a few bucks to 3 or 4 figures. Music under the Creative Commons License is easier to get, but only for non-commercial purposes. If you're...

Question: can we have these threads locked after the winner is announced? Because it seems there are two or three pages of people who are determined to clutter up the front page by continuing to try and get in on the contest 18 hours after it closed as I write this. Are they hoping that the...

I believe this thread was meant as a gag, dude. Look at the contest's. After the deadline has been hit and the announcement made that it's closed to submissions, there's like another three pages of people submitting their entries, completely oblivious of the fact that the contest is over and...

If that's the way you want to be over a remark that wasn't even an argument, we're done here.

You do realize that both of those texts have way more than just beginner material, right? The reason they get recommended so much is specifically because of how much value you get out of them. Hell, Lance Burton's entire stage show is straight out of Tarbell. You're going to get a lot of...

Not too far from the mark. I do script heavily, but if I think the opportunity and timing are right, I'll go off-script. Part of it is I'm confident in the persona I use when performing. I know exactly what sounds right and what sounds wrong coming from me. That focus makes it easier. Still...

For a proper all-around grounding the most effective investment early on is Mark Wilson's Complete Course in Magic. Cards, coins, paper money, silks, ropes, betchas, stage illusions... There's a lot of ground to cover in there. Royal Road is the constant favorite for card specialists while...

I don't disagree. In fact, I was going to recommend the book "Fans, Friends and Followers" in a later installment. But even when you read the book, you notice that all of the people interviewed in it all had a list like I described. A thousand Twitter followers is not the same thing as having...

If you think I'm the only one here who never pulls a punch you're in for a shocking surprise. I suggest you get used to this idea that you can't say stupid **** here without getting called out. And I responded by explaining my reasoning, which you apparently never gave a damn about in the...