Dear Café Gang:

Steve Brooks is a really cool guy. He let me convince him that I would be perfect to write essays on magic in the Buffet (not Jimmy) section. Hopefully I'll be able to add value to a site that I consider utterly extrodinary.

Steve wanted me to make note that apparently I'm the only one who can post in this forum, but that's ok, because I am an almost fanatical reader of PM's. So, if you have comments just send them along! Please.

Also, I am ALWAYS open to suggestions for topics and even for suggestions on a way to re-examine a topic that has already been covered, but maybe from a differing perspective.

For those who know nothing about who I am....pretty much everybody I would imagine...I have been doing magic professionally for over 33 years. For about the first 20 or so I ran not only various magic shops, but the four magic schools that were associated with them. They were variously: The B & H School of Magic which became the Stan Allen School of Magic. That was in Los Alamitos in Orange County. From there I went to San Diego to run Chuck Martinez's Magician's World and the Magician's World School of Magic. Eventually I opened my own magic shop and of course began the Brad Burt School of Magic. Hey, I had to get 'there' eventually!

I have done pretty much everything except produce small white birds from hankies and change women to lions. Oh, I never hung upside down and escaped from a strait jacket!

Several years ago I became quite ill and that led to closing down my store and going online full time. This helped a lot, but I missed the 'gang' in the store. The Café has become a great place to hang out and since I was already writing a bunch of Essays on various aspects of magic for my own online list I thought I could share them here as well.

Thus the note to Steve begging him to let me give it a try! Steve is not only one of the nicest people I know, but he hates to have a grown man whine at him, so he relented and let me try out my hand as a "Café Columnist". He's way cool.

So that's it. I have what I think are some really cool ideas on what and where to go with this and since I am one of the most disorganized people I know I was hoping that in a year or so I would actually have an entire books worth of material posted up here and already organized into chapters, etc.

Take care and back at you soon. Sincerest regards,

Brad Burt