Do you believe in magic?

I just grabbed a glass of club soda from the cafe before holding office hours today. And they were playing the awesome/awful song "Abracadabra" by the Steve Miller Band. You know, the once that rhymes "abracadabra" with "I wanna reach out and grab ya"? That one.

It's just one of those songs that fills you with delight even as it makes you kind of cringe.

The title of this post, however, just makes me cringe -- it reminds me of a period of McDonald's ads that were set to the "do you believe in magic" song. I think they lyrics went something like

Do you believe in magic? And I hope you do,
you'll always have a friend wearing big red shoes

while a creepy Ronald McDonald bopped around a group of kids like a killer clown with a penchant for fresh child-meat. I remember Sar and I, kids ourselves at the time, emphatically stating to each other that we most certainly did not want a friend wearing big red shoes.