Generation Extreme Bullshit.

Penguin magic have just announced a new DVD by Brian Tudor and they've gone as far as to give his style a fancy new name. XCM.

Here's what Penguin said about it in a recent email;

XCM (Extreme Card Manipulation) is the hottest new branch of card magic to hit the scene in fifty years. If you haven't seen anyone perform XCM yet, there's no way to really describe it... you've got to see the video:
http://www.penguinmagic.com/product.php?ID=938

And if you have seen anyone trying to perform XCM already, the chances are you looked at them, said "prick" and walked away. Go check the video demo for yourself.

I am not saying that you don't have to be talented to do stuff like that, in my mind you need to be very special indeed.

Here's a better definition of 'XCM' - Standard card sleights and flourishes done so fast no one can understand what's going on.

The problem with that is no matter what tricks you do, when you suddenly go into a 10 minute flapping session with cards whapping all over the place and then spin one out and say "that's your card", the audience just go - "yeah skillful". Instead of "Damn how did you do that?"

Penguin try to use the reverse psychology bit and tell people 'Don't buy this - its hard'. Here's what they say:

Warning: Don't buy this DVD. Almost no one can actually do the stuff you're about to see. It's aggressive, showy, complex, impossibly fast, and freakish. Once you master it, your spectators may notice only one tenth of what they're supposed to see... and only one one-hundredth of what is actually happening. That's no way to live... pick up a svengali deck and be happy.

If your audience are only going to notice one tenth of what they should see and one-hundredth of what's happening - what's the fucking point?

What would have been a better warning is this:

WARNING: Don't buy this DVD. This stuff is fuck all use in the real world unless you want to look like a magician having an seizure. This stuff is more annoying than it is entertaining and you're only a penguin magician who has trouble with color monte.

It's also not worth buying Tudor's earlier DVD's. Penguin say in their email:

In Generation X Tudor focused on demonstrating his revolutionary new routines, but he glossed right over the instructional sections. As a result, almost no one was actually able to learn the material from the video.

So we'll take that as an admission you've been selling crap to your customers shall we?

MW.