What is up with Michael Close? I met the man one time ? at the Las Vegas Magic Invitational a couple of years back ? and he seemed like a very nice man. I usually enjoy reading his reviews in Magic and when I received my copy today, I saw that he had an opinion of Oz Pearlman?s Stealing Pips DVD from Penguin Magic. I?ll get into the meat of my beef with his approach to reviewing this DVD but first let me dwell on a bizarre factoid.

For some reason, and I can?t read the mind of any magician, Mr. Close has taken to use the word ?crap? in his last two columns. Last month it was used to describe how fooled he was by Derek Dingle?s presentation of a Ross Bertram?s Coin Assembly: ?It fooled the crap out of me.? (Magic, Nov 2003 at 37). In this month?s column, Mr. Close bemoans the fact that publishing magic videos or books is much easier now. Back in the day, Lou Tannen or Jay Marshall would be the arbiter of whether a work was marketable. ?Since it was their money on the line they had to evaluate the material and decide whether it was worth publishing. The publishing process helped filter out the crap. Today . . . . [t]he filtration system has been removed . . . .? (Magic, Dec 2003 at 42). Thus, Mr. Close?s argument goes, the crap gets through to the marketplace.

Maybe this is Mr. Close?s effort to be edgier, more hip. It seems unnecessary. It also seems unnecessary to use the word to describe the work of any magician. My pop used to say that if you have to resort to curse words to talk, you?ve run out of things to say. Sure, ?crap? isn?t the worst word out there and, in fact, for today?s audiences it is pretty tame. But it is unnecessary and, frankly, not that nice.

But back to the review of the review: Mr. Close takes as his premise that the Stealing Pips DVD…
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