You Are All Terrible

Book by Harrison Greenbaum
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Price: £43.75£43.75
6 reviews
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One of the funniest and most insightful magic books you’ll ever read. You Are All Terrible Is your rare chance to step into the brilliant and twisted mind of one of the hardest-working magicians and comedians in the world—Harrison Greenbaum.

“The funniest comedian or magician I have ever seen” David Copperfield

Harrison Greenbaum is an unstoppable force in both comedy and magic. He has toured the globe from New York to Australia, and recently completed over 600 shows as the star of Cirque du Soleil’s Mad Apple in Las Vegas, making him the first comedian or comedy magician to ever headline a Cirque du Soleil show.

Featuring a foreword by Mac King and a final word from David Copperfield, You Are All Terrible is your roadmap to effectively performing more original magic and funnier magic. Across these 200+ pages, you’ll discover the secrets to becoming a successful “comedy magician” that expands beyond the realm of hack lines and cookie-cutter routines. Even if you don’t consider yourself a comedy magician, You Are All Terrible will make you a stronger overall performer.

“Harrison Greenbaum is a complete powerhouse of a performer, pummeling his audiences with powerful left-right combination punches of laughter and amazement.” Mac King

There are no hypotheticals here. This is practical, expert advice for performing memorable magic and hilarious comedy. Get ready to enjoy a gut-busting adventure through a world of magic, comedy, and Venn diagrams…..many Venn diagrams.

As a fun bonus, this hardcover book comes with a cover and dust-jacket themed after a fictitious Tarbell Course in Magic Volume 9 that will fit right next to your other eight Tarbell volumes. Despite the fact that no magic tricks are taught in this book, Harrison has included illustrations for bizarre and impossible effects that will leave all of your magician friends very confused when they flip through it next they visit.

Grab a copy of You Are All Terrible by Harrison Greenbaum and discover the secrets of one of the most prolific comedy magicians of this generation.

“I liked this book a lot. If I were offered one wish, my personal sexual prowess and world peace would have to wait. My wish would be for Criss Angel to read this book. Oops, that’s two wishes . . Because of the reading thing. Let’s go back to world peace — that’s easier.” Penn Jillette

IMPORTANT

This book contains adult themes and language. It is recommended for ages 18+

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Customer reviews for You Are All Terrible

Zaki
Received this book yesterday and read this book yesterday. Super easy read with tons of great info and humour to make it flow well. Couldn’t put it down!

The material itself teaches you how to be original in your approach to magic/comedy and how to create comedy as well. Also love the constant Criss Angel disses haha.

I agree with Mac King’s intro in the book that the book has loads of great info, despite not agreeing with EVERY point Harrison makes. I’d say i agree with 99% of them.
Neill
To be honest I did initially buy this book to mind F**K with my magic friends by having Volume 9 of Tarbell (and it does look great on the shelf). However, I was very surprised at what I received. The content is quite incredible. It is funny (although I don’t think Chris Angel will find it as funny) and very informative. The comical presentation is possibly a little full on and very American but aside from that the principles it puts forward on building funny material and being creative are invaluable. For the jobbing magician this offers a completely different mind-set to performing magic. Unlike comedy, I personally feel we don’t have that many places to try out new material where we can experiment, with the possibility of it not being well received. However, slowly altering my magic set to include more original material is now definitely on the cards. I’m not sure many magic dealers would be happy with the thought that we don’t purchase off the shelf magic and present and modify to suit, however, I think if most performing magicians are like me, we have purchased more than enough books and magic tricks to have a base knowledge to develop something new and unique. I’m not sure how long it would stay unique as other magicians see and evaluate it but it is an honourable target to aim to achieve. Base knowledge only comes from years of study and the bar is very high due to what is already out there in the magic world so I don’t think this book is for the beginner but if you do feel that your act is a close copy of what is available and has been learned then this book will test your creativity and if achievable should result in a more individual and unique magic community. Credit to Harrison Greebaum for putting it out there and challenging us to be better.
Foot note: It does seem a bit ironic (or possibly very clever) that a book screaming the virtues of originality uses the Tarbell course in magic to get noticed.
And yes, it did take me longer to write this than a longer version (are two tags too many?)
Gerhard
This was such a pleasure to read. Really funny. I literally laughed out loud. Although Criss Angel might disagree. The production value is great. I love the fact this sits nicely next my 8th Tarbell volume. It's a great read and I would encourage anyone to get this and read it. It's a pretty quick read. Get this it's good!
Skye
As profane as it is practical, You Are All Terrible is a funny, provocative, inspiring guide on how to make your magic better through the lenses of art and comedy. Harrison Greenbaum's voice is consistently engaging, even with a head-spinning number of genitalia references, and the advice he gives is stuff you'll be able to implement right away. If you want to be a better magician, you can't afford not to own this book and study it repeatedly and thoroughly.
Alexis
I can't believe I'm writing this, but there are too many jokes in this book. I'm not against funny books and I enjoyed Lovick's book, but here, it seems like every other sentence is a joke, and it dilutes the content to the point that I had trouble finishing this relatively short book. And, for a book that complains about magic being dominated by straight white males, I found the humor very straight-white-maley, including several jokes about violence against women.

That said, the book contains useful advice about writing comedy, and hints at how it could be relevant to write magic too. I'm just not convinced that the same advice had to be applied to writing a magic book.
Christophe
I discovered Harrison Greenbaum at "The Session" in London in 2020, and came away very enthusiastic about the lecture he gave at the time on creating a magic routine. This book offers a detailed written translation of his talk, which essentially reproduces what I heard at the time.
Let's be clear: Harrison's jokes, his biases, his references and his style are divisive. It's best not to be sensitive to the sexual, political and scatological allusions... a style not usually found in magical literature.

Nevertheless, this book has several advantages, which I can list here spontaneously (non-exhaustive):
- it blames magicians, not hesitating to criticize the lack of originality and creativity of most of the magical community (and rightly so)
- he puts forward opinions which are personal and which will not suit many people (notably that of no longer doing card tricks)
- he suggests imposing a self-disciplined search for originality by suggesting processes of work and experimentation
- he develops a structure for success based on clarity, contrast and compression
- he explains the conditions that enable humor to be created and improved under standup conditions as the performance progresses
- he presents his theory of what art is, its function, its specificity, its uniqueness

For the Frenchman in me, some jokes are less inspiring than others (but that's the rule of cultural changes and unfamiliar references), and it's difficult to draw inspiration from them completely. The book places a great deal of emphasis on humor... this is amusing at first, but after a while you want to go "straight to the point"... so you have to be patient, accept the digressions and be willing to devote reading time to things that ultimately turn out to be dispensable and secondary.

All in all, this book is original, providing a complementary point of view to the litterature I own and enjoy. Let's say that the books form a puzzle of considerations that the reader must assemble to form a personal opinion. For my part, I'd recommend reading Ken Weber's "Maximum entertainement 2.0", which is denser in information.

I therefore recommend this book to people who know exactly what to expect and are fully informed about the tone and content proposed.

Community questions about You Are All Terrible

Have a question about this product? It's possible others do too. Ask here and other Vanishing Inc. Magic customers will be able to respond with assistance! Alternatively, email us and we can help too.

  • Ofer asks: Can you post a table of contents?

    • 1. Vanishing Inc. Magic responds:Unfortunately the supplier didn’t provide a table of contents for us to use

  • Hugo asks: Why did Harrisson told us at Blackpool the Book was meat to be sold at 100p and discounted at 50p to be finally sold at 40p on Vanishing ? FOMO i guess. Still was the best lecture of Blackpool 2024, entirely worths the money.

    • 1. Vanishing Inc. Magic responds:We are not sure about what was said at Blackpool!, the lecture was amazing

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