"A riotous romp through magic and mentalism as seen through the eyes of creative and witty deviants." - Genii Magazine, December 2005

"Weird, bizarre, disturbing, vile and in several places possibly illegal ... Brilliant! I loved them!" - Simon Lovell

"Keep up the good work. You have quite possibly produced, in booklet form, the most fun you can have in mentalism short of telephoning Kenton Knepper when he's ironing." - Ian Rowland

"Very amusing... You'll be hearing from my lawyers." - Max Maven

OK. So you're interested in the tasteless humour of M.T. Silvercup and his vile desecration of Phil Goldstein's masterful work. Let's take this one step at a time.

So, what are the Off-Color Books?

Few things besides indigestion and ghetto offspring are conceived in an establishment such as Taco Bleh. (I imagine that if I mention the true name of said fast-food pseudo Mexican restaurant chain, I'd likely get sued for no particular reason.)

Well, in the Fall Semester of 1999 at Penn State University, there were a small group of smart-assed hooligans known as the Penn State Performing Magicians. It was a nameless weekday in the early semester, and we were gathered at said restaurant after spending a bit of time working on some inane project at the Kinko's across the street.

Someone said something, and someone else responded with another thing. Before you knew it, these things turned into mischievous giggles that look none-to-good to restaurant management when coming from unruly college kids.

Basically, we were talking about the beautiful (and mostly forgotten) thinking in Phil Goldstein's "Color" books of Mentalism. If you don't know what they are (even after the frivolous EBay craze over them when people were buying them left and right for loads of money and having little clue what they were... just that they were the in thing.), go pick up a copy of Max Maven's "new" book, PRISM. It's the original color series reincarnated as itself. Only in a single book-form.

In any case, we decided that it would be very funny (to us, if no one else) to create a spoof series of Goldstein's books, known as the "off-color" books. We attempted (rather well, I'll proudly say) to simulate the look, graphics, and writing style of each book in the knock-offs. Each book is chock full of puns, dark humor, not-so-subtle sexual content, hyperbolic racism, and plenty of other bad stuff.

Each book is themed according to color, so the effects therein all reflect some aspect of the title of the book. (Violent Book tricks are violent, Redneck are hickish, Blueball... you get the picture.)

So, if you're at all offended by anything at all, ever... don't get them.

Who are M.T. Silvercup?

Well, the primary authors at the start were my good friend Scott Sullivan and myself. To keep the Maven-like writing style consistent, we thought it best to keep the editing and final drafts of each book to just the two of us.

That is not at all to say that these fun works of utter offensive respect would be even possible without the rest of our creatively brilliant gang, listed for the first time in its entirety as follows:

Francis J. Menotti
Scott Sullivan
Randy Shine (contributions in Blueball, Redneck)
Ben Salinas (contributions in Violent, Blueball, Redneck)
Dave Leopold (contributions in Violent, Blueball, Greencard and Blonde)
Brian Foshee (contributions in Redneck)

Does Max know about these?

Yes. Now stop asking; I'm sick of that question.

Mr. Maven does know about these, as do many of his close friends. We decided that it would be in our best interest to early-on notify him of their existence (not that he wouldn't or didn't already know... he has an uncanny knack for "hearing" things.) Besides, they weren't a negative cut at Max. Quite the opposite, in fact.

So we presented him with the books and received gracious (if smart-assed, in turn) compliments on them. Mind you, if he didn't like them, we're probably stubborn enough to have continued regardless. But fortunately, we've developed and maintained (I hope) a sort of mutual respect. That answer your question?

Preview One Effect from the Series...

Thanks for visiting with M.T. Silvercup. I hope you order and enjoy these offensive tributes to a great mind. Please check back off and on for the next couple of years; you never know when some other Silvercup item might come out.

Sit back, fill your gold stein, and raise it for a toast to one of the greater minds in magic: M.T.... I mean--Max Maven.