February 2024 – MagicShow.Tips

Will Goldston Magic Books

I’m going though stuff that I have and on my shelf I have a really cool set of Will Goldston Magic Books. These are the Locked Book Series where the first three originally came with a leather binding with a lock on it. Unfortunately most of the copies that have their original bindings are in rough condition and usually the lock is unattached.

The set I have are numbered first editions and have been rebound and it’s previous owner was John Pomeroy who owned GEM Magic.

I mentioned the previous owner to David Charvet and he said he thinks that Pomeroy put the new covers on them himself!

This is a cool set of books and they’re available as reprints that you can find on Amazon. They’re worth looking into!

– Louie

Hook For the Giant Linking Pins

One of the things that I’m trying to figure out for the Giant Linking Pin / Thumb Tie routine that I’m working on is what is the presentation hook. It’s the why am I showing this to the audience. This is usually the hardest piece of the puzzle to figure out when creating a routine.

I’d been doing it as “the first trick I ever learned“, but artistically, that’s pretty lazy. That premise is a good placeholder to get the routine onstage, but it’s now a good long term one (usually).

It hit me the other night, I personally have a needle phobia (in a medical setting). I could use that as the hook by saying that I did “exposure therapy” starting with carrying around safety pins in my pocket and eventually moved up to the giant pins. That tells the audience something real about me, and gets an unusual prop (the giant safety pins) into play.

I need to play with it more, but I think it’s a good idea…

-Louie

More Thumb Tie Work

I’m liking the thumb tie routine that I’ve been working on the last two weeks. There’s a lot of big laughs in the routine!

One of the challenges in writing for this routine is that a lot of the “comedy” comes from me and the guy onstage being stuck together. I want to make jokes, but the reason for the joke funny can’t be because it’s “gay”. What I mean by that is if the only reason the joke gets a laugh is because it implies one or both of use is gay, I don’t want it. I personally don’t think anyone’s sexual orientation should be the punchline of a joke. That and I don’t have any sexual content or inuendo in the show.

The jokes have to be about the situation that the guy and myself are in. Writing with rules can be harder, but ultimately I think it will make a better routine.

-Louie

Sharing the Stage With my Own Props!

The last ten days I was sharing the stage with another act that used a lot of magic tricks. One of the tricks that they used was my Snake Wand Surprise!

I always love seeing my props out there in other peoples shows! This is the first time I’ve shared the stage with one of my props used by someone else. It’s a good feeling knowing that people are out there using my stuff and making a living with them!

-Louie

News Spot

Here’s a news spot I did earlier this week:

It’s an OK media spot, not the best. They wanted 90 seconds, and I ran the card trick for the camera guy and producer and they wanted the whole routine, just done in 90-120 seconds. That made the spot rushed, I should have let most of the effects linger longer for displays of the card.

Then the camera work during the card trick missed a lot of things because it was tightening up when it should have been wider. All in all, it wasn’t a bad TV spot, but it wasn’t great.

-Louie

Still Figuring Out the Thumb Tie

The last week I’ve been working on a thumb tie using electrical tape. The routine is starting to figure itself out, but I keep noticing dead spots or spots where the blocking is rough and hard for the audience to see.

One place in the routine that’s both dead time and not really audience viewing friendly is when the guy on stage cuts the tape off my fingers. About half the time they try to cut into the gimmick, which obviously is no good. Then I also have to make sure they don’t cut my thumb! While the whole process probably takes 5-10 seconds, it’s a hot mess onstage.

My solution has been to hand the guy the scissors, then take them back, but with my now free hand and cut the tape off my left hand. It gets a laugh at the surprise of my hand being free! I can cut the tape off my thumb really quickly and while facing the audience.

I think this is the solution!

-Louie

Thumb Tie and the Linking Safety Pins

The last couple of days I’ve been working on using a giant set of safety pins onstage for a linking pin routine. Recently I started adding a thumb tie to it to add length. One thing I quickly learned is that there’s a ton of dead time at the end of the routine when I’m having the tape cut off of my thumbs.

My first attempt for fixing the dead time was to add a trick to the end. What I was doing was taking the tape and turning it into an animal balloon. That went over fine, but it’s not the right fix for the routine.

I think my second attempt is a reasonable solution to making the dead time of cutting the tape off my fingers worth it. I’m moving the thumb tie to the first half of the trick. After the thumb tie, the tape is cut off, then I move into the linking pins routine. This has been playing a lot better!

Now I need to keep adding meat to the routine to get it good.

-Louie

Strange Magic Prop in Real Life!

I was browsing through reddit and came across a post with an picture of an old bread slicer:

I immediately made a connection to a prop that I assumed was simply a strange magic prop. The bread slicer resembles Lester Lake’s Disceto that was put out by Abbott’s Magic!

A quick internet search shows that bread slicing machines were invented in the 1910’s and Disecto was put out in 1942. It’s entirely possibly that the Disecto was trying to mimic a common object.

Crazy.

It’s also interesting that if it’s supposed to be a bread slicer, that people still use a prop that mimics something that used to be something people were familiar with, but hasn’t been common in my lifetime.

This is why it’s important to look at our props or lines and take out things that people aren’t familiar with. A good example of this is when I hear a comedy magician use a line about someone’s picture in the post office. That’s something that really hasn’t existed in my lifetime. I’ve encountered it once in my life about 10 years ago in a small town. I do know the reference from Bugs Bunny cartoons, but those were made decades before I was born. Because of this I don’t find the “post office joke” funny or something I can relate to. Look at your show and remove old references whether they are verbal or physical objects.

-Louie

Expanding the Stage Linking Pins

This week I started working on routine using some giant safety pins that I came across (read about them here). My initial plan was to see if I could make my close up linking pins routine work on stage with the the giant pins which are about 14 inches long.

The routine works onstage, but it needs more. It’s hard to justify the time it takes to bring someone onstage for a quick trick. I needed to build out the routine and add more.

I think that adding a thumb tie to the trick adds time and texture to the trick. The idea is after my normal linking pin routine, I would add the thumb tie using the giant pins as the “ring” that would normally go on and off my arms.

I’m thinking of using electrical tape for the tie as it’s easy to get almost anywhere. Method wise I’m thinking of using Irv Weiner’s Red Tape thumb tie, as I have all the stuff for it.

We’ll see how it plays onstage…

-Louie

Why Agents Like Me

There are many reasons why the agents I work with like me, but this is the secret to get any agent to like you. It’s really easy, pay your commissions on time! By the time you get to the gig, the agent has done all of their work (unless there’s a problem) weeks or months ago. The agent is the last person to get paid, and has to wait the longest to get paid for their work.

The week before gigs when I’m sending out conformations for gigs, I also mail out any commission checks. These are sent out before the gig and the agent usually gets paid before I do the show.

This may seem like a small thing, and it really is as usually I have somewhere between two weeks and 30 days to mail the check. I know I like it when shows are prepaid, and I’m sure agents are the same. I also personally know a lot of agents and if you ask them how many of their acts are pay late, or how many acts have owed them money for years, it’s remarkably high.

This one little thing, being reliable with payment goes a long way!

-Louie