Whenever I’m near downtown Portland, OR I try to visit Powell’s Books. They have a huge inventory of used books and many magic books.
If you look at the picture above, it’s a mix of new and used magic books. Frequently, they have a lot of professional magic books, not just standard bookstore stuff. This trip, there wasn’t anything super crazy, but I did pick up these two books:
Both of those books were about $10 and things that I can read when I’m on a plane or whatever.
If you’re ever in the Portland, OR area, you should check out Powell’s Books!
Growing up in magic in the 1990’s there wasn’t a lot of ways to watch performances of magicians. You either had to go to a show, or catch one on a TV show when it aired. That really limited me to watching modern performers, or older performers who were past their prime at a magic convention.
This is a great video from 1978 of many performers who I had read about while they are still in their prime!
This was a lot of fun to watch and I’m glad I stumbled across it!
A while ago, I posted about getting and finally using a Porter Case. I ordered a second one as a backup, and when it arrived, I learned there were two sizes. My second one was a larger size, but still airplane carryon size.
At the end of October I did some senior shows for National Magic Week and to knock the dust off of my second 45 min show that I do on cruise ships. It’s been a while since I’ve done it, so the senior shows were a great chance to perform it as a full show.
I took it as a challenge to see if I could fit the full show into the larger porter case, and it fit! This was a great revelation, as now I have a full show that I can carry onto the plane, and in a way that makes traveling way easier!
Here’s the Porter Case with the show and my sound system (Bose s1 pro) on top of it.
My drop cloth, which is sitting on top of everything, will fit into the case. I didn’t put it in the case because it’s a prop used in two different shows, so when I get home, it’s going into a different case.
I’m really loving the Porter Cases, I wish they still made them.
-Louie PS: If you want to learn more about doing shows for retirement communities, check out my book How To Perform For Seniors.
When it comes to the Object to Impossible Location type of tricks, I like them when the object never disappears. I don’t like how things like the next of boxes are typically presented. You borrow a watch, the watch disappears, and then you show the box. The audience knows the watch will be in the box. There’s no surprise there, it’s a puzzle at that point.
I’m working on a card to impossible location for my show. The thing about this is that I need to get the card from the person who signed it at the end of the trick, but I want the audience to think that the person who signed it gets to keep it. My solution to this is the card below:
I’m simply top changing the signed card for the thank you card. I hand it to them and say, “This is a thank you for helping me out,” and let them see the card’s face, but not the audience. I tell them they can put it into their pocket and keep it. What that does is make the audience think they walked away with the signed card, when in reality, I have it and can load it somewhere later.
I’ve done this once so far, and it worked. We’ll see how well it works long term.
A couple of weeks ago I was on a local TV show to promote National Magic Week. It was a fairly quick appearance and I did one trick which was a card trick, and you can see it below:
The trick uses The Fortune Teller prop for a routine that’s in my 2025 lecture notes. What I like about this prop is that people react positively when it’s introduced, and it’s got a nice three-hit punch at the end of the trick!
When doing TV appearances, I try to do one trick with big impact over multiple tricks. It makes the appearance cleaner. I also did have other stuff in my pockets if I needed to fill time!
Recently, I posted a trick where four aces turn into an ace, two, three, and four. That trick felt like it needed some sort of kicker ending, like the cards having a different colored back or something. Well, I tried making the cards work backwards, going from an ace, two, three, and four into four aces and that fixed the problem. The trick feels complete at the end.
Here’s a demo of the trick:
There’s only one move in the trick, which is an Ascenio Spread. That move is repeated, so it’s not very hard.
I’ve been hunting for a source of Dye Tubes for a while now. In the past I’ve included Vernet Dye Tubes with my Applause Please 2: The Encore trick. I needed a dozen of them and after months of searching, I’ve realized that this year they’re hard to find in the USA. Sure, I could find one or two at a magic shop, but paying retail plus shipping for each unit made it cost prohibitive for me.
I finally sat down and designed my own Dye Tube.
This one is slightly larger than the Vernet one and has larger holes on the ends. My dye tube comfortably holds an 18 x 18-inch silk. Here’s a side by side comparison:
I posted a picture of it on my social media and many magicians commented that they wanted to, so I’m making a batch of them for other magicians.
Awhile ago I picked up The Scoop by Dan Harlan for a show that I’m going to be doing in the spring/summer of 2026. It’s been sitting in my office and on Halloween I had an idea, here’s what it was:
On this episode of the Moisture Festival Podcast we welcome in 1/3 of the Mud Bay Jugglers Doug Martin. We discuss how they got their name, how they developed their own style and the creative choices they made to continue to be so unique.
He tells us about the different incarnations throughout the years and the secrets to keeping a group together for over 40 years. A great conversation with a festival favorite.
