It feels like it’s taking me for ever to get through the Vallarino book!
One of the tricks in the transposition section is an Queen / Ace Transposition. I think JP Vallarino made it a little too complex. Here’s my streamlined version of it:
Years ago I built a set of soft pins for the linking pins trick out of giant 5 inch safety pins. These aren’t as easy to make as you’d think. There are a couple of challenges, like the safety pin take a lot of force to open and close. The tension on the spring make getting the pin over the lip a challenge to open and close the soft pin.
My solution was to cut off the lip of the safety pin, so that the the pin had less distance to travel, making it easier to open and close the soft pin.
That partially solved the problem the of opening and closing the soft pin. The final part was to shorten the needle of the pin, so that it was easier to load things on and off of the safety pin.
After that, the final alteration was to bend the pin so that it functioned like a traditional soft pin. I’ve been using these pins for years and they work great. I’ve seen in magic groups on the internet people ask about gimmicking these giant safety pins and other magicians say that you can’t. Those magicians are wrong and I’ve intentionally not really mentioned you could. I liked keeping this thing for me…or so I thought.
Recently while digging through a junk magic bin I found this:
In this book from 1994, Jose De La Torre came to almost the exact same solution as me…but 30 years before me! While I’m disappointed I’m not the first person to solve this problem, I’m also not surprised. Scaling it up in size logical extension of the close up linking safety pins.
I really liked Ben Harris‘s book Bend it Like Geller! One little note is that my copy is missing a whole line!
There’s a spot for the line, however it looks like somehow it got deleted/removed during the printing process.
Vanishing Inc’s books recently have had some quality control issues like that. I think I’d care less if it was a self published book, and not something put out by one of the bigger magic companies. The JP Vallerino book also had some issues (http://www.magicshow.tips/magic-show-tips/hard-to-read/)
Aside from the missing line, Bend it Like Geller is still a fantastic book!
I’m about halfway through Ben Harris‘s book Bend it Like Geller and it’s a fun read. I didn’t know a lot about David Berglas and Uri Gellar‘s meetings and eventual friendship. It’s a fun read, just for the history of spoon bending.
I really liked Richard Busch‘s essay and while I think I got what he was talking about, it might be worth a reread. The Busch Effect as he calls it, got me to add something presentational to my spoon/fork bending.
One of the cool things about performing at a fair while reading this book is that I have a lot of opportunities to play with the techniques and ideas in this book.
On a side note, it’s been years since I’ve really played around with spoon bending and since then, I’ve learned to do the strongman stunt of ripping a deck of cards in half. That has given me some good hand strength and putting the bends into the spoons/forks is way easier than I remember!
This week I’ve started reading Ben Harris‘s new book Bend It Like Geller. This book is about Uri Geller and spoon/metal bending.
I’m not very far into it, but I didn’t know that according to Ben that Uri Geller was the first person to really bend spoons. That kinda suprised me, Ben mentions that there were spoon bends before Uri Geller, but they were mostly gags, and not bent with your brain power.
This book also goes into routines and methods for different bends. I picked up a few packs of spoons and forks from Costco, so I can work through the book.
I’m enjoying this book so far, and Ben Harris always does a good job with how he lays out the book, and it looks super slick! -Louie
When I travel I try to do shows for senior groups. This is a great way to fill a day when I get into a city the day before a bigger contract. I recently did one, and when I arrived the lady at the desk told me to have a seat in the lobby and someone will be there to get me soon.
Personally I never sit down, especially if it’s out of view of the person at the desk. I always stand near the desk.
The reason for not sitting is simple, I frequently get “forgotten” about when I sit out of view. I don’t know why, I guess whoever is supposed to get me gets side tracked, or whatever. When I stand in view, it’s a constant reminder that I’m still waiting. Usually after a few minutes if I’m still there, the person at the desk will follow up with whoever is supposed to get me. When I’m out of view and sitting, there person at the desk won’t know you’re still there and after about 5 mins I have to ask again. That’s time that I could be setting up.
-Louie PS if you’re interested in performing at Senior Centers and Retirement Communities, check out my book How To Perform For Seniors!
I’m still going through the JP Vallarino book and I hit this description of a card move. The only part I’m talking about is the paragraph that mentions fig 1 and fig 2 along with those pics:
Figure one doesn’t show the set up that’s mentioned in fig 1. Those aces shouldn’t be visible, as they should be on the bottom of the deck and it doesn’t show the indifferent cards. Figure two should show a pinkie break, not a thumb break.
Things like this make learning from the book difficult. I’m really surprised that no one noticed that there were wrong. If this book was a self published thing I’d expect small errors, but from a big magic company like Vanishing Inc, I’m amazed that got by them.
Now I’ll say something positive about the book. I just started the Ace Assemblies section of the book. The first one is called Ultimate MacDonald’s Aces and is pretty good! It’s very heavily gimmicked, but not really in the tradition sense for the MacDonald’s Aces.
I personally don’t really do ace assemblies, however if I did, I would probably do this one!
When I started marketing magic tricks to magicians, I chose to not protect the trick with a patent. It was a conscious choice and I believe is magicians don’t take steps to protect their intellectual property, they can’t be too upset if it gets knocked off. When you sell a magic trick, that makes you a business, and you need to act like any other business.
I made a business decision that it’s not worth thousands of dollars and years to possibly get a patent and to ultimately have that patent become public domain after a couple of decades.
Yes it sucks to have an idea knocked off.
However there are some basic steps you can take to protect. You can get a copyright or a trademark to help stop counterfeits. Personally I have decided to do a combination of the two. I copyright art, instructions and the ad copy of the tricks that I release and I have a trademark on the name Louie Foxx™ .
By not allowing knock offs to use my art, descriptions or name, it makes it much harder for them to sell my products on larger platforms like AliExpress or Ebay. Both of those sites have easy ways for me to report people that infringe on my copyrights or trademark and are usually pretty quick at removing them.
I occasionally search the bigger platforms for my products and file IP claims. I just did a round of this on AliExpress and as of writing this right now, there’s nothing that infringes on my IP there.
I’m still working through the JP Vallarino book. It’s all card magic, which I’m fine with. The book for me had an early hit with his Hypnotic Rumba Count, which I really liked, but then the next few things were pretty redundant and just variations on things. For example his take on the Elmsley Count was basically a style thing and while style is important and important to how he performs, it’s not really actionable information for me.
In the book, the Optical Center Steal is something I’ve done since I was a teenager, and while I came up with it on my own, it’s something that I just assumed was common knowledge. I guess it’s not.
The Revolutionary Control I think gets its name from the rolling action the cards make, and not that it’s a “game changer”. This is another example of a variation, I think Harry Lorayne had a control that was very similar to this.
I’m just wrapping up the section on card sleights, and getting into the tricks. I’m hoping that there will be some more stuff that interests me in it!
Over the last month or so I’ve been trying to get through the book King of Conjurers: Memoirs of Robert-Houdin. This is the biography of Robert-Houdin and for me this is a hard read. It’s probably that it was translated from French and it’s not the best translation is what’s making it a hard read.
It’s an interesting book and one that I feel I should read at some point as everyone loves to quote Robert-Houdin as saying, “…a magician is an actor playing the part of a magician…”
While reading the book, I found this advice (bottom paragraph) about working slowly:
I think he’s right in many instances, but not 100% of the time. Yes, working slowing has it’s place, and most magicians could benefit by working a little bit slower. Someone like Hans Klok whose style working fast works for him.
I’m heading out to a show in a bit and I’m going to try to slow it down a bit…
