magic show tips – MagicShow.Tips

Cutting Up Jackpots!

Performing as a magician with a full magic show (versus an just an act) can be a very solitary job. Most of the time you’re working alone. You do that corporate gig, school assembly, birthday party as the only performer at the event.

Then there are other gigs that bring entertainers together, things like fairs and cruise ships will have multiple performers with shows at the same time. Recently I performed an a ship that had three guest artist magicians, one staff magician and a production show that featured a lot of magic! It was basically a magic convention. Add in some musicians or comedians and it’s quite a group!

One of the fun things about working with other entertainers is just sitting around a sharing stories. Anyone who has been a performer for any length of time has stories of crazy gigs! Honestly its sitting around and “cutting up jackpots” (carnival slang for telling stories) and having a bunch of laughs is good for the soul.

I’ve mentioned it before, but I don’t understand it when magicians say they don’t hang out with other magicians. It must be a lonely like out there for them!

-Louie

What’s in the Box?

Yesterday I mentioned that I paid $15 for a box of magic stuff. All I had to go off of was the picture below:

Well, when I went to pick it up, it was actually 4 boxes!

This led to a challenge as I’m travelling right now, so my car has my show in it and I won’t be home for a few days. Also quite often old magic has a musty smell, and I don’t want to have that smell in my car all week and I just don’t have space for it.

I stopped at a grocery story and used their parking lot to sort through the boxes. Like most boxes of used magic, most of the stuff is junk.

Here’s an overall look at some of the boxes:

The VHS tapes have great material on them, I dont’ have a VHS player and there’s really no market for them. I did find a lo

The stuff that I didn’t want filtered down the magic food chain. These were left at a performer’s house who lives near where I got the boxes.

Here’s the pile of stuff that I kept:

There’s a MAK french arm chopper, MAK Chen Lee Water Suspension, snake basket, multiplying bottles (india), sword thru neck (india), and a lot of other misc stuff.

One of the surprises were two Ormand McGill books and they both were signed!

These boxes of magic were a solid buy for $15 and since I was in the area and didn’t have to travel to get them.

-Louie

Thrill of the Hunt!

People always ask me where I find all of the vintage magic stuff that I own or sell. Some of it comes from conventional things like digging through bins at magic shops or magic auctions. Then the unconventional things like garage sales or whatever.

I just paid $15 for this box of magic and I’ll pick it up later today. I just happened to be doing a show in the town where it is.

It looks like mostly junk from the picture, but at $15 for the whole box, I’m willing to lose that on the very low odds that there’s something worthwhile inside.

Personally I really like the excitement of not knowing what’s in the box! It’s like searching for treasure. I will say that I have no problem throwing away the junk, and I think that’s where a lot of magic collectors go wrong, they keep everything even the junk and end up with a garage full of crap.

Personally I’m a collector, not a hoarder…despite what my wife thinks!

-Louie

Take Care of Yourself

For a few years now I’ve had trouble with the middle finger on my right hand. Sometimes when I bend it, it gets locked bent. Obviously having my fingers work is important to a magician. It’s been really bad the last few months, so I finally went to the doctor to have it looked at.

The doctor said it’s Trigger Finger and referred me to a hand specialist for the next steps. He said that the treatment is typically some sort of physical therapy and maybe an injection or two.

I really wish I had gone in over a year ago when it was clear that this was a chronic thing and not a one off sort of thing. Taking care of my hands should be a priority of anyone that’s a magician!

-Louie

La Galeria Vanishing Bird Cages

The first vanishing bird cage that I had was a La Galleria and was given to me when I was a teenager. It has broken bars and while I used it for years, the broken bars were a challenge. I eventually had it repaired and it worked great!

Recently one popped up for sale that was in great shape, so I bought it. Here it is on the left next to my old one on the right:

My old one collapses really well, it’s got a nice action to it. The one I just got doesn’t really collapse well. It’s like the hinges that hold the large side bars on it are slightly too big and you almost have to fight the cage to get it to collapse, and when it does it’s not as slim as it could be.

I’m glad I have my original cage as it works much better, and I’m not judging this version of the vanishing bird cage on the recently acquired one. It’s nice to add another to my collection, but that one will be a collection piece and not a working one for me!

-Louie

Magic Collector Expo – Sessions

The Magic Collector Expo had many great sessions! These ranged from peoples experiences in shows, talks about magicians they knew or worked with and even a talk about collecting!

All of the presentations were well thought out and highlight with pictures and video on the projection screen.

If you’re into magic history, you should check out one of these events!

-Louie

Cemetery Tour Guide

When I was in New Orleans with the family and one of the things we did was a cemetery tour. The first thing that he did was tell us about himself and his connection to the city.

That’s something that many magicians miss, they don’t tell the audience about them or their connection to whatever they’re doing onstage. When you start performing on a more national scale, the “where you’re from” becomes a lot more important. It doesn’t need to be a while chunk of your show, sometime it can be a little aside about being from where ever.

The one thing that I didn’t like, but it’s a common tour guide and magician joke was at the end he was asking us to review him. He said, “if you didn’t like the tour my name is Joe, if you did like the tour my name is _____“. There’s a lot wrong with that joke, first of all you shouldn’t use anyone else’s name in your closing remarks if you want the audience to remember your name. The tour guide is a great example, in the hack line above I left his name blank, and that’s because I remember the fake name he said, but not his real one. The line got a laugh, but in the long run it hurt him as I can’t leave him a positive review because I don’t remember his name.

It was a short term win (laugh) with a long term loss (me not remembering his name). If you use this line, you really consider if using that line is worth it the little laugh it gets. If that line gets a huge laugh in your show, you really should reexamine your show to find out why your other lines aren’t getting the same reaction as the stolen line (if you didn’t write it, or have permission from the person who wrote it to use it, it’s stolen).

-Louie

Magic Collector Expo – Show

The last night of the Magic Collector Expo was their dinner and show. For hotel banquet food, the dinner was good!

The show was three acts, and opened with James Dimmare doing his solo act. This was his solo act, not the dove act he does with an assistant. Having seen the dove act several times over the years and it’s fantastic, the solo is just OK compared to the dove act.

There was a big challenge for Dimmare was that he couldn’t use fire and does candles in the act. When it came time for him to light the first candle, he took out the lighter, struck it and verbally said “fire”. He then did the portion of his act that uses candles without fire. The fire on the candles really makes the multiplying candle trick amazing, when they appear lit. Unfortunately it really fell flat without them lit. That said, it was probably a condition that was dropped on him at the last minute and sometimes you just have to do it as best you can.

Next up was John Carney. When I was a teenager in the mid 1990’s it was very difficult to see a magicians show. You had to catch them performing in your area. When I was a teenager I found a VHS tape of John Carney doing his show. I must have watched it hundreds of times.

He did a few routines that were on that VHS tape, they’re his work horse routines!

I got pulled up onstage to help him with a trick.

It was super fun, but also stressful. I knew the trick/routine really well from watching that VHS tape. I’m not a good actor, but I tried to act surprised at all the right spots!

Closing the show was Mac King.

Mac has been consistently working his show in Vegas for years and really shows. He comes out with a big smile and does great, even in a room full of people who have probably seen his show a dozen times!

It was a fun show and a nice slice of three very different styles of performing.
-Louie

Trick Supply in Las Vegas

During a break in the Magic Collector Expo, Brian, Brett, Terry, Chris and I headed over to Trick Supply in Las Vegas. Wolfgang the owner who was running the booth at the expo said it was “10 mins away”, so we hopped in a 20 minute $40 Uber to his shop’s location.

It was worth the trip! The show was run by Doug Conn and it’s a super well stocked magic shop, we all picked up a few things.

Personally I love production items, I’m not sure why, but I do. I was looking at this skull, light bulb and corn.

I ended up buying the light bulb and the corn. I’m not sure how I’m going to use the corn, but I have an idea for the light bulb.

If you’re in the Las Vegas area, it’s a great shop and totally worth a stop!

-Louie

Magic Collector Expo Dealer’s Room

Here’s a little peek at the dealer’s room at the Magic Collector Expo:

There’s more, I just took those pics as the doors opened and not all the dealers were set up yet. Lots of books and posters, as for props there was a lot of smaller things. I didn’t see a lot of bigger props, it could be that many of the dealers and attendees flew in, so it’s harder to move those larger props around.

I picked up a few things (so far):

Nothing super crazy. The main things are the blue 28 foot streamer, which will be in my summer show. I was planning on producing a 36 inch silk, but the streamer will have a bigger impact as a lot of the volume of a square silk is lost.

The other thing I will use is the Ali-Baba box in half dollar size. I have a quarter size and it’s just too small, so the half dollar size is a nice upgrade for the routine that I do.

The other things are for me to mess around with.

-Louie