A while ago when I performed at the Moisture Festival I was in shows with Mike Caveney and Tina Lenert. Tina has an amazing act (read about it here) and so does Mike.
Backstage I was talking to Mike about how he got into writing magic books. He was asked to write a book by Bernard Bilis called French Pasteboards. There’s a really cool move in that book called the Bilis Spread. This is a one handed display of three cards, but you really have four cards.
When Mike mentioned that book, I told him I learned to do the Bilis Spread when I was a teenager and he commented that I’m probably the only other person that does the move (aside from Bernard Bilis).
Personally I love little booklets like this, they tend to be overlooked and usually have some fun little nuggets in them! -Louie
I’m just wrapping up run of 8 days of shows using the Riser/Summers Baby Lindy Vanishing Birdcage. This is the first long run of shows that I’ve done using the cage. First of all, this cage has really no break in time, it’s good to go right out of the box and for me it’s the perfect amount of rigidity.
I use a Nielsen rubber canary in my cage, and currently the Riser/Summers cage comes with one, which is nice. I’ve noticed that there are two types of the canaries that Nielsen has put out over the years. One of them is a lighter yellow and one is a brighter yellow. The lighter yellow one is a thinner latex than the brighter yellow one. I prefer the lighter one inside of my cage as it collapses much flatter and if any of it is sticking out of the cage, it doesn’t really provide any resistance if it catches on my sleeve.
This cage works perfectly with my Take Up Reel, so I’m able to close the show with it. The other thing that’s great about this cage’s size is that I’m able to bend my elbow with it all the way up my sleeve, making the motions of my arm much more natural feeling (at least to me) after the vanish.
I’m having a great time with this cage and if you’re in the market for a cage, I recommend the Riser/Summers Baby Lindy Vanishing Birdcage! -Louie
The Linking Safety Pins has been one of my favorite tricks for years. One of things that I do are two phases where the pins are totally out of my hands and someone from the audience links or unlinks them. However my favorite part is the final unlink where I pull the pin through the pin that they are holding.
What draws me to this trick is the simplicity of it. It uses two large safety pins. Everyone knows what they are, they can be examined before and after the trick. Also they take up virtually no space in my pocket.
The downside is that the good oversized linking pins haven’t been made for a long time, so they have to be found on the used magic market. There were soo many sold, they frequently pop up and I’m always buying them whenever I find them. If you’ve never done the linking pins, the trick Shrapnel which is currently available is a good routine and it uses more standard size safety pins and worth looking into.
Sometimes I see things on fairgrounds that make no sense to me in the moment. Recently I saw Bubba Bear and the Bad Land Band.
This is a trailer stage that had an animatronic animal band and Mark Twain. If I was betting, these are older robots from a Chuck E Cheese that have been repurposed for this show.
Here’s a peek at the show:
The show runs every 10 minutes, I didn’t watch more than one show, so I don’t know if they are all different.
The show is (in my opinion) not good, however I do think it serves several important purposes. First of all the trailer stage and graphics look great and it looks like something you want on your fairgrounds. Next, it runs all day, and it has benches, so it’s a chance for people to sit down for a few minutes, however no one is going to sit on those benches for hours chatting. Also, it doesn’t really take man power (unless it breaks down), so it’s an easy to fill a blank spot on a fairgrounds. Oh, it’s owned by the carnival, so I’m going to imagine that if they have a ride that’s supposed to be at the fair, they can easily substitute this in. Finally, it’s free for the people attending the fair, so it’s something that’s not a money grab.
That illustrates something that you need to know if you want to perform at fairs, what is your purpose on the fairgrounds? A fair may book you because they want an awesome show, they may book you because they need to move guests a certain direction on the fairgrounds, or any number of reasons. The sooner you understand why you’re there, you’ll be much more successful!
With all of that considered, I’d still not watch the show again…but if I ran a fair, I’d probably book it and be happy with having it on my fairgrounds.
Back in October I started trying to go to more open mics to play with new ideas. I haven’t been to as many as I’d like, however the one I went to last night was a gave us drink tickets. That got me thinking about a trick with them.
If you showed the ticket, then it grew to about the size of a sheet of paper! For the finale you produce a drink out of the giant ticket!
That’s a great little routine that would be a good opener, especially for something like a corporate holiday party where they are giving out drink tickets.
As for a routine, you could tell a story about trying to use a drink ticket and that the bartender told you it would only get you a small drink. The ticket grows and you got a full beer.
The challenge would be making the growing ticket not look like it was just folded up behind the small ticket. I guess that’s the gag the sets up the production of the drink, so the growing doesn’t need to be the strongest trick.
I’m still working on a redesign for my Applause Please trick.
This is my take on the liquid in light bulb effect, but instead of using a lamp, it uses an applause sign. This has been unavailable for a while as the Tim Rose who built them for me passed away about 2 years ago. I’m working with a new builder and should have it available in the near-ish future.
One of the changes that I’m working on is having it all battery operated. I’ve fought thing as I don’t like to rely on batteries, but I frequently get that suggestion. I think LED technology is catching up for the lumens that I need for the trick that can be run off of a 9 volt battery.
I should mention one of the reasons that I’m not using a rechargeable lithium battery is that you can’t fly with them. If the battery was built into the prop, you’d have to hand carry it onto a plane. Another thing is that I don’t trust myself to always charge it. With a built in battery, if you forget to charge it or don’t plug it in fully, you can’t do the trick. With a 9 volt battery, you just throw a fresh one in there and you’re good to go.
Another change I’m testing now is that I’ve rewired it so that the foot switch and hidden remote work together to so there is less secret pushing of the button on the remote control than in the current version of the trick that I’m using.
Hopefully these will be available by the end of the summer!
Last week I performed at a fair that was very windy and dusty. One of the things that the wind and dust (plus the sun) does is put a lot of wear and tear on your props. After the fair wrapped up, I got up early the next morning before my flight home and did some cleaning and maintenance on my props.
There were several things that I just had to throw away as the dust made them not work properly and I really couldn’t get inside them to clean them. It was also a good time to give my magic show props a good once over to look for things that need repairs, or touch ups.
The nice thing about doing this clean up before I left is when I fly back to CA in a couple of days, I won’t have to clean my props, I can just load into the next gig.
I recently was performing at a fair that had a very challenging stage.
The audience was 25 feet from the front of the stage and the were many visual barriers between the stage and the audience. There was no way to fill that gap, the hay bales were decorative, to cover the front of the stage, so I couldn’t convert them to seating.
The solution for me was to not use the stage, but do the show directly in front of the bleachers. That closed the gap between me and the audience. The show lost some “status” doing it on the ground and not the stage, but the advantage of being close to the audience outweighed the loss of perceived “status”.
Personally when I’m at a gig where the setup is less than ideal, I will try to find solutions to the problem. Sometimes at hotel gigs, it’s doing the show on the dance floor and not using the stage…but sometimes you need to use the stage as your show will get lost on the dance floor in a big venue with the audience seated at tables. At the end of the day you need to weigh the pros and cons of the venue and make choices that will hopefully be advantageous for your show. -Louie
There’s a lot I don’t like about how a lot of card magic is presented. A lot of them are “magiciany” things that we think everyone knows. Let’s start with the fact that there’s a chunk of people that don’t know what the spade and club suits are called. We assume they know that, they don’t.
The one that gets me is that magicians expect people to know what the “mate” of a card is and they use the word “mate” which really is an industry term. It’s not a hard concept to grasp, but when we use industry terms it doesn’t really help. Recently I watched someone do a card trick, they showed the seven of spades and they asked, “what’s the mate to the seven of spades?” The person didn’t know what they were talking about. It would be easier to say, “that’s a black 7, so we’re looking for the other black 7, which would be the seven of clubs…” There’s really nothing gained by asking them what the mate is, and not telling them.
I think “mate cards” are the card magic version of calling scarves “silks”. It still works to convey the idea, but it doesn’t work really well.
A few weeks ago I was hanging out with my buddy Clive Hayward and he showed me Jay Scott Berry’s Lightning Bill Switch. Honestly I think it’s better than the hundred dollar bill switch…in most situations. Essentially it’s the Hundred Dollar Bill Switch, but using a modified Sanada Gimmick called the Cloaking Device instead of a thumb tip.
I bought two videos from Jay, the one on how to make the Cloaking Device and the other on the Lightning Bill Switch. I will say that I feel the Cloaking Device video was incomplete. I think it’s a chopped version of a DVD that he used to sell. Mine starts with him constructing the gimmick, but he doesn’t go into the materials used. I think there’s another video where he talks about the materials, but I’m not going to drop another $10-20 to figure out how to get the name of the type of tape he uses. Personally, I think if I were to buy the videos again, I’d look for a used DVD and you’d get all the info. While I’m all for supporting the creator, I feel like he sold me an incomplete product, so I have no problem paying $5-10 for a used DVD and getting all the information.
With the above concern noted, I still think this is an amazing bill switch. What makes it great is that the bill is only folded into eighths, not sixteenths like with the Hundred Dollar Bill Switch using a thumb tip. That keeps the bill a lot more visible, which is great when doing it onstage and it feels a lot less cramped.
