Category: patter

The (W)hole Thing For Me!

I had a day off last week and finally made a prototype of my custom props for The (W)hole Thing which is Daryl’s version of an Emerson and West packet trick.

The main differences is that the circle around they hole is a donut, the spots are arranged like an X and the cards are black. The main reason that the cards are black is that I might have a line about a black hole. With the cards in black I’m sacrificing some visual clarity of what’s a hole and what isn’t. I think if I end up not using the black hole line, I’ll switch the colors back to red as it visually pops!

-Louie

Over Writing Material…

One thing I’ve noticed that I do is over write my patter for my tricks. The early versions of the tricks are full of stuff that ultimately will be cut. I do think that’s a good way to do it, over write and figure out what’s good and what isn’t. I try to initially fill a lot of verbal space, then cut out what doesn’t work, leaving only the best parts.

The trick I’m working on that’s essentially a clock prediction:

The presentation hook is about my cat, and that seems to be something that people really connect with!

I think that another huge part of putting together routines is finding some sort of presentation hook that people can relate to. There are definitely people who are a lot better at this than me, but I’m trying…

-Louie

Writing a Joke in a Different Language

When I was stage hosting a couple of weeks ago, one of the things that I was asked to do was a contest for the sponsor on the mainstage at the event. One day’s entertainment was geared towards a Spanish speaking audience, and I don’t really speak Spanish, but wanted to try.

I had one of the people on the catering staff who was from Mexico help me translate the beginning of my script.

That’s the opening of the script, but then I needed to figure out how to transition into English. So we wrote a little joke:

That was a great little transition joke, and the first joke I’ve written in another language.

The lady helping write it also helped me with my pronunciation. I think people really appreciate when you make at attempt to communicate with them in their native language.

It was fun to do, and I’m glad I tried!

-Louie

Show Shopping…

When I fly to gigs there’s always a little bit of a shopping list of things that I need to get for my show.

magic show props

It is inconvenient to have to try to find these things sometimes, however it’s better than packing them for travel. I can fly with all the thing above, as I only need the matchboxes, not the actual matches. However the boxes can sometimes trigger a search and I want to reduce that chances that someone will go through my gear.

The things like the paper plates and the wipes are just dead weight and nothing specialized. I’d rather simply buy them when I arrive than have them make my bags overweight.

One thing I don’t do is ask the booker to provide these and there’s a simple reason why I don’t. That’s because just because you ask for something specific doesn’t mean you’ll get exactly what you need. For example the bananas need to be yellow, so that they open easily. If they provide me a banana that’s too green it makes the trick not play as well as it’s a struggle to open it.

It adds a bit of time to my day, but for me totally worth it!

-Louie

Beginning of Fair Season

This morning I’m heading out to AZ for my first fair gig of the year. When I do fairs, I try to work on new material. I’ll be doing something like 15 stage shows, plus I can do as much close up as I want in between shows.

One of the new tricks that I’m bringing down with me is Time Hacker. This is Pitata Magic’s version of Ceseral Magic’s Ultimate Time Prediction. The basic effect is someone thinks of a time and that’s the time showing on a clock.

The presentation is based on a old myth that was popular during the WWII era myth that Asians can tell time by looking at a cats eyes. I had some posters made of my cat and someone is going to try to guess the time and that’s the time on the clock.

I’m hoping the idea of having a cat and talking about my cat will suck people into the trick. I’m not sure how it’ll play, but I have five full days of shows to try to figure it out!!

-Louie

Gotta Keep Inspired

On Saturday night I headlined a bar gig with a few comedians. The feature act was Morgan Colis and she had written a whole chunk of material about magicians because she was working with me. She went as far as to borrow a coat from her grandma for one of the jokes.

Things like that remind me that I’m not working as hard as I used to. Years ago when I was younger, I’d research all of the other acts I was working with, write venue, city, act specific jokes or bits for the gig. I don’t do that very often anymore, especially for a one off gig.

Working with younger acts (by younger I mean performers who are newer) reminds me that I need to work harder to keep up with the “kids”. There are many performers that phone it in the back half of their career, and it’s passable, then there are acts that keep working on their show.

I want to be one that keeps working on their show…

-Louie

Learning on Tour

Today is the final day of the school assembly tour, and after 5 weeks I’ve learned a lot!

The big change was the last time I did this tour, I disliked when the kids sat on the bleacher and I was in the basketball court. I was used to having my back against a wall and the kids sitting on the floor, which is how most school assemblies in the Northwest seat the kids. The advantage of having the kids in the bleachers is that they can see more. The disadvantage is that I don’t have a backdrop, so smaller props can be harder to see. Luckily this year’s show doesn’t really use any small props that the audience needs to see.

I’m much more comfortable with using a handheld mic, and use it most of the time during the show, except a few spots where I need both hands. Using a handheld mic I think is visually superior to a headset as you can use the mic as a prop. I use it to accentuate a spot where I laugh, or cue the audience to a spot where they are supposed to respond.

Using a handheld mic also helps create a certain image, it makes me look more like a stand up comic than “magician”. My warm up is doing “crowd work” where I talk to people and try to find jokes with what they say. It’s a lot of fun, but not easy, especially for kids. How I frame is while we’re waiting for the last class that’s 5 mins late to arrive, I tell them we won’t have time for questions, so they can ask them now while we’re waiting to start. Really the show has started, and I do the questions started at the show’s scheduled start time. Usually one of the early questions I’ll get asked is if I’m a comedian. That means the image I’m trying to portray is working. When I get asked that, part my response is that doing stand up come for kids isn’t a thing. What cracks me up is I then do 5-8 minutes of stand up for the kids!

I’ll probably have more reflections on things that I’ve learned on the 20+ hour drive home over the next couple of days…

-Louie

School Assembly Tour Week 3

Today is the beginning of week three of this school assembly tour. One of the metric’s for figuring out how well you are doing is laughs per minute (LPM). My first show of the tour and first time doing the whole show for an audience I got 1.57 LPM’s. That’s an OK number, as this show has a lot of content in it, and isn’t a “just for fun” show.

Laughs per minute

I listened back to my last show on friday and it had 105 laughs in 45 minutes, giving me 2.3 LPM’s. that’s a huge improvement over the the first show. I added about 50% more laughs to the show!

If you don’t know how to calculate LPM’s, it’s super easy. Record your show, then listen back to it and count the laughs. I used a counter app on my iPhone. Then dived the laughs by the length of your show.

The question I always get asked is what qualifies as a laugh? That’s really up to you to decide.

Another metric is reactions per minute. In that you could count applause, or people going, “wow”. The thing I wouldn’t count are call and response, so anytime you ask the audience to do something and they do it.

-Louie

Tweaking a Line…

Yesterday I posted about writing a line to try to solve a problem where I had a spot in the show where a kid would frequently shout something. I needed to add a line to tell the audience that the fruit I was using wasn’t real. The line I wrote was, “they’re not real, I got them from Ikea…So they’re made of particle board and Swedish meatballs”. That line didn’t get huge laughs, but seems to have solved the problem.

I tweaked the line a little bit to be, “they’re not real, I got them from Ikea…So they’re made of swedish meatballs and sawdust”. This new line is getting a laugh from the adults AND the kids. I think both particle board and swedish meatballs is too much for the kids here to understand. However they do know what sawdust is!

A little tweak like that upped my laughs per minute and solved the problem of how to address the fruit not being real.

-Louie

Laughs Per Minute…

Last night I reviewed the video of the first show of this tour and calculated my laughs per minute. I came in at 1.57 laughs per minute or about three laughs every too minutes. Normally my goal is about 3.5 LPM’s, however this show has more content than my standard magic and comedy show.

I think my short term goal is going to be two Laughs Per Minute, but ideally getting this close to three LPM’s.

If you’re a comedy magician and don’t know your laughs per minute, you need to know them. I’m always amazed by how many comedy acts I talk to and when I ask what their LPM’s are, they either don’t know or say a crazy number like 10. To put it in perspective a stand up comic is in the ballpark of 4-6 LPM’s, maybe as high as 8. You need to know the actual number that you’re getting. Once you know this, it allows you to improve.

The way to figure out your LPM’s is to record your show and count the laughs. Then divide the length of your show in minutes by the number of laughs and you get your LPM’s.

Another metric is “reactions per minute”, so this is more than just a laugh. It could be applause, the audience going whoa or whatever. Having a metric allows you to set a goal.

-Louie