Category: patter

Verbal Card Magic…

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.

-Louie

Amazing Jonathan Tribute Show

My first night hanging out at Magic Live, there was a free show that I could attend. This show was technically not part of Magic Live. It was a show that was honoring the Amazing Jonathan. It was produced and hosted by The Shocker and it was a ton of fun!

The show was billed as an edgy show. Some of the people performing did their acts and other people did what felt like custom things for this show (I can’t imagine why they would do it anywhere else).

One of the highlights for me was Chris Korn. He did a strange thing where he “switched places” with someone from the audience. I’m not going to say what the trick was, you had to be there, but I will say the trick really fell flat, however I loved it. Chris took a risk, and big one and had to commit 100% to the bit. I admire and respect that!

The show makes me want to be more fearless onstage!
-Louie

Cinco De Mayo Trick…

Yesterday I posted about a way to force a fork that used spelling to work the force. Today being Cinco De Mayo, here’s a spelling force that uses that.

cinco de mayo magic trick

Honestly, I’ll probably never do this, so feel free to do what you want with it.
-Louie

Milk Caps Across Routine…

Yesterday I posted a video of me trying out a routine using cardboard milk caps in place of coins for a Three Fly style coins across routine. I sat down and wrote out a little routine for it.

These are milk caps, if you were a child of the 90’s they’re POGs and if you’re an alcoholic they’re coasters for your shot glass.

These were used in the early 1900’s to seal glass milk bottles to keep flies out and tuberculosis in.

There are three of them.

They switch hands faster than cooking a rare steak!

The news one goes hand to hand faster than milk goes through someone that’s lactose intolerant!

The last one disappears faster than a vegan in an ice cream parlor!

All three of them move hand to hand faster than you can applaud!

I feel like there should be a joke for the line, “There are three of them”. It could be something silly, like “Three milk caps, one for each of my twins“. That might be what is needed there.

I also don’t know how I feel about the tuberculosis line. It’s an interesting historical line about milk giving people tuberculosis in the 1800’s (read about it here). I don’t think it will get a laugh, and I try to not joke about illnesses. It’s not a dig at anyone who has tuberculosis, it’s a historical joke. People don’t process things with what was in my head when I wrote it, they hear a “trigger word” and there’s nothing you can do to convince them otherwise.

-Louie

Choices….

Sometimes you find things you weren’t expecting when you are searching for other things on the internet. I ended up finding a video clip of me performing an early version of the final version of my “invisible deck routine“, which I call Choices

Here it is:

It’s not really an invisible deck, but that’s how I describe the routine to other magicians as that gives them an easy idea of what the effect is. Before I go further, yes I understand the trick would be stronger if I said, “Name a card” then it was reversed. HOWEVER, that’s not what I’m going for. First of all, I’m trying to get a little bit more time out of the routine.

The video above starts about 45 seconds into the routine, so that gives me a routine that’s about 4 minutes. It also allows me to involve more than a couple people from the audience. The trick also reveals some personal information about me (that’s at the beginning of the routine that’s not in the video). The routine is a lot more personal than, “I had a dream someone picked a card and when I work up I flipped it over“.

I’m happy with how this routine has progressed since that was recorded in October.
-Louie

RIP – Retire It Please

One thing that struck me was the amount of love for the Amazing Jonathan I’m seeing in FB posts.

amazing jonathan

It’s not the love for him that’s surprising, it’s the people who are doing it. There are a lot of people who I know have swiped gags from the Amazing Jonathan’s show and use them in their show, but are posting RIP’s on their social media. Are they really mourning his passing, or are they mourning the passing of their source free material.

These posts are like being sad when circuit city whet out of business, but not being sad because you were a customer, but because you used to shoplift laptops and it was easy to steal from. If you’re really sad he’s passed, you’d put the rest all of the gags stole from his show.

-Louie

Snappy Flappy Card Transposition!

In my virtual shows I started doing a card change with a flap card. I was isolating the card in a glass, then shaking the glass and the card changes to another card. I really like this, as it makes the change really impossible. The method is simple, it uses a flap card and the card it sitting at an angle. The weight of the card keeps the flap from flipping. Then simply shaking the glass allows the flap to flip for the change.

The other night I was watching a hockey game and playing around with using the flap card in the glass as a card transposition. Here’s what I came up with:

Here’s what the trick needs: It needs some scripting to call attention to just one of the cards. Mention that that jack of diamonds is in the glass, so that when it’s appears in your hand, they know something has happened. I think if you mention both cards, it gets confusing.

-Louie

Give It Up For the Troops…

Last week when I was at a booking conference there were several acts that used the US National Anthem as part of their showcase. That inspired me to write this joke:

The joke has lead to a lot of thoughts on the use of the National Anthem and things like, “tributes to the troops” in the comments of the post. Here’s my thinking, if you honestly want to give a tribute, then do it from the heart, don’t do it the exact way everyone else does it…and don’t do it with the “Branson Formula” which is a hymn followed by a patriotic song (or vice versa), or as one guy did last week and combined the two into a single song called “Jesus, the ultimate veteran”.

Actually honor them, singing God Bless the USA doesn’t honor them. It doesn’t tell their story. Bring a vet onstage and interview them. Give all the active or retired duty military all of your merch for free. Do it from your heart, not from a formula that came out of someone else’s brain.

-Louie

Eye-Balling the Problem…

In my show I do a joke about a kid losing a glass eye during the show. I thought it would be funny to add a visual gag to the verbal joke. The gag works for when you’re doing a multi show type of gig, but it doesn’t work for single show. I ordered a glass eye, and now I have one in my prop case!

The gag works, and I’m glad I spent the $25 on a glass eye, however the gag can be better. Most people don’t know that a glass eye is basically flat, it’s just the front 1/4 of the eye. People think it’s a whole globe that would be a sphere. I think if I managed to find a good looking sphere, the gag would play better.

I guess there’s only one way to find out…track down a round glass eye!

-Louie