When I was buying some props at a Walmart I came across the Nertz game that is put out by Bicycle. It’s got different colors of the rider back cards. These would be great for making color changing card tricks. The only downside is that these appear to only come in jumbo index.
and a funny little thing that I noticed is on the back it lists all the colors and which ones are new. It lists red as a new color?!
If you’re working on a color changing card effect, I think it’s worth it to pick up a pack of these!
I’m going though stuff that I have and on my shelf I have a really cool set of Will Goldston Magic Books. These are the Locked Book Series where the first three originally came with a leather binding with a lock on it. Unfortunately most of the copies that have their original bindings are in rough condition and usually the lock is unattached.
The set I have are numbered first editions and have been rebound and it’s previous owner was John Pomeroy who owned GEM Magic.
I mentioned the previous owner to David Charvet and he said he thinks that Pomeroy put the new covers on them himself!
This is a cool set of books and they’re available as reprints that you can find on Amazon. They’re worth looking into!
I’m liking the thumb tie routine that I’ve been working on the last two weeks. There’s a lot of big laughs in the routine!
One of the challenges in writing for this routine is that a lot of the “comedy” comes from me and the guy onstage being stuck together. I want to make jokes, but the reason for the joke funny can’t be because it’s “gay”. What I mean by that is if the only reason the joke gets a laugh is because it implies one or both of use is gay, I don’t want it. I personally don’t think anyone’s sexual orientation should be the punchline of a joke. That and I don’t have any sexual content or inuendo in the show.
The jokes have to be about the situation that the guy and myself are in. Writing with rules can be harder, but ultimately I think it will make a better routine.
I was browsing through reddit and came across a post with an picture of an old bread slicer:
I immediately made a connection to a prop that I assumed was simply a strange magic prop. The bread slicer resembles Lester Lake’s Disceto that was put out by Abbott’s Magic!
A quick internet search shows that bread slicing machines were invented in the 1910’s and Disecto was put out in 1942. It’s entirely possibly that the Disecto was trying to mimic a common object.
Crazy.
It’s also interesting that if it’s supposed to be a bread slicer, that people still use a prop that mimics something that used to be something people were familiar with, but hasn’t been common in my lifetime.
This is why it’s important to look at our props or lines and take out things that people aren’t familiar with. A good example of this is when I hear a comedy magician use a line about someone’s picture in the post office. That’s something that really hasn’t existed in my lifetime. I’ve encountered it once in my life about 10 years ago in a small town. I do know the reference from Bugs Bunny cartoons, but those were made decades before I was born. Because of this I don’t find the “post office joke” funny or something I can relate to. Look at your show and remove old references whether they are verbal or physical objects.
There are many reasons why the agents I work with like me, but this is the secret to get any agent to like you. It’s really easy, pay your commissions on time! By the time you get to the gig, the agent has done all of their work (unless there’s a problem) weeks or months ago. The agent is the last person to get paid, and has to wait the longest to get paid for their work.
The week before gigs when I’m sending out conformations for gigs, I also mail out any commission checks. These are sent out before the gig and the agent usually gets paid before I do the show.
This may seem like a small thing, and it really is as usually I have somewhere between two weeks and 30 days to mail the check. I know I like it when shows are prepaid, and I’m sure agents are the same. I also personally know a lot of agents and if you ask them how many of their acts are pay late, or how many acts have owed them money for years, it’s remarkably high.
This one little thing, being reliable with payment goes a long way!
In my close up set I do the linking safety pins and I love the trick. I’ve even gimmicked a larger set of about 5 inch pins to do the trick with. The 5 inch pins are good for about 30 people, there’s too small for a real stage show.
I found these giant safety pins and I think they’d be great for using on stage!
The challenge now is figuring out context to do them and getting more than a couple of minutes out of them. In my close up routine I use someone from the audience. Since I’m bringing someone onstage I really need to get at least 4-5 minutes out of the routine to make it worth the time it takes to get someone onstage.
In my writing this morning I had the idea of combining the linking pins with the thumb tie. The idea is the beginning phases will be my normal linking pin routine, then I’ll have my thumbs tied to “eliminate sleight of hand” and then the pins will end up going on and off my arms. That’s the idea, we’ll see how it plays when I get a chance to try it out!
One of my favorite types of show are shows were there are a lot of other performers. It ultimately feels like more of a team effort and you’re not out there working alone. Sure, my time on stage I’m alone, but before show and after show it feels like a group effort!
That said, you can check me out on 3/16/24 at the Hermosa Community Theater in California. This should be a fun show as I don’t know any of the magicians that I’m on the bill with, so I’ll get to meet some new people and see some new acts!
I started my first long run of the year this week. It’s a 10 day gig in Indio, CA. I flew into Fresno, CA, rented a car and then drove 5 hours to Indio. The nice thing about flying into Fresno is that I got to swing by Hocus Pocus and dig through the boxes of magic there!
I’m also always on the hunt for old Cincinnati stock cards from the US Playing Card Company, and found a ton of them
One of the things I picked up is this shell game set (maker unknown) and it will make a great addition to my three shell game collection!
They had some oddities (mostly gaffs) there and that’s something that I’m into! Here are a couple that are for sale on their website:
While I was there I put a two things for my collection. The first is a “snapping turtle” which is an alligator in a turtle shell:
And the other is what a side show would call a mummified devil or mummified alien.
If you’re ever in Fresno, there’s a ton of magic there (and some oddities!) and it’s totally with the trip!
I don’t do a lot of bar gigs anymore, I’m not opposed to them, but they don’t normally make sense with my schedule. Last week I headlined a comedy show at a speakeasy. It was a fun gig!
One of the skills you need for these gigs is to be able to follow any act. The act before me was a comic that was fairly blue, and I do a “TV clean” show, so there’s contrast and the audience has to shift mental gears from his style to mine. There’s nothing wrong with what he was doing, that’s his art. When there’s contrast like that, you need to come onstage with confidence, you’re bringing the audience into your world.
Before the show I always try to do some close up magic, that will have people in the audience already on your side!
The “green room” was in a back corner of the bar and the cool thing was I could watch the show on the TV!
They sold well after the show, so that was a bonus!!
Bar gigs have a lot of challenges, like sight lines, rowdy crowds, challenging stages, however I find them very rewarding as a performer. Because they are typically smaller venues you can connect with people a lot more than in a larger venue.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about Busker Organs and mine finally showed up…after about a month in transit from Europe! This was a crazy transaction, the guy who made it only takes wire transfer which has no buyer protection and these organs aren’t cheap! I don’t know the guy or have any mutual friends with him, so it was a total leap of faith and I half expected the Busker Organ to never show up.
Well, as of Saturday I have it!
The wooden box it was shipped in was damaged in transit. It looked like it had been dropped, then was dragged across a warehouse! The top and bottom were taped on!
Getting it home to check it out, I got to check out the condition.
Opening the crate, my heart sank when I say most of the pipes were knocked out of place, and it look s like someone tried to put them back (incorrectly). The clips the hold the lid on and the decorative wood pieces on the front were broken off and there were gouges in the wood.
Luckily I had a picture of the organ before it was shipped an was able to use that as a reference to begin to replace the pipes.
While it’s disappointing that the decorative pieces had broken off, it’s a pretty easy fix to glue them back on.
Then I had the task to tuning the organ, and I got to give it a crank!
It worked and sounded great! I just booked a gig for tonight at Magic Mondays in Seattle for an idea I have with it. It’s not magic, but should be fun, and thanks in advance to the Magic Monday’s crew for letting me try this!
