Recently this ad came across my social media:
The headline with the picture made me laugh. He’s telling you about using or creating NEW magic routines; however, the video’s cover shows him doing a very common trick!
I don’t know what product he’s selling; I didn’t click the link. I just thought the headline of not using common tricks really contradicted the image of him using a very common routine.
-Louie
PS: You can learn about my process for creating unique magic here!
When I see a magician perform an old trick and really wow an audience, it really makes me happy. By old trick, I don’t mean an overdone trick, but a trick everyone has had, but no one actually does. Recently, I worked with Michael Mesmer and in his early show he does the Prayer Vase magic trick.
This is a trick most magicians had when they were kids and haven’t thought about since. Michael has a great routine with it, and it really connects with an audience!
Sometimes the easiest way to create something that feels new is to look to the past!
-Louie
I think magicians try to overcomplicate things with the card magic they do. You can get amazing reactions with a couple of very simple things. Here’s a quick three beat trick that gets great reactions:
There’s not much to it: two forces, a top change, and then a double lift. I don’t do a double turnover. The reason for that is that most people who have had a passing interest in magic tricks learn a double turnover in the context of either an ambitious card or simply changing the card. When I do this sequence, it looks nothing like what they’d learned in a YouTube tutorial. While I’m using techniques that they may know, they don’t look like what they’d learned.
This is a good lesson: if you keep getting busted doing something like a double turnover, either find a way to eliminate it or make it look different.
-Louie
PS: If you want to learn about my thoughts on the classic force, it’s in my 2025 PCAM lecture notes.
A couple of weeks ago, I picked up an old card fountain. This one was non-working without the remote control.
I opened it up and it had some older guts, I’m guessing from the stamp on the base of it, it’s from 2004.
My original plan was to just replace the electronics with a more modern remote control unit. Once I got it apart, I started thinking that maybe I should build it into a more complex unit, like integrating it into a snake basket or something like that.
-Louie
About a month ago, I had an idea for a routine that’s a three shell game sort of routine, but with juggling. You can read about it here. The premise is that a prize is put into a slit in a tennis ball. That ball is then juggled with two other tennis balls that also have something less valuable in them. The person from the audience needs to track the one with the prize, but can’t and end up winning the two lesser value prizes.
I had an idea, what if instead of prizes, I had predictions. Inside the first tennis ball was a piece of paper that said, “You Will Pick This One First” and the second that says, “You Will Pick This One Second” or something like that. That gives a magic (mentalism) payoff for each selection.
To my surprise, when I actually tried this, it fell totally flat. I’m guessing because the trick took the surprise turn, and the bonus effect wasn’t expected…and probably not that good.
Testing ideas in front of the audience is part of the creative process for me. Sometimes it hits, and sometimes is misses!
-Louie
One of the most requested products I get from magicians is for me to make a USB-chargeable set of Remote Control Chattering Teeth. There’s a reason that I haven’t made them before, and that’s because I sell what I use. Personally, I prefer using disposable batteries. If I forget to charge them, it’s not a big deal; I just swap them out.
Well, in my show, I’m having more and more things that use batteries that need to be charged. From things like the phone that I use to run the production of my show to mic pack batteries. Charging things is now a bigger part of the end of my performing day than it was a few years ago.
I’m learning to install the battery and charger, and I have my first working set of USB-chargeable Remote Control Chattering Teeth.
The next step is for me to use them so I can gain some confidence with my design. I already noticed one thing to change. I have an on/off button and not a switch. With it as a button, you don’t know if it’s on or off. Going forward, future sets will have a switch!
-Louie
PS: you can learn more about the currently available Remote Control Chattering Teeth at: https://www.magicshow.tips/product/remote-control-chattering-teeth/
A couple of days ago Doug Conn posted about the book Card Finesse by Jon Racherbaumer:
His post about the book, made me remember an cool card move that’s in that book. Well, I’m 99% sure it’s in that book, it might be in Card Finesse II.
I had to slightly adjust the camera move. When done as written, there’s a slight flash that the normal human eye watching won’t see, but it won’t withstand repeated viewing on the internet.
-Louie
In my daily writing, I’ve been trying to come up with something to do with a couple of sponge donuts that I picked up in a box of vintage magic about a month ago. They’ve been sitting on my desk, or in the box of magic tricks that I travel with.
It hit me that they’d be great for some sort of ring on a string sort of magic routine. I played with a couple of things and quickly realized it needed something else, so I added a real bagel, and here’s what I came up with:
It really surprised me how much people liked it! I thought it’d get a “that’s neat, what else do you have…” sort of reaction. I need to try to figure out some sort of ending for this, right now it’s got a good opening line, the trick, but I feel like it needs something else.
-Louie
When I was a teenager, I remember reading in (I think) Scarne on Card Tricks about slick cards. These are cards that have a smoother finish than the rest of the cards. In that book, John Scarne mentioned that they were made by using car wax to make the face or back of a card smoother.
At some point when I was a teenager in the 1990s, I noticed that Bicycle Pinochle Cards had a different finish than the poker cards, even though the box said they had the same “air cushion finish” and those cards could be used as a slick card.
Recently I came across an old deck of pinochle cards and made this video:
Most magicians back in the 1990s had never actually seen slick cards; they’d only read about them in old books. I’m pretty sure that now even fewer magicians have heard of them.
What can you do with them?
First of all, you don’t need to drop them as I did in the video. You can bump the deck and it’ll break at the slick card. That will give you a spot to then cut or shuffle to.
Another thing you can do is toss the deck on the table so that they spread a little bit. The deck will naturally spread wider at the slick card, and that can be used for the psychological force of them taking the card at that point.
It’s a weird thing I wouldn’t want to rely on, but it’s fun to play with having one in the deck!
-Louie
Yesterday I made a post about David Regal’s Off With His Head. I wanted to add a third beat to it, and one of the ideas I mentioned was making the three cards that weren’t selected blank. This is really following the B’wave format.
Here’s it with the three blank cards as the ending:
I think it’s (for me) a better trick than the original and away to turn B’wave from a mindreading trick to a magic trick.
-Louie
