One of the things I love when I’m home is being able to get together with other magicians.
While magic jamming with Jonathan Friedman and Chris Beason, we came with with this strange little coin trick:
It’s not really practical, but a fun little magic trick for a video.
-Louie
A few months ago I bought a cool looking vintage spirit hand and planned to use it to make a mold to make my own spirit hand.
I didn’t have any pigment for my resin, so my hand came out looking like a zombie hand! The original one would have come with a gimmicked board to make it move. I gimmicked mine so that is doesn’t need the board.
It works, and if I make another one, I’m probably going to go for a less dead looking skin tone!
-Louie
My segment on Masters of Illusion aired last night, but I didn’t get to see it until this morning as we don’t have cable anymore. It was a good segment and that got me about 2 1/2 minutes of airtime, which is great!
If you missed it, here it is:
The normal routine runs 6-8 minutes, so there’s a lot of stuff that got cut out of the routine to tighten it up for TV.
Here’s a bit of the story behind this routine:
Way back in 2019 I went to Holbrook AZ to perform my magic show at the Navajo County Fair. My bags were overweight, so I left my cards at home, thinking I could get them in Holbrook. When I got there I couldn’t find playing cards anywhere in town! I wandered the stores looking for something “card like” that I could use instead of cards. A box of crackers caught my eye. Over the week I developed a card trick that used crackers instead of cards!
You can also search the tag: Cracker on this blog for more info about the routine.
hope you enjoy it!
The episode of Masters of Illusion that I’m on airs tonight at 9pm (8pm central) on The CW Network!
I should have the video tomorrow to upload, and have some comments on…
-Louie
I found a Vanishing Birdcage on eBay that I don’t have in my collection. I don’t know who made it.
This one is interesting because of its dimensions. Its 5 x 5 x 5 inches, so a square. For perspective, my Owen Vanishing Birdcage is 5 3/4 x 5 x 5, so a rectangle.
What I find strange is the square dimensions make cage look smaller and not really give you any advantage as the cage collapsed is virtually the same size as the Owen cage.
The amount of bulk reduced in your sleeve after the vanish is negligible, and it’s only one bar shorter than an Owen Challenge Cage.
What is interesting is the weight of the cage. I compared it to my Baby Lindy and Owen cage and this cage is 20% lighter than the Riser/Summers Baby Lindy Vanishing Birdcage and about 2/3’s the weight of the Owens Challenge Cage.
The lighter weight is the only advantage for this cage, however I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t have made it a bit wider or shorten it’s depth to give it that rectangle shape to reduce bulk.
I’m glad to have it in my vanishing birdcage collection!
-Louie
I’ve got a few summer camp shows this week. Yesterday I mentioned that I use a Hat Coil in my summer camp show.
Last night I was getting them ready, so here’s how I prep them. I start by removing the inner brown cardboard from the hat coil. Then I take a bit of the middle and I crumple it into a ball. That ball then gets shoved into the middle of the hat coil. That makes it easier to pull out when I’m ready to produce it.
Next I cut off some of the outer layer and throw it away. I use tape to secure the end. The reason that I do that is because the hat coil slows down a lot towards the end and the last bit just takes forever. By cutting off a little bit is makes it a little punchier:
It takes about 10 minutes to do 7 -10 of them, so it’s pretty quick.
Now I’m good to go for the week!
-Louie
In the Seattle area we have a show called Magic Mondays. This is essentially a magic open mic, and a great resource for local magicians to work on material, or just have a chance to perform in front of a real audience. This show has been running for years and has a built in fan base, and the audience came back when the show returned after 2 years off during the pandemic.
Last night we got to see Jim Earnshaw perform some coin magic, then David Regal’s Will The Socks Match. I really liked the sock trick!
Next we had Frederick Turner doing a “do as I do” style card trick, with a bell as the transition prop. I really liked the used of the bell and it was great signal at the end of the trick.
In the show was a new to the Seattle area performer, David Hirata. He did some great rope magic, card magic and was a lot of fun to watch!
Finally we had Master Payne who did his fabulous coin in bottle routine. He’s going to be doing a presentation at FISM in a couple of weeks and will be doing this routine, so he was practicing it.
Last night’s show was solid show and best of all, it’s FREE to the audience!
This is a great show to catch is you’re in the Seattle area on the second Monday of the month at Third Place Books (Ravenna).
-Louie
When I was a lot younger I used to do a ton of summer day camps. By a lot, I mean 2-3 a day all summer. Now I do about a dozen or two a summer. I really enjoy doing them, however I’m trying to get 5-14 day contracts and having a single day camp show can get in the way of booking those longer contracts.
Here’s my case from one that I recently did:
While this show isn’t what I would consider what “my art” is, it still has a lot of things in it that I find interesting. One of those is my hat coil routine. It runs about 5 mins and is what currently is closing the show. There’s not much to it, it uses a hat, electric deck, two loose cards and a hat coil.
A while ago I had a use for hat coils and had bought a bunch of them, then stopped doing the routine, it just wasn’t playing how I wanted it to. So they sat for a while and I decided I wanted to get rid of them, so I started throwing a couple in my case to try to find a use for them. Over a few years I eventually came up with a routine that works.
One the surface, hat coils are expensive at about $4-$5 each retail plus any shipping. However, I had bought a bunch of them initially, so I didn’t pay that much for them. Now whenever I’m at magic swap meets, frequently I can find them and pay virtually nothing for them. Enough old time magicians have these in their collections to keep me doing this routine for a while! Even if I have to pay retail, the routine is worth it!
-Louie
Yesterday was an exciting day at the post office, I had one of Rolando Medina’s Chanin/Rivera shell game sets arrive and an extra set of peas!
These are made from the original mold and look great!
I like the shape of this shell with it’s high top. It covers any flash if your fingers have a gap at the back of the shell. The shape of the shell really poops the pea out the back nicely!
I have several sets of shells made from this mold:
What I like the Medina Set is that it looks semi realistic, less like plastic that’s pretending to be a shell than the other sets. I’m home for a couple of weeks doing local shows that are all stage shows, so I won’t be able to try them out for real until I hit the road…but I’m excited to try them!
-Louie
I don’t get it when magicians are annoyed when people in the audience want to show them a magic trick. If I was guessing it comes down to an ego thing. When I’m doing roving close up magic, I always let them show me their trick. Sometimes you’ll be surprised at what they show you…usually it’s just the 21 card trick.
Occasionally I get to see this two card change:
However sometimes you get to see an amazing trick, this is probably what I’d consider the greatest trick I’ve ever had someone in the audience show me!
Letting someone from the audience have their moment makes you a generous performer. Now there are times where it’s inappropriate to have them do a trick, but in 95% of times when they offer there’s really no reason for you not to let them show you the trick aside from you being worried that someone will steal your spotlight.
-Louie
