One of the questions I get asked about the Snake Wand Surprise V2 is how long does it take to load it. Here’s me loading it slowly, and talking through the loading process:
That took less than 3 minutes to do slowly and as you can see, it’s not very hard to do. Normally, I do it in about 2 minutes.
-Louie
Yesterday I posted an simple color changing back routine that is Elmsley Count based. You can learn the sequence here. While I waiting in my car for an appointment, I grabbed some cards and made a quick trick using that sequence:
I think more people should use the Elmsley Count with the cards held vertically. You have to shift your thinking a bit, as it’s backward. Your finger will do the thumb’s action, and your thumb will do your finger’s action.
Doing the Elmsley Count vertically puts your face into the frame, which in theory is good.
-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.
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
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
The ad for the trick PADO came across my social media feed, and I have some thoughts on just the ad. I want to be clear, I didn’t buy this, these are just my impressions of the ad for the trick.
First of all, the cover for the ad when it was served to me has the palmed card flashing. Here’s the screenshot of the ad for PADO:
This is a very minor thing, and could have been an auto generated cover that the magic company had no real control over. Alright, here’s the actual demo:
Whenever I see a demo where the table is so black that you can’t tell where it ends and the magician’s black clothes start, this is a trick that uses black art. More than that, it’s also probably (I could be wrong) manipulated with a filter to make the black colors blacker. This is fair game for online content, but not in person performing. Once again, I would love to be wrong about this.
If it is, you can’t do this trick “walkaround” without carrying a special surface to do it on. That severely limits where you can do it. You can’t do it on any tabletop. I guess the term “walkaround” can mean a lot of things, but it’s going to be difficult to do on a picnic table in the park on a sunny day.
Another issue I have is that the website says it’s for “beginners”; however, in the trailer there is a control and mercury fold. To accomplish those, the magician in the video drops his hands below the table, then there’s a camera cut. If they can’t do the sleight of hand deceptively in front of the camera for the demo, then it’s not beginner level (in my opinion).
Personally, I think this would be great for magic that’s filtered through a camera where you can be in control of lighting and the black balance, and not when you’re performing to a group of people in front of you. The magic company is selling something that technically could be done in those scenarios, but it probably won’t be something you can do 100% of the time in those scenarios.
There is Brent Braun and Andy Glass’ Chattanooga Kickstand which looks very similar, but without the black art.
What’s written above is my opinion without seeing the PADO gimmick- just my commentary and opinion on how this is being sold. I would love to be wrong, and I could do this on any surface…and it’s not a recreation of the Brent Braun and Andy Glass gimmick.
– Louie
The Triumph card trick, where cards are shuffled face up and face down, ending with all the cards going the same way, except a selected card, has fascinated me for a while. In the past, I’ve published a version or two in Vanish Magazine. Here’s my newest idea for it:
I really like using the old drop the deck and the top card flips over thing as a way to flip over the top card. I’ll probably write this up at some point and publish it somewhere.
-Louie
Last week I started working on a new sequence with a chop chop. Here’s what it looks like:
The cool thing about performing at a fair is that I get a lot of opportunities to try out different sequences to find what I like. This is what the routine looked like at the end of last week, and then in a few days I’ll be starting at a new fair and really deciding if this is what I want the final (for now) routine to look like.
-Louie
PS: Click here if you want to learn more about how I work on trick in my show.
Here’s a simple chop cup routine that you can learn, and do with any standard chop cup.
What I like about this routine, over many chop cup routines, is that I only go to the pocket once, and it’s not immediately before the production of the eight ball.
-Louie
