After goofing around with the cocktail parasols that I bought, I figured out a way to make them self opening.
To make them self opening, it just takes a little loop of elastic…and a lot of help from my reading glasses!
I’m not sure what to do with a parasol that opens by itself, but it makes the ending of most tricks better than if I had to manually open it.
-Louie
When I was 17 years old I won a magic contest at a magic convention. I don’t remember if there was any cash in the prize, but there was a lot of magic donated from the dealers. One of the things that I got was Shimada’s Stevens Greater Magic VHS tape. That tape introduced me to magic Shimada. One of the acts that Shimada was famous for was his parasol act.
I’ve always thought that producing parasols looked great and better than a more modern umbrella. I think that people connect umbrellas with the self opening feature and less so with a more Asian parasol. Yes, I understand that umbrella and parasol mean the same thing, and intentionally using them to refer to different things.
Parasol productions are very cool, visual and fill the stage, however I don’t think most routines pass the “drive home test”. That’s were people in the audience talk about the tricks on the drive home. Parasols pack small and pop open and everyone knows that. That’s the weak spot in parasol productions.
OK, so I’ve wanted to do a parasol magic for years, but is doesn’t really fit my personality (and costuming). Then the other day I was at the store and saw some cocktail parasols. I bought a couple of packs of them and started playing with different ideas of things to do with them.
Let’s see what I come up with…
-Louie
Here’s a packet trick from the 1980’s that I came across.
I think Nick Trost’s Mexican Monte is a pretty solid routine. Here’s me doing the routine and my thought on how to improve it:
It’s really a small change at the end, and I think Nick really nailed it with this one. I’d change the patter, but it’s good and worth checking out if you find one at a magic swap meet!
-Louie
A few months ago I was performing at an event with Ky Dobson and his Wagon of Whimsy. This is a pedal tractor that pulls a wagon that’s got a buttons that do all sorts of funny things, and he tells jokes and does magic and juggling. Ky is a trained clown, and very personable.
He wanted a something to do with an egg that was dinosaur related. This is what we came up with:
Ky had some dinosaur parts and for me the obvious thing was using the dinosaur head like Bob Farmer’s Little Hand trick. It’s a fun simple little trick that was getting great reactions from the kids!
-Louie
Recently I was hanging out with some magicians working on some new magic and someone looked up and saw the cards on the ceiling and wondered who put them there.
I immediately knew, it was Cliff!!
In the 1990’s I met Cliff Gustafson, he was a Seattle magician who worked a lot of bars in the Seattle area. It feels like he worked 1-2 bars a night seven nights a week! He stood out, he wore a tuxedo with a bowtie and everyone knew him!
Cliff wasn’t the best technical or original magician in the world, don’t get me wrong, all the tricks he did were solid! What he excelled at the hardest part of performing magic, he was likable! When you watched Cliff perform, you instantly liked him!
Cliff was always really cool to me, and you can watch a short documentary about him that has some clips of him performing at: robhanna.com
Cliff passed away in 2016, and Seattle lost it’s hardest working magician!
-Louie
Inspiration comes in some strange places. I was cleaning out my storage closet in the office and found a gimmick that was for an ACAAN that was marketed in the late 1990’s. The trick was garbage, and was about to throw it away when I realized part of the gimmick had potential for a different trick.
Here’s the video I sent to my brainstorming group a while ago:
I like the concept of the card turning blank from a deck that’s in order. It makes it very easy to determine that the selected card is the one that’s blank. I don’t think I’ve seen a trick like this before, where a card turns blank in a deck that’s in order. Usually trick where the selected card turns blank, it’s away from the deck or it happens from a packet, like Gordon Beam’s Limited Edition trick.
I’ve been having fun doing this trick which I call Placeholder.
-Louie
Here’s a packet trick that I found in a junk magic bin. It’s a twisting the aces style effect with the backs turning blank at the end.
There are a couple of things that I didn’t like about the trick. The big thing with this style of twisting routine is no one really shows all the backs at first. This is easily accomplished with a Flustration Count and half pass. I think the surprise of the blank cards at the end is more amazing when the audience feels like they’ve seen the 4 regular backs.
-Louie
On Thursday night I made it out to the NW Ring of Fire magic club in Lynnwood, WA. There were about 15 magicians there. It’s been years since I’ve visited this club as it’s over an hour drive (without traffic) for me to get there .
The club president Tony Blei kept things fun, positive and moving along!
While I was there, I won the raffle and my prize were two magic VHS tapes
I don’t have a VHS player, but I discovered a long time ago that the tape can be removed from VHS tapes and they work as hat coils!
It was a fun night and if you’re not going out and meeting other magicians in your area you should! They are a good source of ideas, referrals, and people to cover gigs if you get sick.
-Louie
One way to build a show is to get more time out of the props you already have. There is a limit to the payoff the the trick, like a 15 minute Professor’s Nightmare routine might be a bit much (but maybe not). It’s up to you to figure out what the maximum of any routine you do is.
I have a trick rope routine that I do in the show. By trick rope, it’s a lasso demonstration, not a rope trick. The whole thing runs about 3 minutes and is fairly basic, but has some laughs and a big applause ending. I’m working on adding a few more things to it to hopefully build it out a minute.
I’m working on adding some vertical loop tricks to the routine…but first I need to work on doing butterflies which is the basic skill for vertical loops.
The challenge with something like lasso tricks is that they are a high practice, low payout skill. People think that it’s easy based pretty much on cartoons and think you can do tricks with the rope that are basically impossible due to how gravity works. That said, people still like it.
The nice thing is that most magicians aren’t going to put in the time to learn to do lasso tricks, so it gives me something semi unique right off the bat! The side bonus with lasso is that it’s easy to travel with, and has no set up. I can grab it and do it!
-Louie
A few weeks ago I was hanging out with some magicians before the Justin Willman show in Seattle. One of the props we were jamming with was an Apple Air Tag. Here’s one of the more visually interesting things:
@louiefoxx AirTag Hack! #airtag #appleairtag ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx
It’s an obvious trick to do with an AirTag, but the name lends itself to the trick. This is a trick I’ve wanted to do with an AirTag, but I stopped doing the muscle pass in 2020 and can’t do it anymore. Sure I could probably play with it for a week and relearn it, but I don’t really have a need for it anymore.
If you can muscle pass, this is a great and easy trick with a borrowed AirTag!
-Louie
