One of the best books I’ve read about comedy magic (i’m still reading it) is Be More Funny by Christopher Barnes. This book is a solid book on techniques to create comedy magic, and probably the best that breaks it down into different types of comedy. His examples of the routines to illustrate the comedy … Continue reading “Fantastic Book!”
A couple of days ago I wrote about seeing an amazing act perform under horrible conditions (you can read it here). Yesterday I was performing at a festival and I got to be a good act performing with not so idea conditions. I’m not one to complain, as I’m honestly grateful for any gig and … Continue reading “Making the best…”
Right now I’m a couple days deep into over a week off, no shows until next Wednesday! While enjoying my time off, I came across a video of Doc Docherty‘s routine for the Gozinta Boxes. The Gozinta Boxes were created by Lubor Fielder and the effect is a red box fits inside a black box, … Continue reading “Great Effect for a Bad Trick…”
Right now I’m reading the book Be More Funny by Christoper T. Magician. When it arrived, I was amazed at how thick of a book it is, most comedy magic books aren’t nearly this heavy. Currently I’m about a hundred pages into it and am liking it! One of the things he says in the … Continue reading “Character Mash Up…”
One of the things that I’m always on the lookout for are quirks that I can exploit for a magic trick. Ideally small things that people don’t notice, or things that they accept and don’t think about. In this month’s Genii Magazine I have a magic trick and it’s based on something small that I … Continue reading “Unusual Magic…”
If you notice a problem in your show and it’s an easy fix, fix it. I know this, yet I didn’t do it yesterday. During my preshow I knew my mic cord was going bad, it was making crackly noises. I also had a new cord in my case, so I really didn’t have a … Continue reading “Do It Now…”
Over the last year I’ve been working on a Take Up Reel of my own design. If you don’t know what a Take Up Reel is, it’s a complicated process to do something very simple. All it does all you to have a piece of string and shorten it. That’s it. It becomes very handy … Continue reading “Always Be Tweaking…”
In my interview on The Variety Artist podcast I talk about working on a drawing duplication trick. It hit me yesterday that this could be the solution to the hurdle of borrowing money from the audience. The challenge of borrowing money is the time it takes people to get out money, or whether anyone will … Continue reading “Borrowed Dollar Problems…”
A year or so ago I published a trick in Vanish Magazine that used a Sharpie Marker as a prediction. How it went was someone picked a card and drew picture on it. I then told them to look a the pen they are holding and it said, “you will draw a smiley face” which … Continue reading “Bonus Tricks…”
One of my best friends (who is also an amazing performer) always says, “you’ve got to address the elephant in the room”. What he means is if there is something that the whole audience can see or is aware of that’s a distraction, you need to acknowledge it. When I perform at fairs, sometimes the … Continue reading “The Elephant in the Room…”
