Tag: handkerchief magic

Match Trick Patter

A couple of days ago I wrote a couple of posts about a vanishing and reappearing match trick idea and method. It’s a decent idea for 20 or more years ago when matches were common. Bars don’t give away matches anymore and most smokers have lighters now and not matches, so it’s a trick that missed it’s time.

I wrote out a little script for the trick to try to make it relevant for our current time.

Here’s the routine:

Start with match box in left hand under cover of a handkerchief

“This is the most dangerous trick that I’ve ever done. It’s soo dangerous, I was kicked out of my third grade talent show for doing it when I was 13 years old!

More dangerous than running with scissors or putting honey on my chest to try to breast feed murder hornets…it’s playing with matches!”

Pull the handkerchief off your hand to show the matches.

“I thought I’d be the hottest act”

Strike match and put it into handkerchief covered fist (and into thumb tip)

“but my show went up in smoke”

Squeeze the tip to make a puff of smoke come out.

“Luckily the trick didn’t leave a mark on my permanent record”

Open handkerchief to show the match is gone and not damaged

“The crowd was fired up”

Reproduce the match from the handkerchief

“To this day I can still taste the excitement”

Put the match out on your tongue.

It’s got a little bit of a presentational hook and a couple of chuckles and justifies using the match. I don’t know if I’ll ever do it, but it was fun making the routine.

-Louie

Improvised Magic

As a magician you need to be able to do magic anytime.  It doesn’t mean that you have to do magic whenever someone brings it up, but you should be able to do something.  I’m pretty sure I’ve written about having an impromptu show that you’ve practiced as a show that you always have on  … Continue reading “Improvised Magic”

As a magician you need to be able to do magic anytime.  It doesn’t mean that you have to do magic whenever someone brings it up, but you should be able to do something.  I’m pretty sure I’ve written about having an impromptu show that you’ve practiced as a show that you always have on  you.  I’m not writing about that today, but the ability to improvise magic.


You need to be able to look at a scenario and mentally go through your “toolbox” of sleight of hand, subtleties, or whatever and to make a trick happen. For example last night my family was at dinner with another family and they had a kid who wanted to see a magic trick.  I’m a horrible human if I say no to a 7 year old kid.  Now, this doesn’t mean I need to do a whole show, but a quick trick. 



Looking around the dinner table there was standard stuff like cups, plates, silverware.  What I ended up doing was improvise a little routine.  I told the kid I was going to teach him how to do a trick and then I taught him how to stick a spoon on his nose.  I then told him I was going to make mine disappear off my nose.  I held a napkin in front of my face, wiggled my nose so the spoon fell off, and lowered the napkin to show it was gone.   The kid of course saw what happened…but then he was blown away when his full glass of chocolate milk appeared in my napkin! 

I’ve done the appearing cup in the napkin before, but needed a way to get the misdirection to steal it. The idea of dropping the spoon off my face was something that came to me in the moment and worked out great. It was a funny moment and everyone let their guard down, which allowed me to steal the cup.  



Understanding magic and how it works allowed me to work out this routine at a glace of the table.