jokes – Page 3 – MagicShow.Tips

Another Day, Another New Bit!

Today is the start of the fourth day of coming up with a new bit each day for the show. This is an ambitious goal, coming up with 13 new bits over the next two weeks. The value of doing a ton of shows in a short amount of time is creating material.

Yesterday’s bit was my break apart fishing pole. It worked great, it’s a small moment in the longer bit, but a good moment. Right now the two parts are just held together with magnets. I think I’m going to switch the magnets out for large snaps. Snaps will hold better and the person can’t just stick it back on.

Today’s new bit is something simple, but I think it will help out with a struggle I’m having with part of a trick. In the trick I have someone draw a picture of me. The speed bump I’m hitting is people are worried the drawing has to be good. I’m going to have drawing in my case that’s a bad stick drawing. When the person is worried about being able to draw, I’ll show them the “drawing from the last show“. I could tag it with, “and the person that drew it was only four…ty years old“.

Hopefully the that will get a laugh and speed up that moment of the show.

Today is my first day of the two week fair that I’m performing at. In the next two weeks I’ll be doing 58 shows! I’ll be doing four shows a day, plus a couple of volunteer things. That’s going to give me a lot of chances to work on new material. If I set a goal of coming up with one new joke or bit a day for my show, that will give me 14 new bits, that’s a lot.

Hopefully this goal isn’t too ambitious. That’s a lot of writing that will have to happen in a day that’s already pretty full. I think I’m going to do my best to record (either audio or video) every show. Unfortunately the stage I’m on isn’t the best set up for video recording my shows. Video is the best way to learn and critique your show.

There’s a lot to be learned through audio recording. One thing you’ll really notice are dead spots. These can be harder to spot when you watch your show on video as there may be an action happening that makes the dead spot less obvious. So there is a lot of different information that can be learned from just audio.

Let’s see how today goes…

More Crackers…

At the fair yesterday, I tried the cracker magic trick in my preshow. It went well, and the audience liked it. That said, there are a couple things that I need to improve on. The big one is writing a script, and the other prop management.

For prop management, this will come with doing it. I had to dig around too much looking for the cracker or bowl, that’s mostly because I don’t know what I’m doing. There’s not a clear “flow” to the routine as far as what goes where.

For a script, I basically said something like:

I couldn’t find a store that sold a deck of cards in this town. I ended up having to buy something to try to make it work. So we’ll do a cracker trick! Pick a cracker, remember it, put it back and mix them up. Is that your cracker!!

How about you write your name on it, so we can tell it apart.

It goes into this bowl, we’ll cover it up and shake it to mix them. When I count to three you’ll toss the crackers into the air and I’ll reach out and catch one, it’ll be your cracker. If I can’t do that you win what’s inside this cup.

One…Two…Three!

Was that your cracker (show crushed cracker)?

Wait, there’s the cup…inside the cup is a cracker…read the name…Oh, that’s not your name.

We’ll make it disappear. All I need is some magic dust…and that makes it change into your name!!!

It’s a pretty bare bones script, not much going on. I’ll try to “punch it up” a little bit later today.

Sometimes New Things Hurt…

It’s been a while since I’ve really bombed at a show. Last night I got to remember what that feels like. I was doing a show in a comedy room, and I was only doing a 10 mins, however it was ten mins of new material. They put me as the show closer, no big deal with my normal stuff, but with new stuff, I was already uneasy.

It was a long show, and by the time I got up the audience was tired. I’m not making excuses for myself, that just made it harder for me to pull them up. I didn’t bomb, but I wasn’t happy with the show. They audience was with me, but they the material I was doing didn’t have any jokes or premises, it was simply the trick. There was nothing for them to really engage with besides the trick.

Effect wise everything went well, but there’s soo much more than that. It’s encouraging that the tricks work and are deceptive, but I need to sit down and write some jokes, figure out some premises and make these routines better.

Pump The Breaks…

At my only show I did yesterday I really slowed down. The entire show I probably went 30% slower. I let the magic moments sink in and the jokes marinade with the audience. I’m really happy with the results and I’m going to keep the slowness going for all three shows I’m doing today.

I understand why I go fast. It’s a fear of failure. It’s the fear of audiences not liking the tricks, or jokes not landing with the audience. How I deal with it is that I plow on to the next line. I recently watched a short little animated documentary on Doc Ellis. If you don’t know who he is, he’s the Major League Baseball pitcher that pitched a no hitter on LSD!

What doc was doing with drugs and alcohol was dealing with his fear of failure as a major league pitcher. I’m doing the same thing with speed. Moving from bit to bit and not giving them time to fail, but in the process they aren’t getting time to succeed!

Don’t Recycle…

A long time ago I had a friend give me some great advice. Do not recycle patter, jokes or bits used in a routine for use in a similar routine. An example is if I had two tricks that were too similar to be used in the same show, but are different tricks. An example would be a Benson Bowl and cups and balls, they are different tricks, but essentially the same trick.

It’s very easy to take a lot of your chop cup patter and use it in the cups and balls, or vice versa. Things like, a joke about the ball, or doing the bit where the cup is deeper on the inside than it is on the outside. Using these bits is a way to quickly build up the other routine.

The problem comes in where there are contracts where the booker wants two different shows. You cannot repeat a trick, or joke between the two shows. Now your A show and B show where you share jokes is useless. It would be better in the long run to create unique content for similar tricks.