magic club – MagicShow.Tips

NW Ring of Fire Magic Club

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

FISM Membership…

This summer I’m planning on attending FISM. I bought my ticket in 2018, so been waiting four years for this to happen. I realized my FISM card had expired, so I renewed it.

The card is less than $15 if you belong to another magic organization like the International Brotherhood of Magicians…and it’s even cheaper if you just want a digital card. It’s an easy way to support a magic organization, and it’s a fun, unusual thing to keep in way wallet.

If you got a FISM card when they started selling registrations for FISM to get the cheaper rate, you should check your expiration date, it’s probably expired.

-Louie

Pin Thru SD Card…

We live in a really cool time right now. I got an invite by Tommy Burnett to his lecture for IBM Ring 26 and was able to pop in and watch it while I was running at the gym! One of the the silver linings of the pandemic is that sometimes these Zoom magic meetings and lectures can be attended while you’re doing other things, like working out.

After the lecture they had their club meeting and I got to do the SD card trick I’m working on. That’s another silver lining of the pandemic, is that through Zoom you are able to get an audience almost instantly if you want to try out new ideas. Here’s my first time doing the Pin Thru SD Card trick (sorry, for some reason my screen recorder didn’t pick up my audio)

It’s always nice to get your first live performance out of the way. It’s a good way to shake the nerves of doing the trick and give you some confidence…or it’ll be a train wreck and show you the weak spots in the trick.

If you’re one of the holdouts not embracing Zoom after almost two years, you really should learn to use and perform on it. It’s a great learning tool.
-Louie

Magic Club Holiday Party…

A couple of nights ago I went to the Tacoma Magic Club’s holiday party. I always try to support the magic clubs in my area whenever I can. It was a fun night and towards the end, people in the club can get up and do some magic. One of the magicians did one of my tricks!

It was a lot of fun to see John Villarreal do my Russian Shell Game! This is a shell game that end with 15 shells on the table. This routine is one of tricks that I wrote in a notebook years ago and have been wanting forever. Then a couple of years ago, I made a set and it took off!

If you do anything that I’ve created and I’m at a magic club meeting, please do it! I love seeing what I’ve created out there in the world being used!

-Louie

Magic Clubs!

One thing that I hope still sticks around are some magic clubs getting together on zoom. While I think that meeting in person is more valuable, the Zoom ones tend to be more beneficial to me.

I just happened to be passing through Minneapolis on their magic club night. I looked it up and it was on Zoom (not in person). While I would have loved to visit in person, doing it online was OK.

Whenever possible, I try to get to magic clubs. I think they are extremely valuable in growing as a magician. I hope they figure out (as a whole) how to fix sagging membership numbers as they’re something I’d rather not see go away.

Go out there and support your local club!

Lecture Review…

During the Pandemic, I did many virtual lectures for magic clubs. I stumbled across a review of one in the Linking Ring magazine:

I really enjoyed doing these lectures. I would like to continue doing them, however moving forward with in person shows opening back up, I honestly don’t think that it would be possible to do them for a donation to the IBM or SAM endowment funds due to my performing schedule. I will keep doing in person lectures at conventions or as I travel and am in an area for the local club. It was nice to be able to give back a little bit!

Friends of Magic (The Society of American Magicians)…

There are somethings in magic that confuse me and somethings that don’t. The big one that makes total sense is the decline of membership in magic clubs. There are several reasons why, but the main one is the internet. You can get you gossip, see new tricks, etc online. The second, closely behind the first is most clubs are d*cks to younger people. Old people telling kids who are into flourishes that what they are doing is wrong. It doesn’t matter how you get into magic or what you like, welcome them into the club.

Last night I saw this ad from the Society of American Magicians for the SAM Friends of Magic:

I’m trying to figure out why think selling this is a good idea. It’s all stuff that should be included in your membership! This is like a “light” version of full membership, but being sold as an separate product. Is this trying to generate revenue or increase the Society of American Magician’s membership numbers?

I think it’s ultimately going to do neither.

Chop Cup Load…

Sometimes I think younger magicians don’t give old timers enough credit. The other night I was at a magic club meeting over Zoom and we got talking about chop cup. One of the older members showed us a really cool loading technique that I had never seen before. He used to use it when he did magic behind a bar. The best way to describe it was it was like the Sylvester Pitch done into the cup. It was a really great way to load the cup!

I remember being a kid and while I’ve always loved hearing old magicians talk, many times their moves aren’t very good. It’s not that they aren’t good, they’re just older techniques that have been replaced by better methods. It’s easy to have this cloud your judgement and quickly dismiss what they are doing or talking about.

An example of this is when I was a teenager, I could produce single cards from a back palmed stock in the modern way where you keep the stack behind your hand and peel off a single card. I remember talking about back palming with Mickey Hades and him telling me I was doing it wrong. He taught me to do it the old way of moving the whole stock to the front, peeling off a single card, and then reback palming the stock of cards. It’s a way less efficient way of doing it compared to the more modern way. I can still do it that way (not very well anymore), but more importantly it gave me time to chat with Mickey and that was fun!

If you’re a younger magician, or even an older one, don’t immediately dismiss a magician just because they are older.

Gozinsta-Shot!

I’m finally back home and I have some video of me doing the trick with the Gozinta Boxes that I had been playing with. The effect is a production of two cups and then liquid to fill the two cups. The beauty of the Gozinta Boxes is the misdirection, you can load anything into them. … Continue reading “Gozinsta-Shot!”

I’m finally back home and I have some video of me doing the trick with the Gozinta Boxes that I had been playing with. The effect is a production of two cups and then liquid to fill the two cups.

The beauty of the Gozinta Boxes is the misdirection, you can load anything into them. The first load, is easy as there’s not heat on it. The second one is still pretty easy to do and the misdirection is still very strong as people are reacting to the production.

Be Social…

One of the things that I think is important to do with magic is to be social. Hang out with other magicians, see what they are doing and learn from it. When I was starting out, there was no internet, so that’s how new tricks got around, someone learned it in another city and they … Continue reading “Be Social…”

Simply knowing what other magicians in your market are doing is HUGE. Personally, it let’s me know what tricks not to do in my show. It also let’s me know who someone is talking about if they saw a magician can can’t remember their name.