Tag: sight gag

Finger Off Extreme

I love fun little sight gags and Finger Off Extreme by Luca Bono is FANTASTIC! It’s a silly little gag where you pull you finger off.

@louiefoxx Sleight of hand!! #sleightofhand #magic #magictrick #pinky #degloved #louiefoxx #brokenbone #ouch #wtf ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

What’s great is the visual of the bone is soo unexpected. The trick isn’t hard to do, you do need to palm the piece, but that’s really not a big deal. The props are well made, the packaging is fun (if that’s important to you).

I highly recommend Finger Off Extreme!

You can get it at: https://kranzomagic.myshopify.com/products/finger-off-extreme-by-luca-bono

-Louie

A Sip of Water

Last week I was working with Lanky the Clown and he always has tons of little gags in his clown costume. He showed me a fun little gag where you offer someone “a sip of water“, then offer them a tiny bottle of water.

I thought the gag was hilarious and he gave me one of the tiny bottles.

You can get the Tiny Water Bottles by clicking here!

After playing with the gag, I have a little magic trick with it. I do the gag, then the bottle disappears and reappears from a handkerchief, which ends with the production of a full size unopened water bottle!

If you’re a Paul Harris fan, you’ll recognize this as King Soloman’s Drink from his book the Close Up Entertainer and in republished in The Art of Astonishment Volume 2.

It’s a fun little routine to do!

-Louie

Arrow Production…

I was hanging out with Chris Beason the other day and we were chatting about some tricks with a dollar bill.

One idea I had was that you mention that there are 13 arrows that the eagle is holding on the back of a dollar bill. You then do a double take and notice your bill has 14 arrows and is a misprint. You then pull a full size arrow out of the dollar bill!

It would be pretty easy to do, you’d need a gimmick like an appearing straw, but only about 24 inches long and glue an arrowhead to one end. Or cut the end to a point and paint it silver. It could be kept in a thumb tip, and possibly put a slit in the side of the tip to allow the arrow to be removed from it. The thumb tip is really only there to keep the arrow compress and easier to handle when rolled up.

While not the worlds greatest mystery, it would be a decent sight gag.

-Louie

Amazing Jonathan…

Last night I went to bed with the news that the Amazing Jonathan wasn’t doing well and woke up to the news that he had passed. I didn’t personally know him, but he had a huge influence on how I perform. His modern (for the 1990’s) style of performing didn’t use a lot of magic boxes, it was a lot of normal looking objects.

Unfortunately I never got to see him perform live, I just know his work from television. I did try to see him live once when I was about 19 at a local comedy club. The early show was an all ages show and the night I went it was sold out…the whole weekend was.

Jonathan has probably had more bits stolen than any other comedy magician. All of his gags are super strong and work as a stand alone bits. His work will live on as gags in other people’s show, I’m not sure how I feel about this. I guess after I’ve left this world, it’d be pretty cool if people doing my material, but while I’m alive I’d probably have a different view of this…
-Louie

Your Personal Bubble…

One of the coolest things about performing in your home is that you know what’s within reach in your space. For me it allows me to all sorts of gags or surprise productions of items that naturally came up during the show. For example last week at the Mostly Magic Virtual Open Mic someone commented on how large my “nuts” were. They were referring to the walnuts used in my shell game. I knew I had the giant metal nuts within arm’s reach, so I grabbed them and had a fun sight gag.

Then last night I was a guest on a show and the need to bring out an artificial fist presented itself and I had one within reach. Of course I grabbed it.

It something that’s happening in the moment, and it also makes the audience wonder what you have nearby off camera. I’m not necessarily saying having a ton of props around just for gags, but knowing what you have in your space is a huge advantage!