The last couple of days I’ve been working on using a giant set of safety pins onstage for a linking pin routine. Recently I started adding a thumb tie to it to add length. One thing I quickly learned is that there’s a ton of dead time at the end of the routine when I’m having the tape cut off of my thumbs.
My first attempt for fixing the dead time was to add a trick to the end. What I was doing was taking the tape and turning it into an animal balloon. That went over fine, but it’s not the right fix for the routine.
I think my second attempt is a reasonable solution to making the dead time of cutting the tape off my fingers worth it. I’m moving the thumb tie to the first half of the trick. After the thumb tie, the tape is cut off, then I move into the linking pins routine. This has been playing a lot better!
Now I need to keep adding meat to the routine to get it good.
-Louie
Tag: sleight of hand
Doing a Bar Gig
I don’t do a lot of bar gigs anymore, I’m not opposed to them, but they don’t normally make sense with my schedule. Last week I headlined a comedy show at a speakeasy. It was a fun gig!
One of the skills you need for these gigs is to be able to follow any act. The act before me was a comic that was fairly blue, and I do a “TV clean” show, so there’s contrast and the audience has to shift mental gears from his style to mine. There’s nothing wrong with what he was doing, that’s his art. When there’s contrast like that, you need to come onstage with confidence, you’re bringing the audience into your world.
Before the show I always try to do some close up magic, that will have people in the audience already on your side!
The “green room” was in a back corner of the bar and the cool thing was I could watch the show on the TV!
Also I don’t normally have merch to sell at bar gigs, but I took some of my faux children’s books C is for Conspiracy: The ABC’s of Conspiracy Theories and pitched them from the stage.
They sold well after the show, so that was a bonus!!
Bar gigs have a lot of challenges, like sight lines, rowdy crowds, challenging stages, however I find them very rewarding as a performer. Because they are typically smaller venues you can connect with people a lot more than in a larger venue.
-Louie
The 10 Count
About a month ago I went to Disneyland with a bunch of entertainers after an event we were all at. While not everyone was specifically a magician, everyone there had a magic component in their show. Somehow the “10 Count” with sponge balls came up.
The 10 Count is a little thing where a sponge ball travels from one hand to the other while you count to ten. Each number has a physical action associated with it. It’s a great framing for a quick trick and isn’t limited to sponge balls. I first learned the 10 Count from a sponge ball book when I was a teenager, however it looks like it was probably created by Martin Gardner using matchsticks.
If you don’t know it, it’s worth looking up!
-Louie
Card Production
A few nights ago I was dinking around with a deck of cards while watching a movie with my wife and came up with a production of the top card of a face down deck.
It’s not the greatest production, but it’s something. The action of the card reminds me of something in Ernest Earick‘s book By Forces Unseen.
I think the next step to making it better would be a way to have it come out of the center of the deck…but not sure if that’s possible!
-Louie
Update For Nick Trost’s Mexican Monte
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Nick Trost’s Mexican Monte packet trick (read it here). I was thinking about it and the end with the card with a different colored back is okay, but I think it needed something a little punchier.
Here’s what I came up with:
@louiefoxx Vintage Magic Trick – Updates for Nick Trost's Mexican Monte #magictrick #packettricks #cardtrick #sleightofhand #louiefoxx #nicktrost #vintagemagic ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx
The ending doesn’t play well on camera and from the straight down angle as well as in real life if the change is done by rubbing the card on your sleeve. The Tree of Hearts is think is a more visual ending and having the face change is more of a punctuation on the trick, than the original ending of simply turning the last card over.
-Louie
The Wagon of Whimsy
A few months ago I was performing at an event with Ky Dobson and his Wagon of Whimsy. This is a pedal tractor that pulls a wagon that’s got a buttons that do all sorts of funny things, and he tells jokes and does magic and juggling. Ky is a trained clown, and very personable.
He wanted a something to do with an egg that was dinosaur related. This is what we came up with:
Ky had some dinosaur parts and for me the obvious thing was using the dinosaur head like Bob Farmer’s Little Hand trick. It’s a fun simple little trick that was getting great reactions from the kids!
-Louie
Remembering an Old Seattle Magician
Recently I was hanging out with some magicians working on some new magic and someone looked up and saw the cards on the ceiling and wondered who put them there.
I immediately knew, it was Cliff!!
In the 1990’s I met Cliff Gustafson, he was a Seattle magician who worked a lot of bars in the Seattle area. It feels like he worked 1-2 bars a night seven nights a week! He stood out, he wore a tuxedo with a bowtie and everyone knew him!
Cliff wasn’t the best technical or original magician in the world, don’t get me wrong, all the tricks he did were solid! What he excelled at the hardest part of performing magic, he was likable! When you watched Cliff perform, you instantly liked him!
Cliff was always really cool to me, and you can watch a short documentary about him that has some clips of him performing at: robhanna.com
Cliff passed away in 2016, and Seattle lost it’s hardest working magician!
-Louie
Sponge Peeps – 2nd Attempt
Yesterday I wrote about a failed attempt at making sponge bunnies that look like Marshmallow Peeps (read about it here). I made a second attempt, and this one turned out much better. Instead of using actual Marshmallow Peeps to create the mold, I sculpted them out of clay.
My mold is one full size bunny and then two smaller ones. My thinking is that I can get a full set out of two castings in the mold. I can make additional molds if this is something I want to make a lot of.
I used foam in the mold as I already had that at home, so it was easy to make a test with.
They came out with a workable density, I think that I would like them to be a little bit softer, so I’ll have to explore some other densities of foam. The next step will be to play with adding pigment to them so that they’re yellow.
-Louie
Sponge Bunnies
Last year around easter I had the idea to make sponge bunnies out that look like the Marshmallow Peeps.
I bought this pack of them last year and I just got around to trying to make a set. The first step was to make a mold of them.
I started to make the mold using actual Peep’s, but unfortunately it was a failure. I think the sugar or some ingredient of the Peep didn’t play well with the mold material.
I’m going to give it another try, but I think I’ll have to make the Peep’s out of clay and then make a mold of that. Hopefully it will be sooner than another year before I make another attempt!
-Louie
Blankety Blank Blank Blank by Ken Driscol
Here’s a packet trick that I found in a junk magic bin. It’s a twisting the aces style effect with the backs turning blank at the end.
There are a couple of things that I didn’t like about the trick. The big thing with this style of twisting routine is no one really shows all the backs at first. This is easily accomplished with a Flustration Count and half pass. I think the surprise of the blank cards at the end is more amazing when the audience feels like they’ve seen the 4 regular backs.
-Louie