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The daily blog will continue below this post.
-Louie
When I host a variety show, I try to do as little of my formal material as possible. I do have a lot of material ready to be used, however I try to make the show not about my act…unless I have a scheduled spot in the show.
Here’s my MC props from a gig a couple weeks ago:
Of those props, I only did my routine with the Evaporation gimmick and there were 13 acts in the show, so I was on stage a lot! Luckily, the transitions were pretty tight, and there were a lot of announcements that needed to be done, so that gave me things to fill transitions.
I also did things like interview someone from the audience:
…and fed a guy licorice out of my mouth!
Both of these things were spontaneous and really created fun energy for the show. I always try to find things that take me out of my box and to create a show that’s unique to the people who are in the audience at that specific show that they know they’ll never see again!
That’s why people go see live entertainment, to be a part of a unique experience!
-Louie
The opening magic trick in my magic show has been a quick trick where juice turns into confetti, then the cup turns into a streamer. It’s a great flash trick, but right now I’m playing with a different opener. I’m starting to use my stand up chop cup routine as the opening trick for my outdoor magic show.
The pros of this chop cup style routine as an opener are that it has a lot of magic that happens without a lot of preamble. It gets into the magic quickly. Then the trick has a great payoff with the production of a tennis ball.
The downside is that while the ball in the routine is a yellow ball, it’s small. Ideally, I’d like something visually larger as the first trick in the show, but for now this is working…
-Louie
Last week, my magic show did 12 shows at a fair in California. When I was packing to go there, I took a picture of all the consumable stuff in my magic show. This is stuff that isn’t reusable and I have to replace each show or every few shows:
Here’s what’s in that picture:
It feels like a lot of stuff, and it kinda is when you’re seeing 12 shows worth of stuff, plus a couple of back ups. For a single show, it’s not a lot. The nice thing about having stuff that gets used up in the show is that my case going home is a little bit lighter!
-Louie
PS: I have written tons of posts about traveling with a magic show on this blog!
The last couple of months have seen gas prices rise by over 50%, which concerns a lot of performers coming into the busy summer season. I was on the road all of April, driving just shy of 7,000 miles that month, so I’m very aware of the rising prices.
The number of performers who are losing their minds trying to figure out how to deal with this is staggering. The fact is, when you break it down, it’s not too bad. Let’s say gas has gone up by $1.50 a gallon, and you get 20 miles to the gallon. That means if your typical range is 100 miles (200 round trip), the higher cost of gas is only $15 on that gig.
While I’d rather have that $15 in my pocket than give it to a gas station. If you buy lunch on the way to the gig, that’s probably costing you more than $15.
At the end of the day, if $15 is going to make performing unprofitable for you, you need to raise your rates.
One thing I’m going to warn you about is adding a gas surcharge. The problem with openly adding that as a line item on an invoice or a condition in a contract is when it goes away. If gas drops below a certain amount, are you giving them a credit? That math makes it a pain in the butt for the buyer. They want to know how much you cost when they book you, not how much you might cost. If they’re willing to pay you your rate plus a gas surcharge, then they’re willing to pay you that as a flat rate, and that should be your new rate.
That’s just how I see all of this.
-Louie
About five years ago, I used a torn and restored newspaper as the closer to a show. I used Nick Lewin’s Slow Motion Paper Tear, and it got great responses. Someone in a Facebook group asked about a newspaper tear that gives you clean edges on the tear. In my experience with the trick getting a clean tear is a combination of the grain/quality of the newspaper and just doing it a lot. The more you do it, the easier it is to get a clean tear.
That’s not really what this post is about, it’s about using a newspaper. Look below to see multiple people mention newspapers not being common:
Yes, I agree a newspaper isn’t common, but they still exist. Just about every grocery store in the USA still sells them. Here’s a list of things magician use that they consider “everyday objects” but I think aren’t:
All of those things still exist in the world, but the average person probably interacts with them about the same as a newspaper. I can’t think of the last time I held a pencil or handkerchief that wasn’t magic related. I hardly use cash anymore, and outside of a magic context, I’d say its been years since I would have touched playing cards.
It’s all about context, people still know what a newspaper is, they just might not have physically touched one recently. I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t use one based on how often people see them, but it’s not a strange object. A silver dollar is more strange than a newspaper.
That said, the first line of the newspaper tear when I did it was a joke explaining what a newspaper is.
-Louie
On this episode, we welcome the multi-talented Katie Russo. We discuss her many disciplines, including Chinese pole, juggling, and trombone.
We also talk about her journey from music to circus, and how being in a marching band was the perfect precursor to circus. A great conversation with a 2026 Moisture Festival first-timer.
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Let’s start by me saying I think most omni magic tricks are the result of lazy creativity. I’ve written at least one blog post about that in the past. What most omni magic tricks lack is something more than just the object becoming clear.
Ok, that all being said, I came across a set of small plastic folding chairs and one of the color options was clear.
There were four colors of chairs: Black, pink, blue and clear. I bought one of each. These stand about 5 inches tall. My first idea was some sort of chair test with them. My current idea is this:
Three tiny chairs are shown:
One of the three chairs is freely selected and put into a handkerchief that’s folded into a bag. You snap your fingers and pull out a ribbon/silk that is the color of the chair you put into the handkerchief. Then you remove the chair, and it’s now clear, and the handkerchief is shown empty.
There’s not much to it, but a bit more meat than just “hold this…now it’s clear” like in so many omni magic tricks. This routine is more like Dr. Boris Zola’s Silver Extraction routine. I do like the selection of a color as it adds a layer to it.
-Louie
The Jumbo Tom Foolery Transformation is a series of changes of four playing cards. One at a time, the cards flip over, then the backs change color, then the faces change.
Here’s a quick demo of it:
The challenge with this is that you use the same move 13 times in the routine. I think this routine was originally done with poker sized cards, but then someone decided to sell it in jumbo size to have an additional product to sell. The move doesn’t really lend itself to the jumbo cards, especially with the provided thick 8082 Bicycle Cards!
I came up with a different handling, the move still has to be done 13 times, but I think it makes more sense with jumbo cards. Here it is with my move:
While this is a trick I’ll probably never do for an audience, figuring out a better way to do it was a nice way to exercise my brain!
-Louie
The article below was written in the early 2000’s and was published in the online magic magazine Online Visions which no longer exists. People have asked me about where they could find it. I finally dug it up and here it is:
Call Back
(My Take on the Nest of Boxes)
By Louie Foxx
One thing I’ve never liked is how most magicians perform the nest of boxes trick. They borrow an object, it disappears, and it’s in the box, all in a nice five-minute chunk that wraps itself up nicely. I think there are a couple of reasons most magicians do it that way which are:
1) That’s how everyone else does it
2) The box is expensive, and they want to get a whole routine (or as much time as they can) out of it.
The problem I have with most presentations is the flow. They borrow a watch, and it disappears. Any reasonably smart person in the audience will know it’s going to reappear somewhere. The magician keeps the person on stage and introduces the box. Once again, any reasonably smart person in the audience will know the watch will come out of the box. When the box is opened, and the watch is in the innermost box, this nice linear flow takes away most of the surprise factor of the trick, and it becomes a puzzle.
Before I start with my solution, let me tell you a little bit about my background. I’m a full-time performer, and I work in a variety of different markets from Comedy Clubs to Schools to Casinos to just about everything. I got my start working in the comedy clubs performing a hodgepodge of stand-up comedy and some magic. In comedy writing, there is a thing called a “Call Back”, it’s where you refer to something that you mentioned in an earlier joke…and that was my starting point for my presentation of the nest of boxes.
Also, for what it’s worth, this will apply to any “impossible location” that you can load with the object in full view. Things like a Mullica type wallet would work, or even a Bill To Lemon if you put the lemon in a paper bag.
Here’s the basics of my routine: At the beginning of the show, I introduce the box and mention that no one has ever guessed what’s inside it. Now I have people make guesses, and I give some humorous clues (which are actual clues, but funny). I put the box on the edge of the stage or with someone in the audience and say, “We’ll open this a bit later in the show, and if anyone guesses it correctly, you get to keep what’s inside.”
Around the middle of my show, I do a trick where a signed borrowed dollar disappears and ends up reappearing at the end of the trick. At the end of the trick, I trade the signed dollar for one that’s not written on. Here’s what has happened: the dollar trick has nicely wrapped itself up, and in the audience’s mind, the signed dollar is out of play…But I have it. Most of the audience will forget that I even have the signed dollar! The goal is to get the signed bill in your possession, not necessarily make them forget you have it (it’s a bonus if they forget).
Now the 2nd to last thing I do in the show is reintroduce the box, which has been sitting on the floor, or better yet, in the audience on a table or a chair next to someone. Bring it onstage and recall some of the more interesting guesses that people made. Open the box and reveal the signed dollar!
That’s the bare bones of the routine. Over the spring and summer, I ended up doing this routine about 175+ times, and for me, it’s proved to be a hard-hitting routine.
Having the Nest of Boxes as a call back instead of a tight routine really puts the surprise back into the Impossible Location effect. By doing a bit where I have people guess what’s inside, it allows me to get the boxes in play early on, so the audience is aware of it long before they are used, and I get about the same amount of time in the show out of the Nest of Boxes as if I had it in one straight little routine.
Recently, I have made one change to the routine. In the show, I also do a trick with a signed jumbo card. So, I’ve been loading both the signed jumbo card and the signed dollar into the Nest of Boxes at the end of the show. I’ve found it gets better reaction than just the dollar about half the time, the other half it gets about the same reaction as just the dollar. I’m fine with the little bit of extra work to get a better reaction half the time!
I’ve also used this idea close up with the Coin in Nest of Boxes (the round brass ones). You just need to have two sets. One set you introduce at the beginning, and you switch in the one with the signed coin later in the show…but still delay the revelation till the end. I switch out the boxes while moving things on the table to clear space to do the Endless Chain trick. When the trick’s flow isn’t linear, it will make it much harder for the audience to remember you ever touching the Coin in the Nest of Boxes to switch it out (and takes a ton of heat off the switch). In a close up, walkaround type situation this is a bit tricky to reset easily, so I save it for special groups.
Inspiration: I love the idea of bringing the signed object to a second location. I was first turned onto this in one of Gary Oullette’s Fulminations columns in Genii, where he talked about card to wallet, and the only reason you do it is after you pull it out the first time, you immediately reload it and reproduce it a second time.
