On this episode of the Moisture Festival Podcast, we sit down with juggler and freestyle footballer Cory Black. We talk about how he got started in freestyle football, why he decided to bring his hands into the mix, and how he turned those skills into a one-of-a-kind performance.
A great conversation with an incredibly creative artist who turned his passion into a career.
Cory takes us inside the world of freestyle competitions, inventing new tricks, and the process of developing his act. We also hear about the moment he decided to leave his regular job behind, follow his dream, and become a full-time performer.
While I was travelling, one day I had about 90 mins to kill before I could check into a hotel. It’s rare that I get to a hotel that won’t let me check in early, but it happens occasionally. When it does, I try to do something fun with my time, and that day I went to an antique mall.
One of the stands had a bunch of magic magazines (linking rings, genii, etc) which were way overpriced, but they also had a few magic books that were reasonable. I picked up the Thayer Catalog vol 8, Ireland’s Yearbook for 1952 and a couple of other things.
The Ireland’s Yearbook for 1952 was interesting. It’s a collection of tricks that were published annually by Laurie Ireland. A good chunk of the yearbook was taken up by an origami storytelling routine. This was interesting that I had the folds and the figures, but not the story?!
I had some paper and decided to try the routine, the problem was with how it was written and illustrated, there were a lot of errors with the words and pictures.
For example figure 4 and 5 are incorrect:
I had to do a lot of messing around and guessing what was meant, to get to the finale of the routine, which is a “Chinese junk boat”.
This was challenging to learn, and it’s a storytelling prop like a Troublewit. I don’t think I’ll ever do it, but I do find it interesting that this was a trick of note in 1952!
In January I’ll be lecturing at the Kapital Kidvention in Arlington, VA. I’ll be doing two lectures.
The first lecture is my 2025 PCAM Lecture that debuted last November. The second lecture is a new one called: Two Openers, Two Middles and Two Closers for Kid Shows. The name pretty much says what it’s about, 6 tricks, two for each spot in the show.
The ad for the trick PADO came across my social media feed, and I have some thoughts on just the ad. I want to be clear, I didn’t buy this, these are just my impressions of the ad for the trick.
First of all, the cover for the ad when it was served to me has the palmed card flashing. Here’s the screenshot of the ad for PADO:
This is a very minor thing, and could have been an auto generated cover that the magic company had no real control over. Alright, here’s the actual demo:
Whenever I see a demo where the table is so black that you can’t tell where it ends and the magician’s black clothes start, this is a trick that uses black art. More than that, it’s also probably (I could be wrong) manipulated with a filter to make the black colors blacker. This is fair game for online content, but not in person performing. Once again, I would love to be wrong about this.
Why is it important to know if it’s black art?
If it is, you can’t do this trick “walkaround” without carrying a special surface to do it on. That severely limits where you can do it. You can’t do it on any tabletop. I guess the term “walkaround” can mean a lot of things, but it’s going to be difficult to do on a picnic table in the park on a sunny day.
Another issue I have is that the website says it’s for “beginners”; however, in the trailer there is a control and mercury fold. To accomplish those, the magician in the video drops his hands below the table, then there’s a camera cut. If they can’t do the sleight of hand deceptively in front of the camera for the demo, then it’s not beginner level (in my opinion).
Personally, I think this would be great for magic that’s filtered through a camera where you can be in control of lighting and the black balance, and not when you’re performing to a group of people in front of you. The magic company is selling something that technically could be done in those scenarios, but it probably won’t be something you can do 100% of the time in those scenarios.
What’s written above is my opinion without seeing the PADO gimmick- just my commentary and opinion on how this is being sold. I would love to be wrong, and I could do this on any surface…and it’s not a recreation of the Brent Braun and Andy Glass gimmick.
The Triumph card trick, where cards are shuffled face up and face down, ending with all the cards going the same way, except a selected card, has fascinated me for a while. In the past, I’ve published a version or two in Vanish Magazine. Here’s my newest idea for it:
I really like using the old drop the deck and the top card flips over thing as a way to flip over the top card. I’ll probably write this up at some point and publish it somewhere.
Here’s what my props for a roving magic set look like:
The bottom row is my card routine, which is modular and can run anywhere from about 90 seconds to 7+ minutes. The top row are the other props that I use. Everything goes into my pockets except for the empty chop cup.
The top row is the fortune teller (it’s in my PCAM lecture notes), then my Out for Beers trick, three shell game and a chop cup. The nice thing about these props is that there’s a lot of texture I can have with my roving magic set. The opening is always the card routine, then the next trick depends on the group.
In the past I’ve made Dice Cup Chop Cups available every now and then. They were never an item that I offered on my website. I would just post them to my social media or mention them in my email list. I’ve gotten a lot of people asking about when I’m making the next batch, so I’ve made added them to my shop.
Yesterday I posted about my new sequence for the chop cup, go read that and watch the video before reading this post, as I’m going to write about a few things in that post.
Here’s what I like about that routine:
1: It doesn’t use the standard chop cup move of shaking the cup with the ball, or in this case a die
2: It’s not presented as a “where is the ball,” but as what will happen to it.
3: Once the routine starts, I never go to my pocket.
For me, the big thing is that I want to remove the going to the pocket element during the routine. If you keep going to the pocket, the audience knows that’s where the big ball or die comes from. Don’t fool yourself that repeatedly going to the pocket fools them, they may not have known when you snuck it in there, but they do know where it came from.
Last week I started working on a new sequence with a chop chop. Here’s what it looks like:
The cool thing about performing at a fair is that I get a lot of opportunities to try out different sequences to find what I like. This is what the routine looked like at the end of last week, and then in a few days I’ll be starting at a new fair and really deciding if this is what I want the final (for now) routine to look like.
Here’s a simple chop cup routine that you can learn, and do with any standard chop cup.
What I like about this routine, over many chop cup routines, is that I only go to the pocket once, and it’s not immediately before the production of the eight ball. -Louie
