MagicShow.Tips – A daily blog about magic by Louie Foxx

The Rise of Houdini

On Friday, my wife and I went to see the show The Rise of Houdini in Portland, Oregon. This show was part burlesque, part magic show, and part scripted show about a séance. The magician in the show was D.R. Schrieber.

Before the show D.R. did some close up magic for the crowd.

The magic show was good. D.R. does a great job with his character, and the audience was into it. The third act, which was the play about a séance trying to contact Houdini, was interesting. There was a fake heckler, which I think surprised a lot of the audience, that he was part of the show.

There was a point where there was an intermission during the play, but D.R. was on stage as his character in this play, and he was reading a book. That book was used previously as a book of magic spells. From the audience, the book looked really familiar to me. I asked after the show, and it was, in fact, the pocket edition of Expert at the Card Table!

This is a fun show to watch

-Louie

The Moisture Festival Podcast – Lucy Juggles

On this episode of the Moisture Festival Podcast, we welcome Lucy Juggles! Lucy shares stories of growing up in rural Georgia, struggling to find her people, and navigating her first jobs. We explore how she developed her talents, the hours of practice behind her skills, and why a cross-country move became a game changer. We also talk about staying true to herself onstage and what’s on the horizon. A wonderful conversation with a fantastic performer!

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Visiting the Portland Society of American Magicians Magic Club

With my hand out of commission due to surgery, I’m trying not to let it slow me down too much. On Wednesday night, I went to the Portland Society of American Magicians magic club meeting. It was a lot of fun and I saw a lot of great and fun magic.

That night was the Close Up Magic contest, and congratulations to Mel, who was the winner. Mel did a really cool coin box routine that he said he had been doing since about 1980! What I really liked about this coin box routine was that it wasn’t your standard Okito box routine.

I also tried out a routine I’m playing with. This is the second time I’ve done it, and it’s coming along nicely. This is a routine that I’m working on that only uses one hand, which is another attempt by me to find the silver lining of not being able to use a hand for two to six weeks. I’ll write more about this routine another time.

– louie

Magic show at the Louisville Comedy Club

I don’t make it to the East Coast a lot however on November 29 at 4:00 PM I’ll be performing at the Louisville Comedy Club in Louisville KY!

Advertisement for comedy show in Louisville KY

You can get tickets at: https://www.louisvillecomedy.com/shows/392504
Use the code “magic” to save a couple of bucks ! Hope to see you there!

– Louie

Max Maven’s Ansology

On Monday, I went in to have hand surgery. It’s a trigger finger release; hopefully, I will have full use of my middle finger on my right hand again! Before the surgery, I ordered the Max Maven book, Ansology. The night before surgery I started working through the book. This book is a combination of several previously published Max Maven books along with a little bit of new commentary.

A hand with cards and a Magic book by Max Maven

The nice thing about this book is that it doesn’t rely on heavy sleight of hand for most of it. So I’m able to work through a lot of this stuff with only one hand. So far two great tricks I found are Abacus and Out Of Sorts.

Abacus is an epic trick with multiple endings; it feels very modern, even though I think the trick is like 40 years old. The only drawback is that the trick uses a full deck setup, so for this trick to work, you’d really need a deck switch before you do it.

Out Of Sorts is a great hands-off card trick where you not only tell the audience where their mentally selected card is with your back turned, but you also tell them what it is. This trick does have a bit of procedure up front, which I’m not a fan of; however, I think the payoff makes it a real head-scratcher. I think this is going to be my go to trick right now with only one hand.

I’m looking forward to going through more of the book. I’m familiar with one of the books that’s contained in this anthology Of previously published Max Maven Books. This style of magic, which relies heavily on procedure, math, anagrams, and very light sleight of hand, is great for me right now!

-Louie

Having Hand Surgery

On Monday, I went in to have hand surgery; it was a trigger finger release. This has me out of performing for two to 6 weeks, which will be rough, but I planned for it.

While I can’t perform right now, I can still ship out orders. From now until the two-week initial healing process is over, I’m offering free shipping for orders on my site.

For free USA shipping, use the coupon code: surgery
For a discount to apply to international shipping use the coupon code: hand

These codes are good for the two weeks after my hand surgery and expire on November 9th, 2027.

-Louie

Doing Card Tricks Onstage

This is going to be an angry old man post. If you’re doing card tricks onstage and the audience needs to be able to tell what a specific card is, DON’T use normal poker-size cards. I can’t clearly see them from the third row.

There are options to make things play further back into the audience. Card-Shark makes two great options. Number one are large index cards, those have indexes that are a little bit bigger than standard cards. The best option to still keep the feel of a normal card trick, without going to jumbo cards are the Phoenix Parlour sized cards. These have larger indexes and are physically larger than poker sized cards.

Here’s a picture of the different card’s indexes:

playing cards with normal and large indexes

And here they are lined up:

You can do *most* sleight of hand moves with the Parlour sized cards. I’ve done my card to pocket routine with them and that involves palming a card!

Move up a size and reach a bigger audience!

-Louie

A Magician Needs Their Hands

Today I’m heading into surgery to get my trigger finger hopefully fixed. It’s been a chronic problem for a couple of years, and we’ve tried everything else to fix or manage it, but nothing worked, so it’s time for surgery.

It’s been challenging, basically losing the use of my middle finger on my right (dominant) hand. I’ve had to learn to classic palm a coin, using my ring finger to move a coin from the fingertips into palm position.

After today, I have about a two week recovery period.

Hopefully this works!

-Louie

Writing Patter for a Card Trick

There’s a routine that I’m playing with that uses just the face cards, and they end up being arranged into pairs. Here’s the script that I’m working on for it:

I have all twelve of the face cards. They’re all shuffled up.

(Show cards mixed)

And like a veggie platter, no pears/pairs.
While I deal them, say stop whenever you want, and I’ll mix them at that point.

(Do Paul Curry’s Swindle Switch mix)
They’re more mixed than when I do the laundry. Thanks to Brown vs. The Laundry room, that decision entitles me to pink shirts! Hopefully you mixed them in the right spots to arrange them in pairs like wedding rings, matching in cut, color and three months salary.

Let’s find a spot, give me a number one to twelve.

(Deal to that number and show the next two cards match!)

They match! Let’s do it again, like the time warp!

(Deal to that number and show the next two cards match!)

We need even piles.

(Deal two piles of four cards)

Touch a pile, but choose wisely; the other pile will be banished to the third circle of hell, which is Cerberus and snow. Which isn’t too bad if you like winter and dogs.

(Deal the unpicked in a row. Fan out their pile)

Touch a card.

(Flip the card they picked face up, then deal their cards in a row opposite yours)

And I’ll pick a card.

(Flip over a card. Remove the other two columns of cards that weren’t picked and show they don’t match. Then flip over the cards opposite the two face up cards to show they match!)

They Match!

Method wise, this is a combination of two Nick Trost tricks. This is still in the very early phases of development.

-Louie

The Next Step in the Juggling Monte Routine

One of the routines that I’m working on for my show is a Bank Nite style routine. I’m calling this routine Juggling Monte. This routine has changed a lot in method and presentation since I first thought of it. One of the things I’ve added to it is a display for two of the balls.

These are my first drafts of them, and they work great; however, I’ve got a few changes that I’m going to make. Right now, because they’re 3d printed and have a strange shape, they don’t hold up to travel very well. I think I’m going to make parts of them out of metal so that they hold up better.

The refining part is a very important step in creating magic. Sometimes good enough works, but you need to play with the idea/prop to see if you should stop at good enough, or go further.

-Louie
PS: you can learn about how I work on routines here!