In my collection of magic ephemera there’s a postcard from Charlie Miller to Faucett Ross! There’s a lot of magicians mentioned in it, you can read it below:
I did a little hunting around and found the Hang Ping Chien article that’s mentioned in the postcard. It’s from the April 1975 Genii magazine or page 501 in the Magicana book.
Personally, I’m not a fan of the older style HPC move where you slap the coins on the table. There’s a version in a Gary Ouellette book that’s in the context of a coins through table, where he tosses a coin and I think that looks great!
A couple of nights ago, I went out to see Magic Uncorked in Portland, OR. This show happens every few months at a wine bar called Ora et Labora. It has close-up magic in the bar, then a parlor-style show in the event space.
Unfortunately, I didn’t really get to see any of the close-up magic as I rolled in a bit late. I thought it started at 7 pm, not 6 pm, however Jacob Grier showed me a cool card trick in the hands triumph as everyone was moving from the bar to the event space.
The show is hosted by Dave Gregory, who, along with his wife, owns the wine bar. Dave is a great host, and does a trick to open the show and after intermission.
The first half of the show is done by John Stevens. John does a solid show and one of the highlights for me is the version of 100th Monkey he did! Most of the versions of it that I had previously seen fell flat, but not this one! The only other version I’ve seen was the one Darren Brown did at the Cort Theater on Broadway.
This month’s show had Jonathan Molo as the headliner. I’d briefly met Jonathan somewhere in CA (probably Fresno) a few years ago, so I was excited to see his show. Jonathan puts on a fun, high-energy show. The show’s frame is really his family, which is a super relatable throughline!
One thing I noticed was that both John and Jonathan use handheld microphones rather than headsets. More and more performers are moving away from the headset mics. It takes a bit more skill to use a handheld mic as a magician, however, it allows you to have conversations with people onstage and easily get them mic’d.
Last week the Portland Society of Magicians had their monthly magic meeting and annual swap meet!
I really liked the less formal feeling of this meeting over the slightly more formal way the meetings are normally done. I sold some props, and picked up a few books:
I’ve owned the Nick Trost book and Card Craft in the past, but it’s been at least a decade. Both are great books that I’d love to find time to work through again. That may be wishful thinking as there’s a lot of books ahead of them.
I have an idea to make a video series called, “A Toast to Trost” that has updated versions of his tricks, or new tricks inspired by his. This is a back burner project that hopefully I’ll get to someday…
I’m still working on my Snake Basket Magic Routine. The basket won’t be a basket; it will be a box. I’ve written on this blog before about why I’m not using a basket for the snake. I want the box to look like a shipping crate, but it also must be light and pack as small as possible. I started with a cardboard frame with gaff tape hinges.
I then covered the middles of the panels with wood patterned contact paper.
Finally I did the corners with a wood patterned duct tape to give it the crate look.
This gave me the look that I was going for without the weight of wood, and it packs flat!
The Portland Magic Jam in Portland, OR, is coming up, and it’s got a great lineup!
I just found out that I’ll be performing in the Friday night show! I’ll also have a dealer table with some vintage magic, as well as some of the magic tricks that I make.
You can register at https://pdxmagicjam.com/ They also have an amazing refund policy if you can’t make it, so register now if you’re on the fence about going!
The magic review site Magic Orthodoxy has a blog about getting started performing magic for people you don’t know. It’s called Talking to Strangers and I was a guest on it!
For a show I’m doing in a couple of months, I needed a way to force a number (really a position in a row of things). I didn’t want to use the Hot Rod Force, and my normal default is the Quinta Force, but I wanted to try to figure out something new.
My idea was to put a die in a film can and have someone shake it, and that would force the number.
First of all, I didn’t want to use a die that’s missing a number, and you eliminate numbers as they’re rolled. I’ve seen too many shows where that method is used, and it takes forever to get the last item eliminated, as that number just doesn’t come up.
Other methods I didn’t want was to use a die that’s all the same number or a magnetic die. My goal was to try to come up with a NEW method before I resorted to old methods. Even if I don’t use the method I came up with, it’s fun to try.
Here’s what I came up with:
I think this method had potential. Is it a lot of work to accomplish what a magnetic die could do? Yep. Is the method interesting? Yep!
A while ago, I made a set of natural shells and then made a silicone mold of them. I used that mold to make a bunch of resin shells for a shell game workshop. One of those resin shells recently got 3d scanned and I’ve started printing them!
These are a great beginner set or set to throw in your backpack to carry around and not beat up a nicer set.
On this episode, we welcome Quantum Tease PhD. We talk about her life growing up in Belgium and why she decided to go to Scotland to get her PhD.
We learn that their college offered a comedy class, which led them to many creative outlets, including comedy, music, producing, and burlesque. We discussed their move to Seattle and how it was the perfect place for her to expand across all those outlets. A great conversation with a fantastic performer.
Here’s a “touch the screen” style magic trick for Valentine’s Day. You have a list of five words in this order:
Kiss | Heart | Love | Roses
“These are all things that I can give my wife“
They touch one of them and spell that word, JUMPING, one word per letter. They can move back and forth, but once they hit an end (kiss or roses), they must turn around and go the other way.
They do that, and if they follow directions, they will be on either the world Kiss or Love.
Eliminate the word ROSES. What’s left is:
Kiss | Heart | Love
“Valentine’s Day isn’t about exclusion, so we’ll still use roses. Spell that word, jumping one space per letter.“
When they do that, they will be on the word Heart.
Eliminate the word LOVE. What’s left is:
Kiss | Heart
“Spell the name of person you love, jumping one word per letter.”
At this point, they could be on either Kiss or Heart. For this example, they are on Kiss. You call attention to an envelope that’s been on the table the whole time.
“In this envelope is what I gave my wife on our first Valentines Day Together”
This is a multiple out at this point, the envelope has two openings with each option on its own side. You simply remove the matching prediction and the two prediction are:
“Tickets to KISS!”
There you go, a fun magic trick for Valentine’s Day!
