November 2023 – Page 3 – MagicShow.Tips

Stock Lines in your Show

About a week ago when I was performing in Southern Arizona I went on the Queen Mine Tour in Bisbee, AZ. This is a decommissioned mine that is not a tourist attraction.

My tour guide was a Neale who worked in the mine in the 1970’s. One of the things that struck me was the amount of “stock lines” that he used that are very common with magicians. This should be a wake up call to magicians who use these lines to stop using them. If a retired miner is using lines you use in your show, you should probably cut them and write new lines.

One of the lines he used was at the end was, “If you liked the tour my name is Neale, if you didn’t my name is ______”. I’ve never liked this line when magicians use it. There are two reasons that I dislike it. The first is while it is in a joke, you are implying that the audience may not like your show, and that’s the last impression you give them, not a thank you for spending time with me or something more meaningful. The other reason is that you are leaving your audience on someone else’s name, you should leave on your name!

That’s all, go out there and be better than a retired miner!

-Louie

John L Gaylin – Charlatan

Awhile ago I came across this business card in a box of old magic stuff:

It’s a fun card, especially since it’s old! Looks like area codes became a think in the early 1950’s and this card’s lack of an area code makes me think it’s probably from before the late 1960’s.

A google search only turned up a generic listing, but confirmed by the phone number that it’s the same person.

Do you know anything about him? Let me know!

-Louie

Salt Pour Collection!

I passively collect salt pour gimmicks. I think they look interesting and display well for a magic gimmick in my collection. I’ve had the salt pour in my show a couple of times. It’s been in themed shows, but never in my main show. It’s a trick I keep coming back to, but it’s missing something to make it work in my main show.

Ok, back to the gimmicks. A while ago I bought some salt pour gimmicks to add to my collection. I recently bought a bundle of salt pour gimmicks from Scott Alexander’s estate.

The first two I was able to identify. The one on the right is the older style salt pour gimmick that Jim Riser made. The black one on the left is the Bob Kohler salt pour. This is a new one to me, took a bit of work to figure out who made it.

Jim riser salt pour and bob kohler salt pour gimmicks

Then I got these two salt pour gimmicks:

I haven’t been able to identify who made them, if you have any idea, let me know!

And finally I got a bunch of parts to make salt pour gimmicks:

These parts appear to be trying to replicate the two unidentified gimmicks above. The main difference is these have a shorter neck. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the parts, maybe I’ll have them assembled…or just one and display it with the parts???

-Louie

Call and Response…

There’s a common street performer “trick” to unite the audience and it’s call and response. If you’re not familiar with what that is, it’s typically used when the performer says something like, “Would you like to see another trick…say YES!” then the audience responds by saying YES.

This an effective technique uniting the audience, they’re doing something together and it helps them start to become an audience and not just a bunch of individuals. This is especially important for an outdoor show where you may have a transient audience. Another thing it does is forces the audience to invest energy into the show. The more they are invested in the show, the more they will stay and watch the show…and like it!

I like the technique, but I personally don’t like how most people do it, they’re doing it simply because it’s effective. There’s no real purpose besides filling a hole in the show because you don’t have a segue to the next routine.

When I use it in my show, I give it a bit of meaning. In my Drawing in Ball of Yarn routine, I do it to have the audience vote on whether I should buy the person’s drawing. It accomplishes the same thing and just telling the audience to say “yes”, in fact it actually moves the show forward!

With a little bit of thought, you can find ways to use this technique to move the show forward, instead of a hack bit.

-Louie

Tom Foolery – Preview Party Invitation

I’m a big fan of Tom Mullica a while ago I came across an invitation to the opening of the Tom Foolery bar in Atlanta. Then recently I found a handful of Tom Foolery playing cards, so I went out and had them framed together.

This is a cool bit of magic memorabilia that I’m happy to have displayed in my office!
-Louie

Rope Magic Routine

One of the tricks that I’ve been working on this month is Four Nightmares, which is a rope trick.

louie foxx performs four nightmares dx rope trick

Here’s the rope routine that I’m doing:

-Show long and short rope
I have a long piece of rope and a….Albino worm. I’ll do four tricks, and I’ve given each a cool name.
-Ropes become the same size
I call this the equalizer! I had a lady tell me she didn’t like that because it made her feel stupid.
-tie the two equal ropes together
If you don’t know how a trick works, that means I’m doing my job. I don’t understand how an airplane flies, but when we land I clap for the pilot!
-move knot to one side of the rope, untie it to reveal the short rope
I call trick number two, the de-wormer!
-put away the small rope.
Trick number three…
-tie the double knot
a double knot…
-slide the knot off the rope to reveal the circle of rope
I call that OOhhh whaaat?!
-put the loop onto the rope
Trick number four, I call it…the end
-reveal the loop become part of the single rope

This particular trick is doing a trick for the sake of doing a magic trick. There’s not really anything about me, my life or a point of view in the trick. I think that sometimes you need that stuff in the show, just a fun trick.

This routine is still in its very early stages for me, so we’ll see what happens with it in the future.

-Louie

Don’t Feel Stupid

During a show recently someone mentioned that they didn’t like a trick because they “felt stupid” because they didn’t know how the trick worked. Here’s what my reply was:

“If you don’t know how a trick works, that means that I’m doing my job. I don’t understand how an airplane works, but I still clap for the pilot when we land!

I’ve started to work this into my show at the beginning with the rope trick I’ve been opening the show with. I think it’s an interesting thing to address in the show, that if someone doesn’t understand why a trick works, they aren’t dumb, it’s what’s supposed to happen and that’s totally OK.

-Louie

Magic Audio Cassette Tapes!

When my summer season ended a few weeks ago, I had a 14 hour drive home. During my travels over the summer I found some magic audio cassette tapes, so I bought a cheap tape player and listened to magic on the drive home!

It was really interesting to listen to two different Dai Vernon lectures without being able to see anything. I was kinda amazed that I was mostly able to follow what what he was explaining. It did help that I was familiar with his books from when I was a teenager and had worked through most of the stuff decades ago.

The Radio Magic tape by Steve Shaw (Banachek) and Scott Wells has a lot of great information that still applies today! It’s solid advice for doing a radio or podcast spot and a lot of that applies to doing things like TV morning shows or news spots.

I barely got into the Kreskin and Dunniger tapes. The Kreskin ones were audio of a TV show. It’s interesting to listen to them, they’re from 1972 and the material he’s doing is still solid material! Kreskin was ahead of his time!

Just because something is on an old, outdated medium doesn’t mean you can’t learn from it!

-Louie

Yeah, Don’t Punch Me

Last month when I was performing roving magic at a fair, I had an interesting interaction with a family. A guy approaches me and asks me if I would show his family a magic trick. Of course I said YES, then he said, “I’m not going to watch because I’ll probably get frustrated and punch you.” Then he looked away and his family had a great time watching some close up magic.

I personally thought it was really cool of him to give his family a moment to see a magic trick. I should add that the guy looked like he’d punched a few people in his lifetime. I’m glad he knew his personal limitations and didn’t put himself in a position where he would punch me!

I mentioned this to another performer who was shocked at how “violent” and inappropriate this guy was. I look at this like someone who had a problem with alcohol not wanting to see me do a show at a bar. This guy wanted his family to have fun, even if it was something he wasn’t into. Did he need to tell my why he wasn’t watching? Probably not, but I would have wondered why he asked, then didn’t watch…and probably would have tried to engage him (and gotten punched!)

-Louie

The Moisture Festival Podcast – Ria Lodick

On this episode we welcome in a stage manager for the Moisture Festival Ria Lodick. We talked with her about her joy of teaching, how she came to be so good at conveying information and what brought her to Seattle.

We also discuss the challenges running a show like the Moisture Festival presents and why she keeps coming back. A fun interview with someone that makes all the shows run as smoothly as possible.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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