January 2024 – Page 2 – MagicShow.Tips

Mental Voice vs Inception

When Promystic’s Inception came out many years ago, I immediately got it. My routine with it has become a highlight of my show! It like everything about it, the only downside (and I don’t really think this is) is the price. The unit is about $1k, and for me it’s totally worth it! I use the heck out of it!!

I’ve been looking for a solution for a back up that’s not quite as expensive. Basically I want a unit that I can have around in case of an emergency and something happens to my Inception. In the past I’ve tried Alien Mind Reading and Echo. I didn’t like either of them because they required you to be connected to your phone via bluetooth. The more things you have attached and more connectors the more than can go wrong. Promystic’s Inception is a stand alone unit, there’s nothing additional you need and it’s not wireless connected to anything.

Recently Mental Voice by Blackbox Magic Creations came out and priced at about $200. It’s a stand alone unit and I would say it’s basically a stripped down Inception that’s got a few design flaws.

Here’s what I don’t like about Mental Voice:

It doesn’t have any sort of low battery indicator. They say it will last a month or so with regular use. I don’t want to have to remember which day it was charged last or how many shows its done since it’s last charge.
It has a physical volume sliding lever. This lever sticks out and the volume setting is easy to accidentally change.
The shape of very thick and kinda round near the metal panel. This shape make it difficult to get the bone conductor flat against the person’s head. It’s not hard, but you have to pay attention.
If you have more than one message on it, it’s clunky to toggle between them. If you want to use track #1 for your first show and track #2 for the second and don’t have access to a computer you’ll need to push a button twice for the second track. While this doesn’t sound like a big deal, during a show it is. There’s no feedback (haptic) or visual that you’re on the correct track.
Can’t use other props with it. I know I said that I prefer props that don’t have external things connected to it and that’s true. However I’d be lying if I said I’ve never used Inception‘s ability to connect to other Promystic devices. Mental Voice isn’t compatible with other magic/mentalism props.

With that said, I would say that Mental Voice is Inception with 1/5 of the features for 1/5 of the price. It’d be a good intro to using a bone conduction gimmick to work out a routine before investing in Promystic’s Inception. Then the Mental Voice becomes your emergency back up unit. I play on keeping my Mental Voice, but it will be my backup unit.

One more thing, I would NOT recommend buying direct from Blackbox Magic. I ordered from them it was a sh*t show getting the product shipped to me. I may write a blog post about my horrible experience dealing with Blackbox Magic. Murphy’s now distributes it, so order it from a dealer like Hocus-pocus.com or another reputable dealer.

-Louie

Golden Horseshoe at Disneyland

A couple of weeks ago I went to Disneyland with a bunch of variety entertainers after an event in Anaheim.

One of the things we saw was the piano player at the Golden Horseshow Review.

The format in the show (20ish mins) show was song, jokes, song, joke and that repeated. This is a solid formula for a show and format that’s great for a magician, just substitute tricks for the songs.

Why does it work? It changes him from an ambient act to an engaging show. The jokes also make you connect to him, he’s not just a piano player, he’s a person. That’s the goal with a magic show, to be a human. If you want to learn more about being a person on stage and not just tricks, check out Jon Armstrong’s Masterclass on Vanishing Inc. That master class is really great!

-Louie

Update For Nick Trost’s Mexican Monte

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Nick Trost’s Mexican Monte packet trick (read it here). I was thinking about it and the end with the card with a different colored back is okay, but I think it needed something a little punchier.

Here’s what I came up with:

@louiefoxx Vintage Magic Trick – Updates for Nick Trost's Mexican Monte #magictrick #packettricks #cardtrick #sleightofhand #louiefoxx #nicktrost #vintagemagic ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

The ending doesn’t play well on camera and from the straight down angle as well as in real life if the change is done by rubbing the card on your sleeve. The Tree of Hearts is think is a more visual ending and having the face change is more of a punctuation on the trick, than the original ending of simply turning the last card over.

-Louie

Cult Themed Magic Trick

The middle show of the three city tour I did last week was a cabaret show. This show was themed, and the theme was “cults”. I don’t normally do themed stuff, but came up with a way to use cults to get into something that’s normally in my show.

The premise was that my wife and I like cult documentaries. Then I had a list of them, someone picked one and it matched a prediction and that led me into my cat routine.

One of the jokes that I wrote that my wife didn’t like, but I did anyway was the final cult was “blue oyster”. It got a great laugh in the show! I think the demographic of the audience that night really helped it play, and my wife wasn’t really who that joke was for.

It was fun to do a bit of writing for something I don’t normally do. I also kinda like the premise of cult documentaries and I think people relate to them as they’re popular now. I may try to play with the premise a bit more and see if I can come up with something that I can use in my normal show.

-Louie

Fifty Dollar Banana!

Last week I did a little three city tour, in two states over three days. I performed at a casino in Redding, CA, a cabaret in Seattle, WA and a comedy club in Spokane, WA.

The first show in California was a logistical challenge and it really shouldn’t have been. I flew into the Redding airport, however my flight was over 2 hours late, so when I arrived the rental car desk was closed. They said they’d honor my reservation for the next day, unfortunately I was only in town for something like 20 hours and didn’t need a car the next day.

The casino was about a $20 Lyft ride from the airport. After I got checked into my room, I remembered that I needed to go to the store for a couple of props (this is why I rent a car). The casino isn’t really near anything, and the closest store was about a $23 Lyft ride each way. I needed a bottle of juice and two bananas, so a $3-$4 purchase, but $50+ if I figured in the Lyft prices.

I just happened to notice a poster in the casino for their comedy night and comedy night was that night. It had their headliners listed for the month and I knew all of them…except for the headliner that night. Then luck stuck, I happened to walk by the comics as they were checking into their room and I chatted them up. We knew all the same people, and I managed to convince one of them to give me a ride to the Walmart for my props!

This is why you make friends with other performers and put out good energy into the world. You never know when you’ll need to lean on a network of people!

-Louie

Multiple Parasol Production – Close Up

I’m still playing with using cocktail parasols. Here’s a quick video I made in my hotel room:

@louiefoxx World's Dumbest Magic Trick! #magictrick #cocktailumbrellas #cocktail #parasol #shimada #closeupmagic #louiefoxx #magician #hotelroom ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

I made up three of the self opening cocktail parasols and they easily fit into a thumb tip. I might be able to get one more and still get the thumb tip onto the thumb. However I’m thinking that the thumb tip may not need to fit onto them thumb and it could really just be a holder for the parasols.

I do think it’s fun to produce the little parasols and maybe it’ll be a running gag or something in the show. I’ll keep playing with them, maybe something cooler will come up.

-Louie

Magic and Comedy Show

On Saturday I performed my show for a sold out audience at the Spokane Comedy Club! When I’m performing at on the road at a public show, I always try to reach out to the local magic club. The Spokane Magic Club turned out in force for the show! It was great having them in the audience.

These daytime shows are a lot of fun to do. Years ago when I was in my early 20’s I opened for Brad Upton at a lot of comedy gigs. At the time I was doing a lot of school assemblies during the day. Brad mentioned that being able to get paid to do entertainment during normal people’s workday was like finding gold. At the time, I didn’t realize how correct he was. As I’ve gotten older and when I’m home, I got to bed at 9pm, the later gigs are more work. I still love doing them, however these 4pm shows I’ve been doing at comedy clubs are great, I’m done by dinner time!

Here’s my 55+ minute show from Saturday in 44 seconds:

@louiefoxx
55 minutes of comedy magic in 44 seconds! #magicshow #magician #comedymagic #spokanecomedyclub #spokanemagician
♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

Another thing that’s fun is that these shows put kids into an environment that is normally just for adults. That gives these shows a special energy that you don’t get at a community center gig and leads to amazing shows!

-Louie

Production Cocktail Parasol

After goofing around with the cocktail parasols that I bought, I figured out a way to make them self opening.

To make them self opening, it just takes a little loop of elastic…and a lot of help from my reading glasses!

I’m not sure what to do with a parasol that opens by itself, but it makes the ending of most tricks better than if I had to manually open it.

-Louie

Parasol Magic

When I was 17 years old I won a magic contest at a magic convention. I don’t remember if there was any cash in the prize, but there was a lot of magic donated from the dealers. One of the things that I got was Shimada’s Stevens Greater Magic VHS tape. That tape introduced me to magic Shimada. One of the acts that Shimada was famous for was his parasol act.

I’ve always thought that producing parasols looked great and better than a more modern umbrella. I think that people connect umbrellas with the self opening feature and less so with a more Asian parasol. Yes, I understand that umbrella and parasol mean the same thing, and intentionally using them to refer to different things.

Parasol productions are very cool, visual and fill the stage, however I don’t think most routines pass the “drive home test”. That’s were people in the audience talk about the tricks on the drive home. Parasols pack small and pop open and everyone knows that. That’s the weak spot in parasol productions.

OK, so I’ve wanted to do a parasol magic for years, but is doesn’t really fit my personality (and costuming). Then the other day I was at the store and saw some cocktail parasols. I bought a couple of packs of them and started playing with different ideas of things to do with them.

Let’s see what I come up with…

-Louie