July 2025 – MagicShow.Tips

Mentalism for Kids…

Years ago, when I was a teenager I saw Lee Earle lecture. He did his gumball prediction and then warned that it’s not a kid show trick and that mentalism doesn’t work for kids. Lee said something like, “before you can read someone’s mind, they must first have a mind”. That’s a great quote, but it’s wrong.

You absolutely can do mentalism for kids, but ultimately it comes down to how you frame it. In my library / summer camp show for this year I do three mentalism tricks.

They aren’t framed as “mind reading” and that’s what makes them work, but they are still 100% mentalism. All three are essentially predictions.

One of them I used a Cootie Catcher / Fortune Teller to determine what I’m going to have for lunch or dinner that day.

Another is a card prediction followed by a series of coincidence effects. The third is a strange happening, which is really a multiple revelation of predictions. All three of them are highlights of the show and frequently mentioned when I ask kids in the autograph line what their favorite tricks were.

Don’t be afraid of mentalism for kids, you just need to make it fun and relatable to them.

-Louie

Night and Day with Library Venues

The differences in venues for library shows can be enormous! In two days I did a library show that had about 75 people in a packed meeting room.

Then the next day I had a library show for over 300 people in an old auditorium!

The skills needed to work in both venues are very different. When you’re standing on the floor a few feet from the audience is easier to control that in a giant theater that’s super echoy and everything in it makes noise from the floorboards to the chairs.

I heard that a previous performer in the auditorium struggled with the echos and crowd control. Being armed with knowledge of this, I really had to keep on top of crowd management and my expectations of the audience. In a giant room with a lot of echo, it’s really easy to lose control and hard to get it back!

-Louie

Stealing the PreSale?!

I was curious if Dan Harlan’s Masterworks book set had come out yet and a magic site that sells pirated magic effect that are illegal copies had them listed for sale.

The crazy thing to me is that this set hasn’t been released. They’re preselling a pirated copy of a book that doesn’t exist yet!

That’s insane to me. Why would anyone buy a copy of something that hasn’t been put out yet and why would anyone sell it? If I recall from a thread on TheMagicCafe the books are already late in coming out, so as the person selling the illegal copies, it’s gotta be a customer service nightmare to deal with anyone who bought them wanting to know the status of the book.

If you buy direct from Dan at least you can bug him. If you buy an illegal copy, there’s really no one you can be mad at (except yourself).

-Louie

Siegfried and Roy in Vegas

When Siegfried and Roy first came to the USA, the performed in the Folies Bergere in Las Vegas. I came across a program for that show!

They were number 14 on the bill, it’s crazy that for a while they were one of the acts that defined what Las Vegas was!

I was in Las Vegas several times while they were still performing, but unfortunately never got to see the show.

-Louie

Paper Magic!

There have been several viral videos on social media of a guy doing floating paper at a coffee shop. His name is Arnold Drake World and the coffee shop he’s at is the one attached to Powell’s Books. When I was there over the weekend, I caught him doing his thing!

It was cool to see this live!

You can learn more about him in this news article.

– Louie

Magic at Powell’s Books

On Sunday I made the drive to Powell’s Books in Portland, OR.

They always have an interesting selection of used magic books. They have a range of beginner stuff to more advanced magic books.

A couple of the more advanced books they had were:

And then my personal favorite book that’s with the magic books:

I picked up a The Magic Catalogue by William Doerflinger for $10.

The Magic Catalogue is an interesting book based on what I’ve seen flipping through it. It’s a brief magic history and then reproductions of older and current (at the time of printing) magic catalog pages. I’m not sure who the market is for this, besides me!

If you’re in Portland, OR it’s totally worth popping by Powell’s!

-Louie

The Brotherhood of Magicians!

I was going through a box of old magic and found a membership application for The Brotherhood of Magicians. This was also signed by the founder/president George Closson!

brotherhood of magicians - george closson

This predates the International Brotherhood of Magicians by many years. It’s a cool historical piece, I just wish it was in better condition.

-Louie

Wasn’t it Houdini?

I was performing at an event and they had an exhibit about robots. Part of the exhibit was a timeline of robots on film. The list 1927’s Metropolis as the first robot to appear on film.

I always thought the fun magic fact was that it was Houdini put the first robot in a movie in his The Master Mystery which came out in 1919.

There could be some technicality about this as to why Houdini wasn’t listed. His robot was called an “automaton” and had a brain inside, so more of a cyborg than pure robot and at the end is revealed to not be a robot.

You can see the robot at the end of this clip:

You can find the whole movie in parts on YouTube.

-Louie

Doty Scope

There’s an old magic prop/gag called the Doty Scope. The way I’ve seen it done is the magician has their back to the audience to not see something. Then a periscope with a eye at the end pops up over your shoulder and the eye looks around. I think that’s how its intended to be used, but I’ve never owned one to see the instructions.

I have a use for the gag, but they’re not currently being made. I decided to make my own little one. There’s not much to making a simple one. I used a Eyeball Finger Puppet and a mechanics extendable mirror to make one.

Construction is pretty easy. Cut a slot in the eyeball so the mirror fits into it. Shove the mirror in and then glue it in place.

This will fit in the pocket of my vest. During the trick I turn my back and while my back is towards the audience I extent it and have the eyeball pop over my shoulder. I then rotate the handle a little bit to make some motion to make the the eyeball appear to be looking around.

That’s it, easy to make and do.

-Louie

Fireworks and Street Performing

My town had their Fourth of July festival last night. The event started at 6pm and ended with fireworks that started at 10pm. People set up their chairs at 6pm to get their space to watch the fireworks four hours later.

The fireworks ran about 28 minutes. The fireworks kinda went in four-ish minute cycles. At the end of each cycle was an finale for that cycle and they were all fairly repetitive. The only real variation was the grand finale, but all the previous cycles felt like watching the same thing on a loop.

OK, so what I noticed is once the second cycle happened people started packing up and leaving. These are people who had brought their own chairs and waited four hours to make sure they had a good viewing spot. My guess is that people felt like they had seen something and were ready to leave. This is similar to street performing. Once the audience feels like they’ve seen something, people will leave. In street performing one technique to keep a crowd is having unfinished business. Like a dollar is borrowed early on and that dollar trick isn’t finished till the end of the show. Less people will walk at the end of tricks during the show because the dollar trick hasn’t been finished.

Personally when I’m doing street (found space) shows, I take it personally when people walk. However watching people walk away a few minutes into a $60,000+ firework show that they waited all day to see gives me some perspective on why people walk during my show.

-Louie