Louie – Page 2 – MagicShow.Tips

Unforeseen Challenge!

Right now I’m writing a show that I’ll be doing for a elementary school assembly tour in April. One of the challenges is that I’m trying to avoid the whole 6 7 thing.

That makes counting tricks a challenge and there’s a card across type trick that I’ve written into the show. I don’t want to lose control halfway counting a packet of cards, and that needs to be done four times!

Right now is that my plan it to talk about the objects as I’m counting them. That would break up the 6 to 7 with dialogue between them. I’m not sure if that will work, but it’s an idea. Another idea is to use 9 items instead of the traditional 10. Then if three items move from one packet to the other, that will reduce the counting that will have the numbers 6 and 7 from four times to three times.

Another option would be to not have the trick about counting, but about specific items moving from pile to pile. So three red backed cards end up in a blue backed packet.

I’m not sure how this will play out…

-Louie

Happy New Year (yesterday)!

Today I’m reflecting on 2025 and it looks like I did 204 contracts last year! Some of those are were multiple show/day contracts, but that’s the easiest metric I have for that. I spent just over a month on the ocean performing on cruise ships and we bought a house.

Last year my new year’s resolution was to read more, and scroll less on my phone. I did that…but I can still be better about that. I have a feeling that “read more” is going to be a perpetual new year’s resolution for me.

Here’s what I’m hoping to do this year:

Read more.
Learn Arduino, and build a couple projects I’ve wanted to do forever.
Add more production (video elements) to my show.
Learn Go Button for audio and transition to that from show cues.
Put out 3 products for magicians/performers.
write better transitions for my show

That’s not a lot, and nothing it too ambitious. The big one is still going to be reading more.

-Louie

The Moisture Festival Podcast – Vanessa Vortex

On this episode we welcome hula hoop specialist and circus organizer Vanessa Vortex. We learn about growing up on Broadway in New York and how she rebelled against her Show Biz parents by going to college.

We learn about her journey across the country, how she got involved in circus and what led her to be one of the co-founders of the Bellingham Circus Guild. A fantastic conversation with an amazing person to have in our community.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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New Year’s Eve Gigs

It’s new year’s eve, and I’m at home! I’ve been on the road a lot this year and decided to not seek out work for tonight. Most new year’s eve gigs are train wrecks, and I try limit the ones that I do to ones that are First Night Festivals, or things where I’ll be done by about 10pm. I want to be home or at the hotel before the event turns into a drunk fest and before all the people who were drinking are on the road.

That said, when I was younger, doing new year’s eve gigs used to be a nice part of my income. It was one last good paycheck for the year. Then new year’s eve for me transitioned to doing alcohol free events around the country. For me this was an excuse to travel on someone else’s dime. And that brings us to now, where I’m happy to stay at home!

There’s nothing wrong with going out there and getting the money.

To everyone out there working tonight, have fun, be safe and get paid!

-Louie

Evolution of a Joke

I had an idea for a joke about Houdini. The line I thought of was:
“Once it took Houdini 8 hours to escape a jail cell, a could lawyer could have done it in two.“
I wanted to make it as a cartoon, so I put some basic prompts into AI to make the basic picture:

Then I had AI add the caption:

For some reason it had a cropping issue at the top. Once I saw it, I didn’t like the lawyer, he didn’t need to be in the picture, so I had him taken out.

Looking at the picture above, I decided it didn’t need the word “once,” so I had it removed. Now it’s a nice, tight joke with a setup and a punchline, and the image doesn’t distract or give away the punchline.

I also rewrote the punchline, so there are two versions:

I’m not sure which I like better. I think the one on the right, as it’s tighter. The one on the left really takes the audience to the punchline, while the one on the right makes them think a little.

That’s a little insight of what goes into writing a joke.

-Louie

Venmo Prediction

There’s not much to this idea; it’s a confabulation routine where you predict a Venmo transaction. The three things predicted are a name, an amount, and an emoji.

Method wise, my first idea was to use a no force mental epic. There are a couple of things I don’t like about that. The main one is that you don’t have much room to write. Also, the prop doesn’t look like something that I would use in my show.

When you think about it, you just need to force the three things. Ideally this would be a routine that could be done onstage, alone, without a spectator. That leads to a simple method, the Three Section SvenPad Picasso. This is a forcing pad that’s cut into three sections.

For the routine, I’m thinking it starts by tossing a paper ball into the audience. That person selects a name. It’s tossed to a second person who chooses an amount, and finally, a third person who picks an emoji. All of those selections are them saying stop as you riffle through a section of the pad. The paper ball is tossed back to the stage, and it’s opened to reveal all of the information

This is a packs small, plays big routine!

-Louie

Vanishing Bottle Routines

Yesterday, I posted a little routine for the latex vanishing bottle prop. If you haven’t read it, you can read it here and do that before you read this as what follows will make more sense. Here are some ideas for yesterday’s routine:

Use two bags instead of one so that the item travels across the stage.
Say they’ll change places, the spin the bag 180 degrees.
If using two bags, one could be labelled “full” and the other “empty”. You then turn the bags around, and they have the other word on the back.
To add a layer, to make the method harder to back track, you could start with a variety of drinks that are different colors and force the latex bottle.

There you go, a few ideas to expand the routine.

-Louie

Vanishing Beer Bottle Routine Idea

This morning, I was thinking about uses for the latex vanishing bottles. Here’s one of the routines that I thought of:

Effect: You put a full beer bottle and an empty glass into a paper bag. A snap of the fingers and you remove an empty beer bottle and then a full glass of beer!

Method: You need a bag, a latex beer bottle, a matching real beer bottle, a glass full of beer, and a fake bottomless glass. This fake bottomless glass is basically a thin plastic tube. In the old days of magic, they would call it something like a “celluloid fake”.

Set Up: Place the empty beer bottle and the full glass inside the bag on your table.

Working: Show the empty glass (plastic tube) and put it into the full glass that’s inside the bag. Next, you show the full bottle (latex) and put it into the bag.

Snap your fingers, then remove the full glass (with the plastic tube inside), and then remove the empty beer bottle. Crumple up the bag (with the latex bottle inside) and toss it offstage.

That’s it, there’s really not much to it, but a bit more simply vanishing the bottle or making an empty one become full.

-Louie

Coin Matrix Layout

One of the things that I’m playing with is a Coin Matrix. One thing I thought about is why the coins are in the corners of the performance area rather than in some other shape. I get that there’s a lot of tradition, as the modern coin matrix is based on Yank Hoe’s Sympathetic Coins. Then, when Al Schneider created the modern version, he called it Matrix, and I think in math, those are traditionally a square or rectangular shape.

I was playing with some other shapes and layouts for the coin matrix. A straight horizontal line, a diagonal line, however I think I’ve settled on the classic Ace Assembly layout. With a leader coin in front and the three follower coins in the back.

I really like this layout, as in my routine, there’s some other stuff that needs to happen, and it moves all of the empty spaces once the coins travel to my edge of the table, which makes the next part for me a lot easier to do!

I want to say there’s nothing wrong with the standard coin matrix layout; however, there’s also nothing wrong with changing it!

-Louie

Christmas Mindreading

Here’s a quick little mindreading trick that I came up with a few years ago.

Effect: You ask someone to think of one of the following Christmas things:
Gift – Stocking – Candy Cane – Santa – Snowman
You then tell them letters in the word they are thinking of, then finally the word!

This is a simple progressive anagram. There’s really not much to it, you follow the card below:

I remember the word NASM for the flow of the letters named. Then, for the order of the items, think of a “Gift left in a stocking, which is a candy cane from Santa.” Then if it’s none of those, it’s a snowman.

There you go, some propless mentalism for your family gathering.

-Louie