magic books – MagicShow.Tips

The Handbook for School Assembly Performers by John Abrams

A couple of months ago John Abrams sent me a review copy of his new book The Handbook For School Assembly Performers and it’s fantastic!

I think this is a fantastic book, and as someone who has a done a ton of school assemblies, I learned a lot from the book!

Here’s the blurb I wrote for the book:

Holy cow, I wish I had this book when I started doing school assemblies a couple of decades ago! It would have knocked off about 3+ years from the learning curve.

The book reveals one of the biggest mysteries of school assemblies, “What is a teachers guide and how to I create one”. Then John also covers the nuts and bolts of actually doing the gig from when you wake up to the marketing calendar after the gig is completed.

One huge thing for me, which I’ve never read about is how to deal with “burn out” when you’ve done a ton of shows, and he give you some great strategies to keep it fresh! If you’ve ever thought of going into the school assembly market, this book will take you from 0-60 in no time!

If you are interested in performing in schools, or doing some sort of educational or themed program for kids, this book is a will help you a ton! Even if you’ve already done hundreds of school shows, this book will have a few things or approaches you didn’t think of or don’t do.

I highly recommend The Handbook For School Assembly Performers!

-Louie

Finished Ginosko!

I finally finished reading Ginosko. This is a fantastic magic book, what I like about it is that it’s not just tricks. The whole back half is advice from other magicians and people in David’s life.

For me the routine from the book that’s worth the price of the book is “Asking the 8 Ball”. It’s a transposition of a selected card with the 8 of the same suit. One of the things that makes this great is how the end of the trick where the actual transposition happens, the audience kinda figures it out on their own. What I mean by that is when we get to the point where I reveal the selected card isn’t where it should be, the audience member automatically reaches down and reveals the transposition with any guidance from me.

It’s really a great moment.

There’s tons of other great material and advice in it. There’s a fun vanishing bottle routine in it, I won’t do the routine, but got me thinking about an idea for the vanishing bottle. The book helping me make a connection to something else is always valuable to me!

Another trick that hits really hard is “Post-it Crane”. This is a cool trick, but I don’t think it’ll really ever end up in my main close up magic set because I don’t have the pocket space for a post it pad and the “gimmick”. When I have done it, it’s been for small groups of about 4 people and it absolutely amazes!

This book is cheap at like $25 and totally worth picking up! I got mine at Misdirections Magic Shop.

-Louie

Mike Gallo’s The Ball and Vase

When I was a teenager I came across a copy of Michael Skinner’s Intimate Magic book. In it he teaches his legendary Ball and Vase routine. Basically it’s uses the basic ball and vase trick that comes in most beginners magic kits and turns it into a solid magic routine.

Then there’s Mike Gallo’s The Ball and Vase routine, which I think I’ve encountered decades ago, but never really did. I recently found the set for the trick with instructions and learned it.

Here’s what it looks like:

@louiefoxx You wont believe how cool something so simple can be! #simple #cool #magictrick #ball #what #magic #magician #louiefoxx #michaelskinner #mikegallo #easymagic ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

This trick is fun to do, and I think it’s better than the original Skinner version of the trick. With it having no gimmicks aside from an extra ball, it’s really practical. The only problem for me is that it doesn’t quite fit my close up performing style. also it requires a table, and all of my close up had to be able to be done without a table. Sometimes the non-tabled version of the stuff I do will lack a phase or uses the audience’s hands as a makeshift table. Unfortunately, neither of these is an option for that.

-Louie

Quit Complaining!

One of the things that really bugs me are magicians that complain about people stealing their tricks or ideas when they don’t take the most basic steps to protect them.

There are basic ways to protect your ideas, for example my school assembly show is called Incredible Idioms®. I really like the title and would be bummed if someone took the title, so awhile ago I filed the trademark for it. Last week that trademark was approved!

Filing a trademark is super easy to do and not that expensive. It’s around $250 to do it and you can do it yourself, the USPTO.gov website has tons of tutorials as to what you can and can’t trademark as well as how to do it.

Another good resource is Sara Crasson’s book Own Your Magic A Magicians Guide to Protecting Your Intellectual Property, which covers patents, trademarks, and copyrights. I highly recommend this book!

-Louie

The Classic Force

A couple of decades ago I was at Bob Fitch‘s first performance workshop up in Canada. One of the people there was Bob Sheets. One night at dinner I got to see Bob Sheets do his classic force and he told me his thinking behind that. Sheet’s classic force is the basis of the one that I do. I’ve added some bits to it, like turning cards face up and offering the cards one at a time.

Here’s the second half of my multiple classic force routine:

@louiefoxx Stop taking that! #magictrick #volunteer #magic #fair #countyfair #louiefoxx #cardtrick #stopit ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

If you don’t know how to do the classic force, you really should learn it. It’s a solid skill to have in your tool box. I initially started learning it when I was a teenager from the book Forcing a Card in the Classical Manner by Paul Gertner. I think he’s got an updated version of it out, but that’s the one that was my first real introduction to the Classic Force.

-Louie

A Bad Laugh in the Show

One of the things that Charlie Frye mentions in his book Sleightly Absurd is that you should have no descriptive patter. Since reading it I’ve been looking for places to replace or remove patter that is simply descriptive.

There are reasons to leave in descriptive patter, like if you’re doing cards across and the audience has to know there are 10 cards in each packet.

In my kids show I do a blendo with three silks. In an attempt to remove descriptive patter, I changed to calling them tissues. I give them one at a time to the kid and say, “The yellow tissue if for you to blow you nose. The red tissue I used to blow my nose. The green tissue my dog used to blow her nose.”

All of those get a laugh from the kids, so that’s three reactions I didn’t have before when I simply told the kid to hold the “red, yellow and green handkerchiefs.“. HOWEVER the new laughs weren’t good laughs. I noticed what while the kids laugh, the adults pulled back and for them it was almost a cringy moment. I tried it at several shows and each time I got the same reaction from the adults. That led me to removing the line.

This is a good example of why you should remove a line that gets a reaction from the audience, but isn’t necessarily a line that moves your show forward.

-Louie

Trick from Ginosko

Here’s a trick from the book Ginosko. It’s called Blackjack for Brother John and it’s a packet trick that has a story that has a very 1980’s packet trick feel to it. That’s not a bad thing, but it feels like something Nick Trost or Emerson and West would have put out with novelty cards.

Here’s what it looks like:

@louiefoxx Blackjack for Brother John from the book Ginosko! #blackjack #cardtrick #magicbook #magic #magictrick #closeupmagic #gambling #louiefoxx #ginosko #idahomagic ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

It’s a great story packet trick, and you only need four cards to do it with. That makes it impromptu, just pull the cards from the pack and you’re good to go. I would probably palm them out and remove the cards from my pocket, as you start by showing four of the same jack.

I recommend you pick up Ginosko, it’s only $25!

-Louie

Charlie Frye’s Sleightly Absurd – Review

I’m finally wrapping up reading Charlie Frye‘s magic book Sleightly Absurd. I picked this up at Hocus Pocus in Fresno way back in October when I was visiting their shop.

This book is a fun read and it has a lot of “non traditional” magic book feeling routines in it. The routines have endings to them, which is something that lacks in many magic books by magicians who aren’t out there working. The other thing is that Charlie isn’t a “I do easy stuff so I can concentrate on performing” type of person. He’s doing things with whatever level of difficulty that the trick requires to make the trick the best. Sometimes that’s means hard sleight of hand and sometimes it’s a math principle. I totally respect that approach!

One of the interesting things for me is towards the back of the book there’s Charlie’s approach to Any Card at Any Number. It’s a fairly standard approach where you use a memorized deck and a variety of techniques to get the card at the desired number. He does a great job of breaking down his thought process how determines the best way to go about it and describes many scenarios.

For me the best part is how he calculates the stack number backwards (from the face of the deck).

I had to read that part about half a dozen times for it to make sense for me and once I did, it made total sense! I also figured out a way to get rid of having to remember the pairs, they all all up to 3 or 13, so there’s no memorization of the five pairs, just remembering one rule. This is a game changer for me, it makes the doing the math from the face of the deck insanely easy! This one little thing is worth the price of the book if you use a memorized deck!

This is a great book and totally worth the $75 it sells for!

– Louie

Portland SAM Meeting

Last week I was in town for the Portland Society of American Magicians magic club meeting. It was a light turn out with only about 8 people there, but it was fun.

For me, I always love seeing the different styles of magic that people bring to a magic club. It’s not always their polished routines, but things that they are working on or things that they have and want to share. Personally, I’m more interested in things that you don’t do in your show, but interest you more than your A material. That’s the fun of magic clubs!

-Louie

Shell Shocked by Giovanni Livera

A bit ago someone mentioned Giovanni Livera’s three shell game routine. I wasn’t aware of this routine, so I tracked down a his book Confessions of an Italian Magician where his Shell Shocked routine is written up.

His routine has an ending that’s unusual, it ends with three production items. The first two are dice and the third is a plastic P. I have all of the props except the plastic P, but that’s where my 3d printer came in handy.

Within about 15 minutes I had made a plastic letter P and had it printed and can now learn the routine!

I’ll get started working on it later today!
-Louie