Magicians are the worst at giving advice for beginner magicians. Recently in a Facebook group a magician was asking for recommendations for beginner magic books. The majority of people that suggested The Amateur Magician’s Handbook.
This book is garbage for a beginners magic book by modern standards. Sure it started a lot of magicians, but I think it also turned off more people who were interested in magic. Compared to modern magic books (pretty much anything after Mark Wilson’s Complete Course In Magic book) it’s hard to learn from.
The main reason I think it’s still in print is because it’s got a great title.
I still love the book, and it definitely helped form who I am as a magician, but it’s not a great beginners book. It may be by 1950 standards, but not by modern standards.
It’s been a while since I just spent a good chunk of the day practicing for fun, not for something that’s intended to be in the show. Way back at the beginning of February I had an idea for a coin trick. I played with it a bit back in August, you can read the post and watch a practice video here.
Here’s what the routine looked like yesterday:
It looks way better than the video from August. Honestly I haven’t put too much time into it between February and August and between August and yesterday. It was fun to really spend the day trying to work out the sequence and make it happen!
When the COVID pandemic hit, a buddy and I built a studio in his garage. Unfortunately he just bought a house in another state and is moving, so I’m working on my at home studio. Part of that is customizing props, one of the things that I’m working on is a table. For virtual shows I like a high table, something that’s just below armpit level. That makes it easier to frame my face.
The table I’m currently using has a pretty small table top. The base it’s on is pretty slim, which means I can’t put a very bit table top on it without it getting wobbly. In my shed I have some old speaker stands that are very heavy duty compared to a typical magic table’s base. These will allow me to move the table up high and still be sturdy.
I designed and printed out a flange:
It pressure fits onto the speaker stand.
It’s attached to the table top by eight screws.
It’s very sturdy! I was amazed, there’s no wobbly in the table. I may try to put a larger tabletop onto a speaker stand to give myself some more performing space!
It’s interesting the little magic fads that pop up on Instagram or other social media. Usually it’s a trick that’s cheap or easy to make, that’s really visually and easy to do. One that was going around recently was a floating pen by Rodrigo Romano:
It’s looks good, but it’s much inferior version of The NEW Incredible Floating Pen by Patrick Snowden and Kyle Elder. Their version can actually be done easily in the real world, where Romano’s version is basically for video.
Seeing all of these people float pens on their social media makes me wonder why you’d want to do that?
What I mean, is why would you also float a pen and not something else?
There are plenty of other pen like objects you could make something else float. I made up a version of the trick using a chicken wing and a dish of ranch dressing:
The two props make sense together, unlike a pen and a folded up playing card. For me, I think this is better social media content than floating a pen like everyone else. It visually it looks a lot different. The chicken wing and dish look like a different trick than the floating pen. Also for me, where my “brand” is doing less common things, it fits what I do much better!
How can you take the more “standard” tricks you do and make them visually different?
Something that still bugs me are performers that are still using facemasks in their shows as if they are topical. They really aren’t, it’s lazy creativity. I’ve written about this before (you can read it here), and my thoughts haven’t changed.
Not too long ago I figured out what the problem with 99 % of the mask tricks are:
YOU HAVE TO TAKE THE MASK OFF TO DO THE TRICK
By simply doing the trick, you are defeating the purpose of the prop. That’s the flaw in all of these tricks. The rare exception is something like a color changing mask. If someone came up with a trick where you didn’t take the mask off for the trick, that would make it make sense.
Keeping the mask on really limits what you can do. That condition pretty much leaves you with a color change, with out doing some actual thinking. Here’s some ideas that I don’t have a method for:
Tongue thru mask
Eating / drinking thru the mask
shrinking / growing mask
things appearing on the ear loops: Kinda like the Ring Flite trick
Broken and restored ear loop
It moving by itself: Running gag: while you are talking it keeps moving up your face. You move it down, and it moves up again
Multiplying: you keep taking them off, and there’s always one on your face. You’d have to remove a large amount, so that it’s clear you didn’t just have four masks on.
All of the above tricks keep a mask on your face. However you still have a problem to face, it’s a used hygiene product you are using. Doing a trick with a tissue from the box uses a clean hygiene product. Doing a trick with a tissue you just blew your nose on is a used hygiene product. That’s something else to consider, technically once you touch or take it off with your bare hands, you are supposed to wash your hands.
How do you solve this?
I don’t know the answer, but then I also really don’t want to do a trick with a facemask, so you’ll have to figure that out for yourself if you want to do a trick with a face mask!
Many years ago I decided to not use fire in my show. The decision was based on not wanting to deal with regulations that vary from state to state or venue to venue. It was just too much of a challenge to do it in a legal way. I didn’t wan to have an anchor routine in my show that uses fire, then have to cut it because a venue tells me I can’t have fire.
With the shift to virtual shows, I’ve been playing with using fire a little bit. For example I created a “flaming bill change” where you light a one dollar bill on fire, and it changes into a twenty dollar bill. I think this is a great use of fire to enhance the magic moment of the bill change.
I’ve been using my “flaming jalapeno” for a lot of virtual content, and then this week I’ve finally started to use the “fire breather” for my flea circus. I’m having fun using a little bit of fire, however I don’t expect any of it to make it into my live, in person show.
I guess one of the silver linings to doing virtual shows is that I get to explore using fire!
Way back in the early summer when my state had first started to reopen after the initial pandemic shutdown, and friend texted me this picture of a game wheel at a thrift store for $2.99.
I drove up and bought it. It needed some work, the whole from was stained, and have some sort of glue residue in it. What I found interested was that it was heavier duty that most of the game wheels that I’d seen before. The wheel is two feet in diameter, and made of thick wood, so it’s heavy. The pole it’s on looked like the top pole of a speaker stand. I took it home and it fit into the base of a speaker stand, that would allow me to use it without a table. I threw away the plastic base in the picture above.
This then ended up sitting in my shed for months, as I didn’t want to deal with cleaning up the wheel. I didn’t have an idea of exactly what I was going to do with it. Then I remembered reading about trick called Wheel of Mind by Amir Lustig and Hiam Goldenberg. I wasn’t exactly sure of the what it did, aside from that it was a force. Hiam puts out some pretty clever stuff, and for $15, I figured why not check it out.
Wheel of Mind uses twelve spaces and my game wheel has 20 spaces. Luckily the trick still works with more spaces. The other challenge is that Wheel of Mind uses both sides of the wheel. It turns out it’s really easy to remove the game wheel I have from the stand and turn it over. Now that I have what I’m going to use the game wheel for, it’s time to clean it up.
The first step was scraping all of the glue off of it. However the actual wheel was stained by whatever pen had been used on it previously. The next step was to remove the pins, and peel off the graphic from the front.
I recovered it with white contact paper on the front and back. Then using electrical tape, I made some lines and wrote the numbers in.
For less than $30 (that’s including buying Wheel of Mind) I now have a fun looking prop that will force something. I probably wouldn’t travel with this, unless I was doing a run of shows. It’s mostly for virtual shows, it’s also a cool set piece to have behind me.
The holder I was printing out the other day is finished and works great! I designed this to display to hold an envelope, or jumbo card upright so that it’s more visible than laying flat on a table. I also put a magnet inside of it so that I can simply stick it to the front of my small case.
Here’s the finished holder:
Here it is holding a giant card:
It holds it very securely, the card won’t fall out under normal circumstances.
It also hit me that I could put a magnet behind my virtual backdrop and use it there.
If I end up using it for virtual shows, I’ll need to print out another one to keep with that show’s props. I really dislike moving props around from case to case. That’s a easy way to forget or lose things.
Lately I’ve been thinking about what live, in person magic shows will look like in 2021. I’m fairly optimistic that in person shows will happen, however they will look different. I think the majority of them will be no contact magic shows. That means you can’t have people from the audience come up on stage to help with the show.
I’m trying to plan for that now, and not have to adapt a week before a show. One thing I’m doing today is making a display holder for the front of my case. This is simply a tray that I can set flat props into so that they are upright and visible to the audience.
Here’s what the frontside looks like:
It’s currently being 3d printed in black. It is about 4.5 inches wide and 3 inches tall.
There’s a cut out in the back that I’m going to glue a magnet into. There’s already a magnet inside my case that I can stick this to. This is a simple solution as I don’t use a table to hold props I’m actively using.
Planning for the reality of what’s coming is probably better than hoping everything will be back to where it was a year ago. Even if all restrictions are lifted, the bonus is that I’m developing some new material!
One of the best kept secrets in magic is Nathan Coe Marsh. All of the material he does is well thought out and super solid! A year or two ago he sold a series of videos called “The Living Room Sessions“. These videos were in depth teaching videos of routines he performs around the world. I just noticed he’s got a special on them right now, and you should check them out:
All of the routines work in a stand up / stage context and don’t need someone from the audience to physically come on stage. This is going to be a very important condition for at least the next year.
Here’s a sample of one of his routines:
That’s a solid opening routine. He walks out, and gets right into the trick. The trick is good but the kicker is AMAZING!
