patter – MagicShow.Tips

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

How to be Introduced

A bit ago I was at a gig and before the show the MC told me the introduction there were going to use for me. It don’t remember the exact wording, but it essentially said that I was “slumming it” to perform for that audience.

Personally I don’t like putting down the audience before I even start. You don’t know about the audience, for some people it could be their big night out for the month or year. I don’t want to do that. I’ll put myself down all day in the show, but not the audience, and especially not before I’ve taken the stage. The audience doesn’t know me or my vibe.

An introduction should build up the performer or inform the audience about what they’re going to see. Not put down the audience.

I politely asked the MC to use the prepared introduction.

Don’t be afraid to tell an MC or show host exactly how you want to be introduced. There are times when I’m the MC and an act insists that I use something that I know is wrong. Like when they hand me four paragraphs to read. I’ll ask if I can shorten it, but if they insist, I read what they gave me.

-Louie

Cemetery Tour Guide

When I was in New Orleans with the family and one of the things we did was a cemetery tour. The first thing that he did was tell us about himself and his connection to the city.

That’s something that many magicians miss, they don’t tell the audience about them or their connection to whatever they’re doing onstage. When you start performing on a more national scale, the “where you’re from” becomes a lot more important. It doesn’t need to be a while chunk of your show, sometime it can be a little aside about being from where ever.

The one thing that I didn’t like, but it’s a common tour guide and magician joke was at the end he was asking us to review him. He said, “if you didn’t like the tour my name is Joe, if you did like the tour my name is _____“. There’s a lot wrong with that joke, first of all you shouldn’t use anyone else’s name in your closing remarks if you want the audience to remember your name. The tour guide is a great example, in the hack line above I left his name blank, and that’s because I remember the fake name he said, but not his real one. The line got a laugh, but in the long run it hurt him as I can’t leave him a positive review because I don’t remember his name.

It was a short term win (laugh) with a long term loss (me not remembering his name). If you use this line, you really consider if using that line is worth it the little laugh it gets. If that line gets a huge laugh in your show, you really should reexamine your show to find out why your other lines aren’t getting the same reaction as the stolen line (if you didn’t write it, or have permission from the person who wrote it to use it, it’s stolen).

-Louie

The Card Clothespin!

Here’s a quick little novelty card reveal that I’ve wanted to do for a while, I just never have a clothes pin:

You can download the instructions on how to make the trick here:

The Card Clothespin Download

If you make one, let me know how it plays for you!

-Louie

Original (?) Packet Trick

If you follow me on TikTok, you know I’m into vintage magic tricks and really into old packet tricks. I’ve wanted to come up with an original Emerson and West style packet trick with full story patter. I didn’t want to come up with a variation of something that already existed.

The other day I threw some cards into my backpack and with my time between gigs I came up with this:

@louiefoxx A Car Buying story with Cards! #cardtrick #carbuying #magic #magictrick #sedan #sportscar #carsalesman #story #magician ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

This is actually the second version of the story. The first version is more personal to me and my story, where the one above is more generic. I think this is fairly close to the Emerson and West style, it’s got all the mini effects and the pun/kicker ending.

The handling sequence just worked itself out. It was too easy, so I’m assuming someone has to have come up with it before, but it’s original to me.

This was a lot of fun to work out!
-Louie

The Story of One Card Pete – Elmer Applegate

I love finding old magic, and recently I found something really cool (I”ll post about it another day), but inside of that there was a folded up piece of paper. This is from the mid 1940’s and it had the typed routine for Elmer Applegate’s The Story of One Card Pete!

Elmer Applegate's The Story of One Card Pete

This is a routine for a six card repeat style where you have five cards, take away one and still have five. It’s an interesting routine, and the patter is rhyming. Jeff McBride has a really cool version of it and worth trying to track down the video of.

-Louie

Some Fun Vintage Magic

The local magic club had their swap meet night and I found a few cool things!

First I found an early version of Richard Himber’s Billfooled!

This is a switch wallet and from what I’ve learned this predated what we call the Himber Wallet. The Z fold wallet was an evolution of this.

The next thing I found, were these Repeating Rabbits!

To me these look more like cats than rabbits. This trick is similar to the multiplying bananas.

Finally, my favorite of the things I found was The Puzzle Pants!

That packaging is the best part!

The pants have two balls sewn into them and you have to take them out. This is a Scotch Purse, but themed as pants!

All three of these are great additions to my collection of vintage magic!

-Louie

Calculator Prediction Routine

This morning I was doing my daily writing and came up with a little routine for a number prediction. Here’s the rough routine:

“My third grade report card said my handwriting was bad, and only suitable if a grew up to be a doctor or serial killer. One time I turned in an essay and Ms. Smarr said it was illegible…It was typed, double spaced.”

“The only good thing about having bad handwriting is when I find a note a wrote a long time ago I feel like Indiana Jones trying read a document written by a lost civilization of serial killers. My handwriting looks like the handwriting that on the Magna Carta, if it got wet and put in a blender!”

You then show you elementary school signature, which looks like the bottom line below:

“It’s not that bad. I guess that’s why I preferred math, numbers are easy.”

You then do a calculator force and in my case I’m forcing the number 311707. I then flip over the LOUIE to show it’s actually 311707 (see the top line above).

There you go, it’s a routine, it’s not a great one, but it’s a routine that gets the prediction into play with a personal story. I may revisit this later, but it was a fun surprise that came out of my morning writing!

-Louie

Lightbulb Eating Routine

Recently I was in a show with sideshow performer who did glass eating, and that inspired me to write a routine for glass (lightbulb) eating. I should say that I’ve seen this act many times, so I may have accidentally written a line that’s existed before and a couple of the lines are pretty obvious, so might be used by other performers. With that in mind, as far as I know this is an original script for someone eating a light bulb.

To set the scene, let’s the the performer just did a dangerous stunt before this.

That was intense! Let’s do something lighter.
Bring out lightbulb
I’m going to eat this lightbulb and poop out a chandelier! This is a 40 watt bulb, I used to do 100 watt, but I’m on a diet!
Take out spray bottle of glass cleaner and give it a spray and wipe it off with a paper towel.
If anyone wants some after the show, I brought a doggie bag.
Take out paper bag and put the lightbulb into it.
Ladies and gentlepeople, it’s hammer time!
Take out hammer, and break the bulb through the bag.
Mozel Tov!
I remember the first time I did this, I was a kid in my friends basement, listening to ACDC.
What were you expecting me to say…the Electric Light Orchestra?
Take out piece of glass and show it to the audience. Put it into your mouth and dramatically eat it.
Squirt the glass cleaner into your mouth, pause and look at the bottle. Open the bottle of glass cleaner and chug it!
Show your mouth to show it empty!

**DO NOT DRINK REAL GLASS CLEANER** use a safe blue liquid in the spray bottle.
***DO NOT DO THIS ROUTINE, IT’S DANGEROUS*** This was written as a writing exercise for me.

So that’s the routine, it should have a few laughs. It was fun to write and something I’ll never do. I don’t know why, but things like these that aren’t my show are way easier to write for than my actual show.

-Louie

Look It Up!

This summer teenagers have been saying, “That’s soo sigma” or just “Sigma” when I perform close up magic for them. I had a feeling that “sigma” meant cool, based on the context it was used in. However, to be sure, I did a Google search to figure it out.

Nothing in life has made me feel older than researching slang on the Today Show’s website!

That confirmed what I thought, and now I can use it correctly. While I think that when a older magician uses kid slang it feels like they are trying to pander to the kids and never seems cool.

In my close up I now say, “that’s soo sigma” but I do it in a way where I’m almost making fun of saying it. Very tongue in cheek, and not using it like it’s something I would normally say.

It’s important to keep an eye or ear out for these trends that kids do and figure out how you can use them to your advantage. For example, there’s the trend of kids asking you to “do a backflip”. I came up with two version of this trick to do when they ask:

@louiefoxx Do a Back Flip! #doabackflip #backflipchallenge #backflip #louiefoxx #magic #magictrick, #surpriseending #old #magician #cardtrick ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

The other version and the one that I use is published in Vanish Magazine about a year ago.

Simply knowing how to respond to these things will put you ahead of the game!

-Louie