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ProMystic 50/50

ProMystic just put out a new trick called 50/50 and it’s great! It’s basically a location of someone holding a stack of your money.

The base routine is someone out of a group holds some money of yours. You say you’re betting your money that you can find it. You then narrow down the group until you have one person left and they have your money.

What I like about the routine is that it really fills the stage with a few bills. It also has a feeling of a chance of failure and while the method isn’t 100% is is 99.9% surefire. There is a strange scenario that I can imagine where it could fail, but it’s very unlikely.

I’ve done this three times as preshow and it’s worked great! I need to do some writing and hopefully can move it into the show soon!

-Louie

Obedient Walnut

A few months ago I found some Obedient Walnut tricks in a bin of junk magic at a magic shop. This is a version of a classic trick where you have an object with a string running through it, in this case it’s a plastic walnut. As the walnut slides down the string, it stops whenever you want it to.

Honestly, from a magic perspective, it’s not really a good trick, it’s pretty obvious how it works. I did pick up three of them out of the junk bin as I had an idea for a routine with them. The routine is an interesting idea, but still a bad trick.

I did it once, it confirmed it’s not the best idea or trick and now I can throw away the Obedient Walnuts.

-Louie

No 25 Gilbert Mysto Magic Show Set!

Recently when I was travelling, I came across this magic set in a junk shop

And here’s the picture of the lower tray

They really don’t make magic sets like this anymore. Everything has it’s own neat package, there’s some glass props, if I had the space to properly display it, it’d probably be more interested in it. However I think a bit overpriced at $795! I’m not a magic kit collector, but based on the people I talked to it priced about double what it’s worth.

-Louie

Steven’s Magic Emporium

A couple of weeks ago I was travelling from Nebraska to Arizona and drove a few hours out of my way to visit Steven’s Magic Emporium in Wichita, KS. I’ve gotten their catalog since I was a teenager and attended several of their Desert Magic Seminar conventions in Las Vegas as a teenager.

I think with my visit to Steven’s Magic Emporium I’ve hit all the major magic shops in the USA. I guess the only one that I haven’t been to is Daytona Magic, but I’ve worked their convention, so I feel like that counts.

Unfortunately when I was there, there weren’t any “magicians” working, so I had to tell them what I was looking for. That’s fine, however chatting and then having the person working the counter say, “have you seen…” is very helpful!

I did pick up Craig Petty’s Apparition. When I was in Grand Island, NE, Nate Myers showed it to me and it was similar to something I was working on. I also picked up a couple of other things, like some Hypno Heat for an idea I have.

This is a pretty cool coin transposition using a silver dollar and a Chinese coin. There’s a lot that can be done with the coin set, and I’m excited to start playing with it!

-Louie

Junk Magic from a Junk Shop

I was killing time between shows and was walking through a junk shop and they have a briefcase full of magic. They wanted too much for it at $60, so I negotiated a bit and got it for a reasonable price.

Most of the stuff was garbage, but there were a few cool things. There were four sets of Johnson Scotch and Soda sets and I have a buddy who uses that, so he now has a lifetime supply of them!

One of the interesting things was a trick called Space Coins.

It’s essentially a boston box, but it’s got the fake see through bottom that’s “black art” or more like red art. I’m not a fan of the fake see through thing were you needed to put the prop on a specific surface.

I will say I was super surprised when I tried it out of people that it got great reactions, so I’m not always right. It’s always good to be proven wrong.

-Louie

The Moisture Festival Podcast – Eric Haines

On this podcast we welcome in the troubadour himself Eric Haines. We discuss all the disciplines Eric implements into his show, how he came to be so good at all of them and how he found his calling with the One Man Band. We learn why someone would want to play so many instruments at once and all the great opportunities it has granted him. A really great conversation over Zoom with a one man Moisture Fest.

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Your convenience is not my inconvenience

The other day I posted about an act leaving their backdrop onstage during my show. Besides it being clutter on stage I did voice a concern about it in the wind.

They blew off my suggestions

Well, the next day it got windy and the backdrop started swaying and I took this picture as it blew onto another act on the stage!

The sound guy and I jumped onto the stage, pulled it off of the other act and laid the backdrop flat on the ground. I then went to the backdrop’s owner’s trailer and of course they weren’t onsite. I told them about it when they returned and they blew me off again.

I have a mindset onstage that’s “Your convenience is not my inconvenience“. What that means is that if something makes your show easier to set up, but makes my show harder to do, then I say NO and am firm about it.

Before my next show the act that had the back drop was trying to tether it and I told them it could not be up during my show. They said they’d tether it better and I told them it couldn’t be up onstage during my shows. It’s a safety issue for me, my props and anyone from the audience onstage.

They told me that the event said they could leave it onstage, so I sent the picture of it falling on the other act to our boss along with me voicing my safety concern. Included in the message was that I wanted a record of my safety concern for their backdrop onstage incase something happened during my show to reduce my liability.

Guess what?

They had to take it down during other peoples shows. I’ve watched them set it up and take it down after their shows and it literally takes a few minutes. The only reason to leave it up is laziness.

Don’t let someone else’s laziness affect your show. Working with a band that wants to leave guitars in your performing area, tell them to move them. It’s your stage during your set, if you need 10 X 10 feet or whatever to perform in, tell them that and they need to move their stuff.

Now your show is a success or failure on your terms, not because you have to deal with a backdrop smashing your stuff or shrinking your show because a band won’t move a guitar.

-Louie

Playing Nice With Others…

The other act I was sharing the stage with had a large banner that they left onstage, I’m not a huge fan of other people’s stuff in my performing area. They cleared it with the “boss” to leave it up, so I put my pop up banner in front of it.

It’s nice that it shortened the depth of the the stage, so that was the silver lining.

I try to play nice with other acts, but honestly it’s not a big deal for them to move their back drop off the stage after each show.

-Louie

ProMystic Color Match FTW!

About a week ago I was able to switch back to using the ProMystic Color Match and I’ve been using it with 100% success! I’m glad to be able to not Anverdi Color Match set where I was constantly getting a missed signal. That doesn’t mean that the Anverdi set is bad, it just doesn’t work for how I work.

The ProMystic set is the set I’ve used for years, and that may be why I prefer it. I know why it works, and when it doesn’t, I know why it’s not working. I feel like I definitely committed giving the Anverdi set a chance. I know tons of people that prefer the Anverdi set over the ProMystic. I think ultimately your performing style will dictate which works better for you.

-Louie

Do a Back Flip

My friends that do roving acts like stilt walkers or unicycle have mentioned to me that kids the last year or so ask them to “do a back flip“. I think this is a Tik Tok thing, but I’m not positive. They’ve tried to come up with something witty to say, but really there’s no where to go with that and it’s something completely unrelated to what they do.

It’s never happened to me…until last week. I wanted to come up with something to do, so here’s what I came up with:

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

Here’s the problem, by rewarding them saying that, it could simple open the door to them yelling more in the show. Also, I should be clear that I don’t consider a kid asking me to do a back flip a heckle. It’s really not malicious, they’re having fun…but it’s still an interruption in the show and I don’t want to encourage that.

Since I made that card, I haven’t had someone ask me to do a back flip, so I don’t know how it plays, or if it encourages interruptions. The nice thing is that it doesn’t take up any space, so it’s not a big deal to have with me during the show.

If I ever get to use it, I’ll report back on what happens…

-Louie