I was at a conference in Reno last week, and the hotel/casino had a magic theater in it! The first night a few of us went to check out Phil Ackerly do some bar magic. Phil makes the boxes for my Applause Please 2.0 trick, but we’d never met in person, so it was great to see him in real life!
The next night I snuck down again to watch Phil for a little bit.
It was cool to watch how Phil handled a guy who was one of the “can I shuffle those cards” types. He did it without belittling the person or with a lame hack quip. He did it in an honest, heartfelt way. It was so effective that when the guy tried to do it again, all his friends told him to shut up so they could enjoy the show.
A magician posted these pictures of himself performing as a Chinese person.
Here’s my response to the picture, which I replied to in a private magician’s group, and not on his public, personal FB page:
I really dislike that magicians still think this is an acceptable way to perform. Performing in “yellow face” has a long history in magic and one that needs to end.
Here’s Jack Chanin (I think, and if I’m wrong, let me know) performing in Yellowface (yellowmask?):
These “characters” are outdated stereotypes. Part of the history of yellowface was to portray the Chinese as monsters and to give them frightening physical features. The long mustaches and fingernails, the bright yellow skin color were to make Chinese people look less human.
Why would any performer who knew its history want to continue doing that?
In my opinion, it’s lazy creativity. In both pictures above, the performer is using the Chinese sticks prop; however, that trick isn’t from China! Instead of putting the energy into creating a unique routine, the performer does something that they’ve seen done before. The thinking is that if someone else has done it, then that’s the way to do it.
I’ve personally walked out of several shows when a performer did stereotype material. There is an exception to this, does the performer have a point of view with what they are doing. Is it social commentary, relating an actual experience, or something like that? In all of the exceptions to this that I have seen, the person never put on a costume.
The moral of the story is don’t do stuff like this.
In a couple of months, the Portland Magic Jam is happening. I’m not able to go to many magic conventions due to my performing schedule, but this one I’m currently available for! I just registered for it!
They’ve got a great mix of performers/lecturers for this convention. If you’re in the Portland OR area, or looking for a reason to visit, this is a convention worth checking out!
Effect: You show a bottle and tell a story about a friend paying you back for a beer. You say, “he paid me back with venmo, but as a joke he said it was for an eggplant.” You put the beer bottle into a paper bag. You snap your fingers and bring out an egg plant! You then crumple the bag and toss it over your shoulder to show it’s empty.
That’s it. It’s a simple plot with an easy presentation hook. It is also a non-standard routine for the vanishing bottle.
This lecture is mostly platform/stage material, however there is a lot of stuff of use to close up performers. In the lecture I talk about how I create original magic, and ways to make magic your own. It’s always fun to share my “art” with other magicians!
The more I work on this snake basket, the more I want to simplify the wiring in it. The previous versions had an LED to indicate that it was on. I eliminated that using the ESP32’s built in LED, so that took out some wires. Here’s the current wiring:
One thing I have that’s redundant is that each action is triggered by a button press. The first version just had a single button that started all of the actions that would be timed. I didn’t like this as it makes me a slave to the preprogrammed timing. To give me more freedom, I added a second remote control button, and both buttons trigger each action. I could eliminate the wired button, however, I can see a situation where it could come in handy, like if the remote unexpectedly ran out of batteries.
The next tweak will be in the code, and that will be adding some delays after the button press. That will get my hands away from the remote control or the wired button when the action takes place.
I think this is coming along nicely, and I’ve learned a lot about using microprocessors!
If you’re not a magician, but “magic curious” this is a great way to get some insight into magic and also learn a bit more about the magic magic club.
If you’re a magician, there’s lot of magic to learn. This is more that tricks, there’s a lot of insight into the how’s and why’s of performing magic tricks.
I started using a handheld whiteboard in my show last summer. I never really thought much about it, it’s just a prop I used. Then a couple of weeks ago I saw a picture of me performing with it.
The backside of it looked like garbage. The backside was just cardboard, and it’d gotten dinged up over months of use. I went for a simple fix and just covered the back with some stick on black velvet that I had
It looks way better now! I’m glad I noticed that in the picture, it’s a small thing I could do to make my show look a little bit classier.
In the off season I spend time replacing worn out parts of my show. The fish bowl on the left is the one I’ve used in the show for the last year, and the one one the right is the new one.
It always amazes me how things can get beaten up slowly, and because it happens over time, I don’t notice till it’s really bad. It’s always good to check your props and clean or replace them regularly!
