I was looking at my magic tables and they’re getting beat up. Two of them it’s just the the top fabric was getting worn out, but the third one was straight up beat to crap!
This is my stage table, and things sit on the top of it, so you don’t see the surface of it. As long as I was recovering my two tables that I work on, I might as well do this one.
Here’s all three tables with their new surfaces. Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner, it only took about 30 is mins to do all three of them and it’s not hard. I have a self adhesive surface I use.
Sometimes it’s hard to know when your props are getting worn out as it happens slowly and gradually. Every now and then you really need to give your stuff a good once over !
When I do kid shows, there’s one card trick in the show. The cards aren’t really cards in the sense that one is a king of hearts and one is two of spades, they are just a stack of objects. When I kid picks a card, I draw a picture of their favorite animal on it, and we name that animal.
By creating an image with the kids it makes the card more memorable than just a two of hearts with their name one it. I will also frequently use a blank face or double blank deck of cards. That takes it a step away from a card trick and it’s a trick with a drawing.
A couple of weeks ago I performed at the All American Magic Theater in Portland, OR. One of the nice things is that the backstage TV that shows what’s happening onstage has a show run order.
This is nice with a show with multiple performers. You don’t have to remember who you are following, you just look up! It also shows how long the show is running and how much time is left during intermission!
The current book that I’m reading is Professional Secrets by Geoffrey Durham. This book has been mentioned a lot in online magic forums, and I’m glad to have finally gotten a copy of it at a reasonable price!
I’m about 50 pages into the book and one of the things that I like about it is that it’s more than just the tricks. It’s his thinking on performing. One of the tricks he explains is his opener that is really just a handflash device. However he goes on for several pages about his thoughts on opening tricks and opening your show before he gets into the handflash device.
I like that!
Here’s one of my favorite quotes in the book so far:
I 100% agree with this! Those three adjectives; interesting, attractive and unique are very important. I always tell people that it takes work to be interesting onstage. It also takes work to be unique in a relatable way!
So far I’m liking this book and if you can track down this book you’ll probably like it as well!
For the second time in about two weeks the magic app Inject 2 was taken down by Google.
This really highlights why apps are bad methods, they can be taken away for no reason, and unlike a folding quarter that even if everyone stopped making them they can easily be sourced on the secondary market. With a magic app like Inject 2, you can’t just buy a used one that someone has in a drawer, or have a second one as a backup.
Before I get to Greg’s post about the outage, he’s not doing a great job communication. Sure he’s posting in the Inject 2 Facebook Group and probably on The Magic Cafe, but he should all of our email addresses from when we got the app, so why not send out a bulk email? Right now you really have to find out it’s not working by trying to use the app, then when it doesn’t work, going to the Inject 2 Facebook Group.
Anyway, here’s his post and my thought will follow:
Dear Inject family,
As of 10:22PM Los Angeles time, Google has once again suspended Inject.
Just when I was SO happy with the new ReaList Peek feature …
This time, there was no warning AT ALL.
I have started the appeal process with them.
This is really frustrating, but as I’ve said in my previous posts, Matt and I already have a plan to move Inject away from Google’s App Engine.
I am SO sorry about this.
I’m glued to my computer waiting for a response from a human at Google to resolve this issue.
Thank you again for your patience.
In that post he says, “This time, there was no warning AT ALL.” That implies that that the first time he had warning, but didn’t give it to the users! That’s kinda messes up. If a hotel and knew that power would be out at a certain time and didn’t mention it to me when I checked in, I’d be pissed!
Sure, this Inject 2 is a magic app and no one is going to physically die if it doesn’t work, but there are people who may have been about to use it in a big gig and had it fail, and can affect their income!
Another problem with how Greg has decided to market Inject 2 via physical download cards is that he can’t pull it from the market. The cards are out there and are available for sale RIGHT NOW as Inject 2 is not working. So if someone buys the download card, and it doesn’t work it’s now the magic shop’s problem to deal with the customer service issue. Does the magic shop refund, then try to get a refund from Murphy’s Magic or Greg, ask the customer to be patient, or whatever. It puts the magic shop in a strange position, and if Greg ever discontinues Inject 2, what does a shop do if they have a download card on their shelf? Can they get a refund? It’s also interesting that Murphy’s hasn’t sent out an email about how to deal with customer service around Inject 2 not working. If a customer got it for Christmas and it’s only worked half the time they owned it, I think they should be entitled to a refund. I personally have no idea how that would be handled, because once the app is up and running, there’s nothing to stop that person (that I’m aware of) from using the app.
A few months ago I picked up Henry Harrius’s Refilled vanishing bottle (Corona version). It’s sat on my desk for a while and recently I read Wayne Dobson‘s vanishing bottle routine and kinda liked the idea. So I sat down and wrote out a routine for it.
The effect is: You have a bag and two bottle caps. One is selected and you remove the matching bottle from the bag! You tell the audience you’ll show them how you did the trick, you have two bottles. You take out the second bottle, then put it back into the bag and you crumple up the bag.
Here’s what I wrote:
Two bottle caps, a red coke one and a blue corona one. You’re going to pick one like this is a low budget remake of the matrix
The red cap, everything is revealed, the blue cap and I and you’ll learn nothing, just like high school.
Hold them in your hands and shake them like you’re playing craps, or the baby won’t stop crying. …clearly you don’t have a baby
Now blow on them for luck like you’re in vegas or a kid in the 1980’s who just wants to play super mario brothers
Toss me one.
Red, the coke bottle cap. Inside the bag I have a Coke BOTTLE!
Since you picked the red cap, that means you get to see inside the illusion. you can never go back, your life will be forever changed like going thru puberty or committing murder.
That turned dark
inside the bag I have a second bottle, so it doesn’t matter which you picked, just like voting.
However if you picked the other cap and we needed to keep the illusion, then we would have done it with only one bottle!
It’s not the best script ever, but it’s something to get it onstage and in front of an audience.
One thing I noticed is that I think the trick will play better if the vanishing bottle is the Coke bottle. It makes more sense to have that one disappear in the context of explaining the routine. So I just ordered one of those.
I think this routine could be a good lead into my Signed Coin in Bottle. This was published in Vanish Magazine a few years ago.
I’m working on adding more production elements to my show. I’ve been using video in a very basic way that’s just a camera that’s either on or off, but that’s it. I just added some visual element for projection, and did my first show with them. The first show was pretty basic, it was simply the either a logo, live close up video or pictures.
The first show went well. I’m using Show Cues System and my Media Star remote and running it off of a laptop. Show Cues System is production software (not to be confused with Show Cues music app for your phone) that can run all of the show elements from music to lights. It’s the PC version of Qlabs.
The thing that I don’t like about it is the lack of a screen that I can easily see what the current thing it’s playing it. That helps when you skip a routine, or accidentally push a button and need to move around in your set list. I think I just need to use it more to get used to it!
I tried it out at a gig at a senior community. That’s one of the great things about doing shows for seniors, they are low pressure shows, not huge events where you’re getting paid thousands of dollars. If there’s a tech hiccup, it’s not as huge of a deal!
-Louie PS if you want to learn more about performing for senior communities, check out my book How To Perform For Seniors!
Last week I took the train into Seattle, and I haven’t ridden an Amtrak train in about 30 years! It was great and way better than driving as I could read and practice a card trick I was working on!
I was up in Seattle for lunch with my family, but then I had a little bit of a magic jam while I was in town. The first wave had Chris Beason and Johnathan Friedman!
When Johnathan had to go, he was shortly replaced by Clive Hayward!
It was a blast having some laughs with them and messing around with some magic!
On my way back to the train I walked by the old location of the Mickey Hades Seattle Magic Shop!
When I was a teenager Mickey Hades taught me how to back palm produce single cards the old way where you bring the whole block to the front pull one card off, then put the whole block back behind your hand! That’s also where I inadvertently saw Michael Starr do a one handed top palm and reverse engineered the mechanics of it on the bus ride home!
I was relearning Giovanni Livera’s Shell Shocked routine. This is a three shell game routine and at the end of it you have two dice on the table. Looking at the two dice, I realized that this is a natural transition to the Sachs Dice Routine. I originally learned this as a teenager from the book Routined Manipulation Vol 1 by Lewis Ganson.
If you’re not familiar with the trick, the effect is that you hold two dice in your hand and the numbers on the dice change as you turn your hand over. It’s a great effect and one that Steve Dobson did a lot in his working repertoire. I dug out his lecture notes and grabbed some dice!
The move isn’t hard to do, but Steve does it backwards from how my hands remember it from when I was a teenager. The move is better the way Steve describes it in his lecture notes.
You can learn Steve’s routine from the notes pictured above (if you can track them down) or it’s the basis for the routine taught in Reed McClintok’s Ivory Connection video.
Whenever I’m at a store that has gel pens I always buy some!
I use these for marking cards. The Gelly Roll pens I use for finer marks, like putting writing on the cards for stack number or card value. The Uniball pen has a wider tip and I use it for things like whiting out the faces on the angels or wheels on the bikes.
These are super handy to have around. Usually I have one on my desk, one in my car, and one in my backpack.
