I love it when I’m performing in the San Francisco area and have a friday night off! Whenever I do, I swing by the Magic Garage and hang out!
One of the unusual tricks we ended playing with was an Eddie Fields card trick where a selected card is found by spelling the spectator’s name. It can be any name, and you don’t need to know it in advance, the best part is that it’s self working!
It’s a ton of fun and a great hangout with other magicians. There are people there with all sorts of skill levels and experiences in magic!
I’m using the Play-Duh props in my library and summer camp shows. The fair I was performing at last week I did the routine for some kids between shows.
Recently I came across a T. Nelson Downs throw out card! These were used as promo items by the magician, but this particular one was sponsored by Bicycle Playing Cards!
I’m not sure if this was something that would have been given out by Bicycle or just Downs.
I’ve thought about doing a batch of playing cards like this. Not functional cards, but as promotional items that I can autograph after shows. I think it’s cooler than a postcard, and smaller, so I can carry more for the same weight in my suitcase.
It’s a cool piece that’s a great addition to my collection!
A while ago I wrote a post about me having Trigger Finger, which is a tendon issue in my knuckle. I noticed that it was bad when it was raining, so that means I have an old man super power, my finger can predict the weather!
What can I do with that?
It got me thinking about doing a weather prediction effect. The idea of the trick will be that someone says the name of a city, and I write down what my finger thinks the weather in that city is.
I wanted the prediction to be bigger that something that could be accomplished with a nail writer. After some writing of different ideas, I hit upon using weather icons:
The flow of the effect is:
A city is chosen
The prediction is written down
The weather is the city is determined
The correct icon matching the weather is removed
The written prediction is shown to match the icon
That’s the flow.
I originally had a step earlier in the process that had me showing all the different possible icons. I decided that’s really dead time, and not needed, because we’re going to go through them later to find the correct one.
The method is really simple, I spent a lot of time writing more complex methods, but this was the most simple and direct method that I came up with.
I tried it for the first time a couple of days ago and it worked! Now to do it more and create a more complete routine.
Somehow I got into collecting dead magician’s tie bars! Recently I was visiting with Alan Sands and he gave me one of George Sands tie bars!
If you’re not familiar with George Sands, he created the Sandsational Rope Routine. Most modern cut and restored rope routines are built off of his routine.
Somewhere along the road I picked up the book Circus Rings Around Russia and recently started reading it. The book is a history of the circus in Russia.
It’s interesting to hear how political the circus was in Russia. Both state run and with views that were anti-government. Performers were essentially blackballed for how they express their political views through their performances.
It’s also interesting that the big pro-government circuses were flops with audiences. I think those shows took away the “heart” of the circus and left the audiences feeling cold.
The author of this book also relates how magicians and the side show are considered lower entertainment than traditional circus acts like trapeze or eve clowns. In the USA magic is a huge part of the circus!
For my library and summer camp shows this year, I added a screen to my table.
There’s not much to it. It connects to an iPhone that’s running IQpro and controlled by a Flic Button. The main reason I’m using it is to get used to running IQpro.
I want to be more comfortable using production elements in my show, and obviously the best way to do that is to use them! -Louie
There are some magic products that just shouldn’t exist. This is one of the products:
It’s a cheat sheet for the invisible deck. Let’s start with the memory, you really need to remember two things. You need to remember which side of the deck is even, and hearts to spades, that’s it. For the math, you need to be able to subtract a number from 13.
It’s not too hard, however, it that’s too much for you, you can eliminate the math and memory by simply opening the flap and looking at which side is towards you. Then removing them from the box the correct way and fanning them vertically while looking for the named card. Boom, no math, no memory, no need for an Invisible Deck Crib.
OK, so is this solving a problem? If you’re not going to put the time into learn a trick, you really should be doing it. I suspect that’s what’s behind all the versions of ACAAN that are marketed, it’s to try to make the trick accessible to lazy magicians.
Maybe someone has a learning disability and can’t do the math in their head? OK, there are lots of things that I don’t do because I don’t have the ability to do them. For example I can’t use memory pegs because I have a thing called Aphantasia, however I was able to learn a memorized deck. It took a lot of work and I had to create little things to help me learn it. I wanted to learn to a memorized deck, so I figured out a way.
Now let me mention the worst line in magic advertising: “eliminates memory and math (or commonly sleight of hand) to allow you to focus on performing.” This makes it seem like you can’t do the two at the same time. Let’s look at famous magicians: Darren Brown, David Copperfield, David Blaine, Doug Henning, and Criss Angel All of them do or have done technically challenging things in their shows and could still entertain with it. Why can’t you? If the answer is because it takes practice, then maybe performing magic isn’t for you.
On this episode of the Moisture Festival Podcast we welcome in Mr. LO. We talk about a number of different things including his life as a ballet dancer and all that goes into maintaining your body to perform that every night.
He tells us about the various career transformations he had to make including becoming a full time contortionist and how he found paper tearing to take over once he aged out of contortion. We learn about all the things that go into making such a unique act and the difficulties accompanied with performing an art form that no one performs anymore. A great conversation with a first time performer at the 2025 festival.
The other day I had some free time in downtown Seattle, so I swung by the Market Magic Shop in the Pike Place Market. One of the cool hidden things at the Pike Place Market is that they have a giant Ask Alexander poster on public display in one of their less travelled hallways!
I picked up a couple of things at the magic shop, but while I was there I noticed t they had added Play-Duh to their spring snake selection!
I posted my routine for Play-Duh recently and I really love this prop! It’s in my summer library show and my routine is a hit! I’ve said it before, I wish I had thought of this idea!
Support brick and mortar magic shops, if you don’t , they will keep disappearing!
