Pictures – Page 21 – MagicShow.Tips

This is the Spot!

If you do a remotely fun show for kids, you’ve have a kid pee during your show because they’re having too much fun and don’t want to get up, or you make them laugh too hard. The other night I had a kid helping me and she was laughing super hard, she stopped and said, “I just peed”!

This is always a hard thing to navigate, you need to deal with it, but in a way that causes the least amount of attention. In this instance the kid didn’t seem in distress and was remarkably calm, so I said, “we’ll pause this trick and you can take care of it”. She left and got a change of clothes and while she was gone I did another routine. Once she was back, we picked up the routine where we left off.

Oh, I had a paper towel in my case, so I put it on the spot. Not so much to clean it up, but to mark it for me so I knew where it was.

Every time this happens you need to instantly read the situation to know what the appropriate way to handle it is.

-Louie

Wireless HDMI

Thanksgiving was a few months ago, but I want to say that I’m thankful for this this thing to come into my life!

It’s a wireless HDMI system. This allows me to not have to run a cord from my camera onstage to where ever their HDMI input is. I’ve used it a lot since I got it and I just upgraded it. Before it had to be plugged into power, but I bought the batteries for it, so now I don’t need a power outlet. My video is pretty much 100% self contained now, I just have the output wires from the camera to the wireless HDMI. It’s soo much more mobile now and setting up so soo quick!

-Louie

Packet Tricks with Money by Larry West

Recently I’ve been playing with packet trick techniques using money instead of cards. I discovered this set of lecture notes by Larry West that has two trick using bills like cards for a packet trick style effect.

The two tricks is the lecture notes are very similar, in fact they are the same effect, but with different methods. One uses a gaffed bill and the other doesn’t. I think that one of the reasons that money packet trick magic isn’t really a thing is because to make any gaffed bills, like a one dollar bill with a ten on the backside might be crossing the line with what’s legal or not. Also the cost to put them out as you’d have to add the cost of the bills to the trick.

Anyway, here are the two money tricks from Larry West’s lecture notes:

@louiefoxx Cheating the con man! #magictrick #magic #money #conman #counting #math #magiciam #vintagemagic ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

@louiefoxx Hustling the Hustler! #magictrick #money #magic #moneymagic #hustle #con #vintagemagic ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

I’m not sure which version is better.

-Louie

Applause Please 2: The Encore

Another batch of Applause Please 2: The Encore will be ready soon! This is the prop that I use for the object in light bulb effect. Traditionally this effect uses a lamp onstage, but I’ve changed that lamp to an applause sign!

I don’t have these in stock all the time as the outer applause box I don’t make, Phil over at Ackerly Builds currently makes them for me. That means that I get them in batches of about a dozen and those are then all gimmicked at the same time and offered for sale at the same time and usually sell out pretty quickly.

The current batch of Applause Please 2: The Encore can be preordered at:
https://www.magicshow.tips/applause-please-2-the-encore/
The estimated ship date is March 3rd, 2025.

-Louie

Tinkertopia!!!

One of my favorite stores is in Tacoma, WA, it’s called Tinkertopia. It’s a reclaimed material store that resells this stuff for art.

They have soo much cool stuff, and I always find things that I can use as a part of a magic prop or for some other project.

One of the things that I found were some hinged plastic circles. You can see them on the counter in the above picture. They are 4 segments that are hinged to make circles. I’m thinking I’m going to use them for something similar to the hinged ruler figures that magicians used to do.

The challenge with a store like this is that once they sell out of something, you many never find it again. They had these hinged circles in three colors, so I bought two of each color for a total of six of them. I’m kinda regretting not buying them out of all of them, I have a strange feeling I’ll either need more for whatever idea I come up with, or I’ll fall in with whatever my idea is and want to make a backup and I won’t be able to find more.

Then there’s the possibility that I don’t come up with anything I like with them and end up throwing them away. That’s the gamble.

-Louie

Getting to the Gig in the Winter!

In Seattle when it snows, the whole city shuts down. It’s due to the hills and that Seattle doesn’t get much snow, so there’s a lot less infrastructure to deal with it. The other night I had a gig in downtown Seattle and there was snow in the forecast. This gig was for a national convention, which means most of the people attending were from out of town and staying at the hotel where the convention was being held. That meant if it snowed, the event was still going to happen.

For me, the solution was to get a hotel walking distance from the gig, that was if it snowed I would still be able to make it to the gig. Sure the room cost me money out of my pocket, but I looked at it as insurance to protect the much larger paycheck.

The gig went well and it didn’t snow, but I enjoyed the 6 minute walk to the venue!

When I was in my early 20’s and working a lot of comedy rooms on the road, we did whatever it took to make the gig happen. That’s when I started travelling with emergency things like a microphone, so the gig would happen no matter if the sound guy showed up or whatever.

Many magicians are cheap and wouldn’t invest in the room and then complain that they had to cancel the gig because they got snowed out. I’m not saying you should throw away money on unnecessary things, but I am saying sometimes the insurance is worth it!

-Louie

Mentalist: Uri Gator!

Never pass up an interesting photo! Last week I was doing roving magic at an event and they had an reptile attraction at it. In my roving set I was doing spoon bending and did it for the people running the reptile exhibit.

I had them put the spoon in the alligator’s foot like it was the mentalist and it ended up being a fun picture!

Stuff like this is good social media content, but also something that the event loved and they used the picture!

Always be on the lookout for things like this!

-Louie

Silent Movie

A few weeks ago we went to see a silent movie with the music played by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. This show was sold out and it was a ton of fun.

When watching the movie one of the things that surprised me was the length of time that the title/dialog cards were shown for. It felt like they were either shown way too long or not long enough to read them.

When I was a kid in a high school journalism class we were told that you were supposed time yourself reading the words and add two seconds and that was how long you displayed them.

What does this mean for magic?

Well when you talk, especially telling jokes you need to make sure the whole (or most of) audience has caught up to the end of the set up before you do the punchline. For a magic effect, you need to display at the end long enough for the whole audience to realize what happened and process the magic effect.

– Louie

Dunninger Epherma!

We bought a house a few weeks ago and are moving. One of the fun things about moving is finding things that I had forgotten that I had. This tie clip turned up!

This tie clip belonged to Joseph Dunninger! I have that a few other things that were his. I need to figure out a way to display it, for now it’ll sit on my desk!

-Louie

Story Master Class with Jeff McBride

One of the things I’m trying to be better about in 2025 is being better. Just improving at anything/everything that I do. It’s to not plateau, which is easy to do, you just get lazy.

One of the things that I did was take a class at Mystery School with Jeff McBride. This was the Story Master Class, and was all about telling your story. This was an online class, so it happened over Zoom.

This was my first time taking a class from Mystery School, and I was impressed. It was really well thought out, was homework each week for the three weeks and even David Copperfield popped in to give his thoughts on storytelling!!

I feel like I learned a lot from the class and really covered a lot of different styles of telling stories, with an emphasis on telling your personal story. I really liked the class and while I try to have some sort of personal hook for every routine that I do, I think it makes me want to dig a little deeper and put more of my story into the full routine.

If you’ve been on the fence about a workshop with Mystery School, I really liked the class that I took, jump in an take one!

– Louie