Sometimes where you perform outdoors you’ll have issues with the weather. One night it rained most of the day, and that killed attendance for the shows right after it stopped raining. There was literally no people on the fairgrounds to pull to make an audience, so we used the time as practice time.
The juggler at the fair and I used that down time to work on some lasso tricks:
And since we both had lassos, I was able to try doing two lassos at the same time!
We could have called the show and not performed, however we both got in some fun practice time! I always try to look for spots in my day when I can get in a little bit of practice and a rained out show was a great spot!
In working on the trick with pictures of my cat, that is really just a clock prediction using UTP/Time Hacker this week, I feel like I’m learning a lot.
First of all, I was going to have the cat pictures like a list joke, where there are three pictures and I end up the final one of my cat. It think I only need one picture and that’s of my cat. Initially I was hoping to get 5 mins from the routine, but it’s looking like it’ll be more of a 3 min routine and that’s fine if that’s where the trick naturally wants to land. There no reason to make a trick longer than it needs to be.
The second thing I learned was if you ask someone to give you a random time, they give things like six o’clock, which is fine, but not very interesting. The reveal is better if they are thinking of 6:17 as it feels more impossible.
The final thing I’m coming up with is that this trick needs an out. The first day I did it, it worked great…but the second day it failed both times. I think the fails were user error, so I’ll try to figure it out…
One of the tricks that I do is my version of the Invisible Deck. It’s really just a card prediction and not really an Invisible Deck, but that was my starting point, so I call it that. I’m always looking for new methods that work better and came across the trick Portent.
Here’s the blurb for the trick:
One of the hits of Canadian Alain Choquette’s popular stage act!
The magician predicts ahead of time the exact identity of a card freely chosen by a spectator not a stooge.
The prediction is sealed in an envelope, which was hanging above the heads of the audience! No sleight-of-hand, no magicians’ choices, no forces, no manipulation, no switches, no electronics. The magician touches neither the deck, nor the envelope. This is recommended only to stage & cabaret performer.
This trick hasn’t been made for a long time, but you can still find them for about $75. I found the instruction booklet for $5 and bought that.
I’m glad I just bought the booklet, as there’s a HUGE condition missing from the trick. You need a second person to do it, which 100% makes it a trick that won’t work for me. I’m glad I just have $5 into this trick and not $75. If you’ve got a second person, and working in a more formal venue, it not a bad method.
This trick is one of the reasons I’m weary of any trick that’s advertised basically as a list of what it’s not. When I see that, frequently there’s a play on words with the things on the list or it’s a very impractical method.
this is the beginning of my fair season and I was going through and fixing, cleaning and upgrading props. One of the props in my show is a bowl that holds a ball of yarn. I use a plastic bowl instead of glass because it travels better and is much lighter!
Over time the bowl has really gotten beaten up and it was time to replace it.
I probably hung onto the old bowl for too long, but I liked it because it’s half the height of any plastic bowl that I’ve been able to find. Sometimes you don’t realize how bad things look until you see them next to a new one!
Here’s a rough idea I had for a St. Patrick’s Day themed magic trick that’s a “touch the screen” style trick. You’ll need a four leaf clover with the leaves numbered 1 to 4.
The rules are people will jump on leave for each number, the can only go clockwise or counter clockwise, back and forth NOT diagonally. They also cannot pass the stem.
The touch any leaf, then count the number they’re touching, jumping one leaf per number.
They’re not on the 1, so remove that one.
Now they spell IRISH jumping one leaf for each letter.
You can now eliminate the 2 and 4 and reveal they are on the number 3!
NOTE: It might be good add a phase after they spell IRISH, where you eliminate the 4. Then have them spell LUCK, then eliminate the 2 and reveal they are on the 4. That might make it seem more random?
That math seems to checkout, and feel free to use this for whatever…
One of the symptoms of getting older is that my vision is going. One of the tricks I’m working on this week is Time Hacker by Pitata Magic. The device has switches and the functions are molded into the plastic. Unfortunately I can’t easily read this stuff anymore, so I had to add labels the unit and a cheat sheet to the board that the remote is mounted on.
It’s little things like this that make setting up the show much easier and will reduce the chance of mistakes. For example the remote has two modes and two switches, and it’d be easy to forget which is which. Now I really have no excuse to flip the wrong switch.
Look at your show and try to find spots where you can dummy proof or at least reduce the odds you’ll make a dumb mistake.
This morning I’m heading out to AZ for my first fair gig of the year. When I do fairs, I try to work on new material. I’ll be doing something like 15 stage shows, plus I can do as much close up as I want in between shows.
The presentation is based on a old myth that was popular during the WWII era myth that Asians can tell time by looking at a cats eyes. I had some posters made of my cat and someone is going to try to guess the time and that’s the time on the clock.
I’m hoping the idea of having a cat and talking about my cat will suck people into the trick. I’m not sure how it’ll play, but I have five full days of shows to try to figure it out!!
The other night my wife and I went to a hockey game and it got me thinking about magic with a hockey puck. The nice thing about them is that they can be big, or fairly small depending on the side you have towards the audience. It’s also a really well known thing, at least in the northern hemisphere.
This morning I wrote a bunch of ideas and found one that I kinda like:
You have five different colored hockey pucks on the table. You ask if someone in the audience played hockey or a sport as a kid. Ask them if they remember their number and using that number you count across the pucks back and forth finally ending on one. Let’s say they ended on the green puck.
You then have a prediction that shows they picked the green puck…but then on the back of your puck has their number on the back!
This is simply Phil Smith’s Quinta Force and a nail writer.
Not much to it. It’s a pretty simple and direct trick. You could use any force like PATEO or the Hot Rod Force, but I personally like that with Quinta you can use their jersey number.
One act that I’ve been thinking about is Krystal Younglove’sstrongwoman act.
It’s something that really fills the stage without much in the way of props. It’s the two metal triangles, some rope and 4-6 people from the audience. I think the stunt is very relatable, you’re playing “tug of war” against two groups of people from the audience at the same time.
For me a lot of strength feats fall flat because it’s a “look how cool I am” sort of thing, but I with this particular one, no one wins and you’re fighting a losing battle and essentially it ends in a three way tie. I really like it and I’m surprised more people don’t do it.
In the French Quarter in New Orleans I ran into a street performer. He was doing standard stuff in a pretty standard way. It wasn’t bad, but for me it was just “meh”.
He closed with the cups and balls. If you look at the picture above, you can see the table top. The above picture was taken with the camera held above my head.
I also took a picture of with the camera at my eye level:
I was in the 3rd row and couldn’t see a thing. The busker had trouble building past the second row, and that’s because you couldn’t see what he was doing.
I know I write about this a lot on this blog, but most magicians would learn a lot about what’s visible if they saw a picture of their show from the audience’s eyeline.
Have a friend take a picture of your show and check out your audience’s sight lines, it’s eye opening!
