Pictures – Page 83 – MagicShow.Tips

Riser / Summers Vanishing Birdcage

I’m just wrapping up run of 8 days of shows using the Riser/Summers Baby Lindy Vanishing Birdcage. This is the first long run of shows that I’ve done using the cage. First of all, this cage has really no break in time, it’s good to go right out of the box and for me it’s the perfect amount of rigidity.

Jim Riser Dan Summers Baby Lindy Vanishing Birdcage

I use a Nielsen rubber canary in my cage, and currently the Riser/Summers cage comes with one, which is nice. I’ve noticed that there are two types of the canaries that Nielsen has put out over the years. One of them is a lighter yellow and one is a brighter yellow. The lighter yellow one is a thinner latex than the brighter yellow one. I prefer the lighter one inside of my cage as it collapses much flatter and if any of it is sticking out of the cage, it doesn’t really provide any resistance if it catches on my sleeve.

This cage works perfectly with my Take Up Reel, so I’m able to close the show with it. The other thing that’s great about this cage’s size is that I’m able to bend my elbow with it all the way up my sleeve, making the motions of my arm much more natural feeling (at least to me) after the vanish.

I’m having a great time with this cage and if you’re in the market for a cage, I recommend the Riser/Summers Baby Lindy Vanishing Birdcage!
-Louie
Click here to learn more about the vanishing birdcage!

Bubba Bear and the Bad Land Band…

Sometimes I see things on fairgrounds that make no sense to me in the moment. Recently I saw Bubba Bear and the Bad Land Band.

This is a trailer stage that had an animatronic animal band and Mark Twain. If I was betting, these are older robots from a Chuck E Cheese that have been repurposed for this show.

Here’s a peek at the show:

The show runs every 10 minutes, I didn’t watch more than one show, so I don’t know if they are all different.

The show is (in my opinion) not good, however I do think it serves several important purposes. First of all the trailer stage and graphics look great and it looks like something you want on your fairgrounds. Next, it runs all day, and it has benches, so it’s a chance for people to sit down for a few minutes, however no one is going to sit on those benches for hours chatting. Also, it doesn’t really take man power (unless it breaks down), so it’s an easy to fill a blank spot on a fairgrounds. Oh, it’s owned by the carnival, so I’m going to imagine that if they have a ride that’s supposed to be at the fair, they can easily substitute this in. Finally, it’s free for the people attending the fair, so it’s something that’s not a money grab.

That illustrates something that you need to know if you want to perform at fairs, what is your purpose on the fairgrounds? A fair may book you because they want an awesome show, they may book you because they need to move guests a certain direction on the fairgrounds, or any number of reasons. The sooner you understand why you’re there, you’ll be much more successful!

With all of that considered, I’d still not watch the show again…but if I ran a fair, I’d probably book it and be happy with having it on my fairgrounds.

-Louie

Drink Ticket Magic…

Back in October I started trying to go to more open mics to play with new ideas. I haven’t been to as many as I’d like, however the one I went to last night was a gave us drink tickets. That got me thinking about a trick with them.

If you showed the ticket, then it grew to about the size of a sheet of paper! For the finale you produce a drink out of the giant ticket!

That’s a great little routine that would be a good opener, especially for something like a corporate holiday party where they are giving out drink tickets.

As for a routine, you could tell a story about trying to use a drink ticket and that the bartender told you it would only get you a small drink. The ticket grows and you got a full beer.

The challenge would be making the growing ticket not look like it was just folded up behind the small ticket. I guess that’s the gag the sets up the production of the drink, so the growing doesn’t need to be the strongest trick.

-Louie

Prop Maintenance

Last week I performed at a fair that was very windy and dusty. One of the things that the wind and dust (plus the sun) does is put a lot of wear and tear on your props. After the fair wrapped up, I got up early the next morning before my flight home and did some cleaning and maintenance on my props.

There were several things that I just had to throw away as the dust made them not work properly and I really couldn’t get inside them to clean them. It was also a good time to give my magic show props a good once over to look for things that need repairs, or touch ups.

The nice thing about doing this clean up before I left is when I fly back to CA in a couple of days, I won’t have to clean my props, I can just load into the next gig.

-Louie
Click here for more information about learning to build your own magic props.

Moving On Up…

I recently was performing at a fair that had a very challenging stage.

The audience was 25 feet from the front of the stage and the were many visual barriers between the stage and the audience. There was no way to fill that gap, the hay bales were decorative, to cover the front of the stage, so I couldn’t convert them to seating.

The solution for me was to not use the stage, but do the show directly in front of the bleachers. That closed the gap between me and the audience. The show lost some “status” doing it on the ground and not the stage, but the advantage of being close to the audience outweighed the loss of perceived “status”.

Personally when I’m at a gig where the setup is less than ideal, I will try to find solutions to the problem. Sometimes at hotel gigs, it’s doing the show on the dance floor and not using the stage…but sometimes you need to use the stage as your show will get lost on the dance floor in a big venue with the audience seated at tables. At the end of the day you need to weigh the pros and cons of the venue and make choices that will hopefully be advantageous for your show.
-Louie

Visiting Hocus Pocus!

One my way to the airport in Fresno yesterday, I swung by Hocus Pocus to hang out a bit and dig around their bins of magic. I had a great time chatting with Max, and Kyle Elder happened to be there, so it was fun to chat ACAAN with him!

Hocus Pocus is is the only place to get the magic tricks that I make (other than directly from me). They usually have all of my products in stock!

When I travel it’s important for me to support the remaining magic shops. If we don’t support them, they’re won’t be any to run into when you need something!
-Louie

Rock Magic…

It was nice out, so I went magnet fishing out at the river. Essentially magnet fishing it having a very strong magnet on the end of a rope and tossing it into the water and seeing what metal it brings back. Unfortunately I didn’t get any big chunks of metal, but I did get a handful of decent sized rocks that are attracted to a magnet.

I think the average person who is not a “rock hound” thinks about river rocks as something that you would use with a magnet. That’s something that I could use to my advantage. The key to any trick using these would have to be that the trick isn’t about the rock being attracted to a magnet.

What I mean by that is that if you did a trick with Frixion Ink and just made the ink disappear, the method is the trick. However once you add a layers, like it reveals a card AND not all the ink disappear, the method is no longer the trick.

Trying to distance the obvious method from the trick is another challenge. For example you make a nail move by itself on the table, it’s less effective than if you made a die roll by itself. This reason is that dice aren’t normally associated with a magnet, which is the obvious way that trick would work, where it’s not a huge intellectual leap to connect a magnet and a nail.

I need to sit down and do some brainstorming to figure out what I can do with these…
-Louie

Avocado Magic!

One of the things that I wanted to do when I was in Las Vegas to hang out at Magic Live was to go to Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart. Omega Mart is a huge immersive art installation that’s a strange grocery store and you can actually buy the things there. If you explore there are hidden doors that take you to the crazy places!

It’s totally worth a stop in you’re in one of the cities where they have locations. While we were in the store portion of the Omega mart, I saw an avocado purse, this is a realistic avocado that is made of rubber, but is hollow and has a zipper on it.

The magician in me got thinking about what I could do with it. The obvious trick would be to take something out of it, then at the end of the routine it becomes a real avocado! The addition would be to have a zipper on the reel avocado that you peel off at the end then cut open the avocado.

For a routine you open the purse and take out an avocado pit. Do a trick with it, like a one coin routine, with the pit continually reappearing in the avocado purse. Then the finale is it’s a real avocado.

Another idea is you could cut it in half and now you have an avocado shell. You could do multiplying avocados, or use the shell to steal something else.

Hmm…what if you have a paper cup, an plastic knife and an avocado pit. You do a cup and ball routine, ending with the avocado purse. You get the surprise of the avocado appearing, but then you blow it off by revealing it’s a purse and the pit is inside it. Use that moment of surprise to steal the real avocado and switch the purse for the real one. Do another phase, and steal the avocado like a in Tommy Wonder’s cups and balls and produce it again. This time ask them to open it, and they can’t. Offer the plastic knife you’ve been using as a wand to them to cut it open!

I hope this inspires you when you see things that would be good for magic tricks to think of things you can actually do with them and not just that you could do things with them.

-Louie

Remote Control Alarm Clock…

A couple of months ago I got a lot of vintage magic at a garage sale and one of the things was a vanishing alarm clock stand (no clocks). I also have a lot of remote control units here, so I made a remote control alarm clock:

When you push the button the alarm rings

I’m not sure how I’m going to do this in the show. Traditionally you cover the clock and hang it from the stand. When you hang it, it starts ringing and you pull away the cloth and the alarm clock is gone. Then the alarm clock reappears somewhere else. I think I’ll use the remote control alarm clock as the one that reappears and the ringing is how it will announce it’s reappearance.

-Louie
Click here to learn more about building your own magic props!

To Lure With Spectacle!

When I was performing in King City, CA a few weeks ago my buddy Skip Banks let me read his copy of To Lure With Spectacle by Jimmy Talksalot. I mentioned to Skip that there was a couple of things about my street show that I didn’t like and he brought in the book for me to read the next day.

I was a great read and it really helped me solve some of the problems I was having with my street show. I like it so much I bought one for myself!

The current edition looks different from the previous one, it’s got a lot less frills, but the same great information. If you’re interested in doing street shows, I highly recommend it!
-Louie