Category: Pictures

Magic Garage Sale…

I’m putting together a magic garage sale on July 11th! It’s a literal garage sale, so you have to show up in person for the deals. What’s left I may try to sell on facebook used magic groups, and a lot of it will probably just go to the dump.

There’s a lot of cool stuff, and I was just going through last night and putting prices on things. The garage sale prices are pretty cheap, there are a lot of deals to be had! If I end up listing stuff on the internet for sale, it will be more than the garage sale prices.

Here’s what I priced yesterday:

There’s a lot more! If you’re going to be in the Seattle area on 7/11/21, send me an email and I’ll give you the details!

Leaving My Show…

One thing that’s great about my show is that I can fly with it. However right now my show is in the trunk of my car at the airport in Sacramento, I flew home during a gap between gigs in California. This summer I’m driving to all of my shows, this is due to rental cars being expensive right now and all of the reports I’ve been seeing about people with rental car reservations being denied a car because the rental car company over booked and there are no cars to rent.

Leaving my show in my car always causes me a little bit of stress. When I left the car I locked up my show case:

In my street show I do a chain escape, so my case is locked to my suitcase and they are both locked to my car by about 75 feet of chain! What that means is that if someone wants to steal my case, they can, it’s just going to be a pain in the butt! It’s not a quick smash and grab.

This gives me a little bit of peace of mind leaving it in another state.

Final Virtual Show…

My final scheduled virtual magic show was yesterday at 9:30am…and it was for a group of middle school aged kids. I’m going to say that middle school age isn’t the ideal demographic for 9:30am. They had fun, and so did I!

This show had some problems which are why virtual shows stressed me out. The big one was my internet dropped about 2 mins from the start of the show. I was back in the zoom before the show started. it’s one of those things that had it happened 5 mins later, it would have been a bigger issue. Zoom also wasn’t recognizing my mic, so I had to use my laptop’s mic. That also wasn’t a huge deal, but it just adds to the stress of these gigs.

I ran this show solo, normally I have my daughter run the production on the show. It was fun, but I’m glad to be back to performing in person.

I had a great time learning to perform in a virtual venue, and I really loved creating magic for virtual shows. I’m not saying I will never do another virtual show, there are just no more on my calendar.

Simple Solutions…

This week I’m performing at a fair and here’s the view of the audience from the stage:

The table and chairs are for the judges of the pageant which happens at the end of the day (after my shows). Also all of the chairs have notes that say “reserved on them”.

This particular fair has trouble getting audiences to watch shows at this stage.

Can you guess why?

If you answered there’s no where for the audience to sit, you are correct. Most people given the choice will choose to not sit on the grass.

For my first show, I told people they could sit on the chairs. Quickly I filled all of the chairs for my show. With the success of giving people somewhere to sit, for my second show I drug over a bench. That bench filled. For my final show I drug over two more benches and those benches filled.

The solution was soo simple, give the people somewhere to sit, and they’ll watch the show.

Jerry Andrus Gravesite

I was driving some Seattle to California the other day and on a whim wondered if Jerry Andrus’s grave was on the route. I pulled over and a quick google search showed that it was about 5 mins off the freeway in Jefferson, Oregon! I took the detour to visit it and left some safety pins.

Jerry andrus gravesite

If you don’t know who Jerry Andrus was, he was one of the most innovative magicians of my lifetime and that I’ve ever met! He was doing cardistry 50 years before it was a thing. His Zone Zero trick is still a standard stage magic trick. Jeki Yoo has a huge chunk of his lecture devoted to that trick.

Besides magic, Jerry Andrus was a genius with optical illusions!

I also swung by the Castle of Chaos where he lived

It’s now a historic place!

This was a fun little side trip and great way to break up a long drive!

Magic Collection…

Many years ago I used to buy magic collections of magicians who had passed. I would keep the books or props that I wanted and resell the rest. It’s been a while since I have done that for myself. Last year a did sell off a collection of magic that was a friend of mine who had passed and all the money went to his son.

The other day I was contacted about a magic collection and went out and picked it up. The person had one of my Evaporation tricks, and this was from the original run of 36 that I sold at a magic convention in Canada.

One thing that I think people don’t realize is that most of the stuff in a magic collection is worthless. Usually about half is unsellable because it’s damaged, counterfeit or shipping would cost more than the prop.

You should be realistic about what your collection is worth and to not really count things that have a used value of less than $20. Sure, they do add up, but they are hard as hell to sell!

Empty Venue vs Full Venue…

A couple of nights ago I went to a Seattle Mariners baseball game. It was interesting as there was virtually no one there. In the state that I live in they can have vaccinated sections as well as pod seating. I sat in the vaccinated section, which was pretty empty…the whole ballpark was pretty empty.

What was really interesting was the things that they played to get the crowd pumped up. All the little graphics with sound effects fell flat on the crowd. Whoever plays the sounds was playing them like it was a bigger crowd. I don’t know if they have incentive to mess around with other techniques, especially when our state opens up in less than two weeks.

Performers know that you really need to work a small, spread out crowd differently than a packed house.

Here’s what worked: The interactive things on the jumbotron, we have a hydroplane race where the crowd cheers for a color, and they do a shellgame with baseball hats and a baseball.

Seeing that I would have tried doing some facts or trivia about the batter, then rolling the reaction into a sound/graphic that pumped up the crowd. I don’t know if it would have worked, but it would probably have done at least as well as what they were doing.

Trying to Support…

Last week I while I was in the Bay Area, I went up to San Francisco with a bunch of other acts that were performing at a fair. We walked by a Houdini’s Magic Shop and one of my friends asked if I could help him find a good bar trick. I knew exactly what would be good for him.

When we got in the guy working the counter never looked up at us. He was doing trick for someone at the counter and despite us standing right there he never even glanced at us. He was soo focused on one person he lost out on a sale.

I ran a magic shop for a long time when I was a younger and the thing is whenever anyone walks in you greet them. You don’t need to do anything fancy, or stop in the middle of a demo. A simple “hi” really goes a long way.

Is the lack of the $20 sale going to hurt the shop in a high tourist area?

Probably not.

Over time it does add up, and pausing between demos to sell me something wouldn’t affect the sale he was working on with the customer in front of him.

Table Top View…

In my show I primarily work out of the little bin on the top of my table. It allows me access to my props without having to reach squat to reach down into a case that’s on the floor. It also lets me look into the case and see everything quickly and easily. This is what my table top looks like at the beginning of the show:

As some of the larger props get used they get moved to the trunk on the floor. This is a fairly efficient way for me, as a one man act to manage my props.

Many years ago, I used to work out of my show case that was on the floor. When I was younger I didn’t mind squatting down and grabbing props. As I’ve gotten older, I don’t like to do that, also, ducking behind a case visually doesn’t look good onstage.

Back in Time…

One thing in magic is that people get hung up on is who created what and that if they thought of it without outside influence, then no one else could have possibly had the same thought.

My Russian Shell Game routine was inspired by a magazine column that Gary Oulette wrote. His ending used stacks of cups as the final loads to a cups and balls routine. In the article he “reserved all manufacturing rights“, I’m assuming he did this thinking no one had thought of the idea before.

Recently I was looking for something else and came across Cups and Cups and Cups and balls by Geoffrey Robinson

It’s the exact same idea as Gary’s, but it Gary never had a set made. Geoffrey did and it appears he had to do some problem solving. If you notice the small holes in the top, they are there (I’m assuming) to keep them from sticking together from the suction created if they are too tightly nested.

At the end of the day, you can’t assume you are the first person to have an idea!