I'm on the road from July 12th to August 17th.
No physical item orders will be shipped until I return on August 18th.
Digital products will still be emailed during this time
-Louie Foxx Dismiss
Another day, another change to my wheel. This is a subtle change, but I added colors to the wheel.
There’s a very good reason for this, I’ve figured out a way to force a color on the front and an object on the back. I can now do a prediction that will have three reveals with the wheel, the only variable would be the number, which would be the first selection. Once the first number is made, I can pull the prediction from an index and I’m set! It’ll take a lot of the heat off of the switch, as it happens at the very beginning of the routine!
Months ago I was texting with one of the groups I brainstorm with and I brought up the idea for this gag. You say, “You’ve been a great group, you know, I’m going to give you a free pitcher of beer!” You then reach into your wallet and remove a card with a picture of beer!
The play is on the picture/pitcher words that can sound similar. This would be a gag card similar to the Pride and Joy or the picture of my two kids.
When I have them printed, I also did a set with and empty pitcher. The idea is that I can also use the Out To Lunch principle and make the full pitcher become empty. I’m not sure if I’ll ever use it that way, however I was trying to be forward thinking. It’s much easier to have them both made at the same time, than having to go back and recreate it to make the empty pitcher.
About a week ago I had a post about the game wheel that I bought at a thrift store. I’m going to be using it with Haim Goldenburg’s Wheel of Mind force. The picture on left is what it looked like in the thrift store and the picture on the right is after I cleaned it up.
The problem with the white wheel is that while it is dry erase, it’s still very hard to clean. Also the white isn’t the best on camera. Learning that, I resurfaced the wheel and coated it with chalk board paint. Here’s what the front and back look like now:
It plays on camera much better this way and it’s easier to change the items on the back. Now I just need to figure out what I’m going to force in the show!
Magicians are the worst at giving advice for beginner magicians. Recently in a Facebook group a magician was asking for recommendations for beginner magic books. The majority of people that suggested The Amateur Magician’s Handbook.
This book is garbage for a beginners magic book by modern standards. Sure it started a lot of magicians, but I think it also turned off more people who were interested in magic. Compared to modern magic books (pretty much anything after Mark Wilson’s Complete Course In Magic book) it’s hard to learn from.
The main reason I think it’s still in print is because it’s got a great title.
I still love the book, and it definitely helped form who I am as a magician, but it’s not a great beginners book. It may be by 1950 standards, but not by modern standards.
It’s been a while since I just spent a good chunk of the day practicing for fun, not for something that’s intended to be in the show. Way back at the beginning of February I had an idea for a coin trick. I played with it a bit back in August, you can read the post and watch a practice video here.
Here’s what the routine looked like yesterday:
It looks way better than the video from August. Honestly I haven’t put too much time into it between February and August and between August and yesterday. It was fun to really spend the day trying to work out the sequence and make it happen!
It’s interesting the little magic fads that pop up on Instagram or other social media. Usually it’s a trick that’s cheap or easy to make, that’s really visually and easy to do. One that was going around recently was a floating pen by Rodrigo Romano:
It’s looks good, but it’s much inferior version of The NEW Incredible Floating Pen by Patrick Snowden and Kyle Elder. Their version can actually be done easily in the real world, where Romano’s version is basically for video.
Seeing all of these people float pens on their social media makes me wonder why you’d want to do that?
What I mean, is why would you also float a pen and not something else?
There are plenty of other pen like objects you could make something else float. I made up a version of the trick using a chicken wing and a dish of ranch dressing:
The two props make sense together, unlike a pen and a folded up playing card. For me, I think this is better social media content than floating a pen like everyone else. It visually it looks a lot different. The chicken wing and dish look like a different trick than the floating pen. Also for me, where my “brand” is doing less common things, it fits what I do much better!
How can you take the more “standard” tricks you do and make them visually different?
Many years ago I decided to not use fire in my show. The decision was based on not wanting to deal with regulations that vary from state to state or venue to venue. It was just too much of a challenge to do it in a legal way. I didn’t wan to have an anchor routine in my show that uses fire, then have to cut it because a venue tells me I can’t have fire.
With the shift to virtual shows, I’ve been playing with using fire a little bit. For example I created a “flaming bill change” where you light a one dollar bill on fire, and it changes into a twenty dollar bill. I think this is a great use of fire to enhance the magic moment of the bill change.
I’ve been using my “flaming jalapeno” for a lot of virtual content, and then this week I’ve finally started to use the “fire breather” for my flea circus. I’m having fun using a little bit of fire, however I don’t expect any of it to make it into my live, in person show.
I guess one of the silver linings to doing virtual shows is that I get to explore using fire!
Way back in the early summer when my state had first started to reopen after the initial pandemic shutdown, and friend texted me this picture of a game wheel at a thrift store for $2.99.
I drove up and bought it. It needed some work, the whole from was stained, and have some sort of glue residue in it. What I found interested was that it was heavier duty that most of the game wheels that I’d seen before. The wheel is two feet in diameter, and made of thick wood, so it’s heavy. The pole it’s on looked like the top pole of a speaker stand. I took it home and it fit into the base of a speaker stand, that would allow me to use it without a table. I threw away the plastic base in the picture above.
This then ended up sitting in my shed for months, as I didn’t want to deal with cleaning up the wheel. I didn’t have an idea of exactly what I was going to do with it. Then I remembered reading about trick called Wheel of Mind by Amir Lustig and Hiam Goldenberg. I wasn’t exactly sure of the what it did, aside from that it was a force. Hiam puts out some pretty clever stuff, and for $15, I figured why not check it out.
Wheel of Mind uses twelve spaces and my game wheel has 20 spaces. Luckily the trick still works with more spaces. The other challenge is that Wheel of Mind uses both sides of the wheel. It turns out it’s really easy to remove the game wheel I have from the stand and turn it over. Now that I have what I’m going to use the game wheel for, it’s time to clean it up.
The first step was scraping all of the glue off of it. However the actual wheel was stained by whatever pen had been used on it previously. The next step was to remove the pins, and peel off the graphic from the front.
I recovered it with white contact paper on the front and back. Then using electrical tape, I made some lines and wrote the numbers in.
For less than $30 (that’s including buying Wheel of Mind) I now have a fun looking prop that will force something. I probably wouldn’t travel with this, unless I was doing a run of shows. It’s mostly for virtual shows, it’s also a cool set piece to have behind me.
Lately I’ve been thinking about what live, in person magic shows will look like in 2021. I’m fairly optimistic that in person shows will happen, however they will look different. I think the majority of them will be no contact magic shows. That means you can’t have people from the audience come up on stage to help with the show.
I’m trying to plan for that now, and not have to adapt a week before a show. One thing I’m doing today is making a display holder for the front of my case. This is simply a tray that I can set flat props into so that they are upright and visible to the audience.
Here’s what the frontside looks like:
It’s currently being 3d printed in black. It is about 4.5 inches wide and 3 inches tall.
There’s a cut out in the back that I’m going to glue a magnet into. There’s already a magnet inside my case that I can stick this to. This is a simple solution as I don’t use a table to hold props I’m actively using.
Planning for the reality of what’s coming is probably better than hoping everything will be back to where it was a year ago. Even if all restrictions are lifted, the bonus is that I’m developing some new material!
One of the best kept secrets in magic is Nathan Coe Marsh. All of the material he does is well thought out and super solid! A year or two ago he sold a series of videos called “The Living Room Sessions“. These videos were in depth teaching videos of routines he performs around the world. I just noticed he’s got a special on them right now, and you should check them out:
All of the routines work in a stand up / stage context and don’t need someone from the audience to physically come on stage. This is going to be a very important condition for at least the next year.
Here’s a sample of one of his routines:
That’s a solid opening routine. He walks out, and gets right into the trick. The trick is good but the kicker is AMAZING!
