After a summer of performing, I was doing some prop maintenance and noticed how gross the ropes I use have gotten!
Going through your props a couple times a year to clean them up or replace things that get worn out is a good thing to do. It’ll keep your show looking fresh and not beat up.
-Louie
The final day at the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians (PCAM) convention was a show day for me. I skipped the card clinic in the morning to prep my show for the afternoon. Here’s what I look like before showtime (I’ll add the after later in this post)!
The show went well, it took a few minutes to warm up the audience, but they were great!
A lot of magicians are nervous about performing for magicians. One way to look at it is that they are just people, and in theory, if they’re at a magic convention, they are magic fans. That should give you a head start, as they’ll likely appreciate what you’re doing, unlike a dentist convention.
Here I am after the show, a sweaty mess!
After my show, it was a dinner break, then wrapping up the evening was the One Handed Cut A Thon and the Bag of Tricks contest.
The One-Handed Cut-A-Thon was for whoever could do the most charlier cuts in a minute for the first round and the most in 90 seconds for the final round.
I made it to the final round, but unfortunately, I didn’t win. I did win the Slickest One-Hand Cut award!
Then it was the Bag of Tricks contest. In this contest you get a paper bag with about 14 items and you have to come up with an routine using only those items. You have to use all 14 items or you get a deduction. All the bags were the same, except that each bag had one wild card item, that was different in each bag.
I entered as a team with Mike Norden. Our wildcard item was a tiny smock.
We ended up getting second place, but it was a ton of fun!
The PCAM convention was a ton of fun, and it’s really a family there. Everyone is cool and open to hang out with anyone! I highly recommend this convention to anyone!
-Louie
The third day of the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians Convention started with the Teach a Trick workshops.
These are hands on workshops which ran about 20 minutes each. There were several stations that the magicians rotated through. It was a lot of fun and a great way to make sure everyone took away something new!
After lunch we had the contest awards presentation. You can see the full list with pictures on the PCAM’s facebook page at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/pcam.magic/permalink/10162386689637266/
The next event was one of the things I was really looking forward to, and that was Peter Samelson’s show. I’ve heard a lot about him, read his book Theatrical Close Up.
His show wasn’t what I was expecting. That’s not bad, in fact, I really loved his show. I thought it was going to be a more “artsy” show, but his show was amazing and FUN! I chatted with him about this, and he said that he used to do a more artsy show, but wanted to do a more fun show, and he definitely succeeded in that!
After the show it was a happy hour magic jam in one of the ship’s bars.
Later that night we had Peter Samelson’s lecture. It’s a great lecture on a 12 minute act that has a lot of texture to it. His Ashes on Palm stuff is amazing!
The evening wrapped up with some late night BS’ing and magic jam
It was a super fun day! Tomorrow, the ship stops at Santa Barbara, CA, which is the ship’s only stop on this short run. Tomorrow is also my show day; I have an afternoon show at 3:30 pm, so I need to go through my gear and make sure I have everything I need for it.
-Louie
The second day of the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians convention started out with James Cielen’s talk about performing on cruise ships.
James’s talk was a great insight into what it takes to consistantly be working on cruise ships.
Then it was a break for lunch, which was hosted by Henry Tom.
After lunch was the stage contest. I was recruited to be a judge, so I couldn’t watch for fun, I had to watch for “work”. Lots of great acts! One of the acts produced two live fish! These weren’t gold fish, they were about 10ish inches long and were FISH!
You can see pictures of the contestants on the PCAM’s social media at;
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17cjxmZPLH/
That night was the night of my lecture:
You can order notes from me at: https://www.magicshow.tips/lecture-notes-2025/
And thanks to Brian Cook for my post lecture beer!
Tomorrow has Peter Samelson’s show and lecture, which I’m really looking forward to!
-Louie
This week I’m lecturing and performing at the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians (PCAM) convention aboard the Holland America ship, the Eurodam. I got into Canada the day before the cruise. With the extra day in the Vancouver BC area, I went to see Shawn Farquhar’s Hidden Wonders show!
Shawn’s show is great and it’s a really smart format. It’s not a rigid show, and they way it’s presented makes it feel fresh for the audience.
Then a bunch of the magicians who were in town the night before the convention all went out to hang out!
That brings us to day one of the convention. This year’s PCAM convention is on the cruise ship Eurodam. Before I got onto the ship, I had breakfast with Paul Romhany and Peter Samuelson.
Paul isn’t attending the convention, so it was nice to see him.
Boarding the ship was a potential problem for me as I had my show with me, but I wasn’t a guest entertainer hired by the ship. That means they didn’t have to let me bring any props onboard that they objected to. I really lucked out. I have a whip and that’s the prop I was worried about getting taken away.
I got really lucky, the x-ray screener saw the whip and told the person next to her that I had she thought I had a whip. The second person took my case and handed it to a third person and said, “He has a wire“. The third person opened the case and and saw a coiled up power cord and said, “is this the wire?” I said, “yes” and they closed my case and let me proceed.
Now that I was on the ship with all of my gear I could relax a little bit.
The opening event for the convention was James Cielen‘s show.
We were supposed to see his show in the main theater as part of the cruise, but his schedule shifted, so he did a show just for us. The show he did was close up magic that was projected onto a screen. It was a solid choice of material and I it was great to see what a full close up show for a theater looks like.
The next two events were presented by Daniel Garcia.
He performed a close-up show, a Q&A session, and a lecture. His material is great, and he did a great job explaining why he does things the way he does.
I picked up his One Card, which is a great way to do a named card in envelope.
That took us to about 11 pm, and it was time for me to go to bed.
Today is day two, which has the close up and stage contests. James Cielen has a Q&A about working on cruises, and my lecture is tonight. It’ll be a full day, and I’ll probably need to take a nap or two to make it through.
-Louie
I just started reading the book Openers. This book is a compilation of “openers” for magic shows. The book is mostly close up openers so far, but I’m only about 1/3 into the book.
So far my favorites are:
Virus by John Guastaferro: This is a full deck, all backs routine where one side then turns blank, then to normal playing card faces. It’s not too hard to do. I like the routine, however I think I’d need to find a new theme for it. His theme is great, just not for me.
Contender by Liam Montier: This is a quick trick where you know which card someone is thinking of. I think this is a great “bar bet” style of trick.
I should also mention that I’ve been hunting for chop cup routines that don’t use a table and there’s one in this book called The Gold Cup Con by Carl Royle. It’s a close up routine using a small chop cup that will hold a golf ball. It’s a great routine, just not for what I’m personally trying to do with a chop cup.
I’m looking forward to the rest of the book!
-Louie
In a week I’m heading out to the 2025 PCAM convention to do my full show and a lecture. If you can’t make it, you can get the lecture notes from me!
2025 Lecture Notes .pdf $25 [wp_cart_button name=”2025 lecture notes pdf” price=”25″]
These are the lecture notes from the lecture that I will present at the 2025 PCAM magic convention. They focus is on stand up/stage magic. They contain seven tricks/routines and five essays.
48 pages
These are a .pdf that will be emailed to you within 24 hours of placing your order.
2025 Lecture Notes .pdf $25 [wp_cart_button name=”2025 lecture notes pdf” price=”25″]
In the October issue of Vanish Magazine I’m teaching the Stand Up Chop Cup routine that I’ve been doing this summer. I wrote about this routine a little bit ago, it was created with rules.
Those rules were pretty simple:
1: No table: I don’t work behind a table, and didn’t want to add one just for a chop cup. Also, when on a raised stage, it can created a visibility issue for people seated on the floor below you.
2: No openly going to the pockets (or case): I think that if you constantly go to your pockets or prop case, it’s not hard for the audience to backtrack where the large production item came from. Sure they may not know how you got it there, but they know where it came from.
3: No one from the audience onstage: The chop cup really doesn’t need a spectator onstage…especially if their only job is to let you use their hands as a table. It’s a lot of dead time to bring someone on and off stage, and most chop cup routines don’t justify that.
Oh, I guess I should mention that this is a platform/stage routine and not a close up routine. I wanted to be able to do this as a solo piece onstage and the reason that I created it was there wasn’t anything that fit all three of those rules.
If this is something that appeals to you, check out the October 2025 issue of Vanish Magazine!
-Louie
Last week, I was able to attend the Society of American Magicians meeting in Portland, OR. It was their Most Entertaining Card Trick contest night.
It started with John doing a prediction that played like an invisible deck, but was a very different method!
Michael did a version of Fly Cards, where cards with pictures of flies moved around and ended with the pictures of the flies being smashed.
Vinod did a routine where the cards were shuffled by a spectator and they colors ended up separating into piles of red and black cards.
Jin did a do as I do routine where at the end he and a spectator both selected the same card!
Mel is a card trick with 3 piles of cards where a selected card jumped from pile to pile!
And the final contestant Larry did a trick where aces turned to jokers and back to aces!
The winner by popular vote was Jin!
It was fun to see all the different styles of performing card tricks!
-Louie
Here’s a fun little vintage magic trick by Pavel. It’s called Circulation or Rounding the Squares. It’s a novelty packet trick as the cards it uses aren’t p playing cards. Here’s what it looks like, and what I would change about it.
@louiefoxx Vintage Magic Trick by Pavel! #magic #magictrick #cardmagic #pavel #circulation #vintage #vintagemagic #louiefoxx #packettrick ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx
The ending is soo much cleaner if you palm off the gimmick, versus trying to hide it in the packet of cards. When I showed this trick to people, I was amazed at how hard the trick hit! I thought it wasn’t going to have much impact, but sometimes my view of the trick can be affected by a method I don’t like and I need to remember that no one sees the method.
-Louie
