Ove the weekend my wife and I went out to check out Justin Willman’s Illusionati show in Portland. I’ll start with saying that I think his live show is great! He probably has one of the best opening tricks that I’ve seen. It wins over the audience and sets up his personality perfectly!
The other thing that Justin does really well is his use of the “close up camera”. All of the stuff that he does with it are enhanced by the camera, and not reliant on the camera. It’s all sorta interactive, it’s not just a close up on his hands while he does tricks. It’s all part of larger things. If you’re thinking of using a camera in your show, you really should go see Justin’s show.
The other thing that he does really well is letting spontaneous things happen. He’s the star of the show, but he doesn’t mind sharing that spotlight. That’s a huge contrast from a lot of “comedy magicians” where the second someone from the audience does something funny or interesting, they shut them down. It’s these spontaneous things that make a live show fun!
If Justin Willman in your town, be sure to check him out!
One of the things that I’ve noticed when going through old packet tricks from the 1970’s and 1980’s is that a lot of them will have a strange point where an extra card just appears. A good example of this is Mexican IV by Karl Fulves.
It’s strange when 3 cards turn into 4 cards, I don’t know how I feel about that. I was trying to give the trick some context and make the appearance of the fourth card make some sense, so here’s what I came up with:
Having the baby appear gives the fourth card appear some context, instead of a four turning into two aces. Another thing that I added was the change of the dog card to the dog and cat card, so there’s a little bonus effect in there!
If you’re learning a trick and something doesn’t make sense, figure out a way for it to make sense!
In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s before magic became a global market, it was harder to get a trick that was made in a different country. What would happen is magicians would bring things back when they travelled to another country. One magician that did this was Howard Schwarzman and he would write instructions in English and sell the tricks as “Howard Schwarzman Presents…”.
One of these tricks was called Babushka. Here’s the what the trick looks like:
This is a trick where the method is fairly “Rube Goldberg” in that’s it’s probably way more involved than it needs to be, but it’s fun to do! It reminds me of 1990’s Tenyo magic, it’s a super clever method!
Now for a little Howie Schwarzman story. I never met him in person, but I did sell him a couple of collectable tricks on eBay. After he won the auction he told me he wanted me to send him the items THEN he’d send me a check. I didn’t accept checks as a form of payment and reminded him of that. He said, “Do you know who I am? I’m Howie Schwarzman”. I told him I didn’t care who he is. I did let him mail me a check, but I held it for two weeks for it to clear, he wasn’t happy with that. That’s was my only interaction with Howie.
If you can find a Babushka, it’s totally worth tracking down to play with!
Over on TikTok I post a lot of videos of vintage magic trick and a recent one was of my Milson Worth Silk Cabby. There are two ways I do these videos. The first is EXACTLY how the instructions say, then if I don’t have the original instructions, I try to add a little bit to the the basic function of the trick.
So the trick has a little bit of a routine, besides the standing production. It’s got three vanishes and then the kicker ending. I was trying to maximize how much I could get out of the Silk Cabby beyond just a production of a lot of silks.
Sometimes when you’re out there performing you get to do “media”. That’s talking or performing for the newspaper or for the TV news.
Here’s a newspaper article from over there summer, I did edit out the name of where I was performing.
Sometimes you just know early on that you want to spend your life doing card tricks.
“I saw a show when I was 5, and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world,” magician Louie Foxx said. “I decided that was going to be my job.”
Foxx was at the (fair name) Fair last week doing three shows a day. He’s been to our fair a few times in the past…
Foxx’s website describes him as the consummate kid who never grew up, and that’s the sort of energy he brings to his show. He does his illusions casually, almost off handedly; no cape, top hat and wand for him. Besides the card tricks – using oversized decks that require a lot of dexterity to handle – several of his illusions involved long pieces of colored paper or strings. One trick had him pouring out what appears to be water from a paper cup, until you realize that it’s a single strip of paper, and the cup disappears with it. He designated one audience member at a Thursday afternoon show as his personal wastebasket, and every time a trick resulted in a large amount of paper left over, he would bestow it on that spectator, who took it with good humor.
For all his silliness, Foxx is apparently well respected in the prestidigitation business. He holds two Guinness World Records, and the Society of American Magicians voted him the Best Stage Magician and Best Close-up Magician in Minnesota in 1996, according to his website. He’s also appeared on the TV show “America’s Got Talent,” he told his audience Thursday.
“I was on season six of that show,” Foxx said. “On my last appearance on the show, the judges were Piers Morgan, Sharon Osbourne and Howie Mandel. Piers Morgan said I was an utter waste of time, Sharon Osbourne said I was fantastic, and Howie Mandel said I’d be perfect for (city name). People ask, ‘How far did you make it in the show?’ I’m like, ‘Almost to (city name)!’ So close to my dreams.”
Foxx grew up near Vancouver in the little town of La Center, he said. He does the fair circuit from the end of April through October, and in the off-season works cruise ships, comedy clubs and corporate events.
Foxx’s interest in show business is apparently genetic. His daughter, who’s 20, graduated college in June and promptly ran away with the circus, he said.
“She’s (doing) three shows a day,” he said. “She gets put in a straitjacket, wrapped up in 50 feet of chain, and – in theory – gets out.”
This article is a good example of no matter how clear you are, they will get things wrong. I’m very clear in the show about where I live and grew up, and I didn’t grow up in the town of La Center, it’s where I currently live. I even have a joke about where I’ve lived that lays out the chronology of where I’ve lived.
All in all, it’s not a bad newspaper article, it just got several things wrong.
The batch of Applause Please 2: The Encore arrived over the weekend and they’re shipping out today! This was unavailable for about a year and I now have them in stock!
This is the props for my object in lightbulb routines. You get two complete routines with all of the necessary props* for my liquid in lightbulb routine and my color changing silk to lightbulb routine. In addition to that you learn how to use it as a warm up and there’s some other bonus ideas!
*it doesn’t come with any liquid, so you’ll need to get some red Gatorade or make some by adding food coloring to water if you want to do the liquid in lightbulb routine.
I’m excited that I should have another batch of Applause Please 2: The Encore ready in early November! This is my Object in Lightbulb routine. You get the props for two routines; Liquid in Lightbulb and Silk in Lightbulb, plus a couple of ideas for other routines with it.
The applause boxes are being made by Ackerly Builds (Phil Ackerly) and look great so far! I can’t wait for them to be completely finishes, so that I can add the electronics and a few other parts and start shipping them out!
I was chatting with my friend who makes vanishing bird cages and he was showing me picture of his Big 10 vanishing cage. The picture below is a normal full size (Owen) cage on the left and the Big 10 on the right.
What’s crazy is that the Big 10 cage is actually smaller when collapsed!
I use one of his smaller cages in my school assembly show Incredible Idioms® and I love it!! He makes great cages, and if you’re in the market for a vanishing birdcage, shoot me a note and I can get you in touch with him!
Sometimes I see a picture of a magic trick and try to figure out what it does. Someone posted this picture of a box in a magic group on social media:
It’s a trick where you push the pins though a coin. I thought that this looked like a fun little 3d printing project, so I made a simple version of it. My version had a nested lid instead of a hinged lid.
And if you want to see it work, here’s a demo of it:
This is an easy 3d print as it’s only two parts. You just need the coin and four nails. If you’d like a copy of the .stl file to make your own, contact me and ask for it!
A couple of months ago I got a Leon’s Improved Glass Penetration by Merv Taylor.
It appears it should have a dozen spikes, plus two hooked spikes, and mine only came with six. Five regular spikes and one of the hooked spikes. These are something that was custom made for the trick, so it’s not something I can just go to the hardware store and buy.
This is where my 3D printer comes in handy. I designed a replica of the spike and printed it out!
The test one came out great, now my next step it to print out a full set of them! I do still need to try to create the hooked spike. I’d like the set to match.
