Category: Tricks

FISM day 2

It felt great getting some sleep on a bed after sleeping in my car the night before my flight so that I could make it to FISM. I also got to see how amazing Quebec City looked in the daylight!

In the picture above you’ll notice the barricades on the streets, that’s due to the pope being in town, and his route was on the same street as my hotel’s front door!

I’m up early today as the contest start at 8:15am, which is rough as I’m running on west coast time, which is 3 hours earlier!


After registering, you have to walk along the hall of masters or whatever they call it. I had to stop and take a pic with Michael Ammar‘s portrait! I’m convinced he’s a genius, of all the portraits, his is the only one that anyone talked about!

michael ammar

I had decided for this convention I was going to make attending the contests my priority and not lectures. Little did I know how much of a commitment this would be. I used to tell people I could watch magic shows all day…turns out I can’t…even with top level magicians!

The stage contest had multiple competitors have to cancel due to “flight delays, luggage delays, or visa issues“, so the contest ended early. This was great as I got to see Jim Steinmeyer‘s lecture! The room was pretty full, but I found a seat and got to watch about half of it. There were two people sitting behind me and they had the gnarliest coughs. Even if it wasn’t COVID, I didn’t want what it was, so I got up, but unfortunately by that point the room was packed, and there was nowhere to sit or stand, so I had to bail on his lecture.

On a side note, I decided for my personal health, I was going to wear a mask while at the shows and contests. I took a week off work to go to FISM, so that means a week of my busy season that I wasn’t working, I can’t afford to lose two weeks of work by getting sick with anything.

Louie foxx

I ran into some people I knew and we sat down for lunch!

fism magicians
Left to Right: Louie, Topher, Payne, Mitch, Gwyn, Elliott, and Billy

For lunch today, I ate the convention center’s prepackaged egg salad sandwich, that was probably 93% bread and a beer, which is also essentially 93%bread as well. Then it was time to go to the other theater to see the close up contest!

fism close up competition

This room was giant (for close up) and there was also a satellite room that had a live stream playing of the contest. There were a lot of acts, and most today were just OK.

dom chambers

I did get to see Dom Chambers who I had built some props for to use on AGT perform. I missed him a couple years ago in New York when he was performing with the Illusionists, so it was nice to get to see him live. He did a very funny and energetic card to mouth!

Between the close up contest and the evening show, I swung by the dealers room.

Jeff prace magic
Jeff Prace demonstrates the Penrose Pendant

I was a bit underwhelmed by the amount of dealers, half of the room had empty booths. I had heard various reasons as to why it was empty, cancelled flights, inventory not showing up, etc. The quantity of dealers at FISM was probably the only thing that disappointed me. Sure, I’d rather have a small amount of quality dealers than a lot of lame ones, however I’ve been to local conventions that had more.

The evening show a ton of fun, it was great to see Greg Frewin do the dove act he did in the 1990’s on The Worlds Greatest Magic! The show was 90% solid, and there was a perfectly timed tech problem that occurred right after Greg praised the tech team for running the show flawlessly!

After the show I ran into Bob Fitch, who changed my life when I went to the first performance boot camp he put on about 25 years ago! He’s been one of my hero’s ever since!

Magician Bob Fitch

Bob has always been insanely generous with his time and FISM was no exception! He would talk to anyone that approached him, and would hang out fairly late into the evenings. Fitch was also a fixture in Jeff McBride’s Magic and Mystery School room (more on that tomorrow).

I was a good kid tonight and walked back to my hotel not too long after the last show, as I knew I needed some sleep.

-Louie

Gilbertino’s Master Silk Tube

One of the fun things about acquiring collections of magic, is that you don’t always know what you have. Sometimes you’ll find parts and have to figure out what goes with what.

In a recent box of magic I found a tube with two end caps (and a gimmick). To me it was obvious what it was supposed to do, however I didn’t know what it was. After some research I found out it was a Gilbertino Master Silk Tube!

Gilbertino Master Silk Tube

I still didn’t have any instructions, but the description of the effect I found online confirmed how I thought it worked. Here’s a quick demo of the first trick I thought of for it when I found it in the box:

I have a lot more ideas for it, but unfortunately it’s really not a trick for my show, so I sold it. It’s a great trick for someone show!

-Louie

Another Shell Game Set!

I remember a long time ago chatting with Dr. Lloyd Cripe who was a brain doctor and now retired and he said, “everyone collects something” and at the time I didn’t realize it, but I was starting to collect Three Shell Game sets. Currently I have a giant collection of shells, and it getting harder to find shell sets that I don’t already have.

I found this lot at a magic auction site:

Three Shell Game

I don’t have the upper set of gold shells. I can’t tell what they are made from, it could be plastic or metal, I won’t know until they show up. It looks like I was the only bidder, so I got them for the opening bid price, which is nice!

I’ve had the Dr. Beaumont Shell Game book in the past, and it’s been a while since I’ve read it. I’ll give it a reread when it arrives with the shells and probably sell it with the Vernet Shells which come with this lot.

If you’ve got a unique or uncommon set of shells, send me a note, I’d love to see a pic of them!

-Louie

Cut and Restored Rope

Last week I bought some rope on a whim and started playing with cut and restored rope in my show. I used to do this a long time ago when I was starting out in comedy clubs. Technically my routine was a mix of Steve Bedwell‘s and Michael Finney‘s routines. It worked well at the time and served its purpose, but I really haven’t done cut and restored rope in the show in a 15+ years.

I’m having fun with the trick, and pretty much doing it how I used to do it. However, for me to do it in the show, I need to contribute something to the trick. One thing I did today was start to come up with conditions for the routine. The first condition is that I want all of the cuts to happen with the middle of the rope sticking out of the hand and the ends dangling:

cut and restored rope

I think this is a much more natural and fairer looking way to hold the rope than the standard method where you switch the end for the middle.

Then with further writing I hit on another idea (from the past!)

cut and restored rope

Using a circle of rope instead of an extra length of rope will allow me to get two cuts without having to add any rope and both cuts can be done from the desired hand position!

The next challenge is figuring out how to get rid of the circle of rope once it’s been cut twice and is two pieces of rope. Once I solve that, I need to start doing some writing on what to say!

-Louie

PS. You’ll notice I have drawing in my notebook. I’m using drawing more and more. I highly recommend getting the book Sketch Notes, it really helped me learn to add drawings.

A Better 21 Card Trick!

I’m a huge fan of letting people show me tricks. I’ve written about it many times on this blog. Not only does it let the spectator shine, it encourages them to keep doing magic tricks!

Every now and then I get surprised and this kid showed me a great trick! It was like a way better version of the 21 card trick. It used three reverse faro shuffles and only 8 cards, so it was very fast when compared to the 21 card trick.

The ending was nice, as it wasn’t just a “Here’s your card”, it was a three phase reveal.

Full disclosure, I’m not the biggest fan of this type of reveal for what I do in my work, but the kid did it well and got a good reaction. I can’t argue with that!

-Louie

Some Close Up Magic…

The fair I’m performing at this week has me doing street shows. On the mornings of the slower days I’m doing some more close up style magic for people. Here’s a sample of what I’m doing:

You can see part of the Horizontal Ambitious Card that I recently started doing. It currently has three phases, ending with the card inside the card box. I’m really having a lot of fun with the routine, as it gives me a lot more room to play with the audience within the trick.

This is why it’s important to keep playing with a trick, even when you it’s a solid trick and your “A” material. If you keep playing you can find new bits or ways to do it. I’m of the mindset that a trick is never finished!

-Louie

Magic Jam and a Coin Trick

One of the things I love when I’m home is being able to get together with other magicians.

While magic jamming with Jonathan Friedman and Chris Beason, we came with with this strange little coin trick:

It’s not really practical, but a fun little magic trick for a video.

-Louie

Spirit Rapping Hand

A few months ago I bought a cool looking vintage spirit hand and planned to use it to make a mold to make my own spirit hand.

I didn’t have any pigment for my resin, so my hand came out looking like a zombie hand! The original one would have come with a gimmicked board to make it move. I gimmicked mine so that is doesn’t need the board.

It works, and if I make another one, I’m probably going to go for a less dead looking skin tone!
-Louie

Masters of Illusion – Cracker Card Trick!

My segment on Masters of Illusion aired last night, but I didn’t get to see it until this morning as we don’t have cable anymore. It was a good segment and that got me about 2 1/2 minutes of airtime, which is great!

If you missed it, here it is:

The normal routine runs 6-8 minutes, so there’s a lot of stuff that got cut out of the routine to tighten it up for TV.

Here’s a bit of the story behind this routine:

Way back in 2019 I went to Holbrook AZ to perform my magic show at the Navajo County Fair. My bags were overweight, so I left my cards at home, thinking I could get them in Holbrook. When I got there I couldn’t find playing cards anywhere in town! I wandered the stores looking for something “card like” that I could use instead of cards. A box of crackers caught my eye. Over the week I developed a card trick that used crackers instead of cards!

You can also search the tag: Cracker on this blog for more info about the routine.

hope you enjoy it!