A while ago I wrote about a thing that kids do, which is asking performer to “do a back flip”. I happened to me while I was performing in Nebraska and I came up with a trick to do when if someone asks me that. After I came up with the trick, no one asked me to do a back flip…until last week!
It happened, and I got to finally do the trick and it hit hard!!
So then I decided to try to manufacture a kid asking me to do a back flip. What I’m doing is simply saying, “Is there anything you want to see me do?” It gets them to say “do a back flip” about 1 out of 6 times, which is good and feels organic.
Here’s the odd surprise, people have been asking me for some pretty specific magic tricks…and magic tricks that aren’t stereotype magic tricks. I had a kid ask me to “do a trick where the a ring comes off of a rope”. I think that people are exposed to a lot more magic than magicians think they are. Magic is really good for social media and especially things like TikTok, and combine that with things like America’s Got Talent and you have a very sophisticated audience you’re performing for.
I think the notion that you’re the first magician people are seeing is kinda false. They see tons of magic, maybe not in person, but audiences are definitely exposed to magic! That’s why you need to do good magic and not lame, tired ol’ tricks.
-Louie
Category: Tricks
Visiting the Fresno Magic Club!
When I travel I always try to visit a local magic club. The Fresno Magic Club is a great club and I always love visiting there! I brought three other acts that I was working with last week to the magic club.
I love seeing the different styles of magic and what people of different levels are doing. One thing I dislike is that with the streaming videos, you have a lot less variations in style based on region than you used to have.
I always love watching people of all levels perform in a safe space!
Magic clubs are close to my heart. They really helped me grow as a kid. If you have a local magic club, go out and support it!!!
-Louie
Sponge Balloon Dog!
I was digging through a bin of junk magic and found a couple of sets of sponge sausages. The moment I saw them, I didn’t see sausages, I saw a balloon dog! I took the sponge sausages to the green room and got to work on making a balloon dog.
A bit so thread and I had a sponge balloon dog!
Luckily I was sharing a the green room with Dennis Forel, who is the one balloon figure guy and he approved of it!
After I made it, I did a quick search for “sponge balloon dog” and it looks like Alexander May put one out…and it’s pretty much the same concept. It’s made of sponge sausages!
I’ve been playing with making a blowing up a round balloon, popping it and it becomes the balloon dog. It’s fun, but probably will never has a spot in my show.
-Louie
Magic on the News in Fresno
Here’s an OK news appearance I did last week while performing at The Big Fresno Fair:
It’s an alright appearance, nothing crazy amazing. It’s a decent spot, but could have been much better. I was told I’d have about 3 minutes, but then that changed to two minutes and then at the last minute it changed to 90 seconds.
The change of the length totally threw my plan out the window. That’s why I typically will show up to news spots with material to fill 30 seconds, 90 seconds and three minutes. I try to plan something special and fun for the set length I’m told I’m doing, but that doesn’t always happen! That’s why it’s important to have a lot of material on you when you show up. There are some exceptions, like when you do in studio stuff you’ll normally know exactly how much time you have…but they’ll forget to tell you about a quick little “bump” you’ll be in and need a visual 5 second trick you can do.
Being prepared is the key to these news spots!
-Louie
Demi Deck – Review
I bought into the hype and picked up a Demi Deck while I was at Hocus-Pocus in Fresno. Here’s a quick review of it.
First of all, it works exactly how I thought it would work. If you think about it, there’s really only one way it can work. I wasn’t buying it to figure out how it works, but it’s an interesting prop.
Let’s get into actually doing the trick. I was doing it for the groups of people who showed up as I was packing up the show. I would tell them when my next show is and then offer to show them a quick trick and would do the Demi Deck. It got good reactions from the people.
Next there’s the angle issues. It’s pretty solid from the front, I probably personally wouldn’t take this out for a roving gig where I’m going to be surrounded. But for a group of 4 or so people in front of me, the angles are pretty solid.
Now here’s what I like and why I bought this trick. This reminds me of old school Tenyo tricks where the method is frequently more interesting than the trick. It’s just a gimmicky trick that’s fun to do!
Personally this will probably never be in my “paid” close up work. Is it something that I’ll show people who are at my house…yes!
-Louie
Working on the Rising Card
The rising card routine, that I’m working on right now is missing something. What is missing is time. The routine is really bare bones and is very short, I think without any bits it’s maybe two minutes. Since the routine involves bringing someone onto the stage, I need to get at least three minutes out of it. Ideally if someone is coming out of the audience, it needs to be closer to about five minutes.
One of the ideas that I had was to have a kid do the most “epic” card trick. I have the kid show me their epic, hero face and walk. That didn’t hit the time I tried it, but the kid was younger.
The next time I used an older kid which played better and framed it a little bit different. I had said that they are in show biz now and had them show the audience their show biz smile and walk. That played a lot better than the doing an epic trick with a younger kid. I’m not sure if that’s the route that I want to take, but it’s a step in the right direction!
The other thing that the trick is lacking is music and a punctuation when the card rises out of the deck.
-Louie
Large Size Evaporation!
They’ve been unavailable for awhile, I just finished up a batch of the 16 oz size of Evaporation magic tricks!
This size pops a bit more onstage than the smaller version. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to offer these. They’ve been hard to get since 2020, and whenever I find them, I always buy as many as I can to gimmick!
You can get them at: https://www.magicshow.tips/evaporation-magic-trick-vanishing-liquid/ or your favorite dealer!
-Louie
UnPlanned Rising Card Routine
A long time ago I had an idea for a rising card routine. Most of the rising card routines that I have seen have either a singular rise, which is the whole routine, or it’s multiple rises. The thing I have against multiple rises is that it’s essentially the same trick over and over, you just may add conditions each time to make it more impossible. I understand it gives it a sense of build, but why wouldn’t you just do it the “hardest” way the first time if you could, the previous ones were wasting the audience’s time?
In the idea for my rising card routine, three cards are selected and the deck is put in a glass. An interesting point is that the cards never leave the glass after they are put in. This is one of the interesting parts of this trick, the hands off nature of the trick. I do touch the cards, but only the top card to show it’s not a selected card. So the deck is in the glass, and first two cards appear one at a time to the front of the pack. Then for the finale the final card rises up from the middle of the pack.
It’s a good one, two, three set of reveals. It’s also done with me solo onstage, so no one physically has to come up on stage and it ends with a nice applause pose.
There are some challenges with the original routine. The placements of the gimmick in the deck and best way to hide the lock that I built into my rising card gimmick are some of the more major challenges. I took my props for this routine to the green room of the fair I’m working at and was showing it to Mickey O’Connor and Bri Crabtree for their thoughts. While messing around with a different idea, I came up with a way to use a someone from the audience as a way to “lock” the rising card in the down position. It was a real “break through” for the routine…also it marked a complete change of the routine. It’s now a two card revelation with someone onstage, and that person does the magic. It is a better routine after the changes, and this is a great example of how bouncing around ideas with other people can make a huge difference!
-Louie
Hocus Pocus Magic in Fresno!
One of the things I like about the two week gig in Fresno that I’m at right now is that I get to hang out at Hocus Pocus magic shop! It’s fun chatting with Max, Paul and Betty, they’ve got a cool shop!
One of the fun things they recently did was release a limited run of “hocus pocus” square circles.
These look great and work great! It’s a fun idea and they say they’re thinking of making releasing a special hocus pocus magic prop every year. That’s a fun idea!
Of course while I was there I visited some of my magic tricks
I think they have the last two of my Slow Poke coin tricks. I don’t think I can get them made anymore.
If you’re in the Fresno area, shoot them and note and arrange a time stop by!
-Louie
Shot Glass Production
I’ve been playing a lot with a shot glass production lately. There’s not much to it, or pretty much any shot glass production. Basically you sneak it into where ever you want to produce it and uncover the shot glass and show it to the audience.
The real challenge is having an airtight seal on your shot glass cover that can still be easily removed. Here’s the idea that I’ve been doing:
@louiefoxx How to cool off instantly! #tequila #drink #magic #tequilashots #nebraska #louiefoxx #magictrick #backstage ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx
One of the lesser challenges is what to do with the cover after you’ve removed it from the shot glass. For probably 80% of productions from things like an egg bag, you can simply leave it in the bag. However for a production from something like your shoe, you need to get rid of the cover.
My solution is simple, hide it in plain sight!
This is something that’s working out for me, however I still consider it in the testing phase for me.
-Louie