Here’s a packet trick that I found in a junk magic bin. It’s a twisting the aces style effect with the backs turning blank at the end.
There are a couple of things that I didn’t like about the trick. The big thing with this style of twisting routine is no one really shows all the backs at first. This is easily accomplished with a Flustration Count and half pass. I think the surprise of the blank cards at the end is more amazing when the audience feels like they’ve seen the 4 regular backs.
The Chinese Flame Clock is an interesting magic trick. This was invented by Ed Massey and mine appears to have been made by Milson Worth. This style of illusion isn’t really a modern style, however I’m sure there’s someone out there killing with it!
The trick is really solid, I think it’s pretty deceptive. It’s nothing that I would do, but it’s a great example of creating a method to make an effect happen!
Inspired by Vitaly Beckman’s An Evening of Wonders show, I’m trying to think of ways to eliminate playing cards from my show. Not taking the card tricks out, but trying to figure out other things to use and use them in a context that makes sense. One of the tricks that I do is essentially a card prediction done with jumbo cards and the premise of the bit is the choices that I make in life. I think the trick would work with postcards, and could keep the theme of making choices. With travel postcards from different countries, there is a lot of visual contrast between the cards.
These cards are 4X6 inches which is a little smaller than jumbo playing cards. I needed to commit and buy five sets of them to make the gimmick set of cards or the trick.
On Thursday night I made it out to the NW Ring of Fire magic club in Lynnwood, WA. There were about 15 magicians there. It’s been years since I’ve visited this club as it’s over an hour drive (without traffic) for me to get there .
The club president Tony Blei kept things fun, positive and moving along!
While I was there, I won the raffle and my prize were two magic VHS tapes
I don’t have a VHS player, but I discovered a long time ago that the tape can be removed from VHS tapes and they work as hat coils!
It was a fun night and if you’re not going out and meeting other magicians in your area you should! They are a good source of ideas, referrals, and people to cover gigs if you get sick.
One way to build a show is to get more time out of the props you already have. There is a limit to the payoff the the trick, like a 15 minute Professor’s Nightmare routine might be a bit much (but maybe not). It’s up to you to figure out what the maximum of any routine you do is.
I have a trick rope routine that I do in the show. By trick rope, it’s a lasso demonstration, not a rope trick. The whole thing runs about 3 minutes and is fairly basic, but has some laughs and a big applause ending. I’m working on adding a few more things to it to hopefully build it out a minute.
I’m working on adding some vertical loop tricks to the routine…but first I need to work on doing butterflies which is the basic skill for vertical loops.
The challenge with something like lasso tricks is that they are a high practice, low payout skill. People think that it’s easy based pretty much on cartoons and think you can do tricks with the rope that are basically impossible due to how gravity works. That said, people still like it.
The nice thing is that most magicians aren’t going to put in the time to learn to do lasso tricks, so it gives me something semi unique right off the bat! The side bonus with lasso is that it’s easy to travel with, and has no set up. I can grab it and do it!
When flying to gigs, I used to check my audio gear inside of my suitcase. Then one time TSA damages some stuff repacking it and I now always carry on my audio box. The box is kinda a pain to lug around, not just the airport, but hotel, or around the venue.
About a year ago I had an idea to put a strap on my audio case, so it can attach to the handle of my Pelican Air case. I finally got around putting a strap on it and it’s fantastic! I wish I would have done this a long time ago.
I simply riveted a piece of elastic onto it. Well, there’s a little bit more engineering than that. I put a rectangle piece of plastic under the roll of the elastic to even out force of the elastic being stretched. Without the plastic, the elastic would probably tear at the rivets.
A few weeks ago I was hanging out with some magicians before the Justin Willman show in Seattle. One of the props we were jamming with was an Apple Air Tag. Here’s one of the more visually interesting things:
It’s an obvious trick to do with an AirTag, but the name lends itself to the trick. This is a trick I’ve wanted to do with an AirTag, but I stopped doing the muscle pass in 2020 and can’t do it anymore. Sure I could probably play with it for a week and relearn it, but I don’t really have a need for it anymore.
If you can muscle pass, this is a great and easy trick with a borrowed AirTag!
There are very few comedy stage magicians that are also into sleight of hand. We BS’d a Juan Tamariz move and packet card switches, which was a ton of fun!
If you ever get a chance to see him perform, go do it!
While I’m stuck in the office for a few days while I have my COVID isolation, I decided to read a book that I haven’t read yet. The book I grabbed was David Ginn’s Kidshow Magic Kompendium and a little ambitious of a read at over 500 pages!
This book is does a great job of laying out what makes a good kid show trick! You get complete routines with most of the tricks as well. There aren’t necessarily complete descriptions to how the things work or how to build them as there are many dealer items and things that the average person couldn’t make at home. I don’t think this is a bad thing, but just something to be aware of.
If you want a solid foundation of kid show performing and props, this book is great! I’m about 200ish pages into the book and it’s a fun read. David gives you advice and stories from the past.
It looks like this book is $35 on GinnMagicShop.com and for that price it’s a steal if you’re getting into or want to learn more about kids magic!
A while ago I had an idea to host a zoom session about performing for seniors. It’s been a while since I’ve done any meaningful performing on zoom, so it was a little bit stressful. I did need to redownload and relearn the basics of using OBS (production program).
With all of the technical stress, the nice thing about giving presentations on Zoom is that I can tape my notes to the wall behind my computer! Also with this not being a show, I didn’t feel the need to dig out the backdrop or set up all of the lights.
My goal with the zoom session was to solve problems, not really as a lecture. There were a lot of questions and a topic that came up a couple times was the best way to contact senior communities. For me the best way to do that is with postcards or letters. While it may or may not be the method with the highest closing percentage, for me it’s the most efficient. I can spend less than an hour total and have a couple hundred postcards in the mail, where using phone or email will take a lot longer than that. With email, unless you already have a complete and up to date list, this can be fairly time consuming!
Another topic that came up a couple times is what to bring into a senior show and what type of material to do. My show fits in a briefcase and the audio has it’s own case. The other thing I travel with is a folding step stool.
When I do seniors shows, since they aren’t the best paying gigs, I need to be able to set up and pack quickly. This show can set up in about 15 mins and pack up in about 10 mins!
There will probably be another Senior Show Zoom at some point, if you want to be updated about it, contact me and ask to be on the mailing list!
-Louie PS If you are interested in performing in senior communities and don’t have my book How to Perform for Seniors, you can get it here: https://www.magicshow.tips/how-to-perform-for-seniors-book/
