I'm on the road from July 12th to August 17th.
No physical item orders will be shipped until I return on August 18th.
Digital products will still be emailed during this time
-Louie Foxx Dismiss
Woo hoo! I just got a text from Brian at Magic Crafter that a batch of the boxes for my Applause Please trick are finished!
I still need to add the electronics and a couple other things to them before they’re ready for sale. The bad news is that I’m out of town for a few weeks, so I won’t be able to work on them for a little while. I’m hoping to have them done by Thanksgiving.
If you haven’t seen the trick, here’s the promo video:
These will be available at Hocus-Pocus.com when they’re completed.
I’m still working on my Rising Card routine. At the end of it I’m doing a bit where I push the out jogged card back into the deck and it rises up again. I do that several times, but the bit is lacking an ending. It’s the same joke over and over again.
I’m thinking that maybe after it gets pushed down and pops up a few times, I set the glass into my case, THEN all the cards come shooting out of the glass.
I started playing with it in the green room at the fair a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t really try it at any shows at the fair as I don’t want to deal with the clean up of cards everywhere at the stage I’m at.
Here’s what the ideas will look like:
I’m using The Rocket card fountain. I really like this, it’s pretty quiet and so far is very reliable. I can’t wait to actually try it in the show!
In my Drawing in Ball of Yarn routine, there’s a middle phase that’s a mismade bill. I’ve been having trouble with the the mismade bill part. The bill part was essentially my 13 sided bill routine that I do close up. Here’s what that looks like:
The mismade bill phase was too long for it’s spot in the show and I dropped it for a few weeks. Then I added it back in with a little change, I’m using a Quadraflex style mismade will that has the four quarters.
The routine for the mismade bill part of the routine is simple. I say, “I’ll fold your dollar four times.” then I do that and ask the kid, “do you know what that does…it turns it into four…” as I’m slowly unfolding it. For the last 30+ shows the kid has always replied, “dollars”. Then I say, “four dollars?! Have you seen the budget for this show? It turns it into four quarters!” Then I reveal the mismade bill.
I think this works a lot better because I keep dealing with the number four and it foreshadows what the audience is about to see and then at the reveal, it tells them what they are seeing.
I’m glad I put the mismade bill phase back into the routine and tried a different approach!
One of the challenges of performing in comedy clubs is space on stage. Since most stand up comics don’t require a lot of space, you’ll get some really tiny stages (and sometimes giant ones). The last few years I’ve been working to make my show physically larger, so that it plays better in larger venues. That doesn’t necessarily mean using a larger prop, but sometimes it does.
Here’s my show set up on the stage before the show at the Tacoma Comedy Club a couple of days ago:
There’s not a lot of free real estate on that stage. Right after the pic was taken, I pushed my case back to that it was against the wall to leave more room for the opener to perform. That stage being probably 8 x 8 feet with my gear set didn’t leave a lot of room to perform. Luckily when I started out, I performed on a lot of stages like this so I know how to tighten up my show physically to make it play.
Another thing to consider with set ups like this is that the first row is literally at the edge of the stage, so the audience is on top of you. With the stage being low, anything that happens below my belly button can’t really be seen from about the 3rd row or further back. That mean everything need to be handheld and held at shoulder height.
If you’re interested, here’s my set list for the show:
On the right side, I wrote down the names of the servers at the club so that I could thank them by name. If you don’t already know, always be super nice to the servers and staff at the venue!
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.
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!!!
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.
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.
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!
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.
