Way back in the mid 1990s I went to a few of the Desert Magic Seminars/World Magic Summits in Las Vegas. One of the acts that I saw was Enric Magoo, who does an act as Frankenstein’s Monster. His chair suspension has always stuck with me, and I think it’s the best chair suspension routine that I’ve seen.
Here’s the full act (the chair suspension is at about 4:30):
What makes it great is that it’s a one-person suspension, and the final display with the chair on his book looks really impossible!
One of the problems with magicians is that when they get busted doing a move, they think the person is a “heckler”. Here’s a social media post I recently came across:
Here’s the main problem, every double lift looks like a double lift. Then add in that everyone who has had a passing interest in magic learns the double lift. Put those together, and 90% of double lifts will get busted by anyone who has learned a couple of card tricks.
OK, so what do you do about it?
In the summers, I perform a lot for teenagers, and when I noticed that it was starting to be a problem, I removed traditional double lifts from my close up set. I do use one, but in a weird way, and if someone busts it, because of how it’s used, I can show them they’re wrong.
Think about it: if someone learned two card tricks and one of them is the double lift in the context of an ambitious card style trick, then when you show them your ambitious card routine, you’re showing them a beginner’s magic trick. You might as well take out the ball vase at that point. You need to do something to separate yourself from basic magic tricks.
How do you do that?
Put in the work and figure it out! That’s exactly what I did for my That Way More card routine. I created something that doesn’t look like what they know and use techniques that aren’t typically used in the routine that kids learn.
A year or so ago I posted a video of this bill change to social media, and I started playing with it again. Here’s what the bill change looks like:
I like it because it ends with my face framed for the final display. It’s not hard to do. It’s got a couple of advantages over tricks like Extreme Burn, and that’s that the bills are flat and not held in a cramped position. That position is fine for close up for a few people. When performing for larger groups, the flat nature of the bills in this change play further back into the audience.
Over six years ago, I published a trick called Lip Bomb in this blog and in Vanish Magazine. Here’s what the trick looks like:
Then recently, I saw an ad for a trick that Rocco and Roy Kueppers called Coin Balm. It looks like this was initially released in 2004, here’s what it looks like:
It looks very similar to my trick…doesn’t it?
I do like the lifting of the coin up out of the tube that Rocco does, that makes the trick play bigger than the dumping of the coin downwards that I do in my trick. However I really like the spectator producing the coin from the chapstick tube that I do more than the reveal that Rocco does where he pulls it out himself.
I haven’t bought this product, so I don’t know if my trick is credited in it, or if Michal l P Lair’s Rich Smoke trick is credited.
One of the questions I get asked about the Snake Wand Surprise V2 is how long does it take to load it. Here’s me loading it slowly, and talking through the loading process:
That took less than 3 minutes to do slowly and as you can see, it’s not very hard to do. Normally, I do it in about 2 minutes.
Yesterday I posted an simple color changing back routine that is Elmsley Count based. You can learn the sequence here. While I waiting in my car for an appointment, I grabbed some cards and made a quick trick using that sequence:
I think more people should use the Elmsley Count with the cards held vertically. You have to shift your thinking a bit, as it’s backward. Your finger will do the thumb’s action, and your thumb will do your finger’s action.
Doing the Elmsley Count vertically puts your face into the frame, which in theory is good.
I think magicians try to overcomplicate things with the card magic they do. You can get amazing reactions with a couple of very simple things. Here’s a quick three beat trick that gets great reactions:
There’s not much to it: two forces, a top change, and then a double lift. I don’t do a double turnover. The reason for that is that most people who have had a passing interest in magic tricks learn a double turnover in the context of either an ambitious card or simply changing the card. When I do this sequence, it looks nothing like what they’d learned in a YouTube tutorial. While I’m using techniques that they may know, they don’t look like what they’d learned.
This is a good lesson: if you keep getting busted doing something like a double turnover, either find a way to eliminate it or make it look different.
-Louie PS: If you want to learn about my thoughts on the classic force, it’s in my 2025 PCAM lecture notes.
One of the most requested products I get from magicians is for me to make a USB-chargeable set of Remote Control Chattering Teeth. There’s a reason that I haven’t made them before, and that’s because I sell what I use. Personally, I prefer using disposable batteries. If I forget to charge them, it’s not a big deal; I just swap them out.
Well, in my show, I’m having more and more things that use batteries that need to be charged. From things like the phone that I use to run the production of my show to mic pack batteries. Charging things is now a bigger part of the end of my performing day than it was a few years ago.
I’m learning to install the battery and charger, and I have my first working set of USB-chargeable Remote Control Chattering Teeth.
The next step is for me to use them so I can gain some confidence with my design. I already noticed one thing to change. I have an on/off button and not a switch. With it as a button, you don’t know if it’s on or off. Going forward, future sets will have a switch!
A couple of days ago Doug Conn posted about the book Card Finesse by Jon Racherbaumer:
His post about the book, made me remember an cool card move that’s in that book. Well, I’m 99% sure it’s in that book, it might be in Card Finesse II.
I had to slightly adjust the camera move. When done as written, there’s a slight flash that the normal human eye watching won’t see, but it won’t withstand repeated viewing on the internet.
