| One of my favorite gimmicks and one that I use in almost all of my stage shows is Evaporation! This is a way to make liquid vanish from a single serve bottle of Sunny D (orange juice). The “effect” is similar to a Magic Milk Pitcher, however the method is very different. |
 |
| This gimmick is super versatile, and over the years I’ve used it for a lot of different routines. Click the play button below to watch the video: |
 |
| I just made a big batch of them, and if order one now through July 20th, 2024 I’ll include my trick Out For Beers (a $19 value) for free with it! You don’t need to do anything special to get this deal, simply order the Evaporation trick and I’ll automatically include it with your order. You can get more information or order Evaporation visit: https://www.magicshow.tips/evaporation-magic-trick-vanishing-liquid/ |
Category: Video
Happy Birthday USA!
In the USA it’s Independence Day, which is the birthday of the United States. Way back in 1796, which is the country’s bicentennial, there was a trick put out called Happy Birthday USA: The Bi-Centennial Card Trick by Shigeo Futagawa.
This is a card trick where you have cards that all have red and white stripes on the back, and the numbers on the front. The numbers are 1976, and they change into 1776 and then the backs change to make a flag!
Here’s a demo of the trick:
@louiefoxx Fourth of July Vintage Magic Trick! #fourthofjuly #4thofjuly #america #1776 #usa #cardtrick #closeupmagic#vintagemagictrick #antique #louiefoxx #vintage #independenceday ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx
What I thought was interesting is that in a era of Emerson and West packet tricks with confusing instructions, this has very well laid out instructions that are easy to read!
This trick is a good example of capitalizing on an event in the future. I wonder how many of these that were sold, but I also wonder how many were unsold and thrown away on new years day in 1977!
-Louie
Balls in Hat Routine!
The last couple of weeks I started working on a Balls In Hat routine that I learned from Jimmy Talksalot. It starts with two in the hand and one in the pocket and ends with a nine balls coming out of your hat! It’s a really solid routine!
You can see parts of it in this reel from the fair I was performing at:
@louiefoxx Magic at the @sanmateocountyfair! #magic#sanmateocountyfair #sanmateo #closeupmagic #magician #bayarea #countyfair #louiefoxx #magictricks #cardtrick ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx
There’s a ton of great info and routines on Jimmy’s Substack. There’s free info as well as stuff for subscribers. It’s $8 a month to subscribe and totally worth it to read and watch all the content he has up there. The magic and essays are focused on street magic, but there’s a lot to be learned there if you don’t do street magic.
-Louie
Vintage Magic Trick: The Shaggy Dog Tale
Here’s a vintage magic trick from the early 1980’s by Emerson and West. It’s Larry West’s The Shaggy Dog Tale.
Like all the Emerson and West packet tricks, there’s a story line for the trick and the art reflects that. Here’s what the routine looks like:
@louiefoxx Vintage Magic Trick! Emerson and West's The Shaggy Dog #magictrick #cardtrick #vintage#1980s #magic #shaggydog#emersonandwest #louiefoxx#packettrick ♬ original sound Louie Foxx
Here are the changes I would make to the trick:
Honestly, it’s a trick that’s theming didn’t age well and the trick isn’t that good of a trick without the punchline at the end…which isn’t a great punchline by today’s standards.
-Louie
A Batch of Placeholder!
Yesterday I shipped out a batch of my new trick Placeholder to Hocus-Pocus.com!
Placeholder is a card trick where a selected card turns blank, you can watch a demo of it here:
I have a lot of fun with this trick! You can get it from Hocus-Pocus.com or from me at: https://www.magicshow.tips/placeholder/
-Louie
Father’s Day Magic Trick!
I was playing with an interactive “touch the screen” style trick for father’s day. This is the type of trick where someone starts by touching a object, then spells/counts several times eventually ending up on an object that you know.
The cool thing that I noticed is that if you spell the three words HAPPY FATHERS DAY the math works out for each word for to make it easy.
To do this you’ll start with five objects. These could simply be little pieces of paper that say things about dads, or whatever. You will line these up. For simplicity, I’m going to just use the numbers 1-5.
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5
Touch the one on the left. You are going to move one space per letter. You can move left or right, but only to the one next to it, you can jump spaces or from end to end. Spell HAPPY, moving one space per letter and keep touching that one.
You’re not on the one or the five, so I’ll eliminate those.
2 – 3 – 4
Now you’ll spell FATHERS moving one space for each letter.
You’re not on the four, so I’ll take that one away.
2 – 3
Now spell DAY, moving one space per letter.
You’re on the 2!
That’s a very simple interactive math trick you can do for father’s day!
-Louie
Jeki Yoo’s Vanishing Birdcage!
Here’s a great version of the Vanishing Birdcage by Jeki Yoo.
The cool thing about this is that he’s wearing what he normally wears for all of his videos. The downside is this method isn’t practical for a normal stage show presentation. In my opinion any different method for the cage is great, no matter how practical or impractical it is for different venues. The normal stage version of the Vanishing Birdcage is already a very impractical trick due to the set up when compared to pretty much any standard magic trick, so it’s hard to say any method isn’t “practical”.
-Louie
Coins Thru Glass
Many, many years ago I saw a video of Daniel Cros doing Coins Thru Glass. You can watch it here. Basically the effect is the coins go thru the bottom of the glass into another glass one at a time, then the final coin uses a spectator’s hand. I never really like the ending of the trick and the switching from a glass to a hand.
Last night in my hotel room I was playing with the trick but added a hat to it. That gave a slightly different frame to the trick and allowed me to have a “kicker” ending that still followed the frame work of the first coins to go thru the glass.
Here’s what I came up with:
While not great, if I put a little bit more time into figuring out the blocking, the trick would flow a lot better and look a lot less like I just thought of it and don’t know where the props should go.
It’s a fun little thing to work thru, but I don’t know if I’ll put much more time into it as I don’t think I’ll ever do it.
-Louie
Linking Pins and Thumb Tie
I’m still working on the Linking Pin and Thumb Tie routine and it’s slowly making progress. I started this in mid-February, however I’ve only done it about 30 times. For me that’s a pretty fresh routine. I haven’t figured out where all the moments are.
I wrote a couple of new jokes and changed it so there were three magic effects in the routine instead of three and took it out to an open mic the other night. It can be challenging at a bar open mic when it’s in a big room and there are 13 people there and only two of them are actual audience members, the rest are comics waiting to do there time onstage. In my opinion most bar open mics are to figure out how to do something onstage and just work that part out, you’re not there to try to have your set crush. Yes, you should try and ideally it’ll crush, but you should be bringing things that need work, not polished material.
Here’s bad video with bad audio of the trick:
The trick went well, but more importantly the new jokes worked and I added another penetration, so there are four instead of three in the in the routine. There’s actually normally one more at the end that I didn’t do because I “got the light” and had to wrap up.
The intro to the trick I think needs to be tightened up and be a bit more clear. That comes with time and rewriting and reworking. I think by the end of the summer this will be a strong piece in the show!
-Louie
PS If you want to learn more about how I work on my shows, check out my download The 6 R’s To Working On Your Show!
Working Out New Material!
Over the weekend I performed at a four day fair in California and I learned a lot! I’m working on my half circle show and it’s gotten better but still has a long way to go. I’ll write more about this in the next few days.
Here’s a highlight reel of some of the magic that I did:
@louiefoxx Magic at the Glenn County Fair! #countyfair #orland #glenncountyfair #magicshow #louiefoxx #escape #fairmagicshow #orlandca #magician #comedymagic #closeupmagic #haunteddeck #cardmagic ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx
When I perform at a fair I always put an odd prop or two into my pocket and do it throughout the day. These are usually things that I never intend to do in my standard act, but it breaks up the monotony of doing the same set all day.
The “new” tricks I took were Bob Ostin’s Auto Suggestion and Matchbox Mambo by Paul Richards. I used to sell the heck out of Matchbox Mambo in the early 2000’s when I was at Market Magic Shop in Seattle. Here’s the problem with Matchbox Mambo, it doesn’t work for kids. No matter the conditions you put on it, they can’t see why pushing one matchbox drawer in shouldn’t make the other come out. Handing it to them after doing it the first time and explaining why it doesn’t work the way they think it does is a waste to time. You end up spending more time explaining WHY it’s a magic trick than performing the magic. It was fun to play with last week, but Matchbox Mambo isn’t going to graduate into my main roving magic set.
I’ll write more about Bob Ostin’s Auto Suggestion later.
-Louie