MagicShow.Tips – Page 18 – A daily blog about magic by Louie Foxx

Rope and Coat Hanger

Years ago I came up with a way to do the silk thru ring trick with a coat hanger where the silk goes from the triangle to the hook of the hanger. My method uses a reel and is a very visual moment. I’m trying to recreate that but using using a rope instead of the silk and reel.

Here’s what I came up with.

@louiefoxx Magic with shapes! #magictrick #magic #shapes #coathanger #trick ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

Using a rope in place of the silk solves a problem but it also makes the trick less visual. I think that trick is fine when you take the trade off, it makes the trick much more practical in an outdoor environment like a fair. I’m not sure that this is a method that I’ll use, but hopefully it’s a step that will get me closer to something better!

-Louie

Magician vs Parrot

With social media eating up content, I’m always looking for things that aren’t from my show to use. I personally don’t want to burn material from my show on social media. Recently when I was in Cartagena, Columbia there was a parrot at the port, so I did a trick for it:

@louiefoxx Magician vs Parrot! #magictrick #parrot #magic #parrotsoftiktok #cardtrick ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

It’s not the best trick in the world, but it was easy content to create and fun. More importantly, it’s not my act, so I’m not burning material.

Also, this parrot was kind of a card trick master. I put the shuffled deck down and he flipped over the four aces right away. I wish we had recorded that, but it wasn’t planned and caught us off guard!

Keep an eye out for fun moments that you can use for social media videos!

-Louie

Another Simms Vanishing Birdcage!

A few weeks ago before I went out of town I bought a Vanishing Birdcage and it arrived right after I left town. Now that I’m home, I got to open it up and check it out.

As I thought, it’s a Warren Simms vanishing birdcage!

It’s got the “S” stamped on it and the “H” means that it was made for Max Holden’s magic shop. I’ve now got two Simms vanishing bird cages in my collection.

This is my other one that was made for Tannens”

I’m glad to have both of these in my vanishing bird cage collection!!

-Louie

Ask Questions…

Lately I’m trying to be better about how I use people who come onstage during my show. I want to give them more personality in the show. One way I’m doing that is by asking them questions. Nothing crazy, the two main ones are “where are you from?” and/or “What do you do?“. From those two questions and the situations of the tricks, it’s leading to a lot more comedy possibilities.

These questions also help make the person from the a person, not just a prop. I feel like I was falling into a hole of people on stage being predictable and my show’s interactions with the audience were becoming less natural and more robotic. Asking questions is making me be more present in the show, but also creates a more unique show that the audience is watching.

I had a comedian I was working with recently mention that they were surprised at how much crowd work there was in my magic show!

-Louie

Working With Other Magicians!

Last month when I was travelling to a ship to perform for a week, I noticed on their app I could see the schedule. It turned out there was another magician performing the same week that I was, and that magician was David Williamson!

It’s kinds stressful heading out to a gig where you’re working with one of your favorite magician and one that’s in almost every magician’s top ten magicians. The silver lining to that stress is that I get to hang out with him!

I’ve seen his show before on a cruise ship back in the mid 2010’s when I was on vacation with my family. He does a solid show with classic Williamson energy, I love his stage persona, it’s great!

If you get a chance to see his show, do it…and if you get a chance to work with him, do it!

-Louie

Mike Bornstein’s Money Magic!

In the 1980’s and 1990’s Mike Bornstein had ads in magic magazines for his money magic. I found a set of his lecture notes and have been going through them. One of the tricks that I though was interesting was this torn and restored bill:

@louiefoxx The old hundred dollar magic trick! #magictrick #magic #magician #moneymagic #vintagemagictrick ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

While the method now is fairly standard for torn and restored things, what makes his interesting is the tearing sequence. It’s backwards from how most are done. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse, but different!

Finding unexpected things is one the fun thing about all these old lecture notes!

-Louie

iQ Pro app

A performer that I was working with was showing me the iQ pro app that he uses to run the production for his show. It does it all, music, video and it doesn’t need to use any internet to function. All of that lives on your phone, so a laptop isn’t needed. I played with his and then immediately downloaded it!

I’m still learning to use it, but it’s simple to use (so far) and will do what I need it to do. It runs off of a Flic Button, and that’s the only thing that worries me. My friend assures me that he’s never had a problem with the Bluetooth and he works a lot!

It’s now cheap at $14.99 a month or a lifetime subscription for $595. I’m on monthly for now, and if it ends up working how I hope it will, I’ll probably buy the lifetime subscription.

-Louie

Mike Giles!

Yesterday I posted about using the miracle pad by Mike Giles. In a funny little coincidence I was having breakfast with David Williamson and he brought up Michael Giles! I’m assuming Mike Giles and Michael Giles are the same person. That led me to looking him up, and it looks like he was primarily an illusionist.

Here’s a few video clips of him doing illusions:

It also looks like he had at least one close up magic release:

I always love it when something takes me down a rabbit hole of learning about a magician that I didn’t know anything about!

Sadly Michael Giles died a while ago.

-Louie

The Miracle Pad by Mike Giles

A while ago I came across the Miracle Pad that was put out by Mike Giles. I remember being a teenager when this came out. I think in the late 1990’s this was something like $60 or $75, which was a lot of money for a close up pad!

This is a fancy close up pad, and it will facilitate a production of four half dollars and a jumbo coin.

I’m playing with it and the routine that I came up with is a matrix, that ends with a production of four coins and the jumbo coin. My routine isn’t quite at straight forward as you’d expect it to be with this prop. I had to add in an additional think to make it happen.

I never really intended to use the Miracle Pad as a gimmick. I put a table base on it and it’s my close up magic table that I use with projection. Since I had it with me on the ship I’m performing on, I got to playing with it.

Honestly I don’t think I’ll ever use it as a gimmicked pad in my shows, but it’s fun to play with!

-Louie

Paul Daniels and the Story of Magic

My airplane reading is Paul Daniels and the Story of Magic by John Fisher. This is essentially a book on magic history, with Paul Daniels added in.

I think it’s kinda strange how he’s shoehorned into all of the biographies in the book. It’s like, Vernon was good at card tricks, and Paul Daniels also did them. What I feel the book is lacking is Paul Daniels take on the topics of magicians.

One thing the book gets through, but it’s not clear if it’s Paul Daniels or John Fischer’s opinion and that one of them doesn’t like David Copperfield. I think I had read in Wayne Dobson‘s book that there was a bit of a feud between them at some point.

What I do like is that there are some very specific mentions magic history. Like who created the Sucker Silk to Egg routine that’s now a standard routine. I’m betting 99% of magicians who do the routine don’t know who created it.

If you don’t know it was Fred Culpitt, who also created the Doll House Illusion!

The book also attaches some stock lines to specific performers. I find this interesting, as the history of stock lines is very murky. Quite often they get credited to who popularized the line, and not who created the line. I don’t know how accurate the crediting is in the book, however it’s still great to see some of the history of a joke!

I picked this book up at Powell’s Books in Portland OR for $12 and for that price I’m happy with my purchase!

-Louie