MagicShow.Tips – Page 25 – A daily blog about magic by Louie Foxx

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

The Moisture Festival

In Seattle we have a variety arts festival called The Moisture Festival that happens every year. I’ve performed at this for about a decade and it’s a ton of fun. What makes it fun is that you get a ton of amazing acts together in one show! Each act does 5-8 minutes each, making it a very fast paced show. I performed in three of the shows on the first week.

One of the great things about these shows is just hanging out with everyone! Everyone’s journey to get on stage is different and we all have crazy road stories! This is one of the gigs that I think are good for my soul. I leave them inspired to be better and with new friends!

-Louie

MAK Magic’s Mint Condition

My best guess is in the late 1990’s MAK Magic put out Mint Condition. This is an expanded shell coin that had the back of the coin on the inside. That allows you to show both sides of the shell when it’s empty.

I’ll admit that when it came out I thought it was a dumb idea. It was an improvement that didn’t really improve how a shell coin is used. For most close up magic, I still think it’s not necessary.

The place where this coin is great it for social media videos. Where is someone knows about a shell coin, it removes that when you show both sides of the coin. Social media is a great place for things that correct little details in magic tricks that are overkill for an in person performance.

The other thing is that I don’t think that Mint Condition was a huge seller, as a there’s not a lot of mentions of it when I do a Google Search and I can’t recall seeing one pop up on a used magic site. I guess them being uncommon is good for people who are using them!

-Louie

The Moisture Festival Podcast – Live at the 2025 festival

This episode is LIVE at week one of the 2025 Moisture Festival!

In this episode Louie chats with acts appearing for the first time at the festival. This is a great episode to meet new additions to the Moisture Festival family!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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A Young Person’s Schedule

I’m getting old! I used to be able to perform all day, I think one time when I was younger I did 6 birthday parties in one day! Unfortunately age is creeping up on me. The other day I did three shows, I did two shows at different libraries that were forty five minutes each, then did a 90 minute theater show!

Here’s what the 45 minute library show and the 90 minute theater show look like when packed up:

And here’s what the three venues look like when set up:

I don’t know what I was thinking when I scheduled them! I also should have scheduled them with some time between them, not with just travel time between them. I could have used a nap between the libraries and the theater.

I need to be better about not pushing myself, and scheduling some gaps in my day if I’m going to do 180 minutes of performing!

-Louie

Reading Glasses

Last week when I was hosting a show at the Moisture Festival in Seattle it was the first time I’ve ever worn my reading glasses onstage! While notes in the picture in this post are a reasonable font size, some of the other notes I were given were written in a super tiny font that I wouldn’t be able to accurately read.

It was strange to wear them as they made everything else blurry that was what I would normally look at. I ended up turning it into a bit with my normal stage glasses which have no lenses and my reading glasses.

I can see good enough to do my show with my stage glasses. The reason they don’t have lenses is that I don’t want reflection on the lenses to block my eyes.

-Louie