MagicShow.Tips – Page 27 – A daily blog about magic by Louie Foxx

Vanishing Bottle Routine

A few months ago I picked up Henry Harrius’s Refilled vanishing bottle (Corona version). It’s sat on my desk for a while and recently I read Wayne Dobson‘s vanishing bottle routine and kinda liked the idea. So I sat down and wrote out a routine for it.

The effect is: You have a bag and two bottle caps. One is selected and you remove the matching bottle from the bag! You tell the audience you’ll show them how you did the trick, you have two bottles. You take out the second bottle, then put it back into the bag and you crumple up the bag.

Here’s what I wrote:

Two bottle caps, a red coke one and a blue corona one. You’re going to pick one like this is a low budget remake of the matrix

The red cap, everything is revealed, the blue cap and I and you’ll learn nothing, just like high school.

Hold them in your hands and shake them like you’re playing craps, or the baby won’t stop crying. …clearly you don’t have a baby

Now blow on them for luck like you’re in vegas or a kid in the 1980’s who just wants to play super mario brothers

Toss me one.

Red, the coke bottle cap. Inside the bag I have a Coke BOTTLE!

Since you picked the red cap, that means you get to see inside the illusion. you can never go back, your life will be forever changed like going thru puberty or committing murder.

That turned dark

inside the bag I have a second bottle, so it doesn’t matter which you picked, just like voting.

However if you picked the other cap and we needed to keep the illusion, then we would have done it with only one bottle!

It’s not the best script ever, but it’s something to get it onstage and in front of an audience.

One thing I noticed is that I think the trick will play better if the vanishing bottle is the Coke bottle. It makes more sense to have that one disappear in the context of explaining the routine. So I just ordered one of those.

I think this routine could be a good lead into my Signed Coin in Bottle. This was published in Vanish Magazine a few years ago.

-Louie

Adding Production Elements!

I’m working on adding more production elements to my show. I’ve been using video in a very basic way that’s just a camera that’s either on or off, but that’s it. I just added some visual element for projection, and did my first show with them. The first show was pretty basic, it was simply the either a logo, live close up video or pictures.

The first show went well. I’m using Show Cues System and my Media Star remote and running it off of a laptop. Show Cues System is production software (not to be confused with Show Cues music app for your phone) that can run all of the show elements from music to lights. It’s the PC version of Qlabs.

The thing that I don’t like about it is the lack of a screen that I can easily see what the current thing it’s playing it. That helps when you skip a routine, or accidentally push a button and need to move around in your set list. I think I just need to use it more to get used to it!

I tried it out at a gig at a senior community. That’s one of the great things about doing shows for seniors, they are low pressure shows, not huge events where you’re getting paid thousands of dollars. If there’s a tech hiccup, it’s not as huge of a deal!

-Louie
PS if you want to learn more about performing for senior communities, check out my book How To Perform For Seniors!

Smoke and Lasers!

Last month I popped by an open mic to try a new idea. That idea was for the second phase of my card to pocket to have smoke come out of my pocket before the card is pulled out. I’ve only done it at open mics, and decided to try it at a show and IT WENT GREAT!

The smoke coming out of the pocket adds a nice magical and funny moment to the show. I think I may add something else for the third/final phase, like smoke AND a laser to try to take it over the top in stupidness!

This reminds me of a Mel Brooks quote, “…go past crowd pleasing and into real comedy!” It’s great advice for performing. Go past crowd pleasing and into real magic. How do you take your magic to the next level? Sponge balls are crowd pleasing, but how to you take it to the next level?

-Louie

Ali Baba Box!

Inside a box of old magic I bought I came across an strange coin box which I later learned was called the Ali Baba Box and it appears it was originally created/made by Eddie Gibson in the UK. The one I found was made by Paul Diamond and was originally part of a larger set.

The basic effect is you open the box and take out a sponge sponge ball, then close the box and when you reopen it, it’s full of coins. There really was no context to the sponge ball aside from filling the space inside the box. Here’s my attempt to give the box some sort of context:

@louiefoxx Tooth fairy doesn’t always have cash! #toothfairy #cointrick #magictrick #coins #quarter #payday #magic ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

The tooth fairy theme with the sponge tooth kinda makes sense to tie it all together. I’m sure if I thought a bit more I could come up with something better…

-Louie

Magic in Seattle

Last week I took the train into Seattle, and I haven’t ridden an Amtrak train in about 30 years! It was great and way better than driving as I could read and practice a card trick I was working on!

I was up in Seattle for lunch with my family, but then I had a little bit of a magic jam while I was in town. The first wave had Chris Beason and Johnathan Friedman!

When Johnathan had to go, he was shortly replaced by Clive Hayward!

It was a blast having some laughs with them and messing around with some magic!

On my way back to the train I walked by the old location of the Mickey Hades Seattle Magic Shop!

When I was a teenager Mickey Hades taught me how to back palm produce single cards the old way where you bring the whole block to the front pull one card off, then put the whole block back behind your hand! That’s also where I inadvertently saw Michael Starr do a one handed top palm and reverse engineered the mechanics of it on the bus ride home!

It was a fun trip up to Seattle!

-Louie

Dice Sequence

I was relearning Giovanni Livera’s Shell Shocked routine. This is a three shell game routine and at the end of it you have two dice on the table. Looking at the two dice, I realized that this is a natural transition to the Sachs Dice Routine. I originally learned this as a teenager from the book Routined Manipulation Vol 1 by Lewis Ganson.

If you’re not familiar with the trick, the effect is that you hold two dice in your hand and the numbers on the dice change as you turn your hand over. It’s a great effect and one that Steve Dobson did a lot in his working repertoire. I dug out his lecture notes and grabbed some dice!

The move isn’t hard to do, but Steve does it backwards from how my hands remember it from when I was a teenager. The move is better the way Steve describes it in his lecture notes.

You can learn Steve’s routine from the notes pictured above (if you can track them down) or it’s the basis for the routine taught in Reed McClintok’s Ivory Connection video.

-Louie

White Gel Pens!

Whenever I’m at a store that has gel pens I always buy some!

I use these for marking cards. The Gelly Roll pens I use for finer marks, like putting writing on the cards for stack number or card value. The Uniball pen has a wider tip and I use it for things like whiting out the faces on the angels or wheels on the bikes.

These are super handy to have around. Usually I have one on my desk, one in my car, and one in my backpack.

-Louie

Coin Tray Updated!

The original version of the Bodega Coin Tray didn’t have the letting colored in. That was intentional as I personally wanted mine to look like it’s been on a counter for a while, so I only colored mine in lightly. However I’ve had a lot of people ask me for one that’s colored in so they don’t have to do that.

If you want one colored it, simply shoot me a note before ordering and I’ll make yours that way.

– Louie
PS Click here for more info, or to order the Bodega Coin Tray!

Mailbag Escape Bar

Years ago I read in one of John Novak’s Art of Escapes books about altering the gimmick for a mail bag escape to be a handcuff sort of thing. It was the bar from the mailbag escape and it hand either chains or handcuffs attached to the ends where the locks would be. The premise is the bar was a “spreader bar” to keep your hands separate so that you couldn’t reach the other side.

For some reason I liked this as a prop and have picked up a couple of the bars, but never made them into a the prop with the restraints on the ends. They’re just sitting around collecting dust.

This morning while I was doing my morning writing, I had an idea! What if they bar held a small bag. The bag was on the bar and there were still restraints on the ends of the bars.

This idea is that you would try to get whatever you put into the bag out while chained up.

Then it hit me, that maybe the bag could be mesh with a canvas or leather top:

That would work, but I think the presentation/routine would decide if a solid or mesh bag would be used.

If it was a mesh bag, it could be a laundry bag, and a selected item could be removed? There could be a few items or items of different colors and the item called out by the audience is what is removed. If it’s a laundry bag, they you wouldn’t necessarily need to be chained to the bar.

I like this idea of using the bar from the Mailbag Escape for something it’s not really intended for!

-Louie

Shell Shocked – Three Shell Game Routine

Currently I’m playing with Shell Shocked which is Giovanni Livera‘s three shell game routine from his book Confessions of an Italian Magician.

What I like about the routine is that is has an ending that’s a punctuation, not just doing the same thing under more conditions. In the book Giovanni gives you his shell shuffling sequence, but if you already have a few sequences, then you can add his ending to what you already do.

One of the changes I made to the routine is that I’m palming the P the whole routine, instead of stealing it towards the end of the routine. Doing it that way makes sense for me as I don’t keep my shell game props in a bag, so needed a workaround.

If you’re looking for a shell game routine, this is worth checking out!

-Louie