I’ve got the boxes for the Applause Please 2: The Encore from Ackerly Builds and they look great!
I need to add the electronics before I can ship them.
I’ve only got a dozen of them, and if you want one, you can preorder one here:
https://www.magicshow.tips/applause-please-2-the-encore/
The estimated ship date will be November 28th, 2025.
I’d have them ready sooner, however, I’m heading out on the road to perform, so Iwon’t be able to work on them for a little bit.
-Louie
The last few days, I’ve posted about working on a trick with a wavy arm guy. The effect is that I’m handcuffed, and the wavy arm guy is inside the circle created by my arms. A cloth is raised, and when it’s lowered, the wavy arm guy is no longer inside my arms.
One of the things that I want with the trick is a defined effect.
The effect is a penetration, and that needs to be clear. The thing I need to be careful of is not blurring that with an escape. If someone thinks I can get out of the handcuffs, the effect changes, as it is no longer a penetration.
What that means is that at the end of the trick, the person from the audience needs to let me out of the handcuffs. While that’s a slower moment, I think it’s an important moment to make the penetration effect clear.
-Louie
Yesterday I wrote about working on a trick with a wavy arm guy. I don’t have a routine written yet, I’m just seeing if it works.
Here’s a practice video.
One of the things is the explanation with the mic stand. While it shouldn’t be necessary, I’ve been in the audience where similar penetration tricks are performed and they fall flat because not everyone is really spatially aware.
A good example of this is Andrew Mayne’s Razorwire. Here’s the effect:
Unless you show the audience that you can’t simply walk around the barrier, the trick isn’t going to land. Not everyone will understand that you can’t just by looking.
With my trick, it works, the next step will be writing for it.
-Louie
In my show, I use an inflatable wavy arm guy as part of a trick. Really, it’s there to add some umph to the ending. It’s a large prop to carry around, but worth it for the trick. It’s only used for like 10 seconds at the end of the trick, but it really makes a difference in audience reaction.
Since I’m already lugging this thing around, I should have something else to do with it, for a second show. I’ve written a lot of ideas down over the years, but never really taken action on them.
I finally started working on one of the ideas that I like the most. The premise is that my arms are handcuffed together with the wavy arm guy inside the circle created by my arms. I then pass through the wavy arm guy, so I’m standing next to him with my arms free from him.
It’s one of those tricks, like walking thru a sheet of steel, where I don’t think it initially hits the audience very hard. It’s a good trick, but it’s more of a thinker, than something visual like popping a balloon and having a wine bottle appear.
One of the challenges with this will be selling the effect. I’m not 100% sure how to do that yet.
-Louie
Whenever I’m near downtown Portland, OR I try to visit Powell’s Books. They have a huge inventory of used books and many magic books.
If you look at the picture above, it’s a mix of new and used magic books. Frequently, they have a lot of professional magic books, not just standard bookstore stuff. This trip, there wasn’t anything super crazy, but I did pick up these two books:
Both of those books were about $10 and things that I can read when I’m on a plane or whatever.
If you’re ever in the Portland, OR area, you should check out Powell’s Books!
-Louie
Growing up in magic in the 1990’s there wasn’t a lot of ways to watch performances of magicians. You either had to go to a show, or catch one on a TV show when it aired. That really limited me to watching modern performers, or older performers who were past their prime at a magic convention.
This is a great video from 1978 of many performers who I had read about while they are still in their prime!
This was a lot of fun to watch and I’m glad I stumbled across it!
-Louie
A while ago, I posted about getting and finally using a Porter Case. I ordered a second one as a backup, and when it arrived, I learned there were two sizes. My second one was a larger size, but still airplane carryon size.
At the end of October I did some senior shows for National Magic Week and to knock the dust off of my second 45 min show that I do on cruise ships. It’s been a while since I’ve done it, so the senior shows were a great chance to perform it as a full show.
I took it as a challenge to see if I could fit the full show into the larger porter case, and it fit! This was a great revelation, as now I have a full show that I can carry onto the plane, and in a way that makes traveling way easier!
Here’s the Porter Case with the show and my sound system (Bose s1 pro) on top of it.
My drop cloth, which is sitting on top of everything, will fit into the case. I didn’t put it in the case because it’s a prop used in two different shows, so when I get home, it’s going into a different case.
I’m really loving the Porter Cases, I wish they still made them.
-Louie
PS: If you want to learn more about doing shows for retirement communities, check out my book How To Perform For Seniors.
When it comes to the Object to Impossible Location type of tricks, I like them when the object never disappears. I don’t like how things like the next of boxes are typically presented. You borrow a watch, the watch disappears, and then you show the box. The audience knows the watch will be in the box. There’s no surprise there, it’s a puzzle at that point.
I’m working on a card to impossible location for my show. The thing about this is that I need to get the card from the person who signed it at the end of the trick, but I want the audience to think that the person who signed it gets to keep it. My solution to this is the card below:
I’m simply top changing the signed card for the thank you card. I hand it to them and say, “This is a thank you for helping me out,” and let them see the card’s face, but not the audience. I tell them they can put it into their pocket and keep it. What that does is make the audience think they walked away with the signed card, when in reality, I have it and can load it somewhere later.
I’ve done this once so far, and it worked. We’ll see how well it works long term.
-Louie
A couple of weeks ago I was on a local TV show to promote National Magic Week. It was a fairly quick appearance and I did one trick which was a card trick, and you can see it below:
The trick uses The Fortune Teller prop for a routine that’s in my 2025 lecture notes. What I like about this prop is that people react positively when it’s introduced, and it’s got a nice three-hit punch at the end of the trick!
When doing TV appearances, I try to do one trick with big impact over multiple tricks. It makes the appearance cleaner. I also did have other stuff in my pockets if I needed to fill time!
-Louie
Here’s a tutorial for the card trick I posted about yesterday where the ace, two, three, and four turn into four aces. You can watch it here:
-Louie
