It’s crazy how the stages that I perform on vary. One night I’m on this stage that’s state of the art with a 7 person tech crew!
Then the next show I’m on a stage like this with very minimal tech and no crew.
How I do my show, the core show is without any production and when I can use production, it’s a bonus! However it’s a bonus that I’ve planned for!
-Louie
One thing I realized when posting on social media is that a lot of standard techniques that work in an in person show don’t hold up to video. One example is using an Elmsley Count of four of the same cards, but you’re passing one card off as two. You say you have four queens, and count through them, and don’t call out the suits, so one suit shows twice. This doesn’t hold up to repeated watching.
Here’s my solution to it:
@louiefoxx Super Quick and Stupid Card Trick! #cardtrick #magic #magictrick #cards #playingcards #queens #red #black ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx
In the trick above at the end you see all four suits, however you I’m only showing three cards. The solution is something that I stumbled on and it’ll be in the February issue of Vanish Magazine.
It’s a small thing and won’t improve or apply to every trick where you’re passing of the same card as two different cards using an Elmsley Count, but it’s a nice thing to be able to add when it makes sense!
-Louie
I love finding old magic, and recently I found something really cool (I”ll post about it another day), but inside of that there was a folded up piece of paper. This is from the mid 1940’s and it had the typed routine for Elmer Applegate’s The Story of One Card Pete!
This is a routine for a six card repeat style where you have five cards, take away one and still have five. It’s an interesting routine, and the patter is rhyming. Jeff McBride has a really cool version of it and worth trying to track down the video of.
-Louie
Another day, another Inject 2 outage! We’re just over 3 weeks into 2025 and this is the 3rd time that Inject 2 has stopped working. The first two times it was down about a week each.
Once again, this highlights the problems with internet based apps and sort of apps in general. If a magic app stops working, there’s not much you can do. It’s also hard to run a backup method with an app. You can’t have someone type into Google AND write it on a piece of paper at the same time.
The now frequent outages can affect performances:
I’m appalled that Greg doesn’t immediately let the major magic shops know when Inject 2 is down so they can pause sales. It’s still available at Penguin and Vanishing Inc AND Greg is at MagiFest, where both companies are right now!
Finally, Greg Rostami has talked about this “back up plan” for Inject 2 for almost a month now, but hasn’t started to implement it. He says it will take a month to do, well guess what, if he started it the first time, it’d almost be up and running.
Here’s my theory: If Greg switches Inject 2 to another server or whatever the backup plan is, he’ll have to relist it as a new app. That means current users will have to rebuy it, and he’ll have to deal with refunds from people who just bought it.
I hope that the app does get back up and reliably running as many magicians like it, but it teaches magicians that you can’t rely on technology that’s out of your control.
– Louie
Last week I was at an entertainment showcase. These are where performers do a bit of their show for people who book acts/shows. When watching bands, my number one note for them is to not talk! The amount of banter they do is ridiculous, it’s not a show, you’ve got 15 minute to wow a booker and when they waste 3-5 mins on uninteresting talking on the mic, their show doesn’t look tight.
I love it when I see an act come in to get booked. A good example is Patrick, he came in did a high energy 15 minute set with no wasted time!
I was there showcasing my crank organ as a “roving act”. This is different from stage showcase, you can connect with people differently and have more time. My roving showcase had 45 minutes.
With that time I try my best to connect with people and educate them on how they can use this act at their event. Trying to sell something like the crank organ for events is a bit harder because most people have never seen one and don’t know how they’d use it for their event.
If you’re not using showcases to sell your show, you should look into them, virtually every market has some sort of showcase!
-Louie
When I travel I hand carry my audio/electronic stuff box. I’m paranoid about losing this, so I put an Apple AirTag in it. I set this AirTag to alert me if I leave it somewhere. So if I walk away from the audio case, my phone will let me know!
While I’m mentioning travel tips, I don’t use luggage tags on my bags. Instead I write my name and phone number on my luggage with a marker!
Now there’s no luggage tag to get ripped off, my info is on my luggage permanently!
-Louie
We’re 22 days into the year and Inject 2 has only been working for about a week. Greg Rostami’s last update was two days ago:
While hindsight it 20/20, if Greg had started to move Inject 2 during the first outage almost a month ago, it’d almost be done and up and running. He keeps claiming there are back up plans, but we have yet to see any of them implemented. There’s no reason he couldn’t start working on the backup plan while still trying to resolve the current issue. Sure it takes time, but it appears he’s just in a holding pattern with Google.
App’s are interesting, but if they’re internet based, they aren’t reliable. This is for many reasons, and this is just one of them. There’s plenty others, like I work a lot of GIANT events where there are just soo many people the internet works at a snails pace. There there are times with magic apps where the server that the app lives on gets overwhelmed because there are a ton of magicians using the app at the same time. This happened to an app (I don’t remember which one) on New Years Eve a few years ago.
Then there are times when your phone that the app is on updates overnight and now there are compatibility issues with the app and your phone that weren’t there the day before.
Before you buy an app you need to consider how you’re planning on using it and how it can fail you. If the app goes out mid trick, what are you going to do? If the app glitches and all of the sudden the spectator’s screen shows something they’re not supposed to, what would you do?
Plan for failure!
-Louie
When you perform and there’s a stage, use it! It took me a while to learn this, and I’m glad I figured it out a long time ago. Before I go further, there are times and reasons to be in front of the stage, or in the audience, so this isn’t a hard rule.
Here’s an example, I was watching a performer do the cups and balls and they’re performing on the floor in front of the stage. Here’s what I could see sitting in the back:
The lady standing was moving to the back to where she could stand to see. Don’t worry about her, she’s not what this is about. It’s about the cups and balls on the table and about waist height to the performer.
What does this picture tell you?
It tells me that if I’m on the same level as the audience (the floor), anything held below my shoulders can’t be seen six rows back.
So how do you do the cups and balls onstage?
That’s the challenge because if your tabletop is flat, then the people in the front rows can’t see as the bottom of the table is blocking their view.
You could move the table further upstage and that will help a bit. What I did when I used to do cups and balls was put a “rake” to my table, so the front end was lower than the back end. My table also had a small lip that would stop the balls from rolling off. It was a workable solution and an option.
One thing that’s helpful is to watch magic shows from different seats in the audience and pay attention to when you can’t see things. Not just when they’re performing, but if a magician walks into the audience, how much of them can you see? You can use this information to help you decide to go into the audience and if you do, how to do it so that things can be seen.
-Louie
The local magic club had their swap meet night and I found a few cool things!
First I found an early version of Richard Himber’s Billfooled!
This is a switch wallet and from what I’ve learned this predated what we call the Himber Wallet. The Z fold wallet was an evolution of this.
The next thing I found, were these Repeating Rabbits!
To me these look more like cats than rabbits. This trick is similar to the multiplying bananas.
Finally, my favorite of the things I found was The Puzzle Pants!
That packaging is the best part!
The pants have two balls sewn into them and you have to take them out. This is a Scotch Purse, but themed as pants!
All three of these are great additions to my collection of vintage magic!
-Louie
I was looking at my magic tables and they’re getting beat up. Two of them it’s just the the top fabric was getting worn out, but the third one was straight up beat to crap!
This is my stage table, and things sit on the top of it, so you don’t see the surface of it. As long as I was recovering my two tables that I work on, I might as well do this one.
Here’s all three tables with their new surfaces. Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner, it only took about 30 is mins to do all three of them and it’s not hard. I have a self adhesive surface I use.
Sometimes it’s hard to know when your props are getting worn out as it happens slowly and gradually. Every now and then you really need to give your stuff a good once over !
– Louie
