MagicShow.Tips – Page 40 – A daily blog about magic by Louie Foxx

The Unconquered Card!

When I was a kid, I remember there were two different (gimmicked) three card montes being done. There was Michael Skinner’s and the one put out by Mike Rogers. Both were virtually identical, except that Skinner’s has a snappy flip over. It appears that Roger’s was the first and he had been doing it since the early 1960’s. Here’s what the Roger’s routine looks like:

@louiefoxx Does anyone ever win this game? #gambling #win #cardgame #magictrick #cardtrick #shellgame #threecardmonte #louiefoxx #explained #monte ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

At the end, I show how I would change the count. His shuffle sequence doesn’t make sense with how the cards ended up after the shuffle. So I changed the shuffle sequence, so that your pull a double, to the bottom, then a single to the bottom and finally another single to the bottom. That shuffle sequence leaves the cards in the sequence that they should be in after the shuffle. Where the original sequence the ace shouldn’t be back in the middle.

It’s a little thing, and honestly I don’t know how much of a difference it makes.

-Louie

Bicycle NERTZ Playing Cards

I finally broke down and bought a box of the NERTZ game playing cards that Bicycle puts out.

They’re $24.97 and you get six deck of cards, each is a different color.

What I don’t like about these is they’re jumbo index and not regular index cards.

I’m going to try to come up with a trick that uses these cards. I’m trying to avoid coming up with a packet trick where the payoff is the cards aren’t red or blue.

-Louie

The Moisture Festival Podcast – Harry Levine

On this episode we welcome in the amazing Harry Levine. We talk about his early days being a college radio station DJ and how he was amazed by a fellow moisture festival performers music.

We talk about his journey west and how he ended up staying in in the Northwest for the last 40 years. We also discuss how he became a member of the Mud Bay Jugglers and the Flying Karamozov Brothers. A great interview with the booking guru of the fest.

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Know Your Audio!

A couple of weeks ago we went to a “drag brunch” and I’ve always said you can learn a lot from watching any type of performance, not just magic.

One of the things at this venue was the audio. They had two speakers running and the preshow music and host mics were fine, but they act’s music was only coming off of one speaker. That lead to soo much less energy being put into the crowd with the music when you can hear forks clink on the plates.

With my basic knowledge of sound, I can tell you whatever program (or cord) they were using for the music for the acts was sending the signal to the speakers with one side of the stereo output. When I was waiting for the bathroom, I was chatting with one of the acts and mentioned that whoever was running the sound needed to bump their music as it was only coming out of one speaker. The act asked me if I could fix it, I told them that “While I work in live events, it’s not my gig or my place to tell they sound person how to do their job….But if you tell them what I just told you, it would make it better.“

This is why you need a basic knowledge of things like sound, if the sound is bad, or not enough, you need to be able to communicate to whoever is running sound what you need. Frequently a lot of sound companies send out people whose job isn’t as a sound engineer, but more someone whose job is to load in/out the equipment and make sure that no one steals it.

The second half of the show was soo much better as the music filled the room much better. The “sound guy” had to work a lot harder than the first half because they had to turn the volume up for music and turn it down for the mics In reality, it’s barely any work, but a lot more than the nothing they were doing before.

-Louie

Need a Coin Tray

The “need a penny” tray that I’ve been playing with for a little while has been getting good reactions. It was time to tweak the design to make it look better and slightly more deceptive. The new one (on the right) is next to the old one:

The two main changes that I made was that I beveled the edges of the tray and I printed the bottom portion in black. Here’s a few more views of it:

The beveled edged and black bottom make it look soo much thinner. This is a great example of why you should learn about all types of magic. Essentially I took some stage illusion principles and applied them to a close up magic prop to make it more deceptive. I guess reading Rand Woodbury’s Illusionworks book when I was a teenager finally paid off!

Don’t Let Them Intimidate You!

Last week I had a gap in my schedule, so I threw my crank organ in the car and went to the Pike Place Market to busk with it.

The market has a permit system and rule about how long you can be in a specific spot. When I got there, there was a piano player in the spot I wanted to use, so asked him how much time he had left and put my name next in line. The piano player was visibly annoyed that I got in line to perform at that spot. I should say that since he has a piano, he’s very limited on spots he can do. Me getting in line, cuts down the amount of time he can perform that day.

When he time was up, he angrily packed up his piano. I set up my organ and started to play, and I quickly noticed he was glaring at me from across the street! I took a pic, and you can see him circled in red.

He stood there for about half and hour, then walked by me twice after that to look at my permit. Here’s the moral of the story, don’t let anyone intimidate you when you’re street performing…especially in a permitted situation where there are rules!

-Louie

The Classic Force

A couple of decades ago I was at Bob Fitch‘s first performance workshop up in Canada. One of the people there was Bob Sheets. One night at dinner I got to see Bob Sheets do his classic force and he told me his thinking behind that. Sheet’s classic force is the basis of the one that I do. I’ve added some bits to it, like turning cards face up and offering the cards one at a time.

Here’s the second half of my multiple classic force routine:

@louiefoxx Stop taking that! #magictrick #volunteer #magic #fair #countyfair #louiefoxx #cardtrick #stopit ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

If you don’t know how to do the classic force, you really should learn it. It’s a solid skill to have in your tool box. I initially started learning it when I was a teenager from the book Forcing a Card in the Classical Manner by Paul Gertner. I think he’s got an updated version of it out, but that’s the one that was my first real introduction to the Classic Force.

-Louie

There’s No Plan B for Your A Game

A couple of days ago I finished reading the book There’s No Plan B For Your A Game. I was told it was good by another magician. This is not a magic book, but a “self help” style book.

For me one of the big takeaways is to act like you’re already doing what you want to be doing. For example, I want to work more theaters, so instead of wishing I could do more, I should be acting like I’m currently doing them.

What does that mean?

Aside from marketing to them as if I’m currently in that market, I should have my show up to that level. That means having all the things done (or working on them) for that venue. For example, I want to use projection for part of my show, so I’ve been breaking it in a library shows over the summer. I’m acting like I’m in a venue that has projection capabilities.

This book has made me think a bit more about how to take the next step.

-Louie

Vintage Magic Trick: Nick Trost’s Geo-Metrick

Nick Trost’s Geo-Metrick interesting trick, it’s essentially a packet version of Paul Curry’s Out of This World, using ESP cards. The packet is only 20 cards, ten are of one ESP symbol and the other 10 are of another ESP symbol. You and the spectator each get five of each symbol, they are mixed and you deal out ten of them face down in a row. The spectator then deals their ten cards face up on top each of your face down cards. When you flip over the pairs of cards they all match!

Here’s what it looks like:

@louiefoxx The Bacon and Square Magic Trick! #magictrick #bacon #square #cardtrick #magic #mindreading #mentalism #outofthisworld #louiefoxx #nicktrost ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

For me, this trick isn’t strong enough to justify carrying around a packet of 20 cards just for that trick. However this method would work with just red and black playing cards, so that would make it something you could do with any deck of cards. It’s a good thing to have in my head for an impromptu situation, but I’ll never do it with the ESP cards. I should say that if I came up with a great way to theme the trick for a gig, it’s something I would do.

For example, if I was performing at a pet adoption event, instead of wavy lines and as square, I used pictures of families and pets. Each family was matched to a pet! That makes sense and it’d be an easy way to add a custom trick for the event.

-Louie

A Bad Laugh in the Show

One of the things that Charlie Frye mentions in his book Sleightly Absurd is that you should have no descriptive patter. Since reading it I’ve been looking for places to replace or remove patter that is simply descriptive.

There are reasons to leave in descriptive patter, like if you’re doing cards across and the audience has to know there are 10 cards in each packet.

In my kids show I do a blendo with three silks. In an attempt to remove descriptive patter, I changed to calling them tissues. I give them one at a time to the kid and say, “The yellow tissue if for you to blow you nose. The red tissue I used to blow my nose. The green tissue my dog used to blow her nose.”

All of those get a laugh from the kids, so that’s three reactions I didn’t have before when I simply told the kid to hold the “red, yellow and green handkerchiefs.“. HOWEVER the new laughs weren’t good laughs. I noticed what while the kids laugh, the adults pulled back and for them it was almost a cringy moment. I tried it at several shows and each time I got the same reaction from the adults. That led me to removing the line.

This is a good example of why you should remove a line that gets a reaction from the audience, but isn’t necessarily a line that moves your show forward.

-Louie