MagicShow.Tips – Page 51 – A daily blog about magic by Louie Foxx

Jeki Yoo’s Vanishing Birdcage!

Here’s a great version of the Vanishing Birdcage by Jeki Yoo.

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The cool thing about this is that he’s wearing what he normally wears for all of his videos. The downside is this method isn’t practical for a normal stage show presentation. In my opinion any different method for the cage is great, no matter how practical or impractical it is for different venues. The normal stage version of the Vanishing Birdcage is already a very impractical trick due to the set up when compared to pretty much any standard magic trick, so it’s hard to say any method isn’t “practical”.

-Louie

Coins Thru Glass

Many, many years ago I saw a video of Daniel Cros doing Coins Thru Glass. You can watch it here. Basically the effect is the coins go thru the bottom of the glass into another glass one at a time, then the final coin uses a spectator’s hand. I never really like the ending of the trick and the switching from a glass to a hand.

Last night in my hotel room I was playing with the trick but added a hat to it. That gave a slightly different frame to the trick and allowed me to have a “kicker” ending that still followed the frame work of the first coins to go thru the glass.

Here’s what I came up with:

While not great, if I put a little bit more time into figuring out the blocking, the trick would flow a lot better and look a lot less like I just thought of it and don’t know where the props should go.

It’s a fun little thing to work thru, but I don’t know if I’ll put much more time into it as I don’t think I’ll ever do it.

-Louie

Always Ask Who They Know!

When I travel I try to pop into the local magic shop and support them. When I was in Astoria, OR recently I swung by The Magic Shop and More and hung out with the owner Seth.

While I was there a couple of people walked in and one guy mentions that when he was a kid his neighbor’s dad was a magician. If you perform for the public, you will frequently hear people tell you that they have relative or a connection to a magician. I always ask who the magician is, and many times they will respond with something like, “they’re from a small town, you’ve never heard of them…“. I would say a lot of the time I have heard of them and most of the time I know or have met that person.

When I asked the guy who the magician was, he said BRUCE CERVON! That was a fun surprise and we got to hear a couple stories about Bruce. You never know who you’ll meet and who they know!

Also while I was there, I picked up the Max Malini book. When you visit a magic shop, support them with a meaningful purchase, not just a deck of cards for three bucks.

-Louie

The Moisture Festival Podcast – Ben Nemzer

This episode the Moisture Festival Podcast catches up with magician Ben Nemzer!

We talk about getting started in magic, going to magic camp, running an afterschool program during the pandemic and soo much more! This is a fantastic peek behind the curtain of Ben Nemzer’s life!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Portland SAM Meeting

Last week I was in town for the Portland Society of American Magicians magic club meeting. It was a light turn out with only about 8 people there, but it was fun.

For me, I always love seeing the different styles of magic that people bring to a magic club. It’s not always their polished routines, but things that they are working on or things that they have and want to share. Personally, I’m more interested in things that you don’t do in your show, but interest you more than your A material. That’s the fun of magic clubs!

-Louie

Shell Shocked by Giovanni Livera

A bit ago someone mentioned Giovanni Livera’s three shell game routine. I wasn’t aware of this routine, so I tracked down a his book Confessions of an Italian Magician where his Shell Shocked routine is written up.

His routine has an ending that’s unusual, it ends with three production items. The first two are dice and the third is a plastic P. I have all of the props except the plastic P, but that’s where my 3d printer came in handy.

Within about 15 minutes I had made a plastic letter P and had it printed and can now learn the routine!

I’ll get started working on it later today!
-Louie

Linking Pins and Thumb Tie

I’m still working on the Linking Pin and Thumb Tie routine and it’s slowly making progress. I started this in mid-February, however I’ve only done it about 30 times. For me that’s a pretty fresh routine. I haven’t figured out where all the moments are.

I wrote a couple of new jokes and changed it so there were three magic effects in the routine instead of three and took it out to an open mic the other night. It can be challenging at a bar open mic when it’s in a big room and there are 13 people there and only two of them are actual audience members, the rest are comics waiting to do there time onstage. In my opinion most bar open mics are to figure out how to do something onstage and just work that part out, you’re not there to try to have your set crush. Yes, you should try and ideally it’ll crush, but you should be bringing things that need work, not polished material.

Here’s bad video with bad audio of the trick:

The trick went well, but more importantly the new jokes worked and I added another penetration, so there are four instead of three in the in the routine. There’s actually normally one more at the end that I didn’t do because I “got the light” and had to wrap up.

The intro to the trick I think needs to be tightened up and be a bit more clear. That comes with time and rewriting and reworking. I think by the end of the summer this will be a strong piece in the show!

-Louie
PS If you want to learn more about how I work on my shows, check out my download The 6 R’s To Working On Your Show!

ReUpholstering a Dice Cup

As I get ready to head out on the road to do a week of street style shows, I spent the day cleaning up my props. The dice up that I use for my Cee-Lo dice routine was pretty beat up on the inside.

I’ve been using this particular cup for probably 6 years (or more!) and it’s showing a lot of wear on the inside. I had changed the outer black cover in the 2020’s to a tan leather so that it would show up better for virtual shows.

I carefully removed the old lining on the sides and used that as a template for the new felt that I was going to stick into it. I decided to keep the bottom part as is and just recover it with new felt. I’m not sure this was the best decision…I’ll see how well it holds up over time.

Here’s the finished cup:

It came out alright, I probably should have just made a new cup from scratch. This cup still works great and transferring the leather outer layer or making a new leather covering would have been a pain.

We’ll see how this works this week.

-Louie

Escapes for the Circus

Next month my daughter graduates from College. She had an opportunity pop up to work in a circus this summer where she’ll be doing a 4-7 min act. She’s done solo stuff in my show and she has two different escape acts that she can do. The circus will be fairs and festivals, so she’ll be typically doing three shows a day. We’re working on adding a third escape act so that she can do a different act each show. That will solve the problem of repeating the same act all day. She can do that if she wants, but she’ll have options.

One of the important things is that all of the escapes feel different. They all have a different texture, it’s not just three comedy “in and out” escapes or first she escapes from rope, then the next show chain and the final show handcuffs.

I just finished up making all of the props that she didn’t have her own dedicated set for.

Now the next step is rehearsing it and writing some new jokes.

– Louie

Music Remote Holder

Once again my 3d printer saves me a big headache in getting something made! I need a holder for two Flic Buttons that someone from the audience will use to run a music cue for me during a comedy escape. I spent about 5 minutes designing a simple holder and then hit print!

Here’s what the finished prop looks like:

The piece on the left is the cover, however after putting the Flic Buttons into it, they pressure fit into it, so I don’t need the cover as they won’t fall out.

It’s really worth your time to learn to use basic 3d design software like TinkerCad even if you don’t have a 3d printer. You can design things and then email the file to someone else to print.

-Louie