close up magic – Page 30

Safety Pin Trix

One of the things I’m trying to do is be better with my time while I’m on the road. When travelling and performing in cities away from home, there’s a lot of free time. I usually go out and see the local sights, and hang out with the other acts, however there’s still a lot of down time.

One trick that I do in my close up is the Linking Pins and I use Jerry Andrus’s gimmicked pins, but I’ve never really gone through Jerry’s book. This morning before I headed out to the airport I grabbed my copy of Safety Pin Trix and some regular and gimmicked pins.

I’m planning on going through the book in my hotel room. I’m hoping there will be some things in it that I can add to my current routine!

-Louie

Masters of Illusion Season 8!

The new season of The CW’s Masters of Illusion starts tonight!

I should be in an episode or two later this season. I recorded 4 or 5 bits for the show about a year ago. I’m betting that I’ll end up with two routines in the show this season.

This show is a blast to work on. You get to hang out with tons of really talented magicians backstage and in the dressing rooms. If you ever get a chance to do it, I highly recommend it!
-Louie

Resealing Fork…

I used to do a video series where I created magic tricks with things I found at my hotel. It’s been a long time since I’ve done one, they take a lot of energy to do. I stopped doing them pre covid, and I just made my first one in a couple of years.

It’s not the greatest trick in the world. However it’s getting me back into thinking creatively when on the road and it led to another idea with the forks.

What if you have two forks. You unwrap one and someone picks a tine and breaks it off. The second fork that is still wrapped is missing the same tine!

Methodwise you’d need to force a tine and then prebreak and reseal the other fork. easy peasy…
-Louie

Shell Game Collection…

We’re wrapping up our first move for the first time in 16 years, and it’s amazing what you accumulate over a decade and half. At our new place I set up my collection of three shell game sets, and I have more than I thought I had, and in the picture below there are no duplicates:

There are some interesting sets in the collection. For example I have three sets of Rivera Shells that are all made out of very different material. There are both sets of Karl Normal Shell Game which are bowls, the original run has a divot in the top, where the second run of them doesn’t.

The shell game set I own that’s not pictured is my main working set. I really should get a second set as a back up, and to have in the display.

-Louie

Tiny Bible Magic Trick…

Yesterday I posted a dollar bill trick where the dollar was used to produce a tiny bible. The “bible” was one I made was just some paper that was stapled together, covered with duct tape and wrote on it in white pen (These pens are also handy for marking cards!).

The homemade bible is fine for a test run, but the first thing the people I’ve shown this to did was flip through it. That tells me it needs to be a real bible or at least pass the flip test. There are certain things where having the object people want to touch be real and not something that pretends to be real makes the trick stronger. There’s a sense of disappointment if someone realizes that the oranges you use in cups and balls aren’t real. It doesn’t make the trick any less amazing, but it takes them out of the magic headspace there were in. With that in mind I went out and hunted down a tiny bible!

Sometimes it’s the little things that add a lot to the trick. Having it be a real bible makes it more than a sight gag…not much more, but it does elevate the trick!

-Louie

Money Magic with a Bill…

I’ve had an idea in my head for a while to do something with the “In God We Trust” on the back of a dollar bill. I went out and made a bill that doesn’t have it, normally it’s printed just above the giant ONE on the back of a dollar bill.

This one turned out great and it’s got a nice texture and doesn’t feel altered. The next thing was to figure out what to do with it, here’s what I came up with:

Ideally I want to borrow their dollar bill, call attention to a lot of the “hidden” things on a bill, and also call attention to the “in god we trust”. Then I’d do some sort of trick with one of the parts of the bill and during that trick I’d switch the bill for the one that didn’t have “in god we trust” and I’d do the bible production.

The next challenge is going to be figuring out what the first phase would be…

-Louie

Out For Beers – Review

I woke up today to a great review of my Out For Beers trick!

I really love this trick, the play on words gag really works with my personality. I also think the trick works better than most of the Out to Lunch style tricks because it starts as a gag that is motivated. The trick sneaks up on the audience, which make it even more amazing!

This trick has been a huge hit at the booking confrences I’ve been at over the last few months and has driven a lot of traffic to my tradeshow booth and gotten me a lot of work. Get yours now!

Out For Beers $19

-Louie

Tooth Fairy Magic…

The other day I had a strange idea. I wanted to do a transposition between a tooth and a quarter. Using the toothfairy as presentation hook is a no brainer for this. The challenge was that I wanted one of them to be held in the spectator’s hand and obviously they are very different shapes.

The solution finally hit me, why not hand them a folding coin that was folded in thirds? This will have roughly the same shape as a tooth, and have some textures like a tooth. Once that was figured out, the rest of the mechanics were pretty simple. Here’s me trying it out:

It works! This was a great solution for strange problem.

– Louie

Out For Beers!

Last month when I was at the Abbott’s Magic Get Together, I was doing my trick Out For Beers. This combines a brand new gag card with a classic principle. Many of the magicians who I showed it to asked if I would sell it to them. I didn’t have any with me to sell, so I couldn’t. Because of that demand, I made up some sets for sale.

Here’s what it looks like:

What I like about it, is you are using the gag to get into the trick. Where most of the tricks that use the Out to Lunch principle, the cards are the focus of the trick. They have no reason to be there aside from the trick. That’s what makes Out For Beers great, the trick is unexpected.

Here’s What You Get:
*Gimmicked card to show the full beer pitcher
*50 cards showing the empty pitcher
*Rubber band
*Instructions
*BONUS: 5 extra cards that show the full beer pitcher

Out For Beers $19

A Class Act…

Before I headed out on the road, I was cleaning up and noticed a book that been kicking around my office forever. I’m not sure how I ended up with the book, but I’ve never read it, so I threw it in my car. The book is Class Act: The Magic of Tony Binarelli.

When I was a teenager I think I had seen Tony Binarelli lecture at the Desert Magic Seminar in Las Vegas. At that time he was lecturing on mentalism from his book My Way to Mentalism. Honestly, I don’t remember much of lecture, but I picked up a set of the lecture notes for a friend of mine.

Ok, back to the Class Act book. There’s a lot of hype in the introduction of the book about innovative moves. The first two card sleights are a top palm and second deal, both of which I think predate Tony. However it’s also entirely possible that they are his.

The top palm is a two handed top palm and it’s not very good as written. It’s something that I was doing as a teenager because I couldn’t quite do the one handed top palm. Essentially, it’s a two handed, one handed top palm. In my version I slightly slid the top card forward with the deck held in mechanics grip. Then my other hand pressed down on the outjogged part and the card pops into your palm. In Tony’s version, he slides a lot of the cards forward, it looks strange. The one advantage to Tony’s that they don’t really mention, but kinda hint at is that it makes it easier to palm off multiple cards. You pinkie count them with your ring finger as you push down and they pop up.

The second deal is a turn over deal, you can’t deal face down from a face down pack. I was just chatting with Chris Beason about this second deal technique a few weeks ago. It looks good, but not a natural looking deal.

So far, I’m glad I’m reading the book instead of getting rid of it without reading it.