Tag: devils hank

Walnuts to Glass Magic Routine: UPDATE

I’ve been working on a walnut to glass routine for a little while and there’s one challenge I keep hitting: Why walnuts?

Using balls with cups and balls makes sense as it looks like the shell game which people are aware of. Even though it’s cups and balls and the shell game visually are very different to people who do them, to the general public who have never seen them in real life, it’s appears to be the same.

The challenge with using nuts is basically I’m fighting the whole routine being a testicle joke. I can’t call them “nuts” in the routine, they have to be walnuts. However every time I handle them, I think I’m going to be fighting people in the audience making their own jokes. I really just don’t want that.

I’m switching over to using my Cee Lo dice and cup routine and doing the hat load of the giant metal nut. I’m also using a devils hank for a vanish of all three dice instead of doing a two in the one in the pocket sequence. The bits I have planned for the devil’s hank before the vanish will hopefully help the routine play larger!

I’m hitting the road in a few days and I’ll know if it plays or not soon!

-Louie

Working on the Show

Today I’m starting day four of the doing the new school assembly show. The show is called Incredible Idioms and is at, language and literacy themed shows. This is very different from themed shows that I’ve done in the past. This one has a flow all the way through it. The way it’s written, I can’t easily swap out routines in the show. I really like the way it flows.

In the past with school assemblies, I’ve always had a section where I explain the rules for the audience. This show doesn’t have that, and so far the kids are behaving really well. I think I owe this to the scripting of the show and that there aren’t really any dead spots. There are slow spots, but not really any dead spots.

The warm up to the show is an alarm clock that I put a remote control into and it rings whenever I want it to. This prop is used as the warm up, a running gag and a trick in the show. The trick is that it vanished in a devil’s hank. In my test shows, that clock vanish really fell flat, and I felt that the audience knew the clock was in the hank. The first couple of days in the tour I really focused on making the vanish work for me. It turns out I wasn’t show the back of the hank after the vanish. Once I added showing the other side of the hank, the trick started to hit much harder.

That’s the fun of tours like the one I’m going, it gives you a lot of time to work out problems in the show.

-Louie

Dr. Strange Magic Show…

Last week I was at Disneyland and went over to the California Adventure park to see the Dr. Strange show. Essentially this was a 12 minute magic show. The magic trick were essentially used as “live special effects”, and not as magic tricks. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing them this way, it’s just a different mindset.

There were basically four tricks: Devils Hank, Ring to Flower, Zombie, and an Appearing Pole. This show was a great example of a themed magic show. Every trick was used with a purpose to further along the story. The Zombie was well motivated, but went way longer than it should have gone.

Here’s video I found online of the full show:

This show is also a good example of why when I do themed shows my role is more of a lecturer than a character that’s presenting a show. Performing as someone other than me doesn’t really interest me, and I’m not a good enough actor to do that.