jokes – MagicShow.Tips

Lightbulb Eating Routine

Recently I was in a show with sideshow performer who did glass eating, and that inspired me to write a routine for glass (lightbulb) eating. I should say that I’ve seen this act many times, so I may have accidentally written a line that’s existed before and a couple of the lines are pretty obvious, so might be used by other performers. With that in mind, as far as I know this is an original script for someone eating a light bulb.

To set the scene, let’s the the performer just did a dangerous stunt before this.

That was intense! Let’s do something lighter.
Bring out lightbulb
I’m going to eat this lightbulb and poop out a chandelier! This is a 40 watt bulb, I used to do 100 watt, but I’m on a diet!
Take out spray bottle of glass cleaner and give it a spray and wipe it off with a paper towel.
If anyone wants some after the show, I brought a doggie bag.
Take out paper bag and put the lightbulb into it.
Ladies and gentlepeople, it’s hammer time!
Take out hammer, and break the bulb through the bag.
Mozel Tov!
I remember the first time I did this, I was a kid in my friends basement, listening to ACDC.
What were you expecting me to say…the Electric Light Orchestra?
Take out piece of glass and show it to the audience. Put it into your mouth and dramatically eat it.
Squirt the glass cleaner into your mouth, pause and look at the bottle. Open the bottle of glass cleaner and chug it!
Show your mouth to show it empty!

**DO NOT DRINK REAL GLASS CLEANER** use a safe blue liquid in the spray bottle.
***DO NOT DO THIS ROUTINE, IT’S DANGEROUS*** This was written as a writing exercise for me.

So that’s the routine, it should have a few laughs. It was fun to write and something I’ll never do. I don’t know why, but things like these that aren’t my show are way easier to write for than my actual show.

-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

Creating a Bit From Reality…

Last month I was at an AirBnB. I was sharing the house with a bunch of the other performers at the Ohio State Fair. Behind the painting on the walls we found strange “Alien Postcards” from October of 2016

The first one was behind the paint of an apple, then we started searching the AirBnb and found the second one inside of a picture of Groucho!

OK, so that’s what happened in real life, now how do I turn it into a bit for my show?

I started by telling the story.

I’m staying at an AirBnB with some amazing performing, acrobats, jugglers…and a mime. He’s not even performing here. But that guy never shuts up.

One night I was looking behind the paintings and found some “alien postcards”. When I mentioned it to my wife on the phone she said, “why were you looking behind the paintings”, not “what’s an alien postcard.

I was looking for my keys.

Here are the postcards. On the front they say, “Materials deployed for reflective and connective purposes”. On the back this one says, “Thank you for signaling that you are anticipating my transmission”.

The other says, “Thank you for sending the signal that you are invested in receiving this signal…You’re going to die…JK, LOL LOL…but seriously, we’re watching…no parties!”

So now I’m searching the AirBnB for cameras, and you know what I found?
My KEYS!

That’s the story. I’ve embellished it a little bit added some punchlines. The nice thing about being in a house with other performers is that we could workshop the story a little bit.

The next step is going to be figuring out what to do with this. Is it a little stand alone bit, or is it a segue to something else. Like a trick with a key and/or postcards?

One idea is to have borrow a key, cover it up with a handkerchief and have that held by someone in the audience. Then 5 postcards are shown, each has a place where I’ve found my keys. These could be funny places, like in pie, or whatever. One is selected, and the key disappears and ends up inside of the postcard.

I don’t know what will happen with this bit…

-Louie

Strange Magic Prop in Real Life!

I was browsing through reddit and came across a post with an picture of an old bread slicer:

I immediately made a connection to a prop that I assumed was simply a strange magic prop. The bread slicer resembles Lester Lake’s Disceto that was put out by Abbott’s Magic!

A quick internet search shows that bread slicing machines were invented in the 1910’s and Disecto was put out in 1942. It’s entirely possibly that the Disecto was trying to mimic a common object.

Crazy.

It’s also interesting that if it’s supposed to be a bread slicer, that people still use a prop that mimics something that used to be something people were familiar with, but hasn’t been common in my lifetime.

This is why it’s important to look at our props or lines and take out things that people aren’t familiar with. A good example of this is when I hear a comedy magician use a line about someone’s picture in the post office. That’s something that really hasn’t existed in my lifetime. I’ve encountered it once in my life about 10 years ago in a small town. I do know the reference from Bugs Bunny cartoons, but those were made decades before I was born. Because of this I don’t find the “post office joke” funny or something I can relate to. Look at your show and remove old references whether they are verbal or physical objects.

-Louie

Golden Horseshoe at Disneyland

A couple of weeks ago I went to Disneyland with a bunch of variety entertainers after an event in Anaheim.

One of the things we saw was the piano player at the Golden Horseshow Review.

The format in the show (20ish mins) show was song, jokes, song, joke and that repeated. This is a solid formula for a show and format that’s great for a magician, just substitute tricks for the songs.

Why does it work? It changes him from an ambient act to an engaging show. The jokes also make you connect to him, he’s not just a piano player, he’s a person. That’s the goal with a magic show, to be a human. If you want to learn more about being a person on stage and not just tricks, check out Jon Armstrong’s Masterclass on Vanishing Inc. That master class is really great!

-Louie

Stock Lines in your Show

About a week ago when I was performing in Southern Arizona I went on the Queen Mine Tour in Bisbee, AZ. This is a decommissioned mine that is not a tourist attraction.

My tour guide was a Neale who worked in the mine in the 1970’s. One of the things that struck me was the amount of “stock lines” that he used that are very common with magicians. This should be a wake up call to magicians who use these lines to stop using them. If a retired miner is using lines you use in your show, you should probably cut them and write new lines.

One of the lines he used was at the end was, “If you liked the tour my name is Neale, if you didn’t my name is ______”. I’ve never liked this line when magicians use it. There are two reasons that I dislike it. The first is while it is in a joke, you are implying that the audience may not like your show, and that’s the last impression you give them, not a thank you for spending time with me or something more meaningful. The other reason is that you are leaving your audience on someone else’s name, you should leave on your name!

That’s all, go out there and be better than a retired miner!

-Louie

Adding Some Hype To Your Show

Recently I’ve been to a few sporting events and one of the things I pay attention to the the pageantry of the introductions of the teams. It hypes up the crowd, and it reminds me about the importance of introductions. Simply having someone say your name as you walk onstage works, but it doesn’t put energy into the room.

Yes, I understand that not everyone wants crazy energy put into the room, and it can be done in a low key sort of way.

The other place that sports add energy are in between plays. They’ll either have upbeat music, crowd play along things, or video elements. In a magic show, we have time like that in between tricks or when bringing people up onto the stage.

Those are great times to add music, jokes or something to keep the crowd engaged with you that’s not dead time.

This is where watching your show on video is helpful. If you have a hard time watching your transitions between tricks, this is the area you need to work on. Go to a baseball game and see how they do it…

-Louie

I’m Not Sorry…

One of the reasons that I’m not a fan of stock lines is that 99% of the people who use them only use them because they have heard other people use them. Not because they fit their performing persona or move their show forward, but simply because other people use them.

Recently I saw a magician and he asked where I was from, and I said “Seattle” and he replied “I’m sorry”. This is a very old gag and not a good one. I replied with several reasons why Seattle is an amazing city and he had no follow up. Was I “heckling” him? NO. He asked me a question and opened up a dialogue by putting down where I live. Had he had a joke set about why he dislikes Seattle that wasn’t connected to asking me question, then I would have been heckling. However he asked the question to me, which opened a dialogue…and he didn’t have the point of view or comedy skills to follow up. I wasn’t even funny, just factual with my response.

My point is that if you ask a question only to have your “comedy” response, you might want to rethink why you ask. Especially if your comedy response potentially insults someone. That brings me back to why I dislike how most stock lines are used, the performer doesn’t think about them. So if you use stock lines, think about them…what they are really saying beyond the laugh (if there is a laugh).

-Louie

Michael Buble and Adding Time to Your Show…

Last night my wife and I went to see Michael Buble, and that guy works his butt off onstage. He did just over two hours with no opening act, and the two hours flew by!

One huge thing to note is that it wasn’t all music. In between each song the told jokes. It was a mini stand up set that usually introduced the next song or was about the city we were in. Telling jokes between routines is a great way to add personality and time in your magic show. I used to do this more, and need to get back to doing more of it.

Basic math says if you do eight tricks in your show, and if you can add 2 minutes of jokes between those eight routines, you’ve added 12 minutes to your show without having to carry any extra props. That would turn a 45 in show into almost an hour!

– Louie

Try It Yourself…Then Ask For Help…

Last night I was at a sports bar watching hockey and in between periods I popped into the social media and in a group for children’s performers I saw this post:

For fun I wrote 10 of them…I wasn’t doing anything, it was between periods of the hockey game. It wasn’t hard, you just needed to find things that have an “ah”sound or sound similar to that and you’re off!

You’ll notice that I put a little note at the end of my list. The reason I did was that I think one of the problems with magicians is that they try to get people to give them the answer to a problem before they try to solve it first. In my list I put in the work…so should you. It’s not hard, I literally spent 10 minutes coming up with my list.

“sure, it’s easy for you because you’re creative” would be someone’s excuse for not trying. I’m no more creative than anyone else. I just sat down and did the work. I actually farmed out most of the work to an online rhyming dictionary.

Do the work, then show your work when you ask for help. Seeing that people have put in some sort of effort makes a huge difference in the quality of help you get.

-Louie