linking safety pins – MagicShow.Tips

Jerry Andrus’s Grave

One of the spots that I stop at when I drive down to California is Jerry Andrus’s grave. It’s in the Jefferson Cemetery in Oregon and it’s only a couple of minutes off of Interstage 5. It’s right about when I need to get out of the car and stretch my legs and walk around for a little bit.

I think it’s important to remember the magicians that came before us. Jerry was lightyears ahead of his time! He was a pioneer of cardistry 40 years before it was popular.

@louiefoxx Cemetery Tour! Looking for Jerry Andrus#jeffersoncounty #oregon #cemetery #graveyard #jerryandrus #louiefoxx #findagrave #townhistory #opticalillusion ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

I think it’s important to remember the magicians who came before us.

-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!

Getting Paid to Work on my Show!

Last week I was working with a buddy and one of my creative partners at a fair in Arizona. It’s always great when I do a gig with him because we work on our shows while at the gig!

He hadn’t see me do my linking pin / thumb tie routine before and with his help the routine made a huge leap forward!

If you don’t have a brainstorm group or someone to bounce ideas off, you’re missing out of growing your show quickly. I highly recommend hanging out with other performers that you like or trust and getting their input on your show!

-Louie

More Thumb Tie Work

I’m liking the thumb tie routine that I’ve been working on the last two weeks. There’s a lot of big laughs in the routine!

One of the challenges in writing for this routine is that a lot of the “comedy” comes from me and the guy onstage being stuck together. I want to make jokes, but the reason for the joke funny can’t be because it’s “gay”. What I mean by that is if the only reason the joke gets a laugh is because it implies one or both of use is gay, I don’t want it. I personally don’t think anyone’s sexual orientation should be the punchline of a joke. That and I don’t have any sexual content or inuendo in the show.

The jokes have to be about the situation that the guy and myself are in. Writing with rules can be harder, but ultimately I think it will make a better routine.

-Louie

Thumb Tie and the Linking Safety Pins

The last couple of days I’ve been working on using a giant set of safety pins onstage for a linking pin routine. Recently I started adding a thumb tie to it to add length. One thing I quickly learned is that there’s a ton of dead time at the end of the routine when I’m having the tape cut off of my thumbs.

My first attempt for fixing the dead time was to add a trick to the end. What I was doing was taking the tape and turning it into an animal balloon. That went over fine, but it’s not the right fix for the routine.

I think my second attempt is a reasonable solution to making the dead time of cutting the tape off my fingers worth it. I’m moving the thumb tie to the first half of the trick. After the thumb tie, the tape is cut off, then I move into the linking pins routine. This has been playing a lot better!

Now I need to keep adding meat to the routine to get it good.

-Louie

Expanding the Stage Linking Pins

This week I started working on routine using some giant safety pins that I came across (read about them here). My initial plan was to see if I could make my close up linking pins routine work on stage with the the giant pins which are about 14 inches long.

The routine works onstage, but it needs more. It’s hard to justify the time it takes to bring someone onstage for a quick trick. I needed to build out the routine and add more.

I think that adding a thumb tie to the trick adds time and texture to the trick. The idea is after my normal linking pin routine, I would add the thumb tie using the giant pins as the “ring” that would normally go on and off my arms.

I’m thinking of using electrical tape for the tie as it’s easy to get almost anywhere. Method wise I’m thinking of using Irv Weiner’s Red Tape thumb tie, as I have all the stuff for it.

We’ll see how it plays onstage…

-Louie

Still My Favorite Magic Trick…

The Linking Safety Pins has been one of my favorite tricks for years. One of things that I do are two phases where the pins are totally out of my hands and someone from the audience links or unlinks them. However my favorite part is the final unlink where I pull the pin through the pin that they are holding.

What draws me to this trick is the simplicity of it. It uses two large safety pins. Everyone knows what they are, they can be examined before and after the trick. Also they take up virtually no space in my pocket.

The downside is that the good oversized linking pins haven’t been made for a long time, so they have to be found on the used magic market. There were soo many sold, they frequently pop up and I’m always buying them whenever I find them. If you’ve never done the linking pins, the trick Shrapnel which is currently available is a good routine and it uses more standard size safety pins and worth looking into.

-Louie

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