magic show tips – Page 37

Packet Trick in Spanish

Earlier this summer I started doing a packet trick in Spanish. The trick is Emerson and West’s Gourmet Mouse. What I like about this trick is that it’s very simple and I can do it for kids. The plot is easy to follow, you have three cards. One has a picture of a mouse, one cheese and one a slice of cheesecake. The cheese ends up disappearing and the mouse ends up changing to a picture of a cat (that ate the mouse).

The trick is pretty simple to speak in Spanish and that’s helping me connect with audiences that I’ve struggled with in the past due to language barriers.

Here’s what the trick looks like:

@louiefoxx Help me learn spanish! #spanish #learnspanish #helpme #magictrick #rat #gato #cat #cheese #cardtrick #louiefoxx #learnalanguage ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

To learn Spanish, I’m using DuoLingo and asking for help from people I work with who speak Spanish. I’m getting better, nowhere near conversational, but getting better.

-Louie

Color Changing Card!

Here’s what I’m started doing with the Bicycle NERTZ cards. There’s every color of the rainbow, except for orange, and there’s also black. What I’m doing is that I took out all of five of spades and put them in rainbow order in my pocket. This is my pocket index of the colors. I’m not using the black card. I’m also using a blue backed deck with the five of spades on top. The blue card that came with the NERTZ card set is a different blue than the standard bicycle card blue deck color.

When I start my card routine, I ask what the person’s favorite color of the rainbow is. I then force them the five of spades that on top of the deck as they are picking the card, I say, “People who like yellow (or whatever color they say) always pick the five of spades.” Then I proceed with my multiple force routine and my three locations of a card routine. During the three locations, I’ll pull the yellow backed fived of spades from the middle of the stack in my pocket and move it to the top.

After the three locations routine, it feels like the trick is done. The deck is on the the table and the selected card is face up next to it. I’m stealing the yellow five of spades from my pocket and loading it face up six cards from the top of the deck.

I show the tabled blue backed five of spades, put it into the deck and side steal in into my right hand as I hand the deck to the person who said “yellow”. I ask them what color they said, and they’ll repeat “yellow”. I have them deal down cards spelling yellow, dealing one card per letter. When they hit the W, their card will be face up! I use the time when they’re dealing cards to ditch the palmed card in my pocket.

Now all that’s left is to turn the card over to show that it’s back is now their named color!

A couple of notes about this, first of all, obviously use whatever color they say, not just yellow. I have yet to have someone name orange, if they did, I’d just use that as the premise for the multiple force. Next, it’s easy to know the letters. If they name any color except for red or blue, put the card in the 6th position. If they name red or blue, put the card into the fourth position. That will have the selected card end up face up at either the last card of the deal, or sitting face up after the deal.

Hope you enjoy it, it’s a lot of fun to day, the only downside is the pocket space it takes up.

-Louie

Bicycle NERTZ Playing Cards

I finally broke down and bought a box of the NERTZ game playing cards that Bicycle puts out.

They’re $24.97 and you get six deck of cards, each is a different color.

What I don’t like about these is they’re jumbo index and not regular index cards.

I’m going to try to come up with a trick that uses these cards. I’m trying to avoid coming up with a packet trick where the payoff is the cards aren’t red or blue.

-Louie

Know Your Audio!

A couple of weeks ago we went to a “drag brunch” and I’ve always said you can learn a lot from watching any type of performance, not just magic.

One of the things at this venue was the audio. They had two speakers running and the preshow music and host mics were fine, but they act’s music was only coming off of one speaker. That lead to soo much less energy being put into the crowd with the music when you can hear forks clink on the plates.

With my basic knowledge of sound, I can tell you whatever program (or cord) they were using for the music for the acts was sending the signal to the speakers with one side of the stereo output. When I was waiting for the bathroom, I was chatting with one of the acts and mentioned that whoever was running the sound needed to bump their music as it was only coming out of one speaker. The act asked me if I could fix it, I told them that “While I work in live events, it’s not my gig or my place to tell they sound person how to do their job….But if you tell them what I just told you, it would make it better.“

This is why you need a basic knowledge of things like sound, if the sound is bad, or not enough, you need to be able to communicate to whoever is running sound what you need. Frequently a lot of sound companies send out people whose job isn’t as a sound engineer, but more someone whose job is to load in/out the equipment and make sure that no one steals it.

The second half of the show was soo much better as the music filled the room much better. The “sound guy” had to work a lot harder than the first half because they had to turn the volume up for music and turn it down for the mics In reality, it’s barely any work, but a lot more than the nothing they were doing before.

-Louie

Need a Coin Tray

The “need a penny” tray that I’ve been playing with for a little while has been getting good reactions. It was time to tweak the design to make it look better and slightly more deceptive. The new one (on the right) is next to the old one:

The two main changes that I made was that I beveled the edges of the tray and I printed the bottom portion in black. Here’s a few more views of it:

The beveled edged and black bottom make it look soo much thinner. This is a great example of why you should learn about all types of magic. Essentially I took some stage illusion principles and applied them to a close up magic prop to make it more deceptive. I guess reading Rand Woodbury’s Illusionworks book when I was a teenager finally paid off!

Don’t Let Them Intimidate You!

Last week I had a gap in my schedule, so I threw my crank organ in the car and went to the Pike Place Market to busk with it.

The market has a permit system and rule about how long you can be in a specific spot. When I got there, there was a piano player in the spot I wanted to use, so asked him how much time he had left and put my name next in line. The piano player was visibly annoyed that I got in line to perform at that spot. I should say that since he has a piano, he’s very limited on spots he can do. Me getting in line, cuts down the amount of time he can perform that day.

When he time was up, he angrily packed up his piano. I set up my organ and started to play, and I quickly noticed he was glaring at me from across the street! I took a pic, and you can see him circled in red.

He stood there for about half and hour, then walked by me twice after that to look at my permit. Here’s the moral of the story, don’t let anyone intimidate you when you’re street performing…especially in a permitted situation where there are rules!

-Louie

Vintage Magic Trick: Nick Trost’s Geo-Metrick

Nick Trost’s Geo-Metrick interesting trick, it’s essentially a packet version of Paul Curry’s Out of This World, using ESP cards. The packet is only 20 cards, ten are of one ESP symbol and the other 10 are of another ESP symbol. You and the spectator each get five of each symbol, they are mixed and you deal out ten of them face down in a row. The spectator then deals their ten cards face up on top each of your face down cards. When you flip over the pairs of cards they all match!

Here’s what it looks like:

@louiefoxx The Bacon and Square Magic Trick! #magictrick #bacon #square #cardtrick #magic #mindreading #mentalism #outofthisworld #louiefoxx #nicktrost ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

For me, this trick isn’t strong enough to justify carrying around a packet of 20 cards just for that trick. However this method would work with just red and black playing cards, so that would make it something you could do with any deck of cards. It’s a good thing to have in my head for an impromptu situation, but I’ll never do it with the ESP cards. I should say that if I came up with a great way to theme the trick for a gig, it’s something I would do.

For example, if I was performing at a pet adoption event, instead of wavy lines and as square, I used pictures of families and pets. Each family was matched to a pet! That makes sense and it’d be an easy way to add a custom trick for the event.

-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

Stay Safe Out There

Recently there was a shooting at a fair I was performing at. You can read about it here:
https://columbiabasinherald.com/news/2024/aug/16/grant-co-fairgrounds-evacuated-after-shooting/

This happened on a day where my last show was an hour earlier than the rest of the week, so I was offsite when it happened. When you’re performing at a large event (especially a multi day event), do you have a plan in case of an emergency? You don’t need a formal plan, but just to think it through once when you load it. This isn’t just for an active shooter, but for something as simple a wind or lightning.

Do you know where the exits are?
If you’re onstage, do you have any duty to direct people to exits?
Do you know what the venue’s lightning or wind policy is?
If there’s a medical emergency, do you have the onsite first aid phone number?
If there’s a police emergency, do you have the onsite police/security phone number?

Also I should mention that for many large events, that police and medical’s phone numbers usually aren’t 911. There’s usually a phone number for the onsite team that will respond much faster!

Spending 30-60 seconds just looking at the venue can be super helpful in an emergency!

-Louie

Egg Bag Routine

For some reason I’ve been dinking with the egg bag off and on for the last 10 months. This summer I have the egg bag in my library show, it’s a non-traditional routine, that is really more like a miser’s dream with with balls.

When I was reading Charlie Frye‘s book, he had his egg bag routine. It’s got the standard “sucker” phase, but then his ends with a production of four eggs from the bag, with them all between your fingers like a multiplying billiard ball routine. I like the ending, and I got all the stuff to do the routine. I also got a new egg bag as I’m not sure that I like the standard black egg bag that I had been using. I wanted a color that’s more visible.

I’m trying to work out a routine when I have time that has Charlie’s ending. I’m not positive how I’m going to do the first parts. I just need to play with it more.

-Louie