magic show tips – Page 71

Update For Nick Trost’s Mexican Monte

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Nick Trost’s Mexican Monte packet trick (read it here). I was thinking about it and the end with the card with a different colored back is okay, but I think it needed something a little punchier.

Here’s what I came up with:

@louiefoxx Vintage Magic Trick – Updates for Nick Trost's Mexican Monte #magictrick #packettricks #cardtrick #sleightofhand #louiefoxx #nicktrost #vintagemagic ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

The ending doesn’t play well on camera and from the straight down angle as well as in real life if the change is done by rubbing the card on your sleeve. The Tree of Hearts is think is a more visual ending and having the face change is more of a punctuation on the trick, than the original ending of simply turning the last card over.

-Louie

Cult Themed Magic Trick

The middle show of the three city tour I did last week was a cabaret show. This show was themed, and the theme was “cults”. I don’t normally do themed stuff, but came up with a way to use cults to get into something that’s normally in my show.

The premise was that my wife and I like cult documentaries. Then I had a list of them, someone picked one and it matched a prediction and that led me into my cat routine.

One of the jokes that I wrote that my wife didn’t like, but I did anyway was the final cult was “blue oyster”. It got a great laugh in the show! I think the demographic of the audience that night really helped it play, and my wife wasn’t really who that joke was for.

It was fun to do a bit of writing for something I don’t normally do. I also kinda like the premise of cult documentaries and I think people relate to them as they’re popular now. I may try to play with the premise a bit more and see if I can come up with something that I can use in my normal show.

-Louie

Fifty Dollar Banana!

Last week I did a little three city tour, in two states over three days. I performed at a casino in Redding, CA, a cabaret in Seattle, WA and a comedy club in Spokane, WA.

The first show in California was a logistical challenge and it really shouldn’t have been. I flew into the Redding airport, however my flight was over 2 hours late, so when I arrived the rental car desk was closed. They said they’d honor my reservation for the next day, unfortunately I was only in town for something like 20 hours and didn’t need a car the next day.

The casino was about a $20 Lyft ride from the airport. After I got checked into my room, I remembered that I needed to go to the store for a couple of props (this is why I rent a car). The casino isn’t really near anything, and the closest store was about a $23 Lyft ride each way. I needed a bottle of juice and two bananas, so a $3-$4 purchase, but $50+ if I figured in the Lyft prices.

I just happened to notice a poster in the casino for their comedy night and comedy night was that night. It had their headliners listed for the month and I knew all of them…except for the headliner that night. Then luck stuck, I happened to walk by the comics as they were checking into their room and I chatted them up. We knew all the same people, and I managed to convince one of them to give me a ride to the Walmart for my props!

This is why you make friends with other performers and put out good energy into the world. You never know when you’ll need to lean on a network of people!

-Louie

Multiple Parasol Production – Close Up

I’m still playing with using cocktail parasols. Here’s a quick video I made in my hotel room:

@louiefoxx World's Dumbest Magic Trick! #magictrick #cocktailumbrellas #cocktail #parasol #shimada #closeupmagic #louiefoxx #magician #hotelroom ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

I made up three of the self opening cocktail parasols and they easily fit into a thumb tip. I might be able to get one more and still get the thumb tip onto the thumb. However I’m thinking that the thumb tip may not need to fit onto them thumb and it could really just be a holder for the parasols.

I do think it’s fun to produce the little parasols and maybe it’ll be a running gag or something in the show. I’ll keep playing with them, maybe something cooler will come up.

-Louie

Magic and Comedy Show

On Saturday I performed my show for a sold out audience at the Spokane Comedy Club! When I’m performing at on the road at a public show, I always try to reach out to the local magic club. The Spokane Magic Club turned out in force for the show! It was great having them in the audience.

These daytime shows are a lot of fun to do. Years ago when I was in my early 20’s I opened for Brad Upton at a lot of comedy gigs. At the time I was doing a lot of school assemblies during the day. Brad mentioned that being able to get paid to do entertainment during normal people’s workday was like finding gold. At the time, I didn’t realize how correct he was. As I’ve gotten older and when I’m home, I got to bed at 9pm, the later gigs are more work. I still love doing them, however these 4pm shows I’ve been doing at comedy clubs are great, I’m done by dinner time!

Here’s my 55+ minute show from Saturday in 44 seconds:

@louiefoxx
55 minutes of comedy magic in 44 seconds! #magicshow #magician #comedymagic #spokanecomedyclub #spokanemagician
♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

Another thing that’s fun is that these shows put kids into an environment that is normally just for adults. That gives these shows a special energy that you don’t get at a community center gig and leads to amazing shows!

-Louie

Production Cocktail Parasol

After goofing around with the cocktail parasols that I bought, I figured out a way to make them self opening.

To make them self opening, it just takes a little loop of elastic…and a lot of help from my reading glasses!

I’m not sure what to do with a parasol that opens by itself, but it makes the ending of most tricks better than if I had to manually open it.

-Louie

Parasol Magic

When I was 17 years old I won a magic contest at a magic convention. I don’t remember if there was any cash in the prize, but there was a lot of magic donated from the dealers. One of the things that I got was Shimada’s Stevens Greater Magic VHS tape. That tape introduced me to magic Shimada. One of the acts that Shimada was famous for was his parasol act.

I’ve always thought that producing parasols looked great and better than a more modern umbrella. I think that people connect umbrellas with the self opening feature and less so with a more Asian parasol. Yes, I understand that umbrella and parasol mean the same thing, and intentionally using them to refer to different things.

Parasol productions are very cool, visual and fill the stage, however I don’t think most routines pass the “drive home test”. That’s were people in the audience talk about the tricks on the drive home. Parasols pack small and pop open and everyone knows that. That’s the weak spot in parasol productions.

OK, so I’ve wanted to do a parasol magic for years, but is doesn’t really fit my personality (and costuming). Then the other day I was at the store and saw some cocktail parasols. I bought a couple of packs of them and started playing with different ideas of things to do with them.

Let’s see what I come up with…

-Louie

On The High Wire by Philippe Petitt

My airplane reading last week was On The High Wire by Philippe Petitt. While not magic, it’s about variety/circus arts which is relatable. I thought this going more of a biography, but it’s not it’s a technical manual for high wire walking!

By technical manual, there’s not a lot of specific and it teaches it in very general terms. It’s a very fun read. The way he talks about high wire walking, he’s clearly in love with it and that passion carries the book.

It got me wondering why there aren’t really magic biographies for the general public written as technical manuals that teach techniques in broad strokes. They wouldn’t have to really give away any specific secrets that would spoil any tricks. It’d be an interesting read if someone was able to write one. I’m nowhere near a good enough writer to do that.

-Louie

Custom Printed Gimmicked Deck

I finally used MakePlayingCards.com to have a custom gimmicked deck made! I’ve used them in the past to get large size double blank cards, but those weren’t custom printed.

There wasn’t much from a design standpoint as I just used their standard card faces. This deck is a deck of double faced cards, but the back is all the same card. I had these made to do my version of something that Eric Stevens had shown recently at the NW Ring of Fire magic club.

The cards came out great, and I would totally use them again!

-Louie

Let Them Understand You!

One of the constant struggles I have with performing is audiences that don’t speak English. I never really learned a foreign language when I was in high school and it’s one of my biggest regrets in life. Since I perform a lot in Southern California and Arizona, being able to speak Spanish would really help me out.

The last year I’ve been working on my Spanish with Duolingo and I’ve gotten to the point where I can pretty much do my close up set in Spanish. It’s not conversational, but I’m able to communicate what I’m doing to an audience who primarily speaks Spanish. This is one of the best decisions I’ve made as far as learning a new skill goes!

If you’re a talking act that only speaks one language, starting learning another language. It will open a lot of doors!

-Louie