Today I’m travelling from New Orleans, Louisiana to The Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas for the Magic Collector Expo!
I’ve realized that I’m officially an old magician because I’m going to this. It’s also a sign that I’m into the history of the magic tricks and props. I’ve always been into the history, but the props is a more recent thing in the last decade or so. I’ve always been into the old magic props, but having the money and space to collect and display them has only been about the last 10 years.
This should be a fun few days and if you’re at the expo, be sure to say HI!
This month there’s a really cool magic advent calendar where you get a cool magic trick each day in December leading up to Christmas…and it’s FREE
It’s not too late to sign up for it to learn some great magic. Simply go to: https://mysteryarts.christmas/ and there’s a link at the top of the page to sign up.
The last couple of weeks I started working on a Balls In Hat routine that I learned from Jimmy Talksalot. It starts with two in the hand and one in the pocket and ends with a nine balls coming out of your hat! It’s a really solid routine!
You can see parts of it in this reel from the fair I was performing at:
There’s a ton of great info and routines on Jimmy’s Substack. There’s free info as well as stuff for subscribers. It’s $8 a month to subscribe and totally worth it to read and watch all the content he has up there. The magic and essays are focused on street magic, but there’s a lot to be learned there if you don’t do street magic.
Just a heads up, I’m on the road performing right now. Normally my shipping department when I’m travelling is my daughter, but she’s on vacation now through 9/12/23, so all orders placed for in stock items wont’ ship until then.
Digital products will still be emailed within 24 hours of placing your order.
Physical products that I currently have in stock are:
When I was younger I used to dice stack and was pretty good at it…but that was 20 years ago. I’ve played with it off and on over the last few decades, but never really worked too hard at in. I’m trying to keep up the skill, and not sure what I want to do with it, but I’d like to get past a bit of the basic skill I’ve retained.
This week at the AirBnB, I put my dice and cup in the kitchen and whenever I walk by it I have to practice!
I have a little three phase routine that I have to do. It’s four dice one at a time, then two pairs of two and finally all four dice at once. If I fail on any of the stacks I need to start over. This should help me get my skills back a little bit. Once I get those stacks consistent, I’m going to start working on some more exotic stacks.
I made it to the last day, and despite a late night, I got up on time! FISM is the longest magic convention that I’ve ever attended. You can really push yourself with lack of sleep at a three or four day magic convention, but with FISM at a week long, it’s really a marathon!
The final day of the convention ended with Stuart McDonald’s act, which I’d seen last year at Abbott’s Magic Get Together. I thought he was going to be a strong contender, but it got a very different reaction to the act at FISM than he got at Abbott’s. You should follow him on Facebook and read his post about how he feels he act was received and why it was received that way. It’s very honest and I think correct in thinking that it was the wrong act for this specific contest.
After the contest, it was off for lunch. I’m amazed that this area of Quebec City after having around 1,500 magicians in town for a week, people still asked up to show them tricks when we were at restaurants or bars.
I think that’s a testament to how strong the magic is at FISM both on the stages and in the audiences. No one is doing bad magic here, and everyone even informally has brought their “A game”.
The contests ended with the Winner’s Gala and the Awards Gala, which were to separate events. The Winner’s Gala was first, where the first place acts of all the categories in stage and close up performed their acts. Unfortunately due to some really bad camera work, Markobi’s close up card act was unwatchable. It’s really disappointing for people who bought tickets to the show, to have an act that you couldn’t see because the camera was pointed in the wrong spot. After Markobi, was Luis Olmedo who won Micro Magic and should be given the “boss status” award after the camera work was bad or non existent, he simply stopped and said, “I’ll wait” and did just that until the tech team got their sh*t together.
Then the evening ended with the Awards Gala, which didn’t make sense as we already knew who the first place winners were. While I congratulate everyone who got second and third place in their categories, it was pretty anticlimactic. The only surprises were the Grand Prix and Special Awards, but that wasn’t enough to carry the Awards Gala.
On the official FISM schedule after the Awards Gala was a “party” in the banquet room. This party was moved to the back of the dealers room and was exactly what had been happening the previous few nights. For an amazing week that really could have ended on a HIGH, the last two events were a bit of a let down. While I should have hung out at the party, I had an early flight the next day and did my farewell tour saying goodbye and made it to my hotel for a solid five hours of sleep.
POST FISM
The day after FISM ended, when people were heading to the airport the texts started coming in. People were testing for COVID before returning home and they were testing positive for COVID.
Luckily I tested negative, but I still have a few more days before I’m officially in the clear.
Exposure to COVID aside, I had as much fun at FISM as I did when I was a teenager going to magic conventions. It rekindled my desire to attend more magic conventions and will probably carve out a week each summer to go to a magic convention. I left feeling inspired, and overall it’s good for my soul as an artist to be exposed to high level art!
I’m trying to get ahead of orders and have a few more things in stock. Yesterday I needed to make a new mold for my Russian Shell Game trick. I figured I show you what goes into it. I had already made the bottom part of the mold, so here’s how the second half was made.
I put left the shells in the mold and gave it a coat of mold release, otherwise the silicone would stick, and I’d just have a block of silicone with some shells inside that I couldn’t get out.
Then I measured out the silicone and mixed it up:
That gets poured into the existing mold:
Once it poured, I need to wait until it’s fully cured:
And violia! I’ve got the second part of my mold!
Now I take the resin, color it and mix it up, and that goes into the mold:
I put the top on the mold and let that cure until it’s finished hardening:
Once it’s done, I pop that out and I have the almost finished shells. They still need to be sanded. This is a quick way to produce the sets of these shells.
And here’s what the finished product does:
I hope this little walk through of what it takes to make some of my magic props will give you a little insight into the work that goes into prop building! -Louie
Last night’s lecture was a blast, it looks like we had 119 magicians attend the zoom meeting! Thanks to Drew Cardella to letting me talk to the group that he hosts every Wednesday.
One of the more fun things about the lecture was towards the end I showed something that was new that I’m working on. It was my Take Out Box production and you can read my previous posts about it by clicking here. That turned into an impromptu jam session with some great ideas. And some ideas that I had thought of and discarded for one reason or another that I’m going to revisit.
During that jam session on the take out production box a well known magician said I should release it soon “before it gets out there and someone else does“. While I agree with why I should release it soon, honestly I don’t like the idea of putting out things before they are ready. It’s a sad state of magic where someone would hear about the idea and rush to beat me to market, however that’s the nature of the business world. I’ve always said magicians need to play business like it’s a real business, that means protecting things with patents, copyright, etc. So it’s really my fault if someone gets ahead of me on putting the Take Out Box Production on the market.
It’s taken forever, but I’m getting to work on assembling a briefcase magic show. I dug out of the shed an old Pelican 1525 case that I bought for a specific gig a while ago, then used for my outdoor kid shows in the summer of 2020.
This case had a flange on the bottom, and I took that off. It used to have a bunch of custom 3d printed holders in it, but I took them out when I started using the case for the kid shows. I did leave my Sharpie holder in the case. This is a pretty creative solution to keeping pens easily accessible. The yellow holder has magnets in it, and so do the pens. They will pretty securely in the holder, but are easy to reach in and remove.
I’m starting to play with the layout of things in the case:
I have to make some choices, like using poker size cards, or moving up to parlour or jumbo sized cards. I think that choice will end up being made for me by what props/routines end up in the show. -Louie
