I’m out on the road for all of April doing a new school assembly show. This show is called Amazing Americans and is about Americans who have done cool things.
When I create, I like to have rules. Without rules, I find it hard to create. When you can do anything, I can’t create anything. Starting with basic rules helps, like since it’s a school assembly, that means:
1: Geared toward kids ages 5-12
2: Be presented in a gym
3: Big enough for 200-500 kids to see
These are really logistical things, but things that will limit what can be done. I can’t do a card trick where the cards lie flat on the table, or even card tricks with standard-size cards, if the card needs to be correctly identified from the back of the room.
Next, I’ll look at the show’s theme: Amazing Americans
Here are my rules for that:
1: No flags: I want to highlight the people, not the country.
2: Must have female and minority representation: I don’t point out these, but they are represented.
Finally, some other rules:
1: No brands: That means I can’t do a trick about Coke.
2: No counting that involves the numbers 6 and 7: This really limits a lot of things, like cards across.
3: No action happens on the table top, everything is handheld
4: Show follows the format of alternating routines that are me solo onstage, followed by a volunteer, solo, volunteer…
With those rules in place, it’s much easier to select material (subject and trick). I instantly know whether a trick will fit into the show. Sure, I can break the rules; it’s a very conscious decision to do that if I do.
-Louie
Tag: magician
Out of Town Shipping Notice
**The daily blog will continue to be updated below this notice**
I will be out of town for all of April 2026. That means no orders will ship until I return on May 4th, 2026.
I recently shipped a bunch of my magic products to TrickSupply.com in Las Vegas. You can order my magic from them at:
https://tricksupply.com/product-category/louie-foxx/
Any orders placed directly with me in April won’t ship or work to build won’t start until I return on May 4th.
**The daily blog will continue to be updated below this notice**
Vintage Magic Junk Shop Find
Magicians always ask me where I find all the vintage magic tricks that I have. The answer is simple, I hunt for them. Recently, I was performing in a small town and was walking through a junk shop and found this box:
It’s clearly an older prop, my guess is 1960’s. Here’s a pic in the mirror of my hotel room so you can see the front and back:
What’s really weird about this is the arrangement of the window and door. Here’s a video walkthrough of the prop and what I think is going on:
It’s definitely interesting….
-Louie
Opening Night at the Moisture Festival!
Last week was the opening of this year’s Moisture Festival! I was part of the cast of the opening night show, then I’m back on March 28th and 29th. The Moisture Festival is a fast paced variety show. Each act does about 5 minutes.
Everyone in the opening night show was super cool, and were also amazing acts!
Doing variety shows that have other magicians in the cast is where my style of doing non-standard magic in non-standard ways really helps me. I don’t really have to change what I do because there’s another magician in the show. Last week at the festival, I did my marshmallow act. For the 28th and 29th, I think I’m MC for two of the shows, and the last one, I’ll probably do my bullwhip act.
Hosting the shows at the Moisture Festival is a lot of work, but the host is really the glue that holds the whole thing together onstage! You need to be able to fill time for the stage crew to set/strike props, which can sometimes be fairly involved!
One of the things that the Moisture Festival does really well is create a family backstage! Everyone is super friendly, and it’s just fun to be there!
-Louie
Portland Magic Jam – Day 2
The second day of the Portland Magic Jam (last weekend) was a lot of fun. The day started with Daniel Garcia‘s lecture, which was great! I’ve used his One Card index since I worked with him in November. It’s great, if you need a folded card index, it’s worth looking into!
The highlight of the convention for me was watching David Kay perform for a room of 75ish kids plus adults.
For someone that’s a “kids magician” his knowledge of comedy techniques goes way beyond 97% of children’s magicians that I’ve seen. There’s soo much that any performer can learn from watching his show!
Also, working with Paul Draper the night before was great, and Paul and I are working together this week in Seattle at the Moisture Festival.
The convention venue (Portland Airport Holiday Inn) was garbage. My room had blood on the blankets, which is great if you’re a vampire! They new a convention was coming in, but didn’t appropriately staff their restaurant for use. The first night the turn around time for food was crazy long. For the second night, I drove to Costco which was a couple miles down the street and bought a bunch of pizzas for all the hungry magicians!
Then the evening show was John Shyrock, Daniel Garcia, and Rhy Thomas. The show was great!
This is a solid day of magic and learning!
-Louie
The Joseph Silk Gun!
When I was setting up my dealer table at the Portland Magic Jam, someone saw my Joseph Silk Gun and asked about it. I did a little demo for the other magic dealers in the room, here’s what it looked like:
I think that it’s crazy how good this trick looks! It’s hyper visual, and it was way ahead of its time, but using a gun in a show now isn’t something many performers could get away with.
-Louie
Joseph Silk Gun
Awhile ago I aquired a Joseph Silk Gun. This is a pistol that you put a silk ontop of and the silk disappears.
Here’s what it looks like in action:
The vanish looks like trick photography! Unfortunately, there’s really nowhere that I would use a gun in a performance. Maybe if you did some sort of vignette, but that’s about it.
I’m going to try to find time to make a video of it with a Crystal Cube prop. Both the vanish and production would be instant!
-Louie
Current State of Magic
Are we at the point where this is modern card magic:
I’m trying to decide whether I’m a grumpy old man afraid of change, or if something like this is a step in the wrong direction. Sure, you can do a cool trick with this deck, but is this what card magic needs?
Are we at a point where someone asks you to show them a card trick and you can’t because your deck isn’t charged?
I don’t know.
-Louie
The Ice Cream Cup!
One of the tricks that I’m working on for a tour in April needs an opaque, tall, tulip-style ice cream cup. I spent hours searching thrift stores online and didn’t quite find anything I liked…well I did, but I also didn’t want to buy 36 of them!
I finally gave up on trying to find one that already exists and decided to design my own. The nice thing about this is that I get something that is what I want, instead of the potential limitations of gimmicking something that is already made.
Here’s what the trick looks like in my garage:
The ice cream scoop is something that Dan Harlan sells called The Scoop and he even posted this on his social media:
The cup is my design, and here’s what is it:
Obviously, you don’t need to use The Scoop with it; it would work great with a loop ball or just sleight of hand with a ball. Anything you can fake put into it would turn to the streamers.
Ok, so why did I make a full glass, when I don’t show it empty at the start and could just put confetti in it?
Simple, clean up.
There’s no cleanup with streamers; no one needs to sweep or vacuum them up.
For me, this is the perfect solution for the second half of turning ice cream into something exciting!
-Louie
PS: If you want one of these, contact me for pricing!
The Speed Bump That is 6/7
I’m still working on the show I’m doing for a school assembly tour in April. One of the tricks that I had planned is a cards across type effect using postcards. I had a method worked out, then I realized the trick involves counting to ten.
Counting to ten means I’ll have to deal with kids and the 6/7 trend that’s still happening. It’s not as crazy as it was a year ago, but it’s still a thing.
In the past, I’ve used the Piano Card Trick‘s method of pairs to do an object across types of trick. That version has no counting, just moving pairs of cards. That eliminates using the numbers six and seven in sequence.
The downside of using the pair method is that only one thing moves instead of two or three cards. I guess the big plus is that since I’ve used this in shows before, I have a lot of the “bits” built in, so I don’t need to do a lot of figuring out gags. That’s also a bad trap; I shouldn’t be lazy and should be writing new gags.
-Louie
PS If you’re interested in using the piano card trick onstage, look into Jim Steinmeyer’s Apples and Oranges trick.