mentalism – Page 2 – MagicShow.Tips

The Magic Shop and More!

Last week I was doing a show in Astoria, OR. Whenever I’m in that area I swing by and visit Seth who owns the shop.

It’s really a pitch shop that sells magic tricks to tourists, however they really well stocked with a lot of magic that’s for non-beginners.

When I was there I picked up a Rainbow Deck and a copy of the reprint of the book Mind Myth & Magick by TA Waters. This book when it first came out in the mid 1990’s sold for $60. When I was a teenager working in the magic shop, we had a couple of copies of this book and they took probably a decade to sell. This book wasn’t a hot item at the time. While it is a giant book, $60 was about double what a magic book sold for at that time. Then over the next few decades this book became harder to find with copies selling for over $300! This reprint at $99.95 is a great deal!

The only thing that I don’t like about the book is that I’m taking it on the road with me, and it’s the size of a phone book and I’ll be lugging it around the country in my backpack!

-Louie

Weather Prediction Mentalism Trick

A while ago I wrote a post about me having Trigger Finger, which is a tendon issue in my knuckle. I noticed that it was bad when it was raining, so that means I have an old man super power, my finger can predict the weather!

What can I do with that?

It got me thinking about doing a weather prediction effect. The idea of the trick will be that someone says the name of a city, and I write down what my finger thinks the weather in that city is.

I wanted the prediction to be bigger that something that could be accomplished with a nail writer. After some writing of different ideas, I hit upon using weather icons:

The flow of the effect is:

A city is chosen
The prediction is written down
The weather is the city is determined
The correct icon matching the weather is removed
The written prediction is shown to match the icon

That’s the flow.

I originally had a step earlier in the process that had me showing all the different possible icons. I decided that’s really dead time, and not needed, because we’re going to go through them later to find the correct one.

The method is really simple, I spent a lot of time writing more complex methods, but this was the most simple and direct method that I came up with.

I tried it for the first time a couple of days ago and it worked! Now to do it more and create a more complete routine.

-Louie

Flux vs Espionage

About a month or so ago I had a gig where I was booked specifically as a mentalist. I only added one new thing to what I already do and that was ProMystic’s Flux. I really liked what I could do with it, however the problem is coming up with an out if it fails. The solution that I came to was to have two of them.

Instead of buying a second Flux, I picked up Espionage by Iarvel Magic which is about $50 cheaper than flux. Now having used both of them I decided that Flux is the better of the two and worth the extra money.

First of all both do the exact same thing, they detect a magnet. What I dislike about Espionage is that it’s hard to tell if you turned it on while its in your pocket, where Flux will vibrate when you turn it on. Also the range on Espionage was a little bit shorter than with Flux. Those two things are a big deal when you’re out there performing and to me with the extra money.

-Louie

ReaList by Greg Rostami was Down!

If you weren’t aware Inject 2 by Greg Rostami was down for most of January and when it came back up their marquee trick “the Google Peek” wasn’t and still isn’t functioning. One of the workarounds that Greg was pitching was to buy another one of his apps called ReaList and use it with Inject 2.

Well guess what, ReaList was down for a while!

This really highlights why I don’t use magic apps that need the internet. There’s so much out of your control and according to Greg’s statement so much out of the app developer’s control that make apps like ReaList and Inject 2 unreliable (in my opinion). These are all things that there’s really no back up for. Sure you can have an alternate method, but it’s hard to run them at the same time. It won’t work to say, “type this into Google on your phone AND write it on the back of my business card“.

Before using an app, think about is having someone type something into Google really better than writing on the back of your business card? The effect is the same, and one of these methods leaves them with your business card.

-Louie

Magic Trick Request

At a recent gig they requested I do a trick with a donor’s check. I decided to do a Bank Nite type of trick where the check was put into an envelope and mixed with other envelopes. One envelope was selected and the rest were shredded and the selected envelope had the check.

Pretty standard in effect, but I didn’t want to deal with an electric shredder, so I used a manual shredder.

The shredder above says is has a capacity of 2 sheets, however it worked just fine with and envelope with a check sized piece of paper in it. It played fine, and the manual shredder is a great prop to have around. I think this premise is an easy way to customize a trick for an event.

-Louie

Roving Mentalist Gig

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned I had an upcoming gig where I was booked as a roving mentalist. The gig went well, the thing I struggled with was how to introduce myself, as they specifically wanted “Mentalists” as their roving acts. I figured it out pretty quickly, but it took a few tries to come up with an opening line that made sense.

Here’s what the audience saw for props.

Obviously they didn’t see them laid out like this, they were in my pockets.

Here’s what the full set of props looked like:

The new thing that I added for this gig was ProMystic’s Flux. I really like it, however in trying to come up with an “out” for it when it fails, there’s not a lot to do to get yourself out of it. The easy solution is to simply have two of them, if one fails, I simply get the other one.

I have some ideas for how I’d like to use this onstage…

-Louie

Mentalist: Uri Gator!

Never pass up an interesting photo! Last week I was doing roving magic at an event and they had an reptile attraction at it. In my roving set I was doing spoon bending and did it for the people running the reptile exhibit.

I had them put the spoon in the alligator’s foot like it was the mentalist and it ended up being a fun picture!

Stuff like this is good social media content, but also something that the event loved and they used the picture!

Always be on the lookout for things like this!

-Louie

Inject 2 is Denied by Google!

Well, I can’t say that I’m surprised that this has happened with Inject 2. Here’s the latest from Greg Rostami about Inject 2:

Greg is going a good job of spinning the issue with Google on a competitor reporting him, when the bigger issue is how fake Google page will work going forward. Blaming a competitor on something he was doing that technically he shouldn’t have been doing is like getting made at someone turning you in for a crime you committed. The fake Google page was always not “legit” and the very least (in my opinion) it infringed on Google’s trademark.

Supposedly Greg has this backup plan that he says he hasn’t implemented because it would take a month to put up. If he had implemented it at the first time that Google pulled Inject 2 over a month ago, we’d be up and running. However running it on another server or whatever doesn’t solve the problem with the fake Google page infringing (in my opinion) on their trademark and still open to being shut down by Google even if it’s not on their server.

Inject 2 can do a lot more than just peek what someone Google searches, however those take a bit of work to get set up (or at least they used to), where the Google Peek was a plug and play thing and probably what most were bought for as it’s easy.

I’m very curious what the future holds for Inject 2. I find this whole thing very fascinating and it highlights the HUGE problems with internet based apps, which is you can’t control if they work or not. Apps that live on your phone are a bit more reliable, but still have some issues that are out of your control, like your phone’s OS auto updating and your app is not longer compatible or has a lot of glitches.

If you use apps, you need to figure out your backup plan for what to do if the app stops working, or worse yet stops working mid trick!

-Louie

Inject 2 – Down for the 3rd Time This Year!

Another day, another Inject 2 outage! We’re just over 3 weeks into 2025 and this is the 3rd time that Inject 2 has stopped working. The first two times it was down about a week each.

Once again, this highlights the problems with internet based apps and sort of apps in general. If a magic app stops working, there’s not much you can do. It’s also hard to run a backup method with an app. You can’t have someone type into Google AND write it on a piece of paper at the same time.

The now frequent outages can affect performances:

I’m appalled that Greg doesn’t immediately let the major magic shops know when Inject 2 is down so they can pause sales. It’s still available at Penguin and Vanishing Inc AND Greg is at MagiFest, where both companies are right now!

Finally, Greg Rostami has talked about this “back up plan” for Inject 2 for almost a month now, but hasn’t started to implement it. He says it will take a month to do, well guess what, if he started it the first time, it’d almost be up and running.

Here’s my theory: If Greg switches Inject 2 to another server or whatever the backup plan is, he’ll have to relist it as a new app. That means current users will have to rebuy it, and he’ll have to deal with refunds from people who just bought it.

I hope that the app does get back up and reliably running as many magicians like it, but it teaches magicians that you can’t rely on technology that’s out of your control.

– Louie

Inject 2 Still Not Working

We’re 22 days into the year and Inject 2 has only been working for about a week. Greg Rostami’s last update was two days ago:

While hindsight it 20/20, if Greg had started to move Inject 2 during the first outage almost a month ago, it’d almost be done and up and running. He keeps claiming there are back up plans, but we have yet to see any of them implemented. There’s no reason he couldn’t start working on the backup plan while still trying to resolve the current issue. Sure it takes time, but it appears he’s just in a holding pattern with Google.

App’s are interesting, but if they’re internet based, they aren’t reliable. This is for many reasons, and this is just one of them. There’s plenty others, like I work a lot of GIANT events where there are just soo many people the internet works at a snails pace. There there are times with magic apps where the server that the app lives on gets overwhelmed because there are a ton of magicians using the app at the same time. This happened to an app (I don’t remember which one) on New Years Eve a few years ago.

Then there are times when your phone that the app is on updates overnight and now there are compatibility issues with the app and your phone that weren’t there the day before.

Before you buy an app you need to consider how you’re planning on using it and how it can fail you. If the app goes out mid trick, what are you going to do? If the app glitches and all of the sudden the spectator’s screen shows something they’re not supposed to, what would you do?

Plan for failure!

-Louie