PCAM day 4

The final day at the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians (PCAM) convention was a show day for me. I skipped the card clinic in the morning to prep my show for the afternoon. Here’s what I look like before showtime (I’ll add the after later in this post)!

magician

The show went well, it took a few minutes to warm up the audience, but they were great!

magic show
magic show
magic show
magic show

A lot of magicians are nervous about performing for magicians. One way to look at it is that they are just people, and in theory, if they’re at a magic convention, they are magic fans. That should give you a head start, as they’ll likely appreciate what you’re doing, unlike a dentist convention.

Here I am after the show, a sweaty mess!

magician

After my show, it was a dinner break, then wrapping up the evening was the One Handed Cut A Thon and the Bag of Tricks contest.

The One-Handed Cut-A-Thon was for whoever could do the most charlier cuts in a minute for the first round and the most in 90 seconds for the final round.

I made it to the final round, but unfortunately, I didn’t win. I did win the Slickest One-Hand Cut award!


Then it was the Bag of Tricks contest. In this contest you get a paper bag with about 14 items and you have to come up with an routine using only those items. You have to use all 14 items or you get a deduction. All the bags were the same, except that each bag had one wild card item, that was different in each bag.

I entered as a team with Mike Norden. Our wildcard item was a tiny smock.

We ended up getting second place, but it was a ton of fun!

The PCAM convention was a ton of fun, and it’s really a family there. Everyone is cool and open to hang out with anyone! I highly recommend this convention to anyone!

-Louie

PCAM Magic Convention Day 3

The third day of the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians Convention started with the Teach a Trick workshops.

magic workshop

These are hands on workshops which ran about 20 minutes each. There were several stations that the magicians rotated through. It was a lot of fun and a great way to make sure everyone took away something new!

After lunch we had the contest awards presentation. You can see the full list with pictures on the PCAM’s facebook page at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/pcam.magic/permalink/10162386689637266/

The next event was one of the things I was really looking forward to, and that was Peter Samelson’s show. I’ve heard a lot about him, read his book Theatrical Close Up.

peter samelson

His show wasn’t what I was expecting. That’s not bad, in fact, I really loved his show. I thought it was going to be a more “artsy” show, but his show was amazing and FUN! I chatted with him about this, and he said that he used to do a more artsy show, but wanted to do a more fun show, and he definitely succeeded in that!

After the show it was a happy hour magic jam in one of the ship’s bars.

magic jam

Later that night we had Peter Samelson’s lecture. It’s a great lecture on a 12 minute act that has a lot of texture to it. His Ashes on Palm stuff is amazing!

The evening wrapped up with some late night BS’ing and magic jam

It was a super fun day! Tomorrow, the ship stops at Santa Barbara, CA, which is the ship’s only stop on this short run. Tomorrow is also my show day; I have an afternoon show at 3:30 pm, so I need to go through my gear and make sure I have everything I need for it.

-Louie

Pacific Coast Association of Magicians Convention day 1

This week I’m lecturing and performing at the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians (PCAM) convention aboard the Holland America ship, the Eurodam. I got into Canada the day before the cruise. With the extra day in the Vancouver BC area, I went to see Shawn Farquhar’s Hidden Wonders show!

Shawn’s show is great and it’s a really smart format. It’s not a rigid show, and they way it’s presented makes it feel fresh for the audience.

Then a bunch of the magicians who were in town the night before the convention all went out to hang out!

magicians

That brings us to day one of the convention. This year’s PCAM convention is on the cruise ship Eurodam. Before I got onto the ship, I had breakfast with Paul Romhany and Peter Samuelson.

magicians

Paul isn’t attending the convention, so it was nice to see him.

Boarding the ship was a potential problem for me as I had my show with me, but I wasn’t a guest entertainer hired by the ship. That means they didn’t have to let me bring any props onboard that they objected to. I really lucked out. I have a whip and that’s the prop I was worried about getting taken away.

travelling with magic show

I got really lucky, the x-ray screener saw the whip and told the person next to her that I had she thought I had a whip. The second person took my case and handed it to a third person and said, “He has a wire“. The third person opened the case and and saw a coiled up power cord and said, “is this the wire?” I said, “yes” and they closed my case and let me proceed.

Now that I was on the ship with all of my gear I could relax a little bit.

The opening event for the convention was James Cielen‘s show.

James Cielen

We were supposed to see his show in the main theater as part of the cruise, but his schedule shifted, so he did a show just for us. The show he did was close up magic that was projected onto a screen. It was a solid choice of material and I it was great to see what a full close up show for a theater looks like.

The next two events were presented by Daniel Garcia.

daniel garcia

He performed a close-up show, a Q&A session, and a lecture. His material is great, and he did a great job explaining why he does things the way he does.

I picked up his One Card, which is a great way to do a named card in envelope.

That took us to about 11 pm, and it was time for me to go to bed.

Today is day two, which has the close up and stage contests. James Cielen has a Q&A about working on cruises, and my lecture is tonight. It’ll be a full day, and I’ll probably need to take a nap or two to make it through.

-Louie

NEW Louie Foxx Lecture Notes!

Louie Foxx 2025 PCAM lecture notes

In a week I’m heading out to the 2025 PCAM convention to do my full show and a lecture. If you can’t make it, you can get the lecture notes from me!

2025 Lecture Notes .pdf $25

These are the lecture notes from the lecture that I will present at the 2025 PCAM magic convention. They focus is on stand up/stage magic. They contain seven tricks/routines and five essays.

  • Introduction
  • The Opener Card Routine: The five-minute card routine that Louie does as my warm-up for family audiences!
  • Developing a Unique Show
  • Louie Foxx’s Take Out Box (Two Versions!): Turn a Chinese food take-out box into a production box!
  • Moving the Sponge Ball Down the Field
  • The Fortune Teller: A folded paper fortune teller becomes a self-contained prediction system!
  • Process in Magic and Mentalism
  • The Body Language Book Test: A book test plays BIG!
  • Can I tell that joke?
  • The Cracker Card Trick: A card trick using crackers! This was performed by Louie TV’s Masters of Illusion!
  • Fiat Currency: An opening effect that explains what you do.
  • Why You Should Hang Out With Magicians
  • The Stand Up Chop Cup: A chop chop routine that uses no table and no one from the audience!

48 pages
These are a .pdf that will be emailed to you within 24 hours of placing your order.

2025 Lecture Notes .pdf $25

Zoom Stagecraft…

One thing that I’ve been paying attention to at magic meetings and magic conventions is how magicians are using Zoom. Not from a magic method standpoint, but from using it as their stage. How are thing framing their magic, how are they bringing people from the audience onstage.

Paul Gertner has a really great way of using people from the audience. He has them on a physical screen in his space, and it really gives a feel of the person standing next time. If you get a chance to see him perform, it’s worth it to see what he’s doing. It’s great!

One of the big things that I noticed at the PCAM was the difference in how people performed if they were “Instagram” performers and weren’t doing live virtual shows. The clunky transitions between tricks, and tech transitions (like moving a camera from their face to hands) really highlighted this difference. The people that were live performers really eliminated this dead time, or made it interesting. This isn’t a knock on people that perform on Instagram, it really just highlighted how live performing is a very different skill set.

Just like many live performers have made the switch to Instragram or TikTok, I think people who perform on those venues need to start looking at how to perform live. It’s the logical extension of what they’re doing. Someone sees a video and wants to book you for a virtual show. I understand that live performing is something some Instagram performer have no interest in, and I respect that. However I also think that’s if Ellen asked them to be on her TV show, they’d want to do it.

It’s good to build the skill before you need it!

PCAM Magic Convention…

Last weekend I attended the PCAM magic convention. It was a lot of fun, and they did a good job of keeping the day moving, it went from 10am to 8pm, then unofficially till about midnight.

When the booker approached me to perform at the convention, I decided to pitch something a little different from an act or lectures. I mentioned the little cooking demos I’ve done, and could do a cocktail for them. They like the idea and I got to do one of little mixology video for them!

It went over well! One of the fun things performing for magicians is when you do unexpected things. In that routine there are a couple of interest to magicians. There’s a production of two rats, which is interesting and the flaming jalapeno pepper. The pepper always surprises me that magicians get excited about that. there have been “flaming” objects around for years, not sure why this one makes an impression…unless it’s that it makes sense as a prop.

I’m glad that my whacky little presentation went well. I’d love to do more and more of these over zoom. It’s a different style of performing magic and I’m really enjoying it.

Magical Mixology…

In a few days I’ll be performing at the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians annual convention which will take place online. When they contacted me,I wanted to do something a little bit different. I pitched them having me teach how to make a cocktail. Basically it’s a magical mixology class.

When I sat down to write up the ingredient list and recipe for the cocktail, I decided I wanted to create that like an old magic magazine ad for a magic trick.

I think it turned out well. I worked way too hard on making this, however I think it adds some fun to the whole thing. My starting point was visiting Ask Alexander going through old magic magazines and looking at the ads. I kinda had an idea in my head as to what I was looking for, it was just a matter of finding an ad to use as a template.


Here’s the ad that was my starting point:


Sometimes the little bit extra is what makes the trick work. I’m hoping the ad gets people excited about the mixology.