A few months ago I found some Obedient Walnut tricks in a bin of junk magic at a magic shop. This is a version of a classic trick where you have an object with a string running through it, in this case it’s a plastic walnut. As the walnut slides down the string, it stops whenever you want it to.
Honestly, from a magic perspective, it’s not really a good trick, it’s pretty obvious how it works. I did pick up three of them out of the junk bin as I had an idea for a routine with them. The routine is an interesting idea, but still a bad trick.
I did it once, it confirmed it’s not the best idea or trick and now I can throw away the Obedient Walnuts.
Today I was playing with doing the vanishing birdcage with my sleeves rolled up like Tommy Wonder.
I’m using my Take Up Reel, but I’m not using a double action pull like Tommy Wonder used. The double action pull would reduce arm movement a little bit, however I have a lot of stuff happening on my back and I’m worried that adding another line and the bulk associated with that would be asking for trouble!
Honestly, I’m fine doing the vanishing birdcage with my sleeves down, it was fun to play with it today to see if I could!
Somethings surprise me, like the success of my Incredible Idioms show. This is a school assembly / library show that I’ve done about 125 times since January of this year and I’ve done all those shows with zero promo! All I had one a one paragraph description that I’ve sent out.
I finally sat down and made a sizzle reel for it.
It’s cool that I was able to do the show that many times based only on my reputation!
The other day I posted about an act leaving their backdrop onstage during my show. Besides it being clutter on stage I did voice a concern about it in the wind.
They blew off my suggestions
Well, the next day it got windy and the backdrop started swaying and I took this picture as it blew onto another act on the stage!
The sound guy and I jumped onto the stage, pulled it off of the other act and laid the backdrop flat on the ground. I then went to the backdrop’s owner’s trailer and of course they weren’t onsite. I told them about it when they returned and they blew me off again.
I have a mindset onstage that’s “Your convenience is not my inconvenience“. What that means is that if something makes your show easier to set up, but makes my show harder to do, then I say NO and am firm about it.
Before my next show the act that had the back drop was trying to tether it and I told them it could not be up during my show. They said they’d tether it better and I told them it couldn’t be up onstage during my shows. It’s a safety issue for me, my props and anyone from the audience onstage.
They told me that the event said they could leave it onstage, so I sent the picture of it falling on the other act to our boss along with me voicing my safety concern. Included in the message was that I wanted a record of my safety concern for their backdrop onstage incase something happened during my show to reduce my liability.
Guess what?
They had to take it down during other peoples shows. I’ve watched them set it up and take it down after their shows and it literally takes a few minutes. The only reason to leave it up is laziness.
Don’t let someone else’s laziness affect your show. Working with a band that wants to leave guitars in your performing area, tell them to move them. It’s your stage during your set, if you need 10 X 10 feet or whatever to perform in, tell them that and they need to move their stuff.
Now your show is a success or failure on your terms, not because you have to deal with a backdrop smashing your stuff or shrinking your show because a band won’t move a guitar.
Recently I had a kid ask me to do a back flip during the show. This is a trend and I finally had someone ask me to do it. After it happened I came up with this trick:
The other act I was sharing the stage with had a large banner that they left onstage, I’m not a huge fan of other people’s stuff in my performing area. They cleared it with the “boss” to leave it up, so I put my pop up banner in front of it.
It’s nice that it shortened the depth of the the stage, so that was the silver lining.
I try to play nice with other acts, but honestly it’s not a big deal for them to move their back drop off the stage after each show.
I’ve been working on a routine that I call “choices”, this is essentially a card prediction. This has had many different versions and methods, with the first version simply using an invisible deck for the reveal. It’s had many different reveals from the selected card in a wallet, to it being the only red backed card in a blue backed, blank faced deck.
The trick was just OK, the final reveal was lacking something…or had too much. Then a while ago Nick Lewin put out the 6 Star Miracle Prediction, which is his version of Al Koran’s 5 Star Miracle Prediction. I’m a HUGE Nick Lewin fan, and get everything he puts out. I honestly didn’t think I’d use the trick, however it ended up being the solution for the Choices routine.
The ending where I’m just holding two cards gives a great picture and ends with me in an applause position. The nice thing is the whole thing fits inside a jumbo card case, so it packs relatively small. This trick is intended for stage shows, so I have no desire to use a regular pack…however it could be downsized to that size and play well on a stage.
I’m not sure if this is the final version of this trick, but it feel pretty close!
Last week the fair I was at had a very long walk from the audience to the stage. This made bringing someone up from the audience a bit of a speed bump in the show. The general format in my magic show is every other trick has someone from the audience onstage. Figuring out how to deal with the time that it takes to bring someone onstage was a challenge.
The first thing to fill the time was simply writing jokes to address the issue and fill the dead space. I wrote lines like, “The walk to the stage is longer than the line at the DMV“.
One of the emergency props that I have in my case is a thumb tip with a silk. I can do a solid 5 minute routine with that that’s full of laughs. That routine uses two people from the audience.
Obviously, bringing two people onstage wasn’t he solution to the long walk to the stage, but the silk was. I started simply vanish the silk while the person walked to the stage. It filled the dead space, but needed more. Then during my morning writing I came up with the idea of doing silk in balloon. That gave some sort of a payout to the vanishing silk. However, the breakthrough was the next day during my morning writing I had the idea of silk in selected balloon.
I had a line of balloons tied to string from my case to the microphone stand. The silk vanishes while they are coming onto the stage. Then a balloon is selected and when popped the silk appears inside that balloon.
What I ended up with is a routine for when there is a long walk to the stage (or any show), but not a solution to fill that time for existing routines that I do.
I’m not disappointed that I didn’t come up with a solution for the long walk, as a routine that fills the stage and packs very small is still a win!
After adding a second transmitter to the Anverdi Color Match pens, I’m not having any issues in the show with not getting a signal. This is something that I think that most magicians wouldn’t do because of the cost. It’s literally double what it should cost.
Somehow both sets of transmitters are signaling one receiver, I’m not sure how that’s happens, but it is. I independently tried the transmitter and they are all signaling the same receiver.
This is a good development, however I’d prefer that I have two complete systems running, and not one and half. With two independent systems, I have a backup if the receiver fails.
