Thanks to the power of social media, I figured out what the magic prop that I found at a junk shop yesterday is!
It’s an Abbott’s Surrounded Livestock Vanish by Arturo!
After reading the description, I’m amazed that I pretty much nailed the handling of the box with my guess!
-Louie
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
I had an idea for the trick where the magician swallows a balloon animal. Let’s start with me saying this is something I’ll probably never do, simply because I don’t do the balloon swallow trick. I have several issues with it, one of which is that it really lacks an ending. This is my attempt to give it an ending.
After the magician swallows the balloon, they take an ice pick and jab it into their belly button. You hear a pop, and the magician pulls the deflated balloon out of their mouth.
That gives the routine a finish.
All you need is a Comedy Ice Pick and a Bingo Shooting Device. Glue the Bingo Shooting Device to the Comedy Ice Pick, and when you’re ready for the pop, set it off!
As far as I know, this ending is original to me; feel free to use it if you do the balloon swallow trick.
-Louie
I like the idea of the mentalism premise where you have a 5 objects that are all the same and one different one. People from the audience all hold one of the objects, and you find who is holding the odd one.
That premise is fun, and I have a few themes for it. The other day I thought of one using Monopoly game pieces.
The hotels and houses lend themselves to a presentation about finding your way home.
This set of houses and hotels was 3D printed and is gimmicked to work with Promystic’s Flux. One of the challenges of using an electronic gimmick is what do you do if it doesn’t work? What’s the out? For some things, I’ve decided the best way to do it is to have a second gimmick. Luckily, Flix isn’t too expensive, and running two gimmicks at the same time isn’t very complicated.
I look forward to trying this out!
-Louie
I’m working on a trick where I need to make a postcard disappear from one stack and reappear in another stack. Here’s what I came up with:
The reason I’m going with a gravity flap instead of an elastic flap is that I don’t need a visual change of the card. Also, with gravity, there’s less to break. There’s nothing worse than restringing an elastic flap card has broken right before a show!
-Louie
Today I’m making a couple of take up reels! These are reels that are typically used for the vanishing birdcage. They don’t have anything to do with the actual vanish of the cage, they simply take up slack in the pull and lock it short. This allows you freedom of motion before you do the cage vanish.
People frequently ask me what kind of cage this will work with, and the answer is that it’s great for any cage that works on a wrist to wrist pull. That means an Abbott’s style will work as well as an Owen vanishing birdcage.
The take up reel can be used for more than the birdcage. The Chimney Vanish with a silk will work or pretty much anything that goes up your sleeve. If you have any question about if this will work for you, feel free to contact me!
-Louie
One of the things that I need for a routine I’m working on is a spoon dropper. This will allow me to steal a spoon from my jacket. The first idea was just a magnet. The issue that I encountered was that if I moved too much, the spoon would get knocked off the magnet.
One solution would be a stronger magnet, but it needed to be easy to pull off the magnet. What I did was glue some magnets to a bowl of a spoon, then cover that with black fabric.
The spoon bowl’s shape holding the spoon kept the fabric from my shirt/jacket from dislodging the spoon.
This was a fairly simply solution to the the problem!
-Louie
The final day of last week’s Portland Magic Jam had the Paul Draper lecture. He does a choose your own lecture where the audience asks him to talk about things and he talks about what the audience requests.
Then there was a panel Q and A with all the weekend’s headliners.
Then David Kaye and I snuck out so I could take him for the most Portland lunch, which was eating at a food truck pod!
Then the weekend for me ended with the magic contest.
Unfortunately, I forgot to take more pictures of the contest. There were a couple of extra charge workshops going on after the contest, but I had plans with my wife, so I couldn’t do any of them.
The weekend at the Portland Magic Jam was a ton of fun! I wish I could go to more of these, however, my performing schedule doesn’t let me.
-Louie
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
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
