MagicShow.Tips – A daily blog about magic by Louie Foxx

Seeing another magician’s EDC

Last week when my wife and I went to see the show The Rise of Houdini, the guy I sat next to was a magician. Before the show he turned to me and asked me if I would like to see a trick and of course I said yes!

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of homemade paddles and did a quick paddle routine with two paddles that had spots that disappeared and reappeared.

His paddle design was really cool. It wasn’t just a popsicle stick; he had built little handles for them, which made handling the prop much better, and it made them not look like just popsicle sticks, but something a little bit more special.

His other piece of EDC magic was a hot rod that he had made, but I didn’t get a picture of it. It’s always cool to see what other people are doing. When he found out I was a magician, he asked me to show him something. Unfortunately, with my hand fresh out of surgery, I wasn’t planning on doing anything, especially at someone else’s show.

I did however, do this dollar trick:

It’s always fun running into another magician.

-Louie

Get it at Wacky Zack’s Magic Shop!

drawing of magician performing for seniors

If you’re looking for my How To Perform For Seniors book, you can get it from Wacky Zack’s Magic Shop.

You can reach them at:
(602) 548-8667 info@wackyzacksmagic.com

I want to thank them for carrying my book!

-Louie

Out of Sorts by Max Maven

As I’m working my way through Max Mavens book Ansology, I think my favorite trick in it is called Out of Sorts. This is a trick where a spectator thinks of a card and they never say it out loud, then after a few shuffles, You then tell them what their card is and where it is in the pack.

I’m really liking this trick, it can be done hands off or with the dealing done yourself. I was trying to think of a way to do it so that it wasn’t a card trick and I came up with a way to do it with postcards. The postcards I’m using are national park postcards.

If you are familiar with the trick, you know you need pairs of cards. In the picture above, you’ll see that the postcards are kind of in pairs in columns. Once you know one, it’s pretty easy to know the other. The challenge with this specific set of postcards is that the writing isn’t very big. I think if this is something I was going to pursue, I’d find something with a larger print of the name of the place.

Using these postcards the method doesn’t change. If you have the book, I recommend looking into the trick out of sorts, even with playing cards it’s still great!

-Louie

The Rise of Houdini

On Friday, my wife and I went to see the show The Rise of Houdini in Portland, Oregon. This show was part burlesque, part magic show, and part scripted show about a séance. The magician in the show was D.R. Schrieber.

Before the show D.R. did some close up magic for the crowd.

The magic show was good. D.R. does a great job with his character, and the audience was into it. The third act, which was the play about a séance trying to contact Houdini, was interesting. There was a fake heckler, which I think surprised a lot of the audience, that he was part of the show.

There was a point where there was an intermission during the play, but D.R. was on stage as his character in this play, and he was reading a book. That book was used previously as a book of magic spells. From the audience, the book looked really familiar to me. I asked after the show, and it was, in fact, the pocket edition of Expert at the Card Table!

This is a fun show to watch

-Louie

The Moisture Festival Podcast – Lucy Juggles

On this episode of the Moisture Festival Podcast, we welcome Lucy Juggles! Lucy shares stories of growing up in rural Georgia, struggling to find her people, and navigating her first jobs. We explore how she developed her talents, the hours of practice behind her skills, and why a cross-country move became a game changer. We also talk about staying true to herself onstage and what’s on the horizon. A wonderful conversation with a fantastic performer!

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Visiting the Portland Society of American Magicians Magic Club

With my hand out of commission due to surgery, I’m trying not to let it slow me down too much. On Wednesday night, I went to the Portland Society of American Magicians magic club meeting. It was a lot of fun and I saw a lot of great and fun magic.

That night was the Close Up Magic contest, and congratulations to Mel, who was the winner. Mel did a really cool coin box routine that he said he had been doing since about 1980! What I really liked about this coin box routine was that it wasn’t your standard Okito box routine.

I also tried out a routine I’m playing with. This is the second time I’ve done it, and it’s coming along nicely. This is a routine that I’m working on that only uses one hand, which is another attempt by me to find the silver lining of not being able to use a hand for two to six weeks. I’ll write more about this routine another time.

– louie

Magic show at the Louisville Comedy Club

I don’t make it to the East Coast a lot however on November 29 at 4:00 PM I’ll be performing at the Louisville Comedy Club in Louisville KY!

Advertisement for comedy show in Louisville KY

You can get tickets at: https://www.louisvillecomedy.com/shows/392504
Use the code “magic” to save a couple of bucks ! Hope to see you there!

– Louie

Max Maven’s Ansology

On Monday, I went in to have hand surgery. It’s a trigger finger release; hopefully, I will have full use of my middle finger on my right hand again! Before the surgery, I ordered the Max Maven book, Ansology. The night before surgery I started working through the book. This book is a combination of several previously published Max Maven books along with a little bit of new commentary.

A hand with cards and a Magic book by Max Maven

The nice thing about this book is that it doesn’t rely on heavy sleight of hand for most of it. So I’m able to work through a lot of this stuff with only one hand. So far two great tricks I found are Abacus and Out Of Sorts.

Abacus is an epic trick with multiple endings; it feels very modern, even though I think the trick is like 40 years old. The only drawback is that the trick uses a full deck setup, so for this trick to work, you’d really need a deck switch before you do it.

Out Of Sorts is a great hands-off card trick where you not only tell the audience where their mentally selected card is with your back turned, but you also tell them what it is. This trick does have a bit of procedure up front, which I’m not a fan of; however, I think the payoff makes it a real head-scratcher. I think this is going to be my go to trick right now with only one hand.

I’m looking forward to going through more of the book. I’m familiar with one of the books that’s contained in this anthology Of previously published Max Maven Books. This style of magic, which relies heavily on procedure, math, anagrams, and very light sleight of hand, is great for me right now!

-Louie

Having Hand Surgery

On Monday, I went in to have hand surgery; it was a trigger finger release. This has me out of performing for two to 6 weeks, which will be rough, but I planned for it.

While I can’t perform right now, I can still ship out orders. From now until the two-week initial healing process is over, I’m offering free shipping for orders on my site.

For free USA shipping, use the coupon code: surgery
For a discount to apply to international shipping use the coupon code: hand

These codes are good for the two weeks after my hand surgery and expire on November 9th, 2027.

-Louie

Doing Card Tricks Onstage

This is going to be an angry old man post. If you’re doing card tricks onstage and the audience needs to be able to tell what a specific card is, DON’T use normal poker-size cards. I can’t clearly see them from the third row.

There are options to make things play further back into the audience. Card-Shark makes two great options. Number one are large index cards, those have indexes that are a little bit bigger than standard cards. The best option to still keep the feel of a normal card trick, without going to jumbo cards are the Phoenix Parlour sized cards. These have larger indexes and are physically larger than poker sized cards.

Here’s a picture of the different card’s indexes:

playing cards with normal and large indexes

And here they are lined up:

You can do *most* sleight of hand moves with the Parlour sized cards. I’ve done my card to pocket routine with them and that involves palming a card!

Move up a size and reach a bigger audience!

-Louie