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

Mr. Fingers: The Magic of Irv Weiner

The book Mr. Fingers: The Magic of Irv Weiner came in the mail the other day and I’m excited to start digging through it!

I’ve done Irv’s Red Tape Thumb Tie in my show for a while and have read many other the booklets of his routines. Somehow books that I’m excited to read show up when I’m not in a position to read them for a while. I’ve gotta finish up reading The Bat, which I’m almost done with and have a few projects in the workshop to finish up before I can start this book.

Once I get into it, I’ll write a review.

-Louie

Out of Context Vintage Magic Illustrations!

On my Facebook page I’ve started posting OUT OF CONTEXT VINTAGE MAGIC ILLUSTRATIONS. These are pictures from old magic books that I’ve come across that without context look strange. Here are the ones I’ve posted so far:

I normally post these on Sundays on my Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/louie.foxx/
Pop over there, all of these are public, however if we’re not friends, shoot me a friend request!

-Louie

1940’s Magic Show Review!

I’m still working through The Bat magic magazine and I can across this notice about a magic show:

It’s crazy how bad this magic show must have been that the local magic club had to take out an ad to say they had nothing to do with it! It’s also a flash back to a time when magic clubs were bigger and had some more “influence”.

Today most magic clubs struggle with getting/keeping members.

-Louie

That’s Magic!

I don’t think I wrote a post about seeing the That’s Magic at the White Rabbit Theater in Reno. This is an illusion show presented by Kaileigh and Chase Hasty. I saw the show with 17 magicians!

They do a great job with the magic show. It’s a fairly standard magic show, but they have some original “bits” with the effects they do. Chase does a great job of being in the moment during the show. With a seven day a week schedule, I’d imagine it’s easy fall into being robotic onstage.

The show is more than illusions, Chase shows he has some skill doing ball and card manipulation and Kaileigh does the aerial silks, so it’s not just “store bought” stuff, which I appreciate!

The show uses a lot of lighting cues, which really adds to the theatricality (Is that a word?) of their magic show. Lighting cues really make a show feel bigger. At some point, I should find someone to write some basic ones for me to use when I work in theaters. Just one or two, so it adds visual texture to the show.

I really enjoyed the show, and it’s worth checking out, there’s a lot you can learn by watching it.

-Louie

Snake Basket Magic Trick V2

This snake basket magic trick I’m working on feels like a “project car” that’s in someone’s garage that they are constantly working on. It’s something I keep finding ways to improve. The first version is barely finished, and I’m working on a second one!

The big change is that I’m going to move it away from a card trick. I’m going to merge it with Terry Seabrook’s Chattering Teeth Routine. The snake will chew holes in the paper, and the reveal will be when the paper is opened. A paper is physically larger than a playing card, even a jumbo playing card. Bigger is better for a reveal!

Moving to paper also allows me to customize the routine to a show. For example, if I were doing a safety-themed show for kids, the snake could chew a stop sign in the paper. It could still be a card a la the original Seabrook routine, or spots (like on a die) or even the image a piece of art!

I’m liking flexibility of this idea!

-Louie

A New Routine with a Block

This is an idea I had a while ago, and 3d printed it:

This is a three phase mental magic type routine. I read someone’s mind, then they read my mind, then a magic trick happens. I took it to a magic meet up and here’s what the magicians think of it:

Billy McComb, in one of his books, mentions an easy way to create new routines is to combine two tricks. I think his example is a thumb tie and card to wallet. The block trick I came up with combines the Color Vision Block with a super old stage magic trick. I don’t think people are expecting the part that uses the old stage magic effect, and by the time that part is revealed, I’m way ahead of them. Also, people newer into magic may not recognize it as it’s not really used much anymore.

-Louie

Snake Basket Presentation

The snake basket magic trick that I’m working on won’t have a basket or any of the old snake charmer tropes. The main reason is that after reading about snake charmers and their rise in pop culture, I don’t think my personal values align with that imagery. It’s like “yellow face” Asian stuff that used to be popular in magic. The original intent of it was not positive.

Another reason I’m not using the basket is that it’s a trope that no longer exists. It’s not something that appears in modern pop culture. I know it was in every Bugs Bunny cartoon, but kids haven’t watched those for decades. There’s really no reason to have a basket today.

If you see a reptile show at a school or library, none of the snakes are in baskets; they’re all in boxes or tubs. That’s what I want my snake basket to look like, a box, well, specifically a wooden crate. I’m waiting on the supplies to make it, but the box will be cardboard, so it packs small and light. I’m going to cover it in wood grain contact paper and then add trim with wood grained duct tape.

I’ll post pictures of it when it’s finished!

-Louie

Snake Basket Demo!

The snake basket that I’ve been building is finally starting to take shape! I have a completely functional version of it! Here’s what it looks like:

I’m going to make a small change to the code. I’m going to add a three second delay after the button push for the action to take place. I want to be able to have some physical distance between my hands and body when the actions take place.

-Louie

Green Rooms

In the course of a month, I get to see a wide range of green rooms of offstage spaces for the performer. They range from nothing, a table in a conference room to what they have in nice clubs.

A couple of Decades ago when Jim Gaffigan was really becoming a big, we were chatting with a comedy club owner and Jim said something like, “I know what you pay me, just put me up somewhere nice.” That’s something that really stuck with me, if you treat the act right off stage, it’ll payoff onstage.

A couple weeks ago the comedy club I was performing at had a cabinet of snacks!

More than that, it had three tubs of toiletries:

That’s HUGE if you’re doing two shows back to back and you want to freshen up a little bit between shows. Personally, I try to not take these green rooms for granted, because the next gig I do won’t have anything and I’ll spend 20 minutes hunting down a cup of water!

-Louie

Chinese Laundry Ticket

I found a stack of Chinese Laundry Ticket papers in a box of old magic from the early 1960s. This is a torn and restored paper effect with a strip of paper. The theme of this trick is a ticket from a Chinese laundry that’s torn and restored, and this routine is typically filled with offensive (racist) patter lines. A better themed version would be Arnold Furst’s Fresh Fish paper tear.

Anyway, I have these Chinese laundry ticket papers, and I was curious what they actually said, so I ran them through Google Translate and here’s what they say:

This is one of the things that’s problematic with these older magic tricks, is that what’s actually written on them isn’t what it’s supposed to be in the trick. This trick, if it actually had numbers on it instead of talking about rice, would be slightly less offensive. The simple fact that the trick is taking something from another culture, but not taking the most basic step of making sure it’s correct, is just one of the reasons I dislike this trick.

Go out there and be a better human.

-Louie