Louie Foxx, a young man from Coon Lake Beach, Minn., makes magic all over the place.
He lives in Seattle now. But he travels, with tricks up his sleeves, across the Northwest, Midwest and California.
Between mid-June and Labor Day weekend, he’s got 188 shows on the calendar. Five are on the North Olympic Peninsula, where Foxx will travel with his daughter and assistant, Ella, 9.
She invents jokes, provides conversation on the road and loves the motel swimming pool.
And during the show itself, Ella’s feats include balancing six spinning gold-panning pans.
Her father’s repertoire, meanwhile, mixes plenty of comedy, a magic time capsule and gravity-defying dirt.
“No one will believe what’s in the time capsule at the end of the show,” Foxx vowed.
Port Townsend today
The magician and his daughter will stop first at the old Port Townsend Library, 1220 Lawrence St., at 2 p.m. today for a dual-purpose party: a celebration of the Carnegie library’s 100th birthday and the kickoff of the children’s summer reading program.
More information is at 360-385-3181 and www.PTPublicLibrary.org.
Admission is free to all of Foxx’s shows, which he says are 40 minutes long and both kid- and adult-friendly.
Foxx performs in comedy clubs and casinos as well as libraries, while he has a soft spot for the latter, since his mother took him to the library when he was a boy hungry for books on magic tricks.
Schedule next week
Next on the Foxx itinerary are the North Olympic Library System locations (www.NOLS.org). He’ll do shows at all four.
They are:
■ Monday — 10:30 a.m. at the temporary Forks Library at the West End Business and Technology Center, 71 Spartan Ave.; 2 p.m. at the Clallam Bay Library, 16990 state Highway 112; and 6:30 p.m. at the Port Angeles Library, 2210 S. Peabody St.
■ Tuesday — 10:30 a.m. at the Sequim Library, 630 N. Sequim Ave.; and 2 p.m. at the Port Angeles Library.
Foxx has been at his game since 1996. And even after all these years, two sounds thrill him: gasps and laughter.
“Every audience responds to things differently,” he said.
In the Midwest, a joke will get a huge laugh, then only a chuckle back in Seattle.
Ella helps keep the act fresh — and her dad awake.
“She came up with three jokes while we were driving,” Foxx said.
Then she tried showing him another piece of paper.
“I can’t look at that” while at the wheel, he told her.
When they arrived at their destination, Foxx looked.
It was Ella’s bill for the jokes: $1 each.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
