17th August 2021
With Sydney still in a Covid-19 lockdown our president Dale Trueman requested a few of our knowledgeable members to perform and discuss their various effects, moves routines over a Zoom virtual meeting. All our members were also invited to perform if they wished too, we called it our Magic Jam night.
Dale commenced the performing with his rendition of Twisting The Aces as originally published in Dai Vernon’s More Inner Secrets of Card Magic by Lewis Ganson in the early 1960’s. Dale then discussed the great book, Strong Magic by Darwin Ortiz which explains amongst other subject pertaining to the presentation of magic on how to give your magic more meaning. Dale then again performed the effect, using the same sleights and moves but this time with presentation suggestions from Strong Magic. We could all appreciate the improvement. Jamie Cartier, a magician from the New South Wales Central Coast and a first time visitor to our club gave a very enthusiastic complement to Dale and his performance. Jamie said that it was great to see such a great routine without that “terrible” (his word) Elmsley Count move. Dale must have been silently chuckling to himself. Vernon’s Twisting the Aces is the effect that made Elmsley’s Counting Four as Four, now generally referred to as the Elmsley Count, famous. Both of Dale’s routines used that count at least three times.
Jeffery Clark our technology expert performed an hilarious version of the Multiplying Bottles. Jeffrey used a green screen backdrop, technology available for a Zoom performance. The background behind Jeffrey whilst he was performing his Multiplying bottles were old silent comedy videos including people falling off balconies and an interesting ‘adults only’ segment.
Peter Rodgers claims that he is not a magic book collector, he is just an accumulator of books, not to collect but to read. Tonight he wished to discuss two of his favourite magic authors, that of Bruce Elliott and Karl Fulves. To begin he performed a Fulves routine “Five into Four” which appeared in The Book of Numbers which is a small booklet of card effects published by Fulves in 1971. A five spot is shown, it is cut into quarters and when assembled face down it is seen that the middle spot is missing. When turned face up the card is now naturally the four. The disappearance of the centre spot is a version of a geometric vanish much loved by many puzzle/magic inventors including Sam Lloyd, Martin Gardner and Fulves himself. The physical change of the card in the Fulves routine is normally a double lift, Peter on this occasion used the Bruce Elliott switch from Elliott’s Ambitious Card routine in his Classic Secrets of Magic. Peter promoted both Elliott and Fulves tonight because they were both knowledgeable in magic and also great writers. Their texts were always clear, succinct and interesting. Elliott came to prominence with his editing of the first 300 issues of The Phoenix Magazine in the 1940’s and his writing of four great books on magic for the general public. They are still freely available and have introduce many magicians to this great hobby . Most magicians know of the range of Karl Fulves Dover books published for the general public or perhaps his early magazines, The Pallbearers Review, Epilogue and The Chronicles, which were all republished in hardback form by L&L Magic. They are unaware, however of his dozens of books, booklets and magazines self published up until just a few years ago.
Conway Restom explained that it was a mistake to bypass effects because they appear to be old or seem familiar. It’s worthwhile studying various versions of the same effect because of the hidden gems. He then performed his Rubber Band routine which included many effects from multiple sources including the novel capture of the chosen card with a rubber band. Conway then performed Twist Till it Hurts, the magnificent Geoff Latta packet card effect that has recently been re-released by Meir Yedid of MYMagic as a download. Twist Till It Hurts was originally published in the December 1978 (Vol.1 No. 12) issue of Harry Lorayne’s Apocalypse magazine. It was unusual for Apocalypse to include packet type card effects but Twist Till It Hurts was considered an exception and it got pride of place. The routine is based on a Larry Jennings routine that was an underground effect at the time. Conway performed the “adults only” version as suggested by Meir which puts the effect into the “packet trick” category but the normal routine can be performed with a borrowed pack without any preparation. It is a great routine and Conway gave an excellent performance.
Stephen Miller performed a great effect where he did some mind reading, made a prediction, teleported a chosen card to an impossible location and then revealed it to be reversed in the deck. To add to the impossibility of it all he showed that the rest of the deck was now completely blank. It was John Carey’s ‘50 Oh!’ that Stephen had so capably performed. Daniel Shields trialled a mathematical card discovery routine with everyone at home following along and locating their own card. Garry Davis is one of our country members, he lives in Bathurst a lovely town two and a half hours west of Sydney on the other side of the Blue Mountains. Its amazing how many meetings that he manages to get too. Tonight, though being a Zoom meeting he was able to log in from home. He gave us a great performance of Gary Jones’s ‘Ambitious Jazz’.
Karl Fischer, of Berlin Germany was a frequent visitor to our Ring meetings a couple of years ago whilst he was residing in Sydney for many months. Although Karl didn’t perform tonight it was great to have him join us from his home in Berlin. It just proves what a great organisation the IBM is bringing together magicians from around the world even whilst we are in the middle of a pandemic lockdown.
Peter Rodgers
Sydney Magic Club 