15th June 2021.
Our June meeting was “Fantastic Plastic” a celebration of all those ingenious effects marketed by Tenyo and similar companies to entice beginners into our wonderfull art. Peter Wood, our host for the night commenced by performing his very funny routine with the Penetration Frame aka Tenyo’s Glass Board. Does Peter really have an uncle Lass that owns the firm of Class Glass down at Bulli Pass? We will never know but its a routine that Peter has been performing for some years. Michael Giblin then demonstrated and fooled most of the audience with Tenyo’s 2011 masterpiece The Tower of Dice. A small rectangular tube was shown to be just large enough to contain four small dice. He then produced a tower of eight dice and everything could be examined, a true miracle. Peter Wood then came back with a novel cut and restored rope which was held in a plastic frame.
Scotty (Eric) Flynn, our visitor from the Geniis Magical Society, Ring 102’s sister magic society based in Sydneys Western Suburbs joined in. He started with a delightful routine with a Sharpie pen. He broke the clip off the cap then restored it only for the pen to appear to be made of rubber. Scotty then visually changed a black and white picture of a clown on a silk to a full colour version in a clear plastic cylinder. Peter came back with two apparently chrome plated tubes, really plastic. He put them together with a playing card in between. Ten cent coins dropped in one end mysteriously penetrated the card one by one.
Lindsay Gardiner had come along to sell some props, but he also took the opportunity to perform. A silk vanished from a clear tube when wrapped up. This was similar to Tenyo’s Time Capsule released in the mid 1960’s but Lindsay’s tube was a little larger. He then showed Tenyo’s Occult Board which is actually a small plastic version of Hen Fetsch’s classic masterpiece “Mental Epic” originally marketed in 1954. To conclude his segment Lindsay showed how he had doctored a plastic thumb tip to transpose a signed silk to the centre of an apparently ordinary apple. Between performers Peter came back with a small paddle routine.
Phuoc Can Hua, always has something interesting to show. Tonight he proved that he had X-ray vision and was able to deduce dice and playing cards leaning against a small metal frame. He then read the mind of a spectator with a little plastic clock dial. The spectator secretly moved the hand to his thought of time, then moved it back to 12, but Phuoc could still tell the time chosen. He then showed a cute Chinese doll with a colour changing mask. Our intrepid MC, Peter Wood came back, this time with three small plastic tortoises, one red, one black and one white. A spectator hid one in a small box, and the others in a hand or pocket. Peter by looking through his mysterious “X-Ray” tube was able to deduce their locations in increasingly harder tests.
Peter then introduced your scribe. I started by showing the gathering my set of Richard Kaufman’s two volume (almost 1400 pages) Tenyoism which is printed in full colour and comes in its own slipcase with four DVD’s and three Tenyo effects. I started to perform a card effect but my cards moved away from the spectator curtesy of Mazo Escurridizo’s “Rider, the Runaway Deck”. After recovering the deck and having two cards chosen I demonstrated with Astor’s Zebra Code Prediction that the choices were more than fate. I then demonstrated “Sakkaku” Scale, the Tenyo “Cat” Illusion – possibly the best version of Joseph Jastrow’s optical illusion (the Boomerang Illusion) first demonstrated in 1891. I then showed an air canon and explained how I thought that it would be the perfect prop to use in a ghost show or spirit magic exhibition. To conclude my spot I demonstrated an Intelligent Avoidance Drone, possibly not the usual magic that we perform but a few years ago it would have been labeled a modern miracle.
Peter Wood came back with another effect with coloured plastic balls. Peter was holding a tray with the balls around a small glass in the centre of the tray. This glass was covered by a large upside down tumbler. A spectator named the colour of one of the balls, the tray was covered for just a moment by a silk scarf. When removed the chosen ball had miraculously transferred to the small glass under the large tumbler. Peter then welcomed John Kanawati who performed a delightful trick shot bit of jiggery poker with two blocks of chocolate, one dark chocolate and one white chocolate. Chocolate broken off the blocks disappeared and the blocks were ultimately restored, however, the dark piece was on the white block and the white piece on the dark chocolate. Everything finished fully restored but John failed to share the chocolates amongst his mouthwatering audience. Otto Patterson concluded the evening with the vanish of a silk handkerchief and his equal unequal liquorice routine to a patter story based on Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
We then all adjourned to supper and fraternisation.
Peter Rodgers
Sydney Magic Club 