17th November 2020.
Anthony Dillon was the host for tonight’s meeting which was titled “Impromptu Card Magic”. Whilst Anthony has been attending magic events in Sydney for many years he has only recently become a member of our Ring. This was his first experience at hosting a meeting and was very successful and it was a great meeting.
Anthony commenced the evening by giving away duplicates of a few new magic items that he had acquired. He then discussed his opinions of impromptu card magic pointing out that he believes that it is an important segment of our art and that it should be held in higher regard and not to be thought of as inconsequential. He then performed a Max Maven card discovery and introduced Peter Wood. Peter cheated, as good magicians do by being well prepared. He performed Chad Long’s Shuffle Lesson, had a spectator miraculously work out the identity of the prediction card and concluded with Jay Sankey’s Helter Skelter. Phuoc Can Hua doesn’t normally perform card magic but he showed how his father could psychically deduce playing cards without looking. A very old but still great bit of magic.
Our visitor to the meeting, Daniel Shields, located a chosen card with a business card. Youngest, but one of our most skilled performers, Clement Kwok, caused a spectator to stop him on a prediction card and then he produced the other three cards of the same value. He then duplicated Max Maven’s Pocket Nightmare routine, however he used a normal borrowed pack of cards and used sleight of hand. We don’t see Stephen Bell as often as we would like but he is always welcome. We all enjoyed his performance of Red Hot Mama aka Chicago Opener. Conway Restom was very fair in his performance of Benjamin Earl’s Red Herring.
John Kanawati performed a routine including a card trick that he could do and the follow up of the card trick that he could not do. He then transposed the four kings for the ace of spades. John concluded his set with a version of The Last Trick of Doctor Jacob Daley and an Invisible Card to Pocket routine.
Peter Rodgers performed the controversial 51 Faces North (The Open Prediction) multi-phase routine said to be the Stewart James solution as published in the first issue of Penumbra magazine (May-June 2002). James original described his 51 Faces North in Issue #3 of Ibidem (August 1955) along with his 18 now “infamous conditions”. James didn’t disclose his method and he did not want his version published. It did not appear in the massive Stewart James in Print or The James File Vol 1 or 11. Allan Slaight announced that he had found James method and thats what appeared in the Penumbra and thats what Peter performed but, was it really the Stewart James solution?
Jack Sharp told some bawdy jokes and then performed a card discovery routine using the Klondike Shuffle. His final routine was his version of Clayton Rawson’s (The Great Merlini) iconic “The Little Wonder Thought Projector” originally published in Hugard’s Magic Monthly Vol. V. No. 2 ((July 1947). To conclude the evening Daniel Shields came back and performed Mark Mason’s Stuck Up Monte.
Another great meeting concluded with supper and plenty of talk all conducted whilst we followed the COVID-19 social distancing regulations.
Peter Rodgers
Sydney Magic Club 