Ring 102 Sydney NSW Australia – The Maurice Rooklyn Ring
Meets 3rd Tuesday Every Month at 7:30pm at Northside Chatswood Salvation Army Church Hall Cnr. Bertram and Johnson Street Chatswood. Dale Trueman President email daletrueman@me.com
Our September meeting is our AGM which we always try to get over quickly so that we can perform and see as much Magic as possible. Conway Restom acted as returning officer and Dale Trueman was re-elected as president, Jack Sharp as Vice President, Peter Wood as Treasurer. Conway was unable to continue as Secretary so Steve Miller was elected as our secretary. Our new board members are John Kanawati, Garry Davis and Anthony Dillon.
Garry Davis was tonight’s host with the theme of Close Up Magic and he started the entertainment by introducing our president Dale as our first performer. Dale passed on the hint that a great way to carry small packet tricks is to keep them in your phone case beneath your mobile phone. From behind his phone he produced three cards which he used to perform his version of Jim Temple’s Color Monte first marketed by Emerson and West in the late 1960’s. In Dale’s version he showed three Aces, two red and one black. The idea was to follow the black, but with many fast paced one dollar betts and the cards appearing at various times to be all red, all black and all different the effect concludes with the spectator owing the performer $14.00. It is said that over the years that Color Monte was the largest selling magic trick ever with Emerson and West selling many versions with corporate logos. Our next performer was our ex secretary and Vice President Conway Restom who performed a long medley of effects with various coloured rubber bands that he kept around his wrists. Conway gave the bands names, such as the red band was “Spider” band (later to be called “Super” band, the white was “Cutie” band, the yellow was “Canary” band. He had a “Cannibal” band, an “Acrobatic” band, and a “Steele” band. The routine had bands vanishing, jumping from hand to hand, fingers to fingers and even penetrating a “Houdini” pen, a Sharpie which at one stage was even held at each end by two members of the audience.
Our long standing treasurer, Peter Wood was our next performer. He commenced by producing a sponge ball from an invisible purse with just its frame been visible. He showed a spectator how to saw the sponge in half with his hand, he now had two which changed places, then one vanished to join the other in the spectators hand. Peter tried to get rid of the sponges into his pocket but the kept returning to his hand until suddenly they all vanished. Peter then showed us “Hot Rod”, A Rod with six coloured spots on each side. Peter fooled some of our members by asking someone to call out a colour and suddenly all the spots changed to that colour. Originally it was just on one side of the Rod, but then on both sides then just one side again. The Rod was then handed out to be examined. Tony Croft has been a member for quiet a few years but we are losing him as a regular. He will soon be moving to Port Macquarie, a lovely sea side town about four hundred kilometres to our north. As his swan song Tony would have fooled most of our members with his rendition of the Rick Lax effect, Binary Code 2. Rick Lax performed his original Binary Code effect where he appears to memorise a shuffled pack of cards on Penn and Teller’s Fool Us some years ago. Binary Code 2 goes further and Tony appeared to memorise the order of two packets of half cards as the cards were torn in half. The half card packets were held under the table by two spectators, they were cut multiple times, a half card removed and sat on by each spectator and the packets cut again. Tony went through the packets again and he was able to disclose the missing halves, proving that he had memorised the cards in each packet.
Jack Sharp is a skilled entertainer and tonight he performed Christopher Wiehl’s ‘Arthur’ which was a new effect to most of us. A chosen card, called Excalibur was inserted half way back into the pack of cards, the cards returned to the case with Excalibur sticking out. The spectator then tried to remove the card from the pack but it was stuck fast. The pack was removed from the case but the “sword” was still sticking fast but at Jacks word, the card just slid out of the deck like butter. We don’t see Joey Szabo at many of our meetings, he’s a busy family entertainer and doesn’t like performing in front of magicians but tonight he performed a delightful chop cup routine producing a lime and then as a double surprise a potato to end the routine.
Barry Abkin Is a new member of our ring, he invited Conway to think of a card. He then handed Conway a pack of cards and asked Conway to indicate the value of the card to the audience by dealing the number of cards equal to its value onto the table whilst Barry’s back was turned. The pack was restored and then cards were dealt to indicate the suite and again restored. Barry then faced the audience and by looking through the cards deduced Conways mentally chosen card. The surprise climax was to show that the cards were all blank. This was Barry’ rendition of an effect that was in the magazines and was very popular about twelve or thirteen years ago and was the forerunner of such effects as Joshua Jay’s “Out of Sight” and Stephen Bargatze’s “I Hate Card Tricks”.
John Kanawati with four blank faced cards said he would show us an optical illusion. As he showed us the cards round holes, about two centimetres in diameter appeared on all four cards one at a time. The holes then all appeared to turn into black dots. This surreal effect in John’s hand’s was Christopher Fouquet’s “The Incredible Appearing Nothing”. Peter Rodgers demonstrated John Bannon’s latest version of his Origami Poker, “OMG Super Morigami”. He then proved that he could see through his fingertips by divining the colours of cards from a genuinely shuffled pack, he concluded by sensing the value of a card hidden in a card case. His routine was based on methods devised by Ian Rolland and Luke Jermay.
Anthony Dillon made three predictions whilst Conway cut the pack, he then performed a routine were four coins passed through a metal disk between two rings one at a time. Phuoc Can Hua used a Boston Coin Box to make four coins penetrate the back of his hand. He then commenced a long and involved routine with four Mahjong tiles, two green and two red. The tiles changed places, travelled from Phuoc’s hand to his pocket and the back to his hand. Steve Bell used a large paper cup to produce a toy mouse, and then challenged us, is the mouse in the cup, or in his pocket? The chop cup type routine concluded with the production of half a dozen rubber mice.
Tonight’s host, Garry then performed a medley of card effects. A card chosen from a small packet vanished and reappeared. With a full pack of blue backed cards Garry had a card chosen. It proved to be the only card with a red back and was set aside. Another card was chosen and now the red backed card proved now to be this second chosen card. This was Garry’s rendition of Chicago Opener, also known as Red Hot Mama first released by Al Leech in 1950 as Hot Card Trick No 1. This effect is now a true classic with various routines and variations by such performers as Walter B Gibson, Frank Everhart, Frank Garcia, Jim Ryan, Mike Ammar and Whit Haydn. Our final performer tonight was Bruce Glen. With just four cards they started to turn face down one at a time, but Bruce is a con man and he set up a friendly bet with John’s Toyota. What card is face down? What’s the colour of the backs of the cards? Bruce then showed that no one could guess that because now all the cards had different coloured backs and the motto of the night was to “never play cards with Bruce, the Gentleman Magician”.
We then all adjourned to supper and friendly discussions of tonight’s events.
Peter Rodgers
Sydney Magic Club 