From Ring Reporter Peter Rodgers
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
With our summer holidays still in place our January meeting is normally smaller than most meeting with many members away. Tonight was no exception, however although our numbers were small we had a great night with some excellent magic.
Conway Restom had volunteered to be tonight’s host with the theme “Thematic Threesomes”. He surprised the audience by producing a glass of beer bare handed before most of the members were paying attention. He then commented as he was removing his coat that many people suspect that the beer is up his sleeve. He said that can’t be true because thats where he keeps the glass of orange juice which he now displayed and given away to a thirsty spectator. As Conway introduced Peter Wood, our next performer, he produced a hammer which made sense with Conways patter. Peter invited four people up to assist him. Lena shuffled the cards then Peter had her choose a card, it was the jack of clubs which was now returned to the pack. A marker card shoved part way into the pack proved to be next to the chosen Jack. Three of the assistants then very cleanly each chose a card and returned them to the pack. Robert’s card was found by spelling to it, then Anthony’s was found when he said “Stop”, and John’s turned face up in the middle of the deck. Peter then requested Lena to play the part of the magician and Peter would be the spectator. He asked Lena to fan the shuffled card towards him so he could remove a card. Which he placed face down on the table. He asked Lena to deal cards in a pile and to stop anywhere. Then to take the dealt cards and to deal them into two piles. The top card of one packet disclosed the suit of the chosen card and the top card of the other packet the value.
Phuoc Can Hua was our next performer. With a small white stand with three coloured knobs, that could be removed, and an endless chain he started to scam a spectator although no money changed hands. The chain was looped around the knobs and two removed. If the chain caught on the remaining knob the spectator would win. Despite Phuoc showing how easy it was to win the spectator never succeeded. Even when the game was simplified with one knob removed and just two in play our spectators decisions were always wrong. Peter Rodgers explained how a pack of cards resembled the calendar with many similarities such as weeks in a year and cards in a pack. The number of suits and the number of seasons etc. He then asked a spectator to nominate a date that had a meaning to him. Peter picked up the cards that had been on the table from the start. He said the two jokers were somewhere face down in the face up pack. He fanned through the cards, removing the two jokers, when turned over one had the month and the other the day of the month written in big letters across the jokers faces. This was Peter’s performance of Mathew Knights “Invisible Date”. Quoting Arthur C Clarks third law, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, Peter showed an interesting property of the nitinol alloy. He then attempted a performance of Simon Aronson’s Past, Present and Future.
Well known Sydney magician Bill Walsh was visiting our ring tonight and commenced his performance with the recorded introduction he used when he worked the Close Up Room at Hollywood’s Magic Castle many years ago. Bill commenced with the Gift Box Illusion where the lids of two different sized pictures of boxes still proved to fit when exchanged. He then performed his version of Peter Kane’s Variant with five small wallets. He placed a poker chip in four of them and some money in the fifth. His spectator kept trying to win the money, his odds increased and the money increased, but he couldn’t win. As a booby prize he won an eight ball and some big (stage) Money. Bill then concluded his performance with a funny routine with a roll of Australian currency and a pair of Golden Fun Shears, now an unobtainable classic prop from Supreme Magic who were a major dealer from the 1950’s through to the 80’s.
Barry Abkin is a very enthusiastic, but reasonably new member of the Magic fraternity. He impressed everyone tonight with his performance of Simon Aronson’s Histed Heisted. He gave virtually everyone in the audience a few jumbo cards. Everyone was asked to mentally select just one card from their packet. A standard pack of cards was shuffled by a spectator then Barry called them out in groups. The spectators had to indicate if they heard their cards called in each group. Barry then faultless divined their chosen cards.
Anthony Dillon performed a couple of classic card location effects with a borrowed pack before performing a rendition of the also classic “Will the Cards Match” using five matching pairs of cards. Anthony did say that he likes to perform the classics and I agree with him. Effects become classics because they are the best effects, and yes, all five pairs of cards did match. To conclude his spot Anthony had a spectator deal a few cards into a pile, the spectator then shuffled his cards, dealt some more then dealt more, shuffled and finally dealt some more and he assembled the pack and cut the cards marking the spot where cut. When the top five cards were dealt from the marked position they proved to be the ace, ten, jack, queen and ace of spades.
Conway returned with his routine for Sol Stone’s Abraviagra where a cork mysteriously stands up under an inverted coffee mug. John Kanawati turned a packet of chewing gum into a chocolate bar then he performed a twisting the aces routine where the aces turned over one at a time in his hands but it wouldn’t work for the final ace until the cards were placed in a spectators hands. With just three cards from the deck John showed that they were all aces of spades, then jokers then other aces. This was John’s version of Color Monte, said to be the largest selling three card trick ever. Sticking to his theme John removes three pieces of dinner cutlery from his pocket, a knife, a fork and a spoon. Before the spectator could choose the spoon there was another knife and no spoon then a knife turned into a spoon, then the other one and then the fork also changed leaving john ready for his desert course with just three spoons. Wild Cutlery by Fujiwara Kuniyasu was a new effect to most of us and it was talked about late into the night. Our last performer was our youngest and one of our most skilled performers. It was Clement Kwok who used a borrowed pack of cards. After a few fancy shuffles he threw four cards face down on the table, he then quickly started to deal cards one at a time asking a spectator to say stop. When stopped they counted the dealt cards, there were ten, he showed the four original cards, they were the four tens. He then started to gather the dealt cards again asking the spectator to stop him. There were now six cards left, the four original cards turned over and were now the four sixes. This was the start of Clements fast paced medley of mainly Dani DaOrtiz material.
After the performances we all adjourned to supper and friendly discussions on tonight’s magic.
Peter Rodgers
Sydney Magic Club 