What Happened at the Meeting on Friday 23rd October 2020

 

The meeting, with the theme "Apparatus Magic", was hosted by Andrew Pickard. Using a Square Circle, and showing it completely empty, Andrew produced several brightly coloured silks – a nice display.    Later, he carried out the "Great Wong Illusion".   In a quick trick, he waved his wand near a small scarlet silk and caused the silk to instantly vanish, at such speed that no-one could catch it!   He also had a card chosen, and then displayed a wooden frame filled with sand.  After covering the frame and uncovering it, the sand drained away to reveal the chosen card.

David Whitson used the corona virus theme to devise a trick. The colourful mask he was wearing to ward off corona virus was turned inside out four times to magically display a different patterned mask each time.   Next, he showed a bouquet of green leaves, and it bloomed instantly with red roses.  He showed the rising wand trick, saying it was one of the first tricks he had ever learned.  Then he showed us the item called "What's Next"  in which black spots on a jumbo card keep multiplying until the card is full of spots!

Jeffrey Clark did another routine with his puppet – a cartoon like crow figure, that is quite entertaining.  Jeff performed coin magic.  He showed us a calendar and did a mathematical trick on a square of  dates to achieve the date chosen by the spectator, and predicted by him.

Coin magic was also performed by Al Hirschel.  A bronze coin and a silver coin ware individually inserted in leather pouches, and shuffled.  By holding each pouch close to his ear and concentrating, Al was able to determine which coin was inside the pouch.

Neil Patrick Harris is an American actor/magician, and John Ferguson performed a card trick that Harris had published.  He asked the spectator who had chosen a card to carefully deal cards from the same pack on to the table.  The spectator ended up with his chosen card.  Again, a card was chosen, and John displayed a metal wire.  When he heated the wire in the flame of a match, the wire formed the shaped of the name of the chosen card – e.g. "K" and  a spade shape.  

John asked Noel and Diane Clair to assist with this next card trick – the Split Deck.  A jumbo deck cut diagonally was used, and Diane chose a card (a half-card).  Noel was asked to choose from the other half deck, and yes, he was able to get the other half of the same card!   The "Impossible Sheet of Paper" was a puzzle for us all.   Finally, a card was chosen from a deck by a spectator.  A card frame was displayed that showed a jumbo card that was a jack, and it was tipped out on the table – it had changed to be the chosen card !

Steve Irwin built a tower of three blocks each of which had pictures on the faces.  He covered the blocks with a wooden sliding cover.  When the pulled the cover off, the blocks had reassembled to make a picture of a monkey!

What Happened at the Meeting on Friday 18th September

 

Your reporter was (virtually) present at this meeting courtesy of Jeff Clark, who had arranged that in the face to face meeting, there was a camera connected to ZOOM so that I (and others who wished) could view what was going on.  Thank you Jeff !

The meeting was opened by AL HIRSCHEL, host for the night, on the topic of "Paper and Everyday Objects".   He commenced with the Paper Tear, saying that he loves this trick, although it does not always work. This time, it did, with a nice restoration to the original newspaper.

He also loves the item "Cutting a Business Card so you can put your Head through it".  This involves very precise cutting with scissors!  He did it successfully for us.  He said that if he were to use a postcard, then you can put your whole body through it !

Next up was DAVID WHITSON who vanished a cane by rolling it in a sheet of newspaper and then scrunching it all up to show the cane had vanished. He fanned the one pack of cards in different ways to produce half a dozen brilliant patterns.  He showed us a pack of shrinking cards, and after diminishing them five times, he vanished the pack entirely – really good fun !   He fanned a pack of cards, and then when he fanned them a second time, they glowed gold.

JOEL HOWLETT  displayed a piece of black paper and a piece of white paper and turned them into a black and white checkerboard pattern.  Showing us a large capsule, he asked someone to open it, and inside was a tiny paper bird.  This Joel vanished, and made it reappear inside the capsule.

Baby Mia featured in his next item.  Joel dealt cards down until the spectator told him to stop.  Then he displayed a photo of baby Mia, holding a playing card – and, yes, it was the card stopped at !

JEFF CLARK produced a puppet bird for his item.  A card was chosen by a spectator, put back in the pack, and the pack thrown in the air.  One card was caught by the bird, but it was the wrong one.  A prediction envelope held by a spectator was opened, but it only contained a blank sheet of paper.  Joel scrunched this up, and fed it to the bird puppet.  The bird coughed it up again, and written on the paper was the chosen card !

STEVE IRWIN used something as simple as three bottle caps and one ball bearing to make magic !  After he moved the caps around, the spectator (Diane) was asked which cap held the ball bearing.  Yes, she could not get it right, and the ball bearing was under the control of magician Steve the whole time.

Then Steve asked a spectator to choose a card, and replace it in the deck.  By spelling "S-H-E-R-L-O-C-K  H-O-L-M-E-S" as he dealt cards from the pack, he ended up on the chosen card !  At the end of the evening, Steve kindly work - shopped this trick for us.

To round off the evening, AL HIRSCHEL performed a coin matrix. (He credited Dennis Norman with teaching him this item.) He reminded us that the Australian 5 cent coin features an echidna.  He described the life of an echidna, and laid out four five cent pieces in a square on a mat.  He showed a five cent piece "burrowing like an echidna" under the mat from one corner to the other, and showed that the one coin had been joined by a second, and so on until all four coins had magically assembled in one corner. As well as being amazed by the coin assembly, we learnt quite a bit about echidnas !

What Happened at the Meeting on Friday 17th April 2020

Because of the Corona virus lockdown, the meeting was conducted online using Zoom.  Since we are all in lockdown, we talked at some length about magic websites to look at:

1.Tim Ellis has a website for his "Laneway Theatre" –

https://thelanewaytheatre.com/

and in this website Tim interviews many magicians from Australia and overseas (including our own Joel Howlett!).  Tim has purchased a warehouse in one of the laneways in the Melbourne CBD, and has fitted it out for magic performances.

2. Andrew Pickard drew our attention to a massive 21/2 hour lecture by Marc de Sousa.  It is available to all magicians through the Society of American Magicians, at

https://www.magicsam.com/mpage/boxoffice

and you will need to give the surname of the magician known as "The Professor" to gain entry (which is free) and you don't need to be a member of SAM.

In our online magic session, Noel Clair performed some coin transfers from hand to hand.  Warden (Andrew Pickard) did card to pocket, and a smo-o-o-th top change.   Jeff Clark had attended the Joshua Jay lecture in Sydney, and showed us Joshua's "Phantom Deck".