Due to the non-availability of our hotel venue on 15th April 2019, our April meeting was postponed to 18th April 2019.
The venue was the Sojourn 3 Room of the Hotel Grand Central. The total attendance was 36, which included one guest.
The MC for the first part of the evening was Kenneth Chia. Being a prolific DIY man, Kenneth opened the evening with his self-made prop of a stage version of the Tic-Tac-Toe game. He played the classic Tic-Tac-Toe with the audience, which ended in a draw. When he turned the transparent board around, it revealed a stunningly perfect poster of Ring 115’s theme for the evening: Comedy Magic. What a magical introduction!
Harapan Ong was next. Prior to his performance, an Induction Ceremony was held to induct Harapan to full membership in Ring 115. Harapan did a reverse or anti ACAAN effect, where the card at a randomly chosen number was the only card that was not the chosen card, because the entire deck turned out to be duplicates of the chosen card except this one!
The next performer was Dr Ray Loh. His contributed 3 card effects. The first was the transposition of 4 Aces to blanks. The other 2 were mentalism effects where he was able to correctly divine each of 2 randomly chosen cards.
Kogi Oberoi was next with a Stab In The Dark effect. A deck with a chosen card lost in it was wrapped with a newspaper. A volunteer thrust a miniature sword into the wrapped bundle and was able to locate the selected card!
Charles Choo inserted each of the four 10’s into an envelope. A spectator chose an envelope and the content turned out to be the exact 10 prediction in advance by the performer. His next effect involved 2 half cards inside a wallet and a fan of 12 different cards. A card randomly pointed to in the fan matched the 2 half cards in the wallet. The 11 cards in the fan then turned into blanks.
Before the break, Jeremy Pei did the first of two Dealer’s Demonstrations. Items shown included a stage sized Fantasy Wallet which could produce 6 different flat items, a miniature sliding box using a coin, a McCombical Deck, and a blendo-type bag that revealed THE END made by rope pieces. While demonstrating the last item, Jeremy showed a nice three-phase “Hanging Knots” routine using only a piece of rope.
Jeremy then announced the Magic Warehouse auction of magic props owned by Lawrence and Priscila Khong, before conducting a mini-auction of 5 items. They were a wooden production pagoda, a pair of stage sized spirit slates, jumping bow-ties ala Jumping Knots of Pakistan, stage sized Hippiti-Hop Rabbits, and a wooden spirit gavel.
The second Dealer’s Demonstration was conducted by Cassidy Lee. There was a special package deal comprising Jenzo, Blade, Mint-O and SplitCard. He also demonstrated Wayne Dobson’s “The Key”, a special wallet where a prediction of a playing card appeared in a video taken by a volunteer’s mobile phone, and a giant sore thumb gag.
A 20-minutes break with food and drinks allowed members to intermingle with one another and patronise the 2 dealers.
After the break, John Teo took over as the MC. He commenced with a short comedy act comprising 5 effects that used puns in the patter. His repertoire comprised Sid Lorraine’s “Magic Manor”, a folding paper effect; Roy Johnson’s “Spot-Spot” with a play on the words “spot remover” and hare restorer”; Daryl’s stage version of Emerson & West’s “W-Hole Thing”; a “pom-pom stick” routine using a fishing rod with a hook, a weight, a reel and a bobber; and “Acrobatic Fish-Plus” with a surprising ending where 3 fishes appeared from nowhere on the 3 ropes.
Kenneth Yeo was the next performer. He demonstrated Dean Dill’s coin matrix, but as a comedy slant, he attributed the success of his act to the secret tunnels in the table!
Tommy Chiang performed 2 effects. The first was “Bounce and No Bounce Ball” which he used as a lie-detector in a Q & A game with a lady spectator. In the second effect, all the cards in a deck of playing cards changed into the selected card.
Jeremy Pei returned with Dealer’s Demonstration No 2. He produced a Super Woman doll from a small empty box; solved a mixed-up Rubik’s Cube one face at a time according to the colour named by a spectator; and closed with a stage effect involving 25 mixed-up miniature Rubik’s Cubes which magically transformed into a large picture of Superman!
It was a befitting close to an evening of entertaining comedy magic.
