The May meeting was hosted by Ashish Lodhavia and attended by 43 members and guests. Jeremy Pei kicked off the evening with his sharing of the inaugural ‘Magic Warehouse’ scheduled on 7th & 8th June 2014 at ‘The Hideout’. Tickets to the 2-day magic convention could still be purchased online at $95 at http://www.fcbc.org,sg. An exciting line-up of workshops, performances, competition, dealers, a gala show and a grand, late night auction by Lawrence and Priscilla could be expected.
Douglas Lee and Teo Shun Long received their magic wands from President John Teo after being sworn in as the newest ordinary members to our IBM Ring 115 family.
It was time for ‘All Gimmick Night’ as Enrico Varella presented his version of ‘any card, any number’. He invited 2 guests to each suggest a number and a suit respectively. They were ‘21’ and ‘Queen of Diamonds’. He placed the deck of cards faced down and when he counted to the 21st card, it was surprisingly the ‘Queen of Diamonds’!
Chew Liang Huat transformed 4 cards to all ‘Tens’ and then to all ‘Aces’ with a few deft strokes of his fingers!
Jasper Lee Wei Liang enthralled as he made coins appear, vanish and re-appear, transform into a dollar note while he shared his mother’s interesting money advice with the audience. He also enabled 3 coins to teleport under 2 cards, magically re-sized them into giant coins and eventually transformed into a giant dollar note!
Lee Choong Jee got 7 guests to each take a card from a cut deck. Each guest, based on the number on his card eg. ‘10’, would be given additional cards (3) such that they are topped up to a total of ‘13’ cards. The guests were free to exchange cards, opt to keep or return them to Choong Jee. Only 3 guests opted to retain their cards. Two of them volunteered to turn over their top cards and be given the number of cards to match the number printed on their top cards. After distributing the cards to both guests, Choong Jee’s next card would incredibly match the 3rd guest’s top card when it was flipped over!
Joseph Loh’s guest got to pick a card and place it face-down on a deck. When the deck was cut, it instantly brought him to the guest‘s card – ’10 of Diamonds’! Next, he got a guest to imagine 4 coins of different denominations and to pick any one of them. The guest selected the $1 coin. Joseph placed an empty glass on top of a deck. With a shake, a $1 coin as he had imagined actually appeared inside the glass. Joseph then imagined and ‘created’ a $1 coin inside the glass for himself. He kept a coin for himself but as he tried to pass the other coin to the guest, he mischievously made it vanish as it was only his guest’s imagination afterall!
Satish Kumar’s gimmick was a rubber band which he playfully named ‘Phoebe’. He wound it around a deck which contained his guest’s randomly inserted card. When the deck was dropped onto the table, the ‘Queen of Spades’ sprang out and amazingly, it was his guest’s selected card!
Jeremy Pei introduced a stalk of rose which transformed into a green silk which in turn magically transformed into 2 canes – red and green! He also demonstrated how a circular disk inserted in a holder could change colour or even vanish! He also shared ’Find the Queen’ Monte where a guest thought he had placed a clip at the back of the image of a queen card only to find that it was not, when all the cards were turned face-up. When the clip was placed in any position, it was on the queen as when the cards were flipped over, they had transformed into one big queen card! The last 2 effects were from Ton Onosaka. Other magic items also available at his booth included the ‘Correct Key’, a 2-way ‘offering’ change-bag and a rope which could stiffen instantly!
After the break, Massimo Sacco threw a crushed tissue into the audience and a guest who caught it could choose any card. His choice – the ‘3 of Clubs’ was the prediction written on the crushed tissue when it was opened up!
Maxwell Low presented a diary where each day corresponded to a number and a suit. His guest could pick any day. It corresponded to the ‘2 of Diamonds’. He then placed a deck of cards in between his guest’s hands. When they were opened, there was a single red card among the blue ones and it was the guest’s card!
John Teo presented 4 jumbo-sized face-down cards. When the first card was turned over, he could predict the next face-down card below it. Similarly, when the 2nd card was turned over, he could also predict the 3rd card below it and so on. As he explained how he could do so, he showed the audience the back of the cards again – each now amazingly had a huge, printed, black letter to represent the first letter of the card viz. F for Four, A for Ace, K for King, E for Eight, spelling the word FAKE! Cool! Next, he presented the classic 6-card prediction where one of 6 cards attached to a board with their backs facing the audience was selected and this was predicted in advance. However, this was an improved model as the board is transparent plastic board!
Hayashi Takuya got a guest to place his chosen card over a cut deck and the rest of the cards over it. He then demonstrated he had quick hands as he pulled out the guest’s chosen card – 2 of Clubs – almost instantly!
Next, Tommy Chiang’s guest was asked to pick a number. It was ‘8’. Tommy counted and dropped 7 cards. When the 8th card was turned over, it was the ‘6 of Spades’ which matched the prediction on the blackboards! Even when he repeated the procedure with a different deck and chosen card, the result was still the same as his prediction which had been earlier given on the blackboards! His guest next signed on a randomly chosen card and had it inserted back into a deck. Somehow, Tommy was able to produce the same signed card from his wallet!
Jeremy Pei rounded off the evening with 2 more performances. The first was a Ton Onosaka’s creation which involved 2 cards displaying a Coke and Pepsi can respectively. They could switch places in an instant, change to pictures of Coke Zero, a bottle of orange juice or to a cup of orange juice! Another involved a silver coin re-appearing in his palm, regardless of the number of times it was removed and placed in a pocket. He also made the silver coin vanish, re-appear as an image in his IPAD, then enlarged and eventually retrievable as a tangible, giant coin!
