44 people, including 2 guests, were treated to a magic lecture by Justin Rivera at our May meeting held on the evening of 15 May at the usual venue at Chinese Media Success’ Action Room. 44 people, including 2 guests, were treated to a magic lecture by Justin Rivera at our May meeting held on the evening of 15 May at the usual venue at Chinese Media Success’ Action Room.
44 people, including 2 guests, were treated to a magic lecture by Justin Rivera at our May meeting held on the evening of 15 May at the usual venue at Chinese Media Success’ Action Room. 44 people, including 2 guests, were treated to a magic lecture by Justin Rivera at our May meeting held on the evening of 15 May at the usual venue at Chinese Media Success’ Action Room.
Our host for the evening, Tommy Chiang, introduced our guest Dario Moda from Italy. He was in Singapore on his company’s business. 21 years ago, when Dario Moda was stationed in Singapore, he was our Ring 115 member. It was good to see him again after all these years!
Justin Rivera is a professional comedian and magician, and is named the judges’ favourite in “America Got Talent” program. He was born and raised in the Philippines but now resides in the USA. He had injured one of his legs during this trip to Singapore and had to use a walking stick.
His first effect was a bare-hand vanish of a borrowed $1 bill to appear inside an empty card case. To identify the bill, he tore off the serial number of the currency note. Later, it fits exactly the bill that reappeared inside the card case.
His second effect was a toss-out deck without the use of the usual multi-way force deck, but with other type of gimmicked deck. Next, he showed us his own quite deceptive back and front palm of a single card used in a card manipulation act. Justin tore down his CD manipulative act and taught us what he did at each stage. This included bare-hand CD vanishes and appearances, colour changes, and his bit and restored CD without using a gimmicked CD.
At this juncture, our own Jeremy Pei took over the stage and did a dealer’s demonstration that comprised a 20th Century Silks using a special wooden hand, Mini Dart Board to reveal a chosen card, and a revolving device to reveal a chosen card. It had been quite a while since the last time Jeremy offered his special Surprise Grab Bags. Each bag cost only $20 but contained more than $100 worth of magic.
Lim Teck Guan, one of our regular members, had prepared something to show us and was invited on stage. He plucked 6 to 8 different colour silks from a single sheet of newspaper.The interval that followed allowed members to discuss magic with Justin Rivera as well as purchase items from both Jeremy Pei and Cassidy Lee.
After the break, a video presentation of Justin’s CD manipulation act was projected onto the large screen, complete with background music. After his explanation, we could appreciate each move that we saw in the video.
After this, Justin continued with a card move that he used in his ambitious card routine to bring a card buried in the middle of the deck to the top. Next, he showed a simple but practical triumph card routine. The final effect taught was a magical version of the popular “Cards Against Humanity” party game where he could predict in advance which question and answer would be randomly selected by a spectator.
There was a segment where not only the host Tommy Chiang interviewed Justin, but several of us did too. A couple of interesting questions asked were “why did you combine a pure manipulative routine with a comedy act?” and “what advice would you give to magicians who want to participate in a ‘Got Talent’ show?”
Many members stayed behind to take photographs with Justin Rivera. Other than the CD manipulations, it was a lecture on simple but practical effects.