Alvin Terence and Satish Kumar were the co-emcees for September’s meeting, attended by 28 members. The evening’s announcements included a reminder to sign up for Tim Ellis’ lecture on 20 September 2012 with Satish, and the IBM Ring 115 Annual Lunch to be held on 18 November 2012 from 11 am at Roland’s Restaurant.
The first member to perform for the evening’s theme of “Comedy and Children” was Jimmy Lee. He got Teng Kuan to randomly select and return a card to a deck. After making a wager with a $10 dollar bill which he vanished, he mysteriously made Teng Kuan’s card fall out from the shuffled and fanned-out deck, along with the $10 dollar bill!
Chew Liang Huat showed how he could make a small metal bar seemingly ‘melt’ through a metal block to re-appear from the other side.
Next, Samuel Boey performed with Squeaky the Squirrel and showed how he would entertain his young audience with Squeaky‘s unusual moves.
Satish Kumar who adopted a turbaned persona as emcee, tickled the audience with his antics. He also performed an interesting effect where a wound-up toy car found the chosen card lost in the deck.
Jeremy Pei recounted his experiences as a children’s magician during the early years of his career. He used a stamp colouring book; and then a set of 3 giant cards (2 Kings and a Queen) to demonstrate how the journey (delivery) mattered far more than the destination (magic trick) itself. The audience also sportingly participated as ‘children’.
After the break, Wee Kien Meng shared tips on how he handled ‘smart alecs’ or noisy and disruptive children in his audience. He would lay down ground rules eg. young children had to be seated, and raise their hands to ask questions or to participate. He added that he ensured props not in use were kept out of sight of the children to prevent their grabbing them.
Jeremy Pei performed his favourite trick of the month. He invited a member to randomly pick a card from a set of cards with various hollywood movie titles written on their backs. He then surprised the audience when the selected card labelled “Jurassic Park” matched a picture card of Jurassic Park, randomly chosen from a set of back-facing picture cards mounted on the table. With a tap, he turned all the different picture cards into the Jurassic Park picture card! He also performed another trick where the cards when laid out on the table, spelt “Your Card is the Five of Spades”, matching a card an audience member had randomly picked.
A mini, fun, auction conducted for Jeremy Pei’s magic items rounded off the evening’s meeting. Once again, it was time to call it a night amid much laughter.
Reported by:
(Ms) Low Hwee Lang