The evening of 15 September 2018 was our September Magic Meeting. 27 people, including 3 guests, turned up at our usual venue at Chinese Success Media at Bras Basah Complex.
The co-ordinators for the evening were Victor Heng and Derek Lee. Hosting the entire evening was Victor Heng. He made 3 announcements and introduced the 3 guests, Sandeep, Muru and TK Jian.
Victor then proceeded to screen 5 short videos demonstrating the various genres of comedy magic. The clips featured comedy magic performed by Steve Martin, Dan Harlan, Jonathan Burns, Damien James and Red Skelton with Jerry Lewis.
The first performer of the evening was Lim Teck Guan. He placed 3 solid coins inside a long container and proceeded to pierce each coin with a pencil. The coins were later shown to be undamaged. Next, he displayed 3 playing cards. A spectator took out the middle card but it turned out to be a card depicting a boy going to the “rest room”.
Kenneth Chia performed the colouring book effect using a giant-sized book and a vanishing box of coloured crayons. He then displayed another large book depicting pictures of sweets. Magically, a handful of sweets made their appearance and the book was later shown to have blanks pages. In his third effect, Kenneth had a spectator chose an actor which unfortunately did not match a poster of the movie the selected actor was supposed to star in. All turned out well when Kenneth revealed his prediction which depicted a large poster of the selected movie, but it starred the chosen (wrong) actor!
Derek Lee did a sucker effect of a baby gag of a randomly named celebrity. The baby photograph turned out to be correct with the actual name of the selected celebrity printed on its back.
Before the tea and coffee break, Chua Eng Hock showed a packet of 10 playing cards. A card was freely selected by an audience member. Through a series of mixing the cards utilising the elimination principle, he was able to locate the chosen card.
After the break, John Teo presented Daryl’s “The (W)Hole Thing” using 4 jumbo cards in which 2 had holes (HOLE) in them and 2 did not (WHOLE). The effect evolved around puns, and in the finale, red spots, a red card, and the word “HOLE” magically appeared on the 4 cards. In his next effect, a spectator selected a playing card. Using a special spinning wheel device called the “Thought Transmitter”, he caused another member of the audience to be able to absorb the thought of this spectator, and the member was able to divine the chosen card in a comical manner.
Charles Choo was next. He diminished a fan of cards 5 times until they got too tiny to be seen. By gazing into a clear crystal ball, he enabled a spectator to be able to be able to reveal the selected card.
An Induction Ceremony was held for Wong Hui Xian, where she recited the pledge and the President presented her with a wooden wand as well as the Ring 115 Constitutions.
Ashish showed 4 cards that read M, I, N, and D. An audience member chose one card and its back was shown to have “THIS CARD” printed on it, while the backs of the rest of the cards had “THAT CARD” on them. Ashish then had a card chosen from a deck of cards. He took out 4 cards, but none of them proved to be the correct one. He overcame this problem when he turned over the 4 cards – together, they formed a giant display of the correct identity of the chosen card!
Kogi used a packet of jumbo cards to perform “out-of-this-world”, where the audience made all the correct decisions to deal face-down cards onto a neat column of red cards and another column of black cards. Performing “out-of-this-world” with jumbo cards really makes it cool to watch.
Cassidy Lee, who was the champion of the close-up competition held in Bangalore the previous month, shared about his experiences in India and how he used comedy in his magic performances. He gave several demonstrations using sharpie to wand, spring-back ang-pows and bills, zoom-zoom deck, and his presentations for Alan Wong’s Green Silk to Frog and Richard Sander’s Turbo Stick which led to a two red sponge balls routine.
It was an interesting evening of more comedy, than children’s, magic. Everyone left the venue still with a smile on their lips.