You get it all when you attend a monthly meeting of the Emerald City Wizards! Toward the end of the evening of April 3rd, Ben Eskenazi and his dad, Marty, told the Wizards about a plan they had to offer magic to nursing and retirement homes in the near future. They were seeking input about … Continue reading “April 2014 Minutes”
You get it all when you attend a monthly meeting of the Emerald City Wizards! Toward the end of the evening of April 3rd, Ben Eskenazi and his dad, Marty, told the Wizards about a plan they had to offer magic to nursing and retirement homes in the near future. They were seeking input about the experiences of others; of which there was plenty. Rule number one: keep it simple! The Wizard Leader, JR Russell recounted one performance when, after he had performed his best stuff, someone in the audience approached him and said: “JR, could you play some Country Western?” Despite the bittersweet humor in this, Rule number two comes into play: retired and nursing home audiences are very appreciative of our magic.
The meeting began with a brief overview of business and then we got straight to the raison d’être of the Wizards: the MAGIC. On a “special” deck of cards carried 90 miles from Whidbey Island expressly for the evening, Ben Eskenazi had Roger Sylwester select any card—and I mean ANY card without a force—and to everyone’s surprise, Ben predicted that very card! JR Russell took pride in seeing Ben perform the magic because he was the one who brought the deck so far.
Ralph Hunzinger had a potpourri of magical works in progress which he wanted to share. First up was “Newton’s Miracle”; an anti-gravity tube device that, with the right incantations can speed or retard the speed of objects that pass within it. Then we saw his “Numerology” blocks that shows, no matter how things are manipulated, that they always add up to the same result: 15. Last Ralph showed his “Vanishing Box” prototype where a rose is not a rose but it becomes a daisy. It’s flower power!
Michael Jacobs performed a short, but intriguing card trick where a Queen appeared where we least expected it. Roger Sylwester then did a twist on Michael Close’s “Erma la Fource.” Completely by random did a card get selected by the entire gathering. There’s absolutely no way that Roger could have predicted what the Wizards proposed. But, in the end, strong magic had its way: the prediction he made was identical to ours. Roger said he tested this trick many times with student audiences in California during a recent visit there.
Dan Kennedy then brought out some “royals” who, through their card avatars, performed a little soap opera of the tantalizing type. The red hair women and the black hair women had little trysts with others besides their husbands and yet, at the end of the night, all was how it was supposed to be although there was a lot of hanky panky going on. Bro. John Hamman’s Gemini Twins is used and there are only four cards even though it seemed many more.
Larry Dimmit performed a prediction card miracle: the “Teacher Knows.” It was baffling. Following this was Jay Boiselle who was a newcomer to the Wizards. He operates the Seattle Juggling and Magic Shop. When asked what magi were buying, he recounted a tale about a man really interested in a thumb tip although he had no apparent interest in magic. It turned out that he had sliced a portion of his thumb off and needed a handy prosthetic. Little did he know that the heat and relatively inflexibility of the plastic version he purchased would eventually do him no good. The vanity of it all.
Chris Carlyle had five Wizards select cards. And by five different means, including reading the lumps on the cards behind his back and by dropping a card, he was able to divine all five cards. Mike Battistoni, another newcomer to the club but not to magic introduced himself. He developed his chops, now a little rusty because life got in the way, at the Magic Castle. But he’s raring to get back into the swing of things.
Bill Murray asked Chris Carlyle to help him in a little prediction exercise by selecting a number of cards. Using the Tamariz Stacked Deck (Mnemonica) technique, Bill was able to predict not only the number of cards Chris selected but all of the exact cards within the packet. Mark Paulson then told about Ricky Jay appearing on the “Tonight Show” recently and performing a trick that he had no clue as to how it was done; and then Mark did the same thing: a royal flush. It’s always interesting when things can change so quickly from humble origins.
Terry Burlison performed a clever Ninja card trick using the Elmsley Count. There was always a problem with too much ink on the Ace of Spades. Following this, we had a discussion about the Elmsley Count from JR Russell and Reymarx Gereda. Each showed different techniques; the most useful being that simply putting the last card on the bottom rather than on the top resets you back to the same Elmsley Count. Rounding out the evening of outstanding fooling, Reymarx Gereda baffled with a repeating, computer-like knowledge of how many cards were cut by a helper. How does he do it?
