July 2014 Minutes

Our July meeting was “Mental Magic or Magic That Makes You Crazy.” Michael Jacobs started off the magic with an effect he’s been improving each month. It’s his own creation where a bust inhabited by the spirit of Houdini visibly escapes from ropes, handcuffs and other shackles. Crazy. Roger Sylwester blew our minds with a pack of cards he bought at a magic convention that said the thought of card would be forty down from the top. A spectator thought of any card and when he counted down forty it was there. Jim Earnshaw, our resident coin expert, showed us a very magical wooden Okito Box and wand routine with coins appearing and disappearing in mid air. Jim is crazy good. More mentalism was shared by Larry Dimmit as he showed how two minds could have one thought, He showed a picture with multiple celebrities and both the spectator and Larry’s selections were the same. Mark Paulson made us laugh with a little mentalism humor where he and the spectator thought of the very same thing. He also shocked us by selecting three random books from the library where we meet and predicted a randomly selected word on a freely selected page of one of the books. Mark’s mentalism could make you crazy if you try to figure it out. John Cameron dug around in his magic drawer to find a long lost packet trick where some cards had purple circles and some had purple backs. When a card was chosen it was the only one with a red circle and when a number was chosen it was the only one with a red back. I’m sure it motivated some of us to search through our old magic to find a long lost treasure. Since we met on Mercer Island this month, Chuck Kleiner shared a mentalism effect he created for the local Mercer Island Farmers Market. Chuck predicted which letter in the Market’s name would be freely selected by a spectator. Moving from mentalism back to crazy, Tom Payne inhaled a rubber band. He then showed us a card effect with rubber bands where the chosen card escaped from the bonds of two rubber bands.