Saturday, April 22, 2017

What Happened at the Meeting on Friday 21st April 2017


Joel Howlett was leading the meeting, and the theme was “Silks and Handkerchiefs”.  He commenced by showing us Silk from Rose, then Coin from Silk.  This Coin production led into him producing multiple large coins.   Showing us a circle with paper across it, Joel punched a hole in the paper and from it produced a silk fountain.  He turned a black sash into a rainbow streamer.  What a cascade of colour !

Steve Irwin, the next performer, showed his right hand empty, and then asked Al to imprison that hand in a plastic bag and tie the bag to his wrist with rope so that nothing could get in.   Steve then took a red silk in his left hand, vanished it, and it instantly appeared inside the plastic bag held in his fingers in his right hand.   Everyone gasped with amazement, because it was so unexpected.

Next, Joel showed his ability with the Massal tube. Showing a square of material  empty, he twisted it into a tube, and from the tube produced a black and white silk picture of a flower in a pot.  Asking us to throw the colour from our clothes at it, he then produced a silk picture similar to the black and white one before, but with coloured splotches over it.   Then with a magic word, he produced a silk that not only was a fully coloured flower in a coloured pot, but also was of a size that was four times as large.

We know the zigzag effect with cards, with a banknote, and even with a woman.  The next performer, Noel Clair showed us a zigzag with rope – a device that gave the illusion that the rope was pushed sideways into two pieces, then he restored it. He did ring off rope, and made the ring disappear.

He did his rope routine, in which knots appear on a rope and disappear off it; the ends disappear off the rope; he tied a knot in the centre of the rope and removed the knot, then he put the ends back on the rope.  Next he made a rope pass straight through his finger.   A ring tied firmly on the rope came off easily, then went back on firmly. When he threw the ring at the rope, it went on to it immediately.

Joel produced a silk from his bare hands, vanished it, and made it reappear from mid air.  Next he did the Twentieth Century Silks.

Brad Burgoyne did a nice classical sponge ball routine: he appeared to break one sponge into two, transposed one sponge then two from his hand to the spectator’s, and multiplied two sponges to three.  The old classics have an inherent magical power !

Another classic is the Gung Ho Silk Box, which was used by John Ferguson to produce green, then red, then green, then red silks and so on as an introduction to “Traffic Lights”.  This is a chemical magic effect in which a liquid, swirled in a plastic bottle turns red in colour.  Then when the bottle is shaken, the liquid suddenly turns green. The colour change can be repeated many times – as long as there is air in the bottle !

Anthony Roberts showed us a small box, empty.  Opening it, he produced a silk.  These small silk production boxes are very useful.  Next he dealt cards fairly on to the table for one to be chosen – the 2D.  Opening a box in plain sight on the table all the time, he showed us the prediction he had written – the 2D.

The very useful prop, the Change Bag, was used to good effect by David Whitson, who used it to vanish red, white and blue silks, and then to produce from the empty bag a 2 metre silk Australian flag.  Noting that we should be welcoming to others, he said that the bag was made in Japan, the silks in India and the Aussie flag in Indonesia…..   From the change bag he next produced silk costumes of various animals such as a gorilla, that could go around our necks – and he challenged the spectators to put them on !

A new use for a classic prop, the Money Printer, was shown us by Andrew Pickard.  He used it to vanish a silk, by winding the silk into the printer.  Taking a tubular cover off a wine bottle, he showed the bottle was normal.  When he covered it up and removed the tube again, the vanished silk had appeared tied around the neck of the bottle !

What a night of magic !