2007-02 Late addition

Lecturing for FAME of Greater Orlando

IBM Ring 170
Presents

Tuesday, February 20, 2007
7:30 - 10pm
Garrett Thomas
Garrett Thomas is one of the new faces of close-up sleight of hand magic. Garrett is a real world magician performing in restaurants and clubs all over Western New York, including the Forks Hotel world famed magic bar and restaurant. A member of the elite FFFF magic society, Garrett Thomas has performed and lectured at clubs and conventions all over the US and is now for the first time coming to our area. In addition to his busy performing schedule, he is also one of the magic consultants to David Blaine.
He brings back magic in its purest form, his effects are simple clean well thought out pieces of magical art that he teaches the how and the why of each effect. Coins appear and melt away and jump from one hand to the other in the purest three fly effect that words can't explain. A shuffled deck is dealt out randomly to find your selected card then instantly show the whole deck is now in sequential order. The tools you learn can be applied to many of your favorite routines. Garrett restores a whole new life to some of the moves and gimmicks you already use or may have in you magic drawer at home.

Some of the effects that will be covered are: “The Ring Thing”, “Soft Salt”,”Threasy”, “GT 3-Fly”, “Switchless”, “Match Back”,”Big Coin Little Purse”, Blind 'Em & Find 'Em, Flipper Coin magic and more…

ADMISSION:
Fame Members: $10.00
Non-Members: $15.00

LOCATION:
I-HOP restaurant at 5203 Kirkman Road, Orlando, Florida 32819 across the street from Hooters near Universal Studios. 407-370-0597 (Back conference room)

DIRECTIONS:
Take I-4 and exit at the Universal Studios/ Kirkman Road Exit. Go north pass the Vineland Road intersection and I-Hop is on the right 1/3 mile.

For more lecture information call Craig Fennessy, 407-947-1182

2007-02 Famulus newsletter of IBM Ring 170

Newsletter of IBM Ring #170 The Bev Bergeron Ring

Next general meeting Wednesday, 02/21/2007 at 7:30 PM SHARP

Board meeting at 6:30 pm

Meeting theme: Valentine's Magic

Marks Street Center, 99 Mark Street, downtown Orlando

If you visit with us and do not know the room we meet in , please be aware that some of the people in the office at the Senior Center may not be aware we are meeting there! At the last meeting one visitor asked where the "IBM" was meeting and the management apparently thought they were asking for the International Business Machines group! They said that there was no "IBM" on the schedule. So, if you have never been to our ring meeting , please say "magicians" or "FAME" and if that doesn't get the room location , just walk around looking for us. The Senior Center is a public building.

Lunch meetings every Tuesday at noon at Goodings (next to the food court)

Website: http://www.ring170.com/
F. A. M. E. is the Florida Association of Magical Entertainers

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Directory

Craig J. Fennessy – President – CraigFennessy@gmail.com
Chris Dunn- Vice President – Youngdunns@yahoo.com
Art Thomas – Treasurer – Art.Thomas@Disney.com
Dennis Philips- Secretary – Dennis@alliedcostumes.com

Stefan Bartelski – Editor of “Famulus”- Famulus@illusioneer.com
James Songster- Director at Large, - JjTjMagic@aol.com

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GET PUBLISHED!

Got an idea for an article to add to the next FAMULUS? Put it in the body of an email or in a Word document attached to an email. Send it to Famulus@illusioneer.com, and we will get you in print. Please, please, please, use the above e-mail address, your messages are in danger of getting lost if you do not do so.

2007-02 From the Editor

This last week the Ring lost its Sergeant at Arms, Charlie Cox, one of our best loved members. All of us know him as one of the most friendly members of the ring. He was one of, if not the first, member to welcome when I first came to Ring 170 over five years ago. His sudden demise is a huge loss to the club. Many members were able to attend the Broken Wand ceremony last Friday. Beve Bergeron led this moving ceremony and a number of members spoke. A link to the video of the ceremony can be found lower down in the newsletter, or click here.

Apologies are also in order with respect to an last minute message that was sent out a couple of weeks ago. I was not aware that Yahoo Groups takes 3-6 hours to distribute messages to our mailing list. So a number of you received the message after the event in question. Now that we know about this delay, we have taken steps to reduce the effect of the delay as much as possible, and will take it into account when sending future messages.

Regards

Stefan

2007-02 Ring Report Ring #170 The Bev Bergeron Ring

January started off the new year with a productive board meeting where our New President, Craig Fennessy outlined his plans for the coming year in the ring.

When our regular ring meeting was gaveled to order a hour later, all the newly elected board members came to the front of the room and sat around the table and Craig repeated the plans we discussed in the board meeting and offered a chance for input from the ring. Each month's ring meeting will have a theme on which to base the "show-and-tell" portion after the business meeting. Famulus, our on-line ring publication will be offered in print by Chris Dunn at the monthly ring meetings. Our annual Flea Market and Auction will be in April. We will most likely have a banquet and show this year after not having one for the past couple of years. Jacki Manna will continue to do her fine job in charge of the ring Hospitality functions. We will institute a Youth and Adult "Teach-in" activity. We will have a membership drive with several incentives for new members. It was also suggested we have a tribute to two Orlando local magic legends, Harry Wise and Don Masters.
As the meeting continued, we had forty-two people present and six guests: Christopher Nash,Chuck Hedden,Sean Cinco,Sam Rubman, Zack Rapattoni and a former member renewing his interest in the ring, Brett Railey.

The business meeting concluded and Bondi was kind enough to donate all the items and magazines for our raffle. Sam Rubman was the MC for the show.
First up was Charlie Pfrogner. Charlie had another original idea. He used a saltine cracker as the classic "Hi-Sign". His story was about the "cracker stacker packer" who followed the arrow on the cracker to get them all stacked the correct way. The cracker stacker became a slacker but that was the way the cookie crumbled! These were the great lines and effect Charlie dreamed up this month! Following Charlie was young Sidney Mac had a polished routine with colored golf balls and a Four Aces effect.

Dan Stapleton had a spectator shuffle cards and separate them into three piles. He was always able to predict which pile had more cards of a color and the number of cards. George Bernard presented the "Wheel of Mind". A large wheel-shaped marker board is used and the audience calls out many combinations of numbers that are jotted around the edge of the wheel. Then the wheel is turned over and a clock numbers can be seen. One of the clock numbers is randomly selected and the wheel flipped over. An envelope contains a word. The word corresponded to the exact location of words in a magazine.

JC Hiatt had a clever chop cup routine with a paper coffee cup and two tennis balls appearing as the finale. Bev Bergeron told a cute story about his grandfather cheating him in a four card monte game. Grandpa always won. Sam our MC is a newcomer to the club and provided the riotous laugh of the evening. He began with an excellent "cards across" routine with two spectators and then he called a assistant to help him with the classic "Crazy Man's Handcuffs" rubber band penetration.
Unknown to Sam was the fact that his audience assistant was Lynn Fitzgerald, wife of Mark Fitzgerald who is an old friend and collaborator with Dan Harlan on the creation of the famous effect Copperfield used on his CBS-TV special. The longer Sam was in the dark about this, the funnier it became. Finally, Josh from Daytona magic brought some dealer effects to demonstrate. The meeting ended on a high note. Good things are always happening in Ring #170.

Dennis Phillips

2007-02 Photos from Charlie Cox's Wake

Picture of Ring members in attendance at the Broken Wand ceremony for Charlie Cox

2007-02 Changing Tastes in Parties

How will these websites effect your livelyhood

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-15-birthday-parties-side_x.htm?csp=34

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/50273/kids_birthday_parties_life_in_the_suburbs.html

http://in.news.yahoo.com/070117/137/6b7uv.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070117/us_nm/life_parties_dc

http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/16245751.htm

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/070117/us/usreport_life_parties_dc

http://www.politicalgateway.com/news/read/58433

extreme party
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/puffymtv.html

Jerry Darkey

2007-02 Andre Kole - Free Show

I thought this would be of great interest to our ring.

Andre Kole is coming to town the first weekend in March and admittance is free!!!! http://www.andrekoleshow.com/tour.htm

When: Fri. and Sat. March 2-3 7:00pm both nights
Where: St. Cloud, FL at First Baptist of St. Cloud
Directions: located at 1717 13th Street, St.Cloud, FL 34769 on 192(13th Street) between Missouri Ave and Connecticut Ave.

Everyone is welcome to come,
Thanks,
Marc Vergo

2007-02 Dennis' Deliberations

"The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing - for us, and to us." -Ben Okri
It is sad to think that anyone would compare a magician with a politician!

This also from my old magic friend and critic, Larry Thornton who lives in Calgary, Canada:


The Ten Worst Offenders in Magic


1. The Wandering Street Magician with a Messiah Complex ("Hey, ma'am, wanna see something amazing?")
2. Magic convention misfits who get their kicks pulling pranks on unsuspecting people in the hotel lobby.
3. The kiddy magician who wastes half or more of his show twisting and handing out lame balloon animals.
4. David Copperfield groupies who not only expect free tickets, but annoy attendees in the lobby doing tricks and handing out their business cards.
5. Magicians at the same show who insist on telling everyone around them how the magic is being done.
6. The same idiots who keep whispering loudly, "Nice move!" and "Did you see that steal?" 7. Restaurant magicians "without a clue" that some people go to a public eating establishment -- to eat!
8. Bad (as in Stinkereeno!!) club amateurs who put on an "annual public magic show", just to show how lousy they can really be.
9. Magic addicts who seek out parties in order to bug the guests with 10,000 card tricks
(actually its their favorite twenty card tricks performed 500 times...)
10. Local magic geeks with zero talent and no gigs, who spend their time dumping heaps of criticism on professional magicians they see on TV.

Now that I have malaligned magicians, let me turn to a long overdue tribute to our ring Hospitality leader, Jacki Manna. While Jacki is an excellent magician, she is best known as a professional ventriloquist.

She displayed a bit of her talent at the December Gift Exchange when she opened up her MC role with a cute ventriloquist routine with a Santa Claus dummy. Jacki has been a steady fixture at our ring banquets, shows and ring meetings. Her mentor was the late ventriloquist Howie Olson , a dummy figure maker. Howie had retired in Florida. Jacki has steadily worked as an entertainer and also has had a "day job" as a French and English high-school teacher in Seminole County. She is a gifted children's performer and equally at ease with an adult audience. I am nostalgic for the days in the 50s and 60s when all local TV stations had afternoon children's shows. I often have thought that Jacki would be great on an afternoon children's show.

Near the end of that era , Bev Bergeron tried setting up Jeff McBride with a local children's show TV gig here in town. I wonder if Channel 9's "Cousin Jeff" would have ever made it? Hugh Turley, "Uncle Hubbie" was the last magician in this market with a kid's show on the old channel 35 (WSWB-TV). That station went off the air in the late 70s and came back on a few years later under new ownership from a studio in a converted bank building on the South Orange Blossom Trail. Allan Duckworth, my mascot manufacturing foreman and I used to have fun occasionally helping out Bob Goldberg on his Friday Night Horror Movie show called "The Count"....Bob's show faded to black and Channel 35 moved to its present location on the side of I-4 in Lake Mary and now every Halloween week I do a bit on their Morning news show about costumes and my costume shop.

With video-streaming, video I-Podcasts and You-Tube, how long will it be until some creative people begin a local internet TV station?

Most people are not going to get their TV programming from an over-the-air broadcast signal. With video compression some TV stations are now 4 TV stations! They have an entertainment channel, a news channel, a movie channel and -hold your breath- a local programming channel!

Maybe Rebo will be back on Channel 9c, 1080i and maybe Jacki Manna will be on Channel 6b 720p......?

We can hope!

Speaking of kid's entertainers: I did attend the Barry Mitchell lecture-dealer show. He is a fun guy. He had a lot of creative ideas for the kid's entertainer and the Gospel magician. For a minute I thought he was going to take up an offering and baptize a few converts. I can't fault him for that. He is from under the buckle of the Bible Belt in East Tennessee where even the Episcopalians still handle snakes. But he was gentle with the religion.

I would normally get upset paying 10 bucks to go to a dealer's lecture but he did reveal all the things he was selling and even gave some insights into how he created the routine. His basic concept of "thinking like an entertainer" and "not thinking like a magician" was invaluable. We all know that we often fall into the trap of doing stuff we like rather than what is most entertaining for the audience.

He had one item that all kid's show people should consider making or buying: 12 inch squares of indoor-outdoor carpet with a pair of shoe-prints stenciled on them. He used four carpet-squares spaced on the floor around his table. When the kids come up to help he tells them to "Stand on your spot!". They stand on the square and will not leave it. It was a clever "kid-control" technique.

Dennis Phillips

2007-02 Broken Wand Ceremony for Charlie Cox

For those who were not able to attend the moving broken wand ceremony held for Charlie Cox last Friday (2/9), this is a video of the event. Thanks to the many members who were able to make it.

Charlie Cox

It is with deep regrets that the Board announces the passing of the Ring's Sergeant at Arms, Charlie Cox. Details about memorial service, broken wand ceremony and funeral to follow.