2009-11 Famulus newsletter

Newsletter of IBM Ring #170
The Bev Bergeron Ring

Next general meeting Wednesday, 11/18/2009 at 7:30 PM SHARP

Meeting theme: Christmas Magic

I-HOP Kirkman Road
5203 Kirkman Road, Orlando, Florida 32819

Please join us for dinner beforehand

Lunch meetings in the McDonald’s at 7344 Sand Lake Road, Orlando. It’s two blocks WEST of the intersection of Interstate 4 and Sand Lake Road. We meet every Tuesday at noon upstairs.

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 – srjart@earthlink.net
Sheldon Brook- Acting Secretary – mrbrook33@yahoo.com
James Songster- Director at Large, - JjTjMagic@aol.com
Joe Vecciarelli- Sgt at Arms - talkingmute@tampabay.rr.com
Stefan Bartelski – Editor of “Famulus”- Famulus@illusioneer.com
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2009-11 From the Editor

Happy belated Halloween to everyone. This was for many of us indeed a magical night, as a number of our members performed in Winter Garden. Pictures of the evening are shown below. One more meeting and then, I expect, we are into the annual Christmas Gift exchange. How time flies, it seems as if the last one just took place yesterday.

We continue to be blessed with excellent performers at the Monday night Wizardz, keep on coming and bring your friends, especially your non-magician freinds. They will have a splendid time. (N.B. No show this coming Monday 11/9)

Thanks to Craig for the photographs and our dear friend Dennis for his continuing Deliberations.

2009-11 Ring Report Ring #170 The Bev Bergeron Ring

President Craig Fennessy called the Ring to order on October 21, 2009 and introduced the Ring Officers to the 23 members and guests in attendance. He announced that at the November meeting nominations for Officers will be accepted for the election which will take place at the December meeting. Dedicated members of the Ring were encouraged to indicate their interest. On December 8^th there will be a lecture by Michael Weber also to take place at the IHOP.

The members in attendance announced that the Daytona Magic Convention was coming up November 6^th thru 8^th but prior to that Dan Stapleton will perform 4 performances at the Winter Garden Theater on Halloween Eve and Halloween. Following Dan's show on Halloween, James Songster, Joe Vecciarelli, and Dave Koenig will do a Halloween Zombie Spectacular to round out the Day's festivies.

Kerry Pierce promoted the Annual Leesburg Magic Ring celebration. Our Ring is always invited to participate.

Other members performing this month were Dave Koenig as Professor Slim King in Daytona Beach.

Wallace Murphy will be at the Hard Rock Cafe and Jackie Manna will be busy at numerous venues throughout the area.

Phil Schwartz presented Magic Moment #17 featuring magic illusions that would be very popular during any Halloween Season. He lectured and showed apparatus examples including the Thayer wrist chopper which was introduced in 1941. He mentioned Kar-Mi-Magicians Sword Penetrations of the 1950's, Bill and Jerry Larson's-Wheel of Torture introduced in 1947. There were other examples of illusions designed as guillotines ( Lester Lake), Abbott finger choppers and the very impressive Candle Through the Arm available through Tannen.. He closed his Lecture by performing from 1928 the Demon of Doom Illusion by Thayer. A reluctant volunteer, Jackie Manna, was placed in stocks and to those of the audience who could watch metal spikes were hammered through her wrists and through her neck. What a finale!

After the break, Mark Fitzgerald emceed the members performances. Dan Stapleton started off performing Bob Hummer's Flatware Foolery effect. Will Wortman did a ”Not So Impromptu Hitman” (Merrill and Klan) followed by Kerry Pierce with 'the locked up deck'. Mike Martin and Mark Fitzgerald did a humorous card routine. The evenings entertainment ended with guest Rick Neiswonger performing a very entertaining variation of the “Professor's Nightmare”.

A fine time was had by all.

Sheldon Brook

2009-11 Pictures From Halloween Night

On Halloween, our members, Dan Stapleton, Dave Koenig, James Songster and Joe Vecciarelli performed in the Winter Garden Theatre. Dan with a magic show, James, Dave and Joe in a horror show. The pictures were taken by Craig during the evening.

2009-11 Dennis' Deliberations

am no longer a Ring orphan! I made the short 25 minute drive from Harrisonburg down I-81 to the Fishersville, a small town just east of Staunton, Virginia to the monthly meeting of Ring #320. The ring meets the last Monday of the month in the Switzer building at the Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center. I average attendance is about 15 people so the ring is about half the size of the Orlando group. I lucked out. This month was “Flea Market” night so most everyone brought stuff they wanted to sell or trade. A dealer from Roanoke also was there. It was a solid two and a half hours of getting to meet people and trading magic stories. Every ring has its characters! It is amazing how similar the personalities of magicians are. Most of the regularly working magicians were from the Charlottesville area which has a bigger population. I saw a cute novelty item that I had never seen before and I believe that it is being made by the Roanoke dealer. It is a magic wand that works like a wilting flower! He held the wand up next to his shoulder and while he was talking the wand “tapped” him on the shoulder. He said, “Who tapped me on the shoulder?” He did it again. I am sure you can see what a screamer this one would be for kids!

I have been digging out my illusions from their crates so I could work on the Christmas shows. I made a Thin-Type Sawing-a-woman-in-half illusion to fit my dear wife Cindy 35 years ago She can still fit in it ! The problem is that getting in and out of the box now takes her about 10 minutes!

Last week, I was trying to put her inside the box to test out the repaired foot gimmick and she was moaning and wincing in pain every time she moved her neck or leg or knee or twisted her body in the box. Suddenly she looked up at me and said, “I wish I could go back to the days when life was only JUST a pain-in-the-ass!”

What a great line! I have to work it into the adult act!

I also dug out my Abbott’s “Ghost Walks” Illusion for my Halloween show in Court Square here in town. I get a lot out of the stunt. I do not know many performers that do!

Basically, you are chained to a large upright board with holes in it by a long continuous chain. The board has a skeleton painted on it. You visibly are able to escape the chains. http://www.abbottmagic.com/Abbotts-Ghost-Walks-ABBcmdyzprchgbg.htm

I hesitate to call it a trick. Like the Strait Jacket, it is more of a stunt. It really does not play well if you do it completely behind a curtain. You really have to do it somewhat like you do a strait jacket with appropriate music, in full view and with a faux struggle.

I have had mine for years. I bought it about 25 years ago when Recil Bordner had a special going on. It uses #2 machine chains. The challenge is to make it interesting when you perform it. One tip is to paint or affix numbers and arrows by the holes in the back so your assistant easily knows the path of the chain.

I have a big “turntable” The board is mounted on the top. It has a motor in it that turns about 1 RPM. (W W Granger) You see me struggle and then I go out of sight as it does its 4 turns around to the back and then rotates back around and I emerge with part of the chains free. Each time it turns I am a little freer of the chains. It tends to add a little more mystery to the action. I will be doing it this Halloween for mostly college students.

Cindy selected this song as the new background track http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvgZkm1xWPE (Coldplay) The song is perfect for the mood and the action of the effect! The actual moves I am doing are a bit slower but the same as I used to do for years when I used Sam Cooke’s “Chain gang”, another good song.

At the points of excitement in the song I am making the major releases from the chains.

It tends to match the action very well and the soft ending is where I stumble away and slip exhausted on one knee.

I always ended the bit with the old James Brown shtick of falling on one knee and having an assistant throw a robe/cape over my back.

Lord, what a classic bit from him!

Then you catch your breath bolt up, throw out your chest and throw off the robe! You are really playing with the audience’s emotions.

The track starts again with the instrumental portion of the Coldplay song which makes a great applause cue.

I hope you can use this idea.

Marco Tempest was at “Magic Live!” Stan Allen’s get together in Las Vegas and presented his latest techno-magic marvel, “The Augmented Reality Magic Trick”.

It is enchanting. Grab a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk1xjbA-ISE

It is sort of a “Sam the Bellhop meets Star Trek”…

Is it really coming to the day when we will all have to have a top-of-the-line Mac, a video-cam and $10,000 worth of software to do walk-around card tricks in a restaurant?

Perhaps through volume the prices will fall and you will be able to get all the gear as a package from Hank Lee for $79.95. I can see a 12 year old kid wanting it for Christmas. Jeez! I was happy with Stratospheres. The Augmented Reality version will have those plastic balls changing colors, shapes and blasting off into orbit!

There will be no more scream and yelling, “Turn it around”! All birthday shows will be a 3 camera shoot from all sides? I guess I must just be getting too old.

Canada’s Larry Thornton helped me clarify some of the ideas that follow.

Is this what we face for the future of magic?

The year is 2525:

Two guys (1 and 2) questioning the "magic" on the stage

1) Why is he manipulating all of those decorated pieces of cardboard?

2) They're called playing cards.

1) Playing... what?

2) Playing cards. People played games with them. They gambled with them, and that, more often than not, destroyed lives. But you're watching 'fantasy magic' from a bygone era. We haven't had factory-made, three-ply, air-cushion-finish Bicycles, Aviators, or Bee decks since 2040....

1) What? Played games and gambled with Bicycles, Aviators and Bees? -- What the HECK are you talking about...?

2) *Sigh* You just don't know your magic history, do you?

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1) That's a fun act, but where did he get all those shiny disks of metal? And that odd-looking bucket?

2) Ah, you're beyond hope. That dude's doing The Miser's Dream, a classic of ancient magic where you pluck money out of the air and toss it into champagne --

1) What? There hasn't been physical "money" since the first Mars colony was established. I read in a history book when they used to use that stuff.

2) Have it your way. The guy is presenting a classic illusion of desire: The ability of a magician to pluck large sums of physical cash out of thin air...

1) Yeah, right. When I want large sums of 'cash' as you call it, all I have to do is plug into the Cloud and Google it. It's only digitized information, after all--

3) Hey buddy, shut up! I'm trying to watch the show!

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1) Now there's an act you don't see very often. Talk about doing things the hard way!

2) He's called an illusionist. The Zig Zag and the Substitution Trunk haven't been seen for a very long time. Ten thousand hack magicians overworked them and killed those effects for at least a hundred and fifty years --

1) And now they're a novelty again, right? But the "novelty" is not what he's doing, but how he's doing it!

2) It's a mechanical kind of magic. Not seen since the Alien Invasion of 2180. The unique thing about it, is that there are no electronics, no photonics, no time warps or three-dimensional holograms --

1) Hah! And as the dealers used to say in ancient history, “no threads, no magnets, no trap doors, no mirrors, and your fingers don't leave your hands at any time during the performance!” (laughs).

2) Yeah, we all know the illusions of the past were made obsolete by holography, teleportation, quantum invisibility, and I.M.J. [Internet Mind Jack) so this guy is just giving us a magic tour down memory lane. Just play along with it and pretend you don't know what the heck is going on!

1) Okay. But right about now, I'd rather be out camping on the moons of Saturn with my kids.

2) What? You had kids!? Do the P.C.P. know this? [Population Control Police]

3) That does it!! In about two nanoseconds I'm going to Telethink the theater's Android ushers and have you thrown out of here!

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I remember the time when it took hours of physical practice to do magic instead of the latest download of prepackaged software.

Learning to play an instrument, faro a deck, juggle balls, dance -- you name it -- involves an initial resistance of a very stubborn brain (what is it - some kind of evolutionary defense mechanism NOT to master new skills??), but then persistent repetition coupled with dogged determination, and the brain eventually "breaks down" and readily absorbs the new skill, which can then be a relatively easy task -- for a lifetime.

I read this once: Some famous classical pianist (forget who) had just done a long and complex recital. A voice in the audience was heard: "Man I'd spend my entire life just to be able to play like piano like that!" To which the pianist responded, "I already have."

One more: A pianist was heard to say, "If I don't practice for a day, I know it! If I don't practice for two days, my agent knows it. And if I don't practice for three days, my audience knows it."

Two magicians are watching a fantastic sleight of hand artist. The magician is effortless ripping through the most complex pieces of Vernon, Marlo, Elmsley and so on. ... After about forty minutes of this, one magician leans over to the other and whispers, "Man, it's hot in here. That guy is great! I'm sweating like a pig. Can't you feel the heat?"

"No," says the second magician calmly, "I just do birthday parties."

Most of you know that I am a professional educator and I spent 22 years as a college professor. The education business has expended an enormous amount of effort in trying to determine how people learn. Much of the progress was made in understanding the process of learning during World War Two when we had to take untrained farm boys and quickly teach them war technology. Out of that effort Benjamin Bloom developed a taxonomy to understand the education process.

If you look at the Psychomotor Domain, I hope it will give you encouragement if you ever try to learn a physical skill such as sleight of hand! It will show that it takes times and goes in stages. http://www.businessballs.com/bloomstaxonomyoflearningdomains.htm

Much of this seems like “Common Sense”. Seventy years ago the humorist Will Rogers said the problem with common sense is that "it ain't so common." Well, it is much less common today than it was then.

I will keep you posted from here in the Shenandoah Valley.

Dennis Phillips