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