2007-08 Famulus newsletter of IBM Ring 170

A summer ring meeting with 34 people is very good. Our July meeting had a big crowd and four guests: Miguel Sanchez,Mike Feeney,Andy Stefan and Randall Gomez. There was not a lot of new ring business. Some great lectures are coming up. One big ring story is that Dan Stapleton is now in his own Thursday night dinner show at Mandolins Restaurant in the Radisson Resort-Celebration. He says it is a one-person show with a modern feel using close-up, mentalism and stage effects. Following the brief business meeting James Songster volunteered to be our Emcee for the evening's show.
First on was Charlie Pfrogner with another great low-cost magic miracle from Walgreens! This time it was a small battery operated fan with tiny LEDs in the blades. By the miracle of electronics it revealed a spectator's selected card in its whirling blades. Charlie said it was less than five bucks. The fan is programmable to any card you want to reveal. KP (Kerry Pierce) was up next. He called 6 helpers up and gave then paper bags. Each contained an unknown card. A card was selected from a pack by a spectator and the spectator called out a number. That bag and that bag alone contained the card.This was a creative use of the classic Hot Rod Force.
Mystana (Rebecca Dillion) presented a 20th century effect with ribbons and a black cloth bag. A pink polka dot ribbon appeared between two plain pink ribbons. Steve Hart apparently lit a cigarette and puffed away for a bit and then put it lit into his jacket pocket where it started smoking. Of course, there was no real fire or smoke but the comic possibilities are big. "This jacket has become my blazer!". James Songster showed some new wands he received. He had a spectator select a card and it matched the hand written number on another card in a deck with random numbers written on all of them.
Bev Bergeron came up and he created a lot of fun with a father and a son trying to find the one-out-of-three frogs that will squeak in Bob McAllister's "Three Frog Monte". Sydney McWithy did Bob Carver's classic Professor's Nightmare and then a spectator's selected card jumped back into the deck. Mark Fitzgerald folded two jumbo playing cards in half and interlaced them. Suddenly one folded card flipped over as it was passed through the other one.Then half of it flipped leaving the other half the way it was. Both folded cards were passed out for examination. Dan Stapleton had an original mind reading effect using a Road Atlas and a clever adaptation of Stan Lobernstern's "Precognition" card effect. Dan made a prediction of two cities in the United States. A spectator counted down his own choice of cards that all had different cities hand written on them. He then named a random number and recounted them into two piles. Two cards remained on top . The names of the cities written on the back of the two cards matched Dan's prediction!
Finally, Dennis Phillips had three spectators randomly write three different three place numbers and another spectator added the numbers and they matched a prediction that had been hanging in the front of the audience. He used his own improved version of The Think Pad. Finally, he did a variation of a Dan Harlan effect using ten spectators and ten pairs of miss-matched colored gloves. Mysteriously when the spectators put on the gloves, the final pair matched the final spectator who waited to see which pair of gloves would remain. Phillips used the gloves as a metaphor for teamwork and finding that there is a place for all in a group that has a common goal.
With the show concluded we wrapped up another fun meeting. Join us every month for our always great ring meetings. Good things are happening in Ring 170.

Dennis Phillips