2008-08 Ring Report

Our July ring meeting was attended by 33 people and a number of guests and returning former members. These were Joshua Stencamp, Bill Vontoble, Colin Parks and Jeff Stewart. President Craig Fennessey gaveled the meeting to order. He announced that the board members had approved moving the meeting place to the Elks Club Lodge #1079 at the corner of Primrose and Central Avenue in Orlando starting with the October meeting. The reason is that the City of Orlando has been forced to make budget cuts and can no longer keep the center open in the evenings where we meet. The new meeting place also offers an opportunity to get a reasonable supper before the meeting. There is also a good possibility of us holding other functions there. It has a stage.

Dan Stapleton next gave us a few insights into his recent appearance on “America’s Got Talent”. The full adventure is being published in Magic magazine. He said his appearance succeeded in getting him great publicity and bookings. Joe Vecciarelli provided a short DVD that we watched on the TV called “Presto”. It was a Pixar production with a cartoon story of a magician and his mischievous rabbit assistant.

Two mini-lectures followed. Dennis Phillips and Dan Stapleton did a presentation on the classic “Zombie” effect. Phillips recounted the history from its creation by Joe Karson in Springfield, Massachusetts. Jay Marshall worked for Karson as did Nick Ruggiero. Dan next showed and explained some of his favorite moves with the silver ball. Finally Dennis showed some adaptations of the principle in effects such as “Pranky Hank” and the “Floating Light Bulb”.

Phil Schwartz presented his fascinating and informative “Magic Moment” # 6. This was the story of Carl Williams (b. 1922). Williams is still alive and creating magic. Phil showed a number of Williams’ handcrafted props and explained all of Carl’s talents as an engineer, physicist, master metal and wood worker, sculptor and creative thinker.

Kerry Pierce, “KP” was our Emcee for the evening’s show that followed. He opened with an audience volunteer and presented “Psychic Escape” an effect by Toshio Akanuma and patter from “Just Alan”. It was an enchanting story of trumpet valves his father used when playing in the orchestra for Harry Houdini. The one that was secretly selected by a volunteer audience member managed to escape from a cord that had been threaded through a brass cylinder containing all the valves. Bill Vontoble did Bill Malone’s classic 'Sam the Bellhop' card routine with the patter where every card that is dealt tells the story.

Charlie Prfogner always has something unusual. This time it was a wooden Wonderbox that produced coins. Finally all the coins were turned into a giant coin and a metallic streamer cascaded from the bag used in the transformation. Joshua Stencamp did a Guy Bavali card effect where a card is selected and reveled at a spot counted to in the deck.

Dan Mapp did an interesting mental effect that combined a bit of cold reading and “wonder words” to determine which one on many statements on one of the five colored cards was chosen by a volunteer. Dan Stapleton took the stage for a nice routine featuring a deck that returned to normal after a slop shuffle and at the same time revealed which card that had been chosen by a spectator by being reversed in the deck. He followed up with a practical version of Paul Curry’s 'Out of this World'.

J.C. Haitt presented one of his original creations, a ballpoint pen with a tip that mysteriously changes ends. Hiatt has a way of taking a small sized effect and playing it very big. Finally James Songster was drafted to present a fascinating stage-sized version of a small effect that he and Joe Vecciarelli created called “The Riddle of the Runes”. The large version was crafted by Dennis Phillips. Six big round ruin stones were laid out and the spectator freely selected one and James proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the stones knew which ruin would be selected far in advance because the selection was the only one carved on the back side of the stone.

With the conclusion of the show we went out into the warm Orlando night. Good things are always happening in Ring #170.

Dennis Phillips