I.B.M. Ring 9

Ring Reports

10/18/1999

No. 9, Atlanta, Georgia  Georgia Magic Club
3rd Monday, 7:30 PM, Chamblee-Dunwoody Library, 5339 Chamblee-Dunwoody Rd.
KIRK PUMPHREY, President (bkpump@bellsouth.net)
RILEY LOYD, Secretary
Web Site: http://www.mindspring.com/~rick/ring9.html

The October meeting marked the triumphant return of a long-time member who has been ill, as well as bringing in a large number of guests.  President Kirk Pumphrey led a round of introductions and began the meeting with a number of announcements, first of which concerned the upcoming Atlanta Harvest of Magic, to be held November 11-13, 1999.  Details about the Atlanta Harvest can be found on the Ring 9 web site, maintained by webmaster Rick Silverstein.  Also mentioned were the upcoming magic auction and plans for the holiday banquet.  It was noted that the Siegfried & Roy IMAX film has recently opened at the Mall of Georgia.  J.C. Doty, in attendance tonight with his wife, reported that Bill Clary and Kathy Hoffman had performed at the recent opening of Arbor Place mall in Douglasville.   Nominations for officers, board of directors and magician of the year were opened and will remain open through November.  Lastly, it was announced that November’s regular meeting will consist of a lecture by local pro Robert Bengel.


Following a short break, Vice President Patrick Floyd took on his monthly role of M.C. for the magic portion of the meeting.  To meet the membership entrance requirement, recent Birmingham transplant Jason Partin performed a stand-up coin routine culminating in a jumbo coin production.


October’s theme was “Bizarre Magic.”  Rolando Santos opened by relating the story of Marie Leveaux, Louisiana’s famed voodoo queen.   With the help of his volunteer, Patrick Floyd, a selected card became a “voodoo doll” and was successively reversed in the deck, torn, and burnt.  Each time, the mate of the card was shown to have magically experienced the same fate.  Mike Ellis performed a voodoo-themed prediction effect, in which a “cure” for a specific voodoo-inflicted ailment was sealed in an envelope.  Volunteer David Oglesby, editor of Ring 9’s Equinox newsletter, selected one of several cards bearing drawings of voodoo dolls undergoing various tortures.  The selected doll had been run through with a dagger, but mysteriously, the predicted cure was a voodoo doll sporting a bandage in exactly the same spot.   Joe M. Turner performed a bizarre and dramatic presentation of Larry Jennings’ “Ambitious Classic,” in which four friends were killed, one at a time, by the old man who had been teaching them black magic.  In the end, this old man was revealed to be not a man at all, but a red devil, the King of Diamonds!  (Faust is rarely referenced in card magic presentations, but tonight was the exception.)   Santos won the Coveted Royal Blue Pen, awarded monthly for the best theme performance.

In the General Magic segment, 89-year-young lifetime member Charlie Floyd returned to the stage, spry and caustic as ever, after suffering a mild stroke four months ago.  His famous presentation of the Anderson Torn and Restored Newspaper, complete with trademark “invisible blinding flash” and “inaudible sonic boom,” brought down the house as always.  Young cardman Chris Labowicz entertained a guest with his Ambitious Card routine, while visitor Lee Cox was able to perform his rope routine despite volunteer Lynn Fox’s apparent inability to cut a rope in the center, as instructed.  Stefan Bartelski entertained the crowd with his ability to psychically discern which of five volunteers had selected the only black stone from a handful of blue stones.  Joe M. Turner returned to the stage with a strong mentalism effect in which he mysteriously extracted the identity of four freely selected playing cards from four spectators’ minds under progressively more challenging conditions.  The evening’s magic concluded with Christophe Fouquet’s skillful and flashy cutting to four aces lost in a shuffled deck, producing the final ace with a spinning flourish.

Joe M. Turner