Ring 216 President Cal Tong opened the July meeting by welcoming some members who had not been here in a while and some returning visitors and some new faces. There were twenty-some people in attendance, who were each given a raffle ticket. In between the evening’s performances, the people whose raffle numbers were called chose a magic item from among those generously donated by members. By the end of the evening, everyone had won a prize.
Fourteen performers had volunteered this evening. Yitian Liang started it off by solving a Rubik’s cube without touching it. Mike Bailes performed the cups and balls. David Martinez tried out a new time travel routine in which a card is found even before it is selected. Alex Wu performed a series of difficult card effects done with one hand, including a production of a selected card from a zippered wallet that fooled many of those present. Tom* drew a six by six magic square using a spectator’s numbers. Gary Goldberg demonstrated how to find three needles in a haystack, using a deck of cards.
Fred Rasmussen slyly showed his Houdini side with taped and chained thumbs doing inexplicable things. Jim Blaishek gave a treat to magic collectors with his routine employing a card fan to top hat transformation and a Mel Babcock die box. Harold workshopped a new effect that combined mind reading of a card by a spectator with a cash prediction of a selected number. Michael Nguyen visiting from the Oakland Magic Circle closed out the night with his manipulation act of Miser’s dream, silks, billiard balls and card fan productions.
After the performances and the raffle there was free socializing and sessioning.
