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Ring Report
June 8, 2008
Minutes for this meeting.
The theme for the June meeting was Gaffed Decks. Brother Don Paul was the Theme Leader, and also presented a Teaching Table on the subject of Gaffed Decks.
Danny Baker performed a Three Card Monte effect with three jumbo queens, showing them one at a time and placing them on a table. When he picked them up, all three had changed to spot cards. Danny then showed a very fine Diminishing Cards effect, in which he squeezed a deck of cards to half, then quarter, then one-eighth size before squeezing them out of existence entirely.
Dr. Wilson demonstrated Hellstromism by shuffling and cutting a deck, then having a volunteer cut to choose a card. Dr. Wilson found the card, guided only by animal magnetism conveyed through a cord tied to his wrist and held by the volunteer. He sold three of the rare "Muscle Reader's Decks" after his performance. Professor Miller performed Tom Craven's Blue Collar Assembly, a very solid ace assembly for working magicians.
Brother Don Paul dazzled us with about half of his collection of gaffed decks. For his first performance, he introduced Thomas Edison's technique of recording insights from his dreams, then showed that Edison had dreamed of a card that would be selected in the future. This was a very nice framework for the use of Al Koran's Five Star Prediction Deck. Brother Don showed us a couple of decks for the Rising Cards; the best, from Tarbell, allows three selected cards to rise, and the deck is clean at the end! He also showed us Dan Harlan's Card Rise. He performed "card at a named number among blanks is selected" (C.A.N.N.A.B.I.S.). He challenged us with "readers" that we couldn't spot until he showed us where to look, several obscure decks that are good for only a single trick, and several terrible ideas that had made it onto the magic market as gaffed decks. The whirlwind tour of gaffed decks paused briefly for the Svengali, the Pop-Eyed Popper, and the Invisible Deck that Brother Don always carries as an out. He showed and explained the marvelous Cassandra Deck, the mysterious Casbah Deck, and the Infinity Deck by Jon Allen.
Just when we thought that we could take no more, there was a raffle for gaffed decks with five winners. Full details of the business meeting and photos are available on the Ring's web site (www.ibmring362.org).
