Ring and Assembly Reports | Mile High Magicians Denver Colorado

Are you ready for Prime Time? That was our theme for this month. Do you have a trick or effect you want to work on, do you get nervous, do you have wobbly legs when performing for the club? Well, this was the night for those people to get in front of the club for more practice. Melissa Neumiller opened the evening with an an X-ray vision card trick where the deck of cards where shuffled up and down and she successfully told us how many cards where face up in the deck. She also trained cards to flip over one at a time in the deck, and finally, she had a fortune telling deck placed under her matt and predicted the next card pulled out from the card box. Jeff and Karen Wake gave us 13 tips to prevent wobbly legs and how to calm your nerves. They opened with a fun poem using knots and scarfs that was very entertaining. During intermission, Gregg Tobo’s hosted our new Point/Counter Point segment with Wendy and Mark debating the topic “Should mentalism have a disclaimer?”. To continue the Wobbly Legs evening, new member Jason Toepfer had a card selected, shuffled and then the cards were sprung to a card frame. The card was found under the glass inside the frame! It was his first time performing in front of people in years. He did a nice job, too. Jess Ward, also performed for the first time, and she did Ton Onosaka’s Card Mirage. She loves close-up magic! Glenn Proulx had two VCR tapes examined and then one melted right through the other. It was a strange old Jim Steinmeyer trick that Glenn made relevant in his routine. Our club got gifted several years of old Topps magazines. William Rader hosted a new segment for our meeting performing tricks from these old magazines. Gregg Tobo performed a mentalism card trick. . James Lopez found three selected cards from his spectators! Gene Gordon did a card trick. William also stole a watch, wallet, and sunglasses from his helpers after a card was picked, returned, and ended up reversed in the deck. Cool tricks from the old magazines! FISM winner, OLMAC was a guest lecturer who visited us several days later and did a great job teaching us card controls, routines, and vanished a cigarette lighter. He vanished a whole deck of cards more than once, did some coin magic, had a special super mini briefcase, which the spectators signed card ended up in, a credit card ended up in, and a finger ring! He has mad skills and is a pleasure to watch. He makes everything look so easy and so magical. If OLMAC comes through your town, try to book him!

Ring 131 and Assembly 37 meets the second Thursday of the month at Riverpointe Senior Community 5225 S Prince St, Littleton, CO 80123. https://www.milehighmagicians.comGlenn Proulx 303-794-5208, glennproulx@gmail.com

Please accept my sincere apologies to John Luong, Bob Brown, James Murphy and the others that performed during the intermission at our last meetings. This is a new thing we are trying and I blew it. I did not record who performed. I am sorry. Now, let’s get on with the March meeting. Bernardo Sedlacek came to Denver and he talked about the psychology and theory of performing magic. He showed us a Tantalizer trick that he adapted from Royal Road to Cards it was a mathematical trick and it was liked by all. Bernardo said that he really doesn’t get flustered when a trick goes horribly wrong while performing because they did a riffle shuffle instead of an overhand shuffle. He has always considered it a challenge to find the selected card! He performed a reverse card in box under the table so that neither he nor the spectator could see the card. When the box was opened, the card he predicted WAS reversed! He also suggested that if we need more time finding a card during a trick to ask the question a second time, that will give you more time to located the card. Another event was a field trip down to see Joe and Carol Givan’s Theatre of Dreams where four of our members performed. Melissa Neumiller, Glenn Proulx, Mark Paulson and John Walker received great feedback from our World Famous friends.

We also had our MHMS Annual Flea Market and Swap Meet. For the last three+ years, Bob LaRue and David Breth, have been working with local Filipino performers via the Angeles City Magicians Hub (see on Facebook), to improve their magic and their marketing. One of the challenges is, these performers are universally poor. The MHMS will have a donation box at the Flea Market and we will send it to the Philippines afterwards. Many magical donations were given and we also had a donation box for the Denver SYM for kid friendly magic, which will be in the library of magic we are assembling.

Terry Hedges arrived in Denver and we had a fun night where he taught us some easy top changes, another way to use the D’Lite that may be sitting in your magic drawer at home and a really cool False Cut to keep the deck in the order that you want it in. Terry did a coin under your watch, which fooled us pretty good. He performed Dai Vernon’s “The Trick that Can’t Be Explained” and reiterated that a Top Change and Classic Force are two staples all magicians need to know. His Blank Fusion trick was a hit.

Next, we had Seldom Seen Faces Night where members that have not come to a meeting or performed in a while had a place to shine and showcase a new effect that they have been working on. MC Wendy Wylde hosted the evening and set up a great line-up of magicians. Dennis Michaels performed a cards across, TNR card trick then performed a dangerous CNR electrical cord which turned off and on a light! Don’t try that one at home! Colin Toepfer did a nice Cups and Balls where at the end the balls changed into Rabbits! Janine Aronson mixed up some cards face up and face down and they all righted themselves. Four Aces where removed, lost and by counting AND spelling out the name of the Aces, they were found.

Gregg Tobo hosted Point/Counter Point with Andrew Bates and John Walker discussing whether it is better to learn from books or video. Marty Jewell used her ‘puns’ to entertain us with a change bag, urn and sled. Member Christian Chackmool showed us his Mentalist skills by having us write down an animal, food, person’s name, and place on different colored pieces of paper. After a mixing in a box, a handful of slips where pulled out and his predictions on a pad of paper matched the slips of paper. At the end, he unrolled a paper tape and ALL of his predictions were printed on the paper roll! Dave Elstun blew a lucky kiss into a container and later in his show the vapor kiss turned into a real “Hershey Kiss”. Dave performed a $1 to $100 bill change and did an amazing job at the Professor’s Nightmare.

Shane Cohen set up an amazing intermission with close-up artist John Luong and Bob Brown entertaining the members with Johns innovative magic and Bob’s adept card handling.

Glenn Proulx
Secretary, MHMS

Installing New Officers

MC and new President, Brad Montgomery lead us off into the New Year with 67 members showing up, 14 were brand new attendees! Thank you to last years Executive Board, President Andrew Bates, Vice-President Steve Davis, Secretary Glenn Proulx, Treasurer Chad Darnell, Sargent-at-Arms Gene Gordon. This years’ Board is President Brad Montgomery, Vice-President Mitch Harwood, Secretary Glenn Proulx, Treasurer Chad Darnell, Sargent-at-Arms Gene Gordon. Special thanks to our Editor/Web Master William Rader, and we added Wendy Wilde our Facebook guru, and Gregg Tobo our Lecture Chairman. We had door prizes and a fun Bingo warm-up to meet and great new and old members. Erica Sodas performed a memory and mind reading effect that wowed all of us. Joe and Carol Givens, World Champions at FISM who won the Gold Cup, performed a card trick where three different people chose three cards and Carol successfully named the cards! No clue how it was done. Wendy Wylde did a multiplying dots trick that mesmerized young Colin. Then our youngest performer Colin showed us a stiff rope act. Glenn Proulx did a pencil through a borrowed bill, and then the bill and pencil were passed out for examination. He also had popcorn kernels added into an examined napkin lined Derby, covered it with tin foil and fire heated up the Derby. Spectators could smell the popped popcorn then ate it. Will Rader and Ralph Macintosh did a point/counterpoint bit where they debated the topic if it is OK to expose magic to non-magicians, also when is it OK to expose magic to magicians of different skill levels. Each had 90 seconds to debate. Mentalist Anthem and Aria Flint successfully used mental telepathy to find out words written on paper from our members. Answers included; the names of songs written down, mixed in a bag, selected and revealed. Other objects that Aria predicted while blind folded were cell phones, rings, combs credit cards and the finale was to read the ENTIRE serial number off of a borrowed bill! Our year is off to a great start.

Holiday Banquet in Denver

Thanks to Steve and Chad who found a great place for the banquet this year at Fossil Trace Golf Course. They have a full-scale replica of a Triceratops in the entry! Gene did a wonderful job as the MC and with 75 attendees all had a great time with food, friends, and magic. President Andrew Bates performed a Broken Wand ceremony for Lin Kier while his family was present. Andrew did a ring on rope routine and Dave Neighbors did some fantastic coin magic. Dave also changed a red silk into white and then blended them together. VP Steve Davis did a comedy cards across routine. John Walker from Australia did a fun jumbo card stab with a huge knife and his helper successfully stabbed the correct card and not a finger. Mysto performed his cups and balls routine, which ended up with three huge puffballs and then a coconut, appeared under his hat! Gary Jenkins did a Do as I Do routine where a chicken was used to signal the next spectator that it was their turn to continue with the sequence. Chris Manos did a $6 repeat bill routine. He ended with numbers being called out by spectators and he wrote them on a white board. Chris made a prediction, then without looking, the ‘wipers’ wiped off the white board. Low and behold the only numbers remaining were his predicted numbers! His niece and her friend Kimberly and Leah used a Joker Tube and the Magic Switchboard for their act. Gregg Tobo tried a fantastic new routine with coins appearing out of thin air. Next, at his command, his magnetized wand floated at his fingertips, then he pulled out all of the same suit cards and they traveled from his hand into his pockets and he finished up with a new ring routine. Gene vanished a deck of cards numerous times until he was holding plastic cards! Incoming President Brad Montgomery tore out pages and cut up words from a book. The words where placed in a bag and a word was selected. Letter magnets were dumped into a bag and shook along with a small piece of metal from his refrigerator. The letters attached to the metal and spelled out the word that the spectator selected! He also had Mr. Potato Head metamorphosis into French fries.

Thanksgiving Table Magic and Betchas

With the table set and Thanksgiving rapidly approaching our meeting was centered around magic that you can perform after dinner with friends and family. Along with “Betchas”, I bet I can do this, before you do that, or make some sort of prediction. Our MC Gene Gordon set up the following member magicians for the evening. President Andrew Bates borrowed a woman’s finger ring and under the cover of a hanky, while the ends of the rope were held mind you, the ring ended on the center of the rope with a safety pin holding it in place! Bruce and Kitty Spangler did a floating vase and flower bit from props found at the dollar store. Marty Jewell, the “Queen of Puns” cooked a turkey with a pill-gram, drum stick, and grey V, if you get the gist of how this worked. Gregg Tobo did a TNR napkin where the napkins restored and actually changed places in the spectator’s hands. Gregg also played the game NIM and won every time! Elliott Baskin gave us the religious and history meaning of Thanksgiving by showing us marks on the back of a $1 bill and separated pepper from floating on a water. Editor William Rader, made a betcha prediction that worked well while Jean-Luc performed a card trick. Amy Marschak created an improv poem, which is her specialty, with words suggested from the members. Treasurer Chad Wonder performed a 2 Card Monte routine that was fun and Sargent of Arms Gene Gordon tore off and ate part of a $1 bill then restored it to normal! He also performed a TNR IOU card trick where he won $100 of fictitious money from his helper. His helper held on to the corner of the card as a receipt and it matched. He also did a dice trick where white dice changed places with a red then a green dice.

Assembly 37, Ring 131 meets the second Thursday of the month at Riverpointe Senior Community 5225 S Prince St, Littleton, CO 80123. https://www.milehighmagicians.com Glenn Proulx 303-794-5208, glennproulx@gmail.com

October is our Spooky Magic night and is always filled with fun magic and amazing food prepared by Karen Wake and Sharon Nuanes and appreciated by the club for all of their hard work. Bob Brown electrocuted many pickles with his pickle helmet, which he wore for safety. From Rocky Flats Nuclear Arsenal, member Lew Wymisner found and ant farm and wooden blocks of different colors which floated. Due to nuclear radiation? The ants were huge and correctly predicted the author’s name, which ended up inside of the ant farm. AJ the Great, likes bugs and he also had a large fly mounted on a board. Having a recipe randomly selected from a cookbook, the recipe name was written down. Using the spectators’ psychic powers the name of the recipe was transmitted from one helper to another. VP Steve Davis had spooky music and a spooky story about an empty pumpkin found in an abandoned house. Suddenly, inside the empty pumpkin, spiders, bats, ghosts, goblins and rats appeared! Chad Wonder cut a young spectator in two with a saw whose blade was 10” long. He survived! Jeff and Karen Wake had a card selected by a spectator then found a bag of bones and put them into a box. With the lights and switches thrown, the skeleton assembled him self and the card prediction were found by the skeleton. Mark Strivings had a dead dung beetle from Roman times, which then pushed over a block of wood. President Andrew Bates did a two deck Tarot card reading and matched the cards the spectator held. Steve Aldrich said the only way to get a vampire to come to your house on Halloween is to leave blood from the Needle Through the Arm drippings on the cookies! When you look through Joe Givens goggles you saw a combination, then messages on the wall, then ashes where dumped on paper which formed a shape, which Joe predicted after cutting his hand open.

Penn and Teller Fooler and “Deception” show consultant Francis Menotti lectured and performed the trick that fooled P&T. Francis also passed a signed coin through his shirt. Also a blank card was signed and placed back in a deck, then shuffled. Using a Rubics cube with numbers on the side, the numbers where totaled up. That number was the place where the spectators signed card was found in the blank deck!

Special guest this month was Past National President, Jann Goodsell from Utah. She is our Regional VP of SAM. Welcome! This month we had Stage Magic night where our members taught us fun things from ropes, rings, silks, TNR paper, and mentalism. Gene taught us a rope through the neck routine, how to make a one handed knot, fake knots, false knots, how to make various vanishing knots and a fun routine with these ropes that are perfect for parlor or stage work. False transfers were taught and where to find it in an Abbotts rope book. “Mysto”, Mitch Harwood, explained his method for counting Linking Rings that looks so much better and believable than we have been doing with most of our routines. He also taught us a nice way to set up the rings in your hand and then a clean way to unlink the rings. Past President Matt taught us his version a TNR napkin and how to set up, load pockets, and perform a fun and useful routine that is guaranteed to fool lay people and magicians alike. Dave Neighbors exposed his silk routine using an 18” silk and explained why he choose this size silk over others. He vanished the silk and then it ended up inside an egg and finally he pulled the silk out of his forehead! His handling was very clean and something we should all strive for. Our Editor William Rader showed us a book routine on how to pick up any book anywhere at anytime and predict a word on a page! It is easy to do and easy for us all to learn.

Ten of our members performed at the Thank You show at our free meeting place. We perform a yearly show to the residents at the Riverpointe Senior Center in Littleton, CO for letting us have our meeting room. Steve Davis did an amazing rope routine to music, then pulled the knots off of the rope and finally pulled the rope through his neck. Matt Brandt, pulled out silks and a wine bottle appeared, then he pushed a coin into the bottle. Finally he changed a centavo, into an English Penny, and a Chinese Coin and ended up performing his Big Nut on rope routine. Gene Gordon pulled a wand out of a card box, lassoed a spectator’s card from a paper bag and had sound effects from a kazoo! David Neighbors pulled cards from his mouth, and coins vanished from his hands and ended up in a glass. He also changed a white silk to red and then blended the silks together as one. Gary Jenkins performed a do as I do card effect with a chicken that was very funny to watch the expression on his helpers face! Our picked man, Bob Brown electrocuted 5 pickles! John Luong did a jumbo multiplying rabbit effect along with his famous SuperSized Lunch routine where everything is BIG. Shane Cohen had names on the back of each card then had his helper pick a card. She was sitting on a celebrity picture and it matched Tom Cruise. Mark Strivings did a rope routine where the knots where blown off of the rope. Lew Wymisner selected four random people to sit in the chairs at the front of the room. Four random envelopes were selected by each of us, and when the envelopes where opened the paper inside correctly said we would select a certain color, we did! When we turned over the envelopes the color on the back of it also matched the paper prediction also!

Our MC was Gene Gordon, who made coins jump across and end up in a glass, and he did a fun cards across where the extra cards ended up on the chair the spectator was sitting on! We had twenty-four members show up for our Annual close-up contest this year with nine of our members entering the contest. George Issa did a fun torn and restored BALLOON! The balloon was picked out of a pack, blown up and then popped. Well, it was restored and blown up again. Cool trick. Next we had Chad Wonder do a kids show performing the Professors Nightmare using a broken wand and then multiplying wands. Member Dennis Michael did a torn and restored napkin, then a card on forehead and finally did a wonderful three-shell routine using huge metal nuts from the end of a bolt. Gregg Tobo had a card selected, torn up, and a banana was plucked from a bowl. Inside the banana was the chosen card with a corner missing. The corner fit! Bob Brown did his famous Pickle Helmet where the pickles glow and match the selected card the spectator selected. Mentalist Mark Strivings had a card selected and four decks of cards were shown. The spectator selected one deck. The other three decks were turned face up and their card was missing from three of the decks. The selected deck was shown and one card had a different color back, their card! Wendy Russell performed a Psychology trick where different color spheres where hidden in a persons hand and she correctly guessed who was holding each color. Chris Manos led us all in a cooking class and made different color drinks. He also had a ring on a stick where the chosen ring changed places by moving up or down on the stick and matched the color of the chosen drink! Jeff and Karen Wake did a fun silk routine where the silks would tie and untie. Another trick they had used bottles inside of a tube. Once shaken the bottles would magically turn upside down or reversed. Results: 1^st– Chad Wonder, 2^nd– Mark Strivings, 3^rd– Chris Manos, Peoples Choice- Gregg Tobo, Best Joke- Bob Brown. The rest received Participant Awards.