Centre Michigan Magic Club Report – March, 2002Inside MagicMagic News Updated Daily for the Professional Magician

Susan Hachette

Editor: As promised, here is the first of many reports from the Centre Michigan Magic Club (“CMMC”). As loyal readers will recall, for some reason, the CMMC is unable to have its reports published in either the Linking Ring or MUM. We have agreed to publish the reports here as a service to our magic community.

If you are unfamiliar with the names or situations in this report, click here to read a summary of the club and the folks who call it home.

These are the unedited (with one necessary exception) notes of the Club Secretary, Susan Hachette. We received these minutes as well as those that will be published in subsequent editions along with her permission to publish them in Inside Magic.

March 4, 2002. Elks Club, Vandergraph Avenue, Centre, Michigan.

Tonight’s business meeting ran long ? too long. President Bill “I love my own voice” Post wanted to make sure we all understood that we had to pay dues on-time. Calvin “MagiCal” Jorgenson made an innocent joke, “You mean we can pay our dues ‘over time‘?” It wasn’t horribly funny but it wasn’t horrible either and that is what we expect from MagiCal, jokes that aren’t that funny but are kind of funny.

…

Susan Hachette

If you are unfamiliar with the names or situations in this report, click here to read a summary of the club and the folks who call it home.

March 4, 2002. Elks Club, Vandergraph Avenue, Centre, Michigan.

President Post should have let it slide. He knew MagiCal and his humor but Bill was in a bad mood because he was snubbed by the Academy Awards folks. He had a long-running correspondence relationship with Peter O’Toole ever since Bill said Mr. O’Toole came to entertain the troops in Korea. He assumed, and that’s the key here, that he assumed that the great Peter O’Toole actually was writing him back and sending him things. No one doubts Mr. O’Toole did really get all of the letters and cards President Post sent him but we think he probably just put them in the trash or in a ‘stalker file.’

Everything about President Post is Peter O’Toole. He does a clown act for Kids shows but his stage act is him dressed like Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. Of course he does all of the sand tricks you can think of and ends with a modified salt shaker pour.

So, he was upset, as you can imagine you would be if you were stalking someone for years and years and then the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (or whatever they are called now that we are not allowed to call them Oscars) decided to give your hero and pen-pal a Lifetime Achievement Award at its 75^th annual show and left you out of it.

Peter O’Toole

Because we were all so sure that they really thought about excluding President Post from the events. He felt hurt by the whole thing and hurt that Peter O’Toole didn’t write him back when he wrote him how unfair it all was.

Anyway, so that is why President Post ? normally someone who likes his own voice but is usually pretty decent to people ? nearly snapped off poor MagiCal’s nugget and jumped down his throat over a silly joke.

President Post also said he had some skin rash that was driving him so crazy he couldn’t sleep. He almost put us to sleep, though, when he told us all about how the Oscars people slighted him and have probably “very much upset poor Mr. Peter O’Toole” when the star finds out President Post was snubbed.

The business meeting ended with us condemning the Oscars for slighting fans of its stars. We also all resolved to pay our dues that night if possible. MagiCal was the first to pay. He’s a good egg.

With the business out of the way, President Post worked as emcee for the night’s magic. JAX was up first with a Professor’s Nightmare routine done to music. He was dressed like a police man with sunglasses and a motorcycle helmet on and a leather coat and did the trick to the soundtrack of YMCA by the Village People. Because the song is like 4 minutes long, the routine seemed a little long but he’ll tighten that up before the Convention. He did get the crowd going though. We were all standing and bumping and spelling the letters. It was a lot of fun. What it had to do with three ropes becoming equal in size and then changing back to their original size, I don’t know. But good old MagiCal had an answer.

MagiCal was up next. He started by applauding JAX for his innovation and for finding a way to bring S&M and Bondage into a contest act. Some people hissed but I laughed. I think JAX thought it was a funny line but I couldn’t tell because he still had his motorcycle helmet and sunglasses on.

Marci

MagiCal did a wonderful Card in Wallet that he invented. He was holding the card that had been signed and BLAM it was gone. When he had Marci ? beautiful but that’s about all assistant of JAX ? reach into his pants pocket for the wallet, he played it up. He asked her if she was “available to travel” and she nodded and looked stunned.

He let her take the wallet out of his back pocket and he opened it slowly to show that his key case was sealed inside the wallet. When he removed the key case, there were a bunch of keys as well as the selected card. Marci was stunned ? or still wondering if she could travel ? but the rest of us thought it was a darn good trick.

MagiCal did a cut and restored bar of soap. This sounds like I am making it up, but I am not. He took a bar of Irish Spring, pulled a wire through it so it was in two halves and showed the two halves around the room. He tossed JAX one half and Phil Wall the other. I guess this was to show they were separate but he said it was so they could get a hint about hygiene. “You know guys, with these summer months coming up, you’ll need to bathe on odd and even days.” We all laughed at that one.

It was kind of uncomfortable laughter.

Phil stinks badly most of the time. JAX is usually smelling like Siegfried and Roy, professional smelling. I don’t think it’s that Phil doesn’t shower but I think he must eat something bad that comes through the pores in his skin ? and he has big pores! (MagiCal told me to throw that one in).

He then had the boys throw the soap halves back to him and as he caught them, he tossed it in the air and it came down as one bar of soap. It was incredible. President Post commended MagiCal for finding some use for all his dove apparatus after his last dove “croaked.”

No one laughed. MagiCal still had nightmares about those doves and that stupid table vanish. Saying “croaked” wasn’t funny either and President Post probably knew that. We were all there at the Installation Dinner Show and we all heard that same sickening noise.

With that complete show-stopping moment, President Post walked to the front of the room and announced he would do his version of the Chop Cup. He did it exactly as the instructions tell you to do a Chop Cup. He ended it with two loads; a walnut and a lug nut. The lug nut was big and heavy so I guess that was his big finish.

I got up for the last act. I did a stupid routine. I gave Phil a deck of cards and asked him to shuffle it to his heart’s content. I felt kind of bad for him because of the “stink” comment. He shuffled and shuffled and shuffled. I took the deck back and handed it to Marci on the other side of the room.

The rest is boring: I had Phil name any card. He said 3 of Clubs. I told Marci the 3 of Clubs was the 17^th card from the top. Once she figured out that by “17^th card from the top” meant “hold the deck faced down in your pretty, little, manicured hands and count down 16 cards from the top of the deck and then turn over the next card” it worked well and I got the right card.

Yours Truly

Everybody was silent. I thought I screwed up or something. Then they applauded. I thought for sure they were making fun of me now. President Post thanked everyone and said nice things about my trick.

Even MagiCal seemed surprised. He walked over to me and said, “how the [[[ EDITED ]]] did you do that?!” I felt good about it. I was on “clown nine” as MagiCal would say. Then he smiled and walked over to see Marci. She’d already started shuffling the cards so he couldn?t see if they were in some order. He asked if he could look at the cards for a second. She gave them to him and he riffled them under his nose. He smiled and looked at me and smiled even bigger.

Next Meeting is the first Thursday of the month. This means it will be April 1^st. April Fools will be the theme. The 75^th Academy Awards will be on March 24^th.