NO. 46, OKLAHOMA CITY, OK – Seymour Davis Ring
Meets 7:00 pm, 1st Monday of the month at City Arts Center, Oklahoma State Fairground.
LEE WOODSIDE, Secretary. Email: WoodsideLee@hotmail.com.

Prior to our April meeting, “Magical Michael” Stephanic presented a workshop on the Ring Through Rope routine. He generously supplied the rings and ropes for everyone to keep and practice with.

Our featured performer for April was professional magician Bob Caldwell. Bob regularly wows folks at the Firelake Grand Casino. Bob had several volunteers shuffle a deck and arrive at a playing card in a manner that was beyond fair. No one looked at the chosen card. Another set of volunteers made decisions to select the color, value, and suit of a playing card. At the conclusion, everyone was blown away when the physically chosen card was a perfect match for the mentally selected one. Bob then had an audience member draw an ESP symbol and retain the drawing. Another audience member felt the vibrations from the five different ESP cards and homed in on one card. Yes, the selected ESP card matched the drawing.

Our theme for the evening was rope magic. Members were encouraged to bring their favorite rope routine to share at the meeting. Steve Crawford performed his version of the cut and restored rope for a volunteer from the audience. He also made use of a comedy breakaway fan.

Marty “The Magic Dad” Ludlum performed and then taught his version of the cut and restored rope. Marty has obviously performed this hundreds of times and offered a number of tips for making this a memorable routine for the audience. Visiting magician Phillip Mosnes performed his wonderful rope routine for us. It involved cutting and restoring, but also removing the ends of the rope and handing them out for examination.

Lee Woodside demonstrated how to tie a square knot. Sure enough, the knot turned out to be square rather than round. Lee then removed the knot from the rope. J. David Teeman performed a “rope” routine with a scarf. He determined who had the worst breath by having members of the audience blow on a knot he had tied in the scarf. Sure enough, the knot dissolved. He told us that if you ask an audience of kids, “Who has the worst breath?”, you will always get several boys to claim that they do. Ten-year-old visitor Sam Keeley performed an entertaining disappearing coin routine and then divined a selected playing card. Jeff Gray wowed everyone with his multi-phase coin assembly. He had obviously spent many hours polishing it. Michael Stephanic ended the evening’s performances by having a volunteer cut the deck and remove the card he had cut to. Michael was able to divine the playing card. When asked about method, he merely said “Psi Stebbins.”

-Lee Woodside