Thursday started off slightly later at 10:00, when I went to see the full version of the Paul Wilson presentation, as I didn’t have to duck out to line up for anything. Read yesterday’s report to see what he did, he also showed a fooling Jack Deal from Royal Road, his Fan-2-C gimmick, refried poker (his version of the Solomon/Blomberg deal). Then he talked and demonstrated card mucking and a version of a Pit Hartling trick that is on the Unreal Work DVD.

We then went into the Gazzo lecture where he talked about the Egg Bag and the Tossed Out Deck, which was an excellent version of this trick with a great ending which I won’t spoil but you should be able to get it from Penguin Magic if this is your thing it’s well worth a look.

Jeff McBride’s lecture was up next, and he lectured on his thoughts of being a Magician 24/7 and doing tricks for people that you meet, he demonstrated his rainbow wishing ribbon, and Abi demonstrated bubbles that you could catch and one that represented a spectators wish that became solid and was given as a present. He then taught us his cards from mouth, which he often uses to close his show and some simple card manipulation and silk productions. Jeff then showed us how to put all this into some small stage routines.

Next the last day of close-up so here we go with the last 10 acts:

Shawn Farquahr – Micro Magic – Canada: Card to resealed deck apart from jokers and one other card as a convincer it was the same deck, also had a spectators signed card back in the posistion it should be in the deck. Shawn then finished his act with a cups and balls routine, that finally turned out he was using solid cups after he had produced lots of mini cups.

Alex Stone – Micro Magic – USA: Themed around science, produced 4 Jumbo Coins, matrix with Jumbo Coins and Cards, had someone sign their name across the side of the deck, and placed an unsigned card in a bottle, unfortunately we never saw what he did next as he got the red light from the judges, I can only think this was because his presentation was very fast, not much magic happened, and what did happen was he was shuffling almost under the side of the table out of sight of the camera and judges.

Kiko – Card Magic – Spain: He spread the deck and blew four cards out which turned out to be the aces, a spectator chose a suit of an ace, and he produced the rest of the suit in order, then changed the whole 13 cards to another suit. He then performed a cards through newspaper but with a card with mirrored mylar on and a transparent sheer silk, so you could see the card with signature on under the silk and as he tossed it towards the corner covered with the mirror card it visually vanished and appeared under the card with the others.

Simo Aalto – Micro Magic – Finland: One Card Flurry, bare hand deck production. One coin flurry to jumbo coin, coin matrix with Jumbo Coins and Jumbo Cards then a double big coin production and finally a super-jumbo coin production to finish.

Joker Magic – Inventions – Hungary: A finger ring was placed on the first finger and it was then magically pulled through each finger in turn. Produces one deck which splits into two, then from a chosen deck he produces a matchbox, which multiplies to lots of matchboxes, and the ring from his finger appears in the last one. Ring then vanishes and appears in the card box, which they are selling at this convention. Then he covers the table and everything vanishes from the table, and a ring appears on each of his fingers of one hand.

VIP Magic (Emiel Lensen, Rob Mollien) – Card Magic – Netherlands: Double act, where one is a posh businessman, and the other a very cool looking younger person, and they start to challenge each other with decks of cards, they both produce the four Aces in increasingly impossible ways, including them floating to their hands, appearing under drinks, the Youth then produces the Aces all at once, they then work together to make the deck vanish to leave the Aces.

Martin Eisele – Micro Magic – Germany: I had heard good things about Martin’s act from the Ron McMillan day, it is based on a pseudo childrens programme about a small blue mouse and an orange elephant, complete with voice over. He performs 5 coin repeat, then uses 4 to do a matrix, changes to Jumbo Cards, still with the small coins, which then change to larger ones, then a quick backfire matrix. He then does a very visual matrix with dice, that vanish and the cards are on the table begin to rise up to show the dice back behind them once more. The Elephant and the Mouse then appear at the end.

Rick Merrill – Micro Magic – USA: Home-school act, dollar production changes to chinese coins, change to jumbo’s and do the same thing. Then an excellent and visual marker and coin flurry, and again he switches to jumbo marker and coin and does the exact same sequence. Finishes with some Sharpie impressions and produces sleeves full of markers and a jumbo sharpie fan to end which splits into two coloured sharpie fans.

Jon Armstrong – Card Magic – USA: Jon started off with an entertaining peek style routine where the spectator peeked at a card then the other spectator located it in a fan. A rubber band was then wrapped around the deck and the spectator asked to look at another card, Jon stuck one to his forehead which wasn’t the correct selection, as that was found to be in his wallet along with the original card. He then asked the woman volunteer if she minded having her phone number revealed, he asked for it and seemingly randomly mixed the deck, and when spread revealed her phone number had turned face-up. Sadly I believe Jon ran out of time and was thus disqualified.

Hayashi – Micro Magic – Germany: Matrix theme, with lots of variations, Jumbo Flurries, backfires, then goes on to fill the mat with half-dollars. Then an instant matrix which is very fast, then barehanded matrix, and one-hand matrix with backfire, with 4 Jumbo coins to finish.

In the evening we saw Stevie Starr from Glasgow perform his regurgitation act where he swallows light bulbs, cue-balls, methane gas, coins and even live goldfish, and can bring them up on command and in any order. This stuff really was incredible.

Then finally we saw the Close-up show.

Belinda Sinclair had four spanish dancers and singers on stage with her as they drummed and sang she performed with a very well scripted presentation, a four Ace production from shuffled deck, Ace Assembly, 3 Card Monte and Coin under Watch.

Tim Star performed his silk production, signed card in card case, a tunnel effect where the card pushed through changed to the signed one, his vanishing aces, and finally a coin cup effect.

Lennart Green was on top form, and recieved a standing ovation, he shuffled and dropped cards but still managed to find selections and make them vanish as they were dealt to the table, and finished by producing all of one suit from a very well shuffled and dropped deck, whilst blindfolded.

Michael Vincent’s act centered around the four aces, production of the aces from a mixed and shuffled deck, his version of Reset and to finish all the cards were back in new deck order.

Armando Lucero performed a sequence of changing blank cards from a blank deck into the queens. He then performed his named card between two jokers, and finally finished with his Coin Menagerie matrix effect.

Thats it for today, tomorrow the corporate presentations, and the banquet.