Annual Banquet 2022: Wrap-Up

No regular meeting this month — instead we got together with the local S.A.M. Assembly 248 club for dinner and a show. The following members attended, some with spouses or partners of one kind or another: Dave Boehm, Gary Lazok, Scott Israel, Mike Macarle, Rick Wilson, Frank Pastula, Tank Hanna, Doug Northway, Jay Jennings, Brad Zinn, Chris Rose, Robert Ray, Curt Godsey, Dave Goldberg, and Paul Hamra.

Following dinner was a show, starting off with Tank Hanna who performed two mentalism effects with a couple books, reading the mind of his helpers.

Gary Lazok followed with more mentalism, a version of Kurotsuke where he found the only black ball among five helpers, and then entertained us with some sleight of hand.

Brad Zinn came next with almost a mini-lecture about treating your helpers with respect and demonstrating that with a 3-person version of Tricky Bottles, instead of the 2-person version that most everybody does. He also gave us more information on the mammoth project he created chronicling the history of magic in the Phoenix area.

Next was Chris Rose who presented an updated version of his Milk & Cookies routine that fooled Penn and Teller on the TV show Fool Us. After the routine he gave us the scoop on how he was contacted, getting ready for the show, and how being on the show affected his career.

Finally, President Robert Ray (yes, President of both the IBM and SAM clubs!) closed the show with a couple effects including a very well done PK Touch, and was lucky enough to have our waitress walk in as he was starting B’Wave with jumbo cards — she agreed to act as his helper. While performing for anybody is okay, performing for laypeople and seeing genuine surprise and wonder is the best.

With that, another fun annual banquet was over for another year, and with holiday wishes to each other we headed for home.