The Harry Riser SAM #31 October 2011 Meeting Report October is the month for ghosts and spooks. So we gathered with much anticipation and a fair amount of apprehension for our "spooky tricks" themed evening of magic. First though, and this was not spooky, we had two candidates for SAM#31 membership--Daniel Lee and Aaron Kalinowski. As required, they both performed. Daniel did a breathtaking rendition of the Professor's Nightmare with multiple amazing variations. Actually that nightmare was kind of spooky with all of its surprises! Aaron then presented a fascinating history of magic shops. We learned of the oldest magic shops in the world. He concluded with a description of his visit to Davenports (the oldest family run magic shop) in the London Underground and his rather spooky encounter in The Tube outside the shop with a little old lady and a mysterious gift. Both candidates were then accepted by the membership and survived the official induction ceremony. Master of Ceremonies, Jay Newby, capitalizing on the Halloween atmosphere, while discussing the history of spooky magic his right eyeball popped out. Fortunately he was able to replace it. He then did the matrix accompanied by a frightening story of four innocent people camping in four separate tents along a river which happened to be next to an insane asylum! His sound effects frightened us all! Taylor Martin then added a bit of mentalism to the mood of the evening. He introduced us to The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 1.4 million words. He then had audience members randomly choose a page number out of the 800 pages in the book. Aided by the mysterious spirits of Halloween he was able to mentally sense the first and last word on the chosen page. If that wasn't astounding enough, he did it again with a randomly selected Shakespearian sonnet found at the back of the book. Contributing to our eerie meeting, our esteemed president, Steve Spence, then shared a video of Neil Patrick Harris performing Tobin's Palingenesia--one of the more frightening, albeit entertaining, illusions ever created. As a grand finale, brand new member, Daniel Lee, asked an audience member to write a random name on a business card and to circle the first initial. He then asked the spectator to squeeze his (Daniel's) arm very hard. The initial on the business card gradually became visible in the resulting red patch of skin. Now that was spooky! SAM #31 meets the first Monday of the month at 7:00 pm. If the first Monday conflicts with a holiday weekend, we postpone the meeting one week. Unless otherwise announced the meeting location is the Irvington United Methodist Church, 30 Audubon Road on the east side of the city. See our website for details: www.sam31.com.