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JoeMTurner.com Corporate Magic Update |  |
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Greetings! May was exceptional - exhilarating - exceedingly busy - and exhausting! I literally went from one end of the country to the other -- and back! -- during the month of May. The highlight, of course, was a successful week-long run at the Magic Castle in Hollywood, where I performed 26 shows in 7 days. Finished the last one on Sunday night about 9:30pm, and was on a 12:30am flight back to Atlanta, where I was working a booth at a trade show at 10:30am at the Georgia World Congress Center. June is busy but the good news is that school is out, so I get to take my family to my show in Charleston, SC this month for a mini-vacation. Thanks go to VHA/Novation and to AgroFresh Inc. for major engagements during the month of May -- as well as to EVERY subscriber on this list for your continuing support. I'd love to get a quick email from you letting me know what you think of this newsletter. While you're writing that, why not throw in the name of someone you know who needs a speaker, MC or entertainer for an upcoming event? Have a fantastic June! God bless!  Joe M. Turner
Like the song says... June is bustin' out all over. (In fact, I think I may have gotten some on me -- will club soda get that out?) In addition to my regular weekly appearances, I've got a lovely event at the St. Ives Country Club in early June, followed by the big show at Kiawah Island Resort in Charleston, South Carolina. I've also been invited to perform at a banquet marking the 800th monthly meeting of the Atlanta Society of Magicians. That's 66 years and 8 months of magic in Atlanta, and I'm honored to be part of their commemorative show. The month comes to a close with my 2nd annual appearance at the Atlanta Athletic Club, plus "Main Street Magic 3" -- my third annual summer program for my church, First Baptist Church of Tucker. Immediately after that show, my assistant, her father and I will load into a van and head for Ocean City, New Jersey where I'll be performing at Ocean City Tabernacle on June 26. We get back into Atlanta late on the 27th, and I leave for Reno on the 28th. I suppose I'll find time to catch a few winks in there somewhere.
If you aren't familiar with Google maps, I suggest you go play with them right now. In addition to providing the best, most comprehensive mapping and directions I have found online, you can now play with scaled satellite photos of most maps you generate. Type in your address, zoom in and out on your map -- then click in the top right corner of the screen to switch to "satellite" view. You'll have a ball exploring your neighborhood, your office, the street where you grew up... just about anyplace you can think of. When you stop playing with the satellite pics, you will realize that the directions and maps are definitely superior to any of the other online mapping services. Enjoy this one!
Wow! I got great feedback on the trick I included last month, so I really pondered what to do this month. I have decided to link you to a column written by my friend, Dr. Colm Mulcahy. Colm is the chair of the department of mathematics at Spelman College in Atlanta. He has a real love for mathematical card tricks and writes a monthly column, "Card Colm," for the Mathematical Association of America. In this article, he teaches a few tricks which use the "down under deal." Don't panic -- you don't have to understand the math in order for the tricks to work! You can follow the instructions and look like a mindreader! Colm describes some computations using exponents and base-2 notation, but in this article I want to call attention to a simplified method that he includes at the end of the article. You may want to print this out for reference: Let's consider a version of the first trick, plus a presentational touch. I'll call it: "Bringing Order from Chaos" In this trick, a spectator shuffles a deck of cards, then calls out a random number between ten and twenty. That many cards are removed from the deck and you write down a prediction while the spectator deals the cards using the "down under deal." A "down under" deal means that the first card is put DOWN on the table, then the 2nd card is put UNDER the cards being held in the hand -- that is, put on the bottom of the packet. The next card goes DOWN onto the table, the next card goes UNDER the packet, and so on... until there is only one card left. Your prediction MIRACULOUSLY matches that card despite all the chaotic shuffling and dealing! Start by making sure you know the card on top of the deck. Using Colm's article, we can know the correct position that our known top card needs to be in when the packet is ready for dealing. To figure out the key position quickly, you can forget all that stuff in the article about exponents and powers of two and converting to base 2 by using the last table in the article -- we'll calculate how far the card must go from the bottom, rather than from the top. When the spectator names a number, you simply subtract that number from 17 or 33, whichever is closer. (For 17, you subtract from 33.) The result tells you how far from the bottom of the packet the known card must go. Colm's article gives you some "dodges" to use to get the card in position, but if you know what the top card is, there are many ways you can contrive to get it in the right position in the stack -- perhaps you drop a couple by "accident," giving you the opportunity to rearrange the order. Once the card is in place, doing the "down under" deal works automatically. If you don't think you have the nerve or subtlety to move the card into the position you need, use the 2nd trick in Colm's article. You'll need to explore some of the calculations in the article for this approach, since this method requires that you know the key number from the TOP, not from the bottom. There are several ways you could present this trick. Why not set this up as an illustration of how important it is to track and measure the many variables that affect a project's outcome, and how by using good leadership and well-honed processes, order can come from the chaos? In addition to the fact that the spectator shuffles -- randomizing the deck -- you teach them a process that ultimately leads to a conclusion that you can predict accurately. This would be a good way to use a card trick to illustrate the value of a management methodology. This is getting long so I'll leave you to explore the other material in Colm's article. If you read to the end of the article, though, you may just happen to see my name mentioned!
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