Magician tells Norwich society about tricks of the trade

NORWICH, Conn.—Bruce Kalver would be the first to tell you that 90 percent of magic is shtick.

And so he began his recent address to the members and prospective members of Assembly 63 of the Society of American Magicians with the following patter.

"You might be a magician ... if you paid $35 for a quarter." And when the room roared with laughter, he added, "Yeah, you've done it, haven't you?"

Other signs he named included "if compasses malfunction for several blocks around your house," "if you look at a pretty girl walking by and don't have illicit thoughts but wonder if she'll fit in your zigzag illusion," and "if all your friends are named 'The Great.' "

Kalver, who is the president or the self-described "Dumbledore" of the society, which has some 200 chapters worldwide, demonstrated several tricks in a meeting room of the Beth Jacob Synagogue, prefacing his demonstration by pointing out he was selling the tricks as well.

As a matter of fact, Kalver, 51, is a full-time magician who learned at the knee of his grandfather, also a magician and assistant to Harry Houdini.

"A lot of the stuff I'm teaching tonight is stuff he taught me," he said.

Kalver began practicing magic at the age of 4, and began performing on "the Connecticut borscht belt and in the Catskills" at 10.

For his first trick, he asked a member of the audience to think of a letter of the alphabet, then showed him five different eye charts, each having a different group of letters, and asking whether it contained the letter.

In the end, he guessed the letter B.

"After the muggles leave, I'll explain it to you, OK?"

He worked his way through several other tricks, all of them executed seamlessly, involving missing cards, multiplying balls, shifting lengths of rope and springs and rings.

But it was his second trick that got the biggest laugh.

Kalver used an electric screwdriver to spin a plastic disk painted with a black and white spiral, all the while telling his audience to stare at the disc. At the count of 10, he said, everyone should look at his face.

The illusion was astonishing and hilarious: Kalver's head seemed to expand to twice its normal size.

And when he reversed the direction of the spiral, this time with a volunteer from the audience, the volunteer's head seemed to shrink.

"The nice thing about this is you don't do anything except count to 10," Kalver said. "The state of Rhode Island board of education called me up one day and said, 'We have a grant ... if you can do a magic show on optical illusions and eye care. Do you have such a show?' And I said, 'Of course I do.'

"I was known for three years as the magician that could shrink his head, and I'm proud of that."

(You can see this illusion for yourself by going to the "magical moments" section of Kalver's Web site: http://www.brucekalver.com.)

Don Beebe of Norwich, who is president of the local, said membership is open not just to professional magicians but to anyone interested in magic.

As he himself pointed out to the crowd Wednesday night, "I'm an attorney by profession, but I'm also a ventriloquist."

To which a voice from the crowd shouted, "Isn't that redundant?"