A weekend of Maverick magic

Maria Ly
Staff Writer

Pip Comic Illusionist welcomed families to a Night of Maverick Magic during Family Weekend featuring slight of the hand tricks and a dangerous knife throwing act this past Friday at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Pip Comic Illusionist was a former finalist in Australia’s Got Talent and is a magician, comedian, illusionist, actor and hypnotist and a current Vegas performer.

Pip amazed audiences as he turned a piece of silk into an egg. He told the audience the sentiment of this trick as it is what got him started in magic at the age of four.

Pip said, “I saw a magician in Las Vegas on TV, was super excited, ran into my bedroom, started setting paper on fire while I tried making silk appear, turns out that’s not how dad’s paychecks worked.”

Pip continued, “I feel like giving away the secret is kind of what’s really amazing about this.”

He then invited Jeremy, a member of the audience and real star to the show, to the stage to teach him the art of magic as he fumbled through the steps of making an egg appear, even accidentally showing the audience the egg in his hand before the silk disappeared. Although Jeremy was the butt of the joke the whole night and it cost him $10, he and the audience could not stop laughing.

Ryan Leistikow, a member of the Student Event’s Team, said, “He was the best, definitely one of the best in show, it was all off script and I thought the entire show was great. Jeremy made it worthwhile.”

Jeremy was constantly used in other tricks as Pip demonstrated the “second sight” trick, or what Pip explains is “looking through your eyes to see what you’re seeing”. The trick was first developed from the Project Alpha experiment done by Washington State University to test if psychic phenomenon and ESP was real.

Pip said, “They spent years doing this study, they found gentlemen and realized after six months that psychic phenomenon was real. These two gentlemen, a 17 and 18-year-old, proved they had real psychic ability. After six months of intense testing, Washington State University PhD released a paper on this. The day after that the two men turned around and went, ‘No we’re actually magicians and we’ve been tricking you’. That’s actually a true story!”

He then gave Jeremy a book and asked him to flip to a random page. The audience was cracking up when – the two were back to back – Pip pulled out the same book and used his “psychic abilities” and read back the page to Jeremy word for word.

The audience was even more stunned when they realized the book’s pages were blank.

Jeremy’s 15 minutes of fame were coming to an end, but not till after Pip threw a knife at him.

He had Jeremy sign a card and shuffled it back in the deck. Using a special card cannon, the cards flung in the air as Pip threw the knife straight at the protective board worn around the neck of an oddly calm Jeremy piercing his chosen signed card.

Pip let Jeremy go back to his seat, but not until messing with him one last time as he taped his $10 to the back of his back.

Megan Furr, a student who attended the event, said, “He was hilarious. It was so much fun, and it was so cool to see. I love magic. I really liked the knife throwing trick.”

Jeremy was not the only audience member Pip interacted with as many were able to participate in his show. One member was seven-year-old Easton who helped Pip in his Rubik’s cube trick.

According to Pip, there are 43,252,003274,489,856,000 different Rubik’s cube combinations.

Although he is not able to solve a Rubik’s cube in less than 5.66 seconds, solve five one-handed, solve one one-handed and another one with his feet, blindfolded in less than 50 seconds, or solve three while juggling them like other world record holders – Pip could match all sides of a Rubik’s cube that Easton had previously shuffled.

Pip displayed his psychic abilities once again as all audience members had a chance to participate, as they were asked in the beginning of the show to write the name of a superhero and a celebrity to play that character into a white box on stage.

He then had a member from the Student Event’s Team randomly draw a strip as one audience member really wants to see Nicholas Cage play Superman.

Pip said, “You know how I was talking about project alpha, they did another experiment called subliminal messaging, it basically makes you do things without even realizing.”

He then referred to the video shown earlier in the show, and zooms up to the boat in the background who is in fact, a person with a Nicholas Cage picture taped to their face dressed as Superman.

The Night of Maverick Magic did not end with Pip alone, but also featured the Hoopsters, a family of six from Hutchinson, Minnesota, who performed an array of high energy dances incorporated with hula hoop tricks as some spun four hula hoops around their body at once, another did the splits while spinning a hoop on her arm, and another did a walking handstand.

The show also featured professional aerialist Mimi Ke as she performed a beautiful aerial interpretive number as she elegantly climbed up and spun down the silk ropes to song “Bird Gerhl” by Antony and the Johnsons.

After the show, families were invited for more fun, as the Hoopsters offered free hula hoop lessons.

Another student at MNSU who attended the event has mixed feelings about the magical event. An unimpressed Helen Eastman, said, “I do not believe in magic.”

Header photo by John Shrestha/MSU Reporter.