There was magic at Fireside Café Friday night as mentalist and magician Bedros “Spidey” Akkelian took to the stage for the 25-30 people who came to his show.
Starting with the classic disappearing and reappearing handkerchief trick, Spidey began his show like many other magicians. He showed how the trick relies on misdirection by actually putting the handkerchief in your other hand when you blow on your hand.
It soon became apparent that this act was far from the usual and he illustrated why he was nominated for 2012 Canadian magician of the year and was a finalist on Canada’s Got Talent, which he joked, consisted of only like five people, which got a few laughs from the audience.
His second required a helper from the audience and he picked Castleton student Derek Fallon, who was sitting in the front row.
He had Fallon give him a dollar bill and sign it before ripping off a small part of the corner and saying he was taught the trick at a magic school called Hogwarts, which got a few chuckles out of the audience.
Continuing with the Harry Potter theme, he covered the bill in what he called “magic potion” which was butane and placed the bill in a small brown envelope, all the while the Harry Potter theme song played in the background.
He then used his “magic wand” which was a lighter wand and placed it on and near the envelope.
The crowd got a little tense as Fallon’s money became engulfed in flames.
“When the fire is big it means the envelope is burning. When it gets small that means your money is burning,” Spidey said.
Once the fire stopped, Spidey offered Fallon a kiwi as consolation if he could not get Fallon’s dollar back before joking the kiwi is probably worth five or six dollars in Canada.
Then he did a mentalist trick bringing up another student and having him pick a random number over 20 and below 100.
The number was 73. Spidey guessed it, but not only did he guess it, he made a four-by-four chart with each row equaling 73 diagonally, horizontally, vertically and a few other ways.
That feat inspired a few gasps from the audience as he guessed both the number and even made a chart for the number.
His other tricks involved guessing the first word on a page from the book “Alice in Wonderland,” having three students pick up toys and him guess what the toys are and then matching them with a drawing from his childhood.
All throughout his show he always reiterated that all the tricks were fair, no wires, hidden switches, mirrors, nothing.
“Two things make magic work: desire and imagination,” said Spidey before bringing up his assistant.
That assistant turned out to be his imaginary friend, Billy, who helped him out with many of his mentalist tricks.
Perhaps the most amusing was when he brought up Tori Derksen from the audience while saying he and Billy used to pick up women in the club by guessing the first three digits of their phone numbers after the area code.
Billy would ring a bell whenever it was the right number for Derksen’s phone number.
He began by guessing eight, five, zero, before the bell rang at two. The second digit began with a countdown from nine all the way down to zero where it finally clicked again. For the last digit, he started from one all the way to eight where it clicked again.
Derksen confirmed that was her number.
“It was definitely weird…I don’t know exactly how he did it,” said Derksen.
Spidey later returned to Fallon’s dollar. He took the kiwi from Fallon, which he had Fallon hold on to. He sliced it in half revealing his dollar complete with his name written on the front and the rip in the corner.
Fallon said it was his dollar, and after smelling the dollar it even smelled like kiwi.
“Dude, I knew after he took it, he was going to come back to it,” said Fallon.