For those of you coming to mindvention, Katalina and I are unveiling a very interesting piece.

We were challenged a while back by a college on the East Coast. After our show, where Katalina plays the mystic and I am… well… Me, some of the college professors began to ask many questions. I told them that the answer to their questions was simple, “I’m amazing and my wife is a mystic.”

Surprisingly they were not satisfied with that answer. We recapped the show for them and showed how we explained, demonstrated, and tested her abilities under extremely fair conditions. They agreed that it was seemingly very fair. However, they were concerned because we had set the conditions. (snivelers) So we asked them what do you want? They came back to us with their challenge.

There were three professors, one was a Mathematics PHD, One had a PHD in Economics, and the third was a doctor of Psychophysics. They had decided after an excited flurry of ideas, that multiple variables would be the key for proof of what they had just seen. They had believed that a “Stooge” (whatever that is) might be responsible for some of the transference of knowledge. It was therefore important that this possibility be eliminated. They also wanted to eliminate me from knowing what variables(s) were being selected.

They determined that we might be very clever in uncovering hidden knowledge so to thwart this possibility they would introduce as many variables with as many people as possible (and each of these people would be isolated from the others) and I would not get to know any of those variables. In this way even if I were able to learn one of two of the variables through clever methods or bribery, we could not possibly know them all.

But then at the last minute they changed the conditions of the test. Katalina had to come up with the answer before the final outcome could be tabulated. It was a stimulating and unnerving challenge.

Under the watchful eyes of an audience of over 300 people we were put to the test. It was a very close call and in fact a mistake was made, Katalina had gotten it wrong. There was a hush and someone in the audience who had seen our show earlier demanded that the “audience” results be relooked. They were and there was a mistake. It turned out that Katalina was correct, Pandemonium broke out.

Afterwards, we had dinner with the professors they were quite cordial and very interesting guys and we spent a lot of time avoiding their questions.

So for those of you coming out to Mindvention, stay tuned for this interesting piece.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Daveid, look forward to connecting at Mindvention. We are planning to party it up a bit and have some fun.

We performed last night in St. Louis and again the mistake occurred… is it us… or them??

Today we are performing at Evansville IN. We will see if it happens again. Very odd. Come on out if you are in the area.

Today’s show was a blast. We had a . . . how do you say . . . an interesting audience. (very eclectic) Many different viewpoints of what we did.

The Professor’s Multi-Variable Test went great and there were no mistakes in this performance, Hmmmm. The interesting part of this performance is once the challenge/test is explained you can almost see people lean forward in their seats. They really start to look for all the ways that we might creatively be cheating.

It is an exhausting piece as there is so much explanation, proving, staging, and blocking going on but that is what establishes the level of fairness that makes this so strong for the audience. Today, I had one female that patted me down “police style” to ensure I had no electronics on my person. (hey, that was not so bad, kind of a fringe benefit of the piece.)

I explained that even if I did have an electronic device on me, it would not help since I do not know any of the variables. She agreed but she said she would rather err on the side that I might be a really good cheater. This received a good round of laughter from the audience.

Tomorrow we will be playing outside of Pittsburg and it is a long drive. We might not do the piece tomorrow if we are too tired from the drive.

So are there any other Mindvention attendees out there??

This is just pouring salt in the wound. I wanted to go to Mindvention this year. I just couldn't make it happen. And looking at that list of speakers this year is very impressive. Now you tease us with this... I bet it is just one big party there with so much creativity happening.

How about a video or some pics of this effect of yours??

Also..what in the world is Psychophysics?

Are you planning on releasing this effect?

I don't mean to make it worse richard but I think this one is going to be crazy good.
my only disappointment is that Berk won't be able to make it. his performance last year made him a 'must see' this year.

I guess we'll just have to make due with the rest of these folks.
hmmm cassidy, maven, nyman, nu...it's going to be fantastic.

....and I can't wait to meet you too, Christian and Katalina !

Last night’s show had a new wrinkle. We gave a little more freedom to the audience as the test unfolded. It was a balancing act between keeping control of the audience and letting them control the show. Whew!

They came up with a few new ideas. They had two people take Katalina outside the room and stand guard over her. (I usually don’t like this idea because it disrupts the pacing of the show, but since this is such a unique piece I let it go) Once again the audience had someone pat me down for electronics. A guy this time so it was not as much fun as the last show.

They were also much more protective of the information as in the last shows. They were going to ensure that all the information was protected more than a Brinks Home Security System.

When Katalina came back in and wrote down her answer they stood guard over that as well to insure she could not sneakily change it.

When everything was tabulated at the end . . . we milked it a bit . . . Katalina hesitated to pick up her board to show the answer. We acted like something was wrong and we were going to bale on the test. I thought the audience was going to charge the stage and grab her board themselves. Then she flipped it over and . . . . (well of course if matched . . . we’re amazing) The audience literally jumped up and down and screamed. We received a standing ovation during the middle of the show. That was nice.

This piece has become a real study in audience management and audience teasing for us.

Richard, too bad you won’t be able to make Mindvention. Currently, we are not planning on releasing this, in fact, we did not expect this piece to be as strong or exciting as it is.

We will try to get a video or pics up… that can be a difficult thing to get someone to film the show while we perform.

Dmoses, we look forward to meeting you as well. Make sure you tell me your Magic Café name or we won’t know who you are!

Well, we just finished our show here in Pittsburgh. The audience was quite reserved and non-emotive. It was like performing for a group of Engineers. We decided mid show to not perform the Professor’s Ultimate Challenge.

We also changed up mid-show to more of a magic show than a mentalism show. The audience seemed to enjoy that much more. It was a strange audience and we evaluated after the show as to why this audience seem so unusual. We really had no idea.

The audience reacted quite strongly to a Cards across routine (with a mentalism slant) and less strongly to some of the more standard mentalism pieces.

It could have been us. Katalina and I felt that our pacing was just a little off tonight. If only we could really get in the minds of the audience. We did have many people stay after the show to ask the usual questions. We were just not fully satiated with their emotional reactions. Maybe we are just too picky.

We drive back home tomorrow to enjoy a Halloween party with friends and then we take Sunday off. Monday we are giving a corporate speech. So we will not be able to perform the Professor’s Ultimate there since it is a speaking gig.

But we do have a corporate mentalism gig on Tuesday so we will give it another run through. Just a couple more times to work it out before Mindvention.

We look forward to meeting many of you there.

C&K,

I so love following your daring approaches at live performances. From dealing with audiences who can't hear, to skeptics to grabby handers, you seem to be able to turn on a dime to make the show fit the audience.

That's probably the greatest magic one (or two, in your case) can do.

Thank you both so much for sharing!

Best of luck on Monday and of course Tuesday with Professor's Ultimate. I'm glued to the seat to see what happens next!

DT3

Christian,

Looking forward to seeing you and your piece at Mindvention next week. It sounds great. As for starting a party, I'm sure you'll start a fun one.

But the big party won't be with you. It'll be at whatever bar Cassidy will be at.

:)

-- Jheff

We made it back home and we are getting a chance to relax. Well, do laundry, clean the Van, pay bills, etc, if you can call that relaxing. We did enjoy catching up with friends last night and today watching the Colts battle the 49ers.

Don, thanks for the good words, we have enjoyed your works and look forward to your next E-book. The next time we tour through Florida we will have to meet up.

Jheff, looking forward to meeting you at Mindvention next week, it is going to be great fun for us as we don’t get to play as often as we should. We will be stopping off in Denver for a show and a meeting before flying on to Vegas.

We are getting there a day early so we are hoping to take in Kevin Burke’s show, he has been very gracious with the Mindvention Attendees. What a guy!!

I tried to contact Luke Jermay about his show, but he has not E-mailed back or Tweeted back. So we will see when we get there.

I live in Denver... give me a shout when you are in town (phone number on my website dannyarcher.com)...

maybe we can meet for coffee or a meal?... as you can guess things are super-busy this week for me with all the last minute things...

I will be at Luke's show on Friday...

Danny Archer

Hey I'm going to try to go to lukes show on friday also

Hey K&C,

Glad to hear you will be at MindVention. It will be a pleasure to see you there.

Cheers ...... Charles

I saw their act a few times and all I can say is "awesome". An excellent show from two hardworking pros out there doing magic everyday that no one (Magicians) hears about! looking forward to seeing you all at the Mindvention as well ))))

Bill

Danny, will give you a call when we get to Denver.

Charles and Blake we look forward to meeting you at Mindvention. It should be a blast.

Bill, Thanks for the compliment!.. I look forward to your comments on The Professor’s Ultimate Test.


Our Speaking gig went well. The event had a hiccup when a presenter didn’t show up and there was going to be a huge dead time for a large group of people in one of the rooms. The promoter of the event was in full panic and another speaker said he would fill in “for a price”. The promoter and the speaker tried to come to an agreement but it was evident that the “fill in speaker” was trying to hold him for ransom so to speak. They could not come to an agreement so the negotiation came to an end. The promoter was now disheveled and about one step from the loony bin. We told him we would fill in and we could worry about any payment after the event. At this point he was resigned to defeat and with a blank stare mumbled an OK.

He had no idea that we also were entertainment performers. We went into the room and did some attendee housekeeping for about 15 minutes and then performed an impromptu mentalism show. The promoter almost peed himself. He was totally blown away by the surprise. After the event he thanked us for helping him out of a jam without making the process difficult.

This paid off in many ways as now he has become our cheerleader and has already introduced us to some other contacts. Sometimes simply helping someone out of a tough jam without worry to your own compensation can pay off in ways you don’t expect.

Well, that was the good news. The bad news . . . . .

The show we did today was not what we call a great show. Katalina’s microphone went out in the first 5 minutes of the show. Come on!! Fortunately, we have a back up that we can grab pretty fast but it takes a minute to fix since her mic is inside her dress. For some reason the tech problem threw our timing off a bit. The audience was also subdued and that just did not help the situation. We felt the show dragged a bit and we decided not to do the Professor’s Ultimate Challenge as this effect takes quite a bit of effort and timing.

We felt the show was really slow but afterwords we had about 20 people who stayed for an impromptu 20 min close up show. It turns out the person who hired us loved it and her boss already had given her kudos for bringing us out. Go figure.

Early tomorrow we fly to Denver for one last chance to perform the Professor’s Ultimate Challenge before Mindvention. We have to get up at 0430 . . . . ugh I don’t do mornings.

By the way, Katalina had come up with a great idea to change the colors of the markers used for the final revelation at the end as it brings greater focus to the climax of the effect. This way it stands out from the rest of the stuff written on the multiple dry erase boards used in the audience. Great Idea. I knew I married her for a reason.

Our Show yesterday was a noon show in a beautiful downtown convention property. Nooners are always a little touch and go as you never know what the mood of the audience will be. Sometimes entertainment is a tough sell during the day when people have other things on their mind. However, this crowd was ready to have a good time.

Half way through the show we whipped out the Ultimate Professor’s challenge. We took our time and let them be as fair as they wanted. The ending with Katalina’s nice little touch really made it stand out. The crowd loved it and we are looking forward to presenting this at Mindvention this year.

This will be our last post until after Mindvention, unless you would like a running commentary of what is going on when we get there. Let me know if you would like such a thing.

Thanks for breakfast C&K...

looking forward to seeing your act!

Gino M.

Nice to see you post. I hope you are feeling better.

Tony