It’s been a fun Fall college tour so far. I’ve written about some of the fun things that have happened. Here’s a digest of just a few of the fun things that have happened so far!



Missouri State University: two BIG crowds – about 500-600 each! Awesome late-night event. Some photos here.
University of Kentucky: another fun show at UK. BIG crowd. Had to shut up a heckler and swat a fly.
Bowling Green State University: LOVE this school. LOTS of loyal fans here and always a great show. Lots of footage in this video. Shit Fountain.
St. Anselm College - Large crowd – great theater at the Dana Center. I love performing at St. A’s.
Viterbo University - Four Legged Bird. Some photos here. Can’t believe all the love and support I’m continuing to receive from Viterbo. Thanks!
Thomas College - Dude in the front row on a laptop. Fun show.
University of South Florida – Night show – great treatment. Outdoors. Someone yelled out the window at me.
Lyndon State College - Fun show with the Showoff Show at LSC. Great times here yet again. Debuted the new Chicken Trick. Funny sign outside.



Not every show from the tour is included in the above list, but I could probably write something about every show on this tour. Something fun and different has happened just about EVERY night. I hope the trend continues!

Tell me something I didn’t know.



Read the blog post here.

I performed Wednesday night at THE Ohio State University (Newark Campus). The “THE” in “The Ohio State University” becomes much more funny and ironic when describing a branch campus. The campus is actually a LOT larger than I thought it would be. And there were many more traditional-age college students there than I anticipated too. All good stuff.







My call time was 5:45pm and since I had been on campus earlier in the day to do some other stuff, I was already in town. I had some free time, so I decided to grab a nap in my car until the tornado sirens woke me up at 4:50pm. I turned on the radio and they said a Tornado Warning was in effect and was headed right toward me. The sky, however, was still clear and tornado free. 5 minutes later, the black wall cloud of doom appeared over the western horizon and I decided my call time was now 5pm. I loaded in my gear so I didn’t get all wet and stuff.



We watched the clouds as they passed over. Lots of twirling rotating clouds in the sky, but nothing crazy happening on the ground except wind and sideways rain and angry students.



Performing near the presence of tornadoes is apparently becoming a thing with me. In my career, I can think of several near-run-ins. Last Thursday, I was performing in downtown Dublin, OH. There wasn’t really anyone there because there had been tornadoes earlier in the day. No big deal. Didn’t stop me. Then earlier this year – in the summer – I showed up at a country club in Philadelphia only to find out they didn’t have power due to a tornado or microburst or something. All I know is it took me WAY to long to find a detour that got me to the gig because there were so many trees down and blocking roads. Then back several years ago, while on the way to perform at Purdue University, a tornado crossed the highway less than half a mile in front of me and my friend Mark and we got the experience on video. Note that I say we got the “experience” on video, as it has been pointed out by numerous YouTube commenters that no funnel cloud actually appears in the video. The rain was coming down too hard to see anything anyway.







Back to tOSU(n), the show went great and we had a pretty good turnout, despite the weather. Here are some photos from the show!

I joined up with my good friends Evan and Jonathan from The Showoff Show to return once again to beautiful Lyndonville, VT for a show at Lyndon State College’s Parent’s weekend. Performing with the SOS is always fun because when we do, we usually sneak in a bit where we all do some stuff onstage together – always a good time. Jonathan and Evan and I spend a lot of time together working out material and writing jokes, so we mesh pretty well together onstage.



The posters were kinda funny for the show. We had an opening act, Duwende – an a cappella group from NYC. The posters sort of made it look like they had a different name:







Our hotel was a quaint little bed and breakfast with goats outside.







We had a great turnout for the show. At first we were all a little concerned because with three acts, the show can get a little long, but people hung in and laughed until the very end. Being that it was a parents’ weekend, I guess Lyndon State didn’t want little kids to find their way into the show which, at times, contains adult language (but not always). So they put up signs to warn people. I found that pretty funny.



At LSC, I also debuted the NEW version of the Chicken Trick. I’ve done the bit the same way for quite a while and decided it was time for a change. The rubber chicken is STILL in the act, but plays a little bit of a secondary role now. The new part of the trick is very funny, went over well – and requires hand sanitizer.




Next up, I’ll be at Ohio State University – Newark Campus on Wednesday!



peace, love and salmonella,
MK

I thought it would be funny to make a “magician’s secrets” video (magician‘S not magicianS’) so I made this video in 2008. The videos are inspired by a bit that Conan O’Brien used to do on his show called “Celebrity Secrets.”

“I loved being a part of the show,” Weaver said. “It was really funny, but I wasn’t expecting to put my fingers up a chicken’s butt.”

Gotta love school news.

Do we secretly enjoy sabotaging ourselves, purposely inflicting ourselves with conflict and pain?



Throughout most of my career in show business, I have had an idea about magic that was somewhat wrong. It’s been a mantra that I’ve said to myself, to my fans, interviewers, and to other magicians. It was a saying so second nature to me that it easily rolls off of my tongue. I had built my philosophy in performance around six simple words:



People don’t like to be fooled.



It was that sentiment, that idea that being fooled made people feel bad, that fueled many of the decisions I made in choosing content for my performance. It turned out to be a good thing, because as a result of me wanting to shield the “I got fooled bad” feeling, I developed a style of performing that put the emphasis on the joke. The result ended up being something neat on its own and I certainly don’t regret it.



But I was wrong. People DO like to be fooled. A lot of people do, anyway. And lately, I’ve been seeing a parallel between wanting to be fooled and wanting other sorts of cognitive conflict in our lives. Do you know anyone that invites drama into their lives on a regular basis?







Some people love drama – others find themselves looking for an argument. Humans are, for whatever reason, attracted to conflict. And I think sometimes that’s something that’s internalized. And magic tricks are conflict. The mind is conflicted with what it believes to be true. It’s sort of a sadistic self-inflicting pain ritual that we love to be challenged with this conflict. It’s almost like the way some of us love to eat spicy foods that we know are going to burn our mouths. In America, most Chicken Wing restaurants have at least one sauce that they sell by basically saying “this sauce is too hot for you.” In Korea, there are entire jimdak restaurants dedicated to the idea of the food being so hot that it’s hard to eat. Here’s a video of me trying that:







My favorite hot sauce is called 100% Pain. Any of my good friends know that I always have a bottle in the fridge. When I have people over, sometimes we’ll have fun with how much we can stand. It’s usually not that much. But the burn on the tongue is kind of fun.




It’s also sort of like getting a tattoo. I got my first tattoo this year. It hurt. It hurt pretty bad WHILE I was getting it. But the euphoria from the pain made it sort of fun. And I immediately wanted another one. My brain didn’t put me into panic mode from the pain because I knew I was safe and the pain was, in a way, controlled by me.



I guess maybe we like to try it anyway because it’s fun to inflict controllable amounts of pain on ourselves. Other people play it safe and would rather not. And just like there are those people who won’t ever try the hot wings, there are people who don’t enjoy being mentally challenged by being fooled. Our first reaction is to say “Wait, do that again!” which means “If I see it again, I’ll probably be able to figure it out.” But our subconscious is reacting positively to the idea that our brain has just been stirred up a little. Our subconscious is saying “Holy shit – that just messed up what I thought was true.” And there’s something about it that we like.

These are my thoughts anyway. What do you think? Leave a comment below!

Last year, I started a series of videos called Joke/Story/Trick. It was meant to be a thing I did every week, but I quickly realized that wasn’t the case. I still have ambitions to do them more often. We’ll see what happens. Here I’ve compiled the first 8 J/S/T videos for you all in one place (Also – note there’s usually a little surprise at the end of each video)!



J/S/T #1







J/S/T #2







J/S/T #3







J/S/T #4







J/S/T #5







J/S/T #6







J/S/T #7







J/S/T #8







I’ve already got the idea in my head for the next Joke/Story/Trick video and I hope to make it in the next couple days. Also – if you like the videos above – please help spread the love and share them with your friends! Post them on your Facebook wall, or tweet them. I appreciate it!