The 2012 Winter/Spring Tour is off to a wintery start! We had to reschedule the first college campus of the year (see below) and almost had to reschedule a second one! Nonetheless, things are really clicking with the show. I sincerely hope you have the opportunity to get to one of the shows on the tour soon!  See the below list of shows on the schedule to see if I’ll be in a city near you and keep checking back for updates!

2012 Winter/Spring Tour

January 12 – Chicago, IL – RESCHEDULED FOR FEB. 2
January 14 – Dubois, PA
January 19 – Adrian, MI
January 21 – Glassboro, NJ
January 26 – Cleveland, OH
January 31 – Baltimore, MD
February 2 – Chicago, IL
February 3 – Flagstaff, AZ
February 7 – Alpine, TX
February 9 – Lyndonville, VT
February 11 – Guest DJing –  Powell, OH
February 15 – Melbourne, FL
February 16 – Normal, IL
February 18 – Columbus, OH
February 22 – Mattoon, IL
February 25-29 – NACA – Charlotte, NC
March 10 – Dayton, OH
March 16 – Bexley, OH
March 29-31 – NACA – St. Paul, MN
April 6 – Bennington, VT
April 13 – Ewing, NJ
April 21 – Hamilton, OH
April 28 – Manito, IL

For more info on any of the above dates, refer to my published tour schedule.

 

Also – remember that voting is still going on for 2012 Entertainer of the Year!  The story was recently picked up by Columbus NBC4!

 

 

These “year-in-review” posts sometimes feel somewhat obligatory, but in this case, 2011 was an incredible year and as I look back, I’m overwhelmed with topics to write about.



Here are some standout memories:


2011 was a record year for me as far as the college tour goes. So many great memories. I performed in more colleges than ever this year. While it was hard on my body and mind at times, I got through it with the help of friends, loved ones and amazing audiences.


Did some great TV with ABC6/FOX28 Columbus’s Johnny DiLoretto – some of my first experience with LIVE television. I learned that live TV can be a very difficult thing – Johnny handles it like a pro. When it goes well, it’s exhilarating!


I began my commercial acting career in 2011, and worked on commercials and industrials for Intel, Ohio Lottery, Kemba Financial and a few others!


In 2011, I offered an original creation as my first release to the magic community. repAIR is a Popped and Restored Balloon effect that has never been seen before in the history of magic. It was met with favorable reviews and has sold really well so far.

The Free Beer Tour* was an event that I put together with Corey Montie where I toured local bars and taught attendees bar bets that they could use to scam their friends out of free drinks.


In probably one of the most important things I’ve done in my career, I helped Hopeline, IMAlive.org and Post Secret raise money for Suicide Awareness through this PSA.


Predictions for 2012:

The Kardashians will become irrelevant. Until one of them does something stupid that acts like catnip for humans and makes television gossip shows go apeshit crazy. The American Public will be thrown into an uproar and they will get government involved, who will use new National Defense Legislation to hold the Kardashians in an undisclosed location. This will launch the Kardashians into a new Reality (ever wonder why reality shows hire writers?) show called “The Kardashians Appeal to Congress.”

Apple will come out with a product that you never knew you needed. By next December, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

McDonalds will work with Paula Dean to introduce a new product called “McFatass.”

A Republican presidential candidate will say something stupid.

A group of people with Mayan ancestry will finally reveal the secret “Part 2″ of the calendar they’ve been hiding.

Playboy will offer $50M to Betty White to pose nude. She will accept.

An asteroid will come so close to the Earth that TV News networks will actually be forced to report actual news. The Huffington Post will bump their previous lead-story about what Whoopie said yesterday on The View.

Someone will ask me If I can make them disappear.

You will receive a bad haircut.

Betty White’s Playboy spread will launch her into a career in pornography, shocking everyone who thought the first Golden Girl to do porn would be Rue McClanahan.

The Presidential race will end in chaos when Major News networks announce that the candidate with the most electoral votes was Exxon Mobil.

You will fall in love.

For me, I can already tell that 2012 has some exciting things coming. Two of them I can’t talk about quite yet, but soon! If you get on my mailing list by entering your email address above or clicking here, I guarantee you’ll hear about them! As always, I usually tweet about things as they happen! I hope everyone has had an amazing Holiday Season. Have a wonderful and fun-filled New Years Eve. Make sure you kiss your loved one and hold them tight. If you don’t have a loved one, grab the person next to you and smooch. The memory of the kiss will long outlast the bruise you’ll receive from his or her significant other.


Stay tuned,
MK

Here’s the new 2011-2012 Tour Poster!







Poster design by Edwards Creative, Columbus Ohio.
There is a G-Rated Version of the poster available as well. Both poster designs can be downloaded in print-quality resolution or purchased on CafePress.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=329555&id=16270130518&saved

Timmy Swears, Stupid Eye Trick, Rubber Bands: Joke/Story/Trick #9

What an awesome year. If there’s anything I can say about 2010, it’s that it gave me some pretty damn good stories. Here are a few:



KOREA:
- Embarrassingly pulled the General’s daughter onstage for the chicken trick during a military show in South Korea. Found out it was the General’s daughter AFTER the show when the General tried to scare me.
- Was given a special gift by a soldier after a show.
- Created some amazing experiences eating Korean food, shopping in open markets, slamming up against a language barrier and seeing things I’ve never seen before.
- Befriended a bunch of Professional Wrestlers also touring Korea.
- Got the hell out of South Korea just in time.
- Was driven, without military escort, by an unfamiliar Korean bus driver through the DMZ and left stranded on an Army base.
Blog posts about South Korea here.







COLLEGE TOUR:
- The orange ball trick produced some hilarious results in 2010, including phrases like “Fish Shit” and “Shit Fountain.”
- Experienced (and handled) a student with an open laptop in the front row, skyping during my show.
- Performed a late show outdoors in Florida and apparently interrupted one angry student’s sleep.
- Traveled to 35 cities in three and half months.
- Performed two showcases at Regional Campus Activities Conferences.
- Some shows had AMAZING audiences and TONS of fan support (St. A’s, BGSU and Viterbo – I’m lookin’ at you)!
- Almost got caught in a tornado at OSU Newark.
- Repurposed my high school band uniform as stage attire.
- Created some amazing memories on the road.



CORPORATES:
- Realized that the corporate crowd is the drinking crowd (in most instances).
- Returned to two fantastic company parties that I had previously wowed.
- Performed a show in Canada, where I witnessed a girl literally rip her shirt off like Hulk Hogan at the hotel bar after the show. Most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in a bar.



MISCELLANEOUS:
- Launched an all new michaelkentLIVE.com
- Got two tattoos
- Threw a surprise birthday party for my dog.



It was an awesome year. After telling some stories at dinner the other night, a friend’s mother said to me “And you’re HOW old?” It really put things in perspective. I’ve gotten to experience some really cool things the last few years and from what it looks like, there are even more on the horizon.



Happy Holidays!



peace, love and the future,
MK

It’s time once again for nominations for Campus Activities Magazine’s Readers Choice Awards. The difference this year is that their website is down, so the nominations are being completed the old-fashioned way – by mail, scan & email, or fax. Here’s the form to print and fill out!



I think if I win the award, it will help me free up some time to work on my new invention. I want to combine Four Loko alcoholic energy drink with 5 React gum and call it “9 React Like a Drunken Idiot.”



So I appreciate the help – and if you need the address of an antique store to find a fax machine, let me know and I’ll try to help. hehe The form is below:







I would appreciate it greatly if you would nominate me for categories #8 & #10 (Best Live Novelty Performance and Newest Rising Star). And don’t forget to nominate Fresh Variety as agency of the year!



Fax to: 803.712.6703



Email to: admin@campusactivitiesmagazine.com



Mail to: PO Box 509
Prosperity, SC 29127



I know it’s more work than just clicking a link on the Internet, but if you could spare a couple minutes to help out, I would appreciate it GREATLY!



Thanks again – 2010 has been an AMAZING year and from what it looks like 2011 is going to be even better.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=36988&id=130997323584750

More photos, videos and more at:

http://www.facebook.com/michaelkentfans

Walking in to the American Legion Hall in Ft. Jennings, Ohio, I knew it was going to be a fun one! I was scheduled to perform with Hypnotist and friend, Bill Gladwell. The event was an Annual Comedy Night Fundraiser for the Ft. Jennings Volunteer Fire Department. There were more people in the American Legion than there were houses in Ft. Jennings and the alcohol was flowing.

When I tell people that I tour colleges, they often assume that I perform for drunk people a lot. In reality, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In the case of 95% of college performances, my show is brought to campus as the alternative to going out and drinking. And many of my shows occur on weeknights anyway (I know, since when did that stop college students from getting flagrantly hammered on four loko!?) In any case, It’s the corporate events that I do where I encounter the drunk audience members. Both the Chicken Trick Volunteer and the Money Trick Volunteer were pretty damn drunk at the Ft. Jennings show.



The volunteer I used for the Chicken Trick was all over the place. I had to really reel her in. After the show, she told me she took it easy on me. I wish she would have let me have it! The volunteer for the Money Trick had a killer line that brought the house down.

Me: What if your $20 bill was back together, still had your name on it…and was in THAT box?



Her: Better than MY box!

Wow. Just….wow. The show was very rowdy and went way long because we were all having so much fun.



The previous night, I had been in Ft. Wayne, IN performing for one of my favorite corporate groups there. It’s a small group of 35-50 therapists – all women. They have a good time and get rowdy in a different way than the Ft. Jennings crowd. While in Fort Wayne, I had a few minutes to visit Dick Stoner’s magic shop, “Stoner’s.” Dick Stoner is a friend who has come to see my show in the past. He’s a legend in the world of Comedy Magic. Dick has been doing this so well and for so long that he’s got clients that have had him perform for their event for upwards of 45 consecutive years. After my show, I also had some free time to visit Dominick at Donny Manco’s New Republic Tattoo Studio and get a tattoo I’ve been wanting:




Before heading to Ft. Wayne (not sure why I’m doing this blog post in reverse chronological order), I got to perform in my hometown of Urbana, OH. Photos here! I talked about Urbana in my previous entry, so I won’t get into it too much here. We got a good turnout for a small (900 people) school! The night before that, I was all the way up in Sault Ste. Marie, MI. Sault Ste. Marie, or “The Soo,” is on the Canadian border and has a bridge shaped like a moustache. I got a tour of the city and got to see the famous Sault Ste. Marie Locks.



The TSA played a trick on me on the way up to The Soo. I had something like 200 promotional microfiber lens wipes in my luggage in one of the pockets. The un-nested my nest of boxes and put the lens wipes in the smallest box – as many as they could fit…along with the little TSA “we went through your shit” note. It was funny and I laughed, but TSA really pisses me off sometimes. They put the boxes back inside one another incorrectly and could have damaged them. I once tried to file a claim when the TSA incorrectly re-packed a case and damaged it. It went nowhere. When you file a claim with the TSA, they just blame the airlines. And because I will launch into an angry rant that will make me sound like a crazy Libertarian (I am not), I won’t get into the TSA’s use of invasive and potentially dangerous back scatter X-ray scanners or groping pat-down procedures.



Regardless of the TSA’s antics, they didn’t stop me from having a killer show at Lake Superior State University and after the show, the students took me out for bar food! Also at the last two college shows, I wore a fun new purple jacket (as seen above).



Wednesday night I head to Pittsburgh, PA to perform at Duquesne University then I finish out the year with a couple more colleges, trip to the middle of nowhere (near Fargo!), a show in Brooklyn and a handful of local corporate events! Looking forward to every one of them!



peace, love and drunken chicken choking,
MK

In my job, I’m occasionally asked to perform a “showcase,” where I do a small bit of my act for talent buyers so they can decide if they want to hire me for their events. They’re incredibly stressful performances, knowing that you’re doing your act full of a room full of people who’s job it is to judge you. It’s like being on America’s Got Talent, except without the red X’s. I’m happy to say that all of the showcases went well – especially the last two – and I made it through without Piers Morgan saying anything particularly nasty about me. I know 2010 isn’t over yet, but I’ve already got some fun & exciting things planned for 2011. I can’t remember a year in which I had so many DIFFERENT types of events already on the calendar for the upcoming year at this point in the previous year. We’re talking Workshops, Weddings, Summer Camps, Motivational Talks, Colleges, Theaters, and more!



It also never fails that at this time of year, I start getting bombarded with emails and calls for performances on every Friday and Saturday in December (Christmas/Holiday Parties). I still have just a couple December dates left!



In other news, I recently attended the Ohio Arts Presenters Network Annual Conference in Columbus, Ohio along with fellow Fresh Variety Artists Jonathan Burns, and Mark Hayward. On Monday night, we were asked to collaborate with other OAPN artists to come up with some entertainment for dinner. The only rules were that it had to be something Fresh, new and collaborative. Jonathan and I put together a fun bit in which I made orange balls multiply, then disappear and reappear in Jonathan’s mouth. We did this to the accompaniment of Jason Farnham and Mark Dvorak on Toy Piano and Banjo. A lot of fun! The kick to the routine was making one of the orange balls appear in the banjo player’s mouth! The audience loved it, and I really enjoyed the pressure of putting together a 4 minute collaborative performance between 4 artists in under 4 hours. I hope to have blurry, shaky video of the routine up soon.



This week, I have a performance in East Lansing, MI at Michigan State University, then I’m actually HOME for Halloween. This is the first time I’ve been home for Halloween (my favorite holiday) in at least 5 years. I’m pretty excited!



peace, love and orange balls,
MK