Year In Review

2016 was my busiest year yet!

The year started with shows in Rhode Island, Florida, NYC, Iowa, Houston, Boston, Lubbock, South Dakota, Kansas, and Illinois. After that, I took my lovely wife to my show at the National Museum of Wildlife Art. Our road trip led us through Utah, Idaho, and into Wyoming where Stephie fell in love with everything about Jackson Hole.

Up early to take photos of the sun rising over the Grand Tetons.

Shows kept me busy. I performed in an airplane hanger, on the rooftops of New York City, a barn full of neon signs, giant conference rooms, small meeting rooms, casinos, large theaters, small stages, and more. Plus, I headlined at The Chicago Magic Lounge once a month. It's been great to be a small part of such a cool project and to help magic flourish in Chicago once again.

In May, Stephie graduated from Columbia College in Chicago with her Masters of Arts Management. (She had a full-ride scholarship and graduated with top marks!) She came with me to a gig in Vegas a few days later to celebrate. The gig went so well that the client got me drunk in the bar at The Cosmopolitan. I came back to our room upstairs and woke Stephanie up. You'll have to ask her for the rest of the story...

Stephie said, "I got to be on that stage before you!" BURN.

Then, I spent a couple days in Los Angeles with my best friend Frank Fogg. We went to the beach, spent a night at the Magic Castle, and saw Derek Delgaudio's fantastic one-man show "In & Of Itself." It was a great trip.

If you've enjoyed any part of my show then Frank probably had a part in it. He's easily the most creative magician I know.

After a gig in NYC I slept two hours then woke up to get to the airport. An hour later my Uber dropped me off at LaGuardia. I was tired but I was on time with my bags in tow. Everything was perfect - except my flight was out of Newark. I always fly in and out of LaGuardia but had booked this last-minute trip into LGA and out of EWR. Oops! One hour and $100 later I walked through security and straight onto my flight in Jersey. You learn not to panic on the road. It may be terrible in the moment but nothing's ever as bad as it seems.

Laugh it off, learn from it, and move on.

In July, Stephie and I took a week off for a trip to London. We were there right after Brexit, which was quite interesting to say the least. We did the usual touristy things - museums, Big Ben, the London Eye, the Tower of London, Sherlock Holmes Museum, and more - then went on to Blackpool to see the last night of Derren Brown's "Miracle" tour.

The show was fantastic. Derren is the reason I got into mentalism so I was thrilled to finally be able to see him live. Stephie patiently waited with me at the stage door following the show and after an hour, Derren emerged to say hi to the ten of us who were still waiting. It was a perfect night!

With Derren Brown after his show "Miracle" in Blackpool.

By the end of the summer, I had made a few new friends in the theatre community and lost another friend to suicide. I logged a couple hundred miles training for a marathon, then injured my feet and lost all of my progress. In the midst of it all, I wrote a new show and performed it three times at the Chicago Fringe Festival.

In the fall I performed in Utah, Nevada, Napa Valley, Seattle, Ontario, Buffalo, Albany, Houston, South Carolina, Cleveland, and of course Chicago. We went back to Rhode Island for a show in Watch Hill. It was just down the street from Taylor Swift's house! We saw the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, Pier 39, the Space Needle, the Grand Tetons, the St. Louis Arch, Niagara Falls, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, and Zion National Park.

It's way better from the Canadian side.

At the start of October I turned 30. THIRTY! My only request this year was to be able to perform on my birthday. I remember mentioning that I could "think of no better place to spend my birthday than onstage" and having a fellow performer say "I can think of a dozen better places."

Well, I disagree. So I spent my birthday blowing minds onstage at the Chicago Magic Lounge.

Best gift ever.

At the start of November I watched the Cubs win the World Series alone in my hotel room after a gig in Las Vegas. After the election I produced the "Be Happy Variety Show" to raise money for the ACLU. We raised over $1500. I also joined with my friends Nick and Sin and started performing at their monthly private event in downtown Chicago known as The Magic Penthouse.

Taking a final bow at the "Be Happy" variety show.

In December I had an extremely busy schedule of holiday shows and private appearances. My final flight out of Chicago was cancelled due to snow, so Stephie and I loaded the car and drove 6 hours over to Cleveland to make it happen. I never miss a show.

After losing my friend Jacob I started writing more. I needed an outlet to express the thoughts I was feeling. I've stuck with it and now I publish my thoughts here on my website every Thursday. I call it: Thursday Thoughts. Original, I know.

It took going halfway around the world to see Derren Brown's show for me to have an artistic breakthrough and ascend to the next plateau of my art. I've taken my work in a completely new direction and am truly excited for the months ahead. I already have bookings in three countries next year, so it's shaping up to be pretty incredible. (Stephie's looking forward to going to Cancun in March. For some reason I can't convince her to come to Omaha in January, though.)

2016 was hard. There was loss and pain. The election sucked, great icons passed away, and I spent much of the summer in physical therapy. But I spent the year looking ahead. I went to as many shows as I could and the best ones I've mentioned here. I studied Stoicism and became obsessed with figuring out how to be truly happy. I read and watched and studied and practiced and dreamt about everything that's important to me. It was time well spent.

Blowing minds at The Magic Penthouse.

I don't know what 2017 has in store but here's what I plan to do:

1. Travel even more. (Hopefully Stephie can come, too.)

2. Write every day. (Currently I write 1,000 words a day. I'm going to stick with it.)

3. My name was just drawn for the 2017 Chicago Marathon. Let the training commence!

4. Get off the Internet. Read more, create more, make more eye contact, take more pictures.

5. Make more videos.

One last thing.

I love telling stories through video. For three years now, I've been recording every moment of every day. A few months ago my Canon S120 stopped working. That's the second S120 I've busted. When you use it as much as I do it wears out pretty quickly.

For Christmas I asked for some gift cards to put towards replacing my camera. Thanks to some generous family members and some extra savings I just ordered a new camera. I've been filming everything I did in 2016 - good or bad - but for the past few months I've had to use my iPhone and GoPros to capture those moments. It's just not the same so I can hardly wait for my new camera to arrive!

For now, in the spirit of making more vidoes, may I present to you my newest project: My 2016 Year In Review Video. If you're looking for me in 2017 I'll probably be onstage somewhere in North America. Maybe you'll be in the audience.

See you next year.

Happy Holidays

In a small apartment in Chicago, two best friends are huddled over their keyboards. The soft glow of the screen casts a shadow as their fingers type away in rhythmic patterns. Words flow, forming into ideas, and the ideas lead to the end of a path where dreams come true.

Down the street an old Asian lady quietly tends to her dry cleaning business while the sound of Christmas carolers echoes out of the church across the intersection.

A block away, a sex shop prominently displays this year’s line of electronics in their window, proudly flying a rainbow flag above the streets of Boystown. 

A pack of Cubs fans hoop and holler as they wait on the 152 bus. It’s been weeks since the playoffs but you can still feel the excitement. When you wait a hundred years to win the world series, every day feels like Christmas.

Christians, Muslims, and Jews wait in line to buy coffee as a gentle snow begins to fall outside. People are nicer somehow, holding the door for each other and giving a friendly hello as they pass on the sidewalk.

The holidays are here.

Ever since last month’s election, people have been telling me I live in a bubble. They say the “liberal elites” are out-of-touch with real people and have no idea about life in small town, rural America.

The truth is, I grew up in small town America. I was raised in the middle-of-nowhere Kansas in a four-stoplight-one-high-school-eighty-person-graduating-class-mostly-white county seat.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted more. I wanted to be where the action was, surrounded by people and excitement. I was a big city kid trapped in my small rural hometown.

I didn’t turn my back on my upbringing - I learned from it.

A small town often feels like Christmas in the big city. People are always friendly. You see someone you know everywhere you go and everyone always has time to talk. 

You leave your windows down and keep your front doors unlocked. You don’t have to chain your bicycle and it takes weeks to go through a tank of gas.

Small town life is full of perks.

But living in a small town has its downside, too. The community often attracts similar people - ethnically, politically, religiously, and so on. Only surrounding yourself with like-minded people sounds a lot like a bubble to me.

That’s why I dreamt of leaving. I wanted to know what else existed outside my two mile square hometown.

I’ll never forget my first day of college at USC in Los Angeles. I went from having five thousand people in my hometown to having five thousand people on my side of campus. Everywhere I went I was met with an idea that opposed the first eighteen years of my childhood. Some were good and some were bad, but they taught me to understand why I felt the way I did. 

If I could defend my point-of-view, then I stood my ground and clung to that idea. If someone challenged me and I didn’t have a decent response then I realized I had to change my way of thinking.

Surrounding yourself with different people makes you realize you don’t have all the answers and the ones you do have probably aren’t the best.

I moved to Chicago to be around forward-thinking people from all walks of life. I share train cars with all sorts of people - black, white, gay, straight, old, and young.

We rarely make eye contact and bike thieves are rampant. Most people just put their heads down and get where they’re trying to go. And we always lock our doors. (That’s the simple reality of living somewhere with more people: there are plenty of good people doing good things, but there are also plenty of bad people doing bad things.) If I do live in a bubble, at least it covers all of life’s experiences and not just the good ones.

That’s what most of the year is like in Chicago. You keep your head down and try to avoid people so you can get to work. You have to filter out the distractions from the main attractions, just so you can get through the day.

Except for December.

Something magical happens right after Thanksgiving. I get to walk through my neighborhood and smile at people as they walk by. We all take an extra second to make sure everyone is in high spirits.

I’ve always loved Christmas. The food, the weather, the music, the memories. Everything about it.

But this year, more than ever, I’m so thankful to live in a city where I can share the season with all kinds of people. I’m glad we can all come together to be merry and wish each other well.

I keep mentioning Christmas because that’s how I was raised, but the “liberal elite” in me knows I should be saying “Happy Holidays”.

At a gig several years ago I made the rookie mistake of wishing children “Merry Christmas” as they gave me high-fives after my show. A small girl looked up at me and said “We don’t celebrate Christmas. We’re Jewish.”

I had no idea. I was new to the big city. I’d never met someone who didn’t celebrate Christmas before.

But now I know.  

No matter what you believe or where you’re from, Happy Holidays from this optimistic, overly enthusiastic husband, friend, student, writer, mind reader, artist, and atheist.

In this bubble, all are welcome.

Fun

Being onstage is my favorite thing to do for fun.

Mind reading shows are inherently interactive. The show is not about me, it's about you - the audience. Without you there are no minds to read, no thoughts to gather, no laughter, no applause.

My show is improvisational by design. The script has peaks and valleys that lead to an inexplicable dénouement.

The peaks are set-in-stone. Exposition and dialogue, crafted to move the narrative forward. The words must be clear and concise, engaging and interesting. And, in the process, a character must emerge. A fully-formed, three dimensional, onstage persona. Self-deprecating but smart, funny without trying too hard. In control, but not intimidating. Easier said than done.

Then we reach the mountaintop. The next peak is visible, mere minutes of dialogue away, but I have to cross the valley of improvisation to get there. 

Going downhill isn't bad in this scenario. Going downhill means building momentum. Every word and action that brought us here has led us to this place. And that's when it gets fun.

I don't know what I'll say in this moment. It's based on audience responses. The thoughts and ideas brought onstage each night are different, with each leading to a new path through my "Choose-Your-Own-Mind-Reading-Adventure" show.

Sometimes, when I'm rehearsing, I think of the valleys and they scare me. There's a big, intimidating gap in the script that never gets filled in until that exact moment onstage.

Will I remember their name? Will they be helpful? Will I respond with something clever? Or will I fall flat on my face and stumble over my words? Will I completely blank and fail to come up with a witty ad-lib?

I watch other performers improvising onstage and think to myself "Wow, they're good. That was such a fast response. I'm no where near that quick."

Then the show comes and something happens. I'm in the moment, listening and responding in real-time, but it feels like I'm on auto-pilot. It's as if all of my years of theatre and improv training take over for a few seconds, saying "Don't worry. We've got this!"

The words are there. The jokes are crafted in the moment, like last week: 

"Name a city in the world that you've been to before and would like to return to again."

"Tampa."

"Who would want to go back to Tampa?"

Or the night before, when a middle-aged woman kept voicing her thoughts (unprompted) from the front row:

"You don't have to say every single thing that comes to mind! You're like a typical boomer on Facebook, oversharing and unaware. Am I right, Millenials?!"

Those may not read as good as they sounded but believe me, after winning an audience over for the first 20 minutes of my show - those ad-libbed responses brought the house down.

The goal is to encourage this interaction, not squash it. There's no fourth wall. The audience is the cast, the thoughts are my props, and your mind is my stage. It's not a one-man show. We're all in this together.

When volunteers come onstage I have a series of three questions I ask to get to know them a little better.

• Where are you from?

• What do you do for a living?

• What's your favorite thing to do for fun?

Knowing where someone is from is very telling and a career choice is certain to reveal something about a person that wasn't obvious before, but my favorite question is the final one: What's your favorite thing to do for fun?

95% of my volunteers don't have an answer for that question. They hesitate, unsure of how to respond, then awkwardly say the first thing they think of. Typically, it's answers like "Drink", "Go out with friends", "Party", and so on.

If my participants had a script, this moment would be their "valley of improvisation". This is the one question that gives them the biggest chance to express themself, to open up and say something personal. Yet, so few ever know how to respond.

It's as if the things that define us today are no longer our passions. The things that should take priority - our interests, frivolous pursuits, and more - have taken the backseat to the things that society deems more important. We have become defined by where we're from and what we do, not where we're headed and what we want to be doing.

However, every once in a while I do get an interesting answer onstage.

"Rock climbing."

"Skydiving."

"Sewing."

This is the 5% of the audience that interests me the most. These people have a clear idea of what defines them and how they choose to spend their time. They aren't boxed in by anyone else's presuppositions about modern-day life. They are fully themselves and not ashamed to admit it in front of a roomful of strangers. These are my people.

I was watching a documentary recently called "Particle Fever". It's about a group of scientists working on the Hadron Collider and studying the Higgs boson particle. (It's a fascinating documentary if you're into that sort of thing.) The closing line stuck with me:

“Why do humans do science? Why do they do art? The things that are least important for our survival are the very things that make us human.”

— Particle Fever

It's not where you're from and it's not what you do for a living that defines you. It's not what people tell you to say and how you say it. Staying on script can be awfully boring. The fun begins when you set off on your own, into uncharted territory. The fun starts when you give yourself permission to do what you've always wanted. The fun starts when you want it to.

So...what's your favorite thing to do for fun?

Learning

The road is never more lonely than after a bad show. The economy rental car silently cuts through the night, guiding you back to your room on its own. Your mind is elsewhere, contemplating the minutiae of the show, reliving the performance word-for-word, beat-for-beat.

A bad show is like getting turned down by the girl you asked to prom - except this time it's in front of 500 strangers. A bad show is like forgetting your sixth grade book report over and over again for 45 minutes. A bad show is like watching your coffee mug careen off the counter in slow-motion, crashing into a million pieces on the kitchen floor.

Don't be fooled. When you're bombing, you're completely aware of it. You know you're bombing and you do your best to tread water and get through it. A slight laugh or a hint of energy in the room gives you hope to continue, even though you may have lost the crowd 30 minutes ago.

Sometimes it's the audience. Maybe they weren't your demo. Maybe they were too drunk, or not drunk enough. Maybe they were too tired.

Sometimes it's the venue. Maybe the room was too big. Maybe it was too small. Maybe the sound system was outdated and people couldn't hear you. Maybe the client changed the floor plan at the last minute.

Sometimes it's the event. Maybe it went too long. Maybe there was too much going on. Maybe they were distracted by the company raffle or the dessert the caterer just laid out on the opposite side of the room.

The excuses echo in your hotel room as you stare at the ceiling. You question every decision that led you to this point. But the only person to blame is yourself.

It's always your fault - no matter what. 

You failed to educate the buyer or vet the client. You failed to effectively plan the layout. You failed at something.

It's always your fault.

You get into performing for the good shows: the applause, the standing ovations, the packed houses and rave reviews. 

Good shows are what you dream of on those early morning flights around the country. Good shows are the answer to every half-baked creative equation scrawled in your notebook. Good shows are the destination...but bad shows are how you get there.

Bad shows are your education.

A bad show stops you in your tracks. You're distraught and depressed but everyone else is going on with their lives like nothing happened. The sun still rises and sets, just like any other day.

At first it's hard to sleep and hard to move on, but developing a mental suit-of-armor is a must for a career in the arts. You keep the good and fix the bad, then move on to the next gig.

This isn't about a bad show I had recently. It's about something else. But you're supposed to write about what you know and I thought that the necessity of learning from bad gigs was a good metaphor for life. For every experience, you have to keep the good and fix the bad. You have to wake up tomorrow and get back to work.

Life will go on. It always does.

Patience

I love games. 

Board games, card games, party games - you name it. Strategy games were always my favorite. Chess, Stratego, Risk, Go, Pente, and more. I'm not sure why. I guess when you live in a small town and you don't have much else to do, you end up making your own fun. My fun was mastering any game I could get my hands on.

My fourth grade teacher loved playing chess. He was really good and never took it easy on me. Even when I moved on to sixth and seventh grade, I would walk back across town after school to meet him for our weekly chess match.

I had a long row of chess books at home and studied them more than my homework. But no matter how much I learned about chess I could never beat Mr. Kern.

Then one day I castled, sacrified my knight, and set myself up beautifully for the end game. We danced around each other on the board in silence, the custodian's keys echoing in the empty, familiar hallway.

We traded pieces and shielded our kings, and it became apparent that I wasn't going to lose. I had dreamt of this moment and anticipated his moves. Mr. Kern stared down over the board and, after what seemed like hours, he did exactly what I was hoping. Finally, it was my turn. 

It was a draw. I had pulled even. I was ecstatic.

Mr. Kern - Lyle - had given me a tremendous gift. He had forced me to actually learn the game and try to outwork him. He hadn't let me win and had always played his best. 

Somedays he would humiliate me, winning after a handful of moves. Others, we would fight hard before he would outfox me with a clever combination. But that day was different. I was prepared for his strategy and fought back. I had learned to hold my own and create my own opportunities. It took months and months of agonizing defeats, but my dedication had finally paid off.

I don't remember playing chess with Lyle much after that. Middle school activities got in the way; track, drama, basketball, and choir. I was caught up in adolescence, trying hard to fit in when I could and hide when I couldn't.

In high school I joined the tennis team. Only in a small town could your high school tennis coach also be your favorite elementary school teacher. Lyle and I had crossed paths again.

I had a volatile temper on the court, always knowing I could be better but unable to get where I wanted. And Lyle was there for me again, showing me ways to control my anger and channel it into my game. By my senior year, thanks to Lyle, I was a top-ten finisher at the state tournament.

My favorite games - just like tennis and chess -  teach you patience. You have to commit to something for a long time and know that your hard work will pay off in the end. You have to be willing to be terrible in hopes that one day you can finally pull even. You have to wait for your shot before you can finally unleash your forehand...or bishop...or new mind reading show.

There's no shortcut to success. There's no secret "lifehack" that will suddenly get you where you want to be. No one is going to take it easy on you and if they do, they'll only be doing you a disservice.

Some people find success quickly, with few roadblocks or detours along the way. For the rest of us, we have to keep working and writing and practicing and studying and finally - after patiently waiting - it's our turn to make a move.