On Friday, Mer, knowing how to show a guy a good time, took me back to school for supper. CVCA’s branch of FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) was having a fundraiser spaghetti dinner. Mer had supplied a couple of Italian-music CDs for the event, and so had been given a free ticket. She was kind enough to pay for mine. So, we sat down in a well-decorated cafeteria and ate some pretty good Italian food. We were waited on by one of Mer’s students whom I also know, since he was in Royal Fools last year (he was not able to do Fools this year because of sports schedules). It is fun to know the students. We were joined after awhile by the Murphys, former CVCA parents who put three kids through the school, the last of whom graduated last year and had been a member of my Irish dance club and had been in Mer’s English classes as well. We got a chance to hear about how the family was doing, and it was a very pleasant meal.

After supper, we headed over to the auditorium/chapel for the Sometimes-Annual CVCA Talent Show. It is the “sometimes annual” show because we missed one year a few years ago – this was the fifth show in six years. Mer had been tapped to be a judge, and so she was on stage with the other three judges. I was seated in the audience when I noticed that a part of the projector screen casing was hanging down from the case. I was afraid it might fall on someone, and another faculty member asked me about it, so I went to get a pole to see if I could pull it down. It was too high up to repair quickly, so I figured I would pull it down and worry about fixing it later. I thought it was made of wood and would either pull out of the casing or snap off. Sadly, the show was starting by the time I got back, so I waited for intermission.

When intermission came, I went on stage and had one of the judges help me. I pulled and waited for the wood to snap, but it did not. Finally, one end came close enough to the stage that Eric (one of the judges) could grab it. It turned out to be metal, and no amount of tugging would bring it down. So, we were stuck with this metal piece sticking straight down on stage. The best of intentions….

The actual talent show was fun. I think there were nine acts, although I may have lost count. To my recollection, the acts were:
– an Irish dancer
– a Korean exchange student beat-boxing (and really well, too!)
– a rap duo
– an a cappella singing group of six eighth-grade girls
– two bands
– a young man who displayed a mighty ability to crack his knuckles on command
– a humorous narrated story about a light-saber duel
– a duo presenting a ten-minute version of James and the Giant Peach, with clever motions and varied voices

In between each act, the judges would make positive comments, and the emcees would entertain. The emcees were two of the more popular teachers at CVCA, who also are accomplished musicians, so they were able to play and tell bad jokes and the like, all to good effect.

It was an entertaining evening, with the James and the Giant Peach act winning the competition. The beat-boxing Korean came in second, and the rap duo rounded out the evening in third. The event was well attended, and all the proceeds went toward raising funds for a service group’s spring break service trip, where they go into the greater community to help out with local groups (like Habitat for Humanity, food banks, and the like). So, it was a fun evening for a good cause.

On Wednesday, Mer and I got to go out to supper at Friday’s, where we met up with two former students, Katie and Sarah. The happy thing about the evening is that Katie and Sarah initiated it. That is amazing to me, that nineteen-year-old students would actually want to hang out with 40ish-year-old teachers.

We were both very close to Sarah and Katie. Sarah and Katie were both in Mer’s Honors and AP English classes, and Katie took two writing electives with Mer, and was her student assistant last year. Both girls were in my Irish dance club at school, with Sarah being in it for four years and Katie for three. Both were in Royal Fools as well, with Sarah being in the group for two years and Katie for her senior year.  And they both went with us on last year’s London trip. They are both great and fun people, and so we were both delighted at the invitation.

We met them at Friday’s around 7:00, and we were there until almost 9:00. We had very slow service because the restaurant had sent home most of the cooks when it was slow, so they were unprepared for a mini-rush that happened around the time we came in. As such, we waited about forty-five minutes to get our meals, but it was all fine since we were busy chatting and getting caught up on the lives of Sarah and Katie. The time passed quite quickly (although I was certainly happy when our food did show up!).

After supper, Sarah and Katie swung by the house to pick up some cookies I had just made, and we talked for another fifteen minutes or so before they headed off. It was a great reminder of one of the big reasons of why Mer and I work in education.

Another group of former students invited us over on Thursday. Clarice and Matt invited us over for a game night, and our former students Josh and Kristen (now married!) were to be there as well. The games never really happened, as Josh and Kristen both ended up working later than they’d expected, and they arrived at separate times. In the meantime, Clarice and Matt had put in the first season of the TV show Arrested Development. They thought we would like it, and they were right.

The show features a very dysfunctional and weird family, where the one normal son is trying to straighten out the family business, which had been run by the father, who was put in jail for embezzlement. The show is very witty, and the strange family members are painfully weird. We ended up watching three full episodes. Josh and Kristen showed up partway through one of the shows, and they were delighted, since they are big fans. We had a very good time laughing at the show and getting caught up with the others.

It is a bit weird that young people want to hang out with us, but I’ll not question it. I love the energy and vitality of our younger friends, and it keeps me from getting too old mentally, even if the body keeps aging along. Young people rub off, and that is a very good thing.

Last Saturday was “Mer’s day,” so she was in charge. Her plans did not need to start until late morning, so she let me go running thirteen miles on the Towpath. I’m kicking around the idea of running the Cleveland Marathon as part of a fundraiser for a colleague’s husband who was an avid runner, but is currently fighting cancer. I think I can be ready in time (the Cleveland Marathon is in late May), but I wanted to see how I felt with longer runs at this point. The run went fine, so I’m still seriously considering the marathon.

After I got home and showered and ate, we puttered around the house until almost noon, when we got the car and headed west. We went to Pennsylvania, to Geneva College (about ninety minutes away). One of Mer’s former students, Tiffany, is involved in the theater there, and we have gone to see her in a couple of plays to date – Measure for Measure and Alice in Wonderland (where she was the lead). On Saturday, Tiffany was the lead woman in She Stoops to Conquer, a farce about mistaken identities.

Mer and I had seen She Stoops to Conquer years ago at Actors’ Summit Theater, but we could not remember much of the plot of the play. We both remembered that we enjoyed it and thought it witty, so that was a good sign. Geneva’s production was very good, and the play was amusing throughout, with several laugh-out-loud moments.

The basic plot (ignoring some of the subplots – the play gets quite involved) is one based on mistaken identities and a misunderstanding of social standing – a “manners” play. An old and conservative man has a young daughter (played by Tiffany). He has arranged for a handsome and wealthy and successful son of an old friend to come and stay with them to see if a marriage will result. The daughter is intrigued by the description of the son, but the son has a major flaw – he is uptight and shy around women of good breeding, although is it rumored that he is fond of flirting with women of the working class. The son, meanwhile, has been misinformed that the house in which he is to stay is actually an inn, and so when he shows up, he starts ordering the father around and behaving as though he owns the place, which infuriates the father. When he meets the young woman he might marry, he freezes up and can barely function, so the young woman conceives of the plan to pretend to be a barmaid, so the young man might relax around her and she can get to know him (thus, she “stoops to conquer”).

The production went well. It was a matinee performance, which was sparsely attended, and mostly by grandparents. That made for a bit of a low-energy audience, but the players still kept up good energy on stage. The main actors were excellent and natural-seeming. A few of the supporting roles were a bit stilted or forced, but not to the point of distraction. The biggest difficulty in the play is always the case with high school and college productions: it was a bit hard for the actors to pull off the old men and women of the play. It worked fine, but I think one of the reasons the the Actors’ Summit version worked somewhat better was that older men played the older men parts. Still, that is unavoidable in a college production if the director is going to cast students in all the parts.

The set was basic, but effective – mostly two staircases leading to a mostly-open second floor. The lower level set was confined to the back of the stage and was a sitting nook with a fireplace. The set did give the suggestion of an inn, and it worked well for the action of the play.

It was a good production, and Mer and I had a very entertaining afternoon. We also got to briefly chat with Tiffany after the play, and she was very grateful that we had come to see it.

We headed back home and had supper, and then Mer took me out again, and to another play. This time, we headed over to the much-closer Kent State, to see their production of Ragtime. This production was in the new-to-us large theater that was finished as part of an expansion of the arts-and-music building, and the new theater is huge and beautiful. We had seats near the front. Kent uses a mixture of graduate and undergraduate students in their productions, so their plays are usually very strong. Still, I was not prepared for the high level of Ragtime. It was pretty amazing.

Ragtime is based on a book about race (whites and blacks) and immigrant relations. It ties together several story lines, focusing on a black family, an Eastern European father and daughter, and an affluent white family, with the play mostly taking place in the greater New York city area. As the title suggests, ragtime music features prominently in the musical, and that was a lot of fun.

The actors/singers were jaw-droppingly good, especially the lead actor who played Coalhouse, a ragtime musician who is looking for a woman he loves. As far as I remember from the cast list, the actor who played Coalhouse was the only professional actor, and I am glad they cast him. Even at the start of the play, when there were close to fifty actors on stage at the same time, singing the opening numbers, my eye was drawn to Coalhouse. He had a huge stage presence, and he could sing mightily. What a great actor, at least for this role.

The other actors were all excellent, to the point where after the play, I asked Mer that if this was the level of talent a regional production could put on, how did anyone ever make it in New York or Los Angeles? Kent’s Ragtime was professional-grade all the way through: acting, music, set, and sound system.

The story itself was compelling as well. Sometimes in plays there are characters whom I do not like or about whom I simply do not care. Ragtime did not have any of these. I was interested in what happened to all of the main characters, and there are a lot of them – eight main characters in the three main families, and many supporting roles.

While I suspect many people would not want to see two plays spanning over two hundred years on the same day, it made for a pretty great day for me and Mer.

There are times in my life where I get frustrated with my idle brain, and I snap and decide I need to get back into learning things. That happened again recently, so I decided to try a couple of things. Last Tuesday was the day – I started back at guitar lessons and started dance lessons with Mer.

I have had a guitar for about fourteen years now, and when we first married, Mer and I took lessons together. I had a year or so of lessons, and got to where I could play about a dozen chords and knew a few strum patterns for my right hand. Then, I stopped taking lessons, and I started putzing around with other instruments. So, over the last decade, I have managed to stall at getting better on guitar, and not really gotten good at any of the other half-dozen instruments that I have in my music room. I decided to go back to square one, and I asked a colleague of mine who plays guitar if he would give me lessons. He agreed, and we had out first get-to-know-you lesson on Tuesday. I think Matt (my teacher) was pleased with what I already knew, and I liked Matt’s teaching style and the fact he listened to what I like for music, so I think it is going to work out well.

Tuesday night, Mer and I had our first dance lessons. Years ago, my brother took swing dance lessons, I got to see him dance swing a few times. It looked like a ton of fun, and I have wanted to try it for awhile now. Mer and I are at the age where some of our former students are getting married, especially this upcoming summer. The potential for dancing at receptions seemed to me like a good excuse to finally take some lessons, and happily Mer agreed. We found a ballroom in downtown Cuyahoga Falls, only about ten minutes away. We had an introductory (short and free) lesson last week, but out first real lesson was Tuesday evening. We met our instructor, Dominique, and he turned out to be a lot of fun. He knows what he is doing, and he laughs a lot. We had a good time with him. We learned three slow-dance steps, and four swing steps. Sadly, we did not write them down, so once we went to practice the steps on Thursday, we remembered the slow-dance steps, but could only remember three of the four swing steps. I’m sure we’ll pick it up once we go over it again, but Mer and I both agreed we need to write the steps down, if only to help us remember once we get home. The basic steps have been fairly easy to learn, so we may actually be able to dance a few dances at our first wedding of the season, which is in a month. Dancing with Mer is much fun, and I wish I had started years ago. Bully for me in finally getting my butt on the dance floor.

Last weekend we got to spend the weekend with our friend Ellen in Hillsdale, Michigan. The trip was prompted by Ellen inviting me to give my lecture on “Quantum Mechanical Ideas and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” to her senior English class. I had developed the idea for the lecture a few years ago when Mer still taught the play, and Mer used to have me speak on the topic as well. (For those interested, I talk about quantum mechanical ideas that pop up in the play – things about uncertainty, dual states, the importance of location, and so on.)

Anyway, we used the Monday lecture as an excuse to go out for the whole weekend. So, we headed out about 4:15 on Friday. We were a little anxious in that the weather forecast called for some locally heavy snow, but we did not hit any snow until we had about fifteen miles left to go on the highway (about forty minutes from Ellen’s). The main road off of the highway was a bit dicey since Michigan does not really plow roads much anymore (at least as far as I can tell), but the traffic was light and the road was straight. We were at Ellen’s about 7:45 or so, which was pretty good time. Ellen, ever a gracious hostess, was making a mac-n-cheese casserole that turned out mouth-wateringly good. We ate late, about 8:30, but it was worth it. Ellen had even laid in some ice cream supplies for dessert – very nice.

Saturday was mellow. I had intended on going for a run, but when I saw that it was a wind chill of minus-8 outside, I changed my mind. Instead, I made brownies, which did not firm up right away (they actually were not really firm until Sunday after church), but they were still very good in a soupy kind of way. Ellen stocks dark cocoa, so I used some of that, and the brownies were really dark. We used them later that night as part of large sundaes.

After an afternoon in which I blogged and read, Mer graded, and Ellen handcrafted Valentines that would have made Michelangelo mutter in envy, we went to supper at the nearby Saucy Dog barbeque restaurant. It is a good comfort-food place, and we ate well. We followed that at home with the aforementioned sundaes, which we happily munched on while watching the modern Ethan Hawke version of Hamlet. Although Ellen does not teach Hamlet, she wanted a good version to show her students as part of their study of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which is a play based on the action in Hamlet. I had forgotten how bloody that version of Hamlet is, but otherwise it is very well done and very creative.

I also spent sporadic time during the movie working on Ellen’s Macintosh laptop, which had crashed during an update that I insisted she needed. It all turned out well, but there were some tense (on my part) moments. I did not get everything fully working again until Sunday afternoon.

Sunday we went to Ellen’s church, where we heard a sermon on a passage in Acts, where an Ethiopian official is instructed in the Scriptures by Philip. The pastor pointed out that God instructed Philip to go way out of his way and risk some danger in order to save one man. It was a good point, and a nice picture of how much God values us.

After church, we ate leftover mac-n-cheese casserole and ice cream and brownies. I napped and puttered on Ellen’s computer and then went for a short walk to get some air. I found a very nice park that I want to investigate when the weather is good. Ellen was very anxious to see a movie called The Tree of Life, so she tried to get it from the library. She succeeded, but it was a BluRay disk, and we could not play it. She ordered the DVD from Amazon, thinking she would get a link for a free download, but she did not. So she finally punted, and we rented it from Amazon and watched it streaming over my computer (hooked to a twenty-four-inch monitor).

The Tree of Life is quite a film. It is very artsy, with a lot of time showing the grandeur of the creation while referring to scriptures from Genesis and Job. The film then shifts largely to following one family, and the troubles that family has. I’m not sure what I thought about the film – it was not easy to follow, and I had a mild headache from my poor diet of the weekend, so I was having a hard time keeping up with it.

Ellen had to pause the movie to make supper. She had invited a friend over from church, and so was making supper for all of us. It was a great meal, and Ellen’s friend Richard is fascinating. He has a PhD in history, and is a WWI buff, so we got to spend a lot of time talking about France. I think the meal lasted over two hours, and I did not notice. Usually, I get restless at a kitchen table after an hour (or even sooner). It was a good time.

Richard had to leave because of work the next day, but we went ahead and finished up the movie before going to bed.

On Monday, Mer and I packed up the car before following Ellen to her school, Hillsdale Academy. Hillsdale Academy is the K-12 school associated with Hillsdale College. The Academy is small, with only about twenty students per grade, so Ellen is the only English teacher for grades ten through twelve. The building is very pretty, all brick and carpeted. They do a nice job there, as far as I can tell.

Ellen gave me two periods to lecture to the same class – I think she co-opted the students’ science class to give me more time. The students impressed me. They listened politely to everything I had to say, and several anticipated points I was going to bring up, so they were tracking with the lecture. The lecture was split – I taught first and third period, but that worked fine. I had a good time.

We got to see Ellen in action – her second period class was studying Dante’s Inferno, and Mer got to read a little in Italian to give the class a sample of what the original sounded like. Ellen’s sixth period class was studying To Kill a Mockingbird, and it was hard for both me and Mer not to shoot our hands up in the air to answer questions. Ellen is an excellent teacher, and she runs a tight classroom.

Ellen has a free period 4th period, followed by lunch, so we went to a local deli for lunch. More good food, more good chatting. This is a happy re-occurrence in our lives.

After sixth period, Ellen was done for the day (as far as English goes – she may have had one more Latin class), so we decided to head out. It was a smooth drive home, and the kitties were all well, so it was a very successful weekend. Although I’m still waiting for my honorarium.

Last Wednesday (last week – the 8th), Mer and I invited over our colleagues Dubbs and Craig, and our friend Anna. Anna has spent the last several years in Geneva, Switzerland, working on her Master’s degree in French, so it was good to see her again.

I made dinner and dessert for everyone (burritos and peanut butter bars, respectively), and Dubbs and Anna both brought chips, so we were not hurting for food. Anna is sharp and witty, so she easily fit in to the group dynamics of CVCA folks.

After dinner, I broke out my new trivia game, Bezzerwizzer. Bezzerwizzer has a huge array of trivia categories, twenty in all, covering arts, fashion, science, sports, food, and more. The twist is that you have tiles that allow you to try to “steal” your opponents’ question (if they get it wrong), and you have one tile that lets you trade categories with another player or team. In our game, we played me and Mer versus Anna, Craig, and Dubbs. We played three games, and they were all close, but Anna and company won two games to our one. We still had a great time – with Dubbs and Craig in the same room, it’s pretty hard to not laugh. Sometimes it’s pretty hard to breathe while you are laughing. It was another very successful evening, and we even stayed up past 10:00 on a school night. Wild us.

Last Saturday was my day. I did not have anything too special planned, but wanted to have a puttery day. I went running in the morning, and then came home and showered and took a nap. I then took Mer to Howe Avenue in Cuyahoga Falls, to eat at Five Guys. While not even close to a fine restaurant, they have really great burgers and fries, and it certainly hit the spot. On the way home, we stopped by Handel’s for ice cream, so it was a great food day.

Once home, we popped in Super 8, a science fiction film that our friend Clarice had recommended and then lent to us. Super 8 is set in the late 1970s, and focuses on a group of young people trying to film a short film for a student contest. While they are filming late at night near a train station, a train goes by and hits a truck. The train derails, and turns out to be an Air Force train, carrying mysterious cargo. The kids try to deal with things as people begin to disappear and the military moves in. I won’t get more specific than that, but Clarice was spot-on about the film. It was really excellent, and well shot and told.

On Sunday, Mer and I went to church, came home for lunch, and then went to calling hours for a former colleague who had died from cancer. That was sobering, but it was happy to see how many people came out to support the family (we waited for over an hour to get to see the relatives).

In the early evening, we headed over to Zach and Londa’s house for their Super Bowl party. Zach’s brother, who lives with his young family in Israel, was in town, and so Zach’s family was there. Zach and Londa also invited eight to ten friends over, and so it was very festive feeling. There was too much food, as usual, and I ate too much, as usual. But, although I was sad about the result (the Patriots lost), the football game was entertaining, the food was great, and the company was much fun.

Last Friday, Mer and I got together with our friend Craig, and we headed down to Akron to Actors’ Summit Theater to see the one-man show Bully. Bully is the story of Theodore Roosevelt, and Craig teaches social studies at CVCA, so we figured he would like it. It turns out that Craig knows a ton about Roosevelt, having read several biographies on him. I am fond of Teddy since he fought against trusts and set aside national park land, and Mer and I both like getting our history from theatrical performances. So, we expected it to be a good evening.

It was. The actor playing Teddy, Neil Thackaberry, did a very fine job. I’m always impressed with one-man shows, since I’m not sure what happens if you forget a line as an actor – there is no one on stage to help cover for you. Also, during the performance we saw, a man in the audience passed out briefly. He was able to walk out of the theater with the paramedics, and we were told after the show he was fine, which was great news. But, what impressed me from a theater viewpoint was how Neil came off stage, helped the man to the lobby, made sure he was all right, and then came back in and picked up the play from where he had stopped. It was pretty impressive.

Also impressive was Teddy himself. He was quite a man, and quite complex. He fought in war and wanted the U.S. to go in to Europe in WWI earlier than we did, but he won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating peace between Japan and Russia. Teddy loved to hunt, but set aside park lands. He was widely read, and spoke several languages. He lost both his mother and his first wife on the same day, which was Valentine’s Day. He married again, and lost a son in WWI. It was a fascinating life to watch on stage.

The set was simple – it was a fairly faithful reproduction of Teddy’s study in his home. There were several levels to the study, so it lent itself to other locations (such as the back of a train).

There was a brief talk-back after the show, where the audience got to ask Neil questions, and Neil was joined by a local news man who is an amateur expert on Roosevelt. I do not remember too much of the specifics of the talk, but Mer and I always like such talks – they put the play into more perspective.

After the show, Craig went with us to Friday’s for dessert (we had a gift card). Craig’s family was out of town, so he was free to stay out as late as he liked. Craig is a very funny and creative man, so we had rather a good time talking and laughing over our Brownie Obsession desserts. We did not get home until past 11:00 – it was a very fun evening.

Last Saturday, it was Mer’s turn to take me out for my birthday. She picked a restaurant in Ravenna, and it was a small Italian place called Cipriano’s. It was a very cute restaurant that looked to be a converted home. That gave it a very cozy feeling. Mer had invited our friends Eric and Shanna along for supper, and that was a great addition. We had not been out with Eric and Shanna since our cave exploration back in the summer.

Eric and Shanna are in a band, Bethesda, and they are gearing up to make a new album. Eric teaches junior high history at CVCA, and Shanna teaches English and speech at Lake High School in Hartville. So, we had lots of band and school things to chat about.

The service at the restaurant was very good, and the food was excellent. Mer had gotten the place based on a recommendation from Aunt Mary, and Aunt Mary had steered us well.

After supper, we headed home. We briefly considered trying to go to a concert at the nearby Happy Days Visitor Center, but we figured (correctly, as it turned out) that the concert would be sold out since the venue is small. We had a quiet evening in, which suited me just fine.

Last Friday, Mer took me up to Cleveland for the second part of my Christmas present. We went back to the 14th Street Theater to see Joshua Seth, a “psychological illusionist.” Joshua claimed to be able to use psychological tricks to pick up on details about individual audience members and to share information with the audience. I was looking forward to the performance, as I like unusual things like this, and I like to try to figure out how things work.

The show started a bit late because the theater was having trouble with the sound system. They got that figured out, and Joshua came on stage and started the show by saying he could share a number with us. He said he was thinking of a number between eleven and fifty, where both digits were odd and both were different. The number thirty-seven popped into my head, and I remembered to look at his hands. His right hand was by his waist, but had three fingers extended. I did not get a chance to see his left hand before he asked how many of us were thinking of thirty-seven. Most of the audience applauded. It was a great example of how the brain can notice and process a ton of information without our being consciously aware of it.

Later in the show, he did something similar where he told the audience he was thinking of two shapes, one inside the other. He asked how many people were thinking of a triangle inside of a circle, and most people applauded. He shared that he had made a circle with one hand and briefly made a triangle with both hands near his waist, and he used that as an example of how his art worked.

He did another illusion, where he put band-aids over his eyes, and then put on a metal eye shade so that he could not see at all. He then had an audience member come up and draw five random cards, which he then named. He had a woman come up and write a word on a small whiteboard. She wrote “car,” and he then took the board, and drew a very rough-looking car before writing the word “car.” It was impressive.

He ended the first act by having all members of the audience write down names, a number of significance, and hobbies or jobs. He said that the “vibe” was easier to pick up if people wrote the information down. He had us put all the slips of paper in envelopes, collected them, and then put them in his bag on the stage. He then proceeded to call people up by name or by profession, which he claimed to be “seeing” in his mind. He would then ask them to think of their number or some other fact they had written down, and then would concentrate, and then “zoom in” on the information by getting closer and closer (like, “I’m sensing a fall month, like October…the middle of the month…the 13th or 14th…the 14th!”). It was excellent showmanship. He did it successfully six or seven times, and did have one audience member where he failed to guess anything, for which he apologized, saying his technique was not one hundred percent effective. It was very entertaining.

There was an intermission, and after the break, Joshua switched over to hypnotism. He had ten people come on stage, and he tried to hypnotize them. Of the ten, he succeeded really well with two of them. He put the two people though the paces. He made them be at a beach and be hot, and then made the temperature drop suddenly (the woman of the pair curled up in the man’s lap at that). He made them conduct an orchestra and play various instruments. The man on stage was deeply under, and so Joshua made him forget the number six, and then had him count his fingers. He made the man talk in a gibberish language, and made the woman an expert translator. He made the two of them drive their dream cars at three hundred mph (the woman put on eye makeup in the rear-view mirror going three hundred mph), and made them get pulled over by a cop, and try to get out of the ticket. At that, the woman pulled down her outer shirt (happily she had on two shirts). The man hit on the cop (who was played by Joshua), which was amusing. When Joshua woke them up, they remembered nothing at all. I am glad I was not on stage for that – it would seem a shame to pay for the show, but then not remember it.

It was a fantastic show and very entertaining. Over the next two days, I tried to figure out how he was doing some of the things he did, which could not have all been done by reading body language or the like. Here is my theory:

For the bit where Joshua was telling people their names, hobbies, numbers, etc., he was probably getting the information from a confederate backstage. Joshua wore an over-the-ear microphone that looked normal. But, it would be a piece of cake to put a small speaker behind the ear at the base of the microphone. Joshua had a remote on his belt that controlled background music. He always turned the music up when people came on stage. It is my theory that the music was being used to cover up the slim chance that an audience member on stage would overhear the small speaker. Also, the remote had too many buttons for simple volume-up, volume-down, and skipping to the next track. I think some of the buttons controlled a speaker behind his ear.

Also, Joshua made a big production of putting the envelopes with the audience information into his bag, which was near the back of the stage. He then came to the front of the stage and moved around a lot with a flourish. It would have been very easy for a confederate to pull the envelopes out of the bag if the bag had a false back. The confederate could then simply read the information to Joshua, who could make it more dramatic for showmanship purposes. I’m guessing that the one time he got it wrong with an audience member, it was probably a case where the woman had the same first name as someone else, and the confederate got the wrong card.

As far as the card trick and the word “car” on the board, that would be easy to spot by confederate using a camera or the like. In fact, Joshua said the man holding the cards was shuffling them too quickly for the images to register in the mind. I think the card shuffling was making it too hard for the confederate to see the cards using whatever method he was using to see them.

Lastly, it was interesting to me that the theater was having trouble with the sound system before the show. I think that Joshua’s wireless system for his speaker was causing interference with the theater’s normal channels for their sound system.

All of this is just a guess, but it explains everything plausibly. It does not take away from the fun of the evening, and the hypnotism part was quite real (I’ve seen a hypnotist before). I had a good time.