Whenever I walk into a new venue, the first thing I do is find the worst seat in the house and imagine both of my grandmothers sitting there watching. They’ve both passed, but growing up they were always asking me to speak up.

I mumble. I’ve always mumbled. Two years of dentistry helped a little… but I still mumble. If people don’t understand what you are trying to say, they will stop paying attention really quickly.

On the Silhouette we had a giant screen that let us use cameras and visuals so every seat could follow the action. The shows were a blast, and guests talking to us afterwards usually means we did something right.

Stacy opens the evening with a featured mentalism set, and later I perform close-up magic in the 654 Club, a tiny room where the audience sits just inches away.

Even though we perform separately, the shows connect. Stacy is the mentalist. I’m the magician. At one point in her show she discovers something I “forgot” and gives it to someone attending my show later that night. When the moment pays off later, the whole audience is in on the joke.

To me, that’s what magic is really about: storytelling.

If it’s done right, magic becomes the story people tell later — about the date night they planned, the hidden theater they discovered in Chicago, and the impossible thing they witnessed there.

Our shows work the same way.

In Cahoots is the show we’ve performed together for the past eight years, including our residency in Cleveland.

Delightfully Deceptive is our new show debuting this fall in Cleveland, where the focus shifts more toward my sleight-of-hand magic and Stacy’s ability as a mentalist. I can’t wait to perform it.

My favorite moment of the night at the Chicago Magic Lounge, though, doesn’t happen during my show.

It happens when I stand in the back of the room watching Stacy perform. I’ve never heard audiences react the way they do when she’s on stage. Within minutes she’s talking to someone she’s never met before, and somehow it feels like she knows everything about them.

Stacy is my everything. She’s the love of my life, my inspiration, and my muse.

At the same time… I can’t stand her. I can’t stand how good she is on stage. I can’t stand how naturally performing comes to her. And I really can’t stand how it constantly reminds me how much room I still have to improve.

Close-up is my natural habitat. Hers is the stage. I think that’s why we work so well together.

If you’ve never seen her perform, you really need to see her work to understand what I mean.

If you’ve never visited the Chicago Magic Lounge, you should absolutely experience it.

And if you’re planning a night out in Chicago, take a look at our upcoming dates March 19th - 22nd HERE.

We’d love to see you there.

I hadn’t spent much time in Maryland before this trip, but I knew the basics: the Battle of Antietam happened here, the Orioles play here, and that it reminds me of home.

I grew up in Salem, Ohio—a town full of cornfields, close-knit communities, and people who call you by your first name... or a nickname they know you by.  That’s how Maryland felt to me.  

In my hometown, some people call me "The Magician," others know me as Jason, and a few probably call me names we won’t repeat. That’s small-town life. When I'm recognized as the magician, I try to have a miracle on hand ready to perform. Being known as The Magician is a lot to live up to.   

As we travel, i'm finding myself meeting other small towns magicians.  On this tour we met Dave Thomen, the magician of Hampstead, Maryland. 

Dave is a guy with weekly gig at a The Greenmount Station. Everyone knows him. He knows everyone. He's the type of guy who can call peole by their first name as he performs table side magic while they eat.  Dave is the Hampstead version of me. 

Once a month, he brings in touring magicians such as ourselves for a public show. This show takes place for a maximum of 36 people.  Not because it couldn't fit more but because that's all the fire code will allow. 

Audience members are 6 inches away as the miracles happen which makes for an interesting and unique style of entertainment.  We’ve performed on all types of stages.  From our own intimate stage at The Alex Theater in Cleveland to most of the 700 seat theaters aboard the Holland American Cruise Line ships, we've experienced it all.  Dave’s venue felt like home.

In small rooms like this, the magic feels different. With the audience so close, There's nowhere to hide. It’s raw, it’s personal, and it’s the kind of magic we love most. We were able debuted new material, reconnected with some favorites, and just focused on what we do best, entertaining. Dave runs a tight show and I highly recommend you see the next performing who is visiting from out of town.  

Also at this gig.. we got to see Jeff.  Yep Jeff.. we will get to him soon.  

Let’s Talk About Peter Wood

When Stacy and I filmed our first Fool Us episode, we were nervous, excited, and sworn to secrecy. I posted a cryptic photo of the airplane wing on our trip out and immediately got a response from Peter Wood saying  "Secret mission in Vegas?" here, he would be filming his first Fool Us episode at the same time we were.  

We met Peter back in 2014 at The Columbus Ohio Magifest convention. At a convention like this you will have a handful of coin guys, a handful of card gals and just a few people like Peter Wood.  Those are the ones you want to get to know.  

Peter is a tinkerer . He is someone who can look at an everyday object, tell you how it works, what it's made of and how you can make it better.  Peter turned his basement bathroom into a complete replica of the Haunted Mansion at The Magic Kingdom at Disney World.  Peter is a fun friend to have.  

We knew when we planned this trip that we would be visiting with Peter and his wife Kristi.  I once heard that the way to become smarter is by being the dumbest person in a room and by asking those around you questions.  I always feel like I have a handful of questions that Peter knows the answer to.  

Okay.. we are almost to Jeff... F'ing Jeff ( See Stacy's Mom.. no swearing just for you).  

Breakfast with Tim

Normally after a tour, we pack up and rush home. But this time, a young magician named Timothy Carver asked us to grab breakfast at JeannieBird in Westminster, Maryland. For once, we said yes.

Let me clarify something: I call Tim a "young magician" because I’m 41, halfway to 42, and remember dial-up internet. I get to say "young" now whenever I want to.  

Tim reminded me of myself at his age. He loves sleight-of-hand and out-of-the-box ideas. When I was younger, I was obsessed with Paul Harris The Art of Astonishment books—the same ones that helped shape David Blaine. Tim is cut from that cloth.

He’s already more experienced than I was in my 30s. He and Stacy hit it off, and I hope you get the chance to see his work. He deserves a shot on Fool Us and I hope he shows the world what his mind has come up with.

Okay... Now onto Jeff

First things first: I’m not giving you Jeff’s last name. I love the guy, but he’s like Beetlejuice. Say his full name three times and he’ll haunt your dreams forever.  Lets just stick with calling him Jeff

Jeff—I know you skipped the rest of this blog and came straight here. Go back and read the whole thing. I said nice things about other people before I got to you.  Also... how do you keep getting my number? I’ve changed phones four times yet you still keep texting me?  What the heck? 

Jeff and I met at The MAES convention in Carlisle, PA. I was competing. He was Jeff.We instantly became friends. 

 I grew up the youngest cousin on my fathers side, all of my siblings being much older than me so by the time I was in middle school I was basically raised as an only child.   I always wanted someone to share magic with. Jeff is like an older brother to me. 

When Stacy and I create a new trick, Jeff is the first person we share it with and the last to see it before it hits the stage. It’s a delicate relationship. You want honest feedback, but magicians’ egos are fragile. Jeff gets that. He’s honest, funny, sharp, and somehow manages to critique without crushing your soul.. sometimes. 

We see each other once a year, and we always pick up where we left off—talking magic, roasting each other, laughing the whole way through. He introduced us to Dave and got us into the Greenmount show. He was the first to arrive and the last to leave. More than likely he just hangs out with me so Stacy will talk to him, either way I'm a big fan of Jeff.  

Wrapping It Up

I didn’t plan for this to be a blog full of praise, but here we are. Not because I owe anyone anything—but because I had a genuinely great time.

The tour was a success. We've begun booking another one throughout Virginia and main for this fall and are excited to visit again.  

If we do? I hope to see you there. Just do me a favor... Don’t tell Jeff.

So.. what does this have to do with our episode of Fool Us?  As I mentioned in my last post, we rarely throw a trick into our show without practicing it first.  Typically after creating a new trick we will head out to Open Mic nights around Cleveland and Akron, testing it on unsuspecting audiences.  The problem with our Fool Us trick, we didn’t have the time to do so.  

The Friday before we left for Vegas, I called my cousin Steve and asked for help. Would he be able to round up enough friends who would be interested in seeing our new trick firsthand?  Within minutes we had a few dozen people interested in helping.  

Stacy and I drove down to my hometown of Salem, Ohio and got to work.  We had groups of two come into an undisclosed location and act like Penn & Teller.  We would perform our trick, ask questions, take notes and send them on their way.  This happened every 20 minutes for 7 hours straight.  

This repetition was hugely important to our act.  With every performance we were able to see what worked and what didn’t.  When you create a new trick in your mind you envision it working a specific way.  When you add people to the mix, things change quickly.  If it weren’t for the people of Salem, I don’t think we would have ended up with what we did.  

Our flight was scheduled to leave early on Monday morning so the weekend before was more than tense. Nervous that our trick wouldn’t make it to Vegas we tripled our chances by making 3 of everything.  I had one version in my bag, Stacy had another and we had a backup in our checked bag.  We weren’t going to mess this up.  

When we landed in Vegas on Monday, we had 4 days before we filmed our episode.  We spent this time working with the production team, talking to the prop guys, filming our intro video and rehearsing our trick.  

Performing a magic trick in front of an audience is natural to me, filming an intro video where we talk about ourselves, not so much.  Neither Stacy or I are fans of talking about ourselves directly into a camera, but this was a different experience.  Besides the main trick we performed on stage we had to gather a handful of small visual tricks to show off our skills.  Never in my life would I imagine being on the top floor of a Vegas hotel showing off my sleight of hand.  

The hardest part about the entire experience was the waiting game.  With 4 days before filming, you would think we would go out and explore the town.  That was the plan if it wasn’t 120 degrees by 10am.  Each morning, we would wake up at 5am, walk around the strip and rehearse our lines.  We were the only people waking up before noon in the city of lights.  

Finally, after days of waiting it was our turn to try and fool the boys. Prior to your performance you are brought down to an area below the stage along with a handful of other magicians.  Standing below and hearing the crowd above was the most surreal experience I’ve ever had.  To my left are some of the greatest magicians of our time, to my right props from P & T’s live show.  What in the hell are we doing here.  

The remainder of the evening is a complete blur.  3 years ago, when we were first on Fool Us we were unable to use anyone on stage due to Covid.  This time, we had full access and we decided to go right at the boys.  We were going to bring P & T on stage and try to fool them up close and personal.  If I’m being honest, I don’t remember much once we began.  Here I was standing next to Teller while Stacy was performing a trick for Penn. I think I blacked out. 

So, this is where I leave you.  I can’t tell you if we Fooled them or not, if the trick went well or not, but I can tell you that I’m proud of what we came up with.  One of our main goals was to do something that P & T would look at and enjoy.  Something that they could say, “Well that’s original” and I think we accomplished that.  So please, tune in on April 5^th at 8pm eastern time and enjoy.  Until then... see you on the other side.  

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      That’s what draws me to them, they’re the Bob Dylans of magic.  P & T do what they want, say what they feel and stay true to themselves.  This is how I’ve always tried to present myself.  If you have an opinion, even though it might be wrong, stay true to it until you learn better.  Someone once told me that Stacy and I, being a couple in magic, had to do illusions to be relevant or work on big stages.  Immediately I thought …that’s bullshit.  I try to emulate and keep us close to our heroes, so I’ve always known in my heart that the key to our success lies in being ourselves on stage and only presenting things we believe in! 

      Fast forward to the spring of 2024.  Auditions for the 10^th season of Fool Us had been open for months.  Stacy and I still hadn’t come up with an idea that we would really want to pitch for the show, so we decided not to audition.  That’s when I bought us a bottle of wine, a new game and decided to suck up. 

      You see Penn had come out with a new party game called, You Lying Sack.  We absolutely love playing party games, but nobody wants to play games with us…I don’t know why  

      Anyway…that evening while Stacy and I were playing and getting inebriated she said to me, “We should do something with Penn’s game on Fool Us”.  Since I have no restraint, I immediately emailed the producers of the show and asked if anyone had pitched a trick with Penn’s game.  To our surprise they responded within minutes and said no they haven’t, but they loved the idea and wanted to hear more.  

      Straightaway we started playing with ideas…what are we going to do with this game to make it into a trick? Should we play a round with Penn and beat him every time?  Should we use the game pieces and do a classic magic trick with them.  That’s when we decided to go in a completely different direction.  What if we sold out, sucked up and begged for a trophy? I sent another email to the producers, and they were really intrigued.  They then asked to see the trick.  

      Problem being, we didn’t have one. What could we do to show our desperation for a trophy?  What could we do to fool Penn & Teller? What if we did 2 tricks at once?  I tried to fool Teller while Stacy tried to Fool Penn?  

      We messaged the producers with our idea, and again they wanted to hear more.  Now, they wanted to see the trick in action.  So exciting….but we hadn’t come up with a way to do it yet.  Here we were with an almost definite YES, an idea for a routine and no working trick.  That’s when things got real.  

      Magic is a lot like music in the sense that most of the songs you know, and love were created through collaboration, a team of writers and musicians. There are a few artists that work in complete solidarity but most of the greatest hits took more than one mind to be created.  Magic is the same way.  Here we were, with this idea for a trick and nowhere to go.  That’s when we picked up the Bat-Phone and dialed Brent Braun.  

      To stick with our music analogy, imagine you have this wonderful idea for a song but are feeling a bit stuck on what direction to go but luckily you have a direct line to Taylor Swift.  You can call her, tell her what you have in mind, and she will guide you to something better than you ever imagined.  That’s Brent Braun. 

      He listened to what we had in mind and brainstormed with us until we solved our problem of not having a working trick.  It was simple, brilliant while at the same time deviously deceptive.  We finally had a working trick on our hands.  

      We emailed the producers one last time, laying out what we had in mind and started playing the waiting game.  A few days later, we got the answer we were waiting for…..YES...they wanted to see this on their show.  

      Now the real work began.  Creating, learning, and perfecting a new trick is a process that can take years to accomplish.  Just for some perspective, I recently put a new trick into our cruise act that has taken me 4 years to tweak to the point where I felt it was stage worthy. But….for Fool Us we had just a little over 4 weeks to figure everything out and make it look polished and professional for T.V.   

      Immediately we went into hyper magic mode.  We decided not to take any gigs, not see friends or family, and solely focus on this project.  We wanted to present something on T.V. that would really show our true colors and we had 4 weeks to do so.  Every day from 5am to midnight we would work on this trick, designing props, working on the method and writing scripts.  We would come up with a new joke, send it to the producers for approval and wait for feedback.  All I can say about this is…I’m sorry Criss Angel…Stacy came up with that line. 

      Halfway through this process is when things went wrong.  For those of you that don’t know I went through a health scare a few years ago that’s still affecting me to this day. Around day 12 into these 15-hour workdays things went really really wrong.  We made a trip down to Brent’s J & B Magic Shop in hopes of getting some in person help.  After working on the trick for a few hours we took a lunch break and that’s when my body decided to shut down.  I remember sitting at lunch, eating tacos and all of a sudden…I didn’t know where I was.  I could see the food in front of me, I could hear Stacy talking, but nothing else was working. I needed a break, and I needed it now. That’s when I decided to take a few days off and relax. 

     After a few days of rest, we went back to work.  Each day we would film the trick, Stacy would work on a props, and we would send it to the production team.  They would tell us what they liked, what they didn’t like and what we needed to change.  This happened over and over again until we finally reached the week before filming. 

      As I mentioned earlier, we aren’t ones to throw a trick up on stage without rehearsing it.  Here we were, getting ready to go on national television and perform something we’ve never done in front of a live audience, and we need run time. Let me tell you more about that tomorrow. 

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Yeah, it was crazy, and I still think it’s crazy, but I wouldn’t change it for anything! Never in my life did I think I would wake up and call myself a full-time performer, a performer of magic, nonetheless. Before meeting Jason, I had never stepped foot on a stage or even thought twice about learning a magic trick. But here I am ten years later performing on cruise ships and appearing on national T.V. Pinch me!

When we first met, the feeling I got (and still get) watching Jason perform for others was hard to describe. I could spend hours watching him connect with random people through magic. Their genuine reactions and the rawness of his joy while performing sparked something in me. I loved my job, but I wanted to share in what Jason was doing.

We had loads of conversations about me working with him. At first he was completely against it; he mentioned once when we were dating that I would never be in his show. After 10 years of working together almost every single day…although I can’t picture us doing anything else…I can see where his hesitation came from. Don’t get me wrong Jason is my world and we have a very solid relationship, but married entrepreneurship isn’t for the faint of heart. 

As I reflect back on my 10 year journey as a mentalist I can happily say….I’ve loved it all, the good and the bad. The good is obvious, incredible travel, adventures with my best friend all the time, beautiful venues, making people happy, creating, learning new things, growing as a performer and so much more. 

The bad…well the bad is like any other job. There are parts of being a performer that are harder than I ever imagined. I’ll admit I hate practicing and Jason hates that I hate practicing….so you can guess how that goes.  Not having a steady paycheck or a company to provide health insurance can be so challenging. But the hardest parts of being a performer for me are stage fright and learning how to separate work life and real life with Jason. 

Stage fright is no joke…. there have been a lot of big moments in our career together where I’m not sure I could have done it if Jason hadn’t literally nudged me out on stage. Going from a muggle to a full-blown professional mentalist is no small feat. It took many long nights, hard work, anxiety, fights, high fives, failures, laughs and tears to get myself to place where I felt like I wouldn’t immediately die from imposter syndrome when I stepped foot on a stage. 

And although I said work/life balance is one of the biggest challenges for us…we always find a way to make it work. Jason has always believed in me, always pushed me to do more and he was the first one to tell me that I could and should take risks! I am forever grateful for his encouragement and unwavering support as we navigate this crazy life together. 

I cannot wait to see what the next ten years of our magical life brings us!!

After the show I saw him sitting at the front of the stage, so I went up and talked with him. He told me how much fun he had and how amazing the show was and how he didn’t want it to end.  That’s when I realized he was blind. Here was a boy who was fighting for his life and even though he couldn’t see any of what I was doing, he was laughing. Magic still had the ability to reach him. 

This story popped into my head because of an event we did this last weekend in Columbus, Ohio.  Stacy and I had the pleasure of performing at The Hilton in Easton for the Ohio, Kentucky & Indiana Make A Wish division.  My next blog entry will be all about that.  

Before this conversation on 97.1 I would constantly ask myself what is it that I do?  I mean if I were to fill out a job application right now…. would my skills include: finding a playing card or pulling a rabbit out of a hat? Or, if we were stuck on an island together, what could I really help you with? Start a fire…..not your guy.  Need to know how to make a beveled base table large enough to hide your coconuts while skinny enough to not draw attention from the pack of monkeys trying to steal your lunch… I’m your guy.  

I guess the real answer is, we interact with people and hopefully give them a break from reality.  Our job is to use magic as a catalyst to help others get some comic relief, take a break from stress and everyday life. And sometimes……our job is to have fun while making people say…..”How the hell did you do that!!!??”  

See you next time.  

Click Below For Part One