We had a show in Chicago and it went very well. Here are some photos we thought you might enjoy.

JT was stunned!

Kelly was very emotional.

Justin left the room.

After the show, many groups tried to do this on their own.

Spectacular energy; enjoyable, fun, supportive group.

After doing hundreds of shows, you start to get a feel for audiences. Anytime that a group of people get together, there is an energy specific to that group. Sometimes a group can be relaxed and fun, others can be uptight and challenging. Some audiences are nice to each other and support one other. They enjoy watching anyone on stage. The opposite is an audience that is negative and will sabotage each other to get up on stage.

As an entertainer, you have to understand your audience and be able to adapt accordingly. It is a subtle dance that a performer must do with the audience.

We had a great show last night and it is a thrill to perform when electricity is in the air.

We will go to all ends of the earth to gather interesting items for our show. Here we are in Paradox. We picked up some conundrums, mysteries, and mental illusions.

I was bartering for some interesting mental ambiguities. The shop owner was a clever fox and was not going to let these mind benders go cheap. I believe we picked up some very fascinating items that you will enjoy in our upcoming shows. Ohh, and Katalina picked up a jar of garlic pickles.

Katalina and I have performed at many trade shows where the focus of the job is to drive traffic to the booth, entertain them, and then hand them off to a motivated company representative. This experience came in very handy for this show.

We were scheduled to perform our 75 minute stage Mind Tripping Show, but the event coordinator had to change the entire style of the event, due to unforeseen circumstances. Because of the dynamic environment we had to switch gears and perform “trade show style”.

Drawing on our trade show experience, we were able to bring crowds to our booth and create a carnival atmosphere. The event coordinator was thankful that we were able to adapt so readily to the situation. She marveled at the amount of people that were constantly congregated around our booth.

The advantage of trade show style is that it allows for many people to participate in the entertainment. Even if they only have 10 minutes, they can enjoy some fun, freaky Mind Tripping and then continue on with the rest of their schedule.

It worked out very well. The crowd loved it, the director loved it, and we had a blast.

Earlier this week we performed at UMES, an Historically Black College and University or HBCU.

We have performed at many HBCU’s and always have a blast.

The crowd was loud and everyone wanted to get on stage, but at the same time, the students were very emotive, interactive, and fully engaged in the show.

These girls stayed after the show for some personal Mind Tripping.

We are twittering and we’re loving it.

Short bursts of fun, interesting, and useful information is how we look at Twitter. If you follow us, you will get updates on where we are, what we are doing, and the myriad’s of interesting people, places, and information that is out in the world.

Our name is married2magic.

We look forward to twittering with you.

We have thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent in Maine.

Christian with Heidi, Jasmin, and Carlton at UMPI. A very fun group.

A great crowd at HC. Thanks to Ben for the great pictures.

We learned that Maine is a big potatoes producing state. McDonald's french fries come from Maine. Katalina purchased some seed potatoes that she will plant in her garden this spring. These came from Bradbury Brothers in Bridgewater, Maine.

We also stopped by the Bradbury Barrel Company also in Bridgewater, Maine. This is only 1 of 3 companies in the United States that make barrels. They have unique display barrels whose use is only limited by your imagination! You can find them on the web at www.bradburybarrel.com. Here Christian is with Carolyn inside the company headquarters.

Whenever we are in Maine, Katalina makes her pilgrimage to Stonewall Kitchen. This is her favorite store for jams, sauces, and salad dressings. Very delicious. The store headquarters is located in York, Maine, but you can also check them out online at www.stonewallkitchen.com.

And last, but not least…the frost heaves. These are essentially speed-bumps in the middle of highways and roads due to the weather. A section of pavement ruptures caused by the expansion of freezing water immediately under the road. Watch out for the frost heave signs and whatever you do, do not go fast or you will go airborne.

We wanted to share with you a wonderful email we received from a lady who recently saw our show. She was kind enough to take the time and email us her thoughts. We appreciate it!

Hello Christian and Katalina,

I just wanted to say thank you to you both for the entertainment you provided last evening.
I am not one to laugh easily, especially at comedy but the 2 of you had me happy, smiling and laughing aloud throughout your performance.
I hadn’t been to a magic show since I was a kid at the worlds fair, which was held in New York in 1964.
Thank you again, so very much, you are truly a talented couple.

Sincerely,
Susan

Many times people ask us if anything ever goes wrong in a performance and if it does, what do we do. Here is a great story told by Christian for all the people that wonder about this question.

We were performing at a corporate event and enjoying a delicious meal with our clients before the show. We were to go on in about 10 minutes and Katalina excused herself to make a few last minute adjustments to her costume. This usually means slipping the wireless microphone in her dress and connecting it. Five minutes before we were to go on, I went to check on her and found we were in code red. There was a wardrobe malfunction. The zipper on her dress had exploded.

I stood behind her trying a variety of methods to coax the zipper back into doing its job. Nothing worked. Katalina could only give me ideas since the zipper is on the back of the dress. I could feel the hopelessness of the situation creeping up on us. Then it hit me. Men have no idea how to fix a zipper on a woman’s dress. I told Katalina to wait there . . . I have an idea. I ran out and asked one of our gracious hosts for help. Sharla came to the rescue.

Since it was time for the show, I went on without Katalina. I explained to the audience why Katalina was not on stage with me and that she was being “worked on”. I performed some impromptu miracles while we all waited. Even though the audience was very nice and we were having fun, I was sweating. I could not think of anyway that anyone could save that dress. Just when I was wondering how we were going to get through the night, Katalina and Sharla entered the room and gave me a thumbs up.

The show started and things looked great. About 10 minutes into the show, I got to see the back of Katalina’s dress for the first time. I burst out laughing. Katalina stopped the show and told the audience about our crazy situation and turned to show the audience the “quick fix”; it was duct tape. The audience roared with laughter and the show went great.

After the show many in the audience came up to marvel at this miracle fix that Sharla had engineered in 10 minutes. We had a fantastic time talking with many of audience after the show. Of course we had to get a picture of this miracle fix with the miracle maker, Sharla. Too bad Sharla was not around for Janet just before the Superbowl.

Sharla and her beautiful handiwork.

Here are a few of the wonderful audience members. We always have fun with the AG community.

From Iowa to Kansas to Maryland to Virginia, we have been on the road these past few weeks. Luckily for us we seem to have missed all the bad weather. It was dry and sunny in Iowa and warm and sunny in Maryland. We missed all the ice and snow. Trust us we are not complaining!

But I am sure that many of you are asking why we do this?! Well because we love to entertain and you can’t beat the strong and fun reactions people have to our show. We finished our 60 minute show, but the students did not want to leave, so we entertained them for another 30 minutes!

The weather has been bitterly cold but our audiences have been warm and friendly. At one location, we performed when the temperature was less than 10 degrees. We did not expect many people to show up, but we were pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be standing room only. We were so excited that everyone came out in the freezing temperature that we ended up performing an additional thirty minutes because everyone was having a great time and did not want to go back out into the harsh weather.

You can see Katalina here performing a little impromptu mystery while she made Christian pack up the show for a change. The audience loved her easy going style as she demonstrated the power of friendship.

2008 has been a fantastic year for us!

We want to thank you for continuing to make our performing dreams come true. We look forward to seeing you again.

One of the best parts of our job is that we get to learn about all the interesting jobs that people are doing from farming to candle wick making to truck insurance.

We are excited about what 2009 has in store.

Have a wonderful holiday season and a fantastic 2009!

We get such a fascinating array of reactions during our shows that I decided to try to capture some of them on camera. On the one hand we see jaws open, wide eyes, and moving around, ie getting up from their chairs, as people visibly react to their brains not being able to process what just happened. On the other hand, we also get laughter and joking which is another way for people to deal with being in strange and unknown territory.

Here are some reactions caught on camera:

She looks scared and then stunned.

One girl is totally stunned and the other two are laughing.

This group is just having a good time.

She is not sure what to think - it looks like she is thinking “This is not possible!”

College students have their own way of expressing themselves. We love to get comments from them because 1) they are honest and will give you honest feedback, 2) you just never know what they are going to say, and 3) they are fun to read. Here are some comments:

“7 kinds of awesome! The awesomeness is exceeded only the the dudeasity.” Student, AUM

“Wow, I’m still shaking. The best show I’ve ever seen in my entire life! You guys blew my mind away!!” Daniella

“Dude! You so mind tripped me! That was so awesome man…I was like whoa! Come back next year.”

“Really jaw dropping experience!” Jesse J.