On Thurs. March 12 at 8 p.m., an entertainer named Jim Karol put on a show called “Mind Games” that was held at the Sykes Ballroom by the West Chester University’s Student Activities Council. Jim Karol is an exciting entertainer who has been on the Tonight Show and scheduled to be on the Ellen show. Karol has also starred in the movie “Jackass 2.”
When Karol took the stage, the first thing he said was, “First of all, you all need to know that I scare the hell out of people.” He then threw a humungous cinderblock right at someone in the audience.
“You’ve got to be on your toes during my show!” he laughed. As the audience laughed with him, it was revealed that the prop was a styrofoam cinderblock.
“Mind Games” was an entertaining show due to its large amount of audience involvement. For every trick Karol had up his sleeve, there were at least two audience volunteers up on the stage with him. Most of his stunts involved complicated card tricks. Karol didn’t use any magic or illusions, but instead played with the audience’s minds.
Karol showed off his memorization skills as he handed each audience member a ticket, secretly knowing each number and country printed on those tickets.
“I will give you 1,000 dollars if I can’t guess the 12 digit number on your ticket,” said Karol to a volunteer. Once Karol started getting each number right, the audience started lying. He could even tell when audience members were bluffing. Karol claimed that he had every single zip code in this country memorized. He started backing up this statement when he was able to name where everyone lived.
Although Karol was a big fan of the card tricks, he loved making everyone laugh with his jokes and pranks.
“Who is the biggest skeptic in this room?” he asked. Karol then used props that belonged to the audience, showing that he didn’t need his own “corrupted” items to change the skeptics’ minds. Volunteers were amused as Jim Karol showed off.
“I’ve been nicknamed the ‘Psychic Madman,'” Karol said. Karol has been to 400 different colleges and done thousands of shows. He just recently wrote a book titled “Supermind,” and encourages people to check it out for fun. Karol also asked the audience to stick around after the show, so he could teach some of the method to his tricks.
“Stick around! If you learn how to do this, you will make millions of dollars in Black Jack. I am banned from every casino in this country,” he said in closing.
Alli Snyder is a fourth-year student majoring in Professional Studies and minoring in Theatre and Journalism. She can be reached at AS613905@wcupa.edu