Audience ‘shocked’ by Karol’s performance
Bellaire freshman Brad Mason didn’t expect the more than 150 people in Warriner Hall’s Plachta Auditorium to find out what color underwear he was wearing.
However “Mindwiz” Jim Karol correctly revealed the color – orange – during his show Monday night.
Karol’s achievement left Mason suspicious.
“I was hoping he didn’t peek before the show,” Mason said. “It was weird. At first I didn’t really believe him; now I’m wondering how he did it.”
Karol spent most of the show attempting to convince the audience his act was genuine, inviting those he labeled “skeptics” on stage to witness his abilities.
He said his abilities are “extraordinary feats of the mind.”
Karol’s Web site, www.mindwiz.com, said he has memorized 75,000 zip codes, every country and capital in the world, the Scrabble dictionary and thousands of pieces of sports trivia, information he has shared with around 4,000 audiences.
He describes himself as a comedian with a great memory, who also does magic tricks.
“I love to put smiles on people’s faces; I love creating excitement,” Karol said. “I don’t care about razzle-dazzling them. I just want them to have a good time.”
After starting the show with magic tricks and card games, Karol proceeded to accurately predict the birthdays of two audience members, one audience member’s favorite football team and the amount of money a person had in his wallet, among other things.
Two audience members, including Jackson junior Kyle Martin, took part in a truth-telling experiment where Karol warned them they would be shocked with 30,000 bolts of electricity in the rear if they lied.
Martin made it to the last question before being shocked.
“I’ve been shocked before, being shocked is no big deal, but when I did finally get shocked it caught me by surprise,” he said. “It was a pretty decent shot, enough to make me leave my seat.”
Karol’s assistant Chris Chelko also got in on the act.
Chelko walked barefoot on broken beer bottles with a volunteer on his back, before lying down on the bottles and having another volunteer jump on him.
Karol said there is one particular reason he enjoys performing for college audiences.
“The people’s reactions,” he said.
