Well hurry up, your audience isn't gonna wait much longer!

-JT

I tend to just grin and either go away or do another trick.

One time I was performing to a Alumni class reunion, after we had finished dinner. I started out with a couple of card and coin tricks, then broke into the floating dollar bill. The reaction was priceless!
It is SOOO funny to perform to a class of p.h.d graduates, as they throw the most unreasonable ideas out there. One said there was a magnet. The idea was quickly shot down, however, as others theorized how a magnet couldn't be possible. By the end of the performance, they were convinced that it was either heat waves, energy displacement, or air channeling.

lol... I love this, Just shows that the more education a person has, the more theories they have to go through to try to explain your magic... does not necessarilly mean they will actually figure it out. But their theories will be more enetertaining....

hmmm.. Heisenberg Uncertainty has somemthing to do with it..." " Nooooo... quantuum theory says bla bla bla" lol

lol... I love this, Just shows that the more education a person has, the more theories they have to go through to try to explain your magic... does not necessarilly mean they will actually figure it out. But their theories will be more enetertaining....

" hmmm.. Heisenberg Uncertainty has somemthing to do with it..." " Nooooo... quantuum theory says bla bla bla" lol

The best part of it is when another walked back from the bathroom. Old guy, with thick glasses. Must have been standing ten feet away from me, in dim light, and he instantly said "There's some sort of IT, isn't there?"
I didn't even need to disprove him. The others immediately corrected him, telling him that I had passed it through my hands, and how the heat displacement or "energy emission" whatnot was the ONLY explanation. He apologized, and sat back down.
It was a GOOD night.

The most fun I've had with messing with an audience was a group of mathematicians and nuclear scientists. On the other hand, I went to an Engineering Society dinner with my dad years ago. Couldn't get away with ANYTHING.

One of the best ones i have had is when was using loops to do the haunted deck and someone accused me of connecting peices of hair to the cards and using it to move them (not too far off though if you think about it )

Another time, a friend thought they were close to getting the secret, saying i had a string attached between my two thumbs while i was moving a fork (uncomfortably close... i disproved them by moving my hands closer together and further apart - love that elastic ). The point is, they were saying, i bet you can't just do it impromptu, off the cuff, you have to set up the string, so i went over to a tissue, and lightly blew on it as i moved my hands the same way i normally would... they were instantly confused again

Haha...Fooled by the simplest of things!
Most of the times, audiences will be looking for the most complex of things. They don't lean back and take in the big picture.

sponge balls:

You riped the balls in two. And then one spectator actually ripped one of the balls.

This isn't the worst explanation but cutest that I've heard:

I was pulling quarters from the ears of my nieces and nephews at Thanksgiving. One niece told another that I start by putting quarters in their ears when they aren't paying attention. They are both 5 years old.

When I pulled a silk out of a nieces's ear, she started covering her ears while I made the silk disappear in my hand. I assume she was blocking her ears so that the silk couldn't 'jump' from my hand to her ear. It was cute.

Jim

lol, are you serious?

One time after doing an ambitious card routine (closing with Kaos CTW) I had a guy ask me if I had an impression device which I used to duplicate the signature! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Did anyone else get the "card that changes under heat" excuse more than one time?
Where do people get that idea? I've never heard of a card that changes when you heat it with your hands...

There are devices that change colour with heat; there are devices that become transparent with heat. I own examples of both. I don't see why it's hard to imagine a card that could change colour with heat.

And the impression device sounds like a reasonable explanation for the ambitious card routine, IMO. Wrong, but not stupid.