A Review of one of Rex's show

Sikes Delivers Mind-Boggling Performance

By Jason Klimchok - Used with permission

The Highlander: The Student Voice of College Misericordia Vol.9 Issue 6 November 14, 2005

On Friday, October 28th, I walked into the Cougar’s Den a little before 8:30. That night, I was going to see a performance by the mentalist Rex Sikes. I had barely sat down when the man in the purple suit walked up to me and asked for my help. He handed me a small piece of paper, and asked me to write down a hobby, sport, or activity that I had done as a child. He also handed me a small envelope. He was going to guess what I wrote down at some point during his show. As he walked away, I wrote down my information, put the paper in the envelope, sealed it, and put it somewhere on my person. I did this without showing it to anyone, like he had asked.

Shortly after, he started his show. He had two people from the audience, Dana and Dave, come up on stage. Sikes brought out a deck of cards and had Dave look through them to make sure that there weren't trick cards, and that it was a normal deck. After receiving verification, Sikes had Dana look through the cards as he fanned them out in front of her, and told her to “see it in [her] mind” and to take a “mental snapshot” of the card. He had them both imagine their card on a movie screen in their mind. He followed through with questions of color, suit, and high or low. Then he had David pick another card. Trying to guess even or odd, and suit, Sikes made some errors, but the jokes he had immediately ready left one to wonder if it was a part of the show.

Sikes decided to get other people in the audience involved, having them pick cards, without showing him, and return to their seats. He said he did not know how successful he was going to be, but said he was going to try and guess the cards. He asked everyone with a card to hold the image of it vividly in their minds, so he could better pick up on it. “Nothing I do is supernatural or occult, it’s all done by the process of the human mind,” Sikes pointed out, going further to say that he’s made no deals with anyone, or put any plants or paid stooges in the audience.

He asked everyone to project their card onto a mental movie screen in their minds so that he could see them. He guessed the first card and he was correct. That was followed by the second card ...also correct. Dana and Dave sat back down. He then guessed the 8 of spades from someone in the audience, who promptly replied “Holy [crap]!” His next guess was the queen of hearts, which he changed to the jack of hearts, and was again correct.

One other person in the audience had a card that they had placed in their pocket without looking at it. Sikes explained that he was going to try something “[he’s] never done before.” Sikes was going to try to astral project, or “leave [his] body” and travel from himself to inside the guy’s pocket. “Trust me, it’s gonna be more fun for you then it will be for me,” Sikes said, inciting laughter from the crowd. He made comments about it being dark and full of lint, before ‘returning’ to himself and guessing the 5 of clubs. Once again, Sikes was correct.

He next asked the crowd if anyone there was boyfriend and girlfriend, and found a pair Elizabeth and Matt. He told Matt, the boyfriend, to imagine any place in the world, as vividly as he could, and then print the name of said place in his mind on a movie screen. He asked the girlfriend to remember the first person she ever kissed, and think about his name, and print that on the movie screen too.

He then went back to Elizabeth and he started to draw a picture of what the first guy looked like. When he revealed the picture, it was a cartoony drawing of a person, meant to be an obvious joke. However, before he had drawn the picture, he had written something down on a piece of paper. When the name was revealed, it said ‘Chris.’ The name was correct.

Sikes then went back to work on the boyfriend, Matt, and he asked him to concentrate. Sikes wrote down the name of the place on a piece of paper and held it up behind Matt’s head, so the audience could see, but Matt could not. Sikes then asked Matt to reveal the place he had been thinking of. Matt said Hawaii, just like the sign above his head read.

Sikes followed this by correctly guessing the serial number on a dollar bill. A member of the audience held the bill, and concentrated on the characters that made up the serial number, one by one. He guessed the final letter incorrectly at first, calling a ‘G’, but then correctly switching his answer to ‘Q.’

The next part of his performance had him call five people from the audience up on the stage. He spoke about how he went around the country training law enforcement officials in lie detection. He had the five members, three females and two males, write the type and color of underwear they were wearing down a piece of paper while he looked away and spoke to the audience. He had one of the members of the group collect the papers and shuffle them, face-down so no one could see them. Sikes then took the papers and read each one to each member of the group. Each member was supposed to agree, no matter what, that the type of underwear mentioned was the one that they wrote down. The phrase they were supposed to use was “That is so me.”

Sikes’ challenge this time was to determine who was telling the truth, based on yes and no signals. Before Sikes made his final decision, he had the audience say who they thought the underwear belonged to. After all five were chosen, Sikes made a few changes. Those few changes led to correct answers all along the board. He even guessed, without looking at the card, that one of them was wearing Spongebob Squarepants underwear.

One of, if not the most mind-blowing parts of the performance followed. He asked all the people to concentrate on a number of things: their name, something that had to do with numbers, whether it be address, phone number, or something else. The third thing was something about ourselves that another person could not tell by looking at us. The final thing was a question that we did not know the answer to. “The dumber, the stupider, the more fun this will be. Trust me on that,” Sikes said, referring to the question that would finish off our list.

Sikes then asked the audience to visualize, once again on a large movie screen and he would read our minds and share the information. He chose the people by name, based on what he was receiving. First was Elizabeth. Her number was a date, and Sikes guessed the number. He also guessed that she had a tattoo on her. He answered her question, before revealing what the question was. After answering it, he followed by asking the question.

Following Elizabeth was yours truly. He picked up that I am in the service, and spent time in Iraq. He then answered my question, by saying, “Billions and billions and billions.” He then quoted the question I wrote verbatim. “How many cups of sugar does it take to get to the moon?” After this, he also told me what I had written down before the show, on the paper that I had put in my coat pocket and not removed since it when in. He asked if I played baseball when I was younger, which was correct.

He followed this by guessing various things from various people, about long time friends, pet names, and even a fetish, to the surprise of the person and those in the crowd who also knew the information.

Sikes finished off the show with two final things, one of which did not work. He set pens on a table, and told us to use the power of our mind to try and move one of them. From the beginning, he was not sure it was going to work. Unfortunately, we were unable to move the pen. He had someone near the pen watching to make sure nothing would affect the pen such as a magnet or vibration.

After this, he used a light bulb obtained from Rich Greene. He mentioned that a singer can shatter glass using a note. He told us to think about a note, but not to vocalize it. After a short time, when nothing happened, he had the audience join hands. Sikes held the light bulb around the metal base, so as not to crush the glass with his hands. After a few seconds of combined concentration, the light bulb popped.

Though he had gone through his final two parts, he did one last thing. He told us about a dream journal he kept. He wanted us to help him build a dream, based on the show X-Files. He asked the crowd for the name of an agent (James Farragan), a place for his mission to take place (Sacramento), College Misericordia, a date (April 28th, 2002), a time (11:32am), amount of spending money for the agent ($75,000), to spend.

Sikes then reached into his wallet, which he had not touched at all during the show, and pulled out a makeshift envelope made with 4x6 cards stapled together all around the border. He had Greene reach in and pull out the contents. It was a log of the dream Sikes had the previous night, and transcribed the morning of his CM performance. He read off everything that his log had, and the only thing he got wrong was the year, which read 2002. This concluded his show.

After the show, I had to opportunity to speak with some of the audience. Brandon Jane said, “He was totally amazing. He guessed everything about me, stuff that people don’t know about me. Like I’m color-blind and he got it. I never talked to him before. It’s wild.” Also, Cassie Burriss said that, “It was amazing. I have no idea how he knew this stuff, but it was really impressive.” Cheers and clapping as the show ended seem to tell a lot about what the remainder of the crowd thought of the show.

Rex has many clients around the country, and his manager was kind enough to share some of the bigger name corporate clients he has. Names such as Microsoft, AFLAC, SC Johnson, GE, McDonald’s, and Century 21 populate a list of many. He has also entertained at the home of AOL founder James Kimsey.

Sikes was kind enough to put me in touch with another person who saw his performance. I spoke with Debi Derryberry, better known to us as the voice of the cartoon character Jimmy Neutron, about her experience with Sikes. “I am generally a skeptic…he’s nothing short of astounding. He made me a believer.” Derryberry said that he performed at the graduation ceremony of Castaldi’s Killer Boot Camp. Derryberry is a believer because she sat, “less than six feet away, and it couldn't’t be sleight of hand.”

Fortunately, I was also able to obtain an interview with Sikes after the show, but you’ll have to wait until the next issue of The Highlander for that.

COLLEGE SHOWS ARE GREAT!!!

Rex demonstrates "lie detecting" and concludes this demonstration with amazing mind reading!

They love it! So much so this guy jumped up - raced onto the stage to high-five Rex who had just successfully reads his mind!!!

Like the others she was blown away when Mind Reader "Rex told me about stuff - no one else could know!"