An old thread, but I was just googling the Space Cowboy and spoon bending today for no particular reason, and found this.
A few years ago I was sitting in a tent between acts, and Space Cowboy was on the schedule. I didn't know what act that was, but it sounded uninteresting. However, I ended up watching him on two or three separate days.
The first day he hypnotised a few people including a girl. He sent the girl back to her chair, and then reached at her back like he was grabbing at her and pulling her back. She stopped in surprise and looked around, feeling it. I guess this isn't hard to explain, it's like how you can feel someone's eyes on you. Its supposed to be part of chaos theory or something that you can't observe a system and not affect it. But the next day he did the same thing (reaching out and grabbing at the back) of a different woman he sent to her chair, and it didn't work. She didn't sense it. I thought that was funny.
Also, he explains his acts to some extent. Like on the second day he explains he hypnotises the people by reading their reactions and seeing how easy they are to manipulate. He sees how receptive they are to him.
Another thing he did was get audience members to blindfold him painfully, and tightly with masking tape, like looping many wraps around his head. Then he gets someone to put a broken glass and knives under paper bags, and he slams his hand down on the bag that's empty. He explained he reads the reaction of the person who covered the broken bottle, and can tell by their anxiety which paper bag is dangerous.
He also did the drawing act, like he drew what an audience member had drawn. I can't remember exactly, but he didn't cover his eyes (with mirrors like James Randi said) and he was heavily blindfolded. But he put his hand on the person as they drew, or - I have troubling remembering - he got a separate audience member to touch the drawing person, and then touch him. He said he could feel by their actions (placing his hand on their back) what movements they were making, and thus he could copy the drawing. Or he might have described the drawing, which could be like cold reading. My memory is off because it was a few years ago. Anyway, he's a very interesting performer who explains his acts to some extent.
I am somewhat inclined to believe this telepathy/sensing stuff because it seemed to me I kind of predicted a car hitting an old lady outside when I was a kid. I walked to a corner of the shop, and when I heard the screech and thud, I thought, 'That must be it.' But the incident is confusing for me now, and I don't know if I actually predicted it (only by the span of a minute or so), or if there was just a really long screech and I got confused.
But the really interesting thing was he bent some spoons and cutlery from the audiences table (I think - I can't remember precisely where he got the cutlery from). He did rap them against things to show they were solid and had audience members inspect them. You could see the tines bending and twisting. I didn't take this especially seriously, because the performer is a skinny blonde guy with a lot of piercings, who swallows swords and jokes about Deepthroat. And also because I was a long distance away in the crowd. I figured it was an optical illusion.
But then he began bending spoons in audience members' hands, mainly children. He places his own hands above and below the kids' hands and the spoons bend. In an interview he said people always ask him how he does this, and in seminars he tells them to concentrate and then the spoon has bent in their hands. The most interesting example was when he got this little boy from the audience.
This kid wasn't a plant. It's a tent full of sweaty festival-goers who were sheltering from the rain. The kid was tiny, probably about 4 years old, had a huge skull relative to his frame and formed his words awkwardly, he was so young. The Space Cowboy had the kid hold the spoon which was bending, and the kid suddenly went, 'Aw!' The performer then held the microphone to the kid, and asked,
'What did you feel? Describe what you felt.'
The kid said, 'A zzzap.' He was so young he made the z sound long. The child said the spoon had become hot, and then a few seconds later the spoon kind of melted and broke, and part of it fell to the ground.
I'm not saying I didn't witness a trick, I don't know how it happened, but it's not as cheap a parlour trick as James Randi is making out. He didn't bend the spoon against his chair. The spoon drooped, and dissolved/broke out of a tiny kid's hands.
