Amazing Kreskin nearly nails Super Bowl

Baby Boomer alert: Amazingly, The Amazing Kreskin not only is alive and well and still working at age 78, he has as much work as ever – nearly one show or interview for every day of the year in 2012, he said.

But until this year he never had attempted to predict the Super Bowl score. That changed on Fox Business Channel the week before the big game, when he sealed his pick and gave it to the co-hosts of "After the Bell."

Monday the scores were revealed in a classic, complicated Kreskin ritual involving folded pieces of paper, locked boxes and convoluted codes. Bottom line: He had it Ravens 34, 49ers 29, one intentional safety away from a direct hit.

Kreskin said he was excited about getting the Ravens score right but disappointed by the safety.

"I saw video of one of the coaches clenching his fists and looking down," he said in a phone interview from his New Jersey home. "I felt I should have been standing next to him doing the same thing. I was so damn frustrated."

Kreskin said he spent more than 14 hours researching the two teams then cleared his head and "let my unconscious come through with an answer. It's an intuitive thing, not something I end up by reasoning consciously."

Not bad for a first attempt. Kreskin said he stays sharp and in shape by jogging for an hour every morning between 4 and 5 a.m. and that he spends only a handful of days at home each year. He said it has been estimated that he has flown three million miles during his career.

"My life has been an adventure," he said.

(Full disclosure: One of his stops was at a theater in downtown Ithaca in the very early 1980s. Upon learning that Kreskin was an honorary member of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at Seton Hall, several of my fellow Pi Kappa Alphas picked him up after the show and brought him to our house at Cornell. A very long night, and early morning, of socializing ensued.)