Latest Magic News – February 13, 2004Inside MagicMagic News Updated Daily for the Professional Magician

Serving It Up Like There’s No Tomorrow

What a great collection of neat stories in Today’s Magic News. We’ve got shows upstairs and downstairs, one man’s brave work to inspire others through magic and to cope with Tourette Syndrome, and another man’s decision to give up eating light bulbs.

Do you have story, news, press release, profile or show coming up? Let us know. Send graphics and news to tim@insidemagic.com.

Johnny Pizzi, Peter O?Malley and Eddie Gardner Set for Close-Up and Stage Show

Johnny Pizzi

Merrimack River Current features an advance notice of Johnny Pizzi?s ?A Night of Magic with Johnny Pizzi and Friends.? The show will be held at the Broad Street Grille in Merrimac, Massachusetts. Mr. Pizzi will host two award-winning magicians, Peter O’Malley and Eddie Gardner, for an evening of nightclub magic.

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Serving It Up Like There’s No Tomorrow

Do you have story, news, press release, profile or show coming up? Let us know. Send graphics and news to tim@insidemagic.com.

Johnny Pizzi, Peter O?Malley and Eddie Gardner Set for Close-Up and Stage Show

Johnny Pizzi

Mr. Pizzi is a longtime comedian-magician and has appeared on “The John Laroquette Show,” and regularly performs in Boston and Las Vegas.

The big show is set for Sunday, Feb. 15 at 8:30 p.m. in the upstairs club, and the magicians will also perform close-up magic tricks for patrons of any age in the restaurant and pub downstairs before the show. Tickets for the nightclub magic performance are $10. The close-up magic downstairs is free.

Johnny Pizzi has been doing standup comedy for 16 years on the comedy club circuit. He is one of Boston‘s Premier Comics but also an accomplished Magician. He specializes in Mentalism and does Close-up magic as well.

Check out Johnny?s Pizzi?s neat website here.

Peter O’Malley

We have featured Peter O?Malley before on the pages of Inside Magic and commented then, and reaffirm now, that he has one of the more efficient site for promoting a magician who does so many different types of shows.

See the site we told you about, and read about Mr. O?Malley at the same time here.

You can check out Eddie Gardner?s store, Diamonds Magic Shop here.

To read more about the show, visit here.

Chris Knight Cuts Back on Eating Glass but Ice Picks His Nose

Chris “Crispy” Knight

The Rocky Mountain News features a great profile of 31 year-old showman, Chris Knight. He breathes fire, shoves ice picks up his nose, reclines on a bed of nails, allows spectators to throw darts at his back, uses staples on his back and shoves pins through his skin. He doesn?t eat light bulbs any more though. There is a limit, after all.

He tells the Rocky Mountain News, “It’s just basically Russian roulette, you just eat it, wait two days and hope it passes without cutting up your insides.”

He is a student of the masters of the sideshow including the Human Blockhead, The Great Throwdini, The Fire King and Human Pincushion.

His show titled The Crispy Family Carnival uses techniques he picked up from the famous Coney Island Sideshow School in New York. Well, except for those traditions that are most likely to kill him.

As he learned magic, he wanted more and went on to learn how to perform fire-breathing. From there, he didn?t turn back. He learned, perhaps most importantly, that the trick to performing a sideshow act is that there is no trick: “I had a magician come onstage once and say, ‘Where do you get a collapsible nail to do this trick?” Mr. Knight responded, “There are none. It’s not a trick.”

Check out this great profile here.

Check out the Crispy Family Troupe webpage here.

Read all about the Show Men and Women through Crispy?s Link Page here.

Inspirational and Motivational Speaker Uses Magic

Tim Piccirillo

The Ridgway Record of Ridgway, Pennsylvania, profiles Tim Piccirillo?s motivational story of working through Tourette Syndrome, learning magic and developing a successful career as an inspirational speaker. He notes on his website, that:

?Focusing on what is wrong can only lead to depression. Piccirillo used to get there when he thought about the evils of his syndrome. He asked himself questions such as, ?Can I still see? Can I still hear? Can I walk? Is my overall health still intact?? The answers to these questions was always ?Yes.?”

The newspaper notes that Mr. Piccirillo?s chapter “The Secret to Overcoming Problems” featured in the self-help book “How to Achieve Unlimited Success.”

Check out the story in the Ridgway Record here.

Read Mr. Piccirillo?s inspiring story at his webpage here.