157: Jim Sisti - On The Menu

What was he thinking? Why would someone start a bi-monthly magic publication in the early 1990’s? Desktop publishing was in its infancy in 1990, and I mean dot matrix printing and tractor-fed printers. And when I say low resolution graphics, I really mean pixilated clip art. Wow! And then to make it even more arcane, focus on a small segment of the magic society: restaurant magic. Even at its peak, they only had 500 subscribers. What was he thinking?

But Jim Sisti had a passion and created something that will live as essential reading for the restaurant magician as the Bible of Restaurant Magic. The Magic Menu started with the September/October 1990 issue that carried on for 11 years and eventually bound into two hardback volumes. I believe Jim has a plan for the last couple year’s worth of issues to be bound sometime.

The Magic Menu led the field in educating magicians in how to be a restaurant magician. It remains the longest running and only regularly published newsletter exclusively for the performing restaurant magician. The Magic Menu included advice, tips, tricks, brilliant articles and more for the restaurant magician. Contributors included all the top workers of the day including Al the Only, Michael Ammar, Michael Close, Jay Sankey, Simon Lovell, Paul Green, Doc Eason, Eugene Burger, just to drop a few. I was pleased and honored to have been one of the regular columnists for The Magic Menu for a number of years. I was also the one who designed the artwork for the masthead for the later years of the publication.

Jim was recently an adviser for Criss Angel’s “MindFreak” TV show and now works with Richard Osterlind and seen on many of Richard’s instructional videos. Jim is not only a close-up magician but also a skilled stage performer as well.

In this podcast, Jim talks a little about The Magic Menu, but more extensively about restaurant magic and some of the ideas gleaned from this publication.  Jim talks about the real secrets and talks about facts, figures and money.. In addition to talking about the genesis of The Magic Menu, we discussed Bulletin Board Services (BBS) and other early iterations of how magicians congregated online in the days of "dial-up", which was long before the internet.

If you are interested in performing in a restaurant or in a corporate strolling environment, then this is a "must hear" podcast.

Download this podcast in an MP3 file by Clicking Here and then right click to save the file. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed by Clicking Here. (please note: this RSS Feed subscription system may not work with Android systems). Remember, you can download it through iTunes. See the preview page by Clicking Here.

Magic & Martinis Thursday

Martinis on the Menu

Click the Lybrary log to visit the page for ordering digital  editions of The Magic Menu

148: Day 2 - East Coast Mind Jam 2014

The second day of the East Coast Mind Jam had the "Mind-Jammers" gathered to see and hear a lot of amazing stuff. The lectures were longer than most time allotted at other conventions. And with the lower number of attendees (about 75 people), everyone had quality time with all the performers and lecturers.

Patrick Redford (George Tait) was up first in the morning following breakfast. Next was Devin Knight, then Jim Sisti (on marketing). Richard Osterlind held court for nearly two hours with an SRO audience. That only left an hour with Ted Karmilovich to give some really wonderful ideas in his lecture.

Scott Wells hosted the evening show with a lot of original introductions that will only be seen once. The bill included Devin Knight, Ted Karmilovich, Joe Atmore (who recreated The Amazing Dunninger's old time radio show) and closing the first half with Patrick Redford (George Tait). The second half was a real treat with Richard Osterlind presenting his one man, hour long corporate show to the audience that included many from the public who came in for the evening show.

The hotel had a private party in the bar, so the festivities closed rather early tonight even though there was a cash bar outside the dealers room until the "late" hour of 11:30.

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Time stamps for this podcast:

00:00:00 - Ben Salinas is a card and coin guy with 46 DVDs to his credit. But he is going the way of mentalists and adding more mind reading into his routines. Find out why.

00:09:14 - Joey the See "Mentalist to the Mob" (Joseph Curcillo) talks about how magic and mentalism leak into the courtroom as an attorney.

00:20:30 - Docc Hilford can finally take a breather to relax and chat for a brief moment. He talks about how much he has enjoyed this convention and what makes this one so different from others.

00:25:44 - Ed Russe and Eric Dittelman talk with Joe Atmore about his portrayal of The Amazing Dunninger and the history of this radio great.

Download this podcast in an MP3 file by Clicking Here and then right click to save the file. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed by Clicking Here. (please note: this RSS Feed subscription system may not work with Android systems). Remember, you can download it through iTunes. See the preview page by Clicking Here.