Bill Shirk will be visiting New York City on Wednesday, October 22 through Friday October 24 for a promotional tour for his recently released autobiography "Modern Day Houdini, Secrets of My Twenty
Five Greatest Escapes." On Wednesday evening at about 10:45 PM, Bill will be interviewed by WABC TV's Eyewitness news. At that time he will be demontrating a strait jacket escape. Bill was nice enough to invite me to participate in the restraining process. We still have to clear it with WABC and my supervisors at the NYPD. I'll keep everyone posted how it goes.
Best regards, Tony Parisi
P.S. Bill's book is available at http://www.amazonbooks.com

OK I just got off the phone with Bill. What a genuinely nice guy by the way. He said that he will be attempting to break Mario Manzini's suspended strait jacket escape world record time of 8.5 seconds. In his book he states that he has already done this escape in 3.47 seconds but that he never actually registered it with Guinness, so it didn't count. This should be a very exciting evening. I'll keep you all posted.

Yesterday, I just found his book at Barnes & Noble and snatched it up right away. Can't wait to start reading it! From the looks of some of the pictures, he's done some crazy stuff! Truly impressive.

Hello all. Well, I finally got to meet Bill last night, face to face. What a charming and down to earth guy he is. His stories are even better and more entertaining in person. We chatted for a little bit and he mentioned several of you from the Café, including Shawn, Joe Fox, Steve Santini, Ian, and Kevin and Kristen. He's very interested in joining the Café and said that he would like to be a regular contributer to this board.
As far as the escape went, unfortunately there was a mix-up at ABC studios. They had told Bill that to do the suspended SJ escape he would need to provide his own rigging, which he did bring, but then shortly before show time we find out that they didn't want him to hook up to the ceiling. For some reason they assumed that he would bring some kind of free standing structure that he would be suspended from. So needless to say, Bill settled on doing a standing SJ escape. So Manzini's 24 year old Guinness record of 8.5 seconds still stands. The show will air on ABC world news some time next week. I'll keep everyone updated. Bill was nice enough to invite me out to dinner tonight, and he's flying back to Indianapolis in the morning. He said that I could pass on his email to anyone in escapology who would like to contact him directly. So until he signs up for the Café, feel free to drop him a line at Houdini96@aol.com.
Best regards to all Tony Parisi

Just wanted to say that I just finished Mr. Shirk's book and thought it was great. Very inspiring! And I have come to the conclusion that he may not be entirely crazy, but he's crazier than me!