Magician gets call to White House for Easter Egg Roll

Few guys can pick up women like Michael Grandinetti. The West Mifflin native levitates them.

The magician and illusionist levitated a girl in the middle of a busy street in New York City during a broadcast of ABC Family's "World Magic Awards." While a senior at Duquesne University, he had to get permission to miss some classes so he could fly to Los Angeles to perform on "The World's Most Dangerous Magic" on NBC.

He escaped from between two walls of flaming steel spikes.

"I was covered in kerosene," he says. "Two days later, I was back in marketing class."

Grandinetti, 30, now lives in Los Angeles and performs about 150 shows a year. He has performed magic on the major networks and creates custom illusions for corporate events.

Monday, he performs at the White House Easter Egg Roll, a tradition that dates back to 1878 when Rutherford B. Hayes officially opened the White House grounds to local children.

Grandinetti says he has been advised by White House officials not to give details of his performance, presumably for security reasons. But he says he'll make a 10-foot American flag appear for his finale.

He says he began practicing magic at age 5. Some of his fondest memories are of Saturday morning trips to the Cuckoo's Nest, a magic shop on the South Side, with his father.

"With the Internet and all this stuff going on, I think kids are missing out on the experience of going to an actual magic shop," he says. "I would go get these magic effects, and perfect them and try them out on my friends and my neighbors."

As a sophomore at West Mifflin Area High School, he astonished the halftime crowd at a football game when he made a girl disappear from the middle of the football field and made her reappear in the stands. He was 16. He says the school officials gave him all the support and respect he could want.

"They got me out of class," he says. "I got out of AP English."