Fungus, Mouth Magic and Tapeworm Manipulation: Letters to EditorInside MagicMagic News Updated Daily for the Professional Magician

It’s All Magic, Until Somebody Gets Hurt!

It
is the policy of Inside Magic to publish those letters or email
messages with either differing opinions, or that correct an error made
on the pages of Inside Magic. Inside Magic does not want to do either one of these things. It
would rather just keep plugging along instead of dwelling on the past
or hearing different perspectives on issues it has already resolved.

This service is
required, however, as part of the anti-trust settlement in Gerald
Mahoney a/k/a Balloon Busker Billy, for himself and for members of the
class he represents, vs. Timothy Quinlan, an individual, and Inside
Magic LLC, a limited liability corporation formed under the laws of
Belize, 239 F. 3rd 881, 191 (11th Cir. 2002).

Dear Sir or Madam:

What is a good method for doing a really public prediction. Like I would like to predict the outcome of the Presidential election. Do you have a favorite method?

Garlez, Apopka, Florida.

Dear Mr. Garlez:

Thank you for your note. There are several great methods of performing a headline prediction. One of our favorites is Dr. Dex Miracle in Your Mouth. The
effect is stunning and because it involves a trick that starts a week
before it finishes, you can use the unique method that would otherwise
not work in a performance setting.

It’s All Magic, Until Somebody Gets Hurt!

Dear Sir or Madam:

What is a good method for doing a really public prediction. Like I would like to predict the outcome of the Presidential election. Do you have a favorite method?

Garlez, Apopka, Florida.

Dear Mr. Garlez:

The effect, for those who are not familiar with Dr. Dex‘
stuff, you tell your spectators that you are able to see the future and
can actually predict who will win the upcoming election. Unlike
other magicians or so-called seers who secretly write a prediction and
hide it away until show time, you will begin the process right now and
as time passes, you will be proven prophetic.

You now remove an ordinary Chia Pet receptacle shaped like a cow (also available as a bunny or a bald man). You look into the future and now deliberately and slowly and openly lick the Chia Pet figurine several times. None of your licking patterns are discernible as letters or symbols. Over the next week, the Chia Fauna grows in and on the final two days, it grows into a word, symbol, number, or card.

We have always
played this one straight but there seem to be some comedy opportunities
with the licking and suggesting that your saliva has all that is
necessary to make Chia Fauna grow.

You can order directly from Dex or pick one up on eBay. Once you learn the secret, you can use any Chia Figurine and you do not need special seeds. In
fact, rather than buying it directly from Dex and paying list price, we
bought ours from a guy at the club who made up a bunch of them after
buying the original from Dex. It cost about a tenth of the cost.

You should know that with some of the “home-made” versions of Miracle in Your Mouth, the figurines are made in Mexico and can be contaminated with mercury or lead. It is always a good idea to wear a dental dam when you practice. We take ours off when we’re performing, obviously.

Dear Tom:

When I was talking with a friend of mine at FISM, we had a debate about whether Blackstone, Sr. actually created The Underwater Packing Box Escape and that Houdini stole the crate out of jealousy. This brought back memories of a debate at FFFF a few years ago on whether Hollywood‘s Magic Castle had as much charm as Nepal‘s Magical Theatre Home. Do you have an opinion on either of these two subjects?

M. Absender, Harbor Springs, Michigan.

Dear Mr. Absender:

If you are going to drop names, it is a good idea to get the name right. My name is, “Tim,” not “Tom.” Perhaps you are confused because of the L’il Tom Hardy connection or the Hardy Chronicles. Or perhaps you are so slack-brained that you figured two out of three letters was good enough.

We haven’t been to the fantastic places you’ve been, met the elite that you know, or performed in the far away places like Nepal or Buffalo, New York. You’re special my illiterate friend. You
have what it takes to sweep this and all other criticism under the rug
(or your toupee), and continue your proud harvesting of places and
people to tell other people at other places.

No place is as good as where you once were or where you will soon go. No performance is as convincing as the one you saw performed by Magician X at the La Dee Da Room at the old Magic Pup-Tent.

We still do the
criss-cross force, Hindu shuffle force, and when we’re bold, we try a
Classic Force with another trick in the wings if we fail. Our tuxedo is equipped with two Toppits ? one under the other because the first one wore out.

We have adjusted our waistband in and out depending on the phase
of our various diets, and use our cummerbund to hide the poor fit.

But enough of our jealous rage. Houdini did the better packing box but Blackstone, Sr. invented the box design Houdini used. This is according to the late Blackstone, Jr. Houdini told his assistant, “I’m not going to start from scratch. Pinch the box from old what’s his funny hair’s name.”

The difference between the Magic Castle and Nepal’s Magical Theatre Home is simple. The
wine cellar is far superior at the Magic Castle when compared to the
total lack of a cellar or any alcoholic beverages in a the Buddhist
country where the ground is so frozen they can’t even dig a cellar.

The Magic Castle has better service than Magical Theatre Home
but you can’t look out the window and see Mt. Everest from the Castle. Similarly, you cannot hook up with a working gal on the streets of Nepal so to each his own.

Dear Mr. Inside Magic:

I really enjoy your web-based internet web magazine. I have a question, though. We
tried your Inside Magic product ? after paying 8.95 plus shipping!!!! ?
and while we didn’t get gas attacks any more, we did feel bloated and
testy. Also, when we got the box you sent, three of the tapeworms were already dead. How can we get a refund and why didn’t the Inside Magic do as you promised it would.

Amos Stagg, Shipshewana, Indiana.

Dear Mr. Stagg:

Inside Magic is
a web-site dedicated to the promotion of magic as an entertainment
discipline in all forms, amateur, hobbyist, semi-professional,
professional, and retired. Inside Maggot,
on the other hand, is a site dedicated to the use of beneficial
parasitic resources to cure disease or improve the cosmetic appearance
of their user.

Nonetheless, we’re happy to answer your questions. The
price of Inside Maggot’s miracle mouthful is high but much of that cost
is due to angry trial lawyers and angry legal assistants trying to make
a quick buck off those who willingly swallow live (in your case, mostly
live) parasites or insects to cure what ails them.

The price, given the amount of time in court this company will
likely face for selling a Sheep’s Liver Fluke to help teenagers with
their acne, or aggressive flesh-eating bacteria to help lose cellulite,
is more than reasonable.

The old wife’s tale is true: tapeworms are delicate and vulnerable when they are outside of the lower digestive tract. When exposed to air outside the intestines, they often fall into a pseudo hibernation and will lose all but their scolex. This is not like real hibernation as they do not have a thalamus gland. People frequently mistake the segmenting and fracturing of the dry lower bodies to mean the tapeworm is dead.

This is a big mistake.

Take the scolex (the head) and swallow with a full glass of water or a sugar-filled soda. The tapeworm will break from his self-imposed suspended animation just seconds after he passes into your lower intestine. We hope you didn’t throw out the “dead” tapeworms.

Dear Mr. Magic:

I really liked your article on jock itch. I thought it was so funny. I read it to my wife but she didn’t get it because she doesn’t get it. Get it? How often? Ha. Anyway, why don’t you write more funny articles about jock itch or athletes foot or ring worm. You could write a funny article about linking ringworms or something funny like that.

Your fan,

D. Wade, Taos, New Mexico.

Dear Mr. Wade:

We didn’t write the article your referencing. We wish we had but think it was one of the other, underground magic sites. The only funny article we have written about fungal infections was a short story for a promotional sales kit for the launch of Diflucan One brand of fluconazole.

You are probably thinking there is not to much to laugh about when you consider anti-fungal agents that can be ingested. We wrote a short 500-word piece about what it would be like to be an opportunistic fungal infection. We think it was some of our best work.

One of our favorite lines came near the end of the story. The fungal infection is being confronted by Diflucan and he says, “hey, how come you are so mad at me? I didn’t do anything to you.” And Diflucan says, “there’s a fungus among us. So long Gus!” Oh, yeah, we should have told you the fungus’ name was “Gus.”

Thanks for bringing back such fond memories.

Tim Quinlan, Editor