Letters to the Editor – Magic in Writing (and Answering)Inside MagicMagic News Updated Daily for the Professional Magician

When required by court order or threat of litigation,
Quinlan's Inside Magic publishes letters to the editor and issues corrections,
retractions, or admissions of total fabrication.

If you have a beef with something written, said, not said,
or not pictured, on Quinlan's Inside Magic, please feel free to send an email
to editor@insidemagic.com. We always answer the letters either in this
type of feature or directly by email.

To the Editor:

You made numerous mistakes in your article, "Harlan
Tarbell – Turban Wearing Liar from Gary Indiana."

First of all, Dr. Tarbell is no longer
living. You said he was retired in the
"south of France with
his third wife, a mail-order bride from Belarus." Second, you claim he was from Gary, Indiana but the
reality is he was from Chicago,
Illinois.

Here are two big
blunders in just the article's title and first line. I could name the rest of the errors but that
would be longer than your already ponderous article.

Here's a couple, though.

You claim Dr. Tarbell was originally half of a Siamese-twin
pair and that under his turban "[he] hid the remnants of the operation
that freed him from his sister Anita Tarbell who also wore decorative hats to
hide her most direct connection to her magician brother."

This is not only disgusting but it is untrue. There was no Anita Tarbell and no evidence
that Dr. Tarbell had anything on his head other than hair. He didn't even wear the turban all that
much. In fact, he rarely wore it at all.

You next suggest that while Dr. Tarbell became famous for
his Tarbell Course on Magic, he was
better known as a burlesque dancer performing as "Doctor Tee."

While I can't prove that is not true, you can't prove that
it is. There is nothing in any biography
to suggest Dr. Tarbell even knew how to dance, much less "dance the hootchie-cootchie
to entertain our fighting boys overseas."

Then you said he was an inventor and was the first patent
owner for the process behind "Scratch-n-Sniff" technology. I checked the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office and they have no such record. I also
checked with the Kraft Foods Company in Chicago
and they have nothing to support your bizarre suggestion that Dr. Tarbell
developed the first "Scratch-n-Sniff applications to aid blind shoppers
find their favorite brands." While
I would agree Dr. Tarbell was a caring and giving man, I do not know of any
responsible historian who would suggest this nugget.

I also must take great exception to your persistent and very
irritating style of writing. You use the
royal or papal "WE" throughout your articles and you end almost every
paragraph with a series of exclamation marks.
It is the type of writing I would expect if the Pope was a 16
year-old-girl and I was reading his/her diary.

Finally, while I don't know how Dr. Tarbell obtained his
title "Doctor," I can virtually guarantee it was not, as you wrote,
"because he trained for seven years as a freelance colorectal
therapist."

You should be ashamed of yourself. Get your facts straight before you defame
someone so important as Dr. Harlan Tarbell.

To the Editor:

I read Inside Magic all of the time. You used to have a newsletter that came out
very often but not now anymore. Why and
do you think you will have it come out again?

To the Editor:

In one of your articles, you featured a magician who did a
trick with a ball the floated or something like that. Do you know who that was and how I can get
that trick?

To the Editor:

Are the Mandrake the Magician cartoons original or are they
re-prints from the old series? That is
the first page I look for each day.
Thank you for running them.

To the Editor:

Are you tired of paying good money for bad drugs? Is your spouse tired of putting up with your
excuses? Are you too embarrassed to solve
personal problems because you don't want to ask your own doctor for the
prescriptions YOU REALLY NEED?

To the Editor:

I did that trick you had in your "Learn a Trick
Column" but it didn't come out right.
You said they will always pick the Six of Spades but I've done it 19
times and not once did they say they picked the Six of Spades. Are you wrong or did I read your trick wrong?

To the Editor:

I am a Pediatrician and member of a fairly large practice
here the Des Moines
area. I also enjoy magic and was excited
to read your article about using tricks with kids to encourage healthy
habits. I shared your column with my
colleagues and we were all impressed and have made or bought the tricks as you
taught. I did have concern about one
trick, though; that is why I am writing to you.
The Rising Card trick is a classic and I love your innovative method of
making the card appear to float up and away from the pack but there must be
another substance as sticky and pliable as mucous that can be used to attach
the card to the performer's forehead. While
there probably is not much risk of infection from one using one's own mucous to
stick a card to one's forehead, you suggest the performer "secretly secure
mucous from either his nose or a friend's nose." The spread of germs through the nasal
passages is well-documented as one of the most efficient methods. In fact, next to exposure to serum or blood,
the mucosal lining of the nose or other areas stands ready to actually incubate
infection-causing genes upon contact.
Can you make a correction to your article or bring this to the attention
of your readers? Keep up the great work!

To the Editor:

My story is sad but true.
I am the former mistress of Deputy Prime Minister Kastan Trijolie of Nigeria. The now famous military coup forced us from
the royal palace with little more than the clothes on our backs and one
suitcase of luggage each. Fortunately,
we were able to carry with us – on our persons at great risk and danger if
caught – the keys to our very large Switzerland banks account boxes
that have millions of Euros in gold stored inside of them. Because we are in exile, we cannot get to the
boxes directly but and so we need your help as a honest man, Mr. To the Editor,
to get the gold out. We would be willing
to give you 60 percentages of the gold if you can help us. We can live many lifetimes on just 40
percentages of the gold so we don't need more than that. You can help us by sending your credit
information to my attentions here on the email.
I will send you a test checque to see if you can deposit it into your
account to show that we can have the rest of the millions of golds sent to your
account by a wire transfer. Please times
of the essence, Mr. To the Editor. Send
your informations to me now and I will send the test check right aways. You are the only one we can trust to help us
and we have not tolded anyone else about this.
Only you.

To the Editor:

I asked the magic store owner if he had ever heard of a nest
of boxes made out of bubbles. He said I
was "KRAZY!!!" He said he saw
the same lecture you saw and Losander did not teach anyone how to do a nest of
boxes with bubbles where you pop ever-smaller bubbles until you reach the last
one where the audience can see the marked coin floating inside the bubble. He said he thought you were making this
up. Were you because if you weren't it
sounds like a great trick.

To the Editor:

You should be better in your description of this
website. I wasted alot of time on it
because I thought it was about Magic the Gathering but its' not at
all. It's about MAGIC THE BORING. Say it upfront in your
google listing that
this isnt' a website for people who want to play the greatest game ever
but for
people who like to "do" magic like spazzes.

To the Editor:

You seem to have a thing for Lindsay Lohan and Natalie
Wood. I can see the Natalie Wood
obsession, she was a talented actress who matured into beautiful movie star
with solid acting credentials. Lindsay
Lohan seems to be a self-absorbed teen-idol.
Surely you must have more depth than a tabloid-reader.

To the Editor:

What ever happened to your challenge to David Blaine and
Criss Angel to go head-to-head in a
magic contest. As I recall, you or the
ezine were going to pay some award to the winner and it was going to be
judged
by impartial non-magic judges. Did that
already happen and I just missed it or haven't they accepted it
yet? Just wondering. Personally, I think Criss Angel would
win but
I am biased because I met him when he was filming the first season of
MINDFREAK
in Las Vegas
and he was so nice and asked me about what kind of magic I do and what
I wanted
to do when I got out of school. He is a
star but he is still a magic fan like us.

To the Editor:

Is there a way you could make your web site less
interesting? Perhaps you could take
stories in the regular news and then add a hole bunch of nonsense to them and
post them with pictures of pretty girls who have nothing to do with the story
at all. Oh Wait, YOU ALREADY DO
THAT! Okay, maybe you could write stupid
"fiction" about a stupid "family" of magicians who drink
too much and don't have real homes or real booking schedules and who probably
don't even exist and then post them with a picture of a pretty girl who has
nothing to do with the story. OH NO! YoU
ALREADY DO THAT TO. Hmm. Let me
think. Maybe you could write reviews of
your obviously favorite magicians or youre favorite magicians tricks and books
and DVDs and have pictures of pretty girls with the stories but who have
nothing to do with the stories or reviews.
NO. That wnot work. YOU DO THAT ALREADY TO! Well, I guess youv'e tried all of the idea's
I would suggested to you so you're doing all that you can to make it boring
already. I will just have to take what I
can got.

To the Editor:

Why don't you have more pieces about Li'l Tom Hardy and
family. I look forward to those stories
and even send the links on to my friends when I see a new one. Thanx.

To the Editor:

I met you in Las
Vegas at the second Magic Live. You said you were going to write an article
about me and an interview but I never heard from you again. Do you still have time and do you want me to
resend my clippings and pictures? It's
no problem if you need them re-sent.
Thank you again!

Our responses (in
no particular order):

We don't care what you think, we feel royal enough; and
besides, a Pope can't be a girl.

We were just joking.

Yes, send them again.

We're glad you like the stories, it's nice to hear that.

We like pictures of pretty girls so sue us. By the way, every photo we show has something
to do with the stories or reviews. You
need to look more closely.

What about the Deputy Prime Minister's Wife? Won't she notice 60 percent of the gold is
gone? Or doesn't she know about you and
the Deputy Prime Minister? Why would I
trust someone who would cheat on a government official thrown into exile by his
own country men and women?

We have never been embarrassed asking our trained
physician's assistant for drugs. Our
partner is disappointed and we're embarrassed but not about the same thing.

Not Losander. We think there was a miscommunication. We said we saw "Losander's evil twin"
teach the trick at a lecture recently. As
your neighborhood magic shop owner for Blowsander's
Nested Bubbles.

We heard back informally (we think) from Criss Angel – any
time, any where. No word from Mr.
Blaine's people.

We're glad he is a nice guy on and off television.

You're probably right. Nothing can compare with a game where
you sit amongst your same gender, popping the same type of whiteheads, eating
the same kind high fructose foodstuffs, while living a life of fantasy where
you're not sitting at a table with the same guys, with zits, eating Twinkies.

We will have the newsletter again soon. We just need to figure out the programming so
we don't send spam out unintentionally.
(That doesn't mean we want to send out spam intentionally either. You
know what we mean).

We were just joking about the Siamese Twin – the rest of it
is true, though. Look it up.

We were using the Six of Spades as an example. Read the sentence fragment right before the sentence
you reference. "for example, the
Six of Spades." They can take any
card and it would work as long as you handle the deck as we described. On the other hand, we can just about
guarantee that if you handle the deck correctly but they did not take the Six
of Spades, the Six of Spades will not be the card you show at the end of the
trick. Start at the end and read
backwards. You don't just yell, "Six of Spades" while handling the
cards. You actually produce the card they selected and then lost in the
deck. Does that make sense? If not, write us again and we'll go through
the handling step-by-step. We probably
didn't explain it right.

Why would we want to review products that are no good or
promote magicians we don't like? If the
trick, book, video, or DVD is bad, we won't cover it. So assume if you don't read about a given
item in our pages, it is because it is either terrible or we haven't finished
our comprehensive review of all tricks and magicians in the history of
mankind.

We were just making a joke based on that old saying, Vous pouvez sélectionner votre nez. Vous
pouvez sélectionner vos amis. Mais vous ne pouvez pas sélectionner le nez
de votre ami ("you can pick
your nose, you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your friend's
nose.") We were trying to be
witty. We were also just joking about
re-using the tongue depressors for the paddle trick, and the used cotton balls
as a sponge-ball substitute. But you
probably already knew that – we hope.

We cannot claim to have any depth of character or
integrity. You would likely break your
neck diving into our soul – even in the deep-end.

Based entirely on Princess Narda's rather contemporary hair
style (she used to wear a "flip") we think this is a new series. The artist does give credit, however, to the originator
of the strip in each panel.

The effect is called The Zombie or The Zombie Ball. You can buy it on the internet or better yet
your neighborhood brick and mortar magic store.
We didn't provide the secret because it is not our trick and it is
commercially available.
If you can't find
a brick and mortar store in your neighborhood, travel to a neighborhood where
they have a real magic store. You'll
find a wealth of knowledge there. Chances
are the reason you might have difficulty finding a brick and mortar store in
your neighborhood is because the internet stores' cut-rate prices make it
impossible to pay the rent. You will
learn so much just hanging around the counter of a real-live magic store. We promise.

When required by court order or threat of litigation,
Quinlan's Inside Magic publishes letters to the editor and issues corrections,
retractions, or admissions of total fabrication.

To the Editor:

You made numerous mistakes in your article, "Harlan
Tarbell – Turban Wearing Liar from Gary Indiana."

Here are two big
blunders in just the article's title and first line. I could name the rest of the errors but that
would be longer than your already ponderous article.

Here's a couple, though.

You next suggest that while Dr. Tarbell became famous for
his Tarbell Course on Magic, he was
better known as a burlesque dancer performing as "Doctor Tee."

Finally, while I don't know how Dr. Tarbell obtained his
title "Doctor," I can virtually guarantee it was not, as you wrote,
"because he trained for seven years as a freelance colorectal
therapist."

You should be ashamed of yourself. Get your facts straight before you defame
someone so important as Dr. Harlan Tarbell.

To the Editor:

I read Inside Magic all of the time. You used to have a newsletter that came out
very often but not now anymore. Why and
do you think you will have it come out again?

To the Editor:

In one of your articles, you featured a magician who did a
trick with a ball the floated or something like that. Do you know who that was and how I can get
that trick?

To the Editor:

Are the Mandrake the Magician cartoons original or are they
re-prints from the old series? That is
the first page I look for each day.
Thank you for running them.

To the Editor:

You should be better in your description of this
website. I wasted alot of time on it
because I thought it was about Magic the Gathering but its' not at
all. It's about MAGIC THE BORING. Say it upfront in your google
listing that
this isnt' a website for people who want to play the greatest game ever
but for
people who like to "do" magic like spazzes.

To the Editor:

What ever happened to your challenge to David Blaine and
Criss Angel to go head-to-head in a
magic contest. As I recall, you or the
ezine were going to pay some award to the winner and it was going to be
judged
by impartial non-magic judges. Did that
already happen and I just missed it or haven't they accepted it yet?
Just wondering. Personally, I think Criss Angel would win but
I am biased because I met him when he was filming the first season of
MINDFREAK
in Las Vegas
and he was so nice and asked me about what kind of magic I do and what
I wanted
to do when I got out of school. He is a
star but he is still a magic fan like us.

To the Editor:

Why don't you have more pieces about Li'l Tom Hardy and
family. I look forward to those stories
and even send the links on to my friends when I see a new one. Thanx.

To the Editor:

Our responses (in
no particular order):

We don't care what you think, we feel royal enough; and
besides, a Pope can't be a girl.

We were just joking.

Yes, send them again.

We're glad you like the stories, it's nice to hear that.

We like pictures of pretty girls so sue us. By the way, every photo we show has something
to do with the stories or reviews. You
need to look more closely.

We have never been embarrassed asking our trained
physician's assistant for drugs. Our
partner is disappointed and we're embarrassed but not about the same thing.

We heard back informally (we think) from Criss Angel – any
time, any where. No word from Mr.
Blaine's people.

We're glad he is a nice guy on and off television.

We were just joking about the Siamese Twin – the rest of it
is true, though. Look it up.