From time to time and when required by the standards of decency and regulations, we publish letters to the editor.  If you have something on your brain you would like to share, please send us a note at editor@insidemagic.com.  We won’t use your last name so ask anything  – related to magic.

Dear Inside Magic:

A long time ago or maybe last week you said you were going to do podcasts.  When will they start going?

• Unnamed

Dear Unnamed:

We are going to be doing podcasts and have already had two guests who have volunteered to discuss the history of magic, some of the greats they’ve seen and from whom they learned much.  While we are very talented in the double-lift and second deal, we are still learning how to hook-up the electronics necessary for a podcast.  We have been researching everywhere.  We started reading Popular Electronics magazines from the 1960s – just because we still had them, holding up part of our dining room table, also from the 1960s by coincidence.  The table fell down and scared our 12 cats but we were determined to learn the technique of what the kids call “pod casting.”

Our research showed that the technique did not exist in the 1960s (from 1964 forward), the 1970s (the only “pod” reference dealt with the American space program and did involve microphones and receivers but seemed far too expensive to build), and the 1980s.  We figured we would just break down (not emotionally – that’s what the 12 cats prevent) and go to Radio Shack to get a ready-made kit.  But you know what?  There are no Radio Shacks any more.  They’ve gone the way of Good Humor trucks and regular milk delivery to your front door.

Undeterred, we went to the Internet (capitalized to meet the current style guide here at Inside Magic (pronounced, “IN – side mAGIC” – the .com is silent.  We found many things on the Internet but few things on pod casting until we figured out that we should search for something more specific.  We modified our search in the “search bar” to something other than “pod” OR “casting.”  Each word on its own brings up results that are unhelpful.  The latter brings up many results that are not safe for work but we work from home so all we had to worry about was offending the cats and they don’t do much during the day.

Bottom line: we think we know what we need to do and we will do it, by gollly.  We hope to tape our first one in the next two or three weeks and it should go live within a few days after.  Thank you so much for asking.

 

Dear Editor: 

What is the best way to become a master magician? Is there a course I can take?

• William

Dear William:

The appellation “Master Magician” is given to only one magician at a time.  Currently Lance Burton holds the title after he was given the status by Lee Grabell.  It is, therefore, a very rare honor and one that many of us will never achieve.

On the other hand, you can try to master magic by practicing before a mirror over and over until you fool yourself, perform for a trick for an audience only once (never do it again no matter what they say), and NEVER reveal a secret.  If you keep these things in mind, you’ll go far.  It is a wonderful art and we admire your apparent desire to learn more about it.

We had written a 15 volume set on “How to Become a Master Magician” but it is no longer in print and was the subject of, in our view, needless litigation.  Sorry we don’t have an old set we can give you but it is holding up the other side of our table.

 

Dear Magic:

Why do some magicians change their names to just one name? Like Cher or Sammy?

• Elaine

Dear Elaine:

If that is your real name.  (See what we did there?)  Usually a single name (usually the first name although Penn & Teller are an exception) is something one takes on when they reach a level of fame but in the magic world, it helps to get promoted and adds to the mystery.

Would you want to see “Timmy Quinlan” or “The Amazing Q”? We hope it is the second one because we just bought 1,000 business cards saying “The Amazing Q” from Vista Print one night when we saw a commercial about a special offer just for those watching at 3:30 in the morning.

They haven’t arrived yet and we have no idea how we will distribute them – especially because we forgot (we were tired and that cats were doing their nocturnal running the length of the trailer and then running back) to put our phone number on them.

That means, if you pick up one of our Amazing Q cards, you’ll need to come to our residence and knock on our door – thus scaring the cats and causing them to hide but not before bumping into each other like furry pinballs (our first album name, by the way) – or write us a letter by US Mail.  Our landlord will not accept FedEx packages on our behalf because she worries they could be bad things.

We’ve asked what kind of “bad things” could be in a standard envelope with a FedEx logo.  She responds out of the corner of her mouth not holding her cigarette, “you wouldn’t know, would you?”

Great question but the bottom line is folks will have to send letters.

We don’t know why ordinary letters wouldn’t carry the same “bad things” but apparently they don’t.

So when the cards come (by regular mail) we will write our phone number on the bottom of each.  We wish we had chosen Comic Sans as the font so that when we wrote our phone number on the card, it looked like we intentionally were writing poorly.  But you know what they say, “if wishes were dishes, someone would have to take them out of the dishwasher just once in this dang house, how hard could that be?  You can put them in, no problem, but you can’t take them out?”

If you have a question for our editor, you can use the contact link at the top of the page or just send an email to us at editor@insidemagic.com.