PHP - Magic_quotes_gpc

I built something on my local host and when I loaded it to my online provider I started to get back slashes in front of my single quotes on data I placed in the database, example word\'s

The provider is running 5.2.9 on their server, I checked and magic_quotes_gpc is on, I thought this was old school.

Can I turn if off ? I clean by data with strip_tags() & mysqli_real_escape_string()

I found this  http://php.net/manual/en/security.magicquotes.php

Thanks

My hosting service has magic_quotes_gpc = On.  I was working on my home test server and the following script worked perfectly.  Turns out I had magic_quotes_gpc = Off .. I set magic_quotes_gpc = On and restarted.  Now the script isn't working.  See code and output below.  I know something isn't being escaped properly, but I have no clue how/what.  Even if I copy and paste the $insert output directly to phpmyadmin, it returns the same error.

Code: [Select]
//HTML Vars
$firstName = $_POST['firstName'];
$lastName = $_POST['lastName'];
$email = $_POST['email'];
$desc = $_POST['desc'];    //This is a textarea with long description.
$year = $_POST['date'];

//MySQL - no connection issues
$link = mysql_connect('localhost', '__uesr__', '__passwd__*');
$db = mysql_select_db('__DB__', $link);

$insert = "INSERT INTO images (firstName, lastName, email, descript, dateYear) VALUES ('$firstName' , '$lastName' , '$email' , '$desc' ,  '$year' ";

$query = mysql_query($insert);
if (!$query) {
die ('Can\'t query ' . mysql_error());
}

echo $insert;

::OUTPUTS::

Can't query You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 1

INSERT INTO images (firstName, lastName, email, descript, dateYear) VALUES ('this' , 'is' , 'the@email.com' , 'and. the. description won\'t work.' , '3456'



Obviously I am a novice.  I have tried using mysql_real_escape_string with and without stripslashes, but I'm not getting anywhere except more errors.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  And I don't care about SQL injection AT ALL.  I just want the thing to work with proper escaping for the description if a user inputs special chars.