Magic Castle

Day before yesterday - Mike and me and my brother and his girlfriend and 4 of our friends. It was one of my lifelong dreams come true (I love these posts about my dreams coming true) because we finally got in to the Magic Castle. In case you don't know what that is, it's a private club in Hollywood that has dinner and theaters where amateur and professional magicians perform. Most of the members practice the art of illusion, and you have to be invited by a member to get in. I have wanted to go since I was 6 years old and my first grade teacher came to school and told us she had gone and that they had a piano that plays any song you request. And finally, my dream came true, and I even got to see the piano. It's not really the piano that plays the requests. It's a ghost - Invisible Irma.

I did a book report on Harry Houdini when I was a kid. Maybe that started my interested in magic. I'm not sure. I didn't even realize how much I knew about it until we were at the Castle and I found that nearly 100% of the illusions I had seen before, and I knew how 75% of them were done. The magician who had gotten top billing was god-awful and everyone had a big laugh behind his back. The best magician was the one in the Closeup theater who did sleight of hand with cards and coins, and even when he did a trick that I had seen performed by David Copperfield I still thought it was cool. I wonder when they have the really good magicians. Maybe only on Fridays and Saturdays. We saw a poster on the wall showing their award-winning magicians from 2006. One of them was Jason Alexander. Happy Sigh. I did not remember that my favorite comedian/actor/singer/director is also a magician. (Side note: have had two other run-ins with Jason Alexander trivia just today, making 3 so far this week. Coincidence? Or is it becoming his world and we just live in it?) What do I need to do to find out when he is performing?

They gave us all passes to come back again, and we all can't wait. It was such a great experience, dressing up and being social with friends and talking to Invisible Irma. In spite of it seeming to be amateur night, dinner was wonderful, the ambience was lovely. Good food, friends, booze, music, what more could we ask for?