The Magic Castle

I was eight years old, and I was stand­ing right up next to the TV. Nor­mally the par­ents would have scolded me and told me to sit back down on the couch, but not this time. I had my fin­ger pressed to the screen and lis­tened as David Cop­per­field was going to let us pick which train car he made dis­ap­pear. I moved my fin­ger up, then left and left again, down and right, up and back down. By the end of it, my fin­ger was on the caboose, as was every­one else’s in the world (assum­ing they fol­lowed direc­tions.) I was enrap­tured. He had read my mind from across the tele­vi­sion. And now, I watched as he made the train car disappear.

I knew it wasn’t Magic, but it was some­thing that wowed me and some­thing I couldn’t fig­ure out.

Magic was one of those hob­bies which came and went, I never had the focus to really devote myself to it beyond a few sim­plis­tic card tricks. But I would duti­fully come back to it every few months and I always enjoyed a good Magi­cian spe­cial on TV.

I’ve reached an ama­teur level where I under­stand most of the mechan­ics and tricks with­out being able to recre­ate them on my own.

So when the trip to LA was lin­ing up I dis­cov­ered the Magic Cas­tle, an entity and orga­ni­za­tion which had escaped my view through­out my life.

I was excited about this from the start and I knew it would be a high­light of the trip. Brian and I both packed our suits, ties and shoes and when it was time to get ready to go, we looked good. We made Penn and Teller jokes all night as I’m about a foot taller than Brian.

As we’re tak­ing the ele­va­tor down, we’re in it with three peo­ple in t-shirts and shorts obvi­ously curi­ous why we were dressed to the nines. My cell phone tweets as I get a text mes­sage, and as the door opens to the ele­va­tor I pull it out, frown and look at Brian straight-faced as I say “My stocks are down.” It was com­pletely spon­ta­neous, but it just was how I felt. Dressed in a well fit­ting suit, stay­ing at a four star hotel, and about to go out on the town. In truth it was a text from K telling us to have fun at the Magic Castle.

We get the guy in the top hat and red tailed jacket to hail a taxi for us, and we head off to the Magic cas­tle. We had din­ner reser­va­tions at 9:30 but we had both eaten around 4 so we weren’t too hungry.

When you arrive at the Magic cas­tle, you enter the ante room where you check-in. Then after check­ing in you have to speak the magic words to an owl on the book shelf for it to reveal the bar area. It’s silly and absurd but an amaz­ing piece for the feel and aura of the place. I won’t tell you all what the magic phrase is, but it was cute.

So we end up chill­ing in the bar and dis­cover that the close-up magician’s last show has only 1 seat open. Now the  There were two Asian guys in line in front of us who decided not to split up so it came to Brian and I, we sort of looked at each other and he was the first to say “You go.” I tried to, but hon­estly, I wanted to see Eugene Burger very badly. Thanks Brian!

The show was fun, short and enter­tain­ing. He did some awe­some tricks which bog­gle the mind.

They work very hard to make the Magic Cas­tle feel right. It’s a Vic­to­rian home, lots of wood, carv­ings, paint­ings etc. They also dis­al­low any pho­tog­ra­phy inside the place etc. I wanted to get a photo with Eugene but I fol­lowed the rules, set­tling for a hand­shake after the show.

I recon­vened with Brian who was chat­ting with a girl at the bar, it ended up that she was the daugh­ter of one of the head hon­chos at the Magic cas­tle. It was a fun con­ver­sa­tion, dis­cussing var­i­ous things before it was time for our din­ner reser­va­tion. We got seated and relaxed, order­ing just appe­tiz­ers each. We tipped well since the wait­ers obvi­ously didn’t want us to order so lit­tle. The food was great. From there we got our tick­ets to the 11 o’clock show with Jeff McBride.

JEFF McBRIDE. Do you know who he is? He’s awe­some! Watch this Youtube video. He’s another Magi­cian I had seen numer­ous times on TV and actu­ally watched one of his teach­ing DVDs. He’s a judge on Cel­e­bra­Cadabra, a real­ity show on VH1 that makes C-list celebs into magi­cians. In short, he’s amaz­ing. And his show did not dis­ap­point. Brian and I dis­cussed his show for the next few days try­ing to fig­ure out his tricks but a num­ber of them com­pletely escape us.

In short, it was mes­mer­iz­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing to watch a mas­ter work. We were in the sec­ond row and it was an expe­ri­ence of a life­time. I can’t wait to go back.

When we left we asked the front desk to call a cab for us and we stepped out­side to wait. As we’re wait­ing we strike up a con­ver­sa­tion with this other cou­ple who had called a cab but had some­one jump in before them. So when our taxi pulls up we go to get in and they pick that moment to ask to split the ride with us. I should have said no, but I’m too damn nice.

Their hotel is on Sun­set, the girl says the name and when the dri­ver doesn’t imme­di­ately con­firm that he knows where it is she begins reel­ing off the address. It’s moment’s later I real­ize that both of them are drunk. Now, I don’t have great drunk­dar, I really can’t tell unless they’re slob­ber­ingly drunk. We’re chit-chatting and we get to the address the girl had named off and it obvi­ously wasn’t her hotel. So this sets the dri­ver off (who had pre­vi­ously cursed at a guy in another car) and the woman begins try­ing to quash the fire while the drunk guy in the back begins mut­ter­ing that he’s going to get out as soon as we stop, wher­ever it is.

We end up mak­ing it to the hotel, the dri­ver had known the address. They get out and the guy has to go get change. He flashed the dri­ver a Franklin before half stum­bling inside to get change. Brian had tried to stop him as he could make change but we end up wait­ing a few min­utes for the guy to come back out. The fare had been $17 and they gave the dri­ver a twenty.

Brian and I are apol­o­giz­ing the entire way to our hotel, we didn’t know how drunk they were. He’s a nice enough guy, just tired and since he’s a for­eigner he has to deal with peo­ple not under­stand­ing his accent and such. We tip him well and call it a night.

Man, that night was awesome.