The Magic Castle.

Despite the Mercury News' fantastic prediction of San Jose's first snowfall in over 20 years this weekend*, we took off Friday afternoon for a 48-hour excursion to LA to visit some dear friends and explore the Magic Castle in Hollywood.

We squeezed through the pass over the Angeles National Forest despite a brief startling snowy blizzard near the summit, and made it into LA in a cats-and-dogs-style rainstorm late Friday night. Our friends Craig and Julia stayed up and welcomed us with pizza and hot wings. Love those guys!

Saturday morning we were up at the crack of dawn with the kids (our friends have twin 2-year-old girls, and Cami adores them), so we had a little breakfast, visited a bit, then took the kids to Westfield Topanga for a spin on the double-decker carousel. More things happened - lunch, one of the babies vomited on a random mall patron's shoes, etc. - and then we went back home to let the kids play on the twins' new play structure in the backyard. At 3:30, our friends' nanny (who happens to be the great granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin - only in LA, right?) came to watch all three kids for the evening. The girls ended up having a sleepover style party, watched the Aristocats, and generally had a wonderful playdate for the evening.

Meanwhile, Craig, Julia, Jen and I were off for our own date night in Hollywood to visit the famous Magic Castle. The place has a standard coat-and-tie dress code. I decided to wear my blue velvet jacket, and Jen and Julia were all sparkles and high heels. We ended up spending 7 amazing hours in the place, and it's going to be hard to explain the evening, but I'll try. Our dinner reservation (which was made for us by Kristen Nowicki, my co-host on Mousetalgia and a great friend) was for 6:00, but the place opened at 5, so we decided to get there early to check things out. We were going to meet Kristen and her friend Kurt at 5:45, which left us some time to get the lay of the land.

I'd describe the Magic Castle as a combination of a steak house, a vaudeville theater, a haunted mansion, and the Winchester Mystery House. The building is 103 years old. It has multiple levels - maybe four, but it's hard to say, since various passageways lead to staircases that go down to a series of small showrooms or up to the dining room and larger theaters. Every so often, you'd turn a corner and there'd be a small, well-stocked bar with a bartender ready to take your money and someone with a deck of cards waiting to try out a trick. The decor is lush Victorian elegance, with Gothic touches here and there (including some bizarre photos, paintings and exhibits that you would stumble across while exploring the place.) The history of prestidigitation oozes from the walls, many of which were adorned top to bottom with handbills and posters from famous magicians of the past.

Upon arriving, we had the valet park the car while waiting for the doors to open with a small crowd. When the place was unlocked at 5:05, we traipsed into a small, plush gallery with wall-to-wall bookcases and intricate decor - and, of course, a cashier in the corner to take your $25 cover charge and hand out the schedule for the evening. Apparently, we had missed mingling with Johnny Depp by a day, but were attending the same night as Carson Higgins, the blonde surfer-dude from this year's American Idol who had recently been knocked out of the competition. (Julia, probably the biggest Idol fan in our group, had a chance to speak with him briefly later on in the evening.) But anyway - you pay your cover, then you walk up to a bookcase and say, as authoritatively as possible, "Open SESAME!" The bookcase slides open, revealing a short hallway to the first of numerous amazing bars, and the wall slides closed behind you. You're in the club!

We started by having drinks - I had a chocolate martini, Jen had a Midori Sour - and we chatted with Craig and Julia about our plan of attack for the next 40 minutes while we waited for Kristen and Kurt. We decided to just wander around, something you are mostly encouraged to do when you arrive. We gave up our barstools to the rapidly growing crowd and found our way downstairs through some musty passages to the Hat and Hare Pub, an intimate room with a few chairs around tables, some sofas along the back wall, and a wonderful collection of tiny antique porcelain white rabbits of all sorts of shapes and sizes, which filled the window sills of the place. We ended up watching the first of numerous up-close, fascinating sleight-of-hand shows before dinner, featuring classic card, rope and cups-n'-balls tricks. Even though I know how most of these tricks work, watching these professional magicians perform sleights all night made for one of the best nights I've spent out in years. I think we saw 7 or 8 different performers throughout the evening - many of whom did the same tricks with different patter or pacing, and almost all of whom were simply incredible (with the possible exception of the mind reader. Bit of a yawn.)

Getting ahead of myself. After the first quick magic show (for just a group of 9 of us, which is how many of these smaller parlor shows went), we were seated upstairs for dinner. Craig, Julia, Jen and I all had a fillet, which was very tasty. There was plenty of beef on the menu - I think Kristen had prime rib and Kurt had a strip steak. Craig ordered a great bottle of wine, and we had various appetizers - can't remember what everyone else did, but I started with a lobster bisque. Dinner was lovely - nothing was wrong, although I wouldn't rank it the among my best dining experiences. For me, I think the meal might have suffered a bit simply due to my curiosity and anticipation about the evening. Filling, delicious, nice presentation. Nothing wrong with that at all.

One fun side-note: During dinner, Craig and I were able to perform a magic trick in the famous Magic Castle! To be honest, we really only had an audience of one - Kristen, who is still not quite at the age of not believing, and seemed truly entranced by our impromptu routine. Thanks for the opportunity to be amazing, Kristen ;)

Dinner came with a ticket to the "Palace of Mystery," a largish theater that hosted the biggest show of the evening. We saw three acts - a vaudeville style magician (Joe Monti) who had a really funny routine; a husband/wife duo who did a psychic routine (pretty uninspired, and not at all amazing to those who know how this stuff is done); and a brother/sister team named Yonkany and Anabel, who did old-school pigeons-out-of-your-sleeves style stage magic (with a grand finale that involved conjuring two largish white ducks.) For a stage show, the presentation wasn't bad, but the real thrills were to come later as we explored the nooks and crannies of the place.

The smaller, intimate shows in the various pubs and lounges were the most intriguing. Almost every show we saw involved a magician simply performing card-based sleight-of-hand, often right in front of your face. A few magicians did the basic cups and balls routine, and when well done, the trick is really fun to watch whether you know how the magician is doing it or not. We also stumbled across Imagineer Yale Gracey's mock-up model of a proposed special effect he created for the Haunted Mansion. He made this model to demonstrate the effect in person for Walt Disney. Gracey, a Disney Legend, was also a member of the Magic Castle's Academy of Magical Arts, and the Castle has recently restored the model to working condition, so that when you push a button above a small dark window cut into one of the downstairs passageways, the familiar sound of the Haunted Mansion's foyer organ starts to play, the model lights up inside the window, and it spins into motion. What you see in the mailbox-sized model: a mysterious transparent ghostly figure rises from a tiny, coffin while a ghostly bride floats around the room. Even though I'd seen photos from the fellow doing the restoration a few years ago, it was very cool to see the actual piece in operation.

After a couple more shows, Kristen and Kurt decided to head out, but Craig, Julia, Jen and I decided to stay to catch the featured performer of the night, Mark Haslam. Haslam, a grand-nephew of Cary Grant, was performing exclusively in the 21-seat "Close-Up Gallery," and we were 25th-28th in line for the 10:45 show... so we decided to stay for the 11:30 show, which got us front row seats. Haslam, as it turns out, was a performer requested by name by Johnny Depp the night before, so we were assured that we were in for a treat, and the show was worth the wait. There's no describing his show, which was nothing more than card tricks that were simply confounding, and must have been accomplished by a stacked deck, an enormous amount of chutzpuh, and a few card forces. For example - one minor trick he did was have a volunteer cut the deck in thirds. He then picked up one the piles, told us all exactly how many cards were in the pile, and then counted them out one by one, until he arrived at the last card - number 22, which was exactly how many cards he had claimed were in the pile. Magic? No - he probably knows a deck of cards so well that he could just tell the number of cards he was holding by the feel of the pile and weight in his hand. But that confidence and knowledge of a deck, combined with some card forces, some math and a stacked deck, made for tricks so amazing that I'm not even going to waste time trying to describe them.

So after walking in the door at 5:05 p.m., it was finally almost 12:15 a.m., and time to head home before the paparazi arriving in Hollywood to stake out their hiding spots near the Kodak Theatre for the Academy Awards started clogging the roads. On the way out the door I bought a deck of Magic Castle playing cards to commemorate the trip. The four of us took a quick photo at the door - there were no photos allowed inside the Castle - and we bid the place adieu. What a great night.

*Didn't happen. At least we got to see some snow on I-5 over the mountains on the way home!