Magic Castle

Last night, we visited the so-called Magic Castle of Hollywood, a country club for magicians and Neil Patrick Harris. (D: A special thank you to my friend Ari for the invitation!)

This required gathering up our parents and sending them to the Castle in their own car. Oh, how we wish we had bugged it. This is the first time all four of our parents were in one place without us.

We, on the other hand, learned some interesting family history (unsuitable for publication) while discussing the price of an oversized talis. (That was, amazingly, the only wedding talk that came up all night.)

Our parents warned us of a giant backlog at the valet parkers, but we deftly (though accidentally) circumvented this by pulling in through the employee parking lot, just downhill from a sushi bar / proposal spot. (This, actually, was the other piece of wedding talk that came up, but was unrelated to the impending wedding of Jen and Shawn.) Line-cutting cars is an ethical dilemma that has not been extensively studied in the literature, as drive-throughs rarely make it possible.

By the time we got into the Magic Castle (via a door to which you had to say "Open Sesame", and after Jen mentioned that she would have short offspring), we were starving, but star-struck (since our guide - we're not sure where he came from exactly, but he called himself a "Castle Knight" and had a name tag, so he sounded quite official - mentioned that Neil Patrick Harris).

BTW, we just got word that Fidel Castro resigned as President of Cuba. Thank you, Daniel's iPhone.

The Magic Castle used to be someone's home, and so there were not bathrooms readily available, nor did they have nearly the adequate number of stalls. This clearly became an issue later.

Castle Knight dazzled us with a few parlor tricks (one involving the massive reproduction of foam bunnies), then left us in a line to watch a psychic.

Sleepy. Let's finish tomorrow.