Room 1432: The Magic Castle

In LA there is a place...a castle, if you will...where magicians gather. It goes by the very descriptive name The Magic Castle. You have to be a member to get in. Yep, a member. It's a club where people join so that they can do magic or see others do magic. (And there's a restaurant!) But if you are not a member you can go in with a guest pass. And someone usually knows someone who is a member. Seriously, you think there are Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon? I guarantee you there are Two Degrees to a Magic Castle Member. Now if you are like me, your vision of the place is probably like Medieval Times with a some dude dressed like Merlin inviting you into the World of Illuuuuuuuuuuusssions. Turns out there are no strolling characters. Although the bartender tries to keep up the act of a ghost that plays piano but it's not cringe-worthy (In fact, Irma, the ghost, is pretty good. Just give her ghost parrot a dollar and she'll even do Michael Jackson's Beat It). The decor is very Haunted Mansion meets Sardi's except sans fake cobwebs and the caricatures on the wall are of famous magicians (there's a mini-alter to Harry Blackstone who used to be big in the '70s. It was he and Doug Henning that were the biggies that would hit the Merv Griffin Show and the Mike Douglas Show. I also seem to recall some "variety" specials. Now all we have is David Blaine. Oh '70s, I miss your grade of cheese). The layout of the castle is kind of Winchester Mystery House: there's an upstairs and a downstairs and another downstairs and weird hallways and rooms and creepy dolls. Yeah, I couldn't concentrate on some guy showing me card tricks because there was an old creepy doll displayed on the wall. There are a few different show venues within the Castle. A small one had a Fabio wannabe with crazy bling do card tricks up close and I still have no idea how he did them (our theory was that the diamond-encrusted watch was supposed to distract us from his hand work. That's how crazy the bling was!). And I also visited the main theater for a Saw-a-Lady-in-Half type of show. Now I saw The Prestige so I kind of had an idea how things worked. In fact, I'm not sure I really enjoyed the show because I was concentrating so hard on how they did it. Their names were Mark Something and Jinger...that's Ginger with a J. She wore the Vegas Magician's Assistant type spandex outfits and she twirled. She also did these weird interlude pieces where she would "set up" the next illusion with a little speech. Like before the Spirit Box one, she held a candle up to her face and said something semi-spooky about communicating with the dead. It wasn't a long speech just enough to get the Spirit Box in place so that she can get tied up in it and the "spirits" (aka Jinger) can make a ruckus. You know, now that I'm writing this, it looks like Jinger does everything. Well, she was the one getting cut in half and put in a small box and tied up. Not all at once because that wouldn't be magic, that would be serial killing.

Amenities of Room 1432: Vase of dead flowers. Slight of Hand Cream. No TV but Talking Ventriloquist Dummy.