we went to the magic castle for nopalita's birthday. if you don't know about it, well it's famous in LA. it's probably famous in the magic circles but i don't know about anywhere else. you can only get in through a magician! you must be invited by a magician who is a member of the magic castle. there's a hotel. there's a restaurant. there's magic shows. it's quite expensive but if you see as many magicians perform, the cost breaks down nicely and it's not so bad. it's something to do once in your life.

is this dressed up enough for you bastards?!

you really have to dress up to go there, or so the website makes it seem, but you don't have to dress like you're going to the oscars. just something nice, not sloppy, definitely going out material! guys are lucky 'cos all they need is a couple good suits and they're set for life. i had a shoe issue. i had nothing to wear! then i remembered "the shawshank redemption" and thought that if i wore something halfway decent, no one would notice, afterall, how often does one look at a man's shoes? no one bothered to look at my shoes, what a relief! they didn't deny entry for wrong shoes! hahaha

anyway, there i was among all that money. it's older people who have $ and can finally kick back a little. so bourgeois that i was starting to become a bitch. sorry about that. i kept thinking about leaving society, cutting off everyone i know and becoming some nomad or something. that's how out of it i felt. we watched the main show and a couple side shows. anyway, the evening warmed up and ended well. we saw the magician of the week, toto from tokyo, in the closeup gallery, is that what it was called? anyway, as we were in line, he was sitting there with his manager. 2 guys speaking japanese in the magic castle just stands out. so i talked to them, asking where toto is performing. in the line we were waiting for. *whew* they were, as all japanese in america are, impressed that i knew japanese. i had to do my "half" explanation. (it gets old.) we sat up in front and toto's catchphrase is "amazing". he was pretty good actually. even though his english is limited, what he was doing was understood and he made us laugh several times. he even picked nopalita to come up to assist with his climactic trick. after twiddle thumbs picked a card, he shuffled it back in the deck and magically flicked it to nopalita. it was a sticker on her arm and she was wearing a coat. she was completely flabbergasted as to how he slipped it on her. that was great!

afterwards, i spoke with the manager again and told him the show was good, etc. he said toto has a magic club in tokyo. specifically, it's called "toto's bar" and it's in ginza. cool. although, i bet it's too expensive for me. we decided to end the evening on a high note and not continue on with the other magicians. as we were waiting for the valet to pull around with our cars, there was toto and his manager again. i asked them to take a picture with us since it was nopalita's birthday. happy birthday!