I’m off to Arizona to go hiking in the Grand Canyon with Aaron, but before I head off there are two items from the past month that need recording:
First, the final standings in the NCAA basketball tournament pool. After the disastrous 2006 showing I had nowhere to go but up, and despite a somewhat terrifying late charge by Audrey (who chose Duke because it sounded like a tough name, as in “put your dukes up”) the final standings were as follows:
- Ryan: 720 points (percentile: 81.2%)
- Audrey: 680 points (percentile: 75.9%)
- Lebron James: 630 points (percentile: 64.7%)
- President Obama: 590 points (percentile: 51.1%)
- Dick Vitale (world famous basketball analyst): 500 points (percentile: 21.1%)
Second, after living full-time in LA for five years the payoff finally came: Audrey took me, her friend Lauren, and Lauren’s boyfriend Neil to the invitation-only Magic Castle in Hollywood. Her friend Lou Serrano is a magician, and getting in requires an invitation from a club member, so this one has been a hard night out to schedule. For anyone not already in awe of the place based solely on the fact that it’s called the “Magic Castle”, the night was very much like it sounds: there is a strict dress code (jacket and tie), you eat a nice dinner, and then you’re free to explore a castle-like building with roaming magicians and several theaters ranging in size from 20 to 200 seats. Yeah, I know, pretty much what every person on the planet has dreamed of since they were two years old.
Apparently the Magic Castle is something like a Hall of Fame for magicians, and being asked to perform is a pretty big honor, so the quality of magic was unreal – Lou was talking to us after his show, and during the conversation handed me five singles, and literally when I handed them back they were hundreds. Not a clue how it happened, although my operating theory is that he can stop time, take out his wallet, switch the bills, and then start time up again. On another occasion we were waiting in line to get into a show and a roaming magician did a card trick where he shuffled a deck, pulled out ten random cards, and the numbers on the cards corresponded to the cell phone number of the guy watching the trick. Again, no clue, but my money is on time warps. The evening ended well after midnight with the Japanese guy from Heroes snaking me in the valet line, but the joke was on him when my car still showed up first. Yet another memorable Audrey-arranged evening.