The Magic Castle, or, the Night My Mind Exploded

If you get the opportunity to do sneak into the Magic Castle with a member, do it! We were fortunate enough to have Kiu Li show myself and a group of friends around The Magic Castle, that mysterious house of magic that you have to be invited to in order to get in.


The entrance has a classic gimmick with a holographic wizard who greets you and then directs you to a sliding bookcase where you must say "Open Sesame" for the books to slide open. OK, cute and silly. Shortly after entering there is a haunted piano and Erma, the resident ghost, takes requests of any song and plays them for you (but you can't see Erma). When I requested "Poker Face" I was informed that Erma was on break. I was also reminded that she takes tips...

We toured around the 5 bars and various nooks for close-up magic shows before taking our seats in the Palace of Mystery and watching the talented Arthur Trace and the loud Chipper Lowell. Arthur Trace teased us with rope illusions before performing his signature trick that won him an award at the World Championship of Magic. His complicated illusion involved a piece of post-modern art that he could manipulate in various ways. His dexterity was out of this world and every time he did a cool trick he looked out at the audience as if to say, "Did you just see that shit? I did that." He was followed by Chipper Lowell who had a lot of energy and good spirits, but ultimately relied on cheap audience pranks and a Carrot Top assortment of well-rehearsed but ultimately unsatisfying prop comedy. I think he only did one magic trick, but certainly a decent act. The audience would disagree with me... apparently everyone else really seemed to love him.

Jon Armstrong blew us away in the Close-Up Gallery. This is a guy who seemed to have absolute control of every card on the deck. I felt like he could summon any card at will and make it do anything. And as an audience participant in this one, I could verify that it was absolutely not staged. He even had an excellent repoire with the skeptics at his show. Just an absolute master. He ended by letting a girl tell him where she would like a card to appear - she said "handkerchief" and he made the car appear both from underneath his tie and under his handkerchief.

Finally, we sat to watch Kevin Viner who had the rowdiest crowd of the night. This guy was also butter. Every trick he did nearly pissed me off by how smooth it was. He blew up a balloon and pulled a wine bottle out of it, guessed a girl's childhood phone number, took three rings from audience members and interlocked them (WHAT?), and then guessed the serial code on a guy's $20 bill. It was really excellent.

By this time my brain felt completely unstable. I kept waiting for the floor to drop out from me or to find out the walls are all projected or to discover that my car was cut in half in the parking lot. Kiu Li took this time to wow us one more time (did I mention he was doing illusions every time we were in line for a show?) with a private show and stumped us all a number of times. Wow. MAGIC OVERLOAD. My brain is still struggling to catch back up with reality.

Expectations for The Magic Castle... exceeded. I'll be back.