There's magic in the air

Groucho Marx said, "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member." While I usually agree, there is one glaring exception: The Magic Castle.

I've been an Associate Member of the Castle for over 15 years. To join you have to have a Magician Member sign your application. In my case it was my father-in-law. I'm pretty sure he became a member because he was exceptionally skilled at making money disappear. Especially mine.

Story for another day.

Anyway, I don't go to the Castle nearly as often as I'd like, but I was there last night with friends who hadn't been before. It was great to take in the place through their eyes.

There are three main show rooms: The Close Up room which, and I know this will come as a surprise, is close up magic. Cards and coins disappear and reappear while you're staring right at them. There's no way it can be happening and yet it is. This small, intimate room only seats about 20 people. Together with all the up-close interaction with the magician, the experience definitely feels even more exclusive and special than it already is.

The Parlor of Prestidigitation is upstairs, and it's a bigger version of the Close Up room. Various magicians perform all kinds of tricks from traditional magic to math puzzles to mind-reading.

The Palace, next to The Parlor, is where you'll see the Vegas-y kind of magic: white doves fluttering out of handkerchiefs, poofy sleeved magicians doing familiar tricks with rings and ropes, and the occasional ventriloquist which is going to creep me out no matter how old I get. Last night, the magician hosting the show did a bit where he was puppeteering a Liberace marionette, rhinestones and all. Yes, that Vegas-y. It's a show-bizzy room, but the magic is definitely there.

As any magician worth his weight in card decks will tell you, one of the main components to any good trick is misdirection. That's made a lot easier thanks to five bars spread throughout the 1908 Victorian house the Castle calls home. If you're in a hurry to make one of the shows, cocktail waitresses magically appear in the showrooms to bring your drinks. They're strong (the drinks, not the waitresses), so after one or two of them you start seeing magic even where there isn't any.

Performers change weekly, and there's an early and late performer in every room every night. These aren't the magicians you think of at your kid's birthday party. They're world class magician/comedian performers who've appeared at some of the most prestigious venues in Vegas and internationally. Watching them work, suddenly it becomes less of a hobby and more of a real profession.

My friends enjoyed the evening, and I enjoyed being able to bring them to the Castle. I believe the quality of the shows, the exclusivity of the club and the mystique the Castle has created for itself in the 47 years it's been around are the reason it continues to successfully perform its most essential trick.

Making guests reappear over and over.

The last Munchkin

He's not only merely dead, he's really most sincerely dead.

While the name Meinhardt Rabbe may not be familiar, the role that made him famous surely is. If you've ever seen a little film called The Wizard Of Oz, you've seen Meinhardt as the munchkin coroner. It wasn't the first time being small had big benefits for him.

For thirty years before he made his pronouncement regarding the death of the wicked witch, he worked as a salesman for Oscar Meyer, becoming known as Little Oscar, "The World's Smallest Chef." Then, in 1938, he heard there was a movie casting as many little people as they could find. So he headed to Hollywood, auditioned for TWOO, and the rest is history.

Although he had a few roles in other pictures afterwards, he never again achieved the same level of fame as he did from singing his one famous line as coroner of Oz. He wound up spending the remainder of his career making appearances at events and conventions for the movie.

Recognizing the uniqueness of his story, Meinhardt decided to document his life in an autobiography called Memories of a Munchkin: An Illustrated Walk Down The Yellow Brick Road.

In 2007 he joined other surviving munchkins to receive a long overdue star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Even at 94, it was a short life.

Now I know why it's called Tide

Here's one of my dirty little secrets. Okay, not so dirty. I love doing laundry.

I can't really explain it, other than this: to me, laundry is like a good story. It has a beginning, middle and end.

As an advertising copywriter, I'm not used to things having an end. I'm used to them going on forever and ever, revision upon revision, with everyone including focus groups, the client's wife and the cleaning lady on three opening their big, stupid, gaping pieholes and chiming in with their unqualified opinions about how their ad - the one that I've just slaved over and honed to gleaming perfection until 3 in the morning - should be rewritten and why what it's saying isn't the way it should be said.

Okay, I may have digressed.

Anyway, when the spin cycle is finished, the genuine feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment is just getting started.

Washing machines are like cars to me. I know how to run them, but I don't know how to fix them. So when my 12 year-old Whirlpool Heavy Capacity 8-cycle 2-speed top-loading washer decided to spring a leak and turn our small laundry room into an indoor pool, needless to say I found myself momentarily baffled.

Keeping my wits about me, I leapt into action. I called my son in and had him clean it up. Once he was done I told him to wash the towel. He didn't appreciate the irony.

Fortunately we have an extended warranty on our creaky old washer. I just called it in and the guy came out. After checking the washer thoroughly, he made his diagnosis and said I had a leak in my drainage hose.

I get that a lot.

Sadly he didn't have the part on the truck. But he was able to do a temporary repair using what I like to call "the miracle of duct tape." When the part comes in I'll call again and have him install it.

Until then I'll be at the laundromat, my fist full of quarters, writing my story.

Then folding it.

One and a half men

I know how he feels. Sometimes a million dollars a week just isn't enough.

This week Charlie Sheen, the highest paid actor on network television, said that after seven years, he's ready to move on from Two And A Half Men.

And why not?

His recent run in with the law for alleged domestic abuse for choking and hitting his wife is generating the kind of publicity for him we haven't seen since he had Heidi Fleiss on speed dial. You can't blame him for wanting to strike while the iron's hot.

Okay, bad choice of words.

But it's pretty clear his statement was the first step in preparing both the network and the audience for his post TAAHM career.

The second was his new headshot.

Hope the Easter bunny's rabbit hole is built to code.

This Easter we got something besides cheap baskets and chocolate eggs. We had a 7.2 earthquake.

Well, we didn't have it. Mexicali had it. We just felt it.

A sort of gentle, rolling quake that rocked the house back and forth. Very similar to the sugar rush from too many of those chocolate eggs.

We immediately turned on the television and wondered how long it would be before seismo-gals Lucy Jones or Kate Hutton from Cal Tech would be having a press conference. Turns out not long at all. The second the tv was on, there was Lucy in front of all the microphones, calming our nerves while at the same time cautioning us that we're overdue for the big one.

Talk about mixed messages.

I don't know about you, but I'm heading out to buy some bottled water, plastic bags, canned food and toilet paper. That's for next Easter.

For the next earthquake I'm picking up some vodka.

Score one for the death penalty

I'm going to be getting up on my soapbox in this post, so you might want to take a couple steps back.

Not only am I going to disappoint some of my friends here, I'm also going to be politically incorrect - two things I manage to do on a regular basis.

Buckle up, here it comes: I'm in favor of the death penalty. Especially when it's applied to someone like the piece of human garbage you see here.

This is Rodney Alcala. He was convicted in February of kidnapping and murdering a 12 year- old girl in Orange County, and raping and murdering four Los Angeles women in the 1970's. Without going into the finer points, some of his instruments of choice were a rock, the claw end of a hammer, a shoelace, a nylon stocking and a belt.

For those of you keeping count, this is his third death sentence for these crimes. He was caught, tried, convicted and sentenced to death twice before. But the convictions were overturned, once by the California Supreme Court and once by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The good news however is that in this third trial, they had irrefutable DNA evidence. That's what finally did him in.

Here's the thing: I don't buy the argument that putting him to death brings us down to his level. It's a false analogy. Murdering innocent adults and young children, then executing the murderer as a consequence of their crime are two completely different things. They are not morally equivalent.

While it would be nice if the penalty worked as a deterrent, I don't really care whether it does or not. What does matter to me is that by putting him to death, one less monster walks among us.

A little bit of evil bites the dust.

The death penalty isn't handed out the same way sample cigarettes are on a street corner. You have to earn it. The sadly ironic thing is that once you do, the state then gives you years of automatic appeals to prove you don't deserve it. Many prisoners have been on ("languished" is far too sympathetic a word) death row more than 25 years in California while their appeals wind there way through the court system.

I wonder how many years that girl's parents will have to wait before seeing justice done. To bad there's not a bonus round where those years could go back to his victims.

Maybe it's just the parent in me because one of his victims was a 12 year-old, but I can't find a reason to justify his continued existence. He isn't mentally ill. He wasn't on drugs. He's not legally insane. He wasn't just sitting in the getaway car while the crimes were being committed.

And while it's probably true he did have a bad childhood, I'm just gonna call bullshit on that excuse.

A lot of people will say just the fact he's a human being is reason enough not to execute him. But see, that's another false argument. Obviously he's isn't.

The sister of the young girl Mr. Alcala viciously murdered said, "If there is a hell, I hope Rodney Alcala burns eternally. I wish he would experience the terror he put his victims through."

Ditto.

Maybe Johnny Depp will play him in the movie

Like Clint Eastwood said in Magum Force, "A man's got to know his limitations."

Apparently pirates working the Indian Ocean early this morning didn't see that movie.

It's hard to know exactly what they were thinking when they saw the U.S.S. Nicholas, a navy warship, go cruising by. But you can bet they had a conversation about it while they were enjoying a leisurely day at sea in their skiff. It probably went something like this:

1st Pirate: I say, look at that Navy warship.

2nd Pirate: You know, the American sailors are reputed to have quite a good sense of humor.

1st Pirate: Do tell? Well perhaps they'd get a good chuckle if we fired our guns at them.

2nd Pirate: Oh my gosh, you know, I think they would.

1st Pirate: Besides, what's the worst that could happen?

Here's what happened. The U.S.S. Nicholas disabled the pirate's boat. Then they boarded it and took the pirates into custody. Then they sunk the boat.

As the pirates watched their boat going down, the conversation probably went something like this:

1st Pirate: Perhaps that wasn't such a good idea.

2nd Pirate: In hindsight you might be correct about that.

1st Pirate: But you were right about their sense of humor.

2nd Pirate: Why do you say that?

1st Pirate: Look how hard they're all laughing.