Magicbell Brothers

Some friends of mine (Kay Amano and Masayuki Hisa) developed a series of cute videos designed to promote Los Angeles area businesses among Japanese-speaking television viewers. The five videos are called “Magicbell Brothers,” and follow the travails of two space alien hand puppets sent to earth and forced to visit and critique local restaurants and businesses. What could be more natural?

The series is sugoku kawaii (really cute), and has a very typical Japanese feeling. It’s not anime–it’s better!

Each video is filmed in Japanese with English subtitles. To see them all, click over to Magicbell’s corporate web site:

http://magicbell.tv/eng/magicbellBrothers.htm

日本語でもどうぞ。

http://magicbell.tv/jp/magicbellBrothers-J.htm

Scroll to the bottom of the page to view each of the past episodes.

You've Been Here

Last weekend, my wife and I were invited by a magician-friend to have dinner at the Magic Castle in Hollywood, California. The Castle is a private club for professional and amateur illusionists who need an escape when their I-will-now-make-my-teenagers-act-normal trick fails to work.

The “World Famous Hollywood Magic Castle” is located just behind the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, housed in the former Victorian-style home of Rollin Lane, the man who 100 years ago owned much of the land in what is now Hollywood. But you probably already knew that, since from what I can tell, everyone in America has already visited the club. When I had a chance to dine at Club 33, the private VIP club inside of Disneyland, everyone I talked to said things like, “What’s Club 33?” or “I’ve been dying to go there; how did you get an invite?” or “So’s your mother.” But not with the Magic Castle. When I would casually mention our entry as guests into the Hollywood magical scene, a typical response would be, “Oh, you’ll like it; I enjoyed it when I visited last year.”

So it seems I’m the latecomer to the party. But it was still a nice evening, especially with over 600 prestidigitators and their guests crammed into the restructured house. The evening started at 6:00pm with dinner in the Houdini Room, a large alcove decorated with actual items from Houdini’s collection, including his wand, a straitjacket, several handcuffs, a man-sized milk can, and his famous Metamorphosis Box, from which he was seen escaping nightly. We enjoyed our repast around the seance table with our host Michael and his wife, four other couples of our mutual acquaintance, and possibly Mr. Houdini himself, assuming that he made good on his promise to escape death. I doubt he was there, since his food seemed to go untouched. That was unfortunate, since the food, while heavy on the red meat and clearly not five stars, was more than adequate in quality and taste, and at prices that paralleled those of an ordinary Friday night out.

Dinner was followed by one magic show after another. Many of the shows took place at one of the nearly one dozen bars on-site. (The “W. C. Fields” bar was taken from the Hello Dolly movie set.) You didn’t need a magic wand to see the drinks disappear; that night’s guests had no problem emptying shots at the slightest echo of an “abracadabra.” A few people had more than their fill, but for most it was just part of the 90-proof dinner club experience.

The big show that evening was in the 170-seat Palace of Mystery room, and featured comedian/magician Tom Burgoon, the funny and dexterous Skilldini (Tim Wright), and Reynold Alexander, a visiting magician from Puerto Rico. We also saw Shoot Ogawa perform some close-up magic, and Kostya Kimlat pass rubber bands, playing cards, and even drunk hecklers right through each other.

As a Hollywood hangout, the Castle is normally teaming with current stars and washed-up has-beens, although we did see anyone famous, and no one pointed us out either. We did pass a Japanese couple in the hallway, and a few seconds later we saw those same faces on a wall of magician photos. But the hobnobbing was pretty much limited to the stage.

The evening ended with a 12:30am dessert in the Dante Room. I think they sprinkled my chocolate cake with magic dust, because when I made it home at 2:00am, I fell right asleep. Amazing!

If you ever get a third or fourth chance to enjoy dinner and a show at the Magic Castle, I highly recommend going. While the friendly staff tries to embarrass you right up front by having you say “Open Sesame” to enter the club, it’s still a great place to enjoy an evening meal and some alakazam.

Start Your Engines!

Metered on-ramps are common fare throughout the Los Angeles freeway system. The massive influx of cars onto the highways during the five or six hours-de-rush each day requires some method to even out the rolling population. And while the unidirectional stoplights make at least some attempt to alleviate the metal density on the freeway, they have the nasty habit of backing on-ramp traffic into local thoroughfares, with lines sometimes stretching all the way to residential driveways miles away.

To help reduce the congestion, some of the shorter on-ramps use a two-lane meter. Two lined paths lead from the arterial to the freeway, each harnessed with its own miniature red-light district. It’s a doubling-up pattern that is indigenous to the region, from the twice-is-nice method of increasing property taxes each time you buy and sell a house, to the buy-one-body-part-get-one-free plastic surgery coupons that show up each week in the mail.

The dual entry meters allow twice as many cars on the ramp, demonstrating that there is some wisdom to be had in the traffic engineering community. Sadly, it seems that this burst of inspiration depleted the entire store of wisdom. Instead of alternating the green signals between the lanes, the techs at CalTrans decided that the running the red/green pattern identically in both lanes would provide for optimal confusion patterns, meshing nicely with the overall traffic situation.

Still, there is a certain excitement provided by parallel entry that you just can’t get from the single-lane alternative. This was brought home to me recently as I tried to insert myself into the mayhem of I-405 at around 3:30 in the afternoon. The meter signals were in full swing, successfully queuing cars seven deep in each lane. At five seconds per cycle, it took just over a half-minute to reach to reach the border crossing, but I swear it was more like three minutes. The flow of freeway traffic was so close I could taste it. Mmm, with just a hint of diesel.

As I eased my car to the starting line and counted down the remaining seconds, a strange sensation crept over me, a feeling that at this moment and in this place, there was a battle to win. I glanced to my right, and saw a diminutive 40-something Asian woman gripping the steering wheel of a shiny black Sport Utility Vehicle, a transport with largess normally reserved for the young male demographic and a need to compensate for nature. She did not look directly at me, but a glint in her eye announced clearly: The Race Is On.

My eyes darted reflexively to the thick white stop-line, eagerly sizing up each car’s pole position. I eased forward a little and hugged the line. My windows were closed and the radio’s was playing a jaunty tune, but I could still catch the distinctive sound of an engine revving nearby. It had only been three seconds since I arrived at this coveted spot, but my transformation from geeky computer user to speed demon was nearly complete.

And it wasn’t just me who had changed. As I took another peripheral glance at the SUV, its formerly petite driver was now the Chinese twin sister of Mario Andretti, sporting a flame-resistant racing suit decked out with the signage of motor oil companies. The environment seemed different as well. What had been a five-lane freeway laden with thousands of drivers was now a high-performance racetrack with room for just one winner. The shortened palm tree to my left was still there, but its fronds, once green, now displayed a monochrome checkered pattern.

As the tension increased, the cars filling the freeway made room for this Mother of All Races, parking along both shoulders in waves like the parting Red Sea, as if Earl Scheib had found his true calling as Moses. Finally, the “One Car Per Green” light turned its destined color, and I slammed my foot on the accelerator. Oblivious to the world around me, I fixated on the speedometer–sounding it out as SPEED-o-meter in my mind. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Fifty. The raw power of my fuel-inefficient Nissan Pathfinder propelled me onward. “Eat my dust, hybrids!” I shouted to the NASCAR crowd.

Despite my amazing carbon emissions, Mrs. Chairman Mao was already hundreds of yards ahead of me, escaping rapidly into the distance. As my adrenaline subsided in parallel with the flow of gas through my faltering fuel pump, I cursed the octane gods for turning their backs on my car’s true potential. Another test of my on-ramp prowess come and gone, and there is little left for me but bitter tears. But don’t cry for me, Lee Iacocca. Tomorrow is another driving day, and there’s a triple-lane metered ramp about ten miles from here that I’ve been dying to try out.

Image Credits: Microsoft Office clipart collection

Point A to Point B

Several months ago, Google announced that its mapping system would provide directions for not only cars, but for trains and community bus systems as well. Apparently, they’ve also added certain forms of watercraft. Click here for Google Maps’ directions from Seattle to Honolulu. But be careful: they forgot to add the instruction for donning your life vest.

The Honolulu to Tokyo run provides similar feedback, but travelers heading to England from New York are out of luck. If you find additional routes like these, attach them as comments here.

What's Behind Door #2?

Any church started by King Henry VIII is bound to have some humor in it. And the following video by Alpha, a Christian ministry started by Anglican priest Nicky Gumbel, is definitely funny.

The video was designed to show in movie theaters during the previews, and lasts about a minute. Here’s a link to the video on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azbd4zYVJuQ

For information on Alpha, visit alpha.org.

Programming Visual Basic 2008 by Tim Patrick To purchase this book from Amazon.com, click here.

Programming Visual Basic 2008, published by O’Reilly Media, provides a full overview of Microsoft’s Visual Basic 2008 programming language, including all of the new LINQ features. The book is designed for beginning to intermediate developers, and is also useful for experienced programmers who need to learn Visual Basic and .NET. For those of you who think that reading casually is for the birds, the book also includes a full database-driven software application for you to play with. The code implements a Library Management system, and its code is slowly built up through the chapters of the book.

Once you’ve gone through the book, please post any comments you have about the text on this blog entry. I look forward to hearing from you.

Take the new Disneyland Dream Suite, a one-guest mini hotel in the heart of Disneyland, just above the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. This $3 million luxury suite finally brings to fruition a dream by Walt Disney himself for a private guest apartment inside of the park, beyond the small quarters he already had above the firehouse on Main Street. My son and I received an invitation to tour the suite soon after it’s construction was complete.

We lined up with three other guests at about 4:00pm on a Wednesday afternoon in early March, collecting in a small area between Tarzan’s Tree House and the Pirates of the Caribbean building. Standing in a seemingly private queue with a few nicely-dressed Disney employees seems to naturally draw a crowd; several people came up to ask what we were waiting for. We told them to bug off; this line was for VIPs only! At precisely 4:00pm a friendly cast member led us to an ornate wood-paneled elevator.

In some ways, the suite was less than I expected. At 2,600 square feet, it was definitely grand, with a large entrance hallway leading to a two-bedroom suite with a large living room and a private patio. The rooms were richly decorated, although absent were most of the characters that had made Disneyland what it is. Special light switch buttons in every room would generate a 30 second dance of activity along the walls or ceiling. Even the bathroom had a special button that would dim the lights and let you bathe under an artificial field of stars. But for the most part, it was simply a nice hotel room.

The main attraction of the room is that it is inside of Disneyland. I asked about being able to wander the park at night, and learned that “there are a few provisos, a couple of quid pro quos.” You do get a private walk around the park in your bathrobe after closing, but just once, and then you are locked away until morning. There is a private balcony that overlooks the Rivers of America, a visible yet normally inaccessible spot where you can be the envy of all other Disney guests. But the door to the balcony shuts tight before bedtime. Some of the buttons on the walls that call for music and a ceiling-targeted light show will only work a specific number of times. And of course, there is the draconian measure of the staff kicking you out of the suite after your stay.

And that’s where you wake up from the dream. The Dream Suite is, after all, still a hotel room. For me, the fun of touring the suite came with a twinge of disappointment. A few decades ago I used to wander the very same rooms of the Dream Suite, and without the need for a private escort or a winning ticket. The area above Pirates of the Caribbean used to be home to the Disney Gallery, a store where you could examine and purchase Disneyesque works of art and signed animation production stills at ridiculous prices. While I never bought any artwork there, I would often stroll through the gallery, and lounge for a few minutes in front of the fountain in the inner courtyard. While open to the public, very few Disneyland guests every ventured up the long stairway leading to the gallery. This meant that the gallery and its inner courtyard were almost always empty, providing a calming respite in a land of noisy tourists and long lines.

When I moved back to California last year, I took my son to Disneyland, promising to show him the “secret hiding place” inside of the park. But it was not meant to be. The gallery had already closed to allow for construction of the Dream Suite. Although the inner courtyard and fountain are still there, my tour of the suite in March likely represented my last opportunity to sit and enjoy the calm of that place.

The Disneyland Dream Suite will bring joy and happiness to hundreds of families over the next year; Disneyland plans to give away about 260 “dream stays.” I am sad at the removal of the restful gallery at that location, but times change, and so must Disneyland. Captain EO is gone, but Disneyland remains. The Bear Country Jamboree was gutted, yet people’s dreams continue to come true. For my part, I’m glad that my own dreams are not so tightly bound to specific Disneyland attractions.