Fridays adventure over cocktails and cards

I arrived at Aaron Fisher's place around 2PM, his buddy Alex had just driven down from northern California to go with us to the Rat Dog concert in San Diego. All we had to do was pick Billy Goodwin up at the Magic Castle and hit the road. It was a nice drive south and traffic wasn't too fucked on the 5 on this particular Friday afternoon. Okay, so maybe it was. . . but I certainly didn't notice it as I was stuck in a car with top flight card men.

As it happened, Mr. Goodwin was the only one of us smart enough to purchase his ticket in advance. The rest of us thought we would be able to pick up a ticket at the show. We pull into downtown San Diego and parked in a treacherous garage across the street from the House of Blues.

We were there a couple of hours early so we thought cocktails would be a good place to start. A packed bar with a Dead Cover Band duo lured us in. Drinks all around and lucky enough to find a sidewalk table outside. Aaron and Alex went in search of tickets while Billy and I took out our deck of cards. I don't know Billy all that well. I think it was at little get together in Buffalo called "52" where I met him, saw his lecture and realized that he is a gifted card man. It's not just his skill in executing, but his talent in constructing is right up there with Vernon, Dingle or Jennings. I don't think I'm overstating things when I say that. Also, he's a funny guy. He's funnier that he knows and that's a good characteristic as well.

We had a real good talk about card magic and he fried me with an old incomplete faro control. Ahh this was starting out to be one hell of a night I could just tell.


The evening got weird. Mr. Goodwin entered the establishment leaving the rest of us to get in as much trouble as we pleased. It could have been worse I guess. . . . a lot worse. . . as Tuijauna was on the table for discussion at one point. But calmer heads prevailed.

I got to say this, I don't have enough nice things to say about San Diego. What a fuck'en town that is! We were at the heart of the pulse of a Friday Night Downtown in San Diego. . . baby.

The nightlife, the restaurants, the pussy. . . all off the hook, I guess you might say.

We ended up in this cool Mexican Restaurant with classic live music. A festive place for shots of tequila over some grub. I then witnessed a profound performance. After some introductory chit chat with the outrageously good looking little bimbo's at the next table Aaron goes in for the kill. He pulls out his money clip and pages through some one dollar bills. He has the girls look at the bills and touch them. In an instant without a flash they're all now hundred dollar bills! The chicks flipped, as I did. Hell there must be 4,5,6 hundred dollars. He then had the girls look at the bills and see if they were real. And in another magical moment they were all ones again. His acting and nonchalance through the whole thing was great. For a moment in time, there was a lot excitement because we decided to give some pieces of paper value at all, now, because there were hundreds of dollars involved, somehow things had changed. The way men and women alike looked at Aaron at that moment was based on some zeros on the end of a bill in his hands. As he returned to his seat there was a strange sense that we had all been had, by our worst fears of greed in our selves. It was a strong display of magic, wonder and resentment.