Magic Time Machine

I missed last night's game because we were at the Magic Time Machine in Dallas, celebrating Rachel's birthday. She turned 19 yesterday.

We had a really lazy, relaxing day (after watching Dan In Real Life on Friday night), not doing much of anything. I think we played "Tri-Bond" for about an hour. About 5:15 or so, we all got ready and hit the road for north Dallas.

In case you don't know about the Magic Time Machine (I'm not sure how many there are), it's a character-themed restaurant that is loads of fun. All of the waitstaff are dressed up in various character garb, some in elaborate costumes.

Unfortunately, it is a very, very popular place which does not take reservations. Sooo...we arrived around 6-ish, almost didn't find a parking place, got into an extremely crowded front room, to be told that we had a 1 1/2 to 2 hr wait. !! Yeah. So we got on the list and promptly went back outside (where we could breathe) and debated whether we wanted to go try something else (there was a Texas de Brazil close by...the place where for about $35 a person, these people just walk around and keep throwing various forms of meat on your plate until you just can't eat any more) or wait it out. We decided to go upstairs to the "lounge/bar" and see if we could find a place to sit. We did, and so we waited.

After 30 minutes, my wife went back downstairs to get the buzzer (they were so crowded that they didn't have enough buzzers for everyone, so we were told to come back in 30 minutes for the buzzer!), and we were able to move to a large booth that had been vacated right me.

Then we sat and watched strange people for the next hour and drank non-alcoholic Shirley Temple's (basically cherry 7-ups). Finally, buzzer went off.

We went downstairs, and got our table. We waited with much anticipation to see who our server would be. We had waited two hours to be served by....Joe Dirt?? Yeah. Well, he turned out to be pretty good. And we were in a good corner where lots of other waiters walked by, so we got to converse with several. Joe was good, though. He actually resembled David Spade a bit. Fortunately, his mullet was a wig. Heh.

At one point, he walked by and released a blown up, untied balloon in our booth (which by the way, was delightfully decorated in Valentine's Day decor), which absolutely scared the crap out of every one of us. Seriously, we all jumped and screamed, almost in unison. It's a darned good thing none of us was taking a drink at the time. There would have been Diet Coke everywhere!

The food was...was..."delicious" does not even begin to describe it. Falls waaay short. It was immaculate. I had what is called the MTM 3X4, which is a 4oz piece of beef tenderloin (technically a very small filet mignon), a 4oz piece of grilled chicken breast and 4 bacon-wrapped shrimps. The tenderloin was heavenly. The shrimp were "shrimp-tastic" (sorry). The chicken was ok. The garlic mashed potatoes were amazing. Christi and Justin had the blackened, stuffed prime rib, which was apparently very good, judging from the condition of their plates afterwards. Rachel had a basic cut of prime rib and Stephanie got fried catfish and shrimp.

During the night (which started late for us...we didn't get seated until almost nine, mind you), we talked with Wednesday Adams, who was depressingly delightful, we found Waldo, we saw Snow White and Cinderella, and we saw who we finally figured out was the Mad Hatter. He was delightful. He kept walking by and we kept saying hi to him, and one time we were discussing the semantics about a myth being a true myth or a false myth (sling that around in your brain for a while...I tell you, it will hurt), and, totally without warning, the Hatter stuck his head around the corner and said "It's truly false," in a delightful British accent. The significance of that was that meant he had actually listened to our conversation while he was walking by. He was the last person we spoke to as we went out the door, as well.

Good times, folks, good times! I won't mention how much it cost, because, well, can you really put a price on a time like that? Oh, and I almost forgot about the ice cream and cookies birthday "cake" that three of them brought out to Rachel.

And we got some cool pictures from the local popa...paparaz...photographer. (I can't spell that word...heh.) And like a complete dolt, I forgot our camera. *doh*

I will seek out your spirits tomorrow night while we all watch the Red Sox at the same time...

Let the games begin.