THE WINE CELLAR ...

                             

As usual, my colleagues asked me to organize a group dinner for us last night, someplace "away from the Magic Kingdom" where we could have a quiet dinner meeting.  Nothing against Disneyland, but after a while you yearn to eat in an atmosphere free of Animatronic Puppets.  "What do you feel like?," I asked the group.  "Someplace local," they said, "Surprise us."  So I took them to a nice restaurant called The Cellar.  I didn't tell them until we were en route that it was built by Walt Disney in the late 1960s as a location where he could give visiting executives an initial taste of Disneyland.  He hired the same "Imagineers" who built the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland to transform an ordinary basement in Fullerton into a cavernous wine cellar.  "Don't worry," I said as we descended into the Murky Depths, "It's just like Pirates of the Caribbean, except all the puppets look like waiters ...!"