Chili's Burgers Ruined For The Rest of My Life

One day last week while driving back from CA to OR, we stopped in a Chili's for a quiet gourmet burger. While eating, another group of people walked in to partake of the same gourmet food. As they sat I noticed that one of the booth occupants was waring a baseball cap. I like to wear baseball caps, so I tend to look them over as I see them. I also like to see them worn as baseball players wear them, bill front, not bill in the back, not bill on the side, bill in the front. The way nature intended them to be worn. The cap I saw that night in Chili's had been modified so that the logo of the cap was offset to the right. Which meant that the wearer could get the same goofy effect of wearing the bill to the side while not having to spend the effort to turn the cap sideways. As a further affront to the Laws of Nature, this cap logo (the NY Yankees) was all the wrong colors and sized wrong.
That cap ruined my gourmet Chili's burger. I will never again be able to look at a Chili's burger without seeing that logo burned into it.

Growing Up In Brooklyn

Before we moved to the Brigham Park Cooperative Apartments on Brigham Street we lived on McDonald Avenue in Brooklyn, I don't remember the number. What I do remember is that there was an elevated subway line that ran on McDonald Ave, and beneath the "El" (short for elevated) ran a trolley car line. I can remember coming home from Public School and playing out in front of our apartment house, and watching the trolley cars go by. As boys will be boys we would place things on the tracks like rocks and bottles to watch the trolly car wheels crush the objects. Of course our parents strictly forbid this practice but we did it anyway. One day someone came up with the bright idea of placing a coin on the tracks to see what the trolley car would do to the coin. Someone, eventually came up with a penny which we placed on the tracks. It was flattened like a pancake by the trolley car. It seems that we could have predicted this result but as kids it was more fun and more " naughty" to actually use real money -- a penny. This was 1950 when a penny was actually worth more than a glass bottle. I can also remember we wanted to try a nickel, but no one could figure out how we were going to get our hands on that kind of fortune.

Part 2 of My First Date with my STBB

As you may remember,I was on a blind date with my STBB, and one other couple, and we were playing pool. After either allowing the other couple to win, or just playing badly, we decided to get something to eat. Parenthetically, I should note that it was on this date that I basically decided two things. One, I had wasted a great deal of time and money bowling, during my high school and college years, when in fact I should have spent all that time and money learning the game of pool. As I got older It turned out that its much more common to play pool than it is to bowl, unless of course your are of polish extraction, of which I am not. Anyhow, the two couples left the pool hall and as near as I remember it, I suggested we go to Nathan's in Coney Island NY. This was geographically desirable and it was a cheap way to end a blind date, at least that's what I thought it was. Little did I know that my date was going to order Lobster Rolls, the most expensive thing on the menu at Nathan's. Anyhow, we went to Nathan's and I spent more on food than I ever expected, and my mind was made up about the second thing I needed to decide on this date. It seems that I decided I was going to marry my date. Looking back, I'm not sure that I actually made that second decision, or somehow my mother and future mother in-law, whom I had not yet met, made the decision for me. In any case it was the best decision I ever made ( or was made for me), because not only did I get my STBB but I also got my best friend for life.

My First Date With My "Soon To Be Bride" The First Installment.

Many, many, many years ago either my friend or my future wife's friend, I can't remember which, arranged a blind date for me with my " Soon To Be Bride". incidentally for purposes of protecting the innocent ( Me) I shall refer to her as the STBB (Soon To Be Bride) from now on in this blog, and maybe in my current life as well. Anyhow after this blind date was arranged someone, my STBB always says it was me, decided we should double date, and go shoot pool and then go out to eat. First you should know that in the middle 1960's, the time many, many, many years ago of which I write, had decreed that shooting pool was now "cool". Prior to our blind date many new sanitized pool halls had opened with their express market targets being girls, women, and others of the female sex who up until the invention of magenta colored pool tables would never even think of looking into, much less walking into a Pool Hall. Anyway once society had made it permissible for dates to go into pool halls, off we went the double date, me and my STBB. From, what I can remember the time in the pool hall went well, no blood or other bodily fluids was shed, and everyone on the double date and the other people already in the selected Pool Hall all remember to act like it was socially acceptable to be in the pool hall instead of how they would have acted before magenta pool table covers. To the best of my knowledge no written record exists recording the scores of the pool games we played, but I am reasonably certain that as a practitioner of the art of dating I would have allowed my STBB to win. With such subtlety, that she and her girlfriend would never have known they were being allowed to win. On the other hand they might have just beaten my friend and I outright, but my male ego does does not allow me to recognize that possibility.

Mea Culpea

First off I want to apologize to all our underpaid, under-benefited, under appreciated municipal workers for even considering the possibility of asking them to take any "steps backward" with respect to the pay and benefits. I now realize that their bosses, the taxpayers of OREGON, must make ever effort to keep their current and future standard of living at its ever increasing arc, even if that means taking on more and more crushing taxes or state debt. When municipal unions were allowed to come into existence we the taxpayers of OREGON obviously took a sacred oath to never allow our elected leaders or our municipal employees to ever have a standard of living that was less then their bosses. All of the foregoing not withstanding, it is the taxpayers of OREGON duty to live up that oath, and to bankrupt ourselves and the state if we have to keep that promise.

No Lamb Will Be Served In This House

Because my father had been such a pain in the ass to his parents they sent him to military academy for his high school years, and that is how he met my mother and I was born in South Carolina. It seems that when WW II came about and my dad was drafted from his hometown of Peekskill NY, about 60 mile north of New York City, his draft status showed he had been be military academy. So the ARMY saw that on his record and immediately made him a Sargent and also gave him permanent station status at Ft. Bragg North Carolina, thereby guaranteeing he would never be shipped overseas and possibly be killed during the war. It also made it possible for him to meet my mother who grew up in Rock Hill SC, and marry her and further guaranteeing I would be born in South Carolina. The downside to his permanent status at Ft. Bragg was that for all the time he was there the only fresh meat the ARMY served him was mutton or lamb. As a result after the war and to the day he died he would never eat anther piece of lamb or mutton, so I grew up never eating a lamb chop or a lamb stew, it was banned from out home.
He also learned to hate standing on line, which he did a lot of in the ARMY, so whenever we went out to eat or anywhere else out if there was a line to get in to the place we were going we would get there and turn around and find another place to eat. As a result we ended up eating in many not yet or ever popular restaurants.

Some Random Events

When I was in high school myself and some other guys got a job parking cars at a local synagogue in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn NY. One Saturday night on a very very very cold day we began valet parking the cars and then at the end of the event we would run down the street jump into the parked cars and return them to their frozen waiting owners at the main door of the synagogue. So this elderly couple hands me a car ticket I run down the street and start the car and turn on the radio and turn the heater all the way up, thinking that these additional touches will enlarge my tip. BUT, here comes the funny part, as I drove back to the synagogue in the nearly frozen car I hit a pothole, and the car went in and came out with a bang and the impact shattered the frozen back window. Not knowing what to do I drove the car to the waiting elderly couple, who much to my surprise got in their car and drove off, and I never saw them again. To this day I have often wondered what they thought as they drove in their nearly freezing car with the back window shattered and all in pieces on their back seat. Where they so drunk so out of it in general that they never noticed? Did they ever notice or did they just drive around with the car that way till it rained or snowed into it?

Another time my friends and I were out for the night and we needed to park my car, but could not find a space. But, we saw a VW bug taking up what looked like two parking spaces so we got the bright idea we would push the VW into one space and then my car would fit into the newly enlarged second space. So, we jumped out of the car and two or three of us put our backsides onto the back of the VW and then our feet onto the bumper of a parked car next to the rear of the VW. We then began pushing on the VW expecting it to move along the curb. Much to our surprise the VW didn't move, what did happen is the sheet metal of the VW collapsed and pushed in leaving a large dent in the rear of the VW. So, we lifted up the VW and turned it around so that it was parked the wrong way in the spot and hoped that the owner would not be interested in looking at the rear of his or her car while trying to figure out how it got parked the wrong way from the direction he or she had left it.

1955 with the Internet

I have finally figured out what Portland OR and the areas around them are. They are a small town in the 1950's but they have the internet. Its actually a very appealing combination of small town 1950's America living but with 21st Century advantages. The rub comes when the 21st century begins to try to speed up the 1950's. It's like watching the Leave It To Beaver show, but having it play in forwardness all the time.
Also living in this time warp makes you begin to think that we can actually solve all our social ills by simply ignoring them, as if society will simply outgrow its problems as if they were phases of maturing.

THE DONALD (DONALD TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT)

Just when I was beginning to think that the news was not providing enough things to make me laugh, I heard that Donald Trump is running for President. After I stopped laughing I realized that his candidacy would be a real boost to American Politics. The last Presidential cycle did not feature a TV reality show candidate and I know many people where lamenting that obvious missing candidate. Now, Donald Trump can fill that void. He can appeal to that segment of the American Public who can't tell you how a law is enacted but can tell you who is the last American Idol, or who was on the last cover of PEOPLE Magazine.
Donald Trump can be the Reality TV Party Candidate and we can now have our Presidential Elections done on the telephone the way that the American Idol winners are picked. Leave it up to The Donald to bring us and his hairdo into the 21st Century.

PORTLANDIA

As you may or may not know there is a current TV series on the IFC Network called PORTLANDIA. What the series does, and does very well, is to satirize the city of Portland Oregon. The funniest thing is that the city does a much better job of unintentionally satirizing itself more than the TV show does. For example the city is currently holding honest-to-goodness real live hearings as to whether or not it should join a Federal Government sponsored ant-terrorist network. The city "leaders" and the population are seriously trying to decide whether it is better to not join and have as many terrorist acts in the city as possible, or join and have to deal with reality. That ladies and gentlemen is Portland's real dilemma should it grow-up and act like an adult or should it just live in the made-up world of fairy tales and hob-goblins?

Club Mordecai

Since the Jewish holiday of Purim is coming up, it occurred to me that Jews are always trying to make this into a "happy" holiday, maybe they should start a Club Mordecai Comedy Club. The Club Mordecai would fulfill two purposes, it would give Jews and Non-Jews a place to laugh at and with each other, and it would give guilt-ridden Jews a place to expunge their religious demons in public. Actually the first stand-up should be Woody Allen, notoriously ambivalent about his Judaism, he could do at least two or three hours of one-liners about how his non-stop psychiatric analysis could have been prevented had he just be given the opportunity to tell one-liners at his Bar Mitzvah instead of having to read the Torah.

What Do We Need Cairo Egypt For ?

What is all the fuss about whats going on in Egypt? I bet you can't name one thing that we need that is made in Egypt. They have no oil, no natural gas, in fact the only thing they make in Egypt are Mummies and I don't think the world needs any more of those !!!.
Also, the Egyptian rioters need a really catchy slogan. Down with Mubarak just doesn't get it !! How about: Up with Mummies !!! or Down with Mubarak Up with his Mummy !!!
Anyhow the Egyptian riots are nowhere near as entertaining as the new TV Show PORTLANDIA on the IFC Channel. When you finally get tired of CNN & all the other cable news networks trying to make the Egyptian riots relevant to you, get your cable TV on and begin watching all the shows ON Demand or on HUlU that's where life really happens.

Random Thinks or Thoughts & Dustbins

I just saw a promo for the new James Cameron movie( maker of AVATAR and Titanic ) Sanctuary. Based on the clip the movie should be renamed Scrotum. And by the way why did it take so long for that damn Titanic to sink in the movie? The movie was way too long, as was the remake of King Kong. It seems that movie-makers are confusing length with content. Just because a movie is extra long doesn't mean its extra enjoyable.
Also whats the big deal that Keith Obermann is leaving MSNBC? Have we finally reached the point where non-news is actually now news?
Will someone please tell me from whom the angry people in this country want to take their country back from? And, why do I have to listen to miscreants like Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann from MN, who casually rewrites history to fit her current warped view of American History. As a fringe candidate for the Presidency, it really irks me to think that she and Sarah Palin get to say whatever they want in public, when they should be relegated to the dustbin of history as soon as possible. We need to speed up the dustbin process not the 24 hour news cycle.

SUGGESTIONS

Some time ago (late October early November 2010)I dropped a suggestion into the Suggestion Box at a local non-profit organization we frequent. Well, the other day 90-120 days after my drop, I received a voice mail from someone at the non-profit. The message began by apologizing for taking to so long to either acknowledge and/or agree with my suggestion, you,can guess where the rest of the message went; thanks for your suggestion but no thanks its not for our organization.
After thinking about the reply, the only thing that occurred to me is Why Do I Bother?