Just for fun

Alma found a bag of old candy while we were looking for new candy in her parents' dining room. How old? Well, there were some marshmallows marked as expiring in 1999, and a bunch of Laffy Taffy that, according to Alma, she sold for a class fundraiser in 1997 or 1998. Then, she dared me to eat one.



Thanks to the quality of the camera phone, it can be a little hard to hear me, so I made the following transcript in case you really wanted to know:

Alma: Okay, go ahead.
Me: I used to buy these at the Prescription Counter for a nickel. Man, this is gonna be like, totally stuck to the wrapper, isn't it.
Alma: Yeah.
Me: [unintelligible]
[I eat the candy]
Me: "What do you drop when you're using it, but pick up when you're not?"
Alma: Um, I don't know.
Me: "An anchor." Ohh!
Alma: How is it?
Me: Not really a joke...
Alma: [laughs]
Me: Um, it tastes a little like paint.
Alma: Is that how they usually taste?
Me: Yeah, pretty much.
Alma: Okay, don't eat any more, all right?
Me: Mmm! [moves package towards mouth]
Alma: Hold on, hold on, hold up the wrapper, I wanna get the, uh, the year on the-
Me: Oh. Mm, here.
[The copyright year is 1995.]
Alma: Okay.

And yes, I know - the position I was sitting in makes me look really fat. No need to mention it.

San Diego recap

Too many pics and stuff for the blog, so check it out here. If you like being bored.

Now in select cities

Being in San Diego, with my first experience with In-N-Out Burger and seeing other places I'd heard of but never been to (like Del Taco), made me think a bit about the interesting existence of regional restaurant franchises. When you get right down to it, there aren't very many places that actually span the entire country, but there are a number of other places that are hugely popular in certain regions, and end up gaining this weird national cult status as a result. Here's a few that leap to mind:

In-N-Out: This might be the #1. People swear it's the best fast food burger, and yet it doesn't extend east of Tucson or even north of Redding, CA. You basically have to be in Vegas, California, or the big Arizona cities to see one. And the crazy thing is, they basically have four things on the menu (hamburger, cheeseburger, fries, shake). Best fast food burger? No, but better than the major national chains? Sure. Probably not deserving of its cult status though.

Sonic: Especially now that they advertise nationally even though you've got to drive a couple hours from Chicago or New York to get to one. I barely remember my one experience with Sonic, which came on a quiz bowl trip to points south; the drive-in aspect is a large part of the appeal, as focused on in their generally obnoxious ads, while the food seems secondary. My recollection of the food is nil, so that sounds about right.

White Castle: I never thought of it that way since they were around when I was growing up, but there are no White Castles west of Missouri or south of Tennessee, and they're almost completely absent from New England (though you can get frozen sliders in grocery stores in nearly every state, even ones without actual restaurant locations, New England doesn't even have those). Alma tells the story of people from California out in Chicago for a friend's wedding who insisted on going to a White Castle; this was pre-"Harold and Kumar," so they didn't even have that excuse.

Chick-fil-A: Famously closed on Sundays, the Chick-fil-A site doesn't have an easy-to-use map, but there are (as I mentioned in this week's Junk Monitor) no locations within 50 miles of Chicago, and just two dozen total within 50 miles of New York and Los Angeles. By and large they're a southeastern phenomenon, yet they're popular enough that McDonald's felt a need to rip off their signature sandwich for mass distribution. Considering how obnoxiously religious Chick-fil-A is, though (right down to doing cross-promotion with Focus on the Family), maybe I don't mind the lack of them around here so much.

Krispy Kreme: Krispy Kreme donuts are now sold in most states, though they still omit the northern midwest and most of New England. When I was growing up in New Jersey they were sort of like In-N-Out, this far-off myth of the "best donuts ever" that you could never see in your life. Even as recently as 2001, they were hard enough to find in Illinois that we drove out to the location near O'Hare just to get some. Now they're in every Jewel (although obviously not "HOT NOW").

Carvel: The Geneva store appears to have closed, meaning that there is now one Carvel in Illinois (in Wilmette); when searching for my "three nearest stores" on their website, the next two results are in Michigan, over 200 miles away. Carvel has gained national recognition on the strength of novelty cakes like Fudgie the Whale and Cookiepuss, and you can get their cakes in Jewels out here. You can probably also get perfectly adequate soft-serve at any other place that does soft-serve. But as I was saying to someone recently, when I was growing up, Carvel was ice cream. Places like Cold Stone didn't exist yet and South Orange didn't have a Baskin Robbins or a Dairy Queen. I'm pretty sure I went to Carvel more often between the ages of 6 and 14 than to any other single food-service establishment.

Carvel is an example of the desire for something springing up not around some mythical status but around having little else for so long and suddenly being deprived. I'm not sure if there's anything else I could personally put in that category, aside from maybe Blimpie.

Anyway, those are just some examples that I came up with off the top of my head, but I'd love to hear from the readers (all three of you) on this one. Places that you had as a kid and now long for? Places you hear about as awesome but don't ever see? Places you have but think other people are curious about?

Crowned

Normally I feel about horse racing similarly to the way the rest of the Sports Night cast reacted when Jeremy Goodwin attempted to pitch Secretariat for Athlete of the Century - I don't have the DVDs with me, but when Jeremy delivers his final pitch (based on the fact that Secretariat's heart was found to be much larger than normal at his autopsy), "He had the heart of a champion," either Dan or Casey responds, "And I'm saying he had the heart of a horse." But in light of yet another failure to win the Triple Crown (there have now been as many failed attempts by Derby/Preakness winners just since 1978 as there have been actual winners of the Triple Crown in history, 11 each), I wanted to go back and look at Secretariat's dominant 31-length win in the 1973 Belmont. He was only facing four other horses, but the field included Sham, who had finished second in both the Derby and Preakness. Sham held Secretariat for about 3/4 of a mile - half the race's 1 1/2-mile distance - then tired and ultimately finished last. Secretariat, astonishingly, just kept going and ended up blowing away the track record.

I mention all this simply as a way of introducing this piece from the SportsCentury episode on Secretariat, which is immaculately put together. I'm as cynical about horse racing as anyone, but this piece gives me chills every time (and I've watched it five or six times now). If you wonder what ever made me want to be a video editor, it was the thought of putting together stuff like this.

What can't Brown do for you? Win the Belmont

Tyler and I have an occasional game where we try to guess the pun- or rhyme-based headlines that will arise from various sporting events. Today, as you may know, Big Brown not only didn't win the Triple Crown, he finished last in the Belmont's nine-horse field. Immediately my mind went to possible headlines on ESPN.com and the like:

"No Crown for Brown"

"Brown Goes Down"

"No Browning Achievement"

"Down Goes Brown"

"Brown and Out"

"Brown for the Count"

"Brown-Out at Belmont"

"Tears of a Brown"

"Big Brown Not Even #2 at Belmont"

And then there was Alma's suggestion:

"What's big and brown and smells like failure?"

EDIT: Oh man, you guys. So I posted this at 10 pm; at the time, the headline on ESPN.com was the non-pun-or-rhyme-based "Not So Fast..." As of this edit, the headline is "Brown and Out." Screen-cap proof here. I better see a royalty check in my mailbox soon, ESPN.

Back in town

I'm back from San Diego. A deeper discussion of this with pictures will be up within a few days once Alma can get all her photos into the computer, but it was pretty nice, even if I only managed to see one of the two Cubs wins and had to sit through their loss. By far the worst part of the trip was the flight back in - in particular, the end of it, which was at best the second-worst turbulence I can recall having to deal with thanks to 35 mph winds at O'Hare - and while the weather wasn't quite as warm as maybe I would have liked, it's not bad when the weather is in the mid-60s with some sun and no humidity. It certainly isn't worse than the steamy 85 degrees I came back to.

All in all, it was a pretty fun time, and a good choice for my first true vacation since 1994. I don't know if I'll be able to take a vacation like that every year, but I'd like to. I think it's been good for me to just have some time away, not having to worry about anything. (Kudos to work for not calling me in a panic at any point.)