Monday, August 30, 2010

A True Sandwich Artiste

I know Subway refers to their minimum wagers as "Sandwich Artists", but I'm here to tell you that Jilly Beans is a true Sandwich Artiste.

Just look at the masterful work that goes into these things.

The secret to her sandwich success: "leave no corner uncovered."






Sunday, August 29, 2010

The Three F's: Family, Food, Fun


Get a load of how painfully pale my legs are in this one.

"Celebrities"

It took me a while to figure out who she was, but I saw this blond girl a couple nights ago coming out of the food court at the new mall at the end of the Promenade.
Her name is Alexandra Holden.
Remember when she was Ross's girlfriend/Bruce Willis's character's daughter on Friends? Apparently she's only a few years younger than me, but she looks like she's 15, possibly due to the fact that she appeared to weigh about 85 pounds. I'm not saying she looked too skinny; I'm just saying she was super-tiny.
Teeny tiny.



Then yesterday I saw the Blind Date guy, Roger Lodge, waiting in line at Diddy Riese. I can't lie -- he was actually really attractive.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Travel

Isn't it neat that this morning I was in St. Louis and now I'm in Santa Monica?

And my flight was non-stop! Thanks Southwest!

**This was not my plane. **

This is the first of several delicious sandwiches that Jill will masterfully create for me while I'm here.

It was a BLT and it was positively delectable.


Wednesday, August 25, 2010

My Brother Rich

One of the things I'm most looking forward to doing while on vacation is going for walks with my brother Rich. He can be a truly hilarious person without even trying. For instance, when I lived in Santa Monica and we used to go for walks into Venice a lot, every time and I do mean EVERY time we passed this restaurant called The Firehouse he would ask me if I had ever seen the movie Pumping Iron. Then he would go on to tell me a story about how Arnold Schwarzenegger and other body builders ate breakfast there back in the day. He literally had the same spiel every time. The first probably 5 times I think he genuinely didn't remember that he had told me the story already. Every other time after that, his re-telling of the same story, in exactly the same way, was just comedy gold. I can't wait to hear the question "Have you ever seen the movie Pumping Iron?" come out of his mouth as soon as we're close enough to see the building.

Another funny thing he used to do on walks was I would comment on a pretty plant or flower and he would say "Yes, that's a variety of the starilla genus." The first time he did this I was momentarily impressed that he knew this kind of detailed plant information, until I asked him how he knew it and he honestly answered without any hesitation "I don't; I just made it up."

One of the funniest conversations we had while on a walk was when he tried to school me on family history, but everything he said was dead wrong. He was telling me all about our Grandma Lamb, starting with her maiden name Henrietta Rachel (Actual name: Noraetta Raithel). He followed that up with explaining to me how she used to speak with a German accent (No, she didn't). He said "Don't you remember, she was always saying 'Shut up, dummkopf!'" Our grandma was the sweetest, kindest, most soft-spoken lady that ever lived (as was our Grandma Horner) and would never have told anyone to shut up or called anyone something like dummkopf, and she definitely wouldn't have done either of those things with a German accent. At that point he was just hamming it up and I couldn't stop laughing. I'm laughing about it now, just remembering it.

Rich has a great laugh that never fails to warm my heart. If I'm lucky, when I'm there I'll say something funny enough to crack him up because it's a real treat to hear him laugh.

Side note - One day I found out that Rich had never even eaten at The Firehouse that he knew so much about (this kind of thing is Classic Rich), so we went in and had breakfast. A fellow breakfaster was not a body builder, but a creepy old guy with fingernails like six inches long. It was kind of hard to enjoy eating once we knew Old Naily was on the other side of the room because even though we tried not to glance at him again, just the knowledge that he was there grossed us out.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Glen Campbell + Loretta Lynn = Happiness

I was listening to Loretta Lynn's album Coal Miner's Daughter today and fell in love with a song called Less of Me. My friend the Internet tells me that Glen Campbell wrote the lyrics. I love the sentiment.

Let me be a little kinder, let me be a little blinder
To the faults of those about me, let me praise a little more.
Let me be when I am weary, just a little but more cheery,
Think a little more of others and a little less of me.

Let me be a little braver when temptation bids me waver,
Let me try a little harder to be all that I should be.
Let me be a little meeker with the brother who is weaker,
Let me be think more of my neighbor and a little less of me.

Let me be when I am weary, just a little bit more cheery,
Let me serve a little better those that I am striving for,
Let me be a little meeker with the brother who is weaker,
Think a little more of others and a little less of me.

Let me be when I am weary, just a little bit more cheery,
Think a little more of others and a little less of me.


Fun facts from Glen Campbell's wikipedia page:
He credits his Uncle Boo with teaching him how to play guitar.
In 1971, he took his show the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour on the road for two nights to the Muny in Forest Park (the largest and oldest outdoor theatre in America) in St. Louis, Missouri.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Last Night's Mad Men

Oh my gosh. Sally is going to have the most warped sense of sexuality thanks to Mother of the Year Betty. Mommie Dearest was so horrified to hear the news that her daughter got busted for masturbating ("in public") that she immediately slapped her, then later threatened to cut off her fingers if she dared lie about it.

Poor Sally. She's a sad casualty in the mess that is the fractured Draper family. From this awful experience, she'll quickly learn to keep things of a sexual nature secret, just like Dear Old Dad. Sally's first boyfriend is going to be Glen, the creep who used to be (maybe still is?) obsessed with Betty. That's weird right there.



Can't you just see Sally and Glen killing Henry and Betty then running away on a killing spree like Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate? Sally and Glen would make a swell Badlands couple. Nobody beats Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek though - they are both so young and beautiful in that movie that you don't ever want to stop looking at them.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

The Cowboys / A New Gal


So you know how AMC has John Wayne Saturdays every Saturday this month? What, you didn't know that? Well then, you need to catch up on some TV.

Today when I got home from picking up this new gal at T.F.A. antique store, I came in on The Cowboys (my favorite John Wayne movie) scene where Homer and Cimarron come across the prostitutes. Young Homer can't take the excitement and yelps and rides away hurriedly, Cimarron offends the madam by telling her that she's old enough to be his mama, then the fantastic Mr. Nightlinger restores order by telling her "I have the inclination, the maturity, and the wherewithal, but unfortunately I don't have the time."

The scene where they execute the demise of the villian, played expertly by Bruce Dern, is one of the best scenes in any movie ever.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Pretty on the Outside, Ugly on the Inside

Jennifer Aniston lost me forever when I found out she used the word "retard" on a talk show. She's so pretty and her hair always looks great and I imagine she always smells really good and I wholeheartedly back her original statement about women having kids on their own and her subsequent rebuttal to Bill O'Reilly, but now my image of her is tainted.

It is never ok to use this word. I don't care if you're a brain surgeon with three degrees from Harvard, when I hear you use that word, I'll think you're uneducated, ill-bred, and unobservant, not to mention insensitive, uncaring, unfeeling, uncouth, crass and cold. There's no quicker way to show me what kind of person you are than to casually drop that word into conversation.

I don't want people to stop using this word so they can be politically correct or so my stomach doesn't turn everytime I have to hear it. I want people to want to drop it from their vocabulary because they come to an understanding of how horrible it is to throw that word around when the fact is that it's a derogatory term for retarded people. It's mean and ugly and hurtful to make fun of or make light of people that, through no fault of their own, were born with mental disabilities. Have some character, some integrity.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

One More Week Until the Great Vacation Gorge!

A week from today I'll be in Santa Monica! I need this vacation so badly. It will be nice to get away not just from work, but away from everyday life for a while. I'm going to vacation it up by eating whatever I want and doing whatever I want all day, every day, for 8 magnificent days in a row. Having eaten like a bird for the past few weeks in preparation for the Vacation Gorge, I'm most looking forward to the eating! I'm finally at my driver's license weight for the first time since before I quit smoking, but that won't last for long!

Places I will eat (not necessarily all on the same day) include but are not limited to:
Krispy Kreme,
Thoma's for chili cheese fries,
In-N-Out followed by an ice cream sandwich at Diddy Riese,
possibly a good old-fashioned post-church lunch at Souplantation,
maybe a sandwich from Bay Cities if I can brave the line,
and definitely a few delicious Jill-made sandwiches from her magical Panini-maker.

I was going to say Patty's Pizza but my friend the Internet tells me that the Santa Monica location closed in February. That's a shame, just a real shame.

Speaking of food, I don't know why a quote from Night Court, which has been off the air for almost 20 years, should pop into my head so often, but it does.
"It's so hard to say au revoir so let's just say au gratin." - Buddy (John Astin) to Harry.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

School's Out Forever!

Around this time every year when kids are going back to school, I am renewed with a sense of gratitude that I am finished with school and never have to go back (and you can't make me!).

It's amazing that I graduated from college considering I didn't like school starting with pre-school. After I took my last exam, an overwhelming sense of relief washed over me and stayed with me for a long time. Adult life hasn't always been a piece of cake, but I don't take for granted the fact that I never have homework and I never have to come home after work and study for a test. It's glorious.

Unrelated -- I'm watching Cocktail on TV right now (don't judge me) and Brandon and Brenda Walsh's dad Jim (James Eckhouse) is in the background of a bar scene in Jamaica. I don't see Cindy anywhere. Busted! 9-0 Forever!!

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Dogtown Walking Tour, Part 2

Today's weather is even nicer than yesterday's, so I'm heading out for another walk. Here are some more pictures from yesterday.


This is the kind of graffiti I can get behind.

I'm not sure if this "Care Center" is for old people, or crazy people, or possibly old crazy people.

This hasn't actually been a market for a few years, but if it was still in business I would totally go in there and buy stuff sometimes.


This is a sad, ugly eyesore of a building that was built shortly before the economy went down the toilet. I'm pretty sure no one ever purchased any of the five units. Two of the units have stairs built up to the front door, three of them do not.





Monday, August 16, 2010

Dogtown Walking Tour

Today was the first day in forever that it wasn't blazing hot, so I went for a walk around the neighborhood. These are some of the things I saw.





This is the elementary school down the street.


It's also a fallout shelter, which is nice to know.

Two cute little bakeries that I have never stepped foot in, for some reason.


A cute gazebo in "downtown" Dogtown.



Then my camera ran out of batteries so I headed back home.