A JOURNEY THROUGH THE PAST

Credit Neil Young for the title. Credit my obsessive compulsive note taking for the following.

While sorting out some pictures in iPhoto, in my latest attempt to reach the highest order of organization obtainable on Earth, I needed to establish a date for for one of the photos. This led me to pull out one of my binders of information - binders that one day will be a challenge for my daughter as she sorts through my belongings. I call them my day journals. They are a random and somewhat spontaneous collection of thoughts, observations, plans and souvenirs - collectables from everyday living that reflect my thinking, document my projects, my dinners, and basically, anything that catches my interest. These journals paint a picture of my life better than anything I could tell you.

However, because I was born with the consistency gene turned off, these binders are quite haphazard. Sometime detailed to a psychologically dysfunctional level; other times deficient of things that when looking back, I ask HOW could I NOT have written that down? It drives me nuts. And one day, it will drive my daughter nuts.

But it will also provide some amusing insight, should she have the time to look through them.

In the 1993 folder, I found the answer to my question. The snapshot was taken on August 20, 1993, during an extended business trip that took me from Colorado to San Francisco to LaJolla. Two baseball games, lot of driving miles hotels and restaurants. However, more interesting than the fact that I could answer my original research question was the set of notes I found. Notes that I made while on the trip. It was my way of remembering what I did and what I experienced.

Here are a few of the best form the list:

The no-armed man was from Boulder, CO.  -  WHAT could this possible mean ? This is some kind of David Lynchian code, I believe.


Terry Mulholland told me he's ready to go this weekend  -  Terry was a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies. I have no memory of talking to him, but I did attend a Phillies game in Denver.


Had a non-verbal conversation with Harry Kalas  -  This one I remember strongly. In fact, it was the subject of a former posting of mine.


Joey went out with the mother of "Annie",  Andrea McArdle  - Joey is my uncle Joey. I forgot about this nugget that was passed on to me by Joey's sister, my Aunt Helen. It was Aunt Helen that I was visiting in Boulder. She loved her brother and was always bragging about him, trying to impress me of this man I never really knew. I never knew Joey because he died young, shot by some jerk outside the bar that he owned in Philly.


A small bag of cookies was waiting in my room and the bed was turned down  -  I was on a business trip in SF and staying at the Mandarin Oriental. Five nights on the 33rd floor in one of the classiest hotels I've been in, in one of the most beautiful cities in the US. I can still remember the cookies. The next night, I got extra cookies. There is another note that says I left the maid a $10 tip.


"Michael, I wonder if you could bring my car up?"  - Yes, I actually wrote this down. I guess I was pretty impressed with the services at the hotel.

"I have about 5 minutes before I pass out. If that happens, pour some sugar in my mouth"  -  This was said to me about 3 minutes before I started asking every stranger I saw, if they had a piece of candy on them. Danny was a diabetic guy that worked with me. We were on a cable car, heading to dinner. We found some candy.

Freeway accident on 101-S ramp, the car nearly flew OVER me  - Holy shit! This memory has been erased from my brain. It must have freaked me out that I escaped.


The LaBrea Tar Pits are the pits! Nothing but a flooded tar quarry... but I did get some LaBrea tar on my shoe  - makes me wonder where I was walking.


Passed a cop on I-405 around LA. I was doing 75, the cop was only doing 70  - This was back when 55 was still the speed limit. I remember thinking what the hell, this is LA. It's what you do out here.


SURVIVED LA  -  this was one of my last notes. It did not refer to the accidents or the tar pits or playing chicken with the cops. It refers to the fact that it was freeway shooting season in Southern California.

Here's the picture that took me down this road today. Maybe I won't try to explain what is going on, but I will say that I love it.

GRADUATION DAY

I think you would agree that life is an ongoing school of higher education. And so with that concept in mind, I would like to report that It is graduation time again for me.

I have wrapped up another multi-year matriculation by finding my way through the usual maze of obstacles.  I have conquered the challenges through a combination of hard work, applied experience, hands on learning, and my usual penchant for cramming. The fact that I still cut classes occasionally is something I guess I'll never outgrow.

Let's say that I majored in Organizational Management with minors in various Liberal Arts. There definitely was no science involved in the curriculum, nor logic, and very little math - at least none within the formal classwork and lecture programs. 

There were two courses that left big impressions on me. One, which I did not expect to have to take again, was a 5 credit course on "Destructive Management Practices". This course spanned 2 semesters and presented a comprehensive review of both proven practices and classic technique, along with some new twists on old techniques. These were referred to collectively, I believe, as "NEO-nonsense".  Probably the single best nugget from this course provided me with a profoundly new perspective and a more complete understanding of how many ways optimism can be torpedoed or a discussion can be ground to a halt through the delivery of a well intentioned, but totally destructive response. In this course, we resurrected the NON SEQUITUR and the OFF TOPIC RESPONSE, using both with abandon.

The second course was an oldie, but a goodie: "Power Building thru Information Management" - a practice that I thought was abandoned somewhere in the 70s. What was great about this course was not only the demonstration that a once dead practice could be revived again, but that it could be merged with other neo-nonsense techniques to completely leave the unsuspecting in a dumbfounded state. I learned from a Machiavellian master ! However, I got a C in the course.

And, as in my previous post graduate studies, I left the program early.

It was not my intention when I started to end up in this multi-disciplined program, nor was it my intention to leave early. I came in with a different major in mind, and a very simple expectation for what I would learn. At that time, more than 3 years ago, I was fresh and wide eyed, expectant and positive. But as the years wore on, so did my patience, resolve and finally, interest in the original subject. Even now, I feel so worn down that I am completing this paper without emotion, in a purely perfunctory manner. 

Looking back over the years, the frustrations mounted like the build up of plaque in one's arteries - an insipid sort of destruction where damage builds quietly and gradually, until at some point, the disease overcomes the body's ability to combat it and if left untreated, causes a vital breakdown. In my case, I really felt the buildup in quantum fashion. Looking back, I can point to 3, 4, maybe 6 discrete events that deposited a scaly calcification onto my vital passages. 

But I did survive, because in my case, I did something about it. I graduated.

So let's not seem too negative. I came away a more learned man. Sometimes my learning was delivered in the same negative fashion that my dad employed, but the learning came none the less. Graduation is a time for celebration and moving on; of wrapping up and looking forward to the next challenge. Both of which I plan to do in about 60 minutes from now.

MAN EATS FROG BURGER LOVEBURGER

...or maybe it would be better said as, "Man eats the loveburger at Frog Burger."

As the menu plainly says, the "Love Burger" is a hamburger served between 2 grilled cheese sandwiches.

And lest you think this is some kind of playful, suggestive wording, a culinary slight of hand, or a product that utilizes a newly invented, custom designed grilled cheese, let me spell it out again: What you get is 2 whole grilled cheese sandwiches (like mom makes) with a hamburger sitting between them.

Your eyes look at this and tell you something is wrong, until they see the large, flowing spill of "special sauce" coating over the burger and behaving like a dressing on the underside of one of the grilled cheese sandwiches. It is the only thing hinting that the haphazard pile of food is designed to be that way, and you need to pick the whole disjointed pile up and get your mouth around it. A slight hint.

The burger was reasonably good but the experience was not outstanding. Part of the problem (I believe) is that it was cooked over a moderate heat. There was no crust on the meat nor any noticeable charing, and it was cooked to a uniform, medium doneness. But the bigger problem was that the two grilled cheese sandwiches make their presence felt - more of a statement than any normal hamburger bun could. An aggresively distracting and unharmonious statement.

The special sauce was OK but it was lost in the affair. I'm a ketchup guy anyway. I think of "special sauce" as something that has a self important air about it, but has no business calling itself special. It's precious, but not interesting, and certainly not assertive. Now, as I write this review, it is only a distant, non-impressionable memory.

The milkshake however, was outstanding! It might be considered pricey at $5.50 but the way I look at it is, I have no problem spending $5 for a beer, so why not for the rare ice cream treat. I ordered the black and white. Made with Bassett's vanilla ice cream and a long pump of a good chocolate syrup, it was swirled with on old fashioned blender to be thick, heavy and creamy.

As you can tell, this was not a small meal. I am a person who is well within his ideal weight and could easily make a lunch out of a single grilled cheese sandwich or a 4 oz. hamburger, this burger of love (and I cannot stop thinking that it is 1969 again) was a challenge to eat. It was like eating 4 lunches at one sitting, never mind the milkshake.

But as they say (more or less), "...on this day of man vs. food, man won".

Frog Burger is Steve Poses summer happening on the front lawn of the Franklin Institute. Hanging under a tent, it's like an overgrown backyard grill that doesn't quite seem like it should be there. Even getting to it was through a somewhat indirect path.

Frog Burger is not a destination place but it is worth a stop if you are in the area. But remember, it is at the Franklin Institute, so picture science-kid-o-rama in family and bus-load format. Service is pleasant but the process is not real fast. Reasonable for made to order food burgers but slower than many. Again, I think the temperature of the grill is a factor.

For me, I might try some of the other items on the menu, but as for the Love burger, it's one and done.