‘Cigar time’ is when I get some of my best ideas. Like Lunchables, I thought of that, first. Though in my version, instead of awful Oscar Mayer’s tasteless ham, or worse yet, bologna, and American cheese, which really is less a cheese and more of an industrial grade plastic, I envisioned Serrano ham, aged gouda cheese and Jacob’s Best Cream Crackers. Granted, marketing my version to school age children might have been a bit of an uphill battle, but we’ll never know now, alas.

So during the last smoke-wreathed internal skull session (they’re internal because the last time I started reasoning out loud, Mary began preliminary contacts with the type of institutions that have lots and lots of bars on the windows), I pondered the state of food and drink, and what could be done to improve it in America right now. Not too mention, what could be done to improve the state of my Swiss bank accounts. Which I don’t actually have, but I would have, if I’d filed the patent for that Lunchables idea first.

Like, why can’t you get sushi with fries? We can get tacos with fries at Del Taco, so why hasn’t anyone come up with a place that serves sushi with fries? A fast food joint with a moniker like Bento Buzz, or Samurai Tex-Mex or Tokyo A&W. And while we’re at it, why are we using all this fresh raw fish in sushi? I mean, yes, I like it, but a lot of Americans would sooner endure the withering scorn of their Gallic cousins (which they won’t understand anyway, because it’s all in French), then eat a piece of fish that isn’t sectioned into stick shapes, battered, deep fried and slathered in tartar sauce. So how about sushi made with fish sticks? Think of the savings over that hideously expensive fresh stuff, not to mention you could get a lot more fish stick sushi for the price one pays for a single piece of sashimi grade tuna. Quantity, especially at low, low prices, is always popular in this country.

And since I mentioned french fries, also known as pommes frites, why aren’t we eating them in the methode Belgique, with good ol’ American mayo instead of that plain-jane ketchup? Yes, mayonnaise is a French invention, or so they claim, just as pommes frites are a Belgian creation, but here in America, we’re perfectly happy to take anyone else’s conception, and scale it up to industrial quantities, and serve it from a drive-thru window. With extra-large sodas on the side.

Anyway, that was just last week’s brainstorm session. Imagine what I’ll come up with, while puffing away determinedly on my cigar, this week!

So just a few random observations, besides the parenting equals terminal fatigue one above.

Disney has obviously decided that open combat over dress codes in the dining rooms is futile. I feared a general descent into wife-beater shirts, gimme hats, ragged shorts and flip flops during the evening meals, followed by a breakdown in the social order, leading into mass chaos and open rebellion. Disappointingly, none of this came to pass. Slob chic was on display, sure, but torch wielding crowds and clouds of tear gas, were not in evidence. Perhaps at the late seating? The higher end specialty restaurants (Palo and Remy), did hold the line, especially Remy, where our friend’s pleas to be allowed to wear jeans (but they’re dressy jeans!) instead of dress slacks were met with a polite but firm refusal. Good show, chaps! And chapettes!

Disney offers unlimited soda on board, and there seems to be a soda fountain around every corner. I fondly imagined that deep in the ship’s holds there are large bunkers labeled: diesel fuel, desalinated water, ballast, Coke, Sprite, Diet Coke, etc. And glitter.

We tried early seating for the first time ever, since we were accompanied by young folks, and they had even younger toddlers. Wow, what a change! First, I like to have a cocktail before dinner, because it’s what civilized people do, or so I argue, but even for me, 5:00pm is pushing the envelope a trifle. Not that it stopped me, just caused me to actually ponder briefly before ordering that second cocktail. On the other hand, we actually saw one of the live shows, which isn’t something we normally get a chance to do, because they’re offered before dinner for the late seating and that would cut into valuable cocktail imbibing time. So since you normally finish dining around 6:30 or 7:00 in the early seating, this leaves plenty of time to go to a show, or get some after dinner cocktails. Which are important so that one can reach equilibrium with the pre-dinner libations. Balance in all things, and all that rot.

I’ve never understood the appeal of pools on cruise ships, but as in so many things, I’m apparently the odd one out here. The pools on the earlier ship, the Dream, were so popular, that Disney added several more on the Fantasy. The adult pools are a special strangeness. First, they are, as advertised, adult only, on a cruise ship that is owned and operated by a company whose entire raison d’être is marketing every thing under the sun to kids. But even adults need a little me time, I suppose. Personally, I need loads and loads of me time. The adult pools seem to offer no more than a chance to dip one’s appendages in water while sipping a cold cocktail. There’s no actual swimming involved, as the pools maximum dimension in any direction couldn’t have exceeded ten feet.

The beverage of choice, while sitting on the side of the adult pool, appeared to be ice cold Budweisers, in aluminum ‘bottles’. How these differ from ice cold Buds in aluminum cans is not evident to me, obviously the aesthetics being the all, here.

The Bibbity Bobbity Boutique is a big smash, or so I am reliably informed, by people in the know. My person in the know was the daughter of our friends, who sampled the offerings of the Boutique. Here you can take your little one, preferably female, though I’m not going to judge you, for a princess make over. Makeup, hairspray, dress and glitter. Lots and lots of glitter. So much glitter that you’ll be seeing it in the bottom of the bathtub weeks later. Our friends’ three and a half year old (the aforementioned confidant) thought it was the most totally marvelous thing ever. When we arrived in the dining room, after her boutique appointment, as soon as she saw us walking towards the table, she stood up on her chair and let us, and of course the rest of the dining room, gaze in amazed wonder at her totally awesome splendiferousness. Which we did.

And there was a lot of glitter involved.

I was initially encouraged by the sight of a TSA agent turning away a family with multiple small pre-adults, and their associated conveyances, termed strollers, I believe. Unfortunately, as quickly became evident, several people in line ahead of us really weren’t even minimally prepared to glide gracefully and faultlessly through the X-ray machines, metal detectors, backscatter scanners, pat downs, cavity search and psychological profiling that all experienced travelers who don’t have their own private jet, now consider an everyday occurrence.

So I thought the TSA should post a quick quiz for travelers to see if they are expert or not, kind of separating the wheat from the chaff as it were.

Expert Traveler’s Quiz

1. Can you put everything you need for a week-long business trip to Moscow in a 22” rollaboard bag?
   1. What’s a rollaboard?
   2. Does that include trinkets for the natives?
   3. Maybe. Is it winter? If not, then that means that the trip is scheduled for the last week of July, so yeah, I can handle that.
   4. Yes, but I’ll need to take my other personal carry-on, which is the size of a smallish Great Dane, which won’t fit under my seat, so I’ll still need to run over some elderly people and small children during boarding so I can get on the plane first to snag the necessary overhead bin space.
2. At meal time, the flight attendant announces that you can choose between the Chicken Cordon Bleu, or the Steak au Poivre. What do you do?
   1. Go back to your seat in coach, only people in first class get hot food.
   2. Tell the flight attendant “Hey, hey, I’m on an all liquid diet, you know, Vitamin JB, like Jim Beam”, lean over, throw up in your neighbor’s lap, and pass out.
   3. Politely decline the offerings, since you have fond childhood memories of both these dishes, and eating the airline equivalent would ruin them for you forever.
   4. Pinch yourself to wake up from the dream you’re obviously having, since no one serves anything like that on domestic flights anymore, even in first class.
3. Despite the best efforts of the TSA, you manage to get through the security line in record time and still have two hours before your flight starts boarding. You decide to:
   1. Shop! You have a collection of shot glasses from different cities around the country. So far you have acquired three shot glasses. Time to obtain Number Four!
   2. Eat! Did you know they have TGIFridays in some airports? Isn’t that awesome?
   3. Go to the Admiral’s Club/Red Carpet Club/Upper Class Clubhouse and try and catch up on some emails.
   4. Ride! Around and around on the AirTrain between Terminal 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and then do it all over again!
4. Does your luggage contain any of the following:
   1. A case of Miller Lite because that foreign beer tastes funny.
   2. Two hundred condoms and a phrase book entitled 101 Ways To Pick Up Eastern Slovenian Sex Workers.
   3. Just clothing and a toiletry kit, anything of any value is in your carry-on bag.
   4. Jewelry worth more than $100,000.

Note: If you answered D, please write down your name and the color and size of your bag and hand the note to your nearest TSA agent.

Final Question

Are your lips moving while you’re reading this, even a little?

If yes, please proceed to the line that is not labeled Expert Traveler.

If no, and if you answered C for every other question, you may consign yourself to the tender mercies of your friendly and efficient TSA agent in the Expert Travelers Line.

Congratulations and good luck!

Stories like this were the reason we are finishing up this spring’s travel season on American Airlines, rather than United, even though our closest major hub at Denver is United territory. Although I have managed to put upwards of fifty-some years on this ball of mud (and where, oh where, did those years go?), I still find it hard at times to believe that any one set of people, like the programmers at United, can dig so deep and find their inner Dunning-Kruger. I knew about this effect for some time, but never knew it had a name. Now I can pull that out at parties when the hostess incompetently neglects to put the proper proportion of peanuts in the Chex Mix. I’m sure I’ll be a lot of fun to be around. Unless of course my own special area of incompetence is ‘party-goer’, and because of the Dunning-Kruger effect I’ll be unable to recognize that I’m incompetent at party-going, and now I’m going to go and make a fort from the couch cushions to hide in the rest of the afternoon.

While I’m in seclusion though – don’t take United Airlines till at least 2015, by which time the fifteen-year-old stepson of the IT department manager should be prevailed upon to come in and correct the computer code for the ticketing system.

So, my contribution will be to expand the sum of human knowledge as to other, non-Disney sources of sustenance on the island of Oahu. First the good news – there is actually decent food to be found if you persevere. Over on the North Shore there is a place that serves a pretty fair taco, and more importantly, a superior fish taco. One of the better fish tacos I’ve had since my last visit to Rubio’s, as a matter of fact. It’s called Killer Tacos, and while it would only be fair to respectable when compared to Southern Californian taquerias, it’s solid platinum for Oahu. Go, and feast on the tortilla encased goodness.

We had some Asian food, in this case Thai, from a stand in the Chinatown food markets in Honolulu. It too, was pretty good. Lots of other stuff in there looked middling decent also. And cheap. Portion sizes were substantial enough we were able stretch them out for another meal back in our hotel. But then again, we had a full kitchen in the room. Otherwise, you’re probably looking at whether or not you can stomach three-day-old fish curry without ill effects. I’m not actually recommending you keep fish curry at room temperature for three days and eat it – that would be irresponsible.

We sampled malasadas, twice as a matter of fact, and if Mary had had her way, we’d have gone back three of four more times. Deep dried doughy pillows that were a bit unexceptional until you slam some Li Hing sugar on those puppies, and then they ascend the highest heights of the trash food Everest to perch comfortably, if a bit greasily, in the Throne of All Things Deep Fried. Which means, non-methaphorically that Li Hing malasadas equals extreme goodness. Skip the custard filled ones unless you have a deep and abiding thing for gooey filled donuts.

The Mai Tai bar at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel at Waikiki is everything a beach bar should be. The bartenders are friendly, talented and the drinks are (for Hawai’i) reasonably priced. I’d hazard a guess that they could make a mojito that would make your toes curl in a right proper manner. This bar goes up on my all-time list of famous and infamous bars, which Mary tells me I should post about someday. And I will, someday.

And that’s it for the good news.

Now for the bad news. I like Hawai’i, I really do. And there have been times when I’ve had something to eat on the various islands that wasn’t bad. Now, granted, on this visit, our first to Oahu, we never did get down to Honolulu for some eats, other than the aforementioned visit to the Chinese markets. I am given to understand that there are some superior places to eat in the city. Maybe we’ll find out on some other visit.

One thing I can usually depend on when visiting a place, is to find out where the locals eat, and try that. This doesn’t always work, notable exceptions include Tokyo, where the locals’ idea of what a pizza tastes like, is not what something the guys down at Ray’s Original would recognize. Then there’s Eastern Ohio, where fried bologna sandwiches are very much an acquired taste, which I’ve never really had an hankering to acquire, thank you very much. Add to this list, Oahu, well, probably most of the islands, now that I think about it. Everything we ate on Oahu, at places that the locals patronize, with the exception of Killer Tacos and the malasadas, ranged from pedestrian to horrible with a side trip to dreadful thrown in.

I’ve now sampled several more examples of plate lunches than I should have bothered with, and I can state conclusively that they are not really for me. They shouldn’t be for anyone. Meals that consist of some sort of meat of subpar quality, macaroni salad, and the invariable two scoops of white rice, are just awful. There I said it and there’s really no way around it. I know it’s an island tradition, but they really need to start a high level panel or something to investigate and implement a new island tradition. Could I recommend something with at least a couple of molecules of something vegetable-like in the mix?

We also sampled the very, very, questionable delights of a local chain called Zippy’s. I saw it variously described as an island version of Denney’s, a place where the locals go for home style cooking, or a cheap and easy place to start off the day or finish the night. Our visit can be summed up in two words – truly atrocious. I had the special Zippy’s chili with rice. I can safely say that I have never experienced a bout of indigestion quite as bad in my life. It lasted for two solid days, and I tried everything in the book, including Alka Seltzer, Pepto Bismol, Prilosec, Tums, and standing on my head till all the blood rushed into my cranial cavity and I passed out. Even un conscious my internal plumbing continue to rumble and fizz. I’d mention what Mary had but it would just sound bitter and unpleasant, so I’ll skip it. Just don’t order anything that says pork roast. Better yet, just don’t order anything at Zippy’s period. Go to a convenience store and get on of those hot dogs that have been rotating on the rollers since God was a teenager. Better tasting and it probably won’t give your gastro-intestinal system so much of a fight.

Where real men eat steaks, none of this arugula stuff...

We came across this place on our last road trip, somewhere in Arizona, and it’s kind of awesome. I’m not sure what it’s like inside, but we both envision it’s like a certain type of restaurant we’ve seen that I like to call the “Old West Steakhouse”.

Basically the “Old West Steakhouse” is a specific kind of eatery that both Mary and I have experienced at different times, and in very different places. After comparing notes, we concluded that the places are so similar that there has to be some sort of common template. Both places had booths that were simulated Conestoga wagons, which means basically a table with a canvas top held up by steel hoops over the booth. Down the center of the main room was a life size diorama with, if memory serves, a prospector (or some sort of crazy old coot) tending a fire (simulated) and surrounding him is a pack of blood-thirsty wolves (also simulated). Or maybe just a single kind of mangy coyote, it has been a long time last I was there. Puts you right in the mood to messily devour a twenty-four ounce slab of cattle flesh. I’m not sure about the one Mary went to, but my version of the Old West Steakhouse, also had a menu where the steaks that were well up in the double digits in weight were given manly names like the Cowpoke, or the Gunslinger, while the smaller steaks were called sissy names like the Cowgirl, or the Limpid Violet.

Since the restaurant I went to was in Ogden Utah, and the one Mary went to was outside Phoenix, Arizona, we’ve since determined that if you draw a line between the two locations, then draw a circle who’s center is the midpoint of that line, you’ll have an area where all known samples of the Old West Steakhouse are located. Unless there’s another one outside the circle. Unfortunately, making sweeping generalizations is not an exact science, though geometry is, and since we used geometry to make the circle, we can say with absolutely no authority whatsoever that all versions of the Old West Steakhouse can be located in the continental United States. Unless they aren’t. So it’s quite possible that the Plainsmen is another Old West Steakhouse. We’ll never know since it was a Sunday, and they were closed for lunch.

Since we’re talking about geometry now, or at least I am, the subject now shifts smoothly to Criminal Minds. Wait, wait, I’ll tie this all together if you’ll just give me a few more minutes of your time. Unless, Game of Thrones is on, and then I’ll understand completely that you have something more important to do. By all means, go and watch it – it’s a great show.

A few years ago, you could reliably count on finding Law and Order pretty much whenever you turned on a TV in a new hotel room. Now, it seems that all we ever find is Criminal Minds when we’re travelling. There’s a recurring moment that seems to happen in a significant number of episodes (or at least the three or four we’ve seen over and over again), where the FBI agents will be standing in front of a city map on which all the murders are plotted. Someone will point out that if you draw a line between the first and second murder locations, and then another line between the second and third murders, and finally a line between first and last murders, it’ll describe a geometric shape that we engineers like to call a triangle. If you then bisect each leg of the triangle the resulting intersecting lines will show that the murderer lives at 2420 Dutch Elm Drive. Apartment 2D, in the back. And he drives a Ford Taurus. Who knew that serial murderers were so driven by the dark science of geometry? And kids, next time someone tells you that math, and by extension, geometry, is useless to your future career as a rock god, tell them they’re probably right. But geometry is apparently damn handy if you’re looking for serial killers. So if you want to play it safe, buckle down on the geometry just so you too can join the FBI and chase serial killers. If that rock god career thing doesn’t work out.

Still it is only 3 bucks for a combo!

This photo is of an advertisement. I came across this on top of a gas pump while I was filling up the RoadWarriorMobile. Unfortunately, the RoadWarriorMobile is just a moniker, as Mary vetoed both the spike dispenser and the ventral machineguns, which she will inevitably regret the day the zombie apocalypse breaks out, or the next time there’s a rush on 99 cent a pound turkeys at Safeway.

But, enough about me and my heavily armed and armored personal transportation fantasies. Let’s consider the Frito snack ad. Fritos, with what appears to be nacho cheese on top. Some sort of gooey cheese-food like product anyhow. This is not right, not right at all. This is something you eat when you stumble back from the bar at three in the morning, because to make something actually edible, like a sandwich, is too much trouble. After which you fall asleep sitting upright on the couch, waking the next morning with a hangover, a crick in your neck, and a soul full of remorse and mortification. That’s how and when you eat cheesy Fritos – in the depth of night when only grave robbers and convenience store clerks roam the earth. You don’t eat cheesy Fritos in the cold hard light of day, when anyone can see you. I guess this is just another piece of evidence that civilization is continuing on its never-ending slide into oblivion. A slide, I’m sure, that has been in progress since the first time man lit a fire, and the old folks sat around and groused about how in their day they ate the meat raw and liked it. Except for the time after a few too many fermented berries they…… well, I’ll leave it up to your imagination.

This year’s road trip edition has been through the great Southwest, again, because there’s so much of it. Loads and loads, it’s quite immense really. Sure some people might argue that after a thousand miles of desert it all starts to look the same, and there’s something to that. We, on the other hand appreciate the subtle differences between a Sonoran and a Mojave type desert and feel that each brings a unique perspective that we try to escape as soon as possible, in order to enjoy cocktails around the pool. Deserts we’ve discovered, go so much better with gin and chlorinated water.

We also live adjacent to the Great Southwest, so logistics alone dictate that most of our road trips involve some kind of slog through a hell-blasted, waterless wasteland, scenic though they may be. And as a bonus we get to see things you just can’t find at home. Like the Roadkill Cafe. A place that can be found deep in the hinterlands of Arizona.

We didn’t actually stop at the Roadkill Cafe, much to my everlasting regret, since it wasn’t yet lunchtime, we had schedules to keep, and/or the sun was in our eyes. I think Mary was secretly relieved, not because she feared we’d actually encounter possum pot pie or chipmunk fricassee, but so she’d avoid being around me as I peppered the server with queries like, “so what’s hot off the tarmac today?”, or “is there a difference between the armadillo flattened by a Ford versus one splattered by a Nissan?”

Perhaps on a future trip we can make plans to stop by. I have lots of questions.

Oh, come on! Haven’t they ever watched Terminators 1, 2 or 3, skipping 4 because it sucked? This is how it starts. Today’s running robot cheetahs without heads are tomorrow’s running robot cheetah hunter-killers with frickin’ lasers instead of heads. It’s as inevitable as Charlie Sheen running his car into a phone pole at 3:00AM, staggering out with white powder liberally coating his upper lip, and calling an escort service for a ride home.

This never ends well, man, unless of course, you’re Charlie Sheen.  As someone in a movie once said, so eloquently: Aliens!

Mardi Gras when you’re in your fifties is noticeably different than it was when you were in your twenties. And I’m not just referring to the lack of platform shoes, blow dried hair (or in my case the presence of any hair altogether), and 8 track tapes. All things that really aren’t missed and should be left in the trunk in the basement next to the battered cardboard box containing the tied-dyed shirts, Steppenwolf albums, and shoulder length hair from the Sixties. <shudder

First, hard as it is to believe, continuous drunkenness is a little harder to maintain once you wave farewell to the big 5-0. One benefit is that you remember more stuff. For instance, I distinctly recall driving down to Mardi Gras back in the day, and arriving back home afterwards. What happened in between is pretty much a blank. I am assured that a good time was had, however.

Second, when you go to Mardi Gras after you’ve reached your second half-century, you attend a couple of parades, and then you’re pretty much done. And after you’ve been to a parade, you don’t top the night off by stumbling from one bar to another in the French Quarter till the sun rises.

Third, it’s actually kind of pleasant not to end the night, at dawn, with a big heaping helping of Popeye’s fried chicken or some similar fare. Washed down with some more beer of course. Hard as it is to believe now, but once upon a time I could eat something like fried chicken, biscuits and onion rings, extra spicy, with beer, at five in the morning and suffer no discernible ill effects whenever I regained consciousness. But, since my memories are all pretty much hash, maybe I did suffer unbearable indigestion. I’d say it’s pretty doubtful, as one thing I do remember vividly is that I had a cast iron stomach and I could pretty much eat anything with impunity. That’s what I tell myself anyway, as I pop Prilosecs like they’re Tic-Tacs.

Finally, the beads and throws from the parades are pretty much as silly and useless as they were thirty some years ago, with the exception of this bad boy, which I’m going to wear every single day from now on.

You can call me Pimp Mack Daddy, now!

I’m street, yo!