Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: January 2009 Archives
In our latest trip to Los Angeles, Mary had to go to some meetings while I had to hang out at the pool and ogle scantily clad seniors who were wearing bathing togs that were much too small for the amount of skin they had. I envied Mary.
To make it up to me, Mary finally agreed to take me to Musso and Frank Grill, an institution in Hollywood that I hadn't previously been able to check out. Mary hadn't been there in years. Musso and Frank is one of the last remaining relics of the glamorous days of Hollywood. The restaurant's heyday was in the period between the Twenties through the Forties, and it's apparently little changed from those days. The tables are all banquettes or booths, the walls are covered with dark wood beams and murals that are faded by decades of cigarette smoke. It has that men's club vibe that I like so well, though nowadays it's obvious that the majority of the clientele come from the tourist trade and a few remaining ancients who have eaten there all their lives.
On the last trip to Orlando Mary and I decided to check out SeaWorld since A) we'd never been to the Florida outpost of this venerable (for the theme park world) institution and B) we were going to the park anyhow for the Luau Spectacular article and C) because I had heard a rumor that there was free beer to be had.
First, and to get this out of the way, the rumors were true and there was free beer. I drank it and then the newest owners of the park closed the free beer dispensaries. So, if you want, you can believe that I was personally responsible for closing down the Floridian Fountain of Sudsy Goodness due to excessive consumption that may have resulted in a loud and mostly out of tune rendition of "I Feel Pretty" from the musical, West Side Story, until I was felled by overzealously wielded Tazers. Or you can believe the truth that the free beer was cut off because the new owner of the park, InBev, is staffed with evil foreigner type communist people who are also and, even more scarily, Belgian. Nothing good can come from the purchase of Budweiser by the Belgians and the closure of the free beer pavilion is a sign of this. Unless they start instituting the use of Belgian brewing traditions in the making of Budwesier and thus infuse it with a soupcon of flavor, something it's been missing for a good half century or more. In which case - all hail our Belgian beer overlords!
