The food was secondary to the meeting, we decided on a buffet. It was large enough to seat us a semi secluded area. We sampled several of the selections then had dessert and coffee. The staff didn't pay much attention to the nine of us sitting around for two hours. They were all too busy cleaning mountains of dishes and enough wasted food to feed a small village for several weeks. When this style of dining changed its slogan from "All You Can Eat" to "All You Care to Eat" apparently this place and many of the people who eat there didn't get the message.
After the experience I no longer question the popularity of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Eat Street and Your Chalupa and You.
The restaurant had a very large kids dessert section with ice-cream, cotton candy, gummy bears, jelly beans and lots of edibles (and I use that term loosely) on long toothpicks to swirl in the obligatory chocolate fountain. I was especially taken by the young child who waved his marshmallow though the molten goodness several seconds, took a lick then plunged it back in for a second bath.
After witnessing that and several other affronts to polite social dining etiquette I opted for something difficult to contaminate. Although I did realize I may be consuming microbes I'd rather not think about at least I knew mine would be "packed at the factory" rather than on grubby eight-year-old hands.
Over the course of our recent seven day cruise Wanda and I had a couple of soft serve ice-cream cones. In many cases soft serve has fewer calories than high content milk fat ice-cream. This and the ability to portion control made it a perfect dessert choice so off to the machine we both went.
Once we arrived at our desired location my first consideration was what to do about the exposed cone. It was the next edible container to be used in the continuing effort to empty the machine of its contents before the place closed for lunch. Logic told me it was there for my taking but then I thought of the kid at the chocolate fountain. What if he, or some other creature that carried frogs and hadn't washed his hands in a week touched that bottom cone. I removed and set it aside knowing it would not go to waste. I had no doubt someone would soon use it to hold ice-cream, pudding or mashed potatoes and gravy. Once Wanda and I had two relatively fresh cones she approached the softy machine to make her selection.
I was having a difficult time choosing chocolate, vanilla or what looked like a combination. I decided on the swirl look of the combo when I heard Wanda say, "I need a five-year-old."
"What is it?" I asked.
"I can't get this to work."
And from behind us stepped our savior, a young man who must have recently arrived, since he still looked clean.
"I've been here before and you need to pull hard on that lever," he said as he pantomimed something that resembled a hard tug on a slot machine handle. I did see a casino without a buffet down the street so maybe this was a regular outing for his family.
Now able to operate the softy machine Wanda made her selection and thanked the young man for his help.
"You're welcome, he answered. And by the way I'm six."
As you may already know complaints of my diminishing hearing ability are becoming a regular subject. In spite of our sound equipment that includes six speakers and the decibel generating power to shatter car windows next door I still have a hard time hearing a good percentage of the dialogue. I don't think I'm missing anything of consequence when I watch network programs but I am a PBS snob.
I recently watched Great Estates Scotland and much of it sounded like my Grandma Sophie and her sister Annie conversing in Yiddish.
OK, it's not a big deal. I'm sure a gazillion people have trouble comprehending the English language when it isn't American.
And I've mentioned I use subtitles or Closed Captioning for many hard-to-understand programs. But I have a problem or two.
I can use captions with Netflix on the computer but not on the television. After several months of frustration with all involved blaming the other's software the LG TV took the blame.
I'm still not entirely sure why.
The tech department told me once a dongle is synced with the WiFi and commingled into the X1 Cloud Platform the Netflix streaming interface overrides the internal switching device of our LG LE45047 which renders the CC capability of the television useless.
So here are my choices.
I can watch these interesting programs once on a 17" computer screen or constantly rewind on the 47" LG. I eventually get the spoken word doing the later but after a dozen viewings can also tell you the number and location of any paintings in the scene.
Last night I watched The Sheik on TCM.
The Sheik is a 1921 film that made Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla, professionally known as Rudolph Valentino a star and he was a Rock Star.
In 1926 when the "Latin Lover" was only 31 he died of peritonitis a complication of appendicitis and gastric ulcers.
An estimated 100,000 people lined the streets of
Thank God we now have the decency to respect and honor funerals, unless a faction of society disagrees with the way that person lived. Most riots now follow sports teams winning a championship, which is a much better reason to smash windows, set fires and overturn cars.
So here I was, sitting on the couch surrounded by this cutting technology watching a silent film almost a century old and it had built in captioning. At that point I knew I'd found my panacea.
I needed to go back in time for the technology I needed.
The actors moved their lips and words appeared on the screen, not small sometimes jumbled words scrolling across the bottom. These were large elegantly written full screen narratives. They were visible long enough to read four or five times. My hearing issue was now solved and I also knew if and when my eyesight began to fail I would still be able to see these words.
And then I thought of the old saying: Sometimes you have to take two steps forward and one step back. Was it chance that led me to this old technology?
There are vaults of restored silent movies I've never seen.
Maybe one of these days I'll be ready to watch them but for now, after five minutes I'm bored.
Where did I put that Blu-ray disc of Jersey Boys?
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