First, our flight out of Newark was at 6:30 AM on Sunday 3/5, yowch. Left when it was still dark out, had plenty o'time. Listening to a Moby Grape tape in the car. (Selected highlights from 20 Granite Creek. Had to turn it off before it got to Apocalypse, though. Me and the bride are both white-knuckle fliers and although I absolutely melt at the sound of Peter Lewis' voice I didn't want my last musical memory to be of him singing "....the time has come to die-eye-eye-eye.") Where was I? Oh yeah--we were flying (or crashing) on America West. Now Newark has three main terminals (A, B, and--class? Anybody?) and also the sector they call the "North Area" (tundra, more like) which used to house the People Express Ghetto back in the day.

Remember them? My first airplane experience, Newark to Pittsburgh, 1983---35 dollars and you paid ON THE PLANE. Anyways. You drive into this labyrinth and there are huge signs for each terminal with every airline listed that departs from that terminal. So, although it takes a solid fifteen minutes to make the entire loop, that's no problem because you just need to shunt off the loop when you see the sign for your airline.

Unless it's F***ING AMERICA WEST WHICH ISN'T LISTED ANYWHERE. Of course if you were omniscient (and here's your proof that I'm not, in case you still needed it) you would have known that America West is a sub of Continental and therefore uses the same terminal, gates, desks, and probably those same Used Eggs they serve too. And also the Used Flight Attendants. How did we find this out? After literally half an hour, as we were tootling along through the f***ing SERVICE YARD, I stopped at a lonely guard outpost and asked the Last Human On Earth, inside, where please I might find America C***sucking West. He showed me a map, which said it was at Terminal A. Of course I had to go completely OUT OF THE AIRPORT AND BACK IN to get there. As we're a-comin' back in--from the opposite end--we notice that America West IS IN FACT LISTED on the terminal signs on THIS side--and they say it's at Terminal C. WHAT???

Now I'm livid. Taking no chances, we stop at Terminal A, and Wendy hops out to ask a friendly skycap which way to the sky, Cap? He says C. So we go there.

By now it's boarding time, and way too late for me to park out at the long-term lot, which would have cost us $26 for the whole week. In order to get there on time, I have to park in the hourly/daily lot, which is $26 A DAY--six days, you do the math if you like. We run like hell and get on the plane. We fly.

I am much much worse than usual on the plane--my entire nervous system pretty much seized up like a dry engine. I had a walkman and was listening to Tim Buckley, which I almost always do while flying, for I have always found it soothing. It never occurred to me, of course--until this time--that I was taking my mind off the thought of my own charred bones splintering into a quivering pile of hash by listening to a guy who is in fact DEAD, and I don't know why that should even matter but it did. I looked through the bag at the tapes I had put close at hand, and every one of 'em had at least one dead guy. So I stuck with Tim--he at least died on the GROUND.

My eyes brightened when the Sky-Waitress brought the coffee. Either Wendy noticed or I pointed out myself that I was really looking forward, to an abnormal degree, to the coffee, because it breaks the Cycle Of Terror. "It's Life-Affirming," I said. She didn't understand; she never understands. "Look," I said--"At any moment between the time we took off and right now, they could have KILLED ME. But not only have they NOT KILLED ME: instead,"--pointing at the cup--"...they gave me THIS!!!"

I feel much the same way about airline FOOD--don't laugh. I relish airline food. Once again, they could have killed me and instead they gave me THIS. A present! This particular breakfast was, however, kind of nasty. It consisted of the aforementioned Used Eggs--which is not usually a problem for me--but they had concocted some sort of omelette situation out of said eggs plus shards of turkey and what I guess was supposed to be mushroom gravy but more closely resembled mucus. Are you still reading this?

When we got to Phoenix, there were a huge number of arriving flights for a Sunday morning, and there was quite a wait for the luggage. They had a small flock of Courtesy Creeps there to herd us onto mini-buses for the ride to the hotel. We stood outside on a ramp under the terminal for almost half an hour. Two of our bags got on the bus BEFORE us--I smell trouble already, I said. We then got on the NEXT bus, twenty minutes later, by necessity leaving our last bag on the sidewalk with the rest of the refugees. Mistake, I figured, but let 'em do their job.

It was the main bag, of course, the one with all the important stuff in it, and would you not know that it took them TWO-AND-A-HALF-HOURS to finally get it to the hotel? Wendy spent this time reKooperating (sorry, the devil made me do it) in the room, while I paced back and forth at the Courtesy Desk threatening to strangle whomever strayed within my own territorial imperative. Several of these smug f***s nearly got fed their own little walkie-talkies for brunch.

I won't bore you with the details, but you may recall that nearly EVERY time the company sends me someplace, something terrible happens. I have had literally all my personal belongings stolen, had my CAR stolen, etc. etc., so I'm standing there breathing flames, and all these people I know are coming up to me saying, "Hey, Mike! Anything missing yet?"

I had to kill and eat EVERY ONE of them even though I was still full of Used Eggs and Mucus. And Life-Affirming Coffee.

The hotel is a sprawling series of buildings cut into the side of a mountain. It was kind of disconcerting to have to walk a major horizontal AND vertical distance to our room. But it was a neat walk and a neat room and a neat view too. Unfortunately, it rained that evening as we were heading out to the first awards dinner and we got very damp. At the dinner itself, the District Managers (who have brains the size of hazelnuts) thought it would be real cool if all eight hundred of us were issued NOISEMAKERS to be used, well, pretty much constantly. I'm no audiologist but I believe I have a pre-tinnitus condition, if there's such a thing--and you thought I wear those plugs at your concerts so I don't have to HEAR anything!--and anyway my cochleae were absolutely HOWLING by the time we got to bed.

The next day was meetings all day, and then the MAIN awards dinner that night. The large national awards were presented here, mainly by the president of the company. He's new; just under two years now. We got him from--I swear this is true--Shoney's. Prior to that, he had been CEO of Arby's as well. He has attempted to make us all believe that he is running a kinder, gentler ship than his predecessors, and apparently only one of us is still skeptical. Guess which one of us that might be?

Anyways, there's something about the guy that I cannot quite put my finger on. I'm not denying his business acumen at all, there's just something behind his eyes, know what I mean? It might be something as simple as he can't read from a script very well...because nobody I know has ever seen or heard him speaking off the cuff, without reading from a prompter. But anyway--this dinner goes for hours and hours and here's how it sounds: Somebody's name gets read, you clap. Somebody's name gets read, you clap. Somebody's name gets read, you clap. This for literally FOUR HOURS, and I'm going nuts. My award, which is the company's most prestigious (natch) is near the end. And I'm dying. I'm fully expecting the new prez to butcher the goolies out of my name, the way everyone else does, or worse. In fact no less than TWO executives called me at the store the prior week, to ask me exactly how it's pronounced, "To make sure Len gets it right for ya." Well, thanks. So he starts to read off my stats, which I recognize as being mine--and get up, Wendy tagging behind, to go up and get our pictures taken. So anyway the guy doesn't even get past Michael--the most common name in the Western World, factoid--he reads it as "Michelle." I couldn't stop myself--in front of 800 of my peers I howled "WHAT?????!!!!???!!?!?!" Someone nudged him and he fixed it. I doubt somehow that I will make the Highlights Video that they show at the summer meetings.

So this is the third time I've won this award (which, thanks, he did point out.) The first time you win, they give you a college-size gold ring with a diamond in it. The second time, they pop out the diamond and replace it with a bigger one. The third time, a bigger one yet. So now I have a rock the same size as my wife's engagement ring. Which, if it wasn't set so deeply in the ring, I could have used to carve my name in Our Leader's forehead. PHONETICALLY.

Wonder why I have no friends?

Well, that was the end of the "Business" part of the trip, and the people who won the "first level" awards went home the next morning. And it meant, for us, two days of whatever-you-like and then a bus tour of the Grand Canyon on Thursday.

So, we rented a lil' red Grand Am and broke out the yellow pages. Used Record Stores, Ho! Used Book Stores, Ha! Phoenix, Mesa, and Tempe have SCADS of these places. In major malls, no less. I shudder to think what the rent would cost around here. Can you imagine?

Anyways, I scored a number of things I needed--including something I never thought I'd see again: A Jolly Theatrical Season by Robert Morse and Charles Nelson Reilly. I'll back up over that one: in 1963, as How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying was ruling Broadway, Robert Morse & family moved into our neighborhood. I was nine years old. I had no idea who he was, of course, but I quickly came to learn that, for a nine-year-old, it was a lot like having Jerry Lewis live on your street. He was the life of the party all the time, and he loved kids. Also: his wife Carole (D'Andrea) was an ex-dancer, drop-dead gorgeous, who was the tacit object of my first recognizable lustings later that year--so very tacit, in fact, that I didn't know it MYSELF. Till I had that dream. You've seen her, by the way. She's the one in the film version of West Side Story who says "Oobly-Ooo!" Watch for it next time. What was I talking about? Oh yeah--so Bob and Reilly, his co-star (this was before CNR's later dubious fame on Hollywood Squares and such) made an album that summer called A Jolly Theatrical Season, in which they took several tunes from that season's Broadway musicals, and some from previous years, and--let's say this politely--"deconstructed" them. It's a riot, start to finish. And I scored a copy in 1963 which I played to DEATH. Didn't get too many of the jokes at the time, of course, but it didn't matter. I saw it once at Colony in 1976, and they wanted--typical Colony--$85 for it. So anyway here it was in the middle of the f***ing desert for $15. Yeah!

That same store had such a HUGE selection of early-sixties folk music (about 20 linear feet) that I was positive I was going to finally find the Even Dozen Jug Band--no such luck. But to give you an idea just how much of that stuff they had, here's what I did find: another lost artifact of my youth--in fact my PRESCHOOL years. Chi Chi Merengue by the Eloise Trio! Remember that? I was trying to describe the song to Wendy in the store, but of course you really can't SING that song in public without risking a straitjacket. Somehow--and for the life of me I do not know why--my parents bought the single for me when I was three years old. It's my very first memory of the concept of Morbid Fascination, in that the sound of the record actually frightened me but I kept playing it over and over. So anyway now I have the LP and I can see what the people LOOK like and that ruins it. They're humans.

It was a fruitful day of shopping even though a couple of Mort Sahl albums still elude me; I finally got a copy of Moby Grape '69. Also some Van Ronk, Shecky Green (!), the first Manfred Mann album, lots of other stuff.

The REAL highlight of the trip was, of course, the same as the real highlight of our Hawaii trip in '89. JACK-IN-THE-BOX!!!!!!

You "tony" folks--who drink "wine" and that kind of thing--probably are not aware of the indescribably heady pleasures of Jack-In-The-Box, so let me help you out with some history. In my college days, there were two of 'em in the Bronx; one on Story Av and one on Gun Hill Road. Also one close to home, when I was home, on Route 59 in Spring Valley, which I'm sure you must have driven past many times. A not inconsiderable portion of my body mass is made up of materials procured at Jack-In-The-Box. In the early 1980s the company was in danger of folding, and so they downsized dramatically--closing every one in the East. I was heartbroken. I thought the chain had gone out of business altogether.

There is one and only one thing that the entire human race agrees on, and do you know what that might be? To wit: love it or hate it, there is no other food in the world that even remotely resembles a Jack-In-The-Box taco. Their burgers and other stuff are just burgers and other stuff, like at any other fast-food place. But those tacos actually have their own USDA food group. They taste like nothing else. There's something very unusual about the seasoning, the sauce, and the shells themselves. I'm usually fairly ace at picking out exactly what components a given recipe contains (may I ruin the Dr. Pepper mystique for you? Red Cherry and French Vanilla) but I've never been able to duplicate or even approach the Jack-In-The-Box taco.

So it's May of 1989, and we've arrived in Honolulu and the little bus is bringing us to our hotel in Waikiki. We're about halfway there and I'm looking languidly out the window and suddenly I grab Wendy's arm so hard as to leave Fingerprints In Bruise on her flesh, pointing wildly out the window with the other hand.

Jack-In-The-Box!

Turns out we didn't even have to go all the way back to that one, because there was one RIGHT AT THE BEACH. We ate lunch there every day.

Fast-forward to Phoenix, 1995: as we're heading to the hotel in the little minivan (with no f***ing luggage) I'm trying to Elevate My Mood by telling Wendy, "I can feel it. Somewhere between here and the hotel THERE IS A JACK-IN-THE-BOX AND I'M GOING TO SEE IT AND THEN I WILL BE HAPPY." Well we got almost all the way there but I found one. It helped.

Turns out that Phoenix/Mesa/Tempe has/have a J-in-the-B almost every fifteen feet; there was just a paucity of them on that particular route. So we managed to eat there (at three different locations during the trip) and also at another place we hardly ever get to go--Perkins, our favorite chain diner/restaurant. There's none of them around here anymore. There used to be one in Montclair but it's gone. They're all over Pennsylvania (where we have friends) and upstate New York as well (where I guess we also have friends if you're still reading this far down.) Do you get the idea we're fairly easy to please vis-a-vis vittles? You never need confront the spectre of putting food in front of us and fearing we'll be disappointed, that's for sure.

Well, Perkins is in Arizona too, turns out, and the experience of eating there and at Jack-In-The-Box ON THE SAME DAY was a premiere for me--a culinary bulls-eye. We resisted the temptation to go to Denny's to complete the hat trick.

Is it not the coolest thing that the Two Most Boring Humans In The World managed to find each other or what???

We also spent a sizable part of those two days hiking up the hill that our hotel is cut into. I found it quite by accident, while Wendy was decompressing from the airplane ride and I was taking a mental-health break while waiting for our Prodigal Suitcase to show up. The map of the hotel grounds showed, way up in back of our room, an Herb Garden. I deduced that it must be a culinary herb garden for the restaurant, so I took my camera and headed out.

The hill is an actual, no kidding, 45-degree hill--the kind that it hurts just to stand still on. But I found the garden, and got my first Basil-Fingers Fix of 1995. I live for that, and it usually can't be expected till mid-May. Yay, Arizona. I decided to continue on up the hill since the summit didn't seem too far--and when I got there, wow. You can see a full 360 degrees around the entire tri-city area--"Valley Of The Sun", they call it--and I brought Wendy back up there after dark, again the next day, and several more times. This is our peculiar blend of Tourist Tsuris--we ignore most of the stuff people actually go to SEE and instead go trolling for used record/book stores, Jack-In-The-Boxes, and good views. Also we always make a point of visiting the "real city" behind the Cardboard City they erect for tourists in resort areas. This has not gotten us killed yet, even in San Juan, but it could. (We have no plans to visit Jamaica.) Anyway, whenever we come back from vacation and show our families our Vacation Pictures they're always quietly appalled at how we didn't DO anything.

If we ever have kids they're quite likely to kill us in our sleep.

I shan't give the wrong impression; we did in fact go to a couple of places the tourists go. The Desert Botanical Garden was cactus heaven. Also South Mountain Park, which Bill had told us not to miss, which affords panoramic views of the Valley from the OTHER end--drove up there Wednesday night but we only got about halfway up the mountain before I lost my nerve and inched back down. It was pretty impressive even at the half, so it must be amazing at the top.

Thursday, the "third-level" award people--the Elite Grand Monster-P*n*ses of Radio Shack or whatever it is--got to go on a bus tour to and around the Grand Canyon. It's about four hours from Phoenix and I could hardly wait to see it again. I'd been there with my family in 1968, when I was 14 and way too cool to be impressed by a big red hole in the ground, or so I thought. We drove across the entire country that summer, in an Oldsmobile 98. Not exactly Easy Rider by a long shot, but, hey. Anyway, of course I had seen pictures of the place, but there's no way that can convey the enormity of it. I was really looking forward to seeing it again in the company of someone (named "Wendy") who hadn't seen it before. I told her, probably way too many times, how much it was going to surpass her expectations, and neither of us was disappointed. See the Happy Wendy Face?

Oh--I forgot. Digression. On the way to the canyon we stopped for lunch and snooping-around in Sedona....which I expected to be a dopey little tourist trap, but I was pleasantly surprised. They picked the nicest place in the entire state to carve a town out of. Real pretty.

Anyway, back to the Canyon. I was annoyed that the canyon trails were all closed due to the recent Huge Rains which had flooded the entire desert--true fact--and yet, who was I kidding? We both would have frozen like deer on the highway after about fifty steps. So we walked one of the rim trails instead, and that was bad enough. But I just bit my lip and said, "You're safe, idiot--WALK." It didn't help, of course, but it kept me walking. I did have to stop and take a picture of a sign that proclaimed we were standing at the "Rim Worship Site." This illuminates a little-known fact about the Native Americans: we didn't drive 'em off the map at all. Their civilization failed because they were so anally fixated, as the sign proves and hey buddy I got a PICTURE OF IT.

Then we came home Friday, arriving at Newark at 5:00 on a Friday afternoon. Whose idea was THAT???

Back to work, and back to being told on a daily basis what a crummy job I'm doing. What's wrong with this picture?