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[fflo]

Lisa & Sandi Go to the White Castle and Harold
& Kumar Go to the White Castle and the White Castle

Long about 10:00 one night while vjsmom was here, I found out she'd never been to White Castle. We got a little silly & realized she could go not only to the establishment itself, but also to---showing at 10:25 at the Showcase---the new film about a trip to that particular stoner Mecca. And then, to round out the evening, we could stop on the way home for bookend sliders afterwards. Perfect!

She then had the idea of documenting the venture on film. (Maybe she was thinking, "What Would squirrelykat Do?") So here's the story, in pix:



(We've just gotten the idea.)

(We think it's pretty funny.)



Drive-Thru!

(I went with my usual cheeseburgers-no-pickles; she chose the pure slider for starters.)



We got out to pose & eat.


One kid inside saw us taking pix & just had to come out and ask us about it. We obliged by telling him the tale of the evening. He seemed impressed! Soon, vjsmom took her first bites ever of the tasty, mushy pasty-beefish burger with moist steamed onion bits:


. . .


Then we went to the movie:




It wasn't bad, really! There were two fairly cringy parts in which the over-the-top jokes referenced domestic violence & animal abuse, albeit in very over-the-top ways, the former in a clever sequence that refers mainly to a trite visual condensation of a marriage, the latter with a clearly/crudely fake (à la the gopher in Caddyshack) racoon who had just attacked Harold, so it was sorta self-defense. Even my sensitive self couldn't get too upset, despite hating to see either subject associated with guffawing and tossed off for comic effect, even when it's not the central focus. But the movie was actually pretty smart, in general---more than I'd expected it to be. Plus the matter-of-fact way they treat aspects of being of color and of being gay-bashed, fer instance, is out of the ordinary for this sort of film, I'd say---or for Hollywood in general. It was pretty thoroughly diverting, at the very least. Anyway, where were we? Oh yes---out of the movie and ready for more White Castles! Back for the last bites of the evening:


Mmmmmmmm.





All in all, it was a wonderful night.

Comments

[groovesinorbit]

What a fun evening! Great pics.

I, too, have never been to White Castle.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Movie's still playing! C'mon any time!!

[madush69.livejournal.com]

You must go to White Castle!

[groovesinorbit]

I ought to, just to have said I did it. But I'm battling a college career of making fun of the place, and the description of the burgers is, well, challenging. But I'm game. : )

[fflo.livejournal.com]

The key is that they're not burgers at all, in any conventional way we think of them. They're like appetizers of a meat-inside-bread nature, and they're eaten in a few small bites (or, if you're like the guys in the movie when they finally get to White Castle, in a stuff-it-in-your-face fashion---they're malleable and smushable).

It's not nearly so unappetizing as it sounds (unless you're vegetarian or, like Laura, hate onions). Plus they have other things on the menu, too.

[groovesinorbit]

Chicken rings?!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Yeah. They're like a flat, breaded, round deep-fried piece of chicken with a hole in the middle. They're rubbery-er and less hot in the insides than the regular deep-fried chicken sandwich.

[groovesinorbit]

Innaresting.

[crankyasanoldma.livejournal.com]

I've been wanting to see that movie, but the spousal unit has been reluctant. He absolutely loathed raccoons (long story, childhood incident) so this may be a selling point, sad to say. Thanks for that bit of useful info!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeh---he needs to live out the revenge on the clearly willful, evil racoon, as Harold does with the beast, who's stowed away in the backseat of their car, unbeknownst to the boys but within our view---dramatic irony pulsing throughout the scene!

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

Bwah! Great pictures, and fun idea!

And "mushy" is the perfect word to describe sliders. It's like they accidentally drop them in a sink full of dishwater for a moment before giving them to you. White Castle burgers are near the top of the list of things I don't miss since becoming a vegetarian.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

What can I say---I have plebian tastes. Or at least I often like things that taste bizarrely unsubtle. The other aspect of the "burger" that I didn't capture is the similarity in consistency to wet cardboard. You know, thoroughly soaked, relatively thick cardboard. But made out of paste. The color seems similar to cardboard to me, spiritually, too.

But I don't think I'd like actual cardboard. Even IF there were cheese melted on it.

[lovelikeyeast.livejournal.com]

I can smell it all from here! (Seriously, what the hell is in those things??) The last time A. ate some of those, she smelled of them for 3 days and felt none too good.

I am glad you guys fared better and now might have to see that movie. xoxo

[fflo.livejournal.com]

For me the key is not to eat too many of 'em. What's "too many" varies, depending on various factors. I don't think it's a matter of mere volume, though---they're mostly air and water, after all, and not very big at that.

Eating them anywhere nearly regularly would probably be pretty bad, too.

the majic of white castle

[onstar.livejournal.com]

what a fun piece of photojournalism!! i now want to see the movie too.. many years ago that white castle was pretty central to my life. i used to live in the apartments down the street and would walk across the unkept deserted parking lot that is now the bustling kroger complex to wait outside the white castle for a cab to my midnight group home job. (there used to be such a thing as niteride where you would get a shared cab for about $2 anywhere in the city limits and white castle was the furthest it would go in my neighborhood. the white castle was open for drive thru only at this time, so i would spend a lot of time at that picnic table outside waiting for the cab. we also used to get food quite regularly as well. what i remember is that the fries and cheesesticks often tasted like fish. one night on my way home from the bar i got invited inside to "match one" with the guys working the night shift. they were training someone and weren't supposed to have anyone inside, so they snuck me into the bathroom where we all smoked down while the trainee cleaned the grill. the end part of the deal is that the guys then had to jumpstart my piece of crap car so that i could drive the remaining block home.

Re: the majic of white castle

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Wow---a great reminiscence! I love the taste of earlier days (or middles of the night, actually---the real White Castle time) at that particular location.

You really must see the movie. I'm thinking that, among other things, you may particularly appreciate the conversation H&K have with a drive-through guy. (I withhold details so's you can savor 'em purely when they arise.) It's fundamentally a goofy movie. Well-done goofy.

Re: the majic of white castle

[onstar.livejournal.com]

yes, i really must make it to see this movie!!!

[madush69.livejournal.com]

I absolutely love White Castle. I live within walking distance of A2's famous Carpenter & Packard W.C. as well. In the past week I've eaten there twice, and was actually thinking about stopping there on the way home from the Malletts Creek library. Just a week or so ago I bought a crave case and took it to Chez Wednes for Slider Slammin' fun!!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

It's probably a good thing I don't live as close as you do! Hey, aren't you the one who recommends a Chinese place over there? (think I saw it in ann_arbor_ypsi once)

Wish I'd been at the Wednes Slider Fest.

Finally viewed the pix

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

I finally got around to viewing the White Castle pix this afternoon. I like the stylized versions of those last few. The first picture, albeit not the most flattering picture of either of us, pretty much captures the mood of the evening.

Re: Finally viewed the pix

[fflo.livejournal.com]

You know what I've been thinking today? I've been thinking that I'm just going to stop thinking about how bad or not bad I look in pictures. I really am. At various times in my life (and with various pix!) I've been better and worse at that practice, but most women I know (and some men, too) evaluate ourselves in a terribly focussed way when we see pictures of ourselves. And, you know, I just don't in my heart believe when it comes right down to it that how crappy I look by whatever standards I'm applying at the moment, in a picture or in a mirror or whatever, is even one of the top 5 criteria by which I want first/most to measure my sense of satisfaction with myself in the moment.

Today it came to me cuz I saw this picture on my screensaver slide show here at work:



I've always liked something about that picture, even though at the time all three of us in it thought we looked bad in it. Meaning fat and ill-coiffed and who knows what-all. Yet even then we must have known it captured some of the fun we were having dancing afterhours (perhaps to "Love Shack"?) in that motel room in Chestertown, where we'd gone, post-college, to drink at the Bluebird and pass out in our lodging space at that motel just down the road from the bar---the one whose restaurant used to have the 4 a.m. hunters' breakfast (lots of food fer cheap). Oh, there was a little weirdness about some of the (semi-)sexual shenanigans that went on later that night, but all in all I have pretty good memories of the excursion.

So I saw the picture today, having had brief interchanges of late with a number of people about how bad they do or don't look in certain pictures, or in pictures in general, and I got to thinking: now that I'm a little older, many of my peers have reported having the experience I too have had of seeing an old picture in which you once thought ya looked bad and having new eyes for it. Realizing you were being harsh on yerself. And (in maybe not so self-loving a tendency) commenting on how at least you were young therein, or how young you look vs. how less young you look now.

In twenty years, should we still be alive, will we perhaps think how great we looked in these shots? You never know! Anyway, here's to success in not worrying about such things now, or really ever! I mean, what is it good for? (Lemme hear it: " 'Absolutely nothing!' Say it again!")

Re: Finally viewed the pix

[groovesinorbit]

Whenever I'm not happy about a pic of me, for whatever reason, this verse of Ani's comes into my head now.

so I walk like I'm on a mission
cuz that's the way I groove
I got more and more to do
I got less and less to prove
it took me too long to realize
that I don't take good pictures
cuz I have the kind of beauty
that moves

I love the way her rap ends on beauty and she slides "that moves" right in after it. Love that song allaround.

Re: Finally viewed the pix

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, kewl. Wanna listen to that now.

That song of hers "Fixing Her Hair" resonated with me more than maybe any of 'em, in a way not entirely different from what you're talking about here.

Re: Finally viewed the pix

[groovesinorbit]

Yeah, I can see that (having gone to read the lyrics). I've never heard that one, though. I love "Evolve." It's probably my favorite song of hers.

P.S.

[groovesinorbit]

I've always loved that photo of you guys.

Re: Finally viewed the pix

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

I actually do like that picture of us because it does capture the mood so well. I don't mind looking silly on the Internet--especially when I was being silly at the time. The kind of silly that's fun and makes one feel young and somewhat free.

Re: Finally viewed the pix

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I thought that was what you were saying. I've just been thinking about people and hatred-of- and/or compulsive-evaluation-of-
self-in-photos lately. Been around more people recently who really can't stand pictures of themselves, and a number who've just commented on how bad they do or don't look.

Re: Finally viewed the pix

[fflo.livejournal.com]

and, by the way, here's to that silly free feeling!

Re: Finally viewed the pix

[groovesinorbit]

Hear! Hear!

pics

[squirrelykat.livejournal.com]

hallelujah about the pictures, and how one looks. i had the same thing last week looking at the old MR pics for the scrapbook. i was upset i didn't look like i did when i started here, but, geesh, that was 18 years ago! new perspective. thanks......bless you, LISA!

Re: pics

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Bless YOU, squirrelykat, photographer to the stars (and non-stars)!