Playing chicken

I’ll admit I was a little late to the party on the whole spicy chicken sandwich thang. Oh sure, thanks to my son who’s been willing to make runs to downtown L.A. during the pandemic, I’ve been introduced to the overheated pleasure of Howlin’ Ray’s Nashville Hot Chicken, which, for those of you keeping score really brought the craze home.

Now I like spicy food, always have always will. But like anything in life, it's a matter of degrees. And there's only so much spicy my sensitive yet larger stomach will tolerate. Before you go ahead and make the fat jokes, let me just remind you that like my Lexus, I’m built for comfort, not speed.

Anyway as you can see from the chart on the left, at Howlin’ Ray’s sandwich heat runs the gamut from none to can’t touch this.

So I decided to try the mild, which is the starter sandwich. And I loved it. The problem is my kid couldn’t be running to DTLA nearly as often as I wanted to have a spicy chicken sandwich.

Enter Avid, my friend and 2004 runner up for the bronze in curling. On his Instagram feed, in a rare break from the dog pictures, he posted the sandwich you see above, which happens to look startingly similar to Howlin’ Ray’s. So I asked him where it was and he told me about the Cluck Kitchen in Irvine.

Now Irvine is a much easier drive than DTLA. And if you know anything about me, you know I’m all about easy.

While there ain’t nothing like the real thing, come to find out Cluck Chicken is pretty close. They have the same spice range as HR, and their sandwiches taste uncannily similar.

But if oversized, dragon-breath hot sandwiches aren't enought to fill you up, Cluck Kitchen also has some mighty tasty sides to go along with it. Things like fried pickles, vinegar slaw and, my personal favorite, bacon potato salad.

Yet one more dish proving my timeless theory that bacon makes everything better.

The other thing Cluck Kitchen has is a snappy little hashtag. It's what we in the ad biz like to call "on brand."

State of the reunion

For as much of a social butterfly I like to think I am - and don't get me wrong, I can light up a room - I've somehow managed never to go to any of the reunions at the many agencies I've worked at. Sometimes it was intentional, other times circumstantial. The circumstances were I didn't want to go.

Anyway, a couple Saturdays ago, at the last minute, I noticed an invitation had been sent to me. So for once, I decided to get over myself and make the effort. I'm pleased to report it was well worth it.

For a little over two years, I worked at an agency called DBC in downtown L.A. It was during the time the city was blasting the subway tunnels under 7th Street, and they'd ripped up the asphalt and replaced it with wood planks during construction. One of the owners, Brad Ball, had a great line about it. He said, "L.A. is such a classy city it has hardwood streets." Still cracks me up.

Anyway, I know a few get togethers have happened in the many years since I was there, even one at a park extremely close to my house. But despite my polite refusals in the past, this time I decided to take the dive.

I'm glad I did.

I'd spent so long focusing on a few people there I didn't like - really didn't like - that I neglected to devote any brain space to the ones I actually liked and enjoyed, but had forgotten how much. I was happy to see all the faces there, and genuinely missed many of the ones who weren't able to make it.

As conversation usually goes at these things, we caught up on our current lives, as well as past ones. That's the beauty of reunions: they're moments out of time. Suddenly, you're with a roomful of people who can fill in the blanks about who you were, and what you did way back when (not always a good thing, but always amusing).

So, this is my personal thank you to all my friends who were there and made me feel so damn welcome.

And even though I can already feel my loner, anti-social, too-cool-for-reunion ways creeping back in, before they take over completely let me say I can't wait for the next time we all get together.

For starters, with any luck, I'll be a lot thinner.

Up, up and away

There’s no shortage of complaints about the commute. And it doesn’t even matter where the commute is. If you live in the greater Los Angeles or Orange County area, you are, as we say in the driving biz, screwed.

When I worked recently in Santa Monica for a few months, it took almost an hour to get from the west side to the freeway at rush hour. We’re talking mere blocks. And then another hour to crawl home. Everyone has a commute-from-hell story.

It’s not as if there haven’t been solutions offered to relieve gridlock. Like the picture above from 1954. Yes, 1954.

A monorail system that rides over the center lane of the freeway. It follows the same route, and the property is city owned reducing the cost. Stations would be on a platform, visible, reducing crime.

Then there was the time in 1955 when Walt Disney offered to build a monorail system like the one at Disneyland from the beach to downtown L.A., fifteen miles of track for the then crazy price of free.

But L.A., being the forward thinking city it’s always been, decided to yield to the auto companies and not implement any form of mass transit beyond buses in order to drive up car sales. (Just a side note: years ago when there was a bus strike in L.A., the late comedian Steve Landesberg said it was the first time in history there was a strike of a non-existent industry.)

If you want the full story about it, watch Roger Rabbitt. It’s closer to the truth about public transportation than you think.

Anyway, I write this as I sit in my office in Orange County on Friday night, getting ready to make the drive north. I can see the 405 out my window, and trust me, even with all the lights it’s not very pretty.

The trick to making the ride bearable, or something close to it, is to arm yourself with a few things that can help distract from the congestion, and even make the trip go a little faster.

Which is why I have a nice car, E Street Radio and a carpool partner.