A mild sense of WTF: Get Out of Rehab Soon Cards.

Get Out Of Rehab Soon!

My neighbors, the Christian natalists who are otherwise pretty cool "evangelize once and then leave them alone when they've said no thank you" types, recently suffered a nasty family tragedy when their eldest, a bright young woman who used to babysit the kids before she went to college, was struck by a car. She wasn't killed, but she's been in a wheelchair and pre-physical therapy for the past few weeks. While we were at the mall this afternoon, I decided to pop into a greeting card store and buy her a "Get well" card.

While I was looking through the list of possibilities, I spotted the card visible there in the photograph. Are there really enough people going in and out of rehab that "Get out of Rehab soon" cards are economically viable?

That card in the photo isn't the only one. There were several, one of which actually featured Snoopy from Peanuts. The card showed him driving a car-- I'm quite sure Charles Schultz did not draw this-- and it had platitudes about "dealing with life's curves and jams."

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it reflects just how strange our culture is getting that we now advertise our rehabilitation rather than keep it to ourselves. I think this goes into my folder along with my consequentialist philosophy of hypocrisy: societies function better with a little hypocrisy, a little "we keep that under the covers, denied and unmentioned, even if we know some people are doing it. We don't want to stop them; that would be sand in the wheels of life. But we don't want them to admit it, for the sake of the grease."

Restaurant Review: Johnny Rockets in Tukwila

Summary: We will not be going back.

• Facilities: Okay
• Service: Great
• Food: Terrible
• Price: Excessive for what you get, even if it were good.

Omaha and I took the kids to the Southcenter shopping mall to get some errands done and to get Yamaraashi-chan's hair cut. After everything was done we were all hungry and Omaha suggested that we try out Johnny Rocket's, an überkitschy attempt at re-creating a 50's era hamburger shop. The entire place is done white tile and linoleum, with block lettering and typography right out of the same era. The waiters all wear white smocks and uniforms with neckties and little white hats trimmed in red. The music they play is also out of the 50's: "Big Girls Don't Cry" and early Elvis and so forth. In terms of setting, the place hits it just about right. There are even signs on the walls straight out of the 50's with lines like "The white of our store tells you our food is clean and wholesome!" The music is played far too loud.

The service was certainly adequate. The waitress who served us tried hard to make sure everyone got what they wanted. She even overheard a remark Omaha made about letting Kouryou-chan share her milkshake and brought us two half-filled glasses with extra whipped cream and two cherries, no charge. I gave her a healthy tip.

On the other hand, the food was just awful. First, she brought us our fries and onion rings; the rings were cold. We complained and she brought us a plateful fresh from the deep fryer. Omaha noted that in keeping with the theme the place had no heat-lamps. That might work for burgers and things that are made and then served immediately, but fries and rings are often done in batches. A dip in customary could cause a holdover that would cool the deep-frieds too quickly. Not good.

Even worse, the burgers were simply awful. The girls didn't eat theirs. I made it about halfway through mine before I could stand no more. Omaha did the same with her chicken burger. The problem was universal: in an effort to make it as 50's as possible, the bread was 50's baking-powder leavened whitebread and the burgers weren't drained of their fat. The grease was grossly overwhelming.

The price of two adult burgers, two kids meals, a plate of fries and rings, one soda pop and one milkshake: $42. Ridiculous. I could get better quality calories for half that price at Burger King. There's no way I'm paying double standard fast food to be "transported" to an era before I born.

We all left there convinced that we weren't going to ever visit that particular restaurant again.