I can’t believe nobody’s made this comparison yet……it looks like the producers of “Lost” picked the wrong SF TV-show lead to be Alex’s mom:
Of course, it’s entirely possible that they might be able to land Claudia for a recurring guest spot as her “mother” (flashbacks maybe?), and thus call into question through visuals alone whether Danielle is even as right in the head as she seems to be.
With a name like that, it had better be!
I’ve since learned that there’s a local chain called Fantastic Cafe, which is almost certainly where they got this name. A few doors down there’s a Mediterranean restaurant run by the same family called Chicken Maison, which brings to mind another local Mediterranean chain called Chicken Dijon.
In 2011, Incredible Cafe became Four Brothers Burger Grill as Five Guys Burgers gained popularity. A few years later, with the explosion of chicken fast food, it became Top Tenders. I’m not sure it’s still run by the same people as Chicken Maison, but I wouldn’t be surprised!
As of October 2024, Chicken Dijon and Top Tenders are still around, Fantastic Cafe has expanded a bit, and Chicken Maison has expanded even more. Both Maison and Dijon were among our go-to spots for a while, though the kid prefers Dijon these days.
And we still haven’t gotten around to trying Poulet du Jour, another family-owned Mediterranean fast food spot in the area, which seems to have been around at least as long as Maison, if not as long as Dijon.
Found these next to each other at Costco the other day:
Actually the Lake Forest Market Place, spotted a few weeks ago.
It seems fitting that I’d eventually write a post with this title, seeing as how the regular LA Times column is where I got the name for the Only in San Diego series.
We were up in Los Angeles for a wedding on Wednesday and Thursday. Since we were both involved, we stayed in a hotel instead of driving up and back two days in a row. (I’ve made that drive in 40 minutes. It took us nearly two hours on Wednesday.)
First up: the hotel. You may recall we found an interesting combination in the nightstand drawer the last time we stayed in Las Vegas. Here we found another combination, somehow appropriate for LA:
The Bible, of course, had been provided by the Gideons. The name plate on The Teaching of Buddha indicated it had been placed there by the Society for Buddhist Understanding.
Then, of course, there’s this place. We’ve been told that “Happy cows come from California,” but they never tell you where they go…
I had a few hours free the morning of the wedding (the bridesmaids had an earlier call time), so I walked around downtown Los Angeles a bit. The Disney Concert Hall is weird, of course, but it’s well-known weird.
Now, to a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, the name “Angelus” has a somewhat sinister connotation:
Finally, you may think you’ve seen truckloads of FUD coming from places like Microsoft, but we actually saw a literal truckful of FUD.
It turns out to be a Mexican company that sells meats, playing on the pronunciation (“fud” in Spanish would sound like “food” in English). They’ve recently licensed the brand in the US, focusing on “areas of heavy Mexican immigration where the brand name is already well known”—in other words, areas like Southern California.
That’s it for now. Maybe I’ll post some of my sightseeing photos next year (i.e. tomorrow).
Though of all the things I’ve heard Borat called, “queen” isn’t one of them.
For various reasons, braved the crowds at South Coast Plaza yesterday. Oddly, it’s the easiest mall I’ve parked at all weekend. Getting to the Marketplace was a disaster, but that’s just because the streets are wholly inadequate to get cars in and out of the parking lot, and the Village (formerly the Mall of Orange) was just plain full.
At South Coast, as part of their Christmas decorations, they had these giant, shiny, 14-pointed stars hanging from the ceiling in several places.
Classic Christmas, but when you go down to the first floor and look up, there are all these giant, gleaming spikes hanging over your head.
It’s a little disconcerting. “Death from above!” is not something I want my holiday decorations to invoke.
