Find out what it is in my next post, coming soon.
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All posts for the month May, 2011
Dan Wheldon wins Indy 500!
The Indianapolis 500 is the world’s most famous and prestigious auto race. It has taken place annually since 1911 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway except for 1917-18 and 1942-45 during America’s participation in world wars.
“The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” covers 500 miles, 200 laps on the famous 2.5-mile oval. It currently is the marquee race on the schedule for the IZOD IndyCar Series, the premier open-wheel racing series in North America.
The “500” is the world’s largest single-day spectator sporting event.
Do you know why the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is called the “Brickyard”?
http://www.indianapolismotorspeedway.com/facility/35549-Yard-of-Bricks/
Indy 500 FAQ:
Q. Why does the winner of the Indianapolis 500 drink milk in Victory Lane?
A. Three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Louis Meyer regularly drank buttermilk to refresh himself on a hot day and happened to drink some in Victory Lane as a matter of habit after winning the 1936 race. An executive with what was then the Milk Foundation was so elated when he saw the moment captured in a photograph in the sports section of his newspaper the following morning that he vowed to make sure it would be repeated in coming years. There was a period between 1947-55 when milk was apparently no longer offered, but the practice was revived in 1956 and has been a tradition ever since.
See more frequently asked questions here:
http://www.indianapolismotorspeedway.com/indy500/eventinfo/35195-Indy-500-FAQ/
Indianapolis Motor Speedway Website:
http://www.indianapolismotorspeedway.com/
My wife and I spent the evening with a couple friends recently and I told them about my Yesteryear Remembered blog. Well, immediately after hearing this, the husband started thinking of different ideas to suggest for my blog. He mentioned a few things, but I told him that those were already in the blog, then he chimed in again, “what about the Pacific Dining Car”. I paused for a second, then said, I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never been there before and added the purpose of my blog is to document things from my past, so unfortunately, I can’t use it.
Our evening was winding down, and the husband said we’ll take you to the Pacific Dining Car, that way you can say you’ve been there, and write about it in your blog. We all agreed, and set a date and time to get together for dinner and then ended our evening.
The date arrived when we were to meet with our friends for dinner at the Pacific Dining Car. We picked them up and drove to Los Angeles to the restaurant. The restaurant sits on the corner of the street behind a white picket fence and has a very unusual sign with two, 3 dimensional cows mounted on the pole below it. 
When you first walk through the front door, you are entering the original part of the restaurant which is an actual train dining car. All of the other rooms that branch off from there, were added on later to accommodate the growing number of clientele. The interior decor takes you back to the old days of high class train travel. The walls were clad in green paint with wood trim throughout and the lighting was warm and subdued.
The four of us sat in one of the side rooms which was similarly appointed to match the decor of the main entrance. We were handed our menus which had a variety of steaks (which they are known for), seafood and other side dishes. Our waiter was a great source of entertainment all throughout the evening. He was from Nicaragua, but he spoke fluent Japanese to one of our friends, who in turn spoke fluent Japanese back. All evening we tried throwing different languages at him, like Spanish, Korean, Italian, Chinese and Thai. Mind you, these were only simple greetings or very short phrases that we picked up, but he always had a longer reply in that language (which of course we didn’t understand). We found out later that evening that his hobby is learning different languages.
We were all served our respective meals and the overall consensus was, the food was delicious, a bit pricey, but delicious. I had the baseball steak which was excellent! Would I go back again–yes!!!
You can visit the Pacific Dining Car website at the link below:
http://www.pacificdiningcar.com/index.html
Here’s a filler post to pacify you while I put the finishing touches on my next post.
Definitely a blast from the past. Remember the old style mechanical typewriters?
This inventive person figured out a way to turn an old typewriter into an input device (keyboard) for your computer or iPad. If you’re handy with a soldering iron, you might want to check it out!
We posted our first blog entry on June 25, 2010. If you haven’t read this post yet, you can read it at the following link. http://yesteryearremembered.com/?p=9
To commemorate this achievement (believe me, keeping this blog stoked with content from my MEMORY is an achievement for me), we are going to have a drawing for our faithful subscribers to the Yesteryear Remembered blog.
We will be giving away two $10 Amazon.com gift certificates to two lucky subscribers. We will draw the two winners randomly from all subscriber entries. Please, only one subscriber entry per person. Sorry, we have to limit this contest to United States only due to Amazon’s gift certificate usage restrictions.
If you aren’t a subscriber yet, you still have time to subscribe to be considered for this drawing. For purposes of this drawing, we will accept subscribers up to midnight, pacific daylight time (Los Angeles time), on June 24, 2011.
Click the link below to subscribe:
http://yesteryearremembered.com/?page_id=801
The drawing will be held on June 25, 2011 and the winners will be sent an email within 2 weeks, with the Amazon.com gift certificate attached. Please make sure that you supply us with a legitimate email address. Note: Your email will only be used for purposes of this blog and will never be sold. We cannot be held responsible for delivery of certificate to an incorrect email address.
Good luck and thanks for viewing my blog!
Party with them at Beverly & Rampart location.
65 cent anniversary combo!
Sunday, May 15, 2011
11am – 10pm
Click here for more details on their Facebook page.
http://www.facebook.com/OriginalTommys?sk=app_139229522811253
See my original post on Tommy’s here: http://yesteryearremembered.com/?p=37
Ok, my memory is very hazy on this subject, but it’s not because I didn’t like the show, I do remember I really liked watching the show, it’s just one of those major brain fade things. So I apologize that this post is more about my experiences with magic and less to do with Chuck Jones the Magic Man.
In researching the web for this post, I couldn’t find much information on Chuck Jones the magician or his channel 13 television show. There was plenty of information about Chuck Jones the cartoon character artist, so that may be a post for another time.
Growing up in the 1960′s, there was a wide variety of television programming for kids. There was your usual cartoons, variety shows, costumed characters and then there was Chuck Jones the Magic Man show. I distinctly remember the outfit he wore on his TV show, it was the one shown in the black & white photo to the left. What I found fascinating about the show was the magic he performed. My interest in the art of magic has stayed with me to this day. I still enjoying seeing magic performed, especially slight of hand magic and I still like entertaining kids with simple tricks.
My folks saw that I really enjoyed the show, so they arranged to take me to one of the tapings of the show and be one of the kids in the audience on TV. I actually don’t remember anything about this day, so the rest of this post will be filler information related to magic. 
My interest in magic grew over the years and during my college years, a friend asked if I was interested in a job building magic illusions at a place he worked at–I said sure. Long story short, I got the job, and I found out later that this was the place where they created illusions for Doug Henning (big during my time), Mark Wilson, David Copperfield, Criss Angel, David Blaine and others. They’ve also reproduced illusions like Harry Houdini’s famous water torture cell escape. I learned a lot from the job, and not just how the illusions worked and were assembled, but how to be a craftsman. One really small thing that the job taught me, was to align the slots on screw heads so they looked neat, among other things. The owner of the place, was in my opinion, a true craftsman and it showed in the illusions he created.
There was a time when I thought I was going to be fired (my boss being the creative genius that he was, had a bit of a short fuse). The boss had left the shop to run some errands and gave me my verbal instructions for the project I was working on (we never used drawings or plans). I was working with Plexiglas, plastic sheet making a cover for an illusion. I had placed carpet pads down on the work bench so the plastic wouldn’t get scratched. I had cut all the pieces I needed and was assembling them so I could glue them together.
I started gluing the pieces together using a syringe style applicator. The way this glue works, it basically melts the plastic wherever the glue touches and it bonds the two surfaces together. Well, unknown to me, the glue was seeping (the glue has the consistency of water) down onto the carpet pad and it was getting all over the face of the plastic causing it to get all hazy/melted. By the time I noticed it, it was too late, the damage was done. I didn’t have enough time to make a new one, so I started sanding the surface of the plastic with fine sandpaper, and as luck would have it, the boss came walking in the door and asked what I was doing. I told him what had happened, but I added that I was going to fix it. I kept sanding and sanding till the melted surface was smooth, then I polished the surface till all of the sanding marks were gone. I showed John the finished product and he commented–now that’s the sign of a true craftsman, someone that can cover up his mistakes. Of all the jobs I’ve had, this one was by far the most interesting.
More recently, I was an invited guest to the Magic Castle and like I mentioned in my Magic Castle post (http://yesteryearremembered.com/?p=1059), the person on stage in one of the performance salons introduced a special guest in the audience and it just so happened to be Chuck Jones the Magic Man. He’s looking older now, but I heard he still performs at the castle.
Chuck Jones the Magic Man Vanishes an Elephant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjuUoJV7xdA
Chuck Jones the Magic Man Aerial Suspension
Most of my childhood I ate burgers that my mom cooked in a frying pan on the stove top. It was your typical (typical to me), ground beef with some breadcrumbs and diced onions mixed in. She would form them into patties and place them into a uncoated steel pan (I don’t think they had Teflon coated pans yet), and fry them till golden brown on each side. She would then place them between a toasted hamburger bun, throw on some lettuce (ok, maybe no lettuce, I was a kid after-all), ketchup (I didn’t acquire a taste for mustard or relish till my adulthood) and VOILA, LUNCH! It was simple, tasty and satisfying.
Well one day back in the ’60s, my dad took me to a coffee shop in the neighborhood to grab a bite to eat for lunch. I don’t remember the name of the coffee shop, but I do remember that it was on the corner of Hillhurst Ave. and Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles, California. And, don’t ask me how I remember this, but we sat at a table by the window facing Hillhurst Avenue (see the lady in red and white in the photo, that’s the side we sat on).
Well, after looking at the menu, I ordered a hamburger which is one of my favorite foods, I took a bite and YUCK! It had a bitter, burnt, charcoal (okay, I’ve never eaten charcoal before) taste which I found out was because the hamburger patty had these thick black lines on it (my moms didn’t have these lines), which I actually found out had a name–”CHARBROILED” (I had another name–BURNT!). Well if this is what these newfangled charbroiled burgers are going to taste like, then forget it!
Needless to say, my aversion to “charbroiled” burgers didn’t last too long, especially when I found out that this burnt flavor was not the norm. Today, I still eat burgers like there’s no tomorrow, go ahead, just ask my friends!
Well, the coffee shop is long gone and as of the date of this post, it’s currently a janitorial supply/vacuum cleaner store, I guess I wasn’t the only person that didn’t care for those “char-burnt” burgers.
