The New Super 8 Camera

It hit me today while I was watching some A&E crime program with Zoom that the blog is the new Super 8 Camera of the information/internet age.

You know how you always see those crusty and grainy home movies that Uncle Olaf shot of your 4th birthday party at the pool? Or the embarrassing pre-prom movies your parents always show you around the holidays? Just like it seemed that every baby boomer family was somehow how issued a Super 8 Camera to record ever bit of familial minutia, so too has the blog been issued to every person, family, grandparent, great aunt or battlefield corporal to record the same minutia in painstaking detail. We get to look in on every single person's life. Only without the painful grit or nauseatingly unsteady camera work from Uncle Olaf.

Case In Point.

Today's Entry. "El Loco".

Zoom and I are out test driving cars on a weekday night. Test driving surprisingly turns into car buying (more details later). The deal takes a little longer than expected (I'm usually pretty good with buying a new car - in and out in about an hour and half). Turns out the car I want needs a certain widget replaced as part of an aftermarket recall. Whatever. Fine, let's get the sale set up now and you can replace the framis or p-valve and I'll pick it up next week. That decided, it still takes almost 3 hours to set it all up.

It is now about 9:00-ish and we are starving. We head on over the El Pollo Loco to make with the eating. I order Zoom her customary BRC No C and I begin to order my usual 2 Chicken Breasts and flour tortillas, when the squawky box stops to tell me they have no chicken. Realizing it is late and actually being thankful the place is even open, I am still taken back by what the box just told me.

Confused, I repeat "You have no chicken?"
The box says, "Um yeah, we ran out of chicken today"
The gears in my brain seize as I say, "You have NO chicken, none at all?"
The box agrees with a "Yeah, we have no chicken. We just ran out of it today. Sorry."
It's funny now as I fire back with "You're El Pollo Loco, and you don't have any chicken. I guess you can just cancel the order then."

This stuck with me all the while Zoom and I were laughing and driving to the next El Pollo Loco. How can a place with the name of a foodstuff in it's name be out of the foodstuff in question? I could not get my mind around it. It'd be like going to Burger King and them telling you they were out of burgers. More to the point, why the hell are you frigging open if you have run out of the stuff your place is supposed to be all about selling? Do you get that many people coming to a place named and famous for their chicken ordering only french fries and pinto beans?

Maybe it's not as weird as I think it is. Maybe I was just really hungry and looking forward to my Chicken Breasts.

I still think they could have served the community better by blacking out the "Pollo" in their neon sign to let people know.