The 10 Cent Bottomless Cup Of Coffee....And The Beast!

Music: Route 66 : Nat King Cole
Thoughts: Times long ago and still to come

Hey everyone, thought I'd never get around to updating this blog didn't cha. Well now that it's 2006, thought I'd kinda let everyone know what's going on here.

First off...SAMBO'S! Yes that's right, who here remembers those brightly lit orange havens for culinary bliss? Here's MY story. When I was young, my sister worked at the SAMBOS in my hometown of Hillsboro, Oregon, we used to eat there quite a bit because of that fact, but the times I remember going to SAMBOS the most was every summer when they held the Concours D'Elegance in the next town over at Pacific University. The Concours was the local antique car show that I always loved to go to...I was a nut for antique cars (probably because of my undying love for Laurel and Hardy when I was a kid). I even had a few Avon collectible antique cars (but unfortunately they always came filled with smelly cologne). Anyway, we would either attend the show and then go to SAMBOS to watch them all return to their homes as it was right along the path away from the car show. We would get a booth by the window and some years when we didn't have the money to go to the show, we would just go to the restaurant and watch them all drive by.
Since recently, we got to talking about now defunct fast food and restaurant chains, SAMBOS came up and it put me into another one of my obsessive modes. I researched and discovered the history of SAMBOS, and the only remaining one still in existance (in Santa Barbera). But I had to go to the OTHER one in existance that I knew of and is only 12 miles from here in Lincoln City. I got the chance when me and Natalie escaped from the kids the other night to go to the movies. I found out alot of things just from that one visit. This SAMBOS is called Lil Sambos, ironically enough it is not related to the big SAMBOS chain but was started the same year as the original SAMBOS (1957). Funny thing is when it began it was known as Lil Black Sambos and of course the mascot was a very racial stereotypical Afro-American (black? colored? negroe?....I have no idea what the politically correct terminology is nowadays) little boy with an umbrella and a tiger. The original SAMBOS actually was represented by an INDIAN boy (i.e. from India...not native American) due to the racial conentations of the original story written in 1932 I think and adapted from a story that takes place in India. Apparently, nobody saw anything wrong with this until the 60's when racial equality was a big issue and the Pancake house here changed the name to Lil Sambo's. It burned to the ground in the 80's I believe but was rebuilt and now sports a tiger carrying an umbrella standing atop it's sign out front.
Anyway, the food was Ggggrrrrrreat! (sorry hada do it), and they even have a menu from the OTHER SAMBOS framed with pictures from the past history of this restaurant. OK end of story...Other than the fact that I may do a piece on the two Sambo's for an upcoming Mondo Flod...who knows?
Speaking of MF, last time I told you about my wacky printer...well, he did it to me again. I went to get the covers down for the new widespread release of Mondo Flod because he did such a good job with the last batch of covers....well, he talked me into putting this batch on glossy cardstock insted of regular glossy text paper....told me he would give me a deal and I gave in. Problem was when I came back to get the covers, he had 33 of them and they (in my opinion) looked like crap! They were too contrasty, had lines through them and he had centered the image which means when printed, the equal border I had around the front cover image to make it more symetrical was gone and the image now had no border on the left hand side but a BIG border on the right. I did tell him I was not pleased, but like he said, can't complain too much because of the price (which only came out to 10 bucks for 33 covers front and back....funny last time I paid 10 bucks for 25 covers on text not cardstock). This guy's a nut but I'm still gonna use him.....I think I figured out the best thing to do is to have him run a test copy...that's what we did with the first batch...but I don't think he remembers...

Oh, I mentioned going to the movies...well I finally got around to seeing Peter Jackson's KING KONG! Excellent film, the story was pretty amazing in 1932, but just INCREDIBLE for 2006! My only problem was the continuity in terms of day and night....time has no meaning in this film...but otherwise as has been said before, you couldn't ask for a better remake. Here's a illo that I did of the big ape that hopefully will go into Jim Main's MAKE MINE MONSTERS mag I'm laying out.

That's it, it's off to other things for now...see you all next time!

F