red robin
As I explained today in a "community connection" with a friend from the retreat, "Just because I eat at Red Robin, doesn't mean that I will abandon myself forever." Abandoning yourself is the phrase that encompasses the activities you rely on when you are not getting enough nurturing from your life, and not setting any limits, and pretty much doing the thing you know makes things worse but doing it anyway since you're pretty sure you have to do something to respond to the intensity that you feel.
Kit 4 is interesting, because in one way the rubber meets the road in disconnecting from your external solution, and it was my experience that I was able to do things I would not normally be able to do. This includes counting calories and exercising every day, without being completely obsessed over how I was adding sacrifice to an already sacrificial scenario. On the other hand, we are informed that we simply are not ready. The skills in kits 5 and 6 will be the foundation of the access to joy which, as I understand it, defeats the demons of reaching for the (whatever) and instead reaching for the effective thing. I'm parroting words here, and in all honesty I do not understand the difference between the effectiveness of reaching for the (whatever) so that I am pinned to the collection board with a pin like a specimen, and reaching for the effectiveness of something transformative and supporting. Again, to quote something from my "community connection," ... "I'm not yet at the point where I can have a bad day and say 'oh, that's ok, I'll just eat a pile of spinach and get on the treadmill.'"
Anyway, let's just hypothesize that I had a rough day, on a WEEKEND, which is completely unfair, and all the government's fault, and my chosen restaurant is under construction and the nearest one nearby was, you guessed it. Red Robin. I have a unique perspective of Red Robin, similar to what I have for Starbucks. As a Seattle originated business I remember the original. Back in the 1980s a friends mom took us out to the Portage Bay Red Robin which was the original. What I know now is it is one of the only places you can bring kids for lunch and order a drink without feeling like a deviant. Back then, me and my friend looked at the menu of non-alcoholic beverages and coo-ed over the "Chocolate Moo" etc. I remember everything about that place, the fireplace, the glass enclosed porch overlooking the bridge, the houseboats, the boats destined for the docks or the great beyond. I remember the 1970s graphic design on the car ads and the old fashioned posters they showed on the wall. All these things that likely, as the place was becoming cloned, a replicatory-ist type came in and chronicled obsessively for each new RR that would be created. I imagine this person reviewing posters and other objects d'art. "Definitely not RR," the person would say in a New York rich person lisp. "Ooohh, definitely RR." This would all happen in 1982 or so. In my imagination.
Once I was jogging past the Portage Bay RR and I tripped over the tiniest crack in the pavement and fell. I had a rock wedged in my hand and it was pretty gross. I might have been 20. It was 10:30 in the morning on a Sunday. I went to RR and walked in amidst the staff setting up. This one woman was very nice, and directed me to the restroom. This was the impossibly small restroom that I remember, with the picture of the cigarette girl on the wall. Somehow, the small RR bathroom was part of its charm that did not get cloned. A small bathroom says, we are independent, the fishermen eat here, it says any number of authentic type things that the large bathroom with the taps that turn on for themselves such as Cheesecake Factory does not say. I tore the rock out of my palm and it left an almost exact imprint of the Nike logo. Who knew.
So later, after growing up and all, I returned to RR in California and noticed what had evolved. Portage bay was not within our reach, but the one on the waterfront in Seattle by the daycare became a staple. If it were not for the Santa Fe chicken burger we would have signed off completely, but those anaheim peppers... on a burger... someone was really thinking over there in corporate world. However, a jarring introduction to becoming re-acquainted to my favorite neighborhood establishment was the birthday song. The RR birthday song goes like this. Some poor schlub mentions to the waiter that it's the birthday of the even poorer schlub they brought with them. The staff takes note and at some point they gather around for the act of humiliation. They all sing something along these lines, reluctantly, but with barely enough flair to avoid being fired:
"Happy happy birthday, blah blah blah blah blah (while clapping as if someone was russian breakdancing on the floor, on the beat, you know)
Happy happy birthday, blah blah blah blah blah
Happy happy birthday
(and then in a RITARDANDO which is completely beyond the scope of the asthetic aim of the piece, a slowing down of the tempo for dramatic effect)
... may all your dreams come truuuee
(then back uptempo)
Happy happy birthday, blah blah yabba dabba do. Hey!"
This was my complaint at the time. They re-wrote the birthday song. I had this complaint that felt very valid at the time. My position was, the birthday song goes, well, you know how the birthday song goes. Who is RR to rewrite the birthday song? Is it within their cultural bill of rights to do this? And who are we to just simply accept this new, faulty, russian dance type birthday song when we already had one that was perfectly good? OK, so it was a little downbeat, but still. We have a birthday song in this country. Already.
Then I had kids and of course after the drink I did not feel bad about ordering, we started singing the RR birthday song along with the staff, wherever we were. We do not know the words. We might have been a little loud. We had the clapping thing down, and nobody can ritardando like the Grigg family let me tell you. Of course we may have gotten a few looks. Those people can stuff it in a sack. Until...
This weekend, on the trip to RR I am not supposed to be obsessing about, the one after which I did not want to eat the rest of the day (even though I had only like 6 fries), on this trip I found out two things:
1) The Santa Fe burger is not available in all RRs. Unbeleiveable!
2) Recently, they changed the RR birthday song. Not a big change, but they took out the ritardando. So the staff-singing birthday experience just plows on over you, without a joking nod to aesthetics, As fast as humanly possible.
So now instead of complaining about RR taking the audacious leap of rewriting the birthday song for all of us, I complain that the new RR song is nowhere near as nice, as kitchy, as cigarette-girl-pull the rock out of your palm-nostalgic as the old one. Which proves that nostalgia is as easily romance-able as the high school cheerleader whose parents are away from home.
Bring back the ritardando! Bring back the artificial authenticity I experienced long enough ago to barely warrant as real. Bring back the works, while you're at it. And don't be shy with the anaheims.