Ima Hogg Rides Again

Picnic Day is a big UCD party, held in April every year.  It's kind of like one giganic university open house, but with things like the "fistulated cow" (a real live cow with a window in its side so you can watch the digestive process in action) and daschund races.  And lots, lots, lots more.  The day starts with a parade that involves most of the town.

In truth, we have never done much with Picnic Day since the police made shaving cream fights illegal downtown and the kids lost interest.  When the kids were riding on floats (for the diving team or the children's theater) in the parade we would go down and watch them, but we never really did much other stuff--comes from not have a kid enrolled in school there.

But there is no ignoring that Picnic Day is happening.  We had big clumps of people passing by our house most of the morning.  But we were going to be leaving, so we were heading off in the other direction.  However, we were not spared the hijinx.  As we drove down Anderson Rd., I looked off to my right and there was this muscular kid running out into the street, arms waving in the air, and wearing not a stitch of clothing, his dangly bits waving in the air as readily as his arms.

It's nice to see young people enjoying themselves.

But that was the only part of Picnic Day that crossed our path.   We were headed to San Francisco for our yearly trip to attend a taping of the radio show, "Says You," held again this year, for the second time, at the Jewish Community Center.

They have recently added parking meters around the area, so we were not able to use on-street parking and so went into the JCC parking garage...interesting that before they let you in, they search your car and trunk.

Walt had two observations before the show started.  We were sitting in the cafeteria when the cast arrived, parting the crowd of people like Moses parted the red sea, walking one behind the other.  Walt decided it reminded him of the 7 dwarfs parading through Disneyland.

The second observation was that as he looked around Kanbar Hall (a 475 seat theater), he realized there was not one black person there.  The only black person in the house was Tammy Hall, the pianist with the day's musical group, "Wild Women of Song" (which oddly enough features Hall, singer Pamela Rose, and two men on drum and bass!)

I took a picture of the stage set up. 

I really don't know why I bring my camera each year because you can't take pictures during the show and the best I can do is a hastily taken blurry photo as the show ends.  It looks the same each year, but I keep bringing the camera.

And I'll bring the camera tomorrow when we catch the last day of their tapings in San Francisco.

As always it was great fun.  The fun thing about being at a taping is hearing all the things that won't make it to the air.  (And incidentally, the title of this entry refers to the first category where people were supposed to explain who various famous names were, like Ima Hogg and Diamond Jim Brady (the man who pioneered all these food eating challenges!), whom a lot of people have heard of, but don't really know anything about.

When the show was over, we cashed in a Groupon at Mel's Drive in and did our own eating challenge!

I decided to splurge and add a vanilla malt to my patty melt (well, NEXT to my patty melt!).  I never get milk shakes, for obvious reasons, but this one was so good.  Best of all, you could actually taste the malt.

We finished our audio book, "True Blue" and started "War Horse," which we should finish by the time we get home tomorrow, since it's a short book.

All in all, a very good day...and even the horrible cold I've been fighting for two days didn't present much of a problem.