Reporting LIVE from Glendale Memorial Hospital - 9 O’clock update

 This update was originally scheduled for the 11 AM slot, but technical difficulties got in the way, so we’ve rescheduled it for the 9 PM broadcast.

So yah, breakfast was a little sketchy.  What’s the deal with “Belgian Waffles” anyway?  The association of “Belgian” is misleading – they are nothing like Belgian bulldogs.  Here is what I found when I lifted the insulating cover on the plate:  two tiny waffles (suspiciously like frozen waffles and nothing like actual Belgian waffles) with two small turkey sausages on a plate with a piece of miniature purple cabbage the size of a confession wafer, which was the most attractive thing on the plate.

So my mind is going, Ok, we got some kind of post-modern hotdogs here that they expect you to put fake maple syrup on and nom nom nom boy that’s some good eatin’.  It all makes me wonder what Jim Harrison (The Raw & the Cooked) would make of this.

I mean, look, the waffles really do resemble the crypt systems in modern graveyards, which are like the cubbyholes of old post offices but all poured concrete, installed at the same time and capped later to keep out vermin et al.  The other visual association is with “waffle stompers” – vibram-soles on shoes.  Yum!  That’s attractive.  So you got these “waffles.” 

 

And then you got this little cluck-weiner bedded there.  Now I don’t need eggs, and I certainly don’t want a Grand Slam, but jeez… there’s got to be something edible around this joint.

I know that airline food is notoriously terrible, and hospital food is famously terrible.  I get it about the airline food – they have factories where they make about ten thousand meals at once and they’re bottom-lining and you’re trapped in this speeding aluminum cylinder miles above the welcoming earth, so you can’t complain.  And you’re probably hungry, right?  I mean after the long run down the concourse to the gate and all.  So you’re gonna eat at least some of it.

But what’s the deal with hospitals?  Is the quality level of the food meant to make sure you don’t come back?  Are they doing you a favor on some subliminal level?  You’d think they want to take pride in the food – especially since you might want to stay longer in the costly room.

Why no miso soup?  Oh yah, too much salt in the miso.   But you know – and this is no kidding – the staff here is exemplary.  Emma & Francisco & Hector & Kathleen & Lisa & everyone is just super.  And not only that, they laugh real authentic laughs at my attempts at humor.

 

Hector took me down to the basement in a wheelchair, bound for the big stress-test machine that is rather reminiscent of a MRI maw.  And I thought, The basement, huh?  So I says to him, “Hey, Hector – you ain’t takin me to the morgue, are ya?”

And Hector says, “Naw, you ain’t dead.  Why would I take you to the morgue?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  I kinda pictured you  opening the door and sayin, ‘See all those guys?  If you don’t straighten up, you’re gonna wind up here!’”

And he answers, “Scared straight, huh?”

“Scared stiff, is more like it.  If I owned a hospital, that’s what I’d do.”

 So dear dear Lorin smuggled in a nice fat burrito and a six-pack of fake beer, so lunch was double good (as if to disprove my assertions about the food in the graphs above, the spaghetti & meatballs was pretty good – al dente to the tooth-edge!   Not as good as Mom's, but then whose is?).  We had a nice visit, and then off she went.

Now sharing poetry with Lisa, the Echo Tech.  And ain’t that a cool phrase for the moniker…