This weekend I'm off to Disney World for a weekend full of fun, food and great music from an amazing newcomer by the name of Crystal Shawanda. Her debut single "You Can Let Go" is incredible even to my cynical ears. We're staying at Disney's Contemporary Resort, you know the one that the Monorail runs through. What struck me as odd, was its' name. How can a hotel built in 1971 still consider itself "contemporary" 38 years later? Perhaps it has flat panel HD televisions in every room (yeah right, it's Disney World). I just hope the wireless internet is free (I know, I know, it's Disney)!
I spent the holiday weekend catching up on some shows that I had TiVo'd and hadn't had a chance to watch. One of those shows was a recent episode of Alton Brown's "Feasting On Asphalt 2" from the Food Network. This particular episode featured a dear old friend....the Maid-Rite Sandwich Shop in Quincy, IL.
For the uninitiated, the Maid-Rite is a loose meat sandwich kind of like a Sloppy Joe, but without the tomato sauce. You might even be familiar with the sandwich if you were a fan of the old Roseanne TV show.
The Mason's called Quincy "home" for nearly a decade during my formative years, and one of the things that I remember most was Maid-Rite. Hell, Maid-Rite helped make me the man that I am today. 
I actually didn't discover Maid-Rite until my last couple of years in West Central Illinois. The Maid-Rite was located on the North side of town, and we never had any reason to visit. But during my last 2 years of High School in Quincy, we enjoyed a phenomenon known as "open lunch".
Open lunch meant we could go off campus to eat, and we did....often. Burger Chef, Taco John, and Maid-Rite were frequent lunchtime stops. We'd cram 5 guys into Ty Quinn's Firebird and head out....I can close my eyes and remember it like it was yesterday. Hard to believe it was really over 30 years ago. In fact, every time I hear Heart's "Barracuda" it reminds me of Ty, Larry Foster, Jeff Pfaffe and Alan Brady and our lunchtime trips to Maid-Rite. Those WERE the days!
So after catching Alton's sojourn to my old stomping grounds, I decided I that needed a Maid-Rite....NOW! A trip back to Quincy this afternoon was according to the wife, out of the question, so I hit Google to see where the closest Maid-Rite was located. A road trip will probably have to wait…because the closest Maid-Rite’s are in a couple of small towns near Dayton, OH.
Maid-Rite is actually part of a chain that started back in the late 1920's in Iowa. The Quincy Maid-Rite is one of the oldest locations still in existence. The interesting thing about Maid-Rite, is that each of these original locations is unique, and the only thing that they share is the formula for the Maid-Rite itself.
Today, the Maid-Rite chain is trying to expand and become more like a “normal” fast food chain with identical menus, and a uniform look. Many people say that the standardized Maid-Rite’s aren’t as good as the ones you can get in Quincy, but for now that might just have to do. I’ll let you know when I get back!
If a visit to Maid-Rite is physically out of the question for you, I do have a solution. A few years ago I tracked down a recipe for “Quincy Maid-Rites” and included it in a charity cookbook that I took part in. It’s not the real thing, but it’s damn close. Enjoy!
Quincy Maid-Rite’s
2 Tbsp. dried chopped onion ½ tsp. pepper
2 Tbsp. water 6 hamburger buns
1 lb. lean ground beef Prepared yellow table mustard
1 ½ cup chicken broth Freshly chopped onion
½ tsp. salt (use less if broth is salted) Sliced pickles
Soak dried onion in water. Crumble ground beef into a hot skillet and cook over a medium-high heat. When the soaked onion has begun to soften, add it (and its’ water) to the beef. Stir frequently as the meat browns, using a spatula to break the meat into small crumbles. When the meat is browned, add chicken broth, salt, and pepper. Cook until the liquid is almost gone, roughly 10 minutes. Serve meat on buns with prepared yellow mustard, chopped onion, and pickles. Makes 6 sandwiches.
But, in reality I don't spend a whole lot of time working on my personal profile: Kevin Mason MySpace. I actually spend my time working on behalf of artists, events, charities and businesses helping manage their profiles.
Part of that daily work is to leave comments on peoples pages...so every day I look at hundreds upon hundreds of people's top friends list, while doing my work. And the one thing that I see over and over again is that the majority of pages that I land on all have at least one scantily clad woman in their top friend's list.
Now, naturally you would think that it's usually young guys who would have MySpace pages that include these "hot chicks" in their top friends, but no....it's not only young guys, but young girls, and older men and older women too.... And these aren't just porn stars in their friends list, but actual friends.
I started feeling kinda left out....because I don't have one real friend in my list of 350 friends that has a scantily clad MySpace picture as their profile pic. Now yes, I realize that I could throw Tila Tequila or Jenna Jameson into my Top 20 and I'd be good to go, but that's not the point.
In fact of the 5 women I have in my personal MySpace Top 20, 2 of them don't even include a picture of themselves in their profile pic. So what am I doing wrong? Am I hanging out with the wrong people...or am I just a loser?! It feels like high school all over again.
Oh, by the way (shameless plug time) if your band, event, charity, or business could use help building awareness through MySpace, let me know. Social networking is one of the hottest new marketing categories and we can help you locate all kinds of people...including the scantily clad ones!
You see, for 27 years I actually had a place that I could speak my mind...the radio...so there was no need to express myself "publicly" through a blog. Now granted that specific location actually changed on a somewhat frequent basis....Radford, Roanoke, Tidewater, Charlotte, Huntsville, Bloomington, Indy, Akron.....but I did have a place to express myself. In October 2006, I called it a day, and hung up my headphones.
Since then life has been.......... in flux. I left radio to take a job in the music industry. My dream job lasted just 4 months, as the record company I went to run lost both of it's backers and shut its' doors for good. Fast forward (or not so fast forward) six months, and now I split my time between Ohio and Tennessee, putting a ton of miles on my car.
The trip between Nashville and Northeast Ohio is 500 miles one way, and takes about 7 1/2 hours to drive. I've made the trip so many times, that I think my car could drive itself. My wife, of course, has suggested that I not try to find out.
As I make the drive back and forth every week, I have a lot of time alone....to think. Now those who actually know me already accuse me of thinking too much to begin with, but give me nearly 8 hours in the car by myself, and the topics that come to mind are sometimes quite bizarre.Now.....since I no longer have the radio as a place to regularly speak my mind, I feel the need to express myself in some fashion.....hence, the blog....or Blog-O-Rama as the title states. I really don't know where the title came from, I think it was somwhere between Lousville and Cincinnati.... or was it between Cincinnati and Columbus?! I know, it doesn't really matter...but, that is the point of all this..... I couldn't write the blog until I had the title. Sadly, I've had the title for months.... I just didn't know where to start......
Welcome to the Madhouse......