Farewell, Ryan's, We Hardly Knew Ye

I shed a small tear.

On Saturday, to execute a preemptive strike on the Mother's Day madness, my family had congregated at a Carraba's to treat MatriarchPrime to some much deserved foodings and praisings. This particular Carraba's, however, was located at an intersection I had not ventured past since before the turn of the millennium. As I drove down this particular avenue, shock and dismay as I saw the treasured sign of my once-favorite buffet establishment, "Ryan's" replaced with some who-dat red & white "skillet" sign of some sort.

You have to understand, two of my most favorite memories took place there. First off, while Ryan's as a whole was no better than your standard feeding-trough, its dinner rolls were, simply put, the yeast-based avatar of Nirvana. In fact, it's not even my own experience that cemented this, it was Dudette's. I will forever remember the happy-dreamy look that came over her one gnoshing eve. Look up the word "content" in the dictionary and you could very well have found:

con·tent (kən-tĕnt)
n.

1. The countenance of Dudette upon consuming a Ryan's dinner roll.

The second event was the infamous "live action Scooby-Doo movie" conversation. Taking place well before those horrid pieces of tripe ever hit the screen, this was a discussion between myself and my two friends TheBeefWhoWatches (don't ask...but it's not what you think) and MustardBoy. We had cast the following:

Fred - Jim J. Bullock (Oh c'mon, we've always wondered about Fred...)
Thelma - Janeanne Garofalo (she's perfect!)
Daffney - Various unnamed actresses who rotate from scene to scene. (There purely to help Fred keep up appearances.)

But the real star was Shaggy, starring Dennis Hopper, reprising his "bad things" Nike referee role. You see, Scooby wasn't a live dog, he was really stuffed with a steel pole shoved up his wazoo & Shaggy waved him around like a baseball bat. And that whole talking thing? Only Shaggy could "hear" Scooby, thanks to heavy doses of LSD. In fact, the whole Mystery Machine bunch was pretty much a rolling pharmacy, if you know what I mean.

So the whole gang would go from sleepy town to sleepy town, helping the locals "unmask" the monsters. Unfortunately, due to their chemical induced hallucinations, everyone in town was a monster and those weren't really masks they were ripping off.

And yes, we'd already thought of the sequel, which would've introduced Scrappy, who was in reality a small feral child they'd occasionally kidnap from one of these towns. Shaggy would "instill" Puppy Power into Scrappy with... ah.. Scooby's "help", until such time that Shaggy would yell "We need a new Scrappy!" (which translates into one of the few phrases in Spanish I know by heart, "Neccessitamo un Scrappy nuevo!")

Yes, folks, this was an actual conversation and one I know irrevocably changed one man's life - the poor old guy who was sitting not 2 tables away, hearing every word. I caught a backwards glance, he was quietly eating his meal and not taking his eyes off us for one damn second...

Ah, Ryan's, I'll miss you so...