Pancake Puppies at Denny's, June 19, 2010

One night while Daniel and I were in that state that little kids get into of being very tired but not wanting to go to sleep, we ended up - oh, the shame! - at Denny's on Sepulveda and Overland. We really didn't need anything to eat, which is the perfect excuse to have a bad dessert.

Pancake Puppies have been trademarked by Denny's, so as not to be confused with donut holes, aebleskiver, or hush puppies. I was surprised by their presentation. Despite the fact that I was eating on a place mat covered with advertising, the Puppies were stylishly drizzled with chocolate sauce and beckoned to us in their deep-fried glory nestled against a scoop of strawberry ice cream.



I ate one. I only wanted one. It was a dense and cakey fritter, reminiscent of a stale beignet. But the strawberry ice cream was a nice, nostalgic complement that reminded me of trips with my dad to the ice cream counter at Sav-on when I was a kid.

The hour and the fact that I had actually considered and was now eating at a Denny's restaurant went to my head and I was seized by a fit of silliness that I have not experienced since the 10th grade. I plead the Twinkie defense, with a clear-cut case of Puppies per minas. Temporary insanity induced by fatty, sugary foods brought about the groundbreaking discoveries that were made at our table that night.

While paying the bill, Daniel showed me the finer details of the presidential portraits on ten and twenty dollar bills. Lots of people think foreign currency is pretty with its wigged monarchs, exotic blooms, and architectural wonders. American money, apparently, has got 18th Century hotties on it.



Win a date with Al Hamilton. Check out those dreamy eyes and perfect chin - it's a shame he wasn't a quicker draw.

Daniel says that Hamilton has got dreamy eyes. In my sugar-induced silliness, I had to agree. He also says that Andrew Jackson looks like Anthony Michael Hall from the nose down.



I kind of see it. But I think he looks more like Carol Burnett.

My favorite of course, is Babe-Raham Lincoln. Before Bruce Weber celebrated male beauty for the pages of fashion magazines, there was Mathew Brady, the first photographer to capture an American war set about exonerating an earlier type of male model with his heroic depictions of soldiers and presidents. One of his numerous portraits of Abraham Lincoln was the inspiration for Honest Abe's windswept look, immortalized on our fiver.



Actually, he kind of looks like Cosmo Kramer from "Seinfeld." If Kramer were more serious. And grew a beard.

The dollar is the only bill that has not been given a facelift. Gilbert Stuart's famous rendering of the Father of Our Country was actually an unfinished portrait, its incomplete state a metaphor for the nascent republic.



Hey there, Georgie Boy. Sadly, the buck - and the male beauty contest - stops here.

Apparently, Stuart was as bad at finishing paintings as I am at keeping up with this blog. By the time you get some of these posts, days, if not weeks have gone by. The soup or whatever delicacy I am celebrating has been long since digested, the restaurant's business card misplaced in the slush pile of GMS memorabilia. Amusingly, sometimes a return visit to the scene of the crime will occur before I ever get to post about the first visit.

As my posts simmer in my head before being ladled out into the bottomless bowl of my blog, they take on new and complex flavors as I mull these adventures over. And although some of them, like Stuart's paintings, might never be finished, they are, like sharing laughs at a coffee shop late at night, a nice place to linger.