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Jeff Rake's avatar

I’m with you on too many of these bullet points to list. Just to hit a few: My grandparents lived up the street from Flooky’s so I was a regular even if I was too timid to use the batting cage. I once made it to the final callback for an after school special where I auditioned opposite Robbie Rist. (Ron Howard was also in the room.) And Colonel Lee’s Mongolian BBQ was a four minute walk from home but we were too intimidated to enter. Sigh.

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Michelle Geil's avatar

Oh Brian...as always, this nice Jewish Valley girl who never quite belonged but spent her childhood in the belly of the beast north of Ventura Blvd., can so relate. Laughing, crying. I was trying in vain recently to share some of these very memories with my guy, who is several years older and grew up on Long Island; similar suburban lives but a world away. The Valley is or was like nowhere else, and that is its blessing, and curse, source of our weirdest childhood experiences. Thank you for distilling the essence of its all-American otherworldliness, in all its normal-to-us but occasionally unsettling oddness (kind of like when you try to explain family stuff from childhood that you take for granted but make other people's eyes go wide). If Tracton's was still around, I would meet you there for a Green Goddess salad and their famous shrimp scampi (which my kosher Zady loved to watch us enjoy at family celebrations) and play 'Do you know...' til the cows come home. Shana tova and don't dis my Land of the Lost peeps, lest I sic a Sleestack on you!

L

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