Free For Frying Out Loud by Fay Jacobs Page B

mere $14.99 per month.
    These services, with names like Trusted I.D., Privacy Protector and LifeLock (heck, I’d subscribe to Jaw Lock if they would stop sales calls at dinner time) are lurking everywhere, ready to sell us our privacy back.
    Well I don’t want it. Take my identity, please. I’ll forward the bills.
    As for replacing my shredder, the jury is still out. After all, every day I send out dozens of pieces of correspondence with name and address all over them, even as I spend time feeding the shredder with similar information.
    Face it. It doesn’t make a shred of sense.

April 2008
    GET YOUR HISTORY STRAIGHT AND YOUR NIGHTLIFE GAY
    I’ve discovered Philadelphia.
    Until recently, when I thought of Philadelphia it was all about cream cheese. No longer.
    I’ve returned from an immersion tour that included the best food experience of my life (and that’s going some), watching rainbow flags go up literally and figuratively, and being asked the quintessential “Provolone or Cheese Whiz?” It doesn’t get much better than that.
    On the pretense that lofty topics like history and culture were tour highlights, we’ll start with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the artist Frida Kahlo’s birth, there is a massive exhibit of her most important self-portraits and still lifes. Known for painting herself with that alarming unibrow and mustachioed upper lip, Kahlo was actually more attractive than her self-portraits – as noted in the fabulous photos from her personal albums along with the exhibit.
    If you can’t get there to see it in the next month or so, rent the film Frida , starring Salma Hayek – not only is there an unforgettable scene where Frida tangos with Ashley Judd, but you get a great look at Frida’s canvasses, too.
    Bonnie and I did not jog up the museum steps humming the theme from Rocky , but you knew that.
    For history, I checked out Independence Hall. The room is tiny, with tinier windows. And July 4th, 1776 was reportedly a scorcher. Let’s face it, our forefathers didn’t wear cargo shorts and crocs. John Hancock and the others may have scribbled their john hancocks on the parchment just to flee the sauna.
    Over at the new Constitution Center I walked among the lifesize bronzes of the document signers and a cerebral film exhibit charting our nation’s quest for equality for all. I startedto nurture a bad attitude, figuring that the equality quest would exclude LGBT Americans. To the curator’s credit, the march toward gay equality is noted and given weight, even if there is no resolution yet. I hope I get back in my lifetime for the last reel.
    For more history, I visited the old Wanamaker’s Department Store which is now Macy’s (isn’t everything?) with its two story pipe organ and 18th century architecture. Coincidentally there was a sale and I turned history into shopping before you could say Give Me Liberty or Give me 30% off. I was, at least, using currency with Ben Franklin on it.
    Later, we sampled Philly’s gay culture. We did the nightlife. We got to boogie.
    For the Food Tour: We started in South Philly at Jim’s Steaks, family owned and operated since 1939. Sure, I’ve had Cheese Steaks, but I’d never been asked if I wanted Cheese Whiz on mine. According to Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, it’s not the real thing without the Whiz. Sorry, Guv, I couldn’t go there. But the gooey provolone over steak and onions folded into a perfect roll is deservedly legend.
    Going from the ridiculous to the sublime, Bonnie and I celebrated our anniversary with brunch at the Rittenhouse Hotel. Truly, I have never had a more exquisite food experience in my entire calorie-clogged, thigh-bulging, restaurant-reviewing lifetime.
    We took the Rittenhouse tour-de-kitchen marathon. The buffet had over 40 appetizers alone, including oysters, caviar, vichyssoise with