Sad. They’re about to turn the cool high-rise fomer Howard Johnson’s hotel in my hometown into a bland and generic Doubletree. The restaurant closed years ago and eventually became a Hooters, but the hotel itself remained sublimely HoJo until it lost (or renounced) its franchise last year.

Another nearly-intact HoJo with restaurant was bulldozed in recent years for a freeway improvement project, something Greensboro seems to get way more than its share of.

I miss Howard Johnson’s restaurants. And I’m really mad at myself for not getting to the Times Square location before it closed last summer.

It’s sort of fun reading the early days of The Boondocks while Aaron McGruder is on “hiatus”. I can’t remember for sure if the Chronicle started running the strip from day one or not, although I think it did, since the earliest one I remember featured Riley sighing when he realized he lived on Timid Deer Lane…

You know what’s scary? Right now, my site is number one when you do a Google search on “Timid Deer Lane”, apparently thanks to this post which really had nothing much to do with the comic strip in question.

The big difference between The Boondocks, and even Doonesbury, versus token “conservative strip” Mallard Fillmore, is that the first two usually strike me as funny, even when I disgree with the politics. Mallard Fillmore, on the other hand, shows no subtlety, no characterization, and precious little humor. That’s the kicker: It’s just not funny. It’s a pity, because an actual well-done strip with a right-of-center slant might be interesting to read, even if I disagreed with its viewpoint much of the time.

After looking at numerous real estate listings in recent weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that more North Carolina houses were built in in 1963 than in any other year before or since. I assume it must be that the developers were anxiously anticipating my arrival the following year.