If you’re just jumping aboard The Wienermobile, please exit through the rear and check out Part 1 of my adventure with Susan Olsen,a.k.a. Cindy Brady, and Charles Phoenix, without which Part 2 lacks context. Wagging the tail without the (hot) dog as it were.

Now, assuming you’ve fully digested part 1, join us aboard the Wienermobile as we head east from the Brady Bunch house…

…to another iconic wiener in  the neighborhood, Larry’s.

The Wienermobile ate up quite a lot of real estate in this four- table parking lot eatery.

So we turned the vehicular wiener towards another vintage hot dog-related gem a few blocks away:

Isn’t this where you would go if you were a hot dog?

We knew Chili John’s has very early hours but we jumped out anyway, praying the chili palace still might be open:

If you haven’t been to this place, spit out your food and head there now. It’s as authentic as the day it was born in 1941:

The counter is (perfectly and beautifully) makes up the entire restaurant.

You can see the handpainted mural that runs the length of the restaurant better in this shot with Charles:

Up close it’s apparent that the artist, Mr. Chili John himself, captured each and every crevice of the exploding Vesuvius terrain as possible. Perhaps this was to illustrate the constant lava-like flow of chili that runs through his namesake establishment daily.

While we were there, there was an incredible photo opp for The Wienermobile:

With hot dogs and chili under our belts, it was time to move on to burgers. Very few food symbols are as iconic as The Wienermobile, but surely the Big Boy at Bob’s a few blocks away on Riverside has an equal place on the mountaintop.

The sheer magnitude of these two sculptural icons together was overwhelming for kitsch lovers such as ourselves.

So we took lots of photos:

But, alas, the sun was starting to set and there was one place we knew we had to hit while The Wienermobile was still under our control:

The Circus Liquor neon clown, on Burbank Blvd. just west of Chili John’s, has been in countless movies and tv shows, not to mention I’ve dropped coin in there every time I need a bottle of anything, just so I can visit the clown.

The height of the Wienermobile was an INSANELY perfect fit. If only the clown were permanently mounted on top of it.

With the evening approaching fast we headed back to Willis Wonderland,…

…already upset that our Wienermobile afternoon would soon be but a memory, albeit one grilled into our braincells forever.

When we dislodged from The Wienermobile we got some parting gifts:

Some Wienermobile whistles, some of which were glow-in-the-dark, a plush toy Wienermobile, as well as this larger plastic one:

It was like we had all been dropped out of a time capsule. I’m someone who likes to have a good time but once I’m done with an activity I gotta clear the house and get back to work. But it was as if we all knew that when we separated we would somehow have to settle back into reality, hopefully just little bitty pieces at a time, that’s how strong the magnetic pull of the Wienermobile was for all of us. So was only natural we sat down to a hot dog dinner to extend the wiener coma we were all in.

The dogs were cooked, as I said in part 1, on my newly acquired 1958 golf ball barbecue:

It was comforting to have such statuary in the yard, softening the blow of the departed Wienermobile as it disappeared into the night.

Thank you, Hot Doggers Traci and Yoli. You drove the Wienermobile like it was a delicate little Smart Car and put up with three drooling adults for longer than anyone deserves to be in ecstasy.

And thank you, Mark Blackwell, for documenting the trip, and I mean Trip.

Susan, Charles and myself are forever grateful to have such a childhood and adult dream fulfilled, especially one that provided such insanely magnificent photo opps.

And we are grateful for the joy of celebrating a junk food that was a building block of nutrition throughout most of our lifetimes. Truth be told, although it has killed me, the foolishness of subsisting exclusively on such foodstuffs is starting to be rectified in my old age. But even Martha Stewart enjoys munching on a good wiener every now and then.

The Wienermobile experience was pretty heavy.

But alas, all things must end.

We love you, Wienermobile. Until we meet again…

I’ve only waited a lifetime for a ride in the famed Oscar Mayer Wienermobile and last Wednesday, December 14, my dream came true!! Susan Olsen, a.k.a. Cindy Brady, the youngest of the B. Bunch, Charles Phoenix, Mark Blackwell and I hopped aboard and rode the wiener to some of our favorite kitsch spots in the San Fernando Valley. When one is onboard such a vehicle, photo opps are not to be missed!

It’s hard to look bad in a photo with The Wienermobile. So there’s going to be A LOT of them in this post, probably enough to serialize the adventure so check back later in the week or beginning of next for more. With that in mind I’ll start slowly, like how we all color-coordinated to look as fabulous against the backdrop of the transportational hot dog as possible. I threw my outfit together last minute but was happy with my choices, picking up all the essential colors of hot dogs, mustard, relish and mayo.

Here’s a closer look at my vintage Legionnaires shirt, made from that kind of expensive 1950’s satin that feels like you’re going down a cashmere slide:

I know there’s no Oscar Mayer at KFC but it was the closest thematically of any shoulder bag I had.  My T-shirt was much more on the nose…

… as were my shoes:

The first thing I did once I was dressed was to roast some wienies.  It gave me a perfect excuse to test out my recently acquired 1958 golfball barbecue:

I cooked up sixteen dogs so we could stuff ourselves throughout the day. Here’s the first  one, literally, on the grill:

First to arrive at Willis Wonderland for our big wiener ride was Mark, who documented us throughout the wiener day:

Next was Susan, appropriately dressed in wiener red:

And then Charles arrived, dressed in a dead-ringer Wienermobile matching suit and carrying a banner bearing our favorite brand’s namesake.

This also doubled as a fashionable cape.

It’s obvious we all passed the color test:

We took many such proof-of-concept photos:

There are so many obvious ways one wants to pose against such a stunning background:

When the Wienermobile first pulled up I wept with joy. I had forever envisioned it in my driveway.  Alas, the wiener was too plump to actually fit so it rested nicely in front until we boarded.

Before stepping into the vehicular hot dog we ran inside for a quick wiener ingestion:

They don’t actually serve food in the Wienermobile so we brought the leftovers with us. But we were so excited to finally board the hot dog we had all been dreaming about since we were born that we forgot and left them on top of my car:

Our Hotdoggers, college interns who serve a full year driving the wiener wondermobile, were Yoli Bologna and Tailgatin’ Traci:

You could literally hear an audible gasp from each of us as we entered the Wienermobile for the first time.

It’s got six seats, a mustard floor,…

… an appropriate floor mat…

… and a sky roof.

The seats were LITERALLY the most comfy car seat any of us had ever sat in. Plush yet solid, with armrests that made you feel like you were waiting in a highchair for a jar of hot dog baby food. We didn’t stop yapping about them the entire afternoon.

We especially loved the embroidered Wienermobile on the back of each seat.

None of us could figure out if the hot dogs on the dash had any purpose other than an as an exceptional decorative touch.

We thought we only had a half hour in the Wienermobile so we headed to Ventura Blvd., the street where we thought there’d be the most foot traffic so we could wave to the masses like beauty queens on a float. Charles mentioned that the real Brady Bunch house, the one used for the exterior shot that pops up in every episode, was probably only blocks away. Not only did I have no idea it was in the hood but Susan – an actual Brady – said she had never even seen it herself! How could this be??!  Cindy-I-mean-Susan explained that as a wee star she couldn’t compute that a house that was clearly two stories…

…was in reality only one.

So the Wienermobile, a deceptibly agile vehicle, whipped a U-ie and headed east toward Dillon St. As the top of the A-frame house poked into sight we started going nuts.

And we SO weren’t the only ones. There were already some sightseers there, dying that not only were they at the Brady house but now the Wienermobile had entered the picture AND a real Brady emerged out of it!  Only God could have put a blessed tourist here at this moment.

Needless to say, we took a lot of photos.

With Susan’s 35 year identity crisis rectified, our Hotdoggers, Yoli and Tracy, told us we could drive around for as long as we wanted.

Elated, we immediately discussed iconic snack food related establishments in the immediate area to best frame us and the Wienermobile. First we headed to a hot dog,:

followed by some chili,…

… a hamburger,…

…and a little something to wash it all down with.

But, alas… I have Christmas shopping to do, three song deadlines to hit, an outline overdue for my new live show, a contract to read, a cat scratcher turntable to assemble, a portrait commission to paint, a bunch of publishing crap to get together, not to mention that I’m supposed to be on vacation in sunny Monterey. So Part 2 of our Wienermobile adventures will appear in a few days.

Until then, eat lots of hot dogs as you kick off the holiday season!

Proceed to Part 2