Project: Denny's

If you don't have the time or the money to take a real vacation, you can
always take a virtual vacation via the World Wide Web. Take,
for example, the fellow who has made it his life's mission to visit as many
Denny's restaurants as possible. Read on.

Jason Pfaff's fascination for the Denny's chain of 24-hour cheap eats can
be only partly explained by his grandfather-chaperoned visits
there as a wee lad and by his year working as a Denny's waiter. No, his
problem is deeper: his stated goal in life is "to visit as many
Denny's as possible before I die." At Project: Denny's, he chronicles his
travels to Denny's throughout the land.

Here, then, for the morbid and the bored, is a complete list Denny's
restaurant outlets visited by Mr. Pfaff in his quest. The dozens of
branches are carefully organized by chronology, geographic region, and
Denny's franchise number. Each visit is documented with
photos, descriptions of waitresses, list of items ordered, and which of Mr.
Pfaff's hapless friends were in attendance.

To heighten the challenge, Mr. Pfaff has two sub-goals during each Denny's
visit. First, he tries to scam free stuff; usually, he says,
"the wait-person is so relieved to have someone friendly to talk to for a
change, s/he will just give me something." (Sample trophies:
Denny's tie clip, Breakfast Values menu, Coke Pin, Lunch Basket Promotional
Poster.) Second, at each Denny's visit, the author
seeks to prove a pet theory: that every Denny's manager looks like the
comedian Weird Al Yankovic (who, for the uninitiated, is "a tall
scrawny guy with a dark mustache, silver rimmed glasses, and big curly
black hair.") Mr. Pfaff says he's "a bit lenient on the specifics
(i.e., the hair doesn't have to be curly, and the glasses can be a
different color, and the employee doesn't have to be a manager), but
there has to be a strong resemblance overall." Surprisingly, the majority
of the Denny's documented on this Web site do indeed feature
a Weird Al lookalike.

We can only wish good luck and godspeed to Mr. Pfaff and "Das BÄs," the
secondhand schoolbus he travels in. Who says today's
youth lacks ambition?