I don't know if they have any Johnny Rockets where you are, but just to get you on the right page, it's a mock-50s diner, with sparlky vinyl stools, soda jerks, chili fries and nickel jukeboxes.

After interviewing at Yahoo on Tuesday, I went to San Jose's Tech Museum (5 minutes before they closed) and went to Johnny Rockets to grab a bite before meeting up with Rick and Ammy.

Drinking my vanilla malt and eating my fries, I was thinking about how these places, like so many movies (like Back to the Future and the Wonders), paint a picture of the idealistic 40s and 50s, just like those and later decades presented an idealistic year 2000 (Jetsons and Tomorrowland), when "That Thing You Do" came on over the jukebox.

It just pushed the level of fiction over the top. As if it wasn't good enough to make a living diarama of a 50s burger joint, they had to use fictional retro 60s songs to complete the effect!

Then I spent the last half of my meal listening to one of the waiters trying to teach the other about multiplying a negative number by a positive, and why the answer is always negative, and I felt firmly back in the present...