Chicken in paradise

I've eaten myself into a transfat stuppor at Barney's Diner, where the first Wednesday of the month is Chicken Day and the exhausted waitresses dash around wearing "I Hate Chicken Day" shirts.

For $5.50, you get three pieces of darn-near-perfect fried chicken (they kick the heck out of that fast-food-chicken nonsense), soup or salad, corn or sliced tomatoes and mashed potatoes covered with the most scrumptuous gravy west of Alabama.

We arrived at about 11:45 a.m., all the tables were full and there were people waiting. We got people at the counter to move, so we could scrunch together on the tiny stools.

Barney's, which used to reside in an actual trailer off South Tejon Street, now is at Los Animas and Sierra Madre.