Home Ec: Needs Improvement

They don't teach home ec in Quaker school. Too busy bringing peace to the world and folding clothes for the villagers in Africa to learn how to properly carve a turkey or make rice/beans/potatoes that aren't crunchy. Despite this underprivileged upbringing, I forge on in the kitchen.
Tonight my objective was grilled pork chops with tropical mango salsa. (I'd offer a helpful direct link, but Kikkoman would like to entertain you first. My recipe is at 11 o'clock on the little clock of meals.) Sounds yum, no? 'Cept I forgot that marinating for 4-6 hours was suggested, and tossing it in the refrigerator for an hour while you chop the fruits for the salsa is not an equivalent. Is there any way to speed up marinating? Or is it one of those "watched pot never boiling" rules of the kitchen? (A forgotten marinade never catches up.) On top of my teriyaki grilled pork chop went a salsa of mango, pineapple, strawberry, one jalapeno pepper, a squeeze of lime juice (ooops, I'm just realizing I forgot that part) and coconut flakes (which I also just realized I neglected.) I guess my next culinary adventure will have to involve lots of coconut, because they just don't sell small bags of coconut flakes at the grocery store. (Here's a recipe that might take advantage of the rum I bought for my earlier cocktail experiment: or are Banana Rum Coconut Cookies just too much?)
For dinner I did make some potatoes on the side, thanks to a nice little ready-made bag that saved chopping work, so we could eat at 8, instead of 9 pm. Turns out 8:05 would have been better, the taters were a little firm. But it looked pretty.

Post-Script: The Chicagoist blog also covered (better than me) the Pitchfork Festival, or in their take: Sweatfork. An apt description.