GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #931: NOW I KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE GOD!

 

Earlier this evening, after more than a week of not eating solid food, I had a meal. A real meal. A cheeseburger, to be precise. After days and days of gnawing hunger I felt like God. For the first time in a long time I felt full instead of the somewhat warm feeling I get with "eating" broth.

Each bite of that cheeseburger was a snapshot in time. Shuffle them and watch it vanish. I nearly felt like filming me eating this thing, bite by sensuous bite, making orgasmic moans to anyone who cared to approach my car while I ate. I got mustard in my beard, but I had more important things to think about: getting this burger inside of me. My mouth felt like one big smear as I chomped down, able to identify each ingredient on its own in the mishmash of bolus in my mouth. The onions. The pickles. Oh my. OH MY.

I chewed every bit to sludge, and I sucked at every juice I found. I pressed the burger to the roof of my mouth to get every ounce of flavor out of it. Take a can of Coke and go back to the Dark Ages. Give that Coke to a peasant. Watch the sheer joy on that peasant's face. That's what I felt today in that McDonald's parking lot. Yes, it was a McDonald's burger, and it was ambrosia shipped direct from Mt. Olympus. By the time I'd swallowed the last of it and wiped my sodden face, I realized I now knew what a foodgasm feels like.

And it was fucking great.

I ate more later, and it was great, but it wasn't quite the same. All in all, I'm just glad that I can eat stuff again.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #858: MCDONALD'S

 

I shit you not, I spent five years of my life eating nothing but McDonald's for dinner every night. One year of junior high and all four of high school. In those days I was known for a few things: my desire to be a writer, having read The Stand at least 20 times and having McDonald's for dinner every night. I haven't done that every night since the summer between high school and college, when I dropped 40 lbs in three months. Not bad.

McDonald's is in the headlines these days for two things: trying to come up with an affordable meal deal and changing the way they make their burgers. The affordable meal deal thing is out of their hands. That will never come to pass again unless we crack down on greedflation.  But changing the way they make their burgers? That's very noticeable.

The problem is, they want to make gourmet burgers at a fast food joint. They really need to stop tilting at that windmill. No one goes to McDonald's for a good burger. It's impossible. People go there for a good *fast food* burger. And they go there because it's supposed to be cheap. But corporate greed is out of control. These cocksuckers saw the pandemic and saw it as an opportunity to fleece us blind. But that's my usual rant.

This is a different rant. Because I *have* noticed the difference in their burgers, and it's not a good difference. They have somehow made their burgers so bad that I'm no longer interested in eating them. It doesn't help that they've started to put the toppings (please note that they're called TOPpings) on the bottom of the burger patty. You know how I feel about that. But I ask for extra mustard and extra onions these days, and apparently that means no mustard and no onions. Not even on the goddam bottom. I actually have a bunch of pictures of this. I keep meaning to send it to McDonald's to explain to them the error of their ways. I'd post them here, but it's late and it would take too long. Also, I'm not sure what you'd get out of a bunch of pictures of McDonald's cheeseburgers lacking mustard and onions. I don't think anyone who reads me has that fetish. Unless I'm mistaken? DM me if you want 'em that bad.

The only saving grace they have right now is the Quarter Pounder with Cheese. I don't ordinarily eat these things because they're expensive as fuck, but the burgers are decent, and they put the TOPpings on TOP of the burger patty. And they'll actually put extra onions on there. Extra mustard is asking too much.

So I'm thinking about ditching McDonald's after all these decades of patronage. Why would I keep going there if they're going to keep making their food worse? To give you an idea of how much I used to go there, I have the McDonald's app on my phone. I don't like apps. For some reason there's a layer of IP protection (sometimes called "weaponized IP") on corporations' apps but not their websites, and they're practically the same thing. You can use an ad blocker and stop surveillance pricing on a website. If you do that to an app, you've committed a felony and can literally go to prison for it. Jay Saurik calls it "felony contempt of business model." If I'm that much against apps but I have the McDonald's app? That should say something. I sacrificed a little of my morality in the name of McDonald's, and this is how they repay me?

It might be time to say goodbye to fuckin' McDonald's.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #658: 41 YEARS

 Only a few of you will know this, but from 8th grade all the way through my high school graduation, I ate nothing but McDonald's for dinner. Every. Single. Night. That's five years straight.

And I had the nerve to wonder how I got so fat I looked like Chris Farley in my graduation video.

Well, I changed my habits and lost 40 pounds over that summer, but that's not what I'm here to discuss. I was proud of my five-year stretch. When Supersize Me came out, I cursed Morgan Spurlock's name because that movie made them take away the supersize options, and I thrived on those fuckers.

One day, sometime in high school, I discovered the typed up version of my mom's account of my birth and childhood. You may have seen me post the handwritten version on my social media, which I just found recently. But this typed version held a revelation for me because it detailed my first McDonald's meal. I even know which McDonald's it was: the one in Berkeley on St. Charles, which is still there.

So I know with 100% certainty on which day my love affair with the Golden Arches began, and that was 41 years ago today.

I took such an odd glee in knowing that about myself to the point I put it on the calendar. I'm not all that proud of it anymore, but it takes a lot to get me to take something off the calendar. So there it remains for now.

41 years. I wonder how many billions of those 99 billion served I am.

Yeah, I celebrated today by having McDonald's for lunch. I couldn't help it. It felt necessary.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #446: BIG MAC PRISON

 I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but when I was a kid, I loved the Big Mac prison. It looks like the above picture, but the one I went to was in Villa Park, the location of the first McDonald's Playland or Play Place. There's a difference between the two. One is outside, one is inside. I used to know which was which, but I can't be bothered to look it up right now. Mine was inside and a lot taller than this.

I wrote about it very briefly here. I might have gone into more detail elsewhere, but again, see my attitude toward the above conundrum for more details.

In that GF column I mentioned a field trip, but the simple fact of the matter was, if I went to that McDonald's with anyone, then I would hide in the Big Mac prison to avoid having to go home. If someone found me, I would argue like crazy to not get out of it. Since those who brought me here were adults, they couldn't fit inside, so they had to threaten me until I started crying and climbed down to be dragged home.

The more I think about it, the more I have no idea why the fuck that was. There's the obvious reason of a child having fun and not wanting to go home, but was that really it? There had to be a different reason. I had lots of stuff I could have done at home. That's where my Hardy Boys books lived.

When I was a young man, I'm told I got into a drunken altercation that the cops had to arrive for. I have no recollection of this, but I'm told that I surrendered and said that the cops could bring me to jail. Is there some weird thing in the back of my head that wants to be behind bars? I have no fucking idea. The cops didn't bother arresting me due to the intervention of the friend I got into that altercation with. All I know is that I woke up hours later, sober and wondering why my neck felt so horrible (long story for another day, perhaps) and where the afternoon had gone. Did Big Mac still lurk in the back of my head at the time? Is he there now as I type this?

My Big Mac is long gone. Historical significance apparently didn't apply to McDonald's, so they tore him and his buddies down. But maybe he's still out there. Waiting. For me.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #222: GOODBYE TO MY YOUTH

I live pretty close to where I grew up. When I was a kid my family was upper middle class, but due to a lot of financial issues by the time I was in fifth grade shit fell apart. We used to live in a two-story house on Edgewood which was fucking beautiful. I've fantasized about buying it back as an adult and living there. But we moved to Vallette two blocks away, and it's maybe the shittiest townhouse in Elmhurst. I'm lower middle class swirling down the drain to lower class. I don't mean that as an insult to anyone, but that's just the way it is.


But I remember things. My parents were never married, so I am technically a bastard. (And as a person, I am also a bastard, so everything works out. Sorry.) I've never experienced what is considered to be the regular family life, which is maybe why I embrace the unusual. I've been unusual since birth.


My earliest memories are of mom trying to find a father figure for me. Or maybe my dad trying to find a mother figure for me. It doesn't matter. Both failed spectacularly. (I'm happy with my second step-mom, although currents were rough for about ten years.) I didn't care about those things because I didn't know I was supposed to. As far as I knew everyone had moms and dads that lived apart, and that kids lived with their moms except for certain weekends when their dads watched after them.


I'm out of bounds. I didn't always know that, but I think I'm in a good position to examine the so-called "regular" experience. I remember Mulder once saying, "How do you define normal?" That is my personal philosophy. There is no normal, no matter what TV tells you.


But! There are some things I remember from childhood. Looking back my earliest memory is of my mother and me. I was about three or four, and we did what we always did back then: we walked around the neighborhood.


I walk the same neighborhood as an adult for exercise. But it looks vastly different. I've mentioned it before, but I'll say it again. Elmhurst is dedicated to tearing down houses when they reach their 50th birthday in favor of more modern houses.


I won't mention the address, as there are a lot of awful people who might be paying attention, but Mom and I would head down the block to a neighbor who had a beautiful garden. It was open for everyone to see. I ran my hands along the flowers, awed that such stunning things could exist. My tiny hands on something the earth had produced. Something like me. Natural.


I walk by there now and the garden is not only gone, but the new owner has erected a fence to hide everything in that yard. I saw the garden destroyed. Now I can only wonder what happens back there. Goodbye to my youth.


Two blocks down there was a guy who cultivated an apple tree. Every time Mom and I stopped by he would give me an apple fresh from the tree, and I'd wolf it down. That may surprise many of my friends today. I hate fruits and vegetables. I much prefer cheeseburgers and hot dogs. But lest ye forget, apples are the only fruits I can tolerate today. I think this neighbor is the ONLY reason I do that.


(The only veggie I tolerate is corn, and that's probably because my grandparents made a game of putting butter and salt on cobs so I'd eat it.)


Fast forward to now. The apple tree was dragged out of the ground by its roots for reasons I can never understand. When I walk past that yard I see empty space. Nothing but grass. I don't know why. Maybe the current owner hates trees or apples or both. Goodbye to my youth.


And then there was the maple tree in the front yard that I used to take great joy in climbing. It's still there, and it's bigger than I ever thought. There have been several occasions when I felt I should climb it, but I'm an adult now. I would probably be arrested for it.


The thing about the apples. I don't say this a lot. I didn't even know it until a friend of mine observed it back in college. I got the worst beating of my life from my stepfather over a cheeseburger. Today I consider myself a cheeseburger expert.


I loved McDonald's cheeseburgers when I was a kid. I thought that was the pinnacle of good taste. And then my stepfather stopped me from eating fast food and cooked a cheeseburger for me. It was a bad cheeseburger, so I told him I hated it. I wanted a McDonald's cheeseburger over this shit.


He punched me like I was an adult. He threw my head into a wall. He yanked down my pants so hard that I still have the marks from it on my waist. And he beat the shit out of me.


If you want to know about great cheeseburgers, ask me. I have intimate knowledge about the best of the best. The greatest real cheeseburger is at the Country House in Clarendon Hills, IL. The best charburger is at Sparky's in Oak Brook. The best fast food burger belongs to McDonald's, provided you ask for extra everything.


Those apples were really fucking good.


To quote Jimmie's Chicken Shack and Marcy Playground, "My life was easier at five."


I miss those days. Goodbye to my youth.

HEY FUCKERS #5: FAST FOOD BLUES

Here's another unexpected side effect of my new work hours: I've been eating less fast food. I used to like going out for lunch, but now that I'm getting to work before everyone else, I've been getting a great parking spot. By the time lunch would roll around for me, everyone has just arrived at work, and if I abandon my parking spot, the chances are great that I will lose it and have to park in fucking Timbuktu upon my return. I would probably need a Sherpa to get me back to the office. As a result of this, I haven't gone out for lunch in three weeks, which has cut down immensely on the amount of fast food I eat.


Still, it's a bit hard to avoid it when I get out of work. I drive by Taco Bell on the way home, and their quesarito always calls out to me. Most times, I remain strong and get home without stopping. Others? Not so much. I'm going to quit fast food again starting Monday. I haven't been juicing for the holidays, so I'm getting back to that on Monday, as well.


So of course McDonald's sees this as the perfect time to release a TRIPLE FUCKING CHEESEBURGER. I only have two days to enjoy this delight? What the fuck?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #126: A CONFESSION

Whoo-boy. How am I going to say this? I doubt any of you reading this knew me when I was in elementary school. I mean, it's possible since a few of my relatives follow me, including my Dad, but it's unlikely. So I'd say 98% of you know my feelings on sports. My current feelings, that is. But . . . garsh. I used to feel different.


Here goes. I, uh, used to be athletic. Holy fuck, I can't believe I'm going to confess to this, but there was a time I liked baseball and was fairly good at it. I can remember spending endless hours playing catch against a brick wall by myself. Or, almost as often, playing baseball with my cousin and a few of our friends (more his, since I barely had any at that age) against the same brick wall (since we didn't have a catcher). In fact, during my Cub Scout years, I was good enough to get a couple of grand slams.


I know, I know. Most of you who know me now could never see this happening, but it's true.


I was decent at tag football. I sucked at basketball, but I was willing to put in an effort. However, I really excelled at dodge ball. But as much as I liked dodge ball, I was fucking amazing at obstacle courses. I think it was because I was immune to pain back then. Being routinely beaten physically by schoolmates and family will do that to you.


What happened? How did I go from being fairly fit to being the fat slob I am now? I'm not making excuses--I'm fat and unhealthy because I don't have the willpower to NOT be--but I can trace it back to one turning point: when I broke my leg in the fifth grade.


I was terrified of riding a bike on just two wheels. I lasted until fifth grade on my training wheels, but I got tired of people making fun of me, so I took the fuckers off and tried riding a bike without them. The first time around the block? I actually did pretty well. The second time? *collar pull* I turned into the alley behind my house, and I did it a bit faster than the gravel would have allowed. I skidded and busted my leg. I also tore the shit out of my arm. I'd have a cast on my leg, and my arm would be in a sling, for quite some time.


Because of this, I lost out on my final year as a Cub Scout. I never got my WEBELOS badge, which I wanted desperately. In fact, by the time I could walk on my own again, I lost any desire to do the obstacle course on Field Day near the end of my last year at elementary school, which was my favorite part of the school year up until that point. Soon, I began eating McDonald's for dinner for six years straight. No shit, I seriously ate McDonald's EVERY FUCKING NIGHT for six years straight.


If quantum physics is right, there are quite a few alternate universe versions of me who are athletic and probably playing baseball. Or at least some of them won Double Dare a few times.


For a brief time in college, I was slender and good looking. My hetero-life partner Robert Tannahill once told me I looked like an underwear model back then. But I just fell into that lazy motherfucker, eat a shit-ton of McDonald's rut.


Tomorrow, I start juicing. (Don't worry, I have some fiber supplements, so I won't lose that from my diet.) Hopefully, by this time next year, I'll look like that underwear model again.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #34: A WORLD OF MUSTACHES, LONG GONE

The other day, I'd gone out for a night walk, and as I passed up my elementary school, I was struck by a sudden memory. I have no idea where it came from, but I felt like I was back in the 'Eighties, when I was a student at said elementary school. I remembered a field trip helmed by the guidance counselor. After the educational portion of our outing, he brought us all to McDonald's, at which point he had a difficult time getting me out of the Big Mac prison-thing in the playground when it was time to leave.


But the thing I remembered most starkly was his glorious mustache. Now that I think back on it, every adult male in that McDonald's had a great mustache. So many of the American penis-bearing population back then had beautiful, masculine mustaches.


What changed? How did fashion in America do such a 180-degree shift that mustaches became contemptible? It was such a change that even now, more than twenty years later, mustaches still have not come back into fashion. Okay, they've made kind of a comeback, but not in a good way. The mustache today is a joke, a symbol of goofy masculinity. You can't have a mustache in today's society without being the butt of a joke.


I will never understand the shifts and changes in fashion. I guess that's why my own never changes. The only difference for me is that most of the time, I don't have a beard, and I keep my hair relatively short. During the winter, I grow a beard, and I let my hair go wild. Aside from that, my fashion never changes. I dress just like I did when I was a kid: t-shirt and jeans.


That's probably for the best. Why fuck with something I don't understand. It's a bit disappointing for me that I can't grow a decent mustache, though. I look like a pedophile when I grow one. This is slightly funny, considering that my dad had one of those wonderful 'Eighties mustaches back in the day. He looked kind of like Thomas Magnum back then. You'd think I would have inherited a glorious mustache, but . . . *sigh*


At least my beard looks cool. I guess.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #12: FUCK FAST FOOD

Oh, how I wish I could agree with the title of this one. I've recently discovered that I'm really bad at quitting fast food. I managed to beat my addiction to caffeine, but fast food? Nope. I've been trying for weeks to defeat this one, but I just can't seem to do it.


A part of me blames Taco Bell for introducing the Quesarito, which is perfect if you order it without sour cream but add extra cheese (both shredded and nacho). That same part of me also blames Wendy's for bringing back the Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger, which is fucking amazing. And of course there are always the traditional stand-bys, like McDonald's (anything goes there) and White Castle (home of the Flesh of the Chicken Snake).


The fucked up thing? Most times, when I'm eating these things, I don't really give a fuck about them. I'm eating them because I love the idea of them, and that's so fucking crazy, not even I can reconcile it with the person I want to be. It's like jerking off even though you can't get a rod. You need to blow your load, but you can't get hard. That makes things difficult. You'll succeed, but it won't be as awesome as you think it will be. The orgasm will happen, but it will feel dull and weak, which isn't worth your time.


I need to get down to 235 lbs. for the next time I see my doctor, which is in August. Right now, I'm back up to 245. This is unacceptable. I need to tell fast food to go fuck itself, but that's the hardest thing for me to do, even harder than quitting caffeine (which was really fucking bad). I'm a fat ass who ate McDonald's for six years straight when I was in junior high and high school. I beat it when I graduated, since I managed to go an entire summer without that garbage (and I managed to lose 50 lbs. at the time). Why can't I do that again?


Fuck. Tomorrow, I'm going to try the AM Crunchwrap at Taco Bell. I'm probably going to fall in love with it. I suck at this.

WHEN I HAD FIRE WITHIN MY BLOOD: CHAPTER SIX

JUNE 17, 2000.  11:10 PM.  DUBLIN.  MESPIL HOTEL.

I'm back at that wretched hotel, but that's okay.  All I've got to do is hold out one more day.

We didn't do much aside from coming back to Dublin.  I saw the Book of Kells, which wasn't nearly as impressive as I was led to believe.  What impressed me was the sheer size of the library at Trinity College.  It's like a cathedral, and all the bookcases reach to the vault-like ceiling.  At the foot of each is a bust of one of the "greats," both writers and philosophers.  I've never seen a bigger library; not even the Harold Washington Library in Chicago can hold a candle to it.

After that, I went to see the Blessed Oscar to get a picture of the statue on the rock.  It's so lifelike, but I noticed something I hadn't seen from a distance:  up close, Oscar Wilde is sneering.

That was when I got lost.  I was looking for St. Patrick's Cathedral to get a picture of Jonathan Swift's grave, but the Irish can't give directions to save their lives.  Yes, that sounds like a condemnation from above, but I asked directions from their FUCKING TOURIST CENTER, and they let me down.  I was lost for hours, going up and down crooked, narrow streets that sometimes ended in dead ends, or became pedestrianized to the point where they hardly led anywhere.

I finally found the cathedral, all for nothing.  The graveyard was locked up for construction.

That left me running to McDonald's, which I finally found!  The food, which I would normally have been let down by, was like manna sent to relieve me.  Despite the fact that the supersized cup was more like a skimpy large (they go by the metric system), I felt finally at home in Ireland.

By the way, the Guinness factory is miles long.  It takes up both sides of the street, and it takes three hours just to go on a tour there.

I went to Doyle's Irish Cabaret, which was actually kind of good.  The comedians weren't that great (they just told plain old jokes--imagine an hour of Murphy and Casey jokes, or priests and rabbis walking into bars), and the singing was mediocre (the highlights were "Whiskey in the Jar" and a Gaelic version of "Drunken Sailor"), but the dancing was phenomenal.  They're just kids, but they can kick the shit out of the Lord of the Dance.  I don't know, maybe it's my strange, dark appreciation of graceful people . . . .

JUNE 18.  12:30 PM.  SOMEWHERE OVER IRELAND.

Finally!  I've been on many flights before, but this one is actually enjoyable!  There was a huge wait to get on the plane (as usual), and a bit of a delay to get in the air, but they overbooked!  We were supposed to fly back to NYC in coach, but the powers that be (maybe St. Patrick himself) had us bumped up to FIRST CLASS!  The seat's a bit narrow, but not nearly as much as in coach.  There's enough leg room to actually lay in a fetal position on the floor, if necessary.  The seat goes back, and there's a leg rest, and we each have our own televisions.  Granted, the food still sucks, but they gave us everything we could have ever asked for.  They even gave us a travel pack containing the following:  toothbrush, toothpaste, "Do Not Disturb" sign, moisturizer, mouthwash, earplugs, lip balm, Kleenex, eye shade, socks, and the case it all comes in looks like it can be used to store CD's.  I suffered not one jot during this flight, unless you count the time I spent watching REINDEER GAMES and the end of RAGING BULL.

Take my advice:  when flying overseas (or anywhere, really), fly first class.  Sure, you'll be short a bit of money, but it's worth it.

I hope this time I see the Statue of Liberty.  I'm almost home, to the land of good cheeseburgers and a McDonald's on every corner . . . .

JUNE 18.  9:00 PM.  ELMHURST.

What was the first thing I did when I got back to Elmhurst?  I ate as much as I could at McDonald's, and I loved every second of it (even if it only lasted ten seconds).  I lost 20 pounds during this trip, and it's time to put it back on.

Ireland's the most beautiful land I've ever seen, and there are stunningly cool things to look at over there, but America has Ireland beaten (like a gong) in the food department.  Finally, I'm back in a land built for BIG PEOPLE!

[THANK YOU, GRANDMA LAURETTE, FOR FINANCING THIS TRIP FOR ME.  AND NOW, I'M TAKING THE REST OF THE YEAR OFF.  MAYBE WHEN I GET BACK, I'LL FINALLY BE ABLE TO POST THE DUI DIARY.  WE'LL SEE HOW THINGS WORK OUT IN COURT ON JAN. 4!  MERRY BAH HUMBUG TO YOU ALL!]