Grease Is the Word

While I was creeping along through some unusually crappy traffic on my way to work this morning I heard a radio spot that happily reminded me that all Sonic locations serve their entire menu all day long.

Which means if I want a breakfast burrito at midnight, I can have one.
If I want a banana split (with booze?) for breakfast, all I have to do is ask.

And I'm not complaining -- Sonic makes a decent chili dog and they will pour just about anything into a cup, but there was just something about the way the guy read that line. Something in the "hey hey you you I don't like your girlfriend" tone to his voice that made it all too clear who he was talking to:

Anyone who's ever showed up to a McDonalds at 10:31 a.m.

Now first off, let’s get something straight. Just because Mickey D's advertises something called a "breakfast menu" does not actually mean that anything they serve should actually be considered breakfast worthy.

The items McDonalds sells in the mornings are more like fuel. And not so much in a nutritional sense -- but more that when you crawl out of bed in a half-dead state but still need to provide a semblance of wakefulness and clarity to coworkers, clients, and superiors; the kinds of things McDonalds offers on their menu have a secret way of jump-starting your system so that it looks like you're awake.

It's called intense, flesh-burning heat.

Ray Kroc and his team of mad scientists took a meal that was originally intended as carbo-loading and turned it into temperature-based shock therapy. Think about the way you felt this morning. Right after the alarm went off and you stunned it back into silence for five extra minutes. That wasn't alertness. That wasn't the first step towards waking up.

It's just a lower level of sleep, similar to the
delta state that most brain-eating zombies live in.

And while everyone knows that the only way to kill a zombie is to shoot them in the head, what fast-food executives figured out a long ago is that they can can actually reverse this state in humans by feeding them liquids and sausage-based food forms that have been heated to temperatures well over 102°.

Of course I'm not bashing it -- I've eaten the stuff for years. From Sausage McMuffins with Egg to the pure evil that is The McGriddle, I've injected enough of these drugs into my veins to easily qualify for Ozzy Osborne/Keith Richards levels of idolatry. And it's not because I love the food -- it's because after a hard night of drinking and hitting the clubs it's still the best way I've found so far to help cheat at-work hangover death.

In fact, when I pull up to the drive-thru my
usual order is a McNot Vodka Breath value meal.

It's probably not the best possible thing for me, but when I need to look alive for the camera, it helps get me there faster than anything else I've tried thus far.

At the same time, McDonalds has always been the purveyor of the dreaded Breakfast Curfew, wherein late-comers are denied Judge Judy style from having access of any kind to the magic molten elixirs of life -- Leaving you standing there amongst all the other post 10:30-ians -- rendered elderly from their years of McEating, shrouded in their Members Only jackets and local newspapers opened and folded just so, with no hope of escape.

Unless of course you go to Sonic -- where a trained team of state alchemists and nuclear technicians have discovered the virtual philosophers stone of fast food, which is that the exact same grease that's used to fry the chicken fingers can easily be used to bring hash browns and bacon to their optimal face-melting temperature.

But more than that -- someone's finally divined the fact that most of the people who pull their cars into a Sonic hoping for breakfast food in the middle of the night are usually so stoned out of their minds that it's really not a problem if their breakfast burrito tastes sorta like a fish sandwich.

Think about it. Most Sonic restaurants you see are lit up like Hunter S. Thompson's visions of the Las Vegas strip. Flashing lights, primary colors -- it's a magnet designed specifically to attract potheads with the munchies like moths to a porchlight. Once hypnotized by the lights, they speed into gthe mini drive-thrus that are placed close enough to the kitchen windows so that the process of ordering food has been reduced to simply pointing at the right pictures on the menu. At which point winged fairies glide out towards your car on roller-skates to deliver your bitchin' grindage with a wink of an eye.

And yes, my children -- the schnozberries really do taste like schnozberries.

All leading to the ultimate truth of modern low cost dining, which is: If sign tells you the restaurant cooks one thing but the menu actually offers something different – DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES STRAY FROM THAT PATH.

In other words, if you’re in the International House of Pancakes -- don’t order a turkey sandwich. If you’ve wandered into a Kentucky Fried Chicken, your only safe bet is to order item made from chicken, or things that a chicken might actually eat (such as corn).

And if you value your life at all, never order Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes from Taco Bell.

Quick math lesson:

Tacos = Mexican Food
Mexican Food = Mexico
Potatoes = X

Solve for X, show your work, and graph your results.

If you’re at the point where you’re willing to eat potatoes from a Mexican Restaurant, then you might as well eat from a garbage can.

Which reminds me, did any of you hear what NFL badboy Adam "Pacman" Jones said when they asked him why he went to a strip club the night before he was supposed to meet with League Commissioner Roger Goddell to discuss his pending suspension for a repeated series of arrests stemming from visits to strip clubs?

"If I could do anything different, I wouldn't have went and
gotten nothing to eat then. There wasn't even no girls in there."

I’m probably gonna regret this, but I have to admit that I’m starting to kinda crush on Pacman. Not in that creepy McConaughey/Gyllenhaal type of way -- more like how you can't help but feel sorry for all those animals at the pound and want to go adopt them all at once.

I mean -- all along I was thinking Pacman Jones was just like all the other pro sports malcontents out there -- abusing the privilege of his position, betraying the trust his teammates placed in him, and thumbing his nose at society and the law.

I always thought he was evil, like Michael Vick.

But it turns out that he’s actually just stupid.

Stupid in a cute way, like monkeys who drink their own pee, or cats who fall off tabletops. Remember that pro wrestler from the 80’s, George "The Animal" Steele, who walked around the ring in an infantile daze and tried to tear open the turnbuckles on the ring so he could eat the nougaty goodness of the foam rubber inside?

That’s the kind of image that comes to mind when Pacman does interviews like the one he just did on HBO’s Real Sports, where Bryant Gumbel asked him if he actually once took $80,000 in cash into a strip club. Pacman quickly scoffed and told Gumbel that the amount was more like $15,000. Then when an incredulous Gumbel asked Jones why on Earth he would take so much money into a place like that, Pacman looked him dead in the eye and answered:

"Because I didn’t want to leave it in the car."

You gotta understand something here. Pacman didn’t lean over and check for the answer from a lawyer. He didn’t read that from a prepared statement on a piece of paper. He just said it. Like it was the only possible answer. Almost implying that Gumbel should have felt kinda dumb for having to ask the question at all.

Now for those of you who might not go to strip clubs that often, let me translate this for you. If you’ve reached the point where you’re eating strip club food (which most strippers won’t touch) and bringing ridiculous sums of loose cash in the door with you, it can only mean one thing:

He’s in love.

Come on Pacman -- What’s her name?

Cinnamon?
Midnight?
Peaches?

Oh you poor bastard. If that’s the case, I truly feel for you. Because believe me, once you're in the clutches of a really serious stripper crush it's like the rest of the world doesn't exist.

In fact, if NFL commissioner Roger Goddell cares anything about the game at all, he needs to find out what the dancer's name is so he can have her traded to another city, or at least call in professional help like David Lee Roth, Bill Maher, or Drew Carey to help him realize the mistake he’s making.

And don’t think it’s gonna stop, because dancers love that shit. I’m serious, as a former club DJ who heard more than my share of dancers telling me about the things their "regulars" would buy them; you need to know that strippers love when they get one of us wrapped around their finger. Especially when there’s so much money rains down from the ceiling.

I’ll bet she’s leaning over the corner of the DJ Booth right now, smiling over the rising smoke of her cigarette, telling an un-interested DJ everything Pacman has promised her. And the DJ will smile and laugh with her, and say

"Jeez, what are you gonna have him do next – become a pro wrestler?"

[Listening to:   Public Enemy – "She Watch Channel Zero" ]