Save Us The Aisle Couch

I should have known it was going to be an interesting weekend movie-wise when we went to Blockbuster in B'burg and were bombarded with toxic gas.

I had only one movie in mind I wanted to see. "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." I'd already caught all the others I'd been wanting to see when I was on vacation last week. I knew in my heart that Mr M wouldn't enjoy such a movie. In some ways our movie tastes are quite similar, and in others, totally different. It's odd, but generally a good combination. Anyway, I didn't even suggest this movie because, although I was only suspecting I'd enjoy it, I knew he never would.

So we went along the "New Arrivals," which line the outer rim of the store. I picked out "Judgement at Nuremberg" right off the bat, seeing as how it had Nazis in it, and was an older movie, which I'm always keen to see. Mr M had seen it before but was kind enough to indulge me, so I said, "The next choice is yours," and we continued to walk along the aisles.

I thought hard and pinned my hopes on "Sunshine," and then on "Goodbye Lenin," and as many as three other movies he blithely passed by. Well, not blithely. That's not a word I associate much with Mr M.

When he finally, after picking up two Westerns then putting them back, asked for advice, I kind of suggested "Control Room" or "Supersize Me." Two documentaries, both of which I'd seen, but since I like documentaries and so does he, I felt safe with those. "Well, which one?" he asked. "Either, you pick," I replied.

He picked "Supersize Me."

It was then that we took one last look in the "Drama" section. And drama it was as we walked right into the middle of the toxic gas. No one was around, so it had either wafted in from another section ("Terror," perhaps?) or been deposited by someone who then got the hell outta Dodge. Quickly. Whatever was the case, it almost knocked me over, and then sent me into the giggles as well. I had Oktoberfest flashbacks and was sure there was at least one trumpet player around, hiding behind the "Comedy" section, proud of yet another joke upon the clarinets, but it was not to be. It was a phantom attack.

After that, we decided to hit the checkout line, and pronto.

We waited our way through a sea of teenaged girls talking on cell phones, and it was finally "our time." We got a 20ish girl who checked us out.

Now, I know maybe I expect too much of people. I expect people who are of college age to actually know something, and worse, I expect people who work in video stores to have a certain knowledge of, oh, I don't know, say, movies or such. But the girl, in checking us out, told us, "'Supersize Me' is due by Monday at noon, and 'Judgement at Nurman ... Numabgy ... Nurembagney... Nurmanbagner ... is due next Sunday."

This was a different girl from the one who told us a couple of months ago that "Zrobnan the Geek" was due back next Sunday.

And soon we were back in the safe confines of Chez M, and watching "Judgement at Nurembagney." And I was going on and on about the raw sexual attraction of Maximilian Schell, who Mr M kept saying looked just like his father. His father was a nice looking man, to be sure, for he looked rather like his son looks now, but I'm so sorry, Maximilian is on a different plane of handsome. And anyway, Mr M kept counter-gushing about Burt Lancaster, to whom I'm sure he wasn't sexually attracted, but feels a special kinship towards since Lancaster was a famous atheist.

(An Aside: I have seen Burt Lancaster naked. Years ago my sister and I bought a book that was nothing but famous men naked, and Burt Lancaster was one of them. My sister told me that when she and her family moved, she lost the book, but I'm sure this isn't true and she's just holding out on me.)

It was the next day that we watched "Supersize Me." Well, we watched a short bit of it, anyway. Mr M disliked this movie right off the bat and after about the first three value meals, it was enough for him.

Now, here's my thing about "Supersize Me." I enjoyed watching it, and in fact gave it four stars on The List. And the reason I enjoyed it was simply this. Had I been sitting in the doctor's office, or waiting on having my car serviced, and a man came up and sat beside me and said, "You know, I just finished a month of eating nothing but McDonald's food every meal every day," I'd just have to say, "Really?? Well, tell me about that!" (Well, I'd think that. If in actuality he came up and said that I'd put whatever book I was reading right over my face.)

So it interested me a great deal on the "human being as guinea pig" theory.

But there were things in it that bothered me.

The film's director, Mr Spurlock, who grew up right near me, by the way, came up with this whole idea of his from the Lawsuit the Two Hefty Girls filed against Mickey D's. In his papers the judge said if the THG could prove that eating McDonald's every meal, every day, was unhealthy, then they could go for it. The lawsuit, I mean.

And so, that's what Spulock decided to do. See if it made him unhealthy. And that's fine.

However.

The first thing that bothered me in the movie is that Spurlock decided that since most of FA (Fat America) not only eat a lot of fast food, but also don't get enough exercise, that he wouldn't get as much exercise, either. He went so far as to, once he'd walked a certain amount of steps in a day, start taking cabs and driving everywhere.

Now to me, this is not only unfair to the experiment, but it's just plain dumb. His theory was "Is eating at McD's every meal every day bad for you?" Bad for "you" being the operative there. If he gets a lot of exercise and walks everywhere, then dammit, he should continue doing that. He's manipulating the data right off the bat in his experiment, and it put a taste in my mouth as bad as a cold McRib.

The next thing that bothered me is that, now, I know it's been a good while since I've eaten at McDonald's, but I don't think it's been that long. Spurlock's thing (so to speak) was to only get a supersized meal if asked. Now, he says in there how many times he was asked, but when he is - and I'm trying to think back, I swear I think sometimes even when he isn't - he has way too much food to have gotten a value meal, supersized or otherwised. He gets an Egg McMuffin value meal, and it consists of the McMuffin, the hash browns all mooshed together into a mitten, and a drink - and a sausage biscuit, and another drink. All his meals have two drinks with them. Extra burgers, extra fries, extra drinks. I don't know what kind of special menu he's ordering off of, but I swear I don't know anything about it, and in my day I could find the extra food items if they were hidden under the doormat.

And finally, and this may have bothered me the most, he wasn't natural in his eating. There's a scene fairly early into his experiment where he gets, I think, a Double Quarter Pounder value meal, supersized. It shows him starting the meal, five minutes into it, ten minutes, etc, etc. He talks about how he's starting to sweat, his arm hurts, he has gas (maybe that was him in the Blockbuster Saturday), his stomach gurgles. And yet he eats and eats until finally he vomits himself silly out the window of his vehicle. And they make a big scene of showing, as I just referred to it below, the offending yaak.

And that, my fine feathered, my feathered fine, my fine friends, just sucks.

People who eat at McDonald's may eat lots, and they may eat the wrong things, but they don't fuckin' stuff the food in until they vomit it back up. The experiment was to eat every meal at McDonald's for a month. It wasn't to stuff every morsel of every bite of every piece of food they put in front of you. And who knows, had he not been getting all those extra things with his meals, he might have been able to eat an entire meal without saying hello to it again five minutes later. Add to that the fact that he should be at least partly aware that as a non-fast food eater, he wasn't used to all that crap - he'd need to build up to it, wouldn't he? You don't start out on the second day cramming 57 pounds of food into your gullet.

Oh well. Anyway, these were things that bothered me, and I got to discuss them with Mr M while still enjoying the idea of the movie. However, they were too much for Mr M to bear, and ruined the movie for him, and so it got The Cane.

McDonald's is my least favorite of all fast food places because, to me, it smells. I absolutely hate the way McDonald's smells, it's unlike the smell of any other restaurant. That's why when the rumor went round in the 80s about them having worms in their burgers, even though I knew it wasn't true, I really wouldn't have been surprised had it actually been.

And yet still, anything they have to offer on their menu looked better than Spurlock's "last meal" (the last before the experiment started), cooked by his vegan chef girlfriend. A dirt quiche with some sort of roots and rice on the side.

I definitely wouldn't supersize that.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* The condom box is still in the yard next door.
* I drank a giant cup of coffee today after lunch. It buzzed me and burned my tongue.