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Parting Glances: Pause that refreshes?

I find myself indulging in the delectable savoring of one, two, and sometimes three of what in the greasy spoon trade are called "sliders": small hamburgers with cheese slices, fried onions, kosher pickles, and garnishes of chili, mustard, and ketchup. Yum.
They slide down so neatly; 75 calories per quickie.
I toast these juicy grillers with Jones Co. Creme Soda, and feel effervescently happy that my tab is under $10, including a generous tip. (As a kid I'd wolf down a dozen 12-cent White Castles with a cherry coke — and room for dessert.)
I'm fastidious these days and do sliders only when the forbidden treat lures me onward to gluttony. It's an indulgence — junk food supreme — that, if done too often, loses gusto. That's why I find a guy like Donald Gorske — holder of the 2005 Guinness Book of Records title for eating 25,000 Big Macs over a 20-year period– to be something of a gastronomic monomaniac — maybe a burger basket case.
(The two-a-day Big Mac habit for the 6-ft, 178 lb, 50-year-old Gorske translates — Weight Watchers take note — into 900 heads of lettuce, 1020 onions, 2100 whole pickles, 863 pounds of cheese, 200 gallons of special sauce, 8,250,000 sesame seeds, 20 once-mooing cows — and, presumably: 50 cases of Pepto Bismo — and frisky visits to the loo.)
Like every preprogrammed consumer I have my own monomania — actually two. Both have petered out on me of late: coffee and x-rated videos. Of the former, I was drinking two cups a day (7300 over a 10 year period). No more. Of the latter, well, let's say, I've Peeping Tom'ed enough DVDs to be a TV talk show maven on this lowbrow pastime of male (and some female) crotch potatoes.
I'll refrain from sorting the x-rated cinematic genre by content, as I have so thoughtfully itemized Mr. Gorske's consumables. Suffice it to say, as far as visual trash bagging goes, I've been around the proverbial block more than a few times — on a variety of leashes.
I palm off my x-rated fascination as "inspiration". The naked, suntanned, well-oiled biped in its undressed state appeals to my artistic sense. [Yeah, sure, Mary.] It started in sixth grade when I came across a mythology book illustration of a Greek youth standing buff in front of a temple altar. I looked at his buffer with keen aesthetic interest during many library visits.
Now the improbable — but inevitable — has happened to me: boredom. I've discovered to my chagrin that xxx's are — yes, I reluctantly admit — humdrum. Predictable. Repetitious. Anti-climatic. And, heaven knows: overexposed, in more ways than one. Nothing left to the imagination. Assembly-line GNP (Gross National Product). Ho hum, and a Big Mac yawn. Been there, done that. [Well, some of it.]
Back in the mid-60s, with nothing but posing-pouch magazines, a glimpse of well-stuffed stocking was something shocking. Now, heaven knows, everything shows. After 40-plus years of First Amendment censorship go-ahead, the porn-o-biz bankrolls millions of bucks, hundreds of glossies, thousands of vids, reams of wackadoome stars, x-rated awards nights, and plastic, autographed replicates that, on the whole, I'll admit intimidate me no end.
I don't know: maybe I'm being too hard on myself. [Or, too soft?] Maybe I need a breather with my Creme Soda. Hey, if it works for greasy-spoon sliders, why not bare-bottomed shleppers? Hold da pickle! Griddle da buns!

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