The clown made me eat the cheeseburger, honest

I’m a little bit fat. It’s no big deal and I’m not sensitive about it. If it really mattered to me, I’d step away from the burrito and start jogging. But it doesn’t, so I won’t.

What I will do is something that is fast becoming an American tradition: find somebody else to blame. In this case, a certain red-haired clown associated with a fast food restaurant found on every other block in every city across the country. For lawsuit-avoidance purposes, let’s call him “Donald.”

Donald has been trying to get me to eat cheeseburgers since I was about four years old. For the most part, he’s been successful. This despite the fact that (in my opinion) his cheeseburgers taste like a cross between wallpaper paste and the sawdust elementary school janitors use to clean up the mess created when a third-grader barfs in the cafeteria.

Donald never actually held a .45 to my head and forced me to dine at one of his restaurants. But he did offer a free toy with every (what for legal purposes we will call a) “scrappy meal.” And that, according to Alfred David Klinger—spokesperson for the consumer watchdog group Corporate Accountability International—is just as bad.

By offering that free toy, Donald is to blame for my current, manatee-like physique.

Klinger and his organization want Donald’s head on a platter, though not to eat, presumably, because of the calories and high fat content. Donald, they say, encourages American children to eat the wrong sorts of foods (anything but carrots and Brussels sprouts).

American parents can’t be trusted to look out for the welfare of their own children. We are, Klinger and his group imply, too stupid and lazy.

One can only assume other food mascots also will soon be targeted. I know that stupid bear with a voice faintly reminiscent of Bing Crosby’s got me to eat Sugar Crisp cereal for decades. I still do, from time to time. I was powerless before Sugar Bear’s mellifluous jingle singing!

Likewise, Quisp and Quake (I’m not sure what they were supposed to be) had me eating their cereal as well, even though it tasted like a yellow crayon and stuck to my teeth for hours.

And let’s not forget that freaky-looking plastic-faced guy in a crown and tights who wants me to eat his cheeseburgers. He’s at least as bad as Donald, and twice as ugly, even if he is royalty of some sort.

Then there’s the kindly colonel, who talked me into eating untold hundreds of chickens. What about him? Doesn’t Klinger’s group want to do something about him?

Look, my point is Klinger is stupid. No, wait, that’s not it. My point is, I neither need nor want a consumer watchdog group protecting my delicate eyes from the sight of a clown hawking burgers. I can, believe it or not, decide for myself what I want for dinner. I’m guessing most Americans can say the same.

If I want a watchdog, Mr. Klinger, I’ll buy a pit bull. Meanwhile, have a cheeseburger and a chill pill. In fact, have two. Maybe if your mouth is full, it’ll shut you up for a while.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Picking the perfect minister for your wedding, one circuit at a time

I've been married several times. This doesn’t make me an expert in marriage (quite the opposite, in fact), but it has made me something of an authority when it comes to weddings. I can arrange a catered affair with a good band, elegant table settings and carefully thought out seating plan—in my head. No need for notes or a “wedding planner” book.

I never do any of this planning, of course, because that’s the bride’s duty. I’m not sure who devised this rule, but it seems to me a good one. The point is I could do the job if I ever needed to.

So far, though, the only job I’ve been allowed to handle is finding the minister.

My first wedding was presided over by a friend from high school who became a minister after graduation. The reverend at my second wedding I don’t remember; all I can recall is that he was too smart to fall for it when I told him—moments before the ceremony began—that my fiancée and I had decided to include the “honor and obey” thing in the vows after all. It’s probably a good thing he omitted these items, since that particular wife never even pretended to do either.

At my last wedding, the minister was some guy I found in the phone book. He looked great; bald with vaguely Catholic ministerial robes and a big Hassidic Rabbi beard. I felt like Rasputin was conducting the ceremony.

Yes, I’ve hired some cool ministers over the years. But none compare to the minister who will be doing my next wedding. This one’s going to cost more than all the others combined, but it’ll be worth it, I think.

She’s only four-foot tall and so far she’s performed only one other ceremony, but I’m hiring her anyway.

She’s a robot. A Japanese robot.

She’s the “I-Fairy” (yep, that’s what her Japanese creators, still reeling and confused from Godzilla’s last attack, apparently, have named her). She sports flashing eyes and plastic pigtails, and she’s licensed to perform weddings, at least in Tokyo.

She recently wed Satoko Inouye and Tomohiro Shibata. The bride praised Japan’s state-of-the-art robotics industry, saying people want robots that “serve some kind of purpose.” Coincidentally, Inouye is employed by Kokoro, the company that manufactures the I-Fairy as well as the “Hello Kitty” line of children’s toys.

Since the first time the bubble-headed automaton from “Lost in Space” warned Will Robinson there was danger nearby, I’ve wanted a robot of my own. Thanks to the Japanese, the only excuse I now need to get one is to get married again.

For 6.3 million yen (about $68,000) I can buy my next minister outright rather than pay the usual rental fee. I figure, judging from my previous marital track record, that I’ll get at least six or seven ceremonies out of the I-Fairy before I die. This results in some significant overall savings, based on the per marriage fee most ministers charge.

Despite the coolness factor of robotic minister, the technology really is still in its infancy. Maybe if I wait a while to get hitched again, the good folks at Kokoro will come up with a robotic bride as well.

I wonder if she could be programmed to honor and obey?

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

How I missed becoming the Taco King of the Midwest

The business that gave me my first job celebrated its 43^rd anniversary recently. Taco Boy had only been serving up Mexican food a couple years when they hired me on. I landed the job on the recommendation of my buddy Mick; he’d been working there three months without missing a shift.

I arrived at work, filled with sugar-plum visions of the many wonderful things I would buy with my first real paycheck. A new Corvette, maybe, or a house in the Hamptons.

I was a little vague on that whole “minimum wage” thing.

The manager appeared to be of genuine Mexican descent, which seemed to me exotic, and leant an air of authenticity to the place. I no longer remember her name, but it might have been Maria.

Maria patiently showed me how to operate the tortilla steamer, the lettuce chopper, the cheese grater…if you’re not responsible for payroll and taxes, there’s really not a lot to working at a Mexican fast food restaurant. I paid close attention anyway; this was my first job and I planned to work my way up to manager within a year, buy my own franchise, and eventually become a household name to rival Ronald McDonald. Mike Taylor, Taco-King of the Midwest.

Fifteen minutes into my first job, but I had big dreams.

After showing me the basics of taco building, Maria turned me loose on a couple customers. It soon became apparent that my math skills were such that I was never going to be able to make correct change or simultaneously carry two orders in my head without screwing up at least one of them.

Maria decided my skills might best be utilized in the kitchen steaming tortilla shells and chopping lettuce.

Now, this was my first job and I had never heard the word “hazing” before. Mick hadn’t warned me that Maria often played little jokes on new employees as a way of helping them “settle in” to the Taco Boy family.

So I was taken aback when she set an enormous bowl of pinto beans in front of me along with a spray bottle and kitchen towel and instructed me to clean each bean individually, making sure to keep an accurate count of each bean for “inventory purposes.”

This seemed a pretty humdrum job to lay on the future Taco-King of the Midwest, but I’m nothing if not a team player.

I removed the first bean from the bowl, sprayed it with water, rubbed it dry, and dropped it into a waiting container. One down, countless hundreds to go.

An hour later I had cleaned and counted 1,423 beans. The bowl was still half-full. Maria stuck her head around the corner.

“Hey Mike,” she said. “When did you say your birthday was again? I need it for the paperwork.”

“Um, November 26,” I said.

“And what’s your Social Security number?”

I told her; she made a notation on a clipboard.

“OK, thanks,” she said. “How many beans so far?”

“Uh…” I had lost count. “I don’t know exactly. Over a thousand.”

Sighing, Maria took the container of cleaned beans and dumped them back into the bowl of unclean beans.

“Sorry,” she kindly said. “You’ll have to start over. Management needs an exact count.”

I made it to bean number 2,012 before giving up. I threw my apron on the floor and stomped out the back exit. My career as Taco-King of the Midwest had lasted exactly 93 minutes.

Later that day, Mick explained the whole hazing thing to me. I felt too much a fool to ever go back for my paycheck. But I figure Taco Boy still owes me for that 93 minutes of bean counting.

Based on the minimum wage at the time, Taco Boy owes me nearly two bucks! Pay up, Maria.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

The little old lady that dreamed of a career in the news biz

Editing a small town newspaper was a real eye-opener. For years, I had made my living as a reporter or photographer for one paper or another, but my job at the Lakeview Enterprise represented my first full-time managing editor gig.

For the first time, I was the Big Kahuna, the man in charge, and the sucker who got to deal with all the crazies. And brother, lemme tell ya, small towns do have their share of crazies.

As editor of a community newspaper, you’re expected to cover the Lion’s Club breakfasts and Garden Society soirées. That’s the beauty of small-town newspapers, in fact; you report the stuff the “big guys” would never be interested in, the news that matters most to the locals. Your product is a vital link in keeping the community connected.

It’s a role I loved and one I’d still be doing if declining ad revenues hadn’t prompted the paper’s parent company to close it down.

During my tenure there, I learned a little about the newspaper business, a little about writing and editing, and a lot about dealing with crazies.

I call them crazy, though most were technically sane. Probably. A lot of folks, I guess, are crazy about one thing or another. Beauty pageant moms, for instance, simply cannot understand why you won’t run a photo of their seven-year-old daughter on the front page more than three weeks in a row. (“She came in second in the Little Miss Muffit Pageant in Kalamazoo, you idiot! Do you have any idea what a big deal that is?)

Women who own dance studios—the sort where elementary school kids stumble around a gym in sequined tights to the soundtrack of “Saturday Night Fever”—also demand front-page coverage for each of their weekly recitals.

Also worth noting are soccer moms, Little League moms, Rocket Football moms, band moms…basically, moms. I’m a parent too, and can certainly understand what it’s like to be proud of your kid and to want to share that pride with the community. But a paper has only so many pages and sometimes hard choices must be made.

That’s one reason I found it so difficult to pass over the stories Eunice brought in. In addition to being a self-proclaimed octogenarian with a “nose for news,” Eunice was also my neighbor. As a neighbor, she felt comfortable delivering “scoops” not just to my office, but to my home, day or night, seven days a week.

Among Eunice’s hot news tips were the following:

1) A prehistoric creature of some sort was spotted (by Eunice) living in the town’s lake. It looked something like the Loch Ness Monster, only smaller.

2) Bill, from down the block, had murdered his wife, Lillith, and Eunice had seen him burying her dismembered body in the back yard. (I saw Lillith at the grocery later that same day. She seemed to have all her parts intact. I am nothing if not a fact checker.)

3) Several young women were spotted, by Eunice, strolling casually around the neighborhood buck naked in the middle of the night after skinny dipping at the lake. (This story I checked out for myself, just in case. My late night front porch vigil failed to produce any solid evidence. Dammit.)

There were dozens of others over the years, and I think Eunice honestly believed in the veracity of each and every one of her reports. And honestly, most of Eunice’s stories were far more interesting than the village council minutes I was running each week.

In fact, it’s a shame I wasn’t able to put Eunice’s stories on the front page accompanied by lurid, heavily-Photoshopped pics. If I had, that paper might still be in business today.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.