The Problem with the Tray at McDonald’s

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Neil

One childhood ritual of mine that continues to this day is my method of eating French fries at McDonald’s. I spill the fries onto the tray, rip open two of those jagged-edged ketchup packets (one is never enough) and squirt the tomato delicacy into the empty zone situated between the fries and the edge of the tray. As most of you probably know, when I say “the tray” I don’t mean that I eat directly off of the dirty, plastic, dark-brown McDonald’s tray. No, I throw the fries on the paper “placemat” that is slid on top of the tray by the McDonald’s employee before the arrival of the food. These placemats tend to be colorful advertisements on the front, extolling the fun and community-mindedness of Ronald McDonald, while the back contains the nutritional information, hidden from the customer’s view.

My French fry eating method has one major drawback. Since there are no waiters or busboys at McDonald’s, the customer is expected to do his civic duty and bus his own tray. Several garbage receptacles are provided with swinging doors, so a customer could open one of them by pushing it inward with his tray, avoiding hand contact, and then with a mere shake of the wrist, empty the tray into the darkness of the receptacle. The cheerful customer would then place his tray on top of one of the gray, fake-linoleum receptacles, adding it to a neatly arranged pile of identical trays, ready to be cleaned and reused.

While I am sure this clean-up system works efficiently at the McDonald’s Engineering Lab at Hamburger University, my ritual of spilling out the fries and ketchup onto the paper placemat exposes a major glitch. My placemat always sticks to the tray itself, and no amount of shaking, or banging the tray against the side of the receptacle can ever release it from its greasy prison.

This unfortunate problem requires me to make some hard decision when I visit McDonald’s. Should I stick my hand into the receptacle and manually pull the paper placemat off the tray, potentially splashing ketchup all over my hand, arm, or even my shirt? Or should I just pass the problem off to others, by tossing the tray, with the sticky, stained, paper placemat, right on the remaining pile of trays.

Over the years, many of my friends, having the same difficult with the receptacles (after copying my technique of eating French Fries) chose the second route of action, rationalizing it by insisting that they, “cleaned it off as best as they could.” I could never sink that low. My parents raised me to do better.

But recently, as in many stories, a change in direction came from an unlikely source, forever changing my relationship with the garbage receptacles at McDonald’s. Last week, after my yearly checkup, my doctor told me that I had high cholesterol and sugar levels, and that I should probably stop eating at McDonald’s. A mere day later, another event occurred, adding more fuel to the drama. The Dominican Diner down the block closed down, seized by the State of New York for the non-payment of taxes. The closure of the diner left McDonald’s as the only place within ten block to grab a quick and inexpensive cup of coffee.

McDonald’s or not? That is the question. My decision was — I compromised. This week, I visited McDonald’s four times, but only to order a cup of coffee – no food. No breakfast burrito. No hamburger. No chicken wrap. Not even French fries. I noticed that because I only ordered coffee, the cashier skipped the tray, and just handed me the coffee, right into my open hand – even if I intended to drink it at the restaurant.

This not only enhanced my health, but revolutionized my handling of the clean-up. After drinking the coffee, I now simply push open the garbage receptacle with the paper cup, and toss it away. No more fighting with the unruly paper placemat grabbing hold on to the tray for dear life. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even start to bring my own cup down to McDonald’s and avoid using the garbage receptacle at all.

Truth quotient: 100%. This is the type of story you get when the truth quotient is 100%.

Posted in Food, Health | Tagged | 5 Comments

Central Park

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Neil

Bethesda Fountain

Catching the Bubble

The Great Lawn

Balloons for Sale!

The Lake

Roller Skating to the Music

The Carousel

Big Bird Taking a Stroll

The Sun Sets

Posted in Blogging and the Internet | 6 Comments

The Last Call

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Neil

phone

I haven’t spoken to Sophia in three months.

I have been reluctant to mention this to you, fearing you think I am hopelessly pining for us to get back together, which is not the case at all.  But I’m a sentimental fool, and I was still hoping for a different sort of ending to our long journey together, one where we could joke with each other about our new lives post-divorce, like two ex-lovers in a romantic comedy. Instead, we burned bridges.

I was depressed about this for a month, as if the past dozen years were a waste of my time, but as time crept on, I acknowledged that sometimes you need to learn, love, grow, and move on. By month three, I found myself spending more time worrying about a faraway woman in New Zealand than making peace with the past.

The first week after the blowout was intense. She blocked my phone number. She blocked my landline and my cell phone.  She blocked my mother’s cell phone.  My last attempt to fix things was one of pure desperation — walking down the block to the public phone outside the liquor store, a spot usually reserved for lonely late night phone card calls to foreign countries.

I placed four quarters into the slot. I wiped the receiver with my t-shirt, concerned about exotic germs. I dialed Sophia’s home number. And nothing. I lost all of my money. The phone was rigged the phone so the coins became stuck in the slot. I battered the phone with my fist, like a bully.  The phone laughed at me.

“Fuck it,” I said, taking it as a sign not to call her again.

Not everything has to be tied up together neatly like a fictional story.  Sometimes the tale just ends, without a moral.

Posted in Life with Sophia | Tagged , | 28 Comments

Write What You Know

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Neil

write

for the Absence of Alternatives -

Sherry called me about the blog post that I emailed her earlier that day.  I had asked her to read it before I published it.

“You cannot publish this,” she said.

“Why not?”

She read me the last paragraph of my piece over the phone.  Her voice had a tone of shrill mockery.

“Jason walked up to the plate, the baseball bat in his tiny outstretched hand. It was at that moment, the fifth inning of second game of the Queens County Peewee Little League season,  that I saw my son become a man, confident and assured, a true athlete, a mirror image of his old man. “That’s my son,” I wanted to shout. “That’s my beautiful son!”

I was so proud of myself when I wrote that passage, sharing a touching moment with my readers, that I was shocked when I heard Sherry’s disapproval.

“You didn’t like it?” I asked, confused. “I thought you would be moved to tears!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?  It doesn’t matter WHAT I feel. It’s not true. You are not a father. You do not have a son. You were never an athlete.”

“It’s fiction.”

“And how do I know it’s fiction.”

“Look at the very end of the piece. In the tiny print, it says — “this is pure fiction.”"

“No, no, no. That doesn’t change a thing.  A blog post has to be true. It cannot be fiction.  Look, I know you are jealous of all of the mommy and daddy bloggers out there and all the attention they from the brands, but you can’t write a story about being a father.”

“Why not?”

“Because it opens up a Pandora’s box that will allow white people to steal the stories of African-Americans, and men to write like they understand women, until eventually no one will know what is true and what is fake, and society will simply collapse. We must write what we know.”

“But it’s fiction! Tolkien didn’t know any Hobbits.”

“There are no real Hobbits. But there are real fathers. And you will never know what it means to be a father going to a Little League game. You can never write about it honestly. Even in fiction.  Write about your own life. Sophia, Juli, your mother.”

“But it can be frustrating just writing about my own life.   When I become too honest about my life, people become all judgmental about my life choices, and unfollow me on Facebook.”

“Stop worrying so much  about other people. If you are honest and authentic, we accept you for who you really are.  We WANT to know the REAL you and the REAL events in your life!”

“Is that true or is that just a platitude?” I asked, chuckling. “Do you really and honestly want me to write a blog post about the time you and Martha gave me those blowjobs inside the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disneyland during that Disney Social Media weekend?”

“Stop it!  You promised me!  You can never ever tell that story. Especially since Disney is one of my biggest clients.”

“But it’s a true story, right?”

“Of course it’s a true story. But you have to maintain some confidentiality. You have to act like a professional and not just blurt everything out.”

“So, do you see the bind I’m in?  I can’t make up stories about being a father because it isn’t true.   And I can’t tell true life stories about getting blowjobs by mommybloggers during Disney Social Media weekends because it is TOO true.   So, what else am I left with?”

“You can write a post for my “Campaign to Stop Bullying Blogathon.”

“I’m never writing an anti-bullying post. I like bullying. In fact, bullying was one of my favorite pastimes when I was a teenager. I bullied other kids. And that’s the God Honest Truth.”

“Neil, I don’t believe a word you’re saying. You’re a liar.”

“I’m a writer.”

“No, you’re not. A writer writes honestly and authentically, but without malice, and betters the world.  You’re a fool. The world never improves from your writing.  It just grows worse.”

****

Later that night, there was a knock on my door. It was Sergeant Anthony Rodriguez of the NYPD, 107th Police Precinct. He was a short balding man with a bodybuilder’s body that fit too snugly in his blue uniform.

“Do you know a woman named Sherry Koningsberg,” he asked. His eyes squinted, as if trying to read my face before I even answered.

“Yes,” I do. “She’s an online friend.”

“She’s dead.”

“OMG,” I said.

“What?”

“OMG. That means Oh My God in Internet talk.”

“Whatever. Your friend was murdered!”

“OMG”

He reached into his side pocket and presented me with a crumpled piece of paper. I unfolded it, as slowly as unraveling an origami bird. It was a printout of the blog post that I emailed to Sherry the previous night. And it was splattered with her dark red blood, the same color that was staining my t-shirt that read “Write What You Know,” the one I bought at the Strand Bookstore in December on that same day I was caught masturbating to that Thai Noodle cookbook in the Culinary Adventures aisle of the bookstore.

“You’re under arrest,” uttered Officer Rodriguez, and read me my Miranda rights. My eyes fluttered left and right, looking for an escape.  And then I did it.  I charged forward, pushing the officer aside, and sped down the corridor, like a gazelle running from a tiger, but before I could reach the staircase, I felt the hard cold knock of a wooden club smack me in the back of my head, and I fell to the freshly washed tile floor with a loud thud, and I was out cold.

tiny print — this is pure fiction.

Posted in Literary | Tagged , | 16 Comments

News Cycle

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Neil

First, we were horrified at the Boston bombing.

Then, progressives hoped he was a white nut job so Fox news couldn’t blame it on Islam.  Then conservatives hoped he was Muslim, so liberals would accept the importance of the “war on terror.”

Then we became sentimental about running, marathons,  and the great city of Boston.  Then we debated whether we should even call them terrorists.

Then we all insisted that we hold judgement until the suspects were proven guilty.  Then we talked about them anyway.

Then we laughed at how stupid the media looked in handling the entire story.  Then the media laughed at the internet for fingering the wrong person.

Then we wondered whether this bombing proves a need for more gun control, since it is so easy to buy weapons, or less gun control, so we can protect ourselves.  Then we got caught up in the excitement of the chase and the shootouts.  Then we thanked the police.

Then we felt sympathetic to  Dzhokhar Tsarnaev because he was brainwashed by his brother.  Then we hated him again when we read his racist tweets.

Then we wondered if it was our own colonial policies that caused the radicalization of the world, and the West is to blame.  Then we decided that religion is actually good, but it is the people who distort it who are bad.  Then we wondered if maybe ALL religion is bad.

Then we blamed Russia for their policies in Chechnya.  Then we mocked ourselves for not knowing where Chechnya is on a map.

Then, Neil Diamond sang “Sweet Caroline” at a baseball game, and we decided that Boston has bounced back.

Then there was a thwarted plot in Canada, but since there was no bomb, we shrugged it off.   Then we moved on.

A week later, we hardly remember the victims’ names.

Posted in News and Politics | Tagged | 14 Comments

The Sequence That They Edited Out From the Dove Video

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Neil

The Title of this article from Hollywood.com says it all, “Dove Video PROVES women are more beautiful than they think!”

YouTube Preview Image

But was it truly proven? Citizen of the Month was able to obtain certain material that was edited out of the final video, such as this interview with LAURA, a thirty-five year old accountant and mother of two from North Hollywood, California.

Dove: “A forensic artist wants to draw a sketch of you. He is hidden in another room. Please describe yourself to him.”

Laura: “Well, let’s see. I am decent enough for someone my age. But I never really liked my chin. My friends used to call me “Jay Leno.” I’ve also gained some weight since college. I’ve never liked my big nose, and my hair is too curly and unmanageable. On a scale from 1-10, I would rate myself a 5. I wish I were prettier. My mother never thought I was pretty. She always told me to stop slouching. I slouch too much. I’m disappointed in myself and the way I look.”

Dove: “Interesting. Now, while you were in the waiting room, you were sitting next to another woman. Her name is Cheryl. The forensic artist now wants to make a sketch of her based on your description. Please give him your honest description of Cheryl.”

Laura: “Cheryl? That woman in the waiting room? Wow! That woman looks like she’s really let herself go. She was dressed in clothes off the rack from Walmart. Girl, at least go to Marshall’s and find something half-decent! She was — I can only describe her as fat, like she hasn’t walked a block in years. She needs to go to the gym. I would never let myself go like that. I mean my chin is bad, but at least I exercise. And what’s with her eyes? Is she cross-eyed? Her thick glasses certainly don’t help. Contacts, baby, contacts! She needs a fashion makeover ASAP, and cosmetic surgery or at least some Botox. She’s probably only around forty, but looks more like sixty-five. I feel bad for her husband. All in all, she made me feel more way prettier in contrast. I guess I’m not so bad.”

Dove: Uh, thank you.

[sequence deleted from film]

Moral of the story: Some people see the best in you. And others are just assholes. Don’t let others define who you are. Nothing proves nothing. Especially in edited marketing videos. Define yourself.

Posted in Advertising and Marketing | Tagged , | 25 Comments

One Thing a Day — What Happened?

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Neil

flatiron

After my birthday and my eighth blogiversary, I had this brilliant idea in which to re-energize my blog. I would sit down every night at midnight and write the first thing that came to my mind, no matter how short a piece, like an old-fashioned personal diary.  It seemed like an effective and simple concept, and I promoted it to others.

It was a very very very bad idea.

Most of my friends are full of compassion and dedicated to social justice, using their online influence to better the world. They share their “secrets to success.” They rally their followers against what is wrong in our society — from income inequality to gaining universal acceptance of gay marriage. Or they make us laugh, to ease the pain.

But when I sit down to write, at least at the midnight hour, when the night goes silent, and the city settles into bed, there is nothing more fearful than the voice of my honest heart. I hear the cries of disappointment and anger, lust and shame, jealousy and tears. I bully myself for my lack of courage, and then I turn to you, the reader, with my index finger shaking in your face, mocking your hypocrisy, blindness, and pettiness. And then, when guilt sets in, I apologize, begging for forgiveness.

“It is love talking,” I say. “I love you too much. And you don’t love me enough.”

It’s partly true.   No, it’s mostly bullshit.   I don’t know what I’m saying.  And that’s the problem.  At midnight, when thoughts arise, they bounce around in unexpected ways, like a rubber ball in a racquetball court. Stories of love and friendship warp into tales of yearning and abandonment.

Writing takes discipline and intelligence. There is none of that at midnight in my house. Now you know why I abandoned this “write every day” project after day four.

It would kill me.  I need to go back to writing during the day, when the sun is out.  Maybe once a week.

Posted in Blogging and the Internet | Tagged | 21 Comments

One Thing a Day #4 – Changes

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Neil

me

Posted in One Thing a Day | 6 Comments

One Thing a Day #3 – High Finance

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Neil

train

My grandparents were socialist-leaning Democrats who kept a photo of Eleanor Roosevelt in their hallway, next to the family photos.  My father worked in a city hospital, and received a city pension.  He bought New York City bonds, the safest bet at the time, which had the lowest interest.  We never talked about money or finance.   The business section of the Sunday newspaper was the one we always tossed aside.   “People like us” didn’t have anything to do with Wall Street or the business world.

I became an English major in college.  A film student in graduate school. A writer. A blogger. An instagram photographer. To this day, I remain a financial idiot. I don’t own any real estate or stock.  Doing my income taxes gives me anxiety.   There’s no one else to blame.  I am to blame.   I’m certainly smart enough to open a book on investing or use google to search “mutual funds.” It just never seemed like something that I should do.  Thinking too much about money was wrong.  I should rather worry about the wealth inequalities in American life than selfishly grab my share of it.

I’ve been blogging for nine years now, and I’ve met many people.  I can categorize everyone I know into two camps — those who understand the business side of life AND those who are clueless.

Most of my friends tend to lean towards the artistic side, and for many of those who don’t have a working spouse or a trust fund,  they are hurting financially. Freelance jobs have disappeared, and the publishing, film, academic, and music worlds are shrinking.  Years ago, our parents worked for the same firm for decades.   You could live a comfortable life, even if you weren’t a self-starter.  We are not as lucky.

My advice to you.   Forget BlogHer this year.  Attend a personal finance class instead.  Some of have started online courses. Others have bought real estate, renting it out to students.  The key to survival is KNOWLEDGE.  Most who make money found a mentor, or have a relative, who showed them the ropes.

We feel uncomfortable talking about money.   We say platitudes like “there is enough for everyone,” when we know this isn’t true.  There aren’t unlimited opportunities.  Luck comes from the whispers in a room, and not everyone is invited.

If times are tough for artists and writers, imagine the difficulties of the hard-working individual, stuck in a low-paying job.  We’ve heard many reports about the vast inequality of wealth in America, where the richest 1% of Americans own 40% of the country’s total wealth.  In an article in The Atlantic, Noah Smith, an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, says that while income is important, we should not forget the importance of finance and savings.  It is through saving and investing that the wealthy STAY wealthy. He goes as far as suggesting that public schools TEACH financial education as a way to prepare students for life.

Financial education in public schools is a must. I’m not talking about teaching kids the Capital Asset Pricing Model. I mean what Bob Shiller calls “basic Suze Orman stuff.” How to make a monthly budget. What “saving” and “borrowing” mean. How wealth builds over time. How to avoid borrowing lots of money at high interest rates (e.g. credit cards and payday loans). Etc. The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau can help a lot with this too, by preventing companies from tricking poor people into taking out high-interest debt.

I think this is a great idea, even if all this money talk seems like a foreign language to the disenfranchised.   It will demystify the concept of wealth and money.   I have two advanced degrees — and I need help with the basics of saving, borrowing, assets and mutual funds.

In addition to “nudging” middle-class and poor Americans to save more, we can help them get a better return on their assets — the second thing that has a huge effect on wealth in the long run. This means helping middle-class people invest in stocks without paying high fees. The first part of this is teaching middle-class people to avoid making frequent changes in their stock portfolios. Studies show that individual investors consistently lose money when they try to buy and sell and buy and sell, mostly because they tend to ignore trading costs. So financial education should teach people to let their stock portfolios just sit there for decades, and ignore the ups and downs.

Last year, we wanted to Occupy Wall Street, but no one had a plan for what to do with it — once it was occupied.   Perhaps a better strategy is education, so everyone can be smarter with their money.    Those with money have created the game so they always win.  Everyone else is going to be left out, unless they study up.

Posted in News and Politics, One Thing a Day | Tagged , | 14 Comments

One Thing a Day #2 – The Laundry

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Neil

Boiler Room

Wise men say, “Don’t air your dirty laundry,” so I’m not going to do that. But that doesn’t mean I can’t tell you about the clean, but still very wet laundry that was spinning in the dryer in the garage when Sophia and I had our last fight in the house.

“I’ll take the Shuttle to the airport,” I said, grabbing the soggy clothes in mid-rotation and throwing them into my suitcase.

I walked to the laundromat by the post office, wheeling my luggage in like I was entering the marble lobby of the Four Seasons. A homeless man was washing himself in the sink. A grumpy African-American woman was reading Jet magazine; Fantasia was on the cover. I remembered when Sophia and I watched Fantasia win American Idol. How long ago was that? 2004?! Nine years ago!

I opened the suitcase on the cleanest linoleum counter, and tossed the damp clothes into the commercial drier. My brightly colored shorts and t-shirts — direct from summertime in New Zealand — created a colorful kaleidoscope as they spun, but they would do little to keep me warm during the cold gray wintery life of New York City.

In the front pocket of the suitcase was a New Zealand Paua shell that Juli gave me to take home. It was wrapped in a red towel. I carefully peeled the flaps of the flannel towel open, like a onion, or like a woman, to make sure that it was still in one piece.

Sophia called. We talked. We calmed down. She drove me to LAX. At the American Airlines terminal, I gave her my house key. In New Zealand, Juli gave me her house key, and I took it — a promise to return. And here I was, giving my other house key back to Sophia.

It was not the way I imagined leaving the house for the last time, wheeling out my wet clothes in a suitcase.

Posted in Life with Sophia, One Thing a Day | Tagged , , | 11 Comments