Screwball Tragedy

Author: Mark Dillman

  • I’m Lovin’ It!

    McDonald's sign

    I love McDonald’s. The workers tend to be young and funny and full of energy. The dining areas are tidy and bright, and the parking lots are well lit and generally spacious. Plus, the smell of the French fries! I love McDonald’s!

    The restrooms are roomy and clean, and — unlike many of their competitors I could mention — there’s often a side entrance so you can gain access without having to pass before the eyes of a judgmental counter staff. McDonald’s employees don’t mind. They understand that sometimes a person needs to pee!

    A McDonald’s I went to recently had a giant wall-mounted screen playing zany videos of people setting Guinness World Records. Such fun! And the PlayPlaces (think colorful plastic balls)… nothing like that when I was a kid! Now youngsters can even print out and decorate their own Happy Meals box. And even the merch: so cute! Gotta love that Hamburglar, and gotta love McDonalds!

    On the macro, McD’s offers scholarships to personnel from underrepresented groups. Maybe not such a popular idea lately, but they do. And the whole Ronald McDonald House Charities thing is amazing. More than 260 of them, and all places to stay for the families of sick kids. What’s not to love? And betcha didn’t know there are 40 Care Mobile rolling clinics. Medical! Dental!

    They send crews out to pick up all the greasy McDonald’s litter dropped around city parks and parking lots! Well, no, but who cares? It feeds the seagulls! Seagulls love McDonald’s!

    For a few years I started my workday in suburban Chicago, just a few blocks from the spot of the first McDonald’s franchise in the whole United States. It was a museum, with mannequin employees in paper hats frozen in the act of flipping burgers and frying potatoes. The sign on the Golden Arches read, hilariously, Over One Million Sold.

    I love McDonald’s! I encourage everyone to stop in and say hello.

    Just, for god’s sake, don’t eat the food.

  • Just Desserts

    chocolate cake

    In the early aughts San Jose had an inspiring range of restaurants: Thai, Vietnamese. Indian. Dosas as big as your head. Kheer! The exception was Chinese, at least Veg Chinese.

    For that reason, S. and I were actually glad when a P.F. Chang’s opened downtown, about six blocks from our apartment. It wasn’t in a mall, the spring rolls and tofu were up to par, and the chain-restaurant vibe was comparatively subtle. The exception was the dessert menu, which couldn’t resist a geewhiz offering: The Great Wall of Chocolate, a staple to this day.

    But hey, if you preferred lighter fare, the Tiananmen Lemon Squares were always reliable.

  • Gone Boy

    On Wednesdays of junior year, I caught a ride to high school with a scrappy teen from my neighborhood named Chuck. We had been classmates since first grade, though never actual friends, but I could use the lift, and he could use the five bucks to fuel his rustbucket Chevy Impala, which barely seemed reliable enough to make it across town.

    1969 Chevrolet beater

    Not the actual car, alas. Possibly better than the actual car.

    Once, on Highway 41, a guy in a Cadillac tailgaited us for a few miles then followed us into a left turn lane, stopping inches from our back bumper. Chuck shut off the engine, waited until the left turn arrow changed to green, then got out — achingly slowly — and opened the Impala’s hood.

    The guy behind us was trapped by heavy passing traffic and couldn’t pull out to get by. I stayed in the car, staring straight ahead and listening to Dark Side of the Moon. Chuck kept up the car-trouble pantomime for three complete cycles of the light. Finally, he closed the hood, started the car and continued to school. All of this without a word.

    A few Wednesday mornings later I stood by my front door, waiting. Pickup time came and went with no sign of Chuck. After I had missed homeroom, still waiting, I called his house. Chuck’s mother asked, was I crazy? He took his books and left to get you an hour ago.

    When I finally got to school there was no sign of him, and in fact I never saw or spoke to him again. Months later I heard he had driven the Impala to Arizona to live with his equally scrappy brother, and that his mom never stopped believing I had somehow been involved in the plot.

    I picture him throwing textbooks out the window as he crosses the plains, lightening his load and hoping to reach the next gas station.

  • Incoming

    hard candy

    It’s 1999. I am standing in the rain — really more an icy drizzle — in Skokie, Illinois, a suburb my newspaper doesn’t even cover.

    I am trying to shoot a picture of the Niles North High School homecoming parade that doesn’t look like every other parade picture ever snapped. And do it without soaking my new 24-50mm lens.

    A kid on a float overhands a piece of hard candy which hits me squarely in the forehead, stunning me for a moment. I find this hilarious, already turning it into a story, until a mom comes over and asks, “Did you know you are bleeding?”

    This is one of life’s key loaded questions. No matter how you answer, the answer will not be good.

    photo by WikimediaImages

  • Shake. Rattle. Roll.

    Shredded tire.

    A few months back, heading northbound toward Seattle on the interstate, with afternoon traffic moving slightly above the speed limit — a rare enough occurrence to be a story in itself — I was keeping right to allow hardcore speeders easy passage when I noticed a series of cars in my lane suddenly braking, moving left, then rocketing forward.

    Drawing closer, I realized a battered Camry was going about 50, despite a flat tire on the driver’s side rear. The highway shoulder was plenty wide enough to pull over and safely change it or call for help, but apparently the occupants were determined to make it to the next exit, about a mile ahead.

    Fascinated by the Camry’s side-to-side shake, I slowed to match its speed, hung back a dozen car lengths, and turned my flashers on. I expected the shredding tire to fly apart, but the car made it to the exit for an area called Star Lake, which has a gas station a few yards off the interchange. But they just kept going.

    When I pulled out and passed, the driver, a teenage boy in a backward ballcap, and now more than two miles from the nearest ramp, was chatting on the phone, laughing. I tried to imagine the conversation:

    “Dude, whassup… Me? Not much. I’m on I-5, heading back to Canada.”

  • 23-peat

    BIZ PRESS – The DNA testing firm 23andMe continues to struggle after declaring bankruptcy in late March, though courts have cleared the way for Regeneron Pharmaceuticals to buy the company, which has lost millions of dollars since its heyday in 2021. Officials originally blamed the bankruptcy on weak demand and fallout from a data breach, but internal audits have revealed that more than half of all American men who visited the company’s website mistakenly believed it was a discussion forum focused on their lifelong personal devotion to Michael Jordan.

    Chicago Bulls jersey

  • Other People’s Kids

    (Because at small newspapers that’s what you did.)

    Boy playing ring toss.
    Boy playing ring toss, Chicago, 1997 – by Mark Dillman

  • Smackdown.edu

    According to a notion popularized by psychology professor K. Anders Ericsson, it takes 10,000 hours of practice at a task to make you an expert. The Trump White House is, of course, more of a fake-it-till-you-make-it operation, yet even by those lax standards Linda McMahon’s CV seemed a bit thin for the Secretary of Education gig. Until her appointment, McMahon’s most notable achievement in the field was mistakenly claiming she had an education degree.

    Oops. French.

    Yet simply in terms of faking it she is, if anything, overqualified, having come from the exalted world of professional wrestling, steadfast in its concern for the welfare of children. In the 1990s, for instance, World Wrestling reportedly allowed a predatory announcer who had been fired over his taste for “ring boys” to return to the fold, but only after a stern warning from McMahon’s husband, Vince, to “stop chasing after kids.”

    So, then: not soft on discipline, always a conservative ideal.

    A decade later her World Wrestling Entertainment banned wrestlers from smashing chairs over opponents’ heads, a rule which could easily be adapted to classrooms or cabinet meetings.

    Why then, given such a rare opportunity to influence the youth of America, would McMahon go along with Trump’s lust to shutter ED?

    Christopher Rufo, a conservative DEI foe who is spearheading the drive to shut down the Department of Education, admitted to New York Times columnist Russ Douthat that the reason they want to close the agency instead of reforming it is because, “Conservatives cannot fully staff the Department of Education… Shutting things down is actually a very effective strategy.”

    True, good help is always hard to find. Yet Rufo is overlooking a ready pool of staffers, and staunch patriots all: the WWE has 800 employees who could surely find ways to multitask for the sake of its future fan base, and double-dip in the bargain (a term, in fact, which sounds like a wrestling move). At McMahon’s level it’s common for executives to bring along their best people, and I’m sure they all have opinions on schooling. Who doesn’t?

    Even better, WWE classifies its wrestlers as independent contractors, leaving them plenty of motivation to pitch in, and possibly qualify for health insurance in the bargain.

    Meanwhile Linda, presumably putting in eight-hour days behind the big desk, is watching the minute hand on her Rolex and putting a significant dent in that 10,000-hour deficit.

    WWE star Natalya wrestling

    Deputy Secretary of Education Natalya, left, during recent negotiations with the president of the NEA.

    Bonus fact: the Department of Education is often referred to as ED, rather than DOE, to distinguish it from the Department of Energy. Could it be that the abbreviation ED, in its other context, explains the undisguised hatred Trump seems to hold for the agency?

  • Rhapsody on Blue

    CTA

    It’s just after midnight in Chicago, 1999, on a Blue Line elevated train headed outbound, and a nattily dressed older man is drinking hard liquor straight from the bottle. He’s upset, he explains to no one in particular, because “my baby cheated on me,” even though “I gave her 20 dollars and told her to splurge.”

    A younger guy teases the drunk, who then flashes something from a pocket and says, “I’ll cut off your ears!”

    “With that butter knife?” asks the younger man, who also offers this pearl, although I miss whatever prompted it: “Just because you pour syrup on shit don’t make it pancakes.”

    By Division Street the knife has been put away and the young man is trying to explain to the drunk – who thinks he is riding to Riverdale, which, outside the context of Archie and Jughead, I’ve never even heard of – that he is on the wrong train, the wrong transportation system, and headed in the wrong direction. He should be on Metra.

    At Wicker Park the older man takes another pull from his pint bottle and steps onto the platform. As the train doors close the other passengers whoop with laughter. “Gave his baby 20 dollars and told her to splurge,” says one. “Man, you can’t cross the street with 20 dollars.”

  • Hijinks

    Girl on park swing

    I have no children, no firsthand experience, and never have any idea how old strangers’ children are, but feel strongly that all existing children, when in public, should have their ages displayed prominently on their clothing, thus making it easier for me to later describe that hilariously cute thing they did. Because making a labradoodle wear a watermelon rind for a hat is charming from a three-year-old, but just abusive from a high school junior.

    Pixabay photo by Rudy and Peter Skitterians