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You
can’t be transgressive with fast food, at least beyond the rebellion
your body fights whenever you eat it. Fast-food meals are designed as
complete, corporate-designed, market-researched units of consumption.
You don’t have to think about creating them. You’re not supposed
to think about creating them. Hell, if you’ve ever had the brilliant
idea of mixing-and-matching, well, the brilliance of corporate America’s
sorted it all out prefab. Dunkin’ Donuts® and Baskin Robbins®!
Taco Bell® and KFC®! Nothing at all for you, the benighted consumer,
to worry about. Right?
M.K. Hobson of Oregon City, Oregon, thinks differently.
Here’s her instruction manual for Recombinant Fast Food Bliss, doing
the Nasty all taboo-style with Taco Bell® and Burger King®.
Step 1:
Download the album “Gimme Fiction” by Spoon, a jangly alt-rock
outfit from Austin, Texas, best known for their insouciant sex-funk song
“I Turn My Camera On.” They’ll get you in the mood to
commit crimes – of the not-even-a-misdemeanor victimless sort, that
is.
Step 2:
Get in your car, tell your iPod to “Gimme Fiction,” crank
the ignition and pull out of your driveway, hunkered low over the wheel,
looking shifty-eyed.
Step 3:
Make a Run for the Border. Grip your steering wheel tight, squint, and
pretend you’re dangerous. Try to find a suburb full of strip-malls
on a dark slick rainy night.
Step 4:
Park. We know this isn’t kosher Taco Bell behavior, but it’s
critical. Ain’t no way that drive-thru’s gonna make your day,
hombre.
Step 5:
Walk inside and make a beeline for the condiments caddy. Stuff your pockets
with Fire Sauce. I mean, just take handfuls of that shit. They’re
worth less than the coupons you cut out of the Sunday paper.
Step 5a: Make precisely that argument to any asshat manager
who tries to harsh your mellow. Alternatively, get all huffy with the
guy. Useful quote: “Dude, I just went through your drive-thru and
I had to haul my ass back here because you didn’t give me enough
Fire Sauce.”
Step 6:
Leave Taco Bell immediately, purchasing nothing. They suck.
Step 7:
Drive around looking for a Burger King®. You’re up to “My
Mathematical Mind” on the Spoon album, and thank God too, because
you’ll need that plodding bass line and determined-sounding piano
riff to keep you focused. Because you’re getting hungry. You just
had a fight with some uptight Taco Bell manager about fucking sauce packets,
and you’ve got no patience for driving around in the rainy dark
strip-mall suburbs any more.
Step 8:
Pull into the Burger King® drive-thru. Yes, that’s right. Walking
consumes valuable energies you now need to spend making your order.
Step 9:
Order a Burger King® TenderGrill®. Without the sauce.
Burger King helpfully the TenderGrill in its own Wikipedia entry and defines
it as a fire-grilled chicken patty, honey mustard, lettuce and tomato
on a “corn-dusted” bun. It is the Burger King chicken sandwich
formerly known as the BK Broiler and the Chicken Whopper. Burger King
Corp. has probably gone through these rebranding efforts blissfully unaware
that the honey-mustard sauce is foul and should be outlawed by the Geneva
Conventions.
Step 10:
Pull over, put the Taco Bell® Fire Sauce® on the Burger King®
TenderGrill®, and eat. The sandwich is warm and large, soft and crisp,
salty and sweet; hold it in both hands. There are delicate balances here;
appreciate them. Sink your teeth into the marshmallowy softness of the
whitebread bun, crunch through the crisp tang of the underripe tomato.
Savor the smoky saltiness of the velvet-tender chicken patty, the delicate
smoulder of the Fire Sauce. Close your eyes, chew slowly.
Juicy and spicy and pillowy and warm, this sandwich will fill your stomach,
delight your palate, and please your soul—simply and cheaply. [B]
MK HOBSON
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