Kevin's (b)Log (Peanutty & Painful)

The McDonald's Incident

2008-04-04T15:19:00.064-04:00

Like most Americans, over the years I've developed a certain set of expectations when I walk into a McDonald's restaurant. Keen attention to instructions, exceptional cleanliness, and a fine board of fare are almost never the case. Gut-wrenching nausea, however, does occasionally have its place at McDonald's. Most of us have experienced it, from time to time, after an impulsive Quarter Pounder or McNugget binge. Today, however, I found a McDonald's in Akron, Ohio that serves up a heaping helping of gut-wrenching nausea nice and hot, on the fly, before you even step up to the counter.

I was on my way to a mail-house near downtown to drop off a few batches of direct mail for some of our clients. It was almost mid-afternoon and I hadn't eaten since dinner the night before, so I wanted to stop and pick up something I could snarf back while driving to Cleveland. My only choices were a ghetto BP station (where I once witnessed a near ass-beatin' street fight between two large white women) and a small ghetto McDonald's on Wolf Ledges Boulevard. Since I didn't feel like being approached for loose change or cigarettes at the BP, I opted for the tiny Mickey Dees. It was a choice that may haunt me for years to come.

As I walked inside, the first thing I encountered was a city sanitation worker being handed his food. The kid handing it to him was a pale-white, rail-thin, pimply-faced doofus with a peach-fuzz mustache. His hair was shaved on the sides but long on top and he couldn't have been more than 20. He was the type of kid you see wearing an Insane Clown Posse hoody with over-sized carpenter jeans and his skinny white ass hanging out the top. The type of kid you see stomping across a Marc's or Game Stop parking lot with his fat, tired-looking girlfriend, smoking a Doral, carrying a half-empty bottle of Faygo and wearing a dirty velveteen sweatsuit.

But I digress. For now, this kid was wearing a brown polyester McDonald's smock, big "summer teeth" smile, and holding a mop while asking the city sanitation worker (loudly and enthusiastically), "Heyy - djoo have to clean up the shit today?" These were literally the first words that hit my ears as I entered the restaurant. I looked at the sanitation worker who was unphased - the look on his face said he had been asked this a thousand times (maybe even by this kid). "No," he said. "We actually have another crew that takes care of that." With that, he walked out the door. Now it was my turn.

Immediately I was greeted by an obese, middle-aged, black lady with a big, toothy smile and flared nostrils. "What can I get for ya?", she barked at me. "I'll take two grilled chicken snackers ... chipotle ... and a large Diet Coke please." She took my order. I paid and stepped back.

Just then, the door behind me swung open and another rail-thin white trash kid swooped in next to me, holding an empty McDonald's cup. He wore a buzz-cut, dirty jeans and a dirty (once-white) t-shirt with the collar stretched out. Huffing and puffing, he leaned over the counter, looked down the cook's line and bellowed, "Hey - do you do free refills?" The Big Black McDonald's Lady waddled up and replied, "Uhh, no ... this ain't no regular McDonald's like you sit in ... it's a take-out only. We fill it but it's uhhhh 60-cents." The kid's eyes got as big as saucers. "You shittin' me!?", he exclaimed. Then, he looked at me and said, "Well f***, 60-cents or no 60-cents, I'm thirsty as hell! Fill it up - Coke!" And he scooted the empty cup across the counter toward Big Black McDonald's Lady.

For the next 2 or 3 minutes (which seemed more like a half an hour), the kid conducted a one-sided conversation with me. It started with a simple greeting - "Wassup?" But soon it evolved to personal matters - namely his apparent issue with irritable bowel syndrome after eating McDonald's hamburgers. "Man, you gotta' watch out whatchoo eat here, man. F***in' McDonald's man - make me gotta' poop!" He finished this statement with a noticeable level of self-amusement and kind of jumped a little as he said it. Just then, Big Black McDonald's Lady came back with his Coke, trying to get the lid on, spilling Coke all over her hands as she did. The kid didn't skip a beat and kept right on going about his IBS. "I'm serious y'all," he said excited. "I ate here less than half an hour ago and I already pooped three times!" As if this weren't surreal enough, as he said this, Big Black McDonald's Lady burst out laughing so hard, a long rope of saliva shot from her big teeth, across her forearm, down to the counter between us. It lasted only a second or two, but as she continued laughing, her eyes locked onto mine and she quickly attempted to wipe up the spit with her other hand. The kid was yucking it up too. I can't imagine what kind of look I had on my face at that point, but after another second or two they both settled down and looked away. I don't know if I was more disturbed or entertained at that point.

Before I knew it, Big Black McDonald's Lady was presenting me with my food. Without hesitation, I quickly grabbed it from her Coke-doused hand, did an about-face, and walked out the door. As I did, Poop Kid soberly offered me a "take it easy man."

As I drove up I-77 North, my imagination ran wild with the kind of atrocities that could have taken place with my food on that cook's line. I was reminded of the old thrash song by SNFU - "Kitchen Kreeps" in which the lead singer howled, "Gross inhuman-like abominations, infecting food for all of the patrons." Eeeesh!

Top 5 Negative Celebrity Run-Ins

2008-03-04T22:02:00.040-05:00

Over the years, with a career in the media and a penchant for bands that play small clubs, I've had the opportunity to meet many celebrities ... and make a few of them angry, even hostile from time to time. Here are my top 5 favorite not-so-pleasant encounters with famous people:

5.) Greg Norman. Maybe my first ever negative celebrity encounter. My parents took me to the NEC World Series of Golf when I was around 14 or so. I spent the day gathering a good amount of autographs from folks like Payne Stewart, Hale Irwin, Curtis Strange, etc. But this year, the most famous guy was The Great White - Greg Norman. I remember toward the end of the day, I was lucky enough to spot him with only 2 or 3 other people as we walked across a parking lot. When I asked him for his autograph (now keep in mind, I was only a 14-year old kid at the time) he told me to get lost. I was flabbergasted. Later in life, I would take revenge out on Tori Amos and Michael Stanley (the latter doesn't make the list here only because no one outside of Ohio actually knows who he is).

4.) Tori Amos. I was interning at WENZ-FM in Cleveland my last semester of college. Tori Amos had a couple of songs that were big on Alternative Radio and I couldn't stand her. She visited the station one day while in town for a concert. Everyone was pawing at her, doting over her, telling her how great she was. I thought she was a talentless hack - ugly too. Everyone started lining up to get their picture taken with her and I wound up being the one who took most of the pictures. At the end, everyone asked me if I wanted my picture taken with her. I looked at everybody like they were crazy and said "Are you kidding, uhhh, no thanks." Turned around and walked away. As I left, I could hear her say something coarse, but to this day I'm not sure what it was.

3.) Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs). I went to see the Afghan Whigs play a show at the old Euclid Tavern on the east side of Cleveland around '92 or so. The opening bands had finished and everyone was pig-piling at the front of the stage waiting for the Whigs to come on. I had to pee really bad and in spite of them hitting the stage any second, I made my way down to the creepy dungeon-like restroom located in the basement of the Euc. As I hit the bottom of the steps and turned the corner, I ran right into the 4 members of the band standing in a circle, passing a roach around. I was the only one down there at that moment and as I passed by, they all stopped talking and just looked at me. I went ahead and passed through them to get to the can. As I was peeing, Greg Dulli yelled out, "Hey man, do you party?" Still peeing, I yelled back, "No." Brief pause. "Well then get the f*** outta' here chief!" And the four of them busted out laughing. I felt like Dumbo being heckled by the black crows. That was my first encounter with Greg Dulli. Five years later, and a couple more albums that had barley broke the Top 100 later, Greg Dulli was much more humble when I met him again at the Odeon.

2.) Michael Bolton. I was working at a popular steak house when one of the servers busted onto the waiters aisle exclaiming, "Michael Bolton is here!" After I stopped laughing my ass off, I went to investigate. All it took was a quick glance and I was convinced the guy wasn't Michael Bolton. To make a long story short - I wound up confronting him and telling him straight to his face that I thought he was a fraud. That's how convinced I was. He was surprisingly despondent. And while he really didn't seem to be bothered by the claim I was making, his entourage was. In particular, this little Australian guy with Billy Idol hair got somewhat confrontational with me. In the end, I was proved wrong when the waitress (near tears now) approached me in the waiter's aisle waving his wife's AmEx card ... with her name - something something dash Bolton. Oh well, screw it - it was Michael Bolton. Didn't negate the fact that he sucks.

1.) Kurt Cobain. I saw Nirvana play at a club called The Empire that used to be located next to Progressive Field, before there was a Jacob's Field. On my way into the show, I was able to snag a very sweet tour poster right off the lobby wall. After the show (which had Urge Overkill opening), I got backstage with my friend Grace and met first with Dave Grohl (nice guy, but busy talking to relatives), then with Krist Novoselic (warm and pleasant), and finally with the man himself - the troubled Kurt Cobain. He was sitting on a couch in between two punk rock girls, sweating and staring at the floor. I approached him slowly, extended my hand and introduced myself. He looked up at me without saying anything and shook my hand. I asked if I could get his autograph on the poster. Visibly irritated by my intrusion into his zone-out time, he asked, "You got a pen?" I told him I did not. "Well how'n the f*** you expect me to sign your poster?" Slightly shocked by his belligerence, I couldn't help but laugh. Suddenly, one of the punk rock girls exclaimed, "I've got a pen!" and as I retrieved it from her hand, Mr. Cobain shot her a searing look. I said, "Here." He continued looking at the girl for a moment, then he shook his head and yelled, "F***!" He yanked the pen out of my hand and wrote, "Autograph by Kurt." I have it to this day. And well, we all know what became of him.

The Dough Incident

2008-03-03T21:19:00.016-05:00

The human body is capable of many a terrible thing. Gut-wrenching, awful things which I would never wish on my worst enemy.

Before you stop reading, rest assured, this is not an essay on flatulence or hand-to-hand combat. These are obvious terrible things. Instead, this is an account of one of the worst sales meetings I've ever been a part of - solely because of one man's body and the terrible thing it did during our meeting. This is the story of ... the dough.

I had a meeting with the General Manager of a restaurant in Canton, Ohio called the Fox & Hound. Quaint place - beautiful woodwork, sprawling dining rooms, high ceilings, large bar, several pool tables ... it's actually a chain based out of San Antonio, I believe.

Anyhoo, I had this meeting with a stiff, portly, red-haired fellow - we'll call him Thad. Thad had phoned me a few days earlier informing me that he was the new GM at the Fox & Hound and would like to meet with me to discuss promotions and advertising. When I arrived at the meeting and introduced myself, I noticed Thad gave a firm handshake with a pleasant smile, but had a slight clamminess about his palms.

We sat down and Thad didn't waste any time as he launched into his master plan for the restaurant. As Thad spoke in an excited and somewhat nervous manner, I noticed a small amount of white, frothy spittle forming on one corner of his mouth. As he continued to speak, he got more and more excited. And as he got more and more excited, the foamy white spittle began to transform into more of an Elmer's Glue-like substance, becoming less and less viscous and more like that of ... well, dough.

Thad continued to speak and the dough became larger and larger. In turn, I began to focus less and less on his words, and more and more on the dough. At one point, the dough became large enough that it began to move around the corner of his mouth as he spoke, and periodically, it would even stretch like pizza dough between his bottom and upper lip ... so much in fact, there was no doubt, he too realized the dough was there. I tried desperately to maintain eye contact. But as he talked and talked and the dough became more and more of not just a distraction, but an actual obstruction for Thad, an undeniable sense of awkward tension filled the air. Thad's eyes desperately locked onto mine, almost daring me to look down at his mouth. He became red-faced, and in turn, I could feel myself begin to flush as well.

It was at this point, something transpired that took the seriousness of this matter to a whole new level. As Thad continued on with his now aimless diatribe, in an act of desperation, he quickly (and awkwardly) swiped his wildly gesturing hand across the corner of his mouth to graze the doughball from his face. For a fleeting moment, both of us looked down at his hand as it rested on the table between us. Thad, never skipping a beat, rambled on and on to distract my attention from the newly relocated dough. But for now, it had disappeared. Or did it?

Nothing Thad had spoken of for the previous 5 minutes (which actually seemed like an eternity) actually sunk into my conscious. Instead my mind was wild with wonder now as to the whereabouts of the dough. It couldn't just disappear. It had to be somewhere ... and as Thad wound down his speech, I made quick, sharp glances and the table in front of us to see if it had attached itself there. For now, it was missing. And with that realization, I heard Thad's words, "Sound good?" That was my cue. I snapped out of it. It was time to go and Thad was suddenly a new man. Big, confident smile. Firm voice. I slight, victorious chuckle. Mission accomplished for Thad.

As we stood up from the table and I began to put my notes away (which only consisted of four words total - Fox, and, Hound, Thad), I made one more attempt to locate the phantom dough. I slyly used my packing-up activity to quickly steal at glance at the hand where I had last spotted the dough. And there it was - just on the edge of webbing between his thumb and index finger! A hot wave of panic washed over me. "Which hand is it?", I thought, "Which hand is it???" As my luck would have it was indeed his right hand.

Thad, still confident (and probably completely oblivious that I had re-discovered the nomadic dough on his handshake hand), pushed his chair in and started re-capping his monologue to me as I prepared to walk out the door. I remember thinking, "Maybe I can wave instead of shake." But it was too late. There was Thad's hand, heartily extended toward me for a good, solid goodbye handshake. With great reluctance, I forced my hand out to accept. And as I turned around to walk out the door, I frantically looked down to see if the dough had traveled to my hand. My worst fear came to fruition. The dough lay smeared across the palm of my right hand.

I literally gagged two or three times as I sprinted to my car. Quickly, I fumbled for my keys with my left hand and swung open the door. Carefully, I opened the glovebox where I carried extra fast food napkins and wiped the dough away from my palm. Unfortunately, I was out of Purell so I had to drive all the way back to the office with my right hand positioned awkwardly on the steering so as not to contaminate it with the germs of Thad's fetid mouth-jam. Once I arrived at the office, I ran to the bathroom and almost gave myself 2nd degree burns as I washed my hands under piping hot water. Next was a triple dose of Purell from the extra large dispenser I bought at Sam's Club just a week before. It's hard to say now, but I don't believe I ate using my right hand that evening.

But now I was free of the dough. And never again did I call Thad from the Fox & Hound. Nor did he call me.

Finding Humility On I-80

2008-02-28T23:39:00.012-05:00

Most of us have had a few instances in our lives where we should have died. I seem to have had more than my fair share.

Whether it was the time I fell asleep, drunk behind the wheel of my Camaro at 7am in rush hour traffic; or the time my brother and I took a wrong turn walking down Yonge Street in Toronto at 2am; or the one time I decided to eat at The Golden Corral Restaurant. I can honestly say, I've cheated death quite a bit (for a guy who doesn't do drugs, fly jets, tame lions, or hang-glide, etc.)

It happened again last week. And it was one of those instances where, as I sat there in dumbfounded amazement, my eyes probably bugging out of my head, with my heart visibly beating through my shirt, and adrenaline racing through my veins, I whispered, "Wow. God must want me to stick around for some reason."

I was coming back from a meeting with a Harley-Davidson dealer in Beaver Falls, PA. It was late afternoon and it had been snowing all day long. On my way in, I passed car accidents a-plenty. Every few miles or so, I'd see an SUV in a ditch or a fender bender on the side of the road. "No big deal," I thought, "I drive through this shit all time." As usual, my stereo was incredibly loud (I think it was the new Dillinger Escape Plan that day). I was checking e-mails on my Blackberry, looking for gum, thinking about project deadlines ... everything but concentrating on the road. And it really was no problem at all coming in. Only now, on my way out, a torrential down-poor of frozen rain was hitting the highway in front of me and caking up my windshield. I remember I just got off the phone with a BMW dealer in Akron I had been courting and was ecstatic that I just set up a lunch appointment with him. As I hit the end button my phone, I went to change lanes after passing a bunch of trucks. That's when the shit hit the fan. I remember feeling the back of my Camry begin to slide out from behind me, veering clockwise. At that precise moment I thought, "Oh shit, is this really happening?" Then, almost instantaneously, I answered my own question - "Yes, yes." and I began to spin into a short series of 360's down the middle of the turnpike, around 80mph. I know I did at least two 360's total ... maybe three. As they were happening, I remember saying in a strangely calm and steady voice, almost under my breath, "Oh God, please help me, please help me." At that precise moment, the car came to a sudden halt and fell perfectly into place, with the front end of the car perpendicular to the edge of the highway. Amazing. Huge semi-trucks blasted past me, shaking the Camry in their wake. I couldn't friggin' believe it. I was alive.

After a moment or two assessing the miracle that had just taken place, I waited for traffic to go by and slowly climbed out of the car to see if there was any damage. The car was unscathed, but I noticed that if the back end had been just a few inches further into the berm, I would have needed a tow to get out. And if it had been just a foot further back, I would have gone down, down, down - down into the deep, wooded gully below. Upon realizing this, I immediately thought that if I had gone down, at least there were a few ketchup packets and a lollipop in my glove box that could have sustained me for a few days in case no one found me.

With that, I climbed back into the Camry, waited for more traffic to go by, and went on my way. Only now, I was doing under 60 and refraining from checking my Blackberry. Lesson learned.

Entry #1

2008-02-21T23:55:00.020-05:00

Here it is - the 1st entry in Kevin's Blog. Maybe the only one ever - we'll see how long it can hold my interest.

And we'll see if it interests anyone else. After all, these are just the ramblings of another 30-something suburban white guy who needs something to do after his kids have gone to bed and his wife insists on watching American Idol. I'll try and come up with some interesting stuff. Stay tuned.