McDonald's and Dope                 JIZZO

9/3/98 My sole purpose, other than the conquest of the earth, is to share my fucked up spin on life with my fellow humans in the hope that they will quit their jobs, break up with their girlfriends, and start drinking heavily.
A crazy dream perhaps, but a dream nonetheless.
I'm going to try to eat better on this tour. I know I ALWAYS say this, I guess it's just positive reinforcement. The bane of all healthy eating is McDonald's. Now don't anyone try to tell me otherwise. Nobody goes to McD for the salad bar. Everyone goes for their mad cow fix, ten thousand grams of fat on a sesame seed bun, extra death please, served up with a smile by Ronald McChild Molester Gacy Pennywise the clown. Oh, and by the way, if you eat that Big Mac you'll float. You'll all float.
I worked at McDonalds when I was 16, mostly cause my parents wouldn't let me sell pot. This was before the advent of computer technology. What I'm saying is that we actually had to ADD and SUBTRACT in those days. I know, it's earth-shattering. The counter people nowadays have no concept or need for math skills; they basically do whatever the fucking register tells them to do. If it told them to shit in their paper hats they'd probably do it without question. I always find it amusing when for some reason or another the computers break down and these people actually have to figure out the price of a big Mac with tax. All of a sudden they're on an intellectual level with BoBo the chimp. Actually, BoBo's smarter; he wouldn't work there. So...there I was working at McD with the unisex uniform and the paper fucking hats. All my friends thought it was hysterical, they'd ride their bikes down to where I worked and spend the evening jeering at me through the glass; they'd make a night of it. They'd throw pickles against the window and tip over the trash, anything to send me outside where the jeering could take on a more personal tone. After a couple of weeks the thrill was gone and they moved on to gay bashing.
Now it's impossible to work at McD and not be forever drenched in grease. Grease from the fries, grease from the grill especially. Now I was at that most tender of ages when even a hearty handshake would deliver up a zit of almost biblical proportions. I'd try to keep clean with my bag of stridexes, but to no avail. I soon became zitboy. Then I realized that was how they kept you working at McDonalds, they'd turn your face into such a fucking mutated pizza that absolutely no one would want to be associated with you, other than your fellow employees that is. The guy who cooked the burgers was about 20. He was covered in zits, literally. I'm not kidding, his face looked like low tide at pebble beach. He'd been working there so long he'd given up caring, so I assumed the zits probably spread down his chest and back all the way down to his pus-covered balls. A walking talking mountain of pus and lymph. If some customer was giving one of the counter people a bad time he'd do something to their burger. Sometimes he'd spit a loogie on the grill and cook it like the rest of the meat. He'd salt it just so, flip it over with the spatula, and the add it to someone's quarter pounder. Like anyone could even tell or even think that this would happen to them. I say this as a bit of a warning to any person who thinks belittling a counter person is funny. Believe me, they'll be laughing long after you get in your car and drive away. A word to the wise. This guy had been working at McD for some time. Built up a bit of seniority, so to speak. He was master of his grill, he really was. Sometimes the lunchtime rush was unbelievable. I'd be jumped up on the table, chattering like a chimp and he'd be completely in control. Well, good for him.
I was bun man. I toasted the buns and then ketchuped them. That was my job. Not exactly chemical engineering I know but what the fuck; all I wanted was money for pot and records. That's all I did, smoke dope, go to the mall in the vain hope of talking to chicks, and listen to music. My parents were divorced, so I basically had the house to myself. I'd get up for school in the morning, walk out the door, wait the obligatory 45 minutes till my mom left for work and the trudge back home and commence bonging. My house was designated the party house. I had the cool double chambered acrylic bong with the network of aquarium tubing to cool the smoke, I had the cool stereo system, either Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd playing, I had the freak-out velvet posters all over my walls. So we could, you know, freak-out. And most important, my mom was never home; perfect.
There was about 5 of us, the unwanted, the misunderstood. I was reading Carlos Castaneda at that time so I convinced myself that this was all some sort of pseudo-experiment in consciousness expanding. Yeah, right. We'd smoke just about anything then, good dope, shit dope, seed husks, and last but not least bong resins if there was no pot to be had. To think that I, at one time, would actually poke a straw through a bong stem to smoke the ashes is pretty far fetched. What was I thinking, I wondered? Fuck, I probably would have rolled and smoked my own turds if I thought It would get me high. Creepy.
Then once we were high we'd kick back in our beanbag chairs and look at the freak-out posters hoping they would move a little. They never did, though. Not on pot. On acid though.... My neighborhood smoked pot. The neighborhood adjacent to us, however, smoked angel dust. PCP. I tried it a couple times but it was a little too much. This other neighborhood, though, that was all they did. So after a couple years of getting high we were basically the same but these other dudes....fried. Quick- fried to a crackly crunch. The shit turned them into toast. We'd go to parties and when the cops came to bust it up we'd all be jumping the fences to get away but they'd just hang around, you know, I guess they figured "fuck it." Take me.
When I wasn't getting high I was thinking how I was gonna score pot to get high. If we were talking about smack I'd feel pretty embarrassed but after all we're just talking about pot. MJ. The Devil's weed. A harmless little drug, really. The only thing wrong about this time is that I really didn't accomplish anything, you know, just hang out, listen to music, eat cookies. Hey, this sounds like my life NOW.
So let's get back to McD. Every Saturday night the "stoner crew" did their shift. The stoner crew were the cool people. Hard core hippie dudes and dudesses who figured working one night a week at McD didn't make them a complete goof. They'd bring beer and store it in the freezer and go outside for frequent bong breaks in their cars. I was considered not cool enough to be on the night shift but occasionally I'd fill in. I idolized these people. They were what I wanted to be. They all had vans and cool hair under their hairnets and they all smoked cigarettes. They had this weird electricity going on, like they were all in on this really cool joke that no one else knew. Mona Lisa half-smiles and red flaming eyes, all-knowing eyes. I could never be as cool as them, me with my zits and sensible shoes. Sometimes one of the dudes would go back in the freezer to drink a beer and just stay in there, you know, just sort of nod out among the bags of sliced onions and racks of uncooked meat. Sleeping peacefully with the pickles and the fish and the jars of goop, sleeping like Morpheus, at peace with himself and his whole way of being. How could I compete with a guy that could fall asleep in a fucking freezer and STILL be 10 times cooler than me? No hope.
I could remember looking at him asleep, thinking maybe I should pretend I'm passed out too, maybe that would be my initiation into high society. But I chickened out, I went back to my bun station and sat out the shift, hopelessly uncool in my stupid paper fucking hat, like a cadet in the moron academy, Stalag 13, only the whole camp is filled with Larry Hovises like me. Whenever I think about why kids shoot each other for no reason, over an imagined slight, I have to remember what I was like, where MY head was at at that age. They at least have money and gold chains; I was burger boy with chump change and a paper hat. Society wouldn't have me, school wouldn't have me, only the bong, only Jimmy Page would have me, he knew my troubles and always had an answer to why my dick was so small, why I could grow no moustache, why my face was such a goddamn mess, all these things and more, close the door, light up and listen, my son, listen to the dancing days and sleepless nights and dream, pick up your hairbrush-microphone, look in the mirror and dream. And, you know something, that particular dream came true.