First a forewarning. This post concerns any and all things fast food. If you're a diabetic (Curtis) please read no further. Diabetics are the ones who can't eat fast food right? Anorexics you should probably skip this as well.
1. Chipotle. I don't care what you think or what your problem is. If i make a coupon on an official college document it means you give me a free burrito. It doesn't mean that you give me a free burrito and then call the Dean. I don't care if there were 250 burritos. You better not call the Dean. Why? Because it means I'm in trouble.
Chipotle had to be addressed. Not because they are good or significant in the ways of Colorado conceived Mexican food. They need to be discussed because they are relevant to the personal anecdotes that comprise my today. Anything else concerning Chipotle is of no concern at all. Chipotle is a good lunch but that lunch is a far (and loud) cry from logical.
Chipotle may be fast growing and popular with Brady Quinn. I may eat there on a weekly basis but they will never have my heart. They will not cook for my kids or birth those same kids. They are too exotic, fancy, and hip at this window in history. Eating Chipotle is like a One Night Stand with Feist.
We can agree that commerce at it's origins equates to an American Hunger. Not need based, but thriving off impulse it is far from satisfying in any nutritional sense. We're bloated for a reason, but our bursting seams are not in vain. they are the result of experimentation in variety. This will come to an the day American Sushi is invented. it will be sponsored by Applebee's and use a lot of bacon and cheeses in it.
This experimentation inundates all fields. We live in an era devoid of any logical firsts with every field bordering on their equivalent of American Sushi. These American Sushis (Daft Punk, Dirk Nowitzki, Pixar) are fantastic in their ways but they don't hit home because their origins are that damn murky.
Two Beef Patties, Special Sauce, and like Eight Loaves of Bread. I can understand those origins. This is the sort of food i would invent when drunk, starving, or both. Though i must say i doubt I will be in Darfur with enough Rum. Even if the Peace Corps lay in my future my flask isn't enough of a spark to invent anything. I also heard that Peace Corps provides food, though I'd go either way.
This Big Mac, this All American original has a past, present, and future. it's simplicity is such that it can strike a chord with everyone. A single bite has a basic formula that screams but one sentiment. "This is how I taste. I taste like I deserve to exist". This makes it deserve to exist.
It's not the best food I've ever had. It isn't even the best burger but it gave me a feeling of great gratitude towards whoever had the stones to invent it.
There are more than enough thresholds of judgment. How is the quality? What are the motivations? Does it abide with the regulations of the Metric System? Upon meeting strangers tastes in the things everyone likes, but no one delves into the motivations behind such preferences. The above are meaningless without knowledge of the why behind them. It's seeing the lava without seeing volcano. We could like the same movies but you wouldn't know that my favorite movies are my favorites because they feature a woman sensually eating a strawberry.
Of course this isn't true. I find strawberries disgusting. The only sensual act I can imagine with a strawberry involves burying it.
Why do I like things? What do I like? I like things that should exist. After a certain experience I give thanks to the fact that such a sensation exists, not because of my joy, but because it is an easily imagined output of the world as I know it. A corn maze, a Big Mac, Die Hard. These are things that, analyzing the spectrum of what I know, should exist.
Die hard should exist. Things happen to Cops. Bad things happen in high rises. There are always chances for redemption. It may have been a fast paced thrill ride that invigorated the target Bruce Willis audience, but it was something more. It was a situation you or I could have imagined. it was a situation that we probably HAD imagined. With food, with art, with real estate, and everything conducive to abstract thought, this quality is the scarcest and most valuable.
It can be can taste like rusty toenails and produced with the motivation of promoting Cat Abortion but if it even abstractedly resembles an idea of our own there is no doubt that we would cherish it.
The most recent Die Hard was pretty damn good, but it never would have occured to me otherwise.
The Big Mac, this vehicle for secret sauce, tastes like part of my person. It is reminiscent of growing up, seeing commercials, and chasing my sister with a knife after watching too much Simpsons. Without tasting before, I had tasted it before albeit only in my imagination.
Big Macs taste like a scared, secret part of my brain that is the most delicate, impenetrable part of any person. Chipotle tast6es like Mexican food produced in close proximity to Snow Capped peaks. Which would have occured to you?
Also, I really doubt I could trick 250 people into attempting to redeem coupons for burritos.
-Charlie
PS I talked to Archibald about this same scenario once. I really miss him now.