2 Fedoras and a large Salad

2 Fedoras and a Large Salad

               My favorite thing about blogging is you can steal with impunity.  You can post sayings, aphorisms, and insights made by really smart dead people on your blog and they can’t sue you for copyright infringement, even if you don’t cite them correctly.  Or don’t cite them at all. 

               So I went to the Mcdonalds on Prospect and Lawrence to scavenge, vulture like, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird for quotable blog material.  If you’ve ever been to this particularly wonderful McDonalds, you’ll know that it’s probably the fanciest fast food restaurant in existence.  The lobby looks like a recording studio.  There are all these oddly shaped pieces of wood dangling from the ceiling.  In a studio I’m sure these same hanging ornaments would serve some sound absorbent, acoustical purpose, but in McDonalds they just look pretty.  They bought all the furniture at Ikea.  It’s real fancy. 

               Complementing the weird wood ornamentals are the wholesome looking pictures of bisected grapes or stacks of apples with the words *Fresh Fresh Fresh* or *Enjoy Enjoy Enjoy* presented to you in bold font.  These signs, of course, are selling an image to the patrons of the establishment who haven’t seen Super Size Me—McDonalds is a wholesome business that cares deeply about both the physical health (the grapes are fresh) and the spiritual heath (they want you to enjoy the apples) of their patrons. 

               I ordered two squashed cheeseburgers and a sweet tea.  It cost $3.25.  Then I got food poisoning for free. 

               When you go to McDonalds you usually know exactly what you’re getting.  It’s really cheap, high caloric food that is some combination of friend, fatty, sweet, salty, and dead cow.  So I was pleasantly surprised when I went to this Hilton of the Golden Arches.  It had cheap dead cow, fancy décor, a pleasant, and a stimulating cosmopolitan ambience with a balanced fungal schway.         

               This particular McDonalds has a thing for lamps.  If you weren’t paying much attention you might mistake this McDonalds for a lamp wholesale store.  Or Ikea.  There are spotlights nestled into crevices in the ceiling.  Lamps hanging from the ceiling on wires like phosphorescent orchid bulbs.  There an Chinese hanging lanterns.  There are chandeliers.  There are American hanging lanterns.  There are even cylindrical lamps hanging from the wooden sound absorbent ornaments!   It’s pretty weird.  As I was observing those very cylindrical lamps, fedora #1 walked into the room.    

Fedora #1

               Two high school kids sat down at an open table with stools to my left.  One had a guitar.  The other had a fedora.  The guitar kid played a little 6/8 oom pa pa riff on the guitar, then gave it to the fedora kid, who tried his darndest to pay a G chord.  It didn’t really work.  His friend gave him a few pointers on the G.  Fedora kid tried again.  It still didn’t work, so he handed the guitar back to his friend.  Guitar kid had apparently forgotten his fedora at home, for which he was quite upset.  They started singing Carly Rae Jensen’s incredibly catchy Call Me Maybe.  At this point reading was out the window, so I very discreetly directed my ears and eyes in their direction.  They were joined by a posse of High School kids, all presumably from the nearby Prospect High.  This girl who looked exactly like that Hmong girl from Gran Torino grabbed the guitar from fedora-less Freddy (that’s what I imagine his name to be) and played a single note riff in the upper register of the guitar.  Then they left.  Fedora-less Freddy played Eric Hutchinson’s Rock and Roll from the second movie with those sisters whose pants traveled.  Not that I’ve seen it.

Fedora #2

               Fedora #2 was one of three nerdy looking kids bearing laptops and an “Apples to Apples” box.  I was pretty sure the aforementioned box was really a clandestine Magic card carrying case.  But these kids were also being loud and rambunctious high schoolers of a less cool variety than fedora-less Freddy and fedora #1.  Putting down my book in disgust, I very discreetly started eavesdropping.  Because that’s what writers do. 

               You’ve probably seen these kids before.  One of them is short, pudgy, and sallow with a squashed, square face.  One is medium sized, pudgy, and deathly pale.  The final one isn’t discolored in any way but is ridiculously tall.  The tall one has a ponytail.  And a soul patch-goatee combo. 

               It turns out they were planning for the school newspaper.  Later some less nerdy looking kids came through and joined goatee Greg and his friends at the table.  They used fancy words like “inadvertent” and talked about the 2^nd Amendment.  They tricked me!  They were actually nerds all along! 

The Two Reasons People Wear Fedoras

               There are two reasons people wear fedoras.  One is being stranded on a sweltering, treeless desert island with no other shade providing recourse save the fedora to prevent heat stroke.  Of course fedoras don’t exactly provide much shade so you’ll probably die of exposure or starvation anyway.  The second reason is so other people see you wearing a fedora.  The third reason is to die in style on a sweltering, treeless desert island, though it’s unlikely anyone will see your fancy hat wear.    

               People want to be cool.  Even if they’re dying.  So high school kids and Jason Mraz will go on to wear fedoras even though they aren’t Indiana Jones, actors in film noir movies from the 50’s, or bootleggers peddling moonshine during Prohibition. 

The Large Salad

               I was making a left turn out of McDonalds when a car was pulling in.  Inside the car was this Asian lady holding a giant plate groaning under the burden of an equally if not more giant salad in her right hand while forking the greens into her mouth with her left hand.  In the backseat, her cute little daughter stared forward, oblivious to the spectacular salad-driving, juggling unicycling balancing act taking place mere inches away.  The plaza with McDonalds has a number of things.  There's a spa, a piano school, a pizza place, and a Togos so I imagine the girl was being taken to one of these places.  Or maybe they was just going to McDonalds. 

              I am in no way judging salad lady.  I admire her fervor and aplomb.  I envy the energy with which she devoured her tasty greenery.  But let’s look at the mechanics of driving.  To steer your motorized vehicle there is a circular spinning contraption known as a steering wheel placed around chest level, easily accessible by either arm, to maneuver the car.  This steering wheel is normally directed by one or two hands that spin the circle in the direction you wish your vehicle to proceed.  If you’re holding a giant salad in your right hand and a regular sized fork in your left, it doesn’t seem possible to optimally utilize this car-directing-device.  How can you spin the circle in the direction you wish your vehicle to proceed if both of your hands are busy eating a salad?  Tell me that Giant Salad Lady.  But someway, somehow, she was able to make that right turn, handless, from Prospect into the McDonalds plaza. 

               I’m sure she would have acted differently if she knew I was looking.  She would have been embarrassed at her questionable driving technique just like I would have been embarrassed if she caught me staring.  I’m pretty sure the fedora kids caught me a couple of times when I was trying to figure out what their deal was.  And I don’t blame them.    

Why I don't wear Fedoras

               I’ve a very self conscious human.  I haven’t yet been successful in writing or music, but I want to be.  I say, very hesitantly, that I want to be a writer and a musician.  I say so hesitantly because if I heard someone say that, I would want proof.  Something to show my credibility, that I’m not pretentious and naïve.  A published article, a degree from a conservatory, an album.  The thing, though, is I have none of those things.  I have no proof.              

               When I lose faith, when I recoil at my presumption and throw up my hands in disgust at that malformed lump of a thing i call a song, when I seriously consider dropping the whole artistic thing and becoming a lawyer, I’m encouraged by a quote by Oscar Hammerstein II.  He says, “Everyone is kicked around during his apprentice years and in fear and ignorance he makes silly blunders and does silly things of which he is ashamed later.  If every successful man were to confess these past errors he could do a great service to those young people who are trying to follow in his footsteps.”  Mistakes are par for the course.  Sloppiness, mediocrity, and spectacular failure are necessary stepping stones to achieving success.    

               In the end, though, success isn’t the final goal.  Of course I want to get good at songwriting.  Of course I want an album, a book, some sort of concrete proof that can justify my existence, validate my personhood to other people.  I want people to read what I write, hear what I play.  But even if that doesn’t come, I enjoy these things and will continue to do so.  And that’s enough. 

               I find myself going to McDonalds again and again, time after time drawn to the siren song of those tasty departed cows.  People watching is fun and McDonalds is a great place to do it.  And you get free refills of sweet tea and diet coke.