I'm in Seattle this week shooting a short video, collecting animatronic critters for reprogramming, and trying to detox after my year of government service. This is Part Two of a dialectic review of french fries at area eateries, a joint project with the kindly folks at The Good Senator, where Part One appears.
Mc Donald’s at Westlake Center, Sunday
Fries (standard)
(On location for the Beanie Baby Liberation Front sketch.)
Gus: I’m still happy we got such a great shot of Hot Dog On A Stick. Hot Dog On A Stick is the epitome of depressing mall-vibe. Especially those degrading outfits they make the servers wear. Have you ever seen a man working there?
Jen: No. Oh, in Anchorage. He didn’t look very good in the shorts.
Gus: But he cleans up well. Like Collin Lynch, who also wears shorts and lives in Alaska.
Jen: (soul-pained groan)
Gus: These were McDonalds fries. I’m not dignifying them with a review.
Jen: What did you do with that burger?
Gus: Sssssh! Shhh shhh shhh! No burger! I’m not participating in corporate meat consumption, honest!
Jen pretends Gus hit her
Jen: heh heh heh… is that a hamburger in your pocket?….
Gus: I want it on the record that I tried to give it to panhandlers, but the only one who asked us for change at that point was wearing goth clothes and eye makeup and probably had a trust fund. How old is Bill Gates’ daughter again?
Jen: She was hungry.
Gus: She was a vegan. She wasn’t hungry.
Jen: You don’t know that.
Gus: She said she was a vegan!
Jen: Revisionist! Lies!
Gus: She said she didn’t eat meat.
Jen: You kept the toy from the Happy Meal.
Gus: Of course I did, it has blinking LEDs and a motion sensor. I only have one other motion sensor so far. Those things are useful!
The Hurricane Cafe, Sunday
Cheese fries
Jen: Again with the two fries in one day!
Gus: I got there a little late. You guys had finished most of them already. They were weird. A little sweet, with dry cheese, and like everything else there they were undercooked.
Jen: But there was fermented ketchup! And another hangover!
Gus: You got another hangover from the ketchup?
Jen: It was fermented!
Gus: Never use ketchup from a bottle at a restaurant. They just keep putting new ketchup in and they never clean ‘em out… Your brother never came up with a good memory of your dad.
Jen: No, he did eventually. It was something…
Gus: We were out in front of the Best Western at that point.
Jen: With the werewolf! Was it [the memory] teachin’ him to shoot?
Gus: No… I think it was… well it wasn’t about him shooting Eric’s dog.
Jen groans
Gus: Now I’m remembering things [someone else’s] dad did. Like dressing in a woman’s nightgown. Did your dad ever do that?
Jen: Well… yeah. But he’d always had a lot of fermented ketchup first. And we didn’t let him have the gun then.
Cowboy the dog: Guhurrrrrrrrr.
Jen: When my mom was a kid they had a dog called Suzie That’s The Dog, so they didn’t get it mixed up with her.
Gus: Wait, your mom’s name is Suzie too?
Jen: Yeah, Suzie That’s The Girl.
Gus: That’s almost as bad as my grandpa calling his son Rovie because he wanted a dog, not a kid.
Jen: That’s very sad.
Gus: Why did they have a dog named Suzie when her name was already Suzie?
Jen: They adopted her (the dog). And they didn’t love my mom very much.
Gus: This whole trip has been about dysfunction. And dogs. And french fries.
Jen: And hangovers.
Gus: Metaphysical hangovers, yes. Existential hangovers.