Red Meat Cures Cancer

RAMADA INN, ROCHESTER, NEW YORK

“Good morning! I’d like to welcome all of you to the annual meeting of the corporate shareholders of Tailburger. For those of you who don’t know me, and there can’t be many of you, I’m Frank Fanoflincoln, founder and president of Tailburger. I gotta tell you folks, I’m tickled as a twenty-dollar whore to be here.”

Frank Fanoflincoln, my boss, is a fat man. I’m not talking circus fat or freakish fat or the huge, if I eat three more pints of Ben and Jerry’s they’ll need to move a wall to get me out of my house, kind of fat. But he’s working on it. He also happens to be the most ill-mannered person I’ve ever met. The day I interviewed with him nearly twenty years ago is one I vividly recall. We went to a Chinese restaurant called the House of Poon, where Fanoflincoln, or the Link as I refer to him, spent most of the time with his left hand firmly entrenched inside his boxer shorts. After ordering moo goo gai pan and a Pepsi, he leaned back in his chair, submarined his overly pudgy mitt below the beltline and left it there. If there exists a single better reason not to take a job, I haven’t heard of it, which makes my own presence at today’s shareholder meeting, not to mention my continued employment at Tailburger, a source of incredible self-loathing.

“When I started this company in 1962, I never dreamed we’d become a heavyweight in the fast-food industry. And you know what . . . ? We haven’t. But we do have the best fried hamburger on the market, and we’ve carved out a niche for ourselves as the burger of choice for the fringe element. Take a poll at any correctional facility in this country and the inmates will speak volumes. In Texas alone this year, our Tailburger Deluxe was the final meal of choice for no less than eight death-row inmates. What can I say? At Tailburger, we’re talkin’ proud.”

The Link liked to wear bright-colored sweatsuits, preferably ones with comfort-guard waistbands made of industrial-strength elastic. Although he usually had food in his mouth, or at least in his teeth, he was a strangely effective public speaker, and as usual, his opening remarks were met with enthusiastic applause from the audience. A Civil War buff, the Link legally changed his name in his early twenties to Fanoflincoln out of his fondness for our sixteenth president. His weekends were spent standing in cow pastures with other out-of-shape fanatics, reenacting the battle of Vicksburg or Fredericksburg or Pittsburgh for all I knew. Too large for any of the uniforms available, the Link was an easy target in his vibrant athletic gear and had lately been asked to play a camp-ground tent. Undeterred by this apparent demotion, he likened the competitive world of burgers to the epic struggle between the Union and the Confederacy.

“Don’t think for a minute that I’m satisfied with our progress. ’Cause I’m not. Far from it! This war is in its infancy and we will fight many battles before we reach our Appomattox! So I ask you, as the great Abraham Lincoln once asked Congress, ‘Can we do better? The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew!’ You’re damn right we do!”

The Link shouted at a bewildered crowd. His word-for-word recitation of Lincoln’s 1862 exhortation was undoubtedly impressive, at least the first time you heard it. Once you realized it was the only quote from the Great Emancipator that he knew and you’d heard it countless times at various events, it lost a bit of its impact. For half the crowd in attendance, I’m sure it was inspirational.

“Now ordinarily we’d start this meeting by having some stiffs from finance come out here and tell you about the company’s performance this past fiscal year. And we will do that later once we’ve finished cutting those bloodsuckers out of cardboard. But we’re gonna start a little differently today. I’m just so damn excited about our new advertising campaign, I’ve asked Schuyler Thorne, our chief operating officer and senior vice president in charge of marketing, to speak with you first. Sky has been with the company since 1983, and he’s a big reason why your dividend checks will soon be fatter than a welfare mother’s ass. Get up here, Sky!”

The eyes of the stockholders were upon me as I made my way from the conference room’s front row to the podium and shook hands with the Link. Three weeks before, he called me on the carpet and demanded a new marketing direction for our company and for the flagship sandwich of the franchise, known as the Tailpipe. Following our critically acclaimed, but commercially disastrous, “Get Away from My Tailpipe” campaign featuring various gay activists happily chomping on the product, the Link had assured me that I had better not “fuck the company in the ass” this time. Fortunately for me, I functioned well in a hostile work environment.

The Link wanted advertising that was high-concept, a campaign that would “boil the ocean,” in his words. He picked up this phrase from a men’s lifestyle magazine aimed at disenfranchised twenty-somethings, and though he didn’t know what it meant, he sure as hell thought it sounded good. After tremendous growth in the late ’80s and ’90s, Tailburger was experiencing a bit of a downturn and the Link was getting panicky. Though it hadn’t hit our share price on Wall Street yet, internally we all knew that society’s curbing of excesses and insidious return to Subarus and sensibility was a killing trend for our company. No fat, low fat, reduced fat, artificial fat—each was anathema to us. When your main product consists of four batter-dipped, deep-fried patties of red meat and a bun, held together by five generous dollops of Cajun-style mayonnaise, you rely on the weakness of men and women. My job was to exploit that weakness. With per capita beef consumption at an all-time low and sales of Mercedes, liquor and guns down, we were looking at a bear market for Tailburger.

Once a lowly marketing executive, I had morphed into the Link’s number one lackey, for want of a better term. My advancement to the top of the company had less to do with my business acumen and more to do with my ability to avoid getting fired. The Link shit-canned so many people left and right over the years eventually I was the only one he recognized in the hallways at our headquarters in Mendon, a small town on the southeast side of Rochester. Now he relied on me for everything from marketing campaigns to sales reports to advising him on our casual day policy. If all this wasn’t enough for someone making $187,500, my new duty was to stem the tide of simple living. I was instructed by the Link to lead the middle (and especially the lower middle) class back to an era of crass commercialism, basement pot farming and if possible, the Hustle dance craze. “Bring it back, Thorne!” the Link insisted. “Bring it all back. I don’t care how you do it.” Like a robotic misanthrope, I accepted my tasking without question. Now I faced my first test: the shareholders. Time to spew self-righteous platitudes at the masses.

“Thank you, Frank. It’s a real honor for me to have the opportunity to address our shareholders and owner-operators as a group today. You folks are the real reason for the success of Tailburger. This past year we opened up eighty-four new franchises across the U.S., and we remain extremely optimistic about our future growth potential. As Mr. Fanoflincoln said, and as you are aware, we have succeeded at Tailburger by attacking the fringe. Market surveys indicate that our penetration is deepest with groups ranging from alcoholics to deadbeat dads to skate punks with multiple body piercings. We’re also big with people who believe exercise is an absolute evil. These folks have been loyal to us for years!”

I took a sip of water and surveyed the crowd. Our shareholders, “mostly trailer trash and former XFL football players,” according to the Link, were paying rapt attention. Just my luck.

“So, like I said, these groups are our core customers and we need to cater to them, NOT to families. I fear we’ve gotten away from that. Some of you even approached me this year about adding a playground to the front of our stores. Now that seems like a harmless enough idea on its surface. I agree. But stop and think about it for a minute. If someone’s
out
side using the slide, they’re not
in
side eating a Tailburger. And that’s no good.”

Another sip. Nobody dozing off yet.

“Most disturbing of all, however, I was approached about adding something healthy to our Tailburger menu. Do you know what this tells me? Do you? This tells me that the propaganda machine in America is alive and well. Everyone, from the American Heart Association to Dr. Koop to Richard Simmons, is telling you all you can eat are sprouts and lentils. They say fat is bad and aerobic exercise is good. They say beef kills you. (Pause) Now does anybody here know someone who died from eating a delicious Tailburger? Of course not. These fascists won’t be happy until every last one of us is wearing a Lycra bodysuit and jumping around in our living rooms to the worst prepackaged dance music from the eighties you’ve ever heard. The whole thing is outrageous! We’ve got to push back against this health craze. And we will!”

Another sip. First sleeping shareholder spotted. I was ready to ramble now—ready to preach the gospel according to Tailburger.

“Who are they to tell us what to do with our bodies? I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of it. We get bombarded by one shoddy scientific report after another. It’s just not right, I tell you! At Tailburger, we’re going to play up our image as fast-food outlaws. We’ll continue to be a shining light amidst the darkness. The brand everyone loves to hate. And today, you lucky people will be the first to hear our new national slogan. Mike, will you get the curtain?”

Mike, the hotel’s audiovisual guru, took his cue, pressed some button and revealed my marketing greatness on an enormous screen.

TAILBURGER
WHY JUST
ABUSE
YOUR BODY
WHEN YOU CAN
TORTURE
IT?

“That’s right. We’re going back to our rebellious roots. We will laugh in the faces of the health nuts. All the way to our graves if we have to.”

The audience seemed a bit perplexed.

“Okay. All right. I can tell by your confused faces that you need the concept fleshed out. You’re going to be seeing a full complement of print, radio, television and Internet spots. We’re going to saturate the domestic market with a new theme song by alternarockers Blatherskite called “Torture Me.” We’re going to have a beverage tie-in with Scuz Cola to continue the theme of self-abuse and we have a tentative agreement with Jelloteous Junderstack, NBA superstar and major Tailburger fan, to endorse our product line. This is going to be the biggest marketing launch in the history of Tailburger and an emphatic statement about our company’s rightful place in the twenty-first century!”

My rousing finish didn’t exactly start a riot in the aisles, and the lukewarm response from our shareholders caused the Link’s face to convulse as if he were receiving an enema. Though initially enthusiastic about the Torture idea, he met me with a forced smile as I left the podium. I was accustomed to his capriciousness, however, and I remained unfazed. Late for a plane to Washington, D.C., I didn’t have time to worry, and I left for the airport temporarily indifferent to the experience. Not surprisingly, lobbying had somehow found its way into my job description, and a federal bill, calling for increased amounts of food labeling, more frequent safety inspections and stricter meat handling requirements, had been introduced in the Agriculture Committee. This bill needed to be stopped.

How I’d come to this point in my life was more of a disappointment than a mystery. I was six feet tall when I started with Tailburger right out of business school. I was now closer to five eleven, an angry inch of compressed spine the price I’d paid for bearing the weight of the burger world on my shoulders for two decades. My blondish hair had thinned considerably from its blow-dried heyday in the 1970s, my brow was a bit creased and the flesh under my chin was starting to show the not inconsiderable effects of gravity. Still, despite my physical deterioration, something ageless continued to churn inside of me. For as long as I could remember, I’d talked about breaking off on my own and doing something I would enjoy, maybe even love. No more answering to anybody. No more rat race. Sure it was hokey, this hairball of a notion I’d coughed up while reading a library full of self-help books written by the world’s leading mind-fuck gurus. But I wanted it, whatever “it” was. Herman Melville said that within every man there exists an insular Tahiti full of peace and joy, something that lies at our very center just waiting to be discovered. Where was my insular Tahiti? Not only couldn’t I find it; I wasn’t sure where to look. While I saw others reaching this paradise in their own lives, content with their families and careers, I somehow remained stuck on one of the one thousand uninhabited islands in the St. Lawrence Seaway. My existence was tolerable, but hardly paradise. So, unsurprisingly, a certain sadness overcame me every December when the year would end without a change as my mortgage and an unending series of expenses piled up, and small raises and stock options kept me satisfied enough to stay the course—never any closer to that which allegedly lay at my core.

Though I blamed myself primarily (at least on most days), there was also the small matter of my do-nothing older brother, King, a man-child who had managed to go a lifetime without an identifiable job, let alone a career. His résumé, had he ever bothered to put one together, would have read like the perfect reply to the classified section of a Club Med resort circular. Part-time herbalist. Part-time Pilates instructor. Amateur nutritionist. From Amnesty International to Royal Caribbean, King had worked for every major activist organization as well as every major cruise line, but had lasted nowhere for more than three months. He said he had a problem with authority, but whatever the reason, so long as he stayed outside the confines of corporate America, I was under some kind of intangible psychic pressure to stay securely within them. A family could only have one fuckup, and we had King. It had always been that way, from the time we were young until now. The seminal event in my mind was King’s decision to skip senior year of high school to work ski patrol at Stowe. Many similar choices, evoking a mixture of sympathy and bewilderment from me, followed. As the years passed, however, my pity for him evolved into envy as I considered all the free time he had at his disposal. Nevertheless, every time I had thought about quitting my own job, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. One fuckup is tolerable, but at two fuckups, you unfairly sentence your parents to a lifetime of shunning social events for fear of having to report what their children are doing. I decided long ago that my father would die a horribly painful death the day he had to tell his buddies I was a washroom attendant, or worse, a personal trainer at Gold’s Gym.