President Me (25 page)

He was trying to blame obesity on our “fast-food culture” instead of the fat people themselves. I made the cogent point that I worked at McDonald's and that there was a McDonald's on every corner when he and I were both kids. So why is there a difference now? He said, “Well, the menu was a lot different back then.” Yes, it's gotten healthier, dickweed. They didn't have salad, bottled water, and apple slices on the menu when I was a young politician in the making. If I went into McDonald's when I was eleven and my mom tried to make me order apples, I would've fed them into her asshole like it was a nickel slot machine.

When I argue with people I just hand them a shovel and watch them dig their own grave. So I asked him, “Seems to me like the menu has more healthy options. So what's different today?” He claimed that the food is a lot higher in calories now. I told him that couldn't possibly be true. But like all dumb people going down the bad-argument road, he didn't do a three-point turn, he hit the accelerator.

I told him I'd hang on while he looked up the calorie count for a Big Mac in 1978 vs. today. He said he'd do it after the interview. I said, “No, do it now so I can laugh at you.” He fired back, “I'll do it when we're done.” I countered, “No. If you do it after I hang up, I won't be able to mock you and your retarded argument falling apart.” The guy then said he didn't have a computer. How fucking convenient. Of course, when I had one of my lackeys look it up later that day, I was vindicated.

This guy wanted to blame our obesity epidemic on the food itself. He's only partially right. Our food today does suck, but it's our will that is really the problem. Big Macs haven't gotten any less healthy for us. It's that we're morally weak, there's a fast-food joint on every corner and they're open 24/7. These places used to close and you'd only go there once in a while. Not too long ago, Taco Bell introduced the “FourthMeal.” I thought brunch was the fourth meal, but apparently the fourth meal happens between midnight and two
A
.
M
., when you're shit-faced.

And of course the sizes are absolutely insane. Every commercial you see now for food is about cheapness and portion size. The voice-over says, “Come down to Hometown Buffet” and they show a guy with a Fred Flintstone–sized rack of ribs and a waiter using a pallet jack to bring the food to the table.

Buffets are now illegal for anyone over two hundred pounds that makes less than $35,000 a year. Because when you're poor and somebody says “$7.99 all you can eat” your mission statement is “They're going lose money on this fat hombre.” I know, because when I was poor I used to apply basically the same principle to renting porn.

Nothing is about health or quality, it's all about price and quantity. Today you've got 7-Eleven drinks the size of an aquarium. They might as well make one called the Dunk Tank. You just crawl in and use the straw to breathe. I'm not trying to go all Mayor Bloomberg on you, because I'm not big on the government getting involved in this area. But the more fat people there are, the more fat acceptance there is. This is a strain on our health care system, not to mention our bridges. Hell, if you factor in the effect of weight on gas mileage, this is having a major impact on global warming. Seriously. The bottom line is, fat ain't free. That's why I'm fully behind so-called fat shaming.

This is a term that gets me in trouble, especially with chicks. But I'm not saying we should put fat kids' pictures in the paper or stand them in the town square and take turns pelting them with rocks. I just mean we shouldn't accept obesity as okay. People need to feel the sting of some stares as they waddle down the street. If you visited a person's house and saw them slap their nine-year-old, you'd call Child Protective Services, but if that same nine-year-old were 210 pounds, you'd quietly judge the parents but allow them to feed their kid a breakfast of Slim Jims and Mr. Pibb.

We feel bad shaming the kid but the real shame is going to come in a few years when he can't get a prom date or play sports. So he'll be depressed, won't find a good job, or fit in one airplane seat. Then he'll really feel shame. If you had to make the choice for your kid to be obese or a smoker, you'd want them to be a smoker. Being fat will kill them sooner and will certainly cause more discrimination in their shortened life. They'll lose more jobs and potential relationships from being fat. Especially as a woman. A chunky chick will always lose more opportunities than one who smokes. It's a sad but true fact. This is the ultimate discrimination. I'd argue that every man alive would take a seven or above from any nationality over a fat chick with blond hair and blue eyes. I don't think it's any different when you're a business and you're hiring a receptionist. You want to put your best face forward when a customer comes in the door, and if that face has an extra couple of chins it's not a good thing. Race takes a backseat to fat in the discrimination department. This is the ultimate thing not to be.

Unless you work at the Magic Kingdom. When I took the kids to Disneyland a year ago I could not believe how fat the female employees were. I'm not talking about 15 pounds of “she's got a little extra ass on her, what a pity” fat. I'm talking 120 pounds overweight. The chick running the Jungle Cruise was bigger than the fiberglass hippo she was pointing at.

And they usually came in pairs. It was like a live Tweedledee and Tweedledum, except they were nineteen-year-old Mexican chicks. This is not a good plan. I think we need to team up the skinny ones with the fat ones. Mobile shaming. You don't want to have the two fat chicks deciding on what they're going to get for lunch. You need a skinny one in there to toss around the idea of getting a tossed salad.

I was in a hotel in Boston last year before a gig, bouncing through the channels when I came across some Three Stooges. And because I was in a hotel room I beat off to it. Rules are rules.

Anyway, when I was in my refractory period it occurred to me that Curly is not fat by today's standards. I hadn't seen the Three Stooges since I was twelve and I remembered Curly being “the fat one.” But if you put him up against the average female employee at Disneyland, he's a middleweight. I'm not saying he was skinny. He was no Kate Moss, but he may have been a Kate Upton.

The point is I could go to any mall in America and find ten tweens who are fatter than Curly. He was five seven and 192 pounds, with a little bit of a gut on him, but he would not be fat in today's society. Perhaps if he ate some more of those pies instead of getting hit in the face with them, he could get as husky as the teen behind the counter at Hot Topic.

The worst part is that we can easily rectify this with a little discipline. We don't need any new drugs or fad diets. There are three hundred thousand diet books currently in print and ten new ones coming out every day. How much fresh information could you possibly glean? Eat less, move more. That's it. There's no need for a diet book. Everything you need to know about losing weight could be printed on the back of your driver's license or a business card.

Dig this analogy/advice. Your body basically works like a hot-air balloon. It's all about maintaining a consistent altitude through the ratio of weight to fire. If you want to put a bunch of heavy stuff into the gondola (like mashed potatoes and chicken pot pie), you're going to need to stoke the flames extra hard (i.e., exercise). Michael Phelps can eat whatever the fuck he wants because he spends nine hours a day in a swimming pool. His fire burns so hot and so often that he could butt-chug a garbage barge of tapioca pudding every night before he went to bed and still never gain an ounce. You and I are only willing to commit twenty to thirty minutes a day on the stationary bike, thus we've got to keep track of what's going in the wicker basket. Man, I'm getting heavy here—pardon the pun. You can also choose not to exercise at all but that means a lot of celery and jicama in the basket.

That's why as much as I want shaming to get people to go to the gym, I don't want any shaming when they're there. If they've hauled their fat ass up onto the treadmill, I don't want the skinny bitch training for the marathon next to them making them feel bad that they're slowly walking on a zero incline. This even goes for healthy people, like me. I've been at the gym in the hotel and do my twenty on the treadmill and the chick who is on the one next to me is still chugging away even though she was already sweaty and miserable when I got there. Cut it out, lady. Everything in moderation, okay?

From now on there is a time limit. Go at it as long as you want beforehand, but as soon as someone gets on the treadmill next to you, you've got twenty-two minutes to wrap it up. You're free to go back to your hotel room and do lunges, but you need to vacate the gym and quit shaming the people around you who don't have your commitment, intestinal fortitude, and eating disorder.

A side note: I'm declaring the inverse of this treadmill rule for the urinal. There is nothing worse than when I'm standing at a urinal and the guy sidles up next to me and finishes first. It makes me feel like I either have a prostate issue or have been drinking too much. It makes me self-conscious. I want to turn to him and say, “I only piss like twice a week. It's Wednesday isn't it?”

CELEBRITIES AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE

We used to trust doctors. We knew they had more education and experience than us. In today's narcissistic culture we treat medicine as a matter of personal opinion. That's what I love about carpentry: I get to be an expert. I can tell you the nailing schedule on shear wall, that if you have exterior hinges they have to be NRP (nonremovable pins), and no one is going to question me. Now everyone has shitty medical information from the Internet, celebrities, and their life coaches. They turn to people who failed out of junior college to tell them they can cure their cancer with purified water and good vibes. Oh, and if they align their chakras. For those of you who don't know, chakras are those things that don't exist that chicks with too much time and too little IQ believe are in their body, even though you can't find them on an MRI. Disturbances in these chakras cause every physical, mental, and even financial ailment known to man. So if you have anything wrong—from a headache to getting laid off—it's time to talk to someone who specializes in fixing your chakras. And guess what? These spiritual healers
always
find a problem. Something is wrong with your root chakra and God forbid something happens to your crown chakra. That's really going to fuck up your third eye. It's like going in for a free brake inspection. They're going to find a problem. Just like Manny Moe and Jack with the brake pads, these shaman sham artists are never going say that you're completely in alignment and clear. Nope, you're gonna need some healing stones and white sage smoke to the tune of eighty dollars an hour. Of course it's all a big fat placebo disguised as the wisdom of the East.

What happened? Doctors used to be doctors. In the Old West the entire area would have one doctor that everyone trusted to fix what ailed you with a little whiskey and surgery on a kitchen table. It wasn't like some hippie would show up and say, “Hold on. I have a friend in Dodge City whose aunt was cured by an Oriental who burned a cat whisker.”