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No one must know my terrible secret...

House of Noh!

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Recently both me and my friend Chris S. turned 30. I fell asleep on the train home, missed the Southport stop and got off at the Paulina stop. My walk back to my apartment took me past the fast-food restaurant formerly known as Burger King – the one on Ashland, North of the Whole Foods. I think they’re calling it “Burger Delights” or something written on a Kinko’s produced tarp stretched over the old sign frame where franchise representatives probably cut the official Burger King sign out, rolled it up, then flew it back, business class, to Burger King national headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida.

All the technology used to make an inherently filthy greasy fast food enterprise seem sanitary was evidently licensed to the franchise. Now the place has a torn-out, grimy look to the kitchen but at least there’s more sunlight, and you can see the employees loaf and commit hygienically questionable acts unabashedly (I did).

On the counter the Burger Delights has one of those games purporting to be for the benefit of some well-intentioned charity, the games placed on counters for people to spend change on while they’re waiting for their food or their oil change. Burger Delights has the plexiglass tank of water with bubbles coming up through it. You’re supposed to drop a coin in a slot in the top of the tank and spin a merry-go-round of irregularly sized round platforms inside the tank, the point being to catch a falling coin on one of the platforms. If you do catch a coin on a platform, you get a free sandwich, or side, or drink, or whatever based on the value of the coin you gambled.

Here’s how to win that game: you use pennies to calibrate the position of a single “target” platform in the tank and the angle you hold your coin at when you drop it. It takes around fifteen tries to get good at it. You don’t win anything for a penny, but that’s okay because you’re just getting the thing lined up and learning how to drop a coin at the right angle through the slot. Once you’re landing pennies, then you can drop a quarter with success. Don’t try to move the platform as the coin falls. That’s for chumps. Don’t even touch the knob. Just concentrate on the angle of the coin you’re putting in the slot once you get a platform in a position where you can angle a coin over to it.

It was taking forever to fry my mushrooms. After a series of penny-drops to build my confidence, I caught my first quarter on a platform and was like, “chicken sandwich please!”

They brought out my fried mushrooms but were still working on my chicken sandwich when I got bored and landed a dime.

“Free regular size beverage please!”

When the woman turned from the machine with the full cup I already had a nickel on a platform. “Free order of French fries please!”

When the woman walked over to hand me my bounty of free food, I had a quarter on a platform and, chin in hand in contemplation of the menu, was pondering what type of dessert sandwich I wanted.

“No more! You can’t play our game anymore!

“But it’s for Cystic Fibrosis!” I protested.

“We don’t care! You can’t play our game anymore!”