Swine flu is on the march, to the tune of 8 ten millionths of our American population affected by a marginally worse illness than the usual flu.  What’s more, 22 total people have died, almost all of them in Mexico.  People never die in Mexico.  The disease is obviously getting out of hand, and the end very well may be nigh.

Throw in the continuing economic downturn, some bad juju thrown my way from a failed grad school application process, crummy weather in Nashville, and an apartment with a matching pair of sleep-deprived hangovers, and what you had was a general ennui engulfing my psyche that little other than my girlfriend and the NBA playoffs had taken care of. 

It was time for my lady and I to eat some comfort food.  Cure those blues with a belly full of grease.

And not just a greasy cheeseburger.  It was time for the big guns, the heavy artillery.  Long-range and laser-guided.

McDonald’s.

Within seconds of arriving, we knew what we were having.   Big Mac Extra Value Meal.  Medium.  Greasy fries, sopping burger, fountain beverage.  Yes.

I used to fu*king live on McDonald’s when I was a kid.  Not so much the Big Macs, but whatever combination of food I could come up with to order and absolutely dominate, feasting like a king on food that would make me feel better for twenty minutes, until the processed grossness that constituted Micky D’s product began tearing my stomach to pieces, forcing its way out of my digestive tract not unlike a mutant baby who has had enough of gestating and claws his way to freedom.

This was going to be awesome.

We sat down near the Play Place, with Orange drinks and little cups of goopy ketchup.  The box containing our burgers seemed somehow smaller, and McDonald’s now prints their nutritional information on the back of the package.  29 grams of fat and over 500 calories, in case you were wondering.  Right there for you, before you’ve even opened the box.  But…well…this still was going to be worth it.  It was going to be awesome.

Then I opened the box and the jig was up.  What once seemed like the hugest, biggest burger in the universe now looks…small?  Puny?  Outsized in reputation for the piddling sandwich on display.  Those menu pictures are bullshit.  Lies.  This thing is not…that says enough right there. 

This thing is not.

It tastes okay, sure.  And the fries are all right.  But the Orange drink is the all-star of this team and the Big Mac the disappointing number one draft pick.  Aside from the too much thousand-island leaking off the bottom bun, there was little big, extravagant, American about it at all.

Even the coming intestinal discomfort failed to amaze or entertain.  Nothing.  Like its real food or something, like a double-decker sandwich with silver dollar beef patties and shaved brown iceburg lettuce with thousand-island dressing is some sort of natural, organically-produced food that’s really not so bad to eat.

The girl that took our order was actually cute. 

And did you know that McDonalds serves lattes? 

And that the dollar double cheeseburger no longer costs a dollar?  A dollar-nineteen, I shit you not.

The Play Place in the back was large enough for several kids to have a great time, but I am convinced the one near my home when I was a kid, back before all of them had Play Places and you had to drive to the one in your area with a playground and hope there was an available table, like the club du jour for toddlers before all of them started drinking soy milk, was three times as big as this sorry excuse for a Play Place.  But how can I be sure of this?  I remember a birthday party at the Vandalia McDonald’s way back in the day, that it had the biggest indoor playground I had ever seen.  I was also six years old going on seven with nothing mattering so much as the ten kids at my party in celebration of me that may as well be a throng of thousands and I the center of their universe.  Everything was bigger then, because I was so much smaller.

The McDonald’s in which my girlfriend and I sat was almost totally empty.  A couple high schoolers at a counter, a woman at a booth chowing down solo, and the aforementioned kids playing in the back under the watchful eye of their harried grandmother.  The Big Macs sat down in our bellies like a sponge in dishwater and there was grocery shopping to be done on a rainy, lazy, tired Sunday. Time to get back to it, we supposed, with a refilled Orange drink and thousand-island flavored burps.

It had been many months, perhaps even a solid calendar year since I had last been to a McDonald’s.  It will probably be at least as long again going forward.  The bloom is off the rose, and Wendy’s makes a better burger anyway.