People don't usually think of me as hip, but I can fool you sometimes, which is why I was standing in line at a McDonald's on York Road the other day with the big lunch crowd.
Maybe you heard: McDonald's is the hot place to eat again. Its sales rose 8.2 percent last month, which analysts attribute to consumers watching their pennies and gravitating to cheap fast food and $1 menu items.
There may be fewer people popping for a venti frappuccino at Starbucks, where profits are down dramatically and the barristas might as well bring a deck of cards to work and play solitaire.
But at McDonald's, people are pigging out on Big Macs and large fries and triple-thick shakes, just like the good old days.
Of course, even as I placed my order with the requisite bored-looking kid behind the counter, I flashed back to what happened to poor Morgan Spurlock.
Remember Spurlock? He was the guy who made the 2004 film Super Size Me about the effects of eating too much fast food.
Spurlock decided to see what would happen if he ate nothing but McDonald's for 30 days, and it almost killed him.
Since most Americans get no exercise, he decided not to exercise at all while on this binge. So he gained 25 pounds. His cholesterol levels went through the roof. He felt depressed and exhausted much of the time.
And his sex life just about ceased, which is pretty much what you should expect when you turn into a moody, lethargic fatso.
(There's one scene in the movie that's priceless: Spurlock's girlfriend staring into the camera and fumbling for a delicate way to describe his lack of energy in bed. "I have to be on top now," she says finally.
(Oh, the horror. Honey, you might want to check if he's even awake.)
Sure, what Spurlock did was crazy. But he got a movie out of it, and it made him a ton of money. So when I wrote "poor Morgan Spurlock" earlier, I meant it in a figurative sense.
Anyway, I have no plans to pull another Spurlock, just because I'm trying to stretch a buck here.
He was sacrificing his body for a cause, knocking back Egg McMuffins and hash browns for breakfast, Double Quarter Pounders with Cheese and super-sized fries for lunch, and 10-piece Chicken McNuggets for dinner.
But not me, brother. I need to keep this lithe, ripped body in tip-top condition, especially after getting a look at the deductible I'll be paying under my new health plan.
