I'd Like a McTerrifying, and a Diet Coke to go, please

McDonald’s has a new mascot for its Happy Meals. You know the Happy Meal, a hamburger/French fry/soda/toy combo that used to come with a cookie (cheapskates), that’s now a hamburger/cheeseburger/McNugget/French fry/apple slices/soda/milk/toy combo (although no child would order apple slices and milk on purpose).

That mascot is Happy. We’ll talk about Happy soon enough.

The McDonald’s corporation has always mystified and somewhat frightened me.

Mystified in the sense that I know what I’m eating is bad for me, and I know what I’m eating is probably taking years off my life, so why I’m I still eating it? And why am I making “nom nom nom” noises?

Frightened in the sense that McDonald’s is so good at selling these addictive, fatty hamburgers it has 35,000 locations worldwide, nearly half of those in the United States. Urp.

Oh, and there’s the clown. Clowns scare the hell out of me.

The first McDonald’s mascot was Speedee, an overweight little man in a chef’s uniform, who had a hamburger for a face. This wasn’t an advertising gimmick; it’s just what McDonald’s employees looked like in the 1950s.

In 1962, McDonald’s replaced Speedee, who was at least friendly and didn’t want to swallow your soul, with Ronald McDonald, who did. What the McDonald’s corporation didn’t take into consideration with Ronald is that 15 percent of the population suffers from coulrophobia, a fear of clowns. The percentage of the population that is left-handed is only 13 percent. This means absolutely nothing, except for the fact that there are roughly 6.28 million more Americans terrified by the McDonald’s mascot than are left handed.

That’s a lot. I’m just saying.

However, the terror didn’t stop there. In the 1970s, McDonald’s unveiled McDonaldland, an entire world of terrifying mascots; hamburger-headed politicians and police officers, a purple shake-gulping blob, French Fry Goblins, and dancing McNuggets. There’s a rule on the farm, “Don’t give livestock names. Nobody wants to eat a hamburger named Suzie.” Or, in this case, Mayor McCheese.

Now there’s Happy. An animated Happy Meal box with blue eyes (although only eight percent of the world’s population has blue eyes. Hmm), cartoon appendages and a mouth STRAIGHT OUT OF A NIGHTMARE.

This thing’s gaping black maw has a tongue the size of a human foot and more teeth than a dinosaur.

Little Johnny: “Why’s it smiling like that, Dad?”

Dad: “Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he’s got lifeless eyes …”

Little Johnny: “This is McDonald’s, Dad. Not Jaws.”

Dad: “Don’t be so sure, son.”

You’d think a $97 billion corporation could afford to hire someone to, oh, I don’t know, keep their main Happy Meal demographic from wetting themselves in terror.

A good mascot makes people say, “Awe. How cute. I want one, too.” Like Gidget, the Taco Bell Chihuahua.

A good mascot does not make people cover their eyes screaming, “Oh, for all that is holy. Kill it. Kill it with fire.”

Thanks, McDonald’s. I may not sleep tonight.

Jason Offutt’s latest book, “Across a Corn-Swept Land: An epic beer run through the Upper Midwest,” is available at amazon.com.

The recipe calls for Neufchâtel. What’s a Neufchâtel?

My mom was a great cook. I inherited her full freezer when she died, so I got to enjoy her meals a little bit longer (don’t tell my sisters). I also inherited from her the love of cooking, except my interest was mainly driven by a love of eating.

It went something like this: raw food + gnawing hunger = casserole. Simple.

Although I could prepare meals in high school, my first real foray into the culinary arts didn’t occur until college. Sitting in my kitchen/living room area of my trailer with $10 in my wallet, I thought hungry thoughts. It’s not good to budget on an empty stomach.

With that $10 I could buy:

a)    Gas.

b)   A couple of frozen pizzas and ramen noodles.

c)    Beer.

I chose C, of course. Duh. I didn’t need gas; I knew how to walk. But that didn’t alleviate the problem. I was still hungry.

Rifling through my pantry I found random food items my mother had sent me during the semester I hadn’t eaten because, well, look at them: dry lentils, a can of peas, and a jar of bay leaves. I also found a pound of hamburger in the freezer, a lone carrot in the refrigerator, salt and pepper. In an act of desperation, I threw them together in an old Crock-Pot and created something delicious (well, at least edible).

The result; I’m no slouch in the kitchen (Ty Webb to Judge Smails in Caddyshack: “Don't sell yourself short Judge, you're a tremendous slouch”). So I hate it when I find a recipe that treats me like I didn’t learn how to cook by doing eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

Case in point, I’m looking at a recipe that calls for Neufchâtel. Nothing screws up a perfectly good recipe like something French.

What the heck is Neufchâtel? I’m trying to make a simple salsa dip, and I get a town Napoleon took from the King of Prussia. What’s that have to do with salsa dip?

OK, OK. Deep slow breaths, Offutt. Deep slow breaths.

Turns out the American version of Neufchâtel is basically cream cheese. Why didn’t the recipe just say so?

This happens to me more than I’d like.

Sweet potato, onion, flour tortillas, cheddar cheese, lemon? Great. I know what all those are. And … a Dollop of crème fraîche? I’d have better luck making this dish if the recipe told me to cut off my own fingers.

And it doesn’t end with crème fraîche. Oh, no. There’s Demerara sugar. What is Demerara Sugar? Sounds like a stripper name. Oh, wait, it’s brown sugar.

Same thing with passata. Did my recipe just curse at me in Klingon? No, it’s a kind of tomato sauce. Farfalle pasta is apparently bow-tie pasta. Emmental cheese is often called by its redneck name, Swiss.

Ugh. I think I’ll stick with ingredients I can pronounce.

Jason Offutt’s latest book, “Across a Corn-Swept Land: An epic beer run through the Upper Midwest,” is available at amazon.com.

If the warning label makes sense you’re too far gone

The machine makes an awful noise, but it’s fun to play with. Ah, the paper shredder, an office worker’s version of a chainsaw.

The shredder was one of the last presents my mom gave me, although as a journalist I wasn’t quite sure what kind of papers I had that were important enough to shred. Certainly nothing to do with my finances, which mainly consisted of the change I had left over after I paid my bar tab.

Anything worth destroying I did the old fashioned way, I soaked it in gin and set it on fire.

But since then I got married and found my wife is averse to me setting fires in our yard. I’ve also discovered the paper shredder is a great way to destroy eviden… Uh, old tax documents. Yeah. Old tax documents.

Then, when recently destroying, uh, old tax documents, I saw something I’d never noticed before, a warning label, which is strange because it’s right on the top where you feed in the papers.

Hmm. A warning label on something called a “paper shredder” seems a bit superfluous. I mean, come on, the machine is called a shredder. SHREDDER. That’s the main villain from “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” If you use this machine wrong it will roundhouse kick you in face. I thought that was understood.

But there it was.

“No jewelry.

OK.

“No paper clips.”

Sure, yeah. That would damage the machinery.

“No fingers.”

I thought we’d been over this. It’s called a shredder. It shreds things. That’s all it does. Why did the manufacturer feel it necessary to tell the operator not to stick his fingers into the shredder? The warning should read, “No cheese.” I hate using a cheese grater. This would save so much time.

“No neckties.”

First, the image is funny. Some guy leans over, his tie gets stuck in the shredder; it pulls him closer and closer to the Knives of Doom. He shrieks because he doesn’t realize his thumb is right next to the well marked “off” button. Oh, slapstick comedy, you’ve desensitized me so.

“No hair.”

See, “No neckties.”

This is where we sit today. On the shoulders of idiots. In what other country are there product labels warning you that you shouldn’t use a Vidal Sassoon hairdryer while sleeping, music lovers shouldn’t eat their iPod Shuffle (but it said Apple on the box), people who buy a Rowenta iron should never “iron clothes while they are being worn,” or pyromaniacs shouldn’t put Black Cat firecrackers “in mouth.”

Seriously?

The reason these warning labels aren’t funny (they are) is simple. Someone had to do every one of these things.

Fell asleep with a running hair dryer? Happened.

Swallowed an iPod? Happened.

Ironed clothes while wearing them? Heck, I’ve done it. In my defense, it’s not like I was ironing my pants. The article of clothing was a necktie, and I wasn’t inserting it into a paper shredder at the time.

Shoved ignited firecrackers into a mouth? Happened, most probably in Arkansas.

Political hacks, survivalists, and conspiracy theorists claim this country is seeing its last days. We are, but not from an impending apocalypse. It’s because we have people not smart enough to run a paper shredder.

My head hurts.

Jason Offutt’s latest book, “Across a Corn-Swept Land: An epic beer run through the Upper Midwest,” is available at amazon.com.

Somehow the Parts Come Together

The movie theater parking lot was more full than I’d ever seen it, and this was just for a Sunday matinee. The lot at our local theater was never this crowded, even on Middle Age Date Night for a movie starring Paul Rudd, or Jennifer Aniston, or Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston (God, help me).

I parked and my family piled out of the minivan to trek to the theater through frigid temperatures all the way from the back of the lot.

That’s funny because it’s a complete lie. As any father has probably guessed, I let my family out at the front door and went to park 14 miles away, trudging through the snow, ice, and wolves by myself as my family stood in the warm comfort of the theater lobby asking each other what was taking Daddy so long.

It was cold. The kind of cold that froze breath in your mustache (at least if you were a man, or a yeti, or had a glandular problem, or something). There’s a kind of family hierarchical structure that assumes all fathers were sherpas in a past life and everyone else was a Disney princess.

Possibly not true.

But we got there. The important part wasn’t that we arrived at the theater in time for the movie, but we got there in time to buy slushies and popcorn, and I had a moment to go to the bathroom before the show started. I once missed Darth Vader cutting off Luke’s hand due to an extra-large Coke, and vowed missing a minute of a movie would never happen to me again.

It hasn’t.

Even for “The Lego Movie,” which we were there to see.

The concept of “The Lego Movie” both impressed and concerned me. Impressed because this was commercialism at its finest. After purchasing toy rights for Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Simpsons, DC Comics, Indiana Jones, and quite possibly me, why not take these franchises, smoosh them together and make a quadraziillion dollars? And not just from the movie, from all the Legos toys they’d sell later.

It was perfect. Kids love Legos, parents of today’s kids grew up loving Legos, the Billund, Denmark, company The Lego Group, is still selling Legos. Why not?

I was concerned because this was simply a 100-minute advertisement for something my kids would want me to buy for them. If you don’t have children you probably have no idea that the entire Lego Star Wars set alone costs more than my house.

Turns out, the movie was funny, thoughtful, and not only made the Boy and the Girl laugh and enjoy each other’s company on the drive home (usually 10 minutes in the car is like a UFC match), it gave Mom and Dad a present.

Ever since we watched the movie, the Boy’s played with all the Legos he’s ignored since roughly the moment he opened them as a present.

Thank you “The Lego Movie.”

Jason Offutt’s latest book, “Across a Corn-Swept Land: An epic beer run through the Upper Midwest,” is available at amazon.com.

When in Danger, Remember to be Australian

I’m worried about America, and not for the obvious reasons. The crumbling economy, the rise in violent crime and the fact that “Keeping up with the Kardashians” is starting its ninth season are minor in comparison.

My concern is because we’ve gotten soft. Animals can sense this.

Let’s look at the following headlines:

·      “Guy Tosses Meat to Bear, Gets Mauled” (OK, soft and stupid).

·      “Donkey Kills Texas Mayor.”

·      “Newt Gingrich Bitten by Penguin.”

It might sound like I made up that last one, but according to the Associated Press, while visiting the St. Louis Zoo in 2012, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was bitten by a Magellanic penguin.

Americans, more concerned with hair care products, the price of Botox and how to get a Merlot stain out of the carpet, have lost the killer instinct that made animals run screaming from people like Teddy Roosevelt and Ernest Hemmingway.

The cure? When confronted by any animal, just ask yourself this, what would an Australian do?

Headline: “Shark Attack Victim Survived By Poking Animal In The Eye.”

A Great White Shark tried to swallow Australian abalone diver Eric Nerhus, 41, in 2007.

“I’ve never felt fear like it ’til I was inside those jaws, with those teeth getting dragged across my body,” Nerhus said on Channel Nine television network.

With his head and one arm starting to go down the shark’s throat, Nerhus jabbed out the shark’s eyes with his free hand and the shark let him go.

Headline: “Woman, 94, Battles Rogue Kangaroo.”

Ninety-four-year-old Phyllis Johnson hung the wash outside her home in the Australian Outback when an adult red kangaroo attacked her in 2011, according to Newser.com. The animal repeatedly kicked Johnson before the nonagenarian beat the snot out of it with a broom. Adult male red kangaroos can grow up to eight feet tall and weight 200 pounds.

Headline: “Fisherman Fist-Fights Crocodile, Survives.”

Yoann Galeran swam in the ocean outside an Australian yacht club when an eight-foot-crocodile attacked him in April 2013, according to The National Post.

“It went straight away to the top of my head and diving under the water he tried to do that spinning thing,” Galeran told The Post.

When Galeran realized his head was in the croc’s mouth, he pulled back and started punching the reptile, which swam away.

The kicker? Galeran is French. Australia even turns the French into fearless animal-punching machines.

Here’s what happens in America.

Headline: “Residents report attacks by squirrel.”

People in the small town of Bennington, Vt., have been terrorized by a “rogue” gray squirrel.  A man shoveling snow was attacked by this squirrel in 2011.

“All of a sudden I felt something on my back and shoulders, scratching,” shoveler Kevin McDonald told The Bennington Banner.

Although McDonald threw the squirrel off his back, it jumped back on twice, scratching and biting McDonald who ran inside his house to escape the rodent.

The next day McDonald’s neighbor “battled” the squirrel with a metal pole and blanket, according to The Banner.

The squirrel attacked at least three people.

A squirrel.

So, the next time you’re confronted with any angry animal, remember to stop, drop, and be Australian.

Jason Offutt’s latest book, “Across a Corn-Swept Land: An epic beer run through the Upper Midwest,” is available at amazon.com.