Little Caesars

 Several years ago, I walked into a Little Caesars to pick up a couple of “Hot N Ready” pizzas which, in my case, was more of a “Warm N Wait” situation as there were no pepperoni pizzas on deck. 

Taking a seat, I began to observe the well-oiled machine that was Little Caesars. I quickly surmised that the heavyset mustachioed gentlemen with the buzz cut (whose name had to be Mike) was the manager and he was running the drive-thru window.  

On the other side of the kitchen resided two teenage pizza artisans mechanically churning out pies while wearing headphones. Mike was a beast. He inspected, sliced and boxed the product in what appeared to be one effortless motion before handing it to the customer. So, when Mike stopped and stared intently at a large pizza for several seconds, I knew somebody had just lost their chance at employee of the month.

I could almost hear Mike’s internal dialogue as he gesticulated his exasperation by raising his hands and exhaling loudly. It was clear he found himself in a conundrum. Does he let this culinary infraction stand and get the merchandise out the door or does he confront the issue head-on? 

Eventually he turns toward the prep-station, abomination in hand, and taps the closest of his sous chefs on the shoulder. Both of them remove their headphones just in time for Mike to present the pizza and ask whatever everyone else in the room knew to be a rhetorical question: “What is this!!?”

Glancing at each other, one of them timidly offered, “A large supreme?” 

Mike’s glare could have withered an artificial fern. “And what is all over it!!?” 

Still not sensing an ambush, the same young man earnestly responded, “Toppings!!?”

Mike looked like he was going to burn that mother down. Through gritted teeth, he managed to get out, “And why are there so many of them!!?”

This was not what I, or his colleagues, expected to come out of his mouth. I was mentally prepared for any number of scenarios ranging from wrong toppings to contraband body hair, but I was not expecting a volume discrepancy.

Clearly as flummoxed as me, the duo’s spokesman elaborated by admitting that he had been generous with the toppings because he felt that the customer would appreciate a hearty pizza. 

Mike, now looking to the heavens for strength and hitting every syllable as if it owed him money, said, “You don’t work at Papa Johns! Is there a Domino’s logo on your shirt!!? THIS. IS. LITTLE. CAESARS!!! We could have made 3 supreme pizzas with that many toppings! Don’t let it happen again!”

Without waiting for a response, Mike turned on his heel and returned to his staging area to contemplate the repercussions of not hitting his daily numbers.

The two employees shrugged at each other, repositioned their headphones and went back to prepping pizzas. I tried to imagining the conversation when they got home and their parents inquired about their day. Parents who had painstakingly taught their children about self-sufficiency, work ethic and taking pride in your craft. Then, in an instant, Mike the human demotivational poster brought the walls of excellence crashing down.

My pizza, which had not yet been prepped, became collateral damage from the ToppingsGate scandal. When we opened the boxes at the house, each slice contained a single, orphaned peperoni. My wife frowned and asked why there weren’t more toppings. She suggested that I should have said something at the store. I informed her that had I complained to management about the scarcity of my toppings, either Mike or myself was going to catch a charge.

The Epstein Files

The Epstein criminal enterprise embodies a sobering truth. Specifically, that the justice system navigated by the rest of us bears little resemblance to the one encountered by the wealthy and powerful. Had Epstein been a mid-level trafficker catering to working-class Americans we would never be in this situation. Everyone involved would have been un-masked Scooby Doo style and subjected to criminal charges and the public scrutiny that accompanies them.

The irony is that the Trump administration has turned into its own wake. When they were on the other side of the presidential seal, the current FBI director, vice-president and even Trump himself alluded to a dark conspiracy perpetrated by the deep state protecting wealthy and influential clients of Epstein. The client list continues to be the political equivalent of Schrödinger's cat, somehow tangible enough to sit upon the Attorney General’s desk for review and yet never existing at all.

I am willing to bet that the list (if it does exist) is not populated by roofers, second generation farmers or shift-leaders at Dairy Queen. It contains CEOs, hedge-fund managers and political donors whose influence and reach would likely reverberate throughout the Federal government and both political parties. The only undisputed commonality of Epstein’s “clients” is that they continue to evade any repercussions for their crimes.

For every wealthy client who perpetrated a crime, there were countless others turning a blind eye to the most despicable form of commerce imaginable. They placed their own ambitions and influence over the safety and well-being of children. Whatever their political ideology, socio-economic status, or elected position; if they participated or enabled child trafficking they should be brought to justice. We can no longer claim to be a city on a hill while we continue to protect a shanty in the swamp.

Conspiracy Theories

 “You know dad, the moon landing was fake.” My eldest was around 8 years old when he came home from school and announced this to the family. To be clear, this information originated from playground banter rather than school curriculum. A classmate had informed some friends that his dad told him the truth about the moon landing after watching a video on YouTube. A few years later, my daughter would ask me why they had faked the sinking of the Titanic citing similar sources.

More recently, I had an experience with a gentleman who has been attending our church for several years and is of limited means. Occasionally I will take him to get some lunch after church and it was on one such Sunday that we found ourselves walking into a Subway whilst chatting about what he would want to drink.

He had been going on in some detail about how there was nothing better than an ice-cold Dr. Pepper so I suggested that he should have one with his sandwich. With only mild alarm, he looked at me and announced he had stopped drinking Dr. Pepper now that they “were putting AIDS in it.” It was at this point the Subway employee removed his AirPod and cast a reflexive glance at the drink fountain.

Certain that I had misheard him, I clarified and he was adamant that he had seen a video on the Internet that proved they had changed the formula a few years ago so that it included AIDS (in this scenario the release of Dr. Pepper Zero seems more ominous). Setting aside my burning desire to ask if the video in question had been uploaded by Mr. Pibb, I began what I believed to be comprehensive logical rebuttal to the Big K fear-mongering.

Most importantly, you cannot just add AIDS to something like it was aspartame. AIDS is the result of a virus not its cause, so the author of the video lacked a basic understanding of science (or beverages). This would be akin to infusing a Monster Energy drink with osteoporosis or selling apple juice with 20% less gonorrhea. Secondly, who would stand to gain? Perceiving that he remained unconvinced, we descended further down the rabbit hole. Turning my full attention to him, I began what I believed to be an unassailable case for AIDS-free Dr. Pepper:

Let’s pretend, for the sake of argument, that AIDS was something they could add into a drink. Why would a multinational beverage conglomerate, whose profits are contingent upon getting as many people as possible to consume Dr. Pepper as often as possible for as long as possible, follow a course of action diametrically opposed to their continued financial success and / or existence.

Feeling the intellectual wind at my back, I continued to assure him that there is no reason he cannot enjoy an ice-cold Dr. Pepper on a hot summer day. Guiding him toward the counter, I announced to the room at large that he should go get his Dr. Pepper while I speak to the resident sandwich artist who, although listening to our discussion, had so far refrained from comment. 

When my lunch companion rejoined me, cup in hand sipping on a cold beverage, I smiled and asked how that Dr. Pepper was treating him. He informed me that he felt more comfortable getting a Pepsi whilst mumbling something about not taking any chances.

I was telling this story to a group of acquaintances who joined me in laughing at the absurdity. One individual, still chuckling along with the rest of us, said, “That is crazy….But those government clouds are no joke.” Despite my instincts to the contrary, I decided this was a thread worth unraveling.

They explained that all cloud formations we see today were manufactured by the Federal government in order to best control the populace. When I expressed skepticism that Washington, DC was in possession of a meteorological vending machine, they admitted that they too had harbored the same reservations before a YouTube video had opened their eyes.

The cornerstone of this argument was a simple statement, “Thunder just doesn’t sound the same as it did 20 or 30 years ago.”  Encouraging me to think back, they asked if I could honestly say that the thunder I heard last week was the same as the thunder I heard in the 90’s.

I haven’t even memorized the names of all of my children’s teachers I met at open house that week, so I knew there was no way for me to objectively compare the volume, frequency, duration and tonal characteristics of a thunderstorm that occurred before 2Pac was shot.

I thought about reminding them that the composition of a thunderstorm varies wildly based on the atmospheric conditions that spawn it, but I was already on a losing streak and I did not want to tempt fate. Instead, I listened politely and wondered why no politician had ever run on an anti-tornado platform.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the government clouds / chem trail / cloud seeding scenario is that it often finds its audience with people who remain unconvinced that the actions of humanity have any effect on the climate or weather. Those Venn diagrams shouldn’t overlap. How does one believe that we have the capability to bend the forces of mother nature to our will and yet somehow humanity remains statistically insignificant regarding our environment?

What do I know? Maybe it is all connected. Maybe YouTube is right. Perhaps, during a routine recalibration in 1912, the GovWeather-O-Matic 4000 starting dropping icebergs in the North Atlantic. In order to distract the populace from the fact that President Taft was tinkering with the jet stream, the US government conspired with a British company to fabricate one of the greatest maritime disasters of the century. The secret was then handed down until it appeared that the Soviets were on the cusp of a sustained orbital presence above the earth which could provide irrefutable proof that America was exporting cumulus clouds and low-pressure systems.

The government then hired Stanley Kubrick to film a moon-landing on a studio backlot in the hopes of turning people’s attentions from the heavens to the Kremlin. Their plan worked until the widespread adaptation of cell phones allowed for the recording and scrutiny of GMO thunder against free-range organic thunder through social media platforms. Then, just as YouTube sleuths got wind of their plans, they started putting AIDS (also known as the 24th flavor) into a popular soft-drink.

Sometimes I want to fight the good fight and sometimes I realize that the best course of action is to stay quiet and let people enjoy their Pepsi.

The Facelicker

While I have already written about my daughter’s involvement with competitive cheerleading, my oldest son has a passion for competitive robotics. If there was ever a total opposite to a competitive cheerleading tournament, it would be a competitive robotics event. The only commonality is my inability to comprehend how either event is scored.

My understanding is that when you get into higher levels it is more sudden death battle-bots than collaborative Amazon warehouse drills. While both cheerleading and robotics are full-day endeavors, the S.T.E.M. crowd is more of my scene. The emphasis on engineering, science, and programming is needed more now than ever and I sincerely hope that programs like this continue to expand.

While I was walking by two gentlemen at the Robotics state tournament, I overheard a conversation I was unlikely to hear at a competitive cheerleading event. They were each laying out a case for which one’s offspring exhibited autodidacticism at an earlier age. “He was reading before he could walk” was a common theme. I fought the urge to downplay the achievements of their kids by telling them that my son marked his gestation by tapping out the Fibonacci sequence on my wife’s uterus.

There were a large number of attendees wearing NASA gear and robot-themed puns on shirts, but one older gentleman’s attire caught my attention. It was a T-shirt styled like college alumni gear. In arced script, it said “Facelicker” and underneath that was “Est. 1979.” For a split second, I entertained the idea of asking about the meaning and origin of his garment, but other tasks needed to be completed before we could retire to the hotel for the evening. Perhaps it was a small liberal-arts college whose primary endowment came from someone with an unfortunate surname or an obscure psychedelic jam-band. Whatever it was it would just have to remain a mystery.

The next morning at the hotel, I just happened to wander onto the elevator with the very same gentleman wearing the same shirt. Since it was just the two of us and a softball coach engrossed in his phone, I decided that there was no time like the present. I motioned toward his shirt and said, “I have to ask.”

His face lit-up with an intensity that let me know that his entire life had been leading up to this moment. Day after day he wandered the earth just begging for someone to give him a reason to tell his story and I was just the moron he had been searching for.

He set the scene for me. It was a 1979 worship service at an undisclosed denomination and he described sitting on the pew sandwiched between his wife and her best friend. His arms were around both of them when, at some point during the service, his wife leaned over to him and challenged him to suddenly turn and lick her best friend’s face.

If he had entertained any reservations about tongue-bathing another woman during the scripture reading, it was not conveyed in his recounting of events. I was fuzzy on the details of the wager itself, but whatever was at stake, he smiled broadly while bragging that he “got her from chin-to-ear” smack dab in the middle of exalting the Almighty.

At this point the third passenger, who had been absorbed in authoring a lengthy text message right up until the moment that “chin-to-ear” made its debut, looked up with what could only be described as involuntary revulsion. Unabated, Facelicker Jones chuckled as he said, “Boy, you should have seen the look on her face after I got done! At any rate, she went and had a T-shirt made to commemorate it soon after and here we are.”

There had been many scenarios floating around my head before hearing his tale, but tracing a woman’s jawline with your tongue in the name of the Lord had not been on my bingo card. As the door began opening and the softball coach all but threw himself from the elevator into the lobby, my mind swirled with questions:

How old was the shirt he was wearing and why did it not look worn at all? Did he have an entire wardrobe of these like the batsuit? What woman’s reaction to unwanted face-licking is to present the offender with a commemorative T-shirt? How did his wife feel that he continued to memorialize the moment he violated the sanctity of her friend’s neckline? Where was his wife now? Did he and the best friend get together and continue to regale strangers with their origin story? Can you imagine being out to dinner with them and stepping on that landmine? So, how did you two meet…..

Would she answer, “It was love the moment he turned away from his ex-wife during the fourth stanza of Shall We Gather at the River and baptized my jawline with his saliva. We have been inseparable ever since!”

After parting ways with him in the lobby, I found my wife and recounted the sordid tale as she valiantly attempted to continue consuming her waffle before ultimately giving up. She then made it clear that despite 22 years of marriage, when it came to Face-licking she did not think that we “were there yet.” Then, for what must have been the thousandth time in our lives, she gave me the, “This is why we do not talk to strangers” reprimand.