One of the problems with exposing myself to reality TV is that I also expose myself to TV commericials, and I will buy anything anyone tells me to. As a result, I found myself on Wednesday driving about 20 minutes round trip to pick up a Hardee’s Low Carb Thickburger. “How did they make a fast-food hamburger with so few carbohydrates? I asked myself. I got it home and found the secret: no bun – it’s wrapped in lettuce. It’s not bad, really. It’s kind of like a giant ground beef spring roll. But I don’t think I’ll be making any more 20 minute round trips to get one. “Mike and Chris have promised that at their next brunch, in consideration of any low-carb dieters, they’re going to make meat waffles. I can hardly wait.”
While finishing off the No Bun Weirdburger, I remembered another time I went considerably out of my way to eat something ultimately disappointing. When I lived in Tokyo, my aunt and uncle came to visit and we went to Kyoto. My aunt went out for a walk one morning and returned to the hotel unable to talk about anything but the cinnamon rolls she had smelled from a small bakery. She went on about it all day long, and made me promise that I would go with her the next day to negotiate the purchase of these items, since I had been in Japan for several months by that point, honing my smiling and pointing skills.
We set out the next morning at roughly the crack of dawn “she really was like a kid on Christmas day” and found the “bakery in question, which looked more like a machine shop. But there was no denying the intense aroma of cinnamon baked goods. I found someone who worked there, who reacted the way many Japanese do when they encounter a foreigner, which is roughly the way they do when they encounter Godzilla. I finally managed to convince him that we weren’t there to step on cars, but wanted to buy what they were baking. The delight on my aunt’s face when I emerged holding a bag of goodies was almost spiritual. We each removed one item from the bag, and took a big bite of … something with the consistency of a building material. Perhaps a wood laminate, or polycarbonate. It was undeniably cinnamon, but to this day I’m not entirely certain it was food. Somewhere I have a picture of my aunt trying in vain to bite through hers, with a there-is-no-Santa look on her face.