Amarillo Sam's Drive-In Round Up - July 26th

Page 12

Amarillo Sam's Drive-In Round Up

Sunday, July 26th, 1981

Ever since I told all you guys a couple months back that the good ole’ American hamburger is going right in the toilet, I’ve been getting all sorts of calls and letters from the big fast food companies telling me to change my opinion to one that accurately reflects what they see as the facts. The average one goes something like this:

Dear Sam:

We are sorry you feel that your intestinal distress is caused by the high quality meat we serve you at bargain bin prices. Please know that this is not a designed or proven side effect of consuming our products; in fact, we fed our hamburgers to over 100 laboratory mice at three top-flight university laboratories, and found a success rate in stable bowel evacuations of over 90 percent. We stand strong in our belief that, just as was proven with the polio vaccine, if it’s good for the mice, it’s good for humans as well. We hope you will consider these facts and relay them to your readers.

Yours in Christ,

Average American Diarrhea Merchant

That’s all well and good; I’m glad the mice are regular enough to make it through an episode of “Family Feud” without having to run off to the can like they’ve got a cruise missile parked up there. But that still doesn’t answer the question of why I can’t keep the beef I eat with me any longer than it took my third wife to divorce me and take off with the Mr. Coffee. Heck, it’s getting so bad I’m thinking of installing a black water tank on the Hemicuda and cutting a kiester-size hole in the driver’s seat.

 

Now I know what you’re gonna say: “Amarillo Sam, you need to get yourself to the doctor and have your large intestine snaked.” As kind as you are to offer me the free medical advice, let me tell you that’s it’s not just your humble drive-in critic whose cutting his food better rates than the Star Motel cuts a working girl out on Highway 9. The Journal of American Gastrointestinal Health, which is one of those magazines they stock in doctors’ doctor’s offices and is read by some of the finest kiester specialists in the country, ran a long article this month stating that by age 35, the average American male has over two pounds of undigested red meat in his bowels, and that to make sure this won’t compound to four pounds or more by age 50, some primo food pharmacists are being contracted by Washington to inject new formula into the beef we eat that’ll help us kick out the new tenants before the ink’s dry on the lease. Now seeing that I’m the average American male (except for where it counts, if you catch my drift -- and I think you do), I can’t help but think that my hourly trips to the can are a direct result of the government tampering with my meat. They may have good intentions, but the mercury on my Conspiro-meter is rising, and it looks like Ronald McDonald may be colluding with Uncle Sam to sell us more meat at bigger prices.

Speaking of meat in the seat, John Travolta, your second favorite Sweathog, who got roasted on a Corvair spit in “Carrie”, is a sound design man for the movies who’s looking into the shady death of a politician in “Blow Out”, which opened this week at Alvin's Safari Drive-In. My indoor bullstuff-meter was running high on this one, seeing as how there’s a “movie-within-a-movie” and the director, Brian de Palma, is one of those guys who loves to rip off famous Hitchcock shots in a way that lets you know they’re ripped off but is still intended to make the more educated of you go, “Ooooooh, now that’s interesting the way he did that -- it reminds me of Hitchcock’s ‘Rope’, but with a more European sensibility.” Still, this flick’s still got some good, primal drive-in chops, like a thru-line where Barbarino’s job is to find and record the perfect scream of the horizontal pogo-stick.

Sam says check it out, and get a free hamburger on me.