This weekend marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of The New Yorker. I never had a story published there, but in 1993 editor Daniel Menaker liked this one well enough to work with me on it for a few weeks. I mention it in my column about the magazine tomorrow, and thought I would post it here for anyone who is interested in reading it.
Big Boy is in the ready room, having his pompadour teased and airing out his crotch. He slouches in the stylist's chair, legs apart, naked room the waist down. His famous red-and-white checkered overalls are draped across a ratty couch. Near the couch sits a tray piled with dozens of Big Boy Burgers, cold and untouched, sent over by a local franchisee. Each burger is wrapped in grease-soaked yellow paper, the paper spangled with little running Big Boys, hefting their namesake burgers overhead and smiling happily at the world.
The genuine article grimaces and roughly slaps wide swaths of talc powder over his giant, hairless belly and flame red thighs. He is a tad over eight feet tall, according to his bio sheet, but has the genitalia of a five-year-old — a fact not mentioned in the press material but readily apparent.
"If McDonald's would've put an extra dime into their Big Mac we'd have sunk fifteen years ago," he says, his voice thick and phlegmy. He turns his massive head toward a visitor, slowly, lest the torque snap his neck.
"Off the record," he adds quickly, and winks.
Once a pair of stylists in white tunics finish applying hair goo to Big Boy's upswept, Reaganesque coif, he grips the chair's armrests, hard, and with enormous effort, plus help from the stylists, hauls himself to his feet. When he turns to accept the overalls, he flashes a glimpse of his aluminum neck brace, de rigueur for someone whose head constitutes a third of his body weight.
He dresses, slowly, as if underwater. By the time he has finished, his forehead is beaded with sweat. Big Boy sticks out an arm to brace himself against a squirming stylist — sitting back down would be too much trouble. His face goes blank.
"I hate this," he says, in a slurry whisper.
"It's four o'clock, Mr. Boy," murmurs a nervous woman clutching a clipboard. Big Boy comes alive, smearing his hands over his face as if to wipe it clean. He scratches himself vigorously about the privates, then grins largely and plunges through a metal door into the chaos of the Forty-fourth Annual International Food and Restaurant Convention.
Tens of thousands of people mill past booths in Chicago's gigantic McCormick Place. So much to look at, the eye dances over the jarring graphics, waving flags, pulsating signs, flashing, rotating displays, dancing models, and walking food containers. All manner of sounds fill the air — the gargling flap of a multitude of voices, punctuated occasionally by the oddly familiar shriek, copyrighted maniacal laugh, or trademark whoop, not to mention the competing blare of electronic music, trumpets, gongs, sirens, and bells. Somewhere a calliope plays the circus theme: "brup-pup-pudday-duddah brup brup-pup puh duh..."
A small blimp, powered by electric motors, drifts overhead and stops. "Hey down there!" a canned voice calls. "Have you been to the Kraft Cheese-o-rama? Booth twelve on the Main Floor. Kraft Cheese-o-rama. Get going! See the big cheese show. Cheese cheese cheese cheese!" then the blimp moves off. Ten yards away, it stops and repeats the spiel. high above the crowded hall, half a dozen other blimps float gently in the distance.
The blimps can be viewed at eye level by those in the corporate suites ringing the main floor. in Suite 304A, a pair of men in baggy suits sit, their backs to the window, side by side at a table, taking notes. A moment passes.
"That will be all," says the older man, briskly. "Thank you." The clown gathers up his balls, a bit wearily, and uttering little gratitudes, bows backward out of the room. A female secretary at the door sees him out then looks, questioningly at the men, who shuffle their papers. it is utterly quiet — no noise from the hall seeps through the thick windows. The older an turns to the younger.
"Well?" he says.
"It's after four," says the younger, gesturing to his watch. "We're supposed to be on the floor."
"Are we finished?" asks the older.
The younger consults a clipboard. "Three more."
"Let's get tis over with," says the older.
"We'll miss him doing it," says the younger. "He's expecting us."
"So we miss it," replies the older. "He'll cope, and if he doesn't..." The man shrugs, then nods to the woman at the door. "Bring in the next one."
She opens the door and steps back. The Gouda Baby is brought in, ushered in a wheelchair by a small, middle-aged lady with an anxious expression.
The two men sit straighter in their chairs and gaze intently at the Gouda Baby. One of the rash of dysplastic infants, the Gouda Baby is actually not a baby at all, but a twenty-three-year-old who, despite his age, has the appearance of a four-month-old infant, albeit one who weighs 110 pounds and is three feet tall. "Gouda" was originally a description of his disconcertingly large, round, reddish cheeks, but for the past three years has also been his professional name.
"Good afternoon," says the younger man, standing up and reaching far over the desk, extending a hand. "We've admired your work with Hickory Farms." The older man looks down, fidgeting with an enamel pin on his lapel.
The anxious woman pushes the Gouda Baby's wheelchair as close to the table as possible. The Gouda Baby, who up to this point has seemed asleep, abruptly thrusts a pudgy hand in the general vicinity of the younger man, the elbow receiving a bit of guidance by the woman behind him, who introduces herself as the Gouda Baby's assistant but whom the two men assume correctly is actually his mother. The younger man snags the Gouda Baby's hand and shakes it, the baby's fleshy arm wangling loosely below as he does.
Weighing as much as a compact car and with a head the size of a garbage can, Big Boy immediately draws attention. People in the convention hall freeze, gaping. Some waves or call out his name. Others whip out pocket cameras and snap pictures.
Moving slowly on his stubby legs, at the center of a flying wedge formed by the Big Boy Burger Boys — six solid young men in identical checked overalls — Big Boy hooks his thumbs in his overall straps. Towering above his entourage, he smiles and nods, slowly, his head like a boulder teetering on a ledge.
A teenage girl slips through the phalanx of security and thrusts a pen and a pad of paper at Big Boy. His bloated fingers can't grip the pen, however, and it clatters to the floor. The girl is swept aside, dejected, looking for her pen on the ground.
Big Boy arrives at the Big Boy Zone and representatives wearing his face on discreet enameled lapel pins jostle each other, lining up to greet him. The crowd thickens. Far away, across the huge hall, people notice what's going on, drop what they're doing and instinctively head in Big Boy's direction, some at a trot. Tony the Tiger shows up at every strip mall, it seems, but a Big Boy appearance is rare. The Marriott Corporation, owner of the Big Boy chain, is said to be in horror over the possibility of an incident. They prefer to use college kids in paper mache heads whenever possible and keep the actual Boy himself under wraps, sequestered in his custom-built home on an abandoned oil rig platform twenty-five miles off the coast of Florida.
But Big Boy is on his best behavior, so far. he extends a hand to anyone in front of him, and people strain over each other to take it, although most end up shaking just the tip of one finger, as if grabbing the fat end of a baseball bat.
"Hiya, hiya," Big Boy mumbles. "Nice to know ya, nice to blow ya!" His voice is such a low, moist slobbering, as if his mouth were filled with coleslaw, that nobody catches his words. Nevertheless, every time his lips move, the nervous woman with the clipboard flinches.
Public enthusiasm is important — trends in the industry are immediately registered at the fall show. Futurism was in a few years back, as the bedrock of American business rushed to update their suddenly-fusty images. The Consolidated American Tea & Food Company, founded in 1837, changed its name to CATFO, and the etching of a Yankee clipper at full sail that had long adorned its products was etiolated into a pair of blue triangles. That year, there was hardly a mascot to be seen.
No longer. A quick glance t the displays of the major companies in the main hall announces that nostalgia is back, even if it is nostalgia for 1969, when Quaker Oats introduced Quisp and Quake, both of whom are here and looking fit. A dense line of people forms around the refrigerated semi-trailer where the Jolly Green Giant is kept, lying on his side on a chaise like a Thai buddha He exchanges a friendly word or two with his admirers as they file by. A boiled spinach smell hangs in the humid air.
The tone is more subdued at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Attendees shuffle, heads bowed, past Colonel Sanders, embalmed in his glass coffin. At Pillsbury, Poppin' Fresh signs autographs for a long procession of fans. He is perched on a stack of phone books, making small talk, laughing that particular tee-hee-hee giggle of his and rolling his cow eyes. A miniature pen is stuck in his fluffy stump of a hand, and he keeps leaving traces of himself over the "I Met the Doughboy at Food/Rest/Con '95" notepaper he is signing. A closer look reveals that his skin has the tendency to collect dirt — grit, chips of glass, a stray black pubic hair, even a paperclip — pressed into the soiled dough.
The sound of thunder and heavy rain nearby draws attention to a circular stage shrouded in a silver curtain. Lights flash and speakers boom, and the curtain flies up to reveal the Morton Salt Girl.
There have been perhaps twenty Morton Salt Girls — they replace them every few years. This one is a pistol. Maybe eighteen, with bobbed black hair. Big dark eyes, a full pouting mouth. She wears a short, yellow, baby-doll dress and black patent leather shoes. With the slightest motion the dress flies up and she flashes a pair of tiny yellow panties. Dozens of businessmen cluster around the edge of the platform.
The foul weather sound effects subside, and the Salt Girl, twirling her enormous umbrella, skips her way once around the stage, pouring a trail of pure white salt from the drum-sized blue canister under her arm.
"Morton Salt welcomes you to the 1995 Food/Rest/Con!" she says, cheerily. "This is the forty-fourth year of the show and the forty-fourth year that Morton Salt has been a part of it. Salt is a vital nutrient and basic dietary building block — deprive the body of salt and life is impossible. Salt is mentioned forty-seven times in the Bible, and was so precious in ancient days that the Romans paid their soldiers with salt. Our word 'salary' comes from the Latin word for 'salt.'"
She says all this in a childish singsong, accenting every noun. Only the first row or two of spectators realize she is lip-synching. Her speech continues for a while, punctuated with broad, pinwheeling arm motions. It ends:
... whether adding zest to the most expensive French meal, or spicing up a bag of French fries, salt is the world's most popular seasoning and Morton Iodized Salt is the world's most popular salt. Customers who know you serve or use Morton Salt know that you maintain the highest standards possible. Turn to Morton Salt — "The Salt of the Earth." Thank you and enjoy your day!
She executes a valedictory twirl. The audience gets a parting shot of her yellow panties. The men around the stage disperse, after each grabs a handful of free salt packets from huge barrels designed to resemble Morton canisters. Everyone carries plastic shopping bags, loading them up with samples and brochures and books and magazines and coasters and branded change purses. The Big Boy organization hands out key chains — a tiny plastic boy, in his classic running pose, burger held high. Soon the crowd strips the tables clean of the key chains, and another crate of freebies is called up from storage.
The main floor is mobbed, but only a relative handful of stragglers find their way downstairs, to McCormick Place's lower level — where the third-rate exhibitors are scattered amidst piles of cardboard boxes, splintery wooden pallets, and great gray dumpsters of garbage waiting to be hauled away. here the glitter of the main hall quickly fades into forlorn displays of odd culinary devices and obscure foodstuffs — spiced apple rings, marshmallow fluff, Indian curry, egg timers, those multicolored candy dots on strips of waxy paper.
Staining on tiptoe to catch the gaze of the occasional passerby, a dwarf dressed as a pear hands out bags proclaiming ENJOY SYNTHETIC FRUIT! and urges conventioneers to fill them up from a cornucopia of realistic-looking NewApples™, NewOranges™ and NewPears™ ("Half the calories; twice the taste!") Behind him, a large, gleaming machine with quivering rubber hoses injects more NewFruit™ into steaming molds.
Bosco Bear, who arrived at McCormick hours before his call time, has wandered down to te lower level. He extends a paw to accept a NewApple™ from he dwarf and, nibbling distractedly, strolls slowly down the nearly empty aisles. From the corner of his eye, Bosco notices Pop, sitting by himself, ignored, half-hidden by a cart piled high with folding chairs. Bosco's heart swells — ever since he was a cub he has loved Pop. Staring somberly at the dingy linoleum floor, Pop does not see the bear. Above him is a frayed banner reading RICE KRISPIES! A tattered, grimy sign on an easel proclaims HERE TODAY! LIVE IN PERSON! SNAP! CRACKLE! POP! Someone has taken a red pen and drawn a line through "Snap" and "Crackle." Pop looks terrible — dry and wizened and trembling with some kind of palsy. His pointed ears stand out at right angles to his yellowish, shrunken skull. He can't weigh more than forty-five pounds.
"I love your cereal," Bosco says, hesitantly, afraid of embarrassing himself. Pop scribbles what could be "Best wishes — Pop" on a miniature cereal box and pushes it across the table, never looking up. "Sorry about Crackle," Bosco says, dropping the box into his plastic shopping bag. Pop gazes up at last, revealing dull, cloudy eyes.
"Yeah," he says, flatly.
Bosco lingers a moment, then he turns away, saddened. But he can't afford to be down, he thinks to himself. He needs to be up. Dynamic. Bosco looks at the clock. Only fifteen minutes left, he realizes. Better hurry.
Bosco tries to purge his mind of the awkward encounter with Pop. Now that Snap and Crackle are gone, few expect Kellogg's to let a lone, fading Pop represent Rice Krispies. Supposedly, they offered to shift Pop over to Cocoa Krispies, but he refused to work with the monkey. Now the rumor is that a trio of giant, rapping rice kernels dubbed "R.K. Snap" is being groomed for Pop's job.
Ducking into the scummy, unmaintained men's room — there is only one, apparently, serving the entire lower level — Bosco turns his head to the left to avoid looking at the galaxy of dried snot stuck on the white tile, and notices another bear using the adjacent urinal. His face brightens with recognition.
"Hey Sugar Bear," Bosco says, cheerily, finishing up. "Bosco Bear. We were in Denver two years ago. Remember: 'Drink Your Bosco Every Day; Bosco, Bosco, It's Okay!' He extends his paw, holds it out a moment, then lets it drop, unshaken.
The other bear seems pained. "It's Golden Bear now," he says, sheepishly, running his finger over a purple sash across his chest that, indeed, reads "Golden Bear."
They wash their paws in silence. Both bears' fur soaks and remains wet even after using a half dozen paper towels.
"That's right. I'd heard that, sorry," Bosco finally says."How did that happen?"
Golden Bear shoots Bosco a hard look. "Here's a joke," he says. "What's what and sweet and granular and goes in coffee?"
"I ... I don't know," Bosco says, trying to play along. "What is white and sweet and granular and goes in coffee?"
"I don't know either," Golden Bear says, turning and walking away.
Bosco hurries after him, but he's gone. No time anyway. He rushes toward the "Up" escalators.
The Gouda Baby would give his eye teeth, if he had teeth, for a cereal gig — sugar, golden, or otherwise. But he couldn't even get himself onto the Kellogg's short list. Too pudgy — try Campbell's, they said. He had nearly resigned himself to the idea of spending the rest of his life handing out cubes of smoked cheese at shopping malls. Then Marriott called.
The Gouda Baby had only a few weeks to practice, but everything goes splendidly. A plaster of Paris burger proper carefully constructed at home is set on the coffee table and the Gouda Baby is placed next to it. On a whispered command from his mother, he snaps from his usual narcoleptic near-stupor into an expression of amazement — eyes goggling, hands thrown back in surprise and delight, fingers splayed — that would look exaggerated in a silent movie. But the two executives seem pleased. The younger man asks if the Gouda Baby can do "the loft" and the baby spastically sticks out a chubby arm. He nearly topples forward as his mother paces the heavy plaster burger on his hand, but then steadies himself. The men nod and whisper, and the older man hurries around the table to walk the Gouda Baby and his mother to the door. In the hall, a tiny elephant nervously probes the carpet for crumbs with his trunk.
"You were marvelous," coos the mother, stroking one of the Gouda Baby's pillowish cheeks, as she rolls him toward the elevators. The Gouda Baby, already asleep, emits a snurgling sound.
Downstairs, in the pandemonium of the main hall, things are heating up at the Big Boy booth. The Burger Boys push the eager crowd back. It is obvious something is about to happen.
Big Boy is helped onto a circular platform, two feet high and maybe four feet in diameter. Next to the platform is a giant chair — more like a throne. Big Boy sets his legs wide, as if bracing himself. One hand creeps hesitantly across his hip, and the nervous woman with the clipboard, watching from below, goes pale. Big Boys' face darkens with concentration and anxiety. Two Burger Boys bring a gigantic plate holding a burger the size of a stack of automobile tires. The burger isn't real, but appears to be made out of fiberglass; the bread, beef patties, and cheese are secured by a barely visible bolt through the center. The Burger Boys grab his hand and slide it through a strap hidden under the pate. Big Boy gazes around.
"Where are they?" he asks, drool cascading out of his mouth when he opens it.
"They must have been detained, says the nervous woman with a clipboard.
A Burger Boy quickly dabs Big Boy off with a sponge mop and then everybody steps back as a fanfare of trumpets and French horns explodes from a hidden sound system, a blast worthy of the entrance of a Bourbon king. Air hisses. The platform shudders, then rises about five feet off the ground. There is an anticipatory flutter among the dozen or so press photographers and TV cameramen. The clatter in the great hall subsides. Even salesmen closing deals nearby pause and turn toward the Boy.
From Big Boy's great height, he takes a moment to survey the hall and the crowd in front of him. His face is calm now. Catching the eye of the nervous woman, he makes a quick, feinting motion with his free hand, then winks. Concentrating hard, he takes a breath, then raises the plate over his head, tilting forward slightly, the other arm trailing back, as if running. He seems to lose his balance for a moment, but then he catches and sets himself, like a weightlifter bracing for the count. There is a collective intake of breath from the onlookers and a smattering of applause.
Big Boy holds "the loft" position for three, maybe four seconds, then slowly exhales and sags. his hands drop to his sides. The hamburger does not fall off the plate, even when vertical. The platform quickly descends with a hydraulic sigh and two Burger Boys rush to guide Big Boy into the waiting throne while another slips the plate off his limp hand. Big Boy turns to draw deeply from an oxygen bottle. Someone mops his head again, and a bald man with a small black bag places a stethoscope against Big Boy's heaving chest. The cameramen, putting on their lens caps and spooling up their cable, record none of this. The crowd disperses.
After a few minutes, Big Boy is coaxed to his feet. He makes his way slowly across the hall, leaning heavily on a pair of Burger Boys toward a side exit, where a specially equipped van waits to take him to his four-star hotel.
A green blimp, vaguely shaped like a pickle, follows the entourage, hovering above, haranguing them about the allure of sweet gherkins. Big Boy and his handlers leave quickly through a metal door. The blimp butts itself gently against the cinderblock wall above the doorway, hesitates or a moment as if puzzled, then makes a forty-five degree turn, its little electric motors whining, and heads off in another direction.
"Hey you!" it screams. "Hey hey hey. Howsabout a sweet gherkin to go with that? Wouldn't a nice gherkin taste good right about now...?"
