Getting creamered

Sometimes, I accidentally hear what the morning DJ on the country music station says. I really don’t mean to. His voice is only allowed on the radio during times of desperation, when all of the other stations have banded together in an attempt to make me listen to McDonald’s commercials.

By the way, did you know that McDonald’s will put the sugar and cream right into the coffee for you now? This is what business students call innovation. Pretty soon, you’ll never have to touch a creamer again. It’s kind of a shame, though, because my friend Josh does this really funny trick where he pretends that he has something is his eye, and he rubs his eyeball with his closed fist going, “Aw, man, my eye is killing me!” Then he takes a fork in his other hand and sticks it into his fist, like he’s going to scratch his eye with the fork.

And as you’re sitting there watching him, the syrup dripping off the pancake on your fork, thinking to yourself, “Is he seriously going to scratch his eye with a fork?”, that’s when he pops the fork into the creamer that was hidden in his fist, making a sound that, on an old-time radio show, would certainly have passed for an eyeball being punctured -- of course, if you had listened to this performance on an old radio show, not only would you have been helpfully reminded to drink more Ovaltine, but your pancakes would not have been ruined from the creamer splatter.

If McDonald’s has its way, Josh won’t be able to do that trick anymore, which I think we can all agree would really be a shame. At least he’ll still be able to do the thing where he grabs his head like he’s going to crack his neck, and then just as he turns his head to the side, he smashes a Tic-Tac container that he’s hidden in his hand, making it sound like he’s broken something very important. Ah, that Josh. He should really get a job.

Anyway, I recently heard the morning DJ working himself into a foamy lather over the fact that some elementary school teachers are using the phrase, “sitting pretzel style,” rather than “sitting Indian style.” He was very angered about this, mostly because very angry people draw a crowd.

After thinking about it for a while, I decided to be really angered about it, too. Clearly, our kids should not be taught to emulate snack foods of any kind. Where would it end? Today, pretzels. Tomorrow, HoHos.

In my estimation, though, what’s sadder than the proliferation of snack-related sitting positions amongst our children is the precipitous decline in our national regard for the Seinfeld rerun. You used to be able to depend on Twinkies and Seinfeld reruns to never get old. But I think those reruns have lost a little bit of their luster ever since Kramer had to go and mess them up with his racist tirade, which must have, by now, been shown on the internet more times than that video of the French guy head-butting the other guy in the chest during that big cricket match.

After the event, which couldn’t have been run more smoothly by Tom Cruise’s publicist, Kramer apologized to Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who shot him down like they’d taken lessons from Cindy Beal, who shot me down for the prom like she’d taken lessons from the Red Baron. That is, if the Red Baron had his mom answer the phone to say that the Baron was doing homework and couldn’t talk.

A couple of weeks ago, the morning DJ asked the question, “Who would someone apologize to if they offended white people?”

Of course, the DJ was being disingenuous. The bigger issue is who deserves an apology when you’ve offended humankind in general. Also, the answer is Jeff Foxworthy.

You can head-butt Mike Todd in the chest online at mikectodd@gmail.com.