Joel Murphy

Burger King and I used to have a good thing going. They would run ridiculous advertisements on TV involving their terrifying King mascot and in return, when I was in the mood to order crap food that I would regret eating the next day, I would purchase one of their delicious chicken sandwiches. Things were great for years, but recently the company decided to spit in the face of our unspoken agreement and release a new series of ads promoting a taste test among “Whopper Virgins.”

If you haven’t seen these ads, allow me to explain how they work. Burger King sends a camera crew out to some remote village (one of the few small villages remaining in the world that doesn’t yet have a McDonalds, Burger King or Starbucks) and finds local townspeople who have never tasted the greasy, processed mush we refer to as fast food. Then, provided that they can convince these simple folks that the cameras won’t steal their souls, the Burger King crew videotapes these confused people eating both a Whopper and a Big Mac and asks them to choose which one they like the best. Overwhelmingly, these “Whopper Virgins” choose the Whopper over the Big Mac.

(Sadly, at no point does the Burger King mascot pop out from behind the scenes and attempt to stuff dollar bills down these villagers’ pants.)

These Whopper Virgin commercials are stupid on a number of levels. First of all, the term “Whopper Virgin” is absurd. According to my trusty dictionary, a virgin is defined as “a person who has never had sex.” Therefore, we can deduce that a Whopper Virgin is a person who has never had sex with a Whopper. Hopefully, with the possible exception of this guy, no one has ever fucked a hamburger. I know Burger King has always said that you can “have it your way,” but I always assumed they weren’t encouraging you to actually have intercourse with their signature sandwich. Besides, if you were going to fuck a hamburger, I hope you would at least go for the Carl’s Jr. Six Dollar Burger. I mean, just because you are sticking your junk in your Happy Meal, that doesn’t mean that you have to sacrifice your dignity by banging a cheap piece of meat.

While I think that we can all agree that calling these people Whopper Virgins is a poor choice of words, I can understand why Burger King would give them that moniker. After all, it’s a lot catchier than “unwashed aborigines who have never eaten a Whopper and who can’t quite understand what Burger King is and why these people are shoving a camera in their faces.” But, putting the stupid name aside for a moment, the entire logic behind these commercials seems flawed.

Burger King claims that this is the world’s most pure taste test, since these people have never heard of Burger King or McDonalds, which means they are unbiased. Having never tasted a hamburger before, supposedly these Whopper Virgins are best equipped to judge once and for all which burger is best. But honestly, what kind of sense does that make? I understand taste tests where participants wear blindfolds and pick which soda they like best so that people who think they like Pepsi because of it’s clever advertising will discover that they actually prefer Coke (or that they can’t tell Coke and Pepsi apart, which amazingly many people seem unable to do). If Burger King had simply done a blind taste test to decide which burger was best, then I wouldn’t have taken the time to write this column. But their big selling point of the commercials – finding people who have never tasted a Whopper or a Big Mac – is fundamentally flawed.

Sticking with the virgin idea, let’s say that you and your friends were conducting a scientific experiment to find out which one of the ladies in your social circle was the best in bed (this may sound scandalous, but for the sake of this analogy, let’s assume that this is a very important and professional experiment, with lab coats, beakers and all that jazz, and that if done correctly you and your friends could win the Nobel Prize). Would you have these ladies all sleep with a virgin to determine who is the best in the sack? Of course not. The virgin would have no clue what was going on. He’d be dealing with strange sensations that he’s never experienced before and would be too nervous and confused to properly judge the situation.

That’s how I imagine this taste test played out for these poor Whopper Virgins. Assuming that the Burger King crew was able to overcome the language and cultural barriers and adequately explain to these people what the hell they were doing in their village, I assume the villagers didn’t quite know what to think of the two fast food hamburgers placed in front of them. If you had spent your whole life eating animal meat that wasn’t pumped full of growth hormones and pesticide-free fruit and vegetables, I would imagine eating American fast food would be a jolt to your system. I’d love to see the footage that ended up on the cutting room floor to find out just how many of these pour souls ended up regurgitating their delicious Whoppers and Big Macs later that evening.

Even without the flawed logic of the entire setup, you also have to consider that Burger King conducted these taste tests on their own, which makes the entire process suspect. Who knows how fresh the Big Macs were that they were handing out to the villagers – they could have purchased a bunch of them in America and just tossed them all into a bag, only to later serve them side by side with a Whopper that was made fresh. For all I know, they could have told the villagers that if they didn’t select the Whopper, it would greatly upset their gods or that the Burger King Corporation would make it so that it will never rain in their village again. Whatever actually happened during the taste test, I guarantee you that those villagers are still telling tales of the day the crazy white people came into their town offering everyone strange meat (not unlike that unsettling camping trip I had when I was in Boy Scouts, but I digress).

Since tomorrow is the start of a new year, I’m hoping that Burger King will realize the error of their way and will drop this whole Whopper Virgin campaign. In the spirit of change and new beginnings, I’m willing to still honor our old agreement – as long as Burger King promises that the next time they send a camera crew to a remote village uncorrupted by modern society, it will be to scare the shit out of the unsuspecting townspeople with their creepy mascot.

Joel Murphy is the creator of HoboTrashcan, which is probably why he has his own column. He loves pugs, hates Jimmy Fallon and has an irrational fear of robots. You can contact him at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.

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Ned Bitters

This week’s inductee into the “Overrated Hall of Fame” is … public, tangible displays of grief for total strangers.

They recently found the body of that three-year-old Florida girl that had gone missing. You know, the one whose mother waited a month before reporting her missing. Sure, it’s a damn sad story, and I can understand total strangers being affected by it. We’ve all known our share of three-year-olds, and even I can remember two or three who were so non-irritating that their disappearances would have left me quite sad. (Okay, maybe only two.)

News that the body was found has brought the usual herd of idiots to a makeshift, white trash memorial sight for the poor girl. I saw on the news that a pile of teddy bears is growing somewhere in Florida. I’m sure these mental defectives think they are moving us saner folks with their televised empathy. Sorry ramrods, but your furry displays of grief don’t impress me.

I’ve never felt so distraught over the death of a stranger or celebrity that I saw fit to show up with flowers or toys. The people who make a public display of their grief aren’t really mourning the death. They are engaging in a pathetic act of Me-ism, and it’s nauseating. (I especially include every English twit who showed up with flowers at Buckingham Palace after “the People’s Princess” died. These same Brits have the nerve to boast about the quiet English dignity.)

As for all you noodniks in Florida, if you’re so into three-year-old girls with (allegedly) batshit crazy mommies, go do something more worthwhile that will actually help a kid. Be a foster parent. Donate toys to a some group that will distribute them to real live living children. Throw a little money toward a respected children’s charity. But please, do it quietly, so that the rest of us don’t have to hate you as you cry for the camera and lay your toy/flower/candle at the “look-at-me!” memorial site.

Because let’s face it, these gestures are all about the griever and never about the dismembered departed. I’m not saying that the brutal death of a stranger (usually a white female, in this country) or the untimely death of a celebrity (the better looking, the more widespread the displays of look-at-me grief in this country) don’t really affect people. But to go through the act of buying flowers, writing a cliche-ridden note, then making the trip to some thrown-together memorial isn’t a sign of respectful mourning. It’s a sign of a disturbing mental imbalance and a disgusting display of narcissism.

It’s the same principle with these roadside memorials to car crash victims. While your grief was no doubt severe, the rest of us don’t need a mile-by-mile reminder of the fact that your friends or relatives became unfortunate statistics. It used to be just morbid crosses that dotted the roadside gullies, but in the past decade or so, the displays have gotten Versailles-level gaudy. Trees and telephone poles look like ornate totems.

I’m sure the poor schmuck who died in his car was given a proper burial. Go leave your tacky displays at their graves, where the flower-hearts and stuffed animals can be ignored by wine-cooler guzzling teenagers at 3 a.m. on a Friday night. At least there they won’t pose a hazard like they do on the side of the highway. Some of these roadside death extravaganzas have to cause even more twisted-metal deaths due to rubbernecking bozos trying to discern the contents of the three-foot high pile of shit just off the berm.

I don’t read comic books or graphic novels, but I do have an idea for a new type of superhero. This guy would be called Kerosene Man. He’d drive around with a trunk full of kerosene and a box of matches. Every time he comes to a roadside pity party, he’d jump out of his car, douse it with kerosene and light that sucker.

But that will have to remain just a fantasy. Instead, every trip in my car will mean I’ll have to endure another onslaught of look-at-me tackiness. Every time I see one of these mounds of morbidity, I want to stop my car and toss the entire collection of look-at-me-goods right into my trunk. But I’m sure some empty-headed do-gooder would jump out of his car and stomp me to death.

It’s not that I’m afraid of that type of death. Hell, I’d gladly become a martyr in my efforts to eradicate this roadside scourge. But it’s not death-by Doc Martins that prevents me from taking action. It’s the fear that the knucklehead who killed me would get plastered by a passing semi. I wouldn’t give two shits about him. I just know that it would result in yet another goddamn roadside memorial.

Ned Bitters is, in fact, overrated. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.

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Courtney Enlow

Well, my friends, another Christmas has come and gone. Cookies have been eaten, ham has been consumed and the now-annual feeling that I didn’t listen to nearly enough Christmas music has set in.

So what now?

As I’ve told you before, Christmas is a long process for me. A typically two month extravaganza of film, food and music prominently featuring the sounds of bells. However, this year’s holiday could not be enjoyed as much as I’d have liked. As I mentioned a few weeks back, I was recently alerted that my real-life job, the thing I do which gives my end-tag the “corporate shill” part, no longer exists. So my Christmas season consisted largely of panic-induced trips to CraigsList and Career Builder, desperately searching for anything that will save me from my near future as a financial assistant, a destiny that has caused countless nightmares and jolted sweat-dripping awakenings.

So you can gather that Santa didn’t exactly fill me with the magic he normally does.

Despite the circumstances that lead to my lessened holiday joy, the fact is that I am an addict. And nothing can change the fact that the crack of Christmas (to hence be referred to as “Christ-meth”) has lead to some pretty serious withdrawals already, leading nicely into the year-end nostalgies.

This Y.E.N. that I speak of is a very technical and scientific phenomenon, wherein one spends all of December thinking “Wow, this year sucked. Is it over yet?” and then upon watching/reading various year-end lists and specials, one realizes exactly how much good stuff happened in the past 12 months and does the classic “Aww. Good times.” One of the most common side effects of this condition is The Time Warp. Ex: “Wait, Britney only flipped out this past spring? Really? I could have sworn that was like a year ago. Huh.”

It’s true. I even had a party in her honor. A party I could have sworn was last year, but a quick trip to Facebook shows that the pictures are in fact from 2008. Good times.

Another post-Christmas/pre-New Year condition? Actual illness. Statistic I just made up but is probably totally factual: one in every four people will get some kind of severe cold or flu starting December 26th and lasting until December 30th. Truth. Last year it was a stomach situation that I don’t want to talk about, but let’s just say I lost six pounds. Good times. This year, it’s a sore throaty sniffly sneezy situation with some unrelated joint pain from sleeping on a twin bed at my parents’ house and some mild lactose intolerance flare-ups from the multiple cheese-based dishes at various Christmas soirées. Not as glamorous, but it got the job done nicely. I’ll give it a 7.

Of course the coming down period is not all sad nostalgia and frequent cramps and nausea. There’s some definite upsides. My personal favorite? TV marathons. The holiday season is a magical time during which television programmers go on vacay and just play marathons every day for a week. USA is pro at this, which is why I’ve been watching nothing but House and avoided the channel like the plague on Saturday (NCIS marathon-day. Luckily TLC was rocking What Not To Wear for eight straight hours, so I was covered.)

Another plus? New toys, obviously. As you get older, the number of presents decreases but the quality becomes magical. New DVDs, new books and, my personal favorite, new shit you don’t want and are totally returning the second Best Buy opens tomorrow. Magic.

I’ve got a theory that the unwanted present is like a more thoughtful gift card. I can’t decry such genius. My digital picture frame is about to become Doctor Who Season 4. Brilliance.

All in all? A fairly decent yule-time. Sure there are a few things I still want. A couple more pairs of Chuck Taylors, a new job, the uszhe. But I cleaned up pretty good, speaking gift-wise and comfort-and-joy-wise. I’ve got no complaints.

Except for the lactose intolerance. Yecch.

Courtney Enlow is a writer living in Chicago and working as a corporate shill to pay the bills. You can contact her at courtney@hobotrashcan.com.

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Hobo Stu

Hello everyone,

I hope all of you have exciting holiday plans scheduled for next week. For all of our Jewish friends out there, I wish you a happy Hanukkaah, which I know starts next Monday. All of you Christians (and atheists who enjoy commercial holidays where you get free presents), I wish you a merry Christmas. And Ned Bitters, I wish you a happy Kwanza. For all of the rest of you out there … hopefully you will at least get a few days off of work next week.

Speaking of a few days off of work next week, HoboTrashcan will be on hiatus from December 22 – 26. The rest of the HoboTrashcan staff will be celebrating the holidays with their families and I will be busy wearing a Santa hat and drinking copious amounts of alcohol out of a festive holiday stocking in the parking lot of a strip mall.

Happy Holidays everyone, we’ll see you back here on December 29.

Here’s what’s new on HoboTrashcan.com this week:

Murphy’s Law – I bet the cake had white frosting on it
Heath and Debrah Campbell of Hunterdon County, New Jersey attempted to buy a birthday cake for their son, but their local ShopRite refused to make the cake for them. Why did ShopRite object? Because their son’s name is Adolf Hitler. Joel Murphy takes a look at this bizarre story in this week’s column.

Note to self – Susan Lucci trivia
Washington Redskins middle linebacker London Fletcher was once again denied a trip to the Pro Bowl this year. The 11-year veteran, who currently ranks fifth in tackles in the NFL, has never received a Pro Bowl nod. This week, Brian Murphy explains why the Pro Bowl voters got it wrong once again.

Overrated – George Bailey’s lending practices (and the vilification of Ebenezer Scrooge)
For years, George Bailey from It’s A Wonderful Life has been portrayed as a wonderful guy with a heart of gold, while Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol has been portrayed as a heartless villain. This week, Ned Bitters reexamines these two iconic characters’ business practices and explains why moviegoers have got it all wrong.

Outside of the In-Crowd – I’ve got a theory
This week, Courtney Enlow navigates dangerous terrain as she attempts to get inside the heads of Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt. Enlow wonders if these two reality stars are really as shallow and vapid as they seem or if perhaps they are actually deeply committed geniuses who are pulling a big prank on us all.

- Hobo Stu

Hobo Stu’s Weekly Recap is also available as an email newsletter. To sign up for the newsletter to ensure you never miss an update, send an email to newsletter-subscribe@hobotrashcan.com.

• Introduction
• A Lars update
• Christmas spirit
• Contractually obligated Batman discussion
• Harry Potter and No Country For Old Men
• “Feliz Navidad” by Christmas with Beer

Hobo Radio 70 - We wish you a Merry Christmas [ 56:13 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Week 70 Spotlight: We wish you a Merry Christmas

Christmas may be less than a week away, but it seems like Joel Murphy and Lars Periwinkle are having trouble finding their Christmas spirit. Instead of talking about sugar plums and snow angels, the dynamic duo seems to be focused on suicides, Black Friday deaths and a deadly new disease.

If this were a Christmas movie, Joel and Lars would be visited by three holiday spirits who would show them the true meaning of Christmas. Unfortunately, all they have is Batman, Harry Potter and No Country For Old Men to distract them from their holiday blues.

Why is the Hobo Radio crew feeling like the Grinch this holiday season? Is Lars secretly a fan of the Harry Potter books? And does he really have a deadly disease named after him? The answers to these questions and more are in this week’s podcast.

Hobo Radio is the official podcast of HoboTrashcan, brought to you by The Podcast Network.

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