Eternal Wisdom Of The Ouch

OK, so this was going to be a deconstruction of the latent fascism in "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends," but the harsh, excruciating reality of inertia changed that.

So, this is my ankle.

Pretty cool, huh? It looks kind of like those bubbles boiling through Agent Smith when Neo lays the Zen-master smackdown on him. That, or a surgically implanted softball.

If only it were something that cool. Instead, it's merely the throbbing result of an ankle staying put while the rest of the body -- and tendons and ligaments -- goes the opposite way in the never-ending pursuit of a constantly bouncing orange ball.

Tonight, driving home from the gym -- left-footed with the aid of cruise control, biting my lip to the kind of pulsing pain that makes cutting off your foot seem like a solution better than the codene that doesn't seem to be working fast enough -- it hits me.

In fact, it hits me so solidly that I actually say it out loud: "Yes, God, I'm alive. Thanks for reminding me."

Now make it stop!

Something about the immediacy of acute pain turns down the volume on anything abstract.

Simple laws of physics.

All that exists is the riot of whatever the opposite of ecstasy is shooting up your leg.

The tangible, eternal wisdom of The Ouch.

The Curtain Rises, Reality Suspends

A performace by the famed Aquila Theatre Company of New York.

As the lights dim and the curtain rises, reality as we know it suspends.

The world, in that slice of time, becomes whatever we want it to be. We are seduced by performers whose passion has earned them the good fortune of losing themselves, night after night, in this world of their making.

Whatever anxiety or suffering we bring with us floats away, into the ether. Pain cannot touch us ... except, perhaps, for the rear end that tingles sharply on the cusp of intermission.

It takes a moment to get acquainted with this new reality. The actors are not yet characters. They are people playing characters, until their spell is cast.

It is a salve to the wounds that afflict us. It makes our lives bearable in a way that liquor, nicotene, chocolate milkshakes or Lithium never could.

We are free: Free to imagine without boundaries; free to revel in our existence.

Too soon, the curtain falls. We return to flesh and bone, ceasing to be more than ourselves. We are human again because they are human again.

We only stay to watch them bow -- no longer characters now, but people -- because we must show our appreciation for the gift they have given us. If only etiquette dictated they stay behind the curtain, leaving us only to remember what they were before it fell.

Blithe, blissful ignorance. It fades.

Too soon.

Half an hour later, Olivia, noblewoman of Illyria, is smoking a cigarette near the moving van parked in the theater loading dock. Her hair is pulled up, no longer shining under the warm lights of the stage.

The cold night air is biting. She's wearing a sweatshirt.

The spell is broken.

Jared, The Sanctimonious Sandwich Guy

Yeah, Jared, those pants really WERE big.

You lost a lot of weight -- 235 pounds, we're told.

Good for you. We get it, OK?

That was half a decade ago. Five years since Subway first trotted you out. You were a novelty then.

Now, you've overestimated yourself.

In recent years, your role in Subway ads had been diminished; you were reduced to mere cameo appearances, playing second fiddle to that firefighter guy who almost usurped your fat-guy-rescued-by-lettuce-and-bread-sandwiches throne.

It seemed fitting. Step gracefully aside and let others use their proverbial 15 minutes to enjoy the whole weight loss testimonial spotlight thing.

This, you see, is the natural evolution of fleeting celebrity, if we should even assign you such a distinction.

We aren't typically the type to trash a guy who finds infamy and fortune by sheer virtue of chance meeting opportunism. This is a society that substitutes capitalism for hunting and gathering, and a man's got to make a living.

But, Jared Fogle, you've crossed the line. You've turned into quite the weenie, and it's quite time you were put out to pasture.

In Subway's latest round of ads, we find you back hogging the spotlight. This newfound resurrection is OK on its face, for it's left to each of us to decide in the marketplace of pop culture minutea whether we can stomach a resurgence of your homogenized success story.

Not this time, Jared.

The first commercial in your return to a starring role, which first aired in November, was mildly digestible, kind of like those "tasty" low-carb alternatives that you consume more than you eat.

You extoll to us the virtues of Subway's footlong Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki sub:

"You know that McDonald's commercial that says, 'Stay away from my Chicken
Selects?'" you tell us. "Well, actually, that's good advice, because a five-piece Chicken Selects has 33 grams of fat ..."

Fair enough. Jared the everyman success story wants to be Jared the sanctimonious mercenary, on the prowl to slay himself a giant. Your choice, my man.

But your latest assault, on the Big Mac, brings us perilously close to throwing up in our mouths. In this second commercial, you gloss up a footlong Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki sub like a Botoxed "Price Is Right" spokesmodel and transpose it against a piddly rendering of a Big Mac.

You offer us a simple choice:

"Big sandwich, less fat?"
"Small sandwich, more fat?"

Ok, Jared, it's getting old. Please, we're asking nicely, one more time: Just go away.

But then, this. The unforgivable:

"Duh-uh."

Oh, so that's how it is, Jared? For years now, we've endured the ad nauseum regurgitation of your claim to drastic weight loss. We let you slide, because, hey, Subway was just telling your story, right? We could take it or leave it.

But, "Duh-uh?"

Here's the thing: We all have choices. If the corporate fat cats told you to throw in that little patronizing one-liner, you could have told them, "No, there's only so much I'll do to make a cheap buck off a misleading advertising campaign." You would have been something of a hero. It could have been a truly Darth Vader, ninth-hour-conversion kind of moment.

Maybe, just maybe, you could have saved yourself from the ash heap of pop trivia. Instead, you've gone from punchline to a guy we'd all like to punch.

That's the best case scenario. It's also a distinct possibility that you ad-libbed that gay little tool of persuasion, which surely would have earned you a solid round of applause from all the focus-group pencil pushers who mistakenly believe that because we watch "I Love the 90s" we pine for the good old days of Jared the used-to-be-fat guy.

So now we should bow to the altar of Jared?

Sorry, but that doesn't settle too well in our stomachs.

It seems you're not telling us the whole truth, Jared: (http://business.bostonherald.com/businessNews/view.bg?articleid=52637):

Those same three footlong sandwiches contain more than three and a half
times as many calories as one Big Mac. Ditto on cholestorol. They have six times
the sodium, seven times the carbohydrates and 14 times as much sugar.
``When you look at these other factors, the Subway sandwich is much worse, it's not even close,'' Boehm said. ``When you start to make health claims and leave out certain critical details, that's when the [Federal Trade Commission] gets
concerned,'' he added.

Very not cool, Jared.

And, it looks like you aren't the only hoedog Subway is pimpin'. (http://www.publicinterestwatch.org/press_10_27_04.htm):

LOS ANGELES, CA-- October 27, 2004-Public Interest Watch today called on the Internal Revenue Service to investigate whether the American Heart Association ("AHA") allowed its logo to be used in commercial endorsements for Subway sandwiches, in return for millions of dollars in contributions from Subway.

A current Subway advertising campaign compares a Subway sandwich to a McDonalds' Big Mac and claims that the Subway sandwich is healthier because it has fewer grams of fat. The AHA logo appears next to the Subway sandwich, implying that the sandwich has been endorsed by the AHA over the Big Mac, and that the sandwich promotes cardiovascular health.

Interim Executive Director Lewis Fein commented, "The American Heart association has no business selling its endorsement to fast-food companies. If the AHA will auction itself off to the highest corporate bidder, then its credibility as an
organization is shot. There is simply no way to justify this type of conduct by
a non-profit that relies on taxpayers to finance its operations."

It didn't have to be this way.

Afterall, that footlong Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki sub DOES look kinda tasty on T.V., even though we know there's no way in hell the girl behind the sneeze guard will stuff that much meat in it.

That sub was your opportunity to reinvent yourself.

Too bad you had to go and try to ram it down our throats.

Duh-uh.