Remora

Are the hard times over for Burger King? Actually, LI doesn't care. We just wanted to write that sentence, which has a vaguely biz-o-lect sound. Apparently Burger King is suffering the pangs and arrows of outrageous customer dissatisfaction. They've turned against the whopper. Those bastards. Turns out BK is run by a giant British conglomerate -- you never know who owns the toys nowadays -- that also puts out the Smirnoff vodka. The Brits, showing rare good sense, have decided to concentrate on their intoxicant, and find a buyer for the ailing King.

When Limited Inc was a dewy youth, he preferred Burger King to McDonalds and especially to Dairy Queen. The royalty of cheap food -- how it studs the American highways and byways! Basically, LI's preference was swayed by the paper crowns you sometimes got at Burger King. And the shakes. As I remember it, the shakes were better than those plastic-y tasting concoctions you'd get at MacDonalds.

Time has not been kind enough to marry LI off ... Having no children to watch, wide eyed, as the tv shows grotesquely magnified burgers being whisked off grills, thus activating the Pavlovian impulse in the little dears, LI has no reason to return to the foods of yesteryear. Oh, now and then the rare visit to Schlotzky's, but besides that, fast food just isn't in our orbit. Nothing, though, conjures up repulsion like the thought of going into one of those boites and chowing down on the burgers. The LA Times, which has several unintentionally funny stories today (one about a "smear campaign" re Beautiful Mind, accusing the movie of covering up some of the facts about its subject, was particularly amusing -- it quotes Neal Gabler, a Hollywood intellectual whose brain stretches from Variety all the way to the spiritual heights of, say, Alan Toffler -- a giant, in other words, in every way, and a true credit to the industry -- as saying that the campaign, and Russell Crowe's failure to secure an Oscar, was -- well, I must quote the graf:

"I think, in the future, when people are thinking about using biopics, they'll be more cautious on how they use the facts," Gabler said. "I happen to think this is a tragedy. To think we have this new chilling effect. That artists are going to have to be bound by facts. ... Imagine if Shakespeare was bound to the real character in 'Richard III'? If he were alive today, would Shakespeare be called upon to revise that play?"

LI will not gild this lily with comment ), but the BK saga is tops. Here, for your dining and dancing pleasure, are the grafs that particularly amused LI:

"In recent months, Burger King has made its shakes creamier and thicker by adding ice cream. It dressed up the Whopper with larger pieces of lettuce, thicker slices of tomatoes and pickles with a stronger dill flavor.

Mike Aldredge, 36, a Burger King regular for the last 15 years, has noticed the difference. The Costa Mesa resident, who eats at Burger King twice a week, said he liked the new and improved food so much he might easily double his visits.

"This is the best fast food I've ever had," he said, clutching a double Whopper with cheese. "And it's getting better."

However, new products and variety might not be the sales drivers Burger King executives expect. McDonald's much-hyped New Tastes Menu, which rotates new products year-round, has failed to attract hordes of new customers. In a recent national survey, Villa Park restaurant consultant Robert L. Sandelman found fast-food customers ranked cleanliness, taste and food flavor ahead of choice, which placed 11th out of 12 categories."

Question: where did that Mike Aldredge, 36, come from? Was there some kind of casting call? Second question: how much does he weigh? The vision of him, clutching his double whopper with cheese, is going to remain with LI the rest of the day. Sadly enough.