Welcome to March 15, the feast day of St. Ides Malt Liquor.
I came here not to pour one out for Caesar, but I did want to mention that 3/15 makes a much more *ahem* rational ratio than 3.14. Get your shit together, circles.
Anyway, what I mostly wanted to discuss is a Lenten ritual dying hard. Raised Catholic post-Vatican II, I spent nearly every late-winter and early-spring Friday of my childhood abstaining from eating meat. Being also, and more importantly, a suburban American, several of those sepia-toned family dinners featured one or more McDonald’s Filets-O-Fish.
I inhaled four F-O-Fs on March 8 of this year. And they were good, no matter what Ray Kroc said.
Kroc, you see, fought tooth and nail against adding a fish sandwich to the menu of his burger chain. I doubt he was antipapist, but he was a little too into burgers.1 I am glad his franchisees won out and continue pandering to Catholics determined to observe canon law in the breach.
But even all that is not the reason I’m typing at ya’ll. I absolutely needed an excuse to post the following television spot from 1983.
Imagine sinking millions into a product and ad campaign predicated on the sole premise of “We’re the same but bigger.” Kings get usurped and beheaded for far less-serious blunders. Also, the branding makes one assume that BK was peddling either protected marine mammals or cannibalized New Englanders. Good eating? This guy didn’t think so.
And when was the last time you had the chance to buy a Whaler? Sure, the questionably royal burger chain still sells a Big Fish sandwich, but that just means the BK brass eventually admitted their folly.
Header pic: “Jonah and the Whale,” Folio from a Jami al-Tavarikh (Compendium of Chronicles)
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