Into the fryer

I was reading an article about how minimum wage employees at McDonald's are going to go after the company because they occasionally get themselves burned on the job. Seems to me if you're working with hot grills, fryers full of hot oil and flames, getting burned just might be an occupational hazard.

Still, it's no fun. I know from experience.

The first job I ever had was at Fisher's Hamburgers at the Town and Country Shopping Center, across from Farmer's Market on 3rd and Fairfax. At the time, Fisher's was one of L.A.'s renowned hamburger places, often mentioned in the same revered breath by burger lovers as Tommy's, Cassell's, Dolores' and The Apple Pan. I'd eaten at Fisher's for years with my parents, and liked it so much I decided I wanted to work there. Displaying an unusual amount of moxie for a kid as young as I was at the time, I went in one day, walked right up to the owner - a man named Howard Shear - and asked if I could have a job. To my everlasting surprise, he gave me one.

I won't go into dates and ages, because that's on a need-to-know basis. And you don't need to know. Let's just say I could only dream of making the minimum wage McDonald's employees get today.

I learned all the details of how the restaurant worked. I made tartar sauce and thousand island dressing (not together) in vats in back that were so big we stirred them with our arms. Still not sure how the health department let that one get by. I also learned how to work all the stations at Fisher's: the register, the grill, the soda fountain, and the french fries.

The fryers were like the ones in the picture - big vats of oil heated to 400 degrees. The way you made fries was by putting raw, sliced potatoes in the basket, lowering it into the oil, and setting the timer for a couple minutes. When the fries were ready, you'd lift the basket out by the handle and shake the excess oil off the fries. In that process, lots of fries fell into the oil. Because of that, the fryers had to be cleaned many times during the course of the day.

The way you cleaned the fries out was by running a strainer over the top of the oil and scooping them up.

One day, I was cleaning the fryer and the handle on the strainer was a little greasy (Strainer? You strainer you brought her. Thanks, I'll be here all week). So I'm holding the greasy strainer handle, and it suddenly slips out of my hand and disappears down into the fryer. Without thinking, my cat-like reflexes kicked into action and I reached down into the boiling oil up to my elbow to grab it.

As we say in my country, not a smart move.

Everything went into slow motion. I looked down at my arm in the oil for what felt like hours, but in reality was only seconds. Next, I realized I could feel it burning and yanked it out (with the strainer in hand - mission accomplished). I dropped the strainer, and made a beeline to the ice machine by the soda fountain and rammed my red, right arm into the ice. To this day, I can hear the sizzling of the ice on my hot skin.

Fortunately, I'd gotten there fast enough. The ice took the burn away, and I had no scarring. Other than the emotional kind for doing something so stupid.

But the most important thing is I learned a valuable lesson I still use to this very day.

Don't go asking for jobs if you don't really need one.

The Elvis factor

There's a phenomenon called The Elvis Factor. It's the fact that at any given time, 10% of the population believe Elvis is still alive. And of that 10%, 8% believe if you send him a letter he'll answer it.

I'm going to generalize here, but as a rule these people are very sensitive and don't respond well at all to being asked about their questionable beliefs. They don't like being cornered, and when they are usually lash out with personal insults or comments that have nothing to do with the issue at hand.

Imagine, a group of petty, thin-skinned, hard-headed people believing what they want despite verifiable facts to the contrary. Wonder who they're voting for?

When you ask them about it, why all the papers reported him dead, why there's a grave at Graceland, why he's laying in his casket in that famous National Enquirer photo, they all give the same, extremely predictable answer: conspiracy.

It'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.

Almost every major event that's happened in the last century has a conspiracy theory attached to it. And a group of people willing and ready to blindly support those theories with their ignorance. When you disagree with them, they act like Americans in Europe for the first time. They just keep talking louder and louder until you. get. it.

You can tell I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist. I have my suspicions about the JFK assassination, I think something may have landed at Roswell and it does seem interesting to me there was one news story about the discovery of over two hundred years' worth of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and then nothing. But that's about it.

I believe we landed on the moon. I believe Challenger exploded because of a faulty "O" ring.

A healthy dose of skepticism and questioning authority is a good thing. But the reality is, for the most part, things are exactly what they appear to be. And the big events, the catastrophic disasters, the "I'll always remember where I was when I heard it" tragedies happen because they happen.

There isn't any giant conspiracy. There's nothing hiding under the bed.

Although I keep telling my kids there is. It never gets old.

The London Telegraph has a great article on the 30 Greatest Conspiracy Theories. Definitely worth reading, if only for comic relief.

For the most part, these theories are harmless rantings. But one more than the others has a deep cruelty to it. The one about 9/11. The victims families have enough pain for the rest of their lives without these "theorists" continually trying to explain what REALLY happened.

By the way, good luck trying to figure out who put me up to writing this.