Thursday, August 06, 2015

Spoiled Alert

Spoiler alert: The answer is "The Doughnut." If you were wondering what the question was, you probably didn't fall prey to clicking on the article about breakfast. The headline asked "Is it healthier to skip breakfast or just eat a doughnut?" My first reaction was to wonder how such a wordy headline got past the normally eagle-eyed Internet editors. Didn't they understand that headlines are supposed to say in as few words as possible what the article is about, leading the reader into the story? It reminded me of the tell-all trailers for movies that have been coming out. You know the ones. Two and a half minutes of your film's best jokes or biggest revelations? Chris Pratt riding with Veloiciraptors or the fact that John Connor turns out to be a Terminator. These moments didn't come as a shock. They came as part of a package designed to draw people like my son and I into the theaters to see if that could really be all there is to it. No shame, no gimmicks. Just good old-fashiioned advertising.
Years of M. Night Shyamalan endings conditioned me to expect the unexpected. That's why I now expect the guy who is helping the kid who sees dead people to be dead. I expect that that eighteenth century village will actually be a little enclave of modern-day hipsters trying to fool their kids into believing there are monsters waiting for them just outside in the forest. And that's why I expected that the doughnut was going to be the best chance we had for a healthy breakfast versus no breakfast at all.
Doughnuts? Isn't that what Homer Simpson eats? Homer Simpson is stupid. Why should I believe that eating a piece of sugary dough boiled in grease and covered in more sugar would be better for me than eating nothing at all?
Because Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's dad. Rosebud is a sled. That naval officer that looks like Kevin Costner who was investigating the death of the secretary of defense's mistress turns out to be a Russian spy. It's all so obvious. Everything I needed to know about eating breakfast I learned from watching movies. And being very, very suspicious.
As it turns out, a healthy lunch includes a moderate-sized portion of broken glass. Hard to believe, isn't it?

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