The Shake Shack Super Bowl Experience (Semi-SFW) · 2:24pm Feb 13th, 2023
So. About that game...
Give me a few minutes to set this up. We're taking the long way around. And those with easily-upset stomachs may want to skip this blog. I'm not going to be graphic -- but I am about to get detailed.
I've only been to Shake Shack once, and that number is unlikely to go up.
They supposedly have the best mass-produced milkshakes in the States, and the hyphenated section is the key qualifier. I get my milkshakes in a shore town: one which I can, at best, reach twice per year. They're only available from mid-spring through the first days of fall, and they are created with the homemade ice cream flavor of your choice, added to real milk, put through two minutes in a high-speed specialized blender. They are shakes which you pay eight dollars for and then add a tip because you feel like you just ripped the parlor off. Which, added to the problems of travel, is why I only have them twice per year.
Shake Shack... exists. That was about as much as I knew about it. But they had recently set up a franchise at a toll road rest stop. It was a very hot day, I'd been driving for far too long (and stuck in traffic for most of it), I needed something and... I saw the sign at the side of the road. All things considered, I might as well stop. After all, they were supposed to be good. So many people swore by them. And sure, maybe those people just hadn't had the chance to try a true milkshake, but there had to be something decent to attract that kind of audience.
I pulled over into the rest stop lot. Parked. And then there was no risk of being stuck in traffic, because I was stuck in line. At least forty people ahead of me, with three registers going. And I nearly walked out right there, but I was hot and thirsty and look: there's forty people waiting for this. Doesn't that mean it's worth having?
Waited. Sometimes the line went backwards. Someone who'd just collected their slow-to-fill order would have a problem with the contents and cut back to the registers.
...I have now been in line for about a sixth of the time I was on the road.
Fifth.
One customer doubles back for Da Merch.
...oh, is it my turn? Really? One chocolate shake, please. Yes, that's all I want. I saw your price list: it's also all I can afford. And once it was finally delivered, it was the too-pale brown of that last thing you stepped in and never quite got off your shoe. The chocolate flavor was tangibly artificial while not being recognizably chocolate, and the texture was the dictionary entry for 'glutinous'. It went down like chilled slurry, only with a lower percentage of identifiable clay. It was cold and wet and sort of qualified as a liquid, so I guess there was a chance that you could technically categorize it as a 'drink'. (Given the rest stop price, you could also classify it as 'Most of your water heating bill'.) But it wasn't a milkshake.
I got back in the car. I'd already resolved that as far as their shakes went, this was one-and-done. But maybe the burgers were better...
I was about five miles down the road when I achieved Zen awareness of my large intestine.
It was cosmic, in a way. I was just sitting in the driver's seat, trying to maneuver along, and suddenly I could name every cell in my colon. And I mean that I knew who all of them were. I gave them identities and histories and a really important job, which was to stay exactly where they were and dear gawds, don't contract, don't push, take the rest of the day off except for you, Sphincter Crew. Y'all are now on overtime. Double time. Full time.
Do not go off shift or we are all going to die.
Five miles. That's the speed of a chemical reaction, and it was racing through my body at a decidedly higher rate that I was managing to get through traffic. Admittedly, I was now perfectly willing to violate the speed limit, because I was a mobile medical emergency and it was just a matter of deciding where to happen, which could not be in the car. So I would have felt free to step on the gas, except that explaining myself to the inevitable officer would require time I didn't have. Also, stepping on the gas requires muscle movement. It might produce some shifting in the thigh. And the buttocks. THE BUTTOCKS CANNOT MOVE. DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT THE CURRENT STATE OF THE BUTTOCKS. KEEP THE GATES LOCKED.
Oddly, achieving Zen awareness of your colon makes it somewhat difficult to apply the same level of attention to traffic.
Drive. Dear gawds, just drive. For the sake of sanity. For salvation. For not having to replace this outfit, and possibly this car. Find an exit and get onto the ramp and look for anything with a bathroom which will welcome someone who's just going to be a customer on the way out, except that here comes the road congestion again and we are going to play Tower Defense because I am under siege from within and I am burning all the powerups. The rules currently require me to roll a 10 on Willpower. Every six seconds. Could be worse: we could be playing Gurps, which rhymes with Burps, which is an action which gets an unwanted substance out of the body and I should not have gone there --
-- I atone for my sins. It's something to do.
Possibly I didn't atone in time and this is my punishment --
--exit. Ramp. Can't go in there. Can't get into the proper lane in time for that one. But here is where we stop and now we are going to get out of the car in such a way that the only parts of the lower body which move are below the knees. This can be done. With time, care, leverage, and no more than fifteen people wondering if this is a good time to put me on TikTok. Because my hips don't lie and right now, they also don't do anything else.
Advance To Bathroom Or Rather, Sort Of Sway.
There's no one else in there. Good. The only death will be mine.
Take a seat...
Bluntly: it was a Haribo Sugar-Free Gummy Bear experience (and you can look that up on your own). Everything solid within the targeted area was now liquid. Any swallowed chewing gum which might have been hanging around got evicted six years early. I achieved a state of partial vacuum, and then I scheduled an immediate colonoscopy because I was never going to be this internally clean again. Jet propulsion was discovered. Orbit became an option, and I nearly took it because at some point, I would have suffocated from lack of oxygen and let's face it: that was going to happen anyway, but thinning out the atmosphere might take care of the smell.
...eventually, it stopped. I managed to stand up on the third attempt. The cleaning supplies were located, and I spent some time scrubbing everything because 'Do not go in there' isn't a meme: it's an environmental hazard and I'd really rather not kill anyone today. Unless they work for Shake Shack, in which case, come on in: the brown water's fine.
I got a drink on the way out. Made it back to the car. Drove home. Very. Slowly. While watching the roadside for available bathrooms at all times.
There was no Round Two.
I ran out of hot water after I got home.
Twice.
So what happened? My guess is an allergic reaction. There was something in the 'shake' which my body rejected immediately. Get it out and we mean NOW.
And how does this relate to last night's game?
There were so many people in line, they must have wanted to be there, and I truly love a good milkshake. I'll go a long way for one and probably spend too much, when I shouldn't have done so at all. But I continue to look, because... surely there's going to be a good one somewhere else eventually, right? It's just a matter of trying. So follow the group. It's not as if we'd all be here just because there's a theoretical chance of enjoying ourselves, and we keep showing up over and over and...
I watched last night's game all the way through. A group of us got together in the 'verse Discord server and used #thesportingdeath from first play to That Holding Call and a little beyond. I was in the odd position of being timeslipped: my viewing was on the app, and that put me about a minute ahead of everyone else. I tried to use my precognitive powers for only minor evil.
The Super Bowl is a national holiday of sorts. I think of it as being a backup New Year's. The next morning's vomit splashes on the sidewalk are exactly the same.
After last night's game, knowing #rigged will be trending for days... the prospect of next year's Super Bowl feels like this:
I never complained directly to Shake Shack. What was the point? It was my reaction. Obviously I'm in the minority there. (One would hope.) At most, they might have apologized through -- sending a coupon. For more Shake Shack. Pass.
But let's say I had.
And they approached me about a year later. Said they'd isolated the ingredient which had produced my reaction. And they had a solution.
Finding the crucial factor had allowed them to double the amount!
That's right. Twice the trigger from now on, in absolutely everything! Oh, and in order to compensate, they'd cut the amount of artificial flavor in half, turned the solidity level into Nearly Concrete and touched up the color with some green chunks. Plus they'd raised the price by eighty percent. But they'd still solved everything because from now on, whenever I bought my next shake (and surely I'd want another one now, since they'd fixed every problem!), they would give me the cup of a True American Consumer and direct me to turn left.
All I had to do was drink it while sitting on their Exclusive Shake Shack Toilet.
(Don't use any others!)
It's a pay toilet.
Charges by the minute.
And as long as you're stuck here, would you like to watch some lousy commercials?
...@$#%ing refs...
i watch a youtuber who told a story (he's not a story youtuber) about hw, in his college days, before youtube, he knowingly ate some suspect frozen meat and then the next day, went on a trip. in indiana. no gas stations. no rest stops. a straight road. and fields. he got to a toilet..... eventually, but lost his boxers. they were a lost cause.
If it was an allergic reaction, with your luck....be grateful you escaped anaphylaxis shock. The rash can last "days to weeks" & it can be fatal.
Ugh, Shake Shack. There was a Bobby’s Burger Palace by my office (back when my team was working at an office) that was a common choice for the big weekly Friday lunch trip. We all loved the place… and then it closed.
And a Shake Shack took its place.
To this day, I don’t understand how they got half as much seating out of the same location. Or how they got away with selling what were clearly supermarket-grade frozen fries. I got a shake from them once and was… whelmed. Not amazing, not terrible, thankfully not your reaction. After a few tries we wrote off the place with some regret and went to the nearby Popeye’s more often.
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On the one hand, one needs to admire the countless millennia of evolution behind it, when the body goes
"POTENTIAL TOXINS DETECTED. INITIATE EMERGENCY PURGE."
On the other hand, it is not something I desire to experience ever again
(Those 6 hours a few years back felt more like the aforementioned millennia)
And wise choice on avoiding Shake Shack in the future - might only have been some unfortunate contaminant, or might be some "standard" additive for the shake; either way no milkshake is worth something like that.
I am unfortunately unable to comment on the game, as I both did not see it and know nothing beyond the bare-basic rules...
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That could make for a fun little story in the Tryptich Continuum; Twilight Sparkle has taken an interest in Hoofball and wants to learn the rules. After Rarity shows her the massive cart-sized rulebook and tries to explain the game, Twilight walks away thinking that a unified theory of magic would be easier to figure out.
this is not funny yet im fucking crying right now with how funny it is.
sorry it happened to you. but dear god the way you describe everything is fucking gut bustlingly funny.
I can only think how horrible it must be for a worker to clean the bathroom after such an event.
I don't think there is a sufficient amount to pay me.
I've heard much the same stories about Taco Bell, although ours here in town has been 100% just fine and about the only place I can find with a $3 lunch that fills me up (Bean and rice burrito, Chipotle chicken burrito, and here's your change)
I'm spoiled for milkshakes. At K-State we had Call Hall ice cream, and you know its fresh when you can see the cows out back. Then there was this little burger bar over by Yuma street that made a shake that required sitting down and getting a spoon. Wonderful. Then at Wamego we have the Kreem Cup, which I believe uses Call Hall ice cream. I think the town grew up around it.
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My body does that with milk in general, but only in sufficient quantities. So milkshake, soup, stuff like that. If I remember to take the lactase first, I'm fine. Otherwise, it's purge time.
Novelty will do that.
Like... okay. Dairy Queen is nothing special, right? Like it's perfectly decent ice cream and mediocre fast food. It has cachet for having existed basically forever, and that's it. There's nothing wrong with that; sometimes you want to buy a Blizzard and know you're getting a standard-issue Blizzard rather than tracking down a proper ice cream parlor that maybe is amazing, and maybe it just keeps going because the locals grew up with it and keep it in business generation to generations like a kind of cult.
(A lot of local greasy spoons are objectively terrible places, but all the locals swear by them because they were taken there as kids and the hamburgers you have between the ages of five and fifteen become your platonic ideal of a burger no matter what.)
Bit of a tangent. Anyway, DQ first came to my neck of the woods in 2010. And for the first summer it was here it was fucking slammed EVERY night. I was driving my sister to her second-shift job at the time and enormous lines all the time, like two-hour waits for ice cream. Because people around here had never had a DQ before, it was new to this part of the country, and so was new and exciting and where you went.
And then the novelty wore off.
Chik-fil-A, same deal. It's perfectly decent fast good chicken, maybe better than all the other fast food chickens but still fast food chicken. Nothing special. But when it opened around here, it actually ruined traffic in the shopping plaza it opened in. Enormous lines, ridiculous ones. Other shopowners complained their customers couldn't reach them. The cops threatened the franchise holder with creating a public nuisance because they had to basically be there directing traffic four or five hours a day, every day.
And... then the novelty wore off, and now it's just a Chik-fil-A.
You might or might not have been driving through New York, but the New York State Thruway has also added Shake Shack to many of its rest stops, with more coming. And the lines have been nutso, because its new; we don't have it up here so people are going out of their way.
This will die down soon.
You mean this one?
pbs.twimg.com/media/Fo0VpkZXoAElwZR?format=jpg&name=small
I challenge anyone to look me in the eye and tell that this is not holding. This is TEXTBOOK holding. Bradberry reach out, got a fistful of jersey, and yanked. It came away from the body!
That is almost never not called if a ref sees it, whether there's two minutes left on the clock or not. The penalty was entirely legit and the call was correct.
And that's before you even get into the fact that Bradberry, himself, postgame, directly admitted that he was holding and he was hoping it wouldn't be called. The guy doing the holding says he was holding! Even without the photographic evidence how is that not dispositive?
Look on the bright side. It could have been far, far worse.
I can go you one better: I had the chance to visit the U.S.S.R., about 4 months before the Berlin Wall came down, and while my tour group was in Moscow we decided to visit the McDonalds (the only one in Soviet Russia!). There were, oh, I'd say about ten registers going and the line was still over twenty people deep on each one.
And my condolences to your innards.
Even leaving aside the decent indie ice cream parlors, we get Culver's here in Wisconsin. I'm in no hurry to try Shake Shack for the first time.
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Babcock Hall ice cream much the same here at the university in Madison.
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If you've got Culver's, Shake Shack ain't worth your coin. Wisconsin knows good ice cream (and hi from Milwaukee!)
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Good to know about Shake Shack. Now I won't have FOMO, as though this post didn't already do a great job of fixing that!
Hi backatcha!
Ooh, that happened to me once!
Years ago, perhaps inspired by Super Troopers, I bet that I could drink an entire bottle of sugar-free imitation maple syrup. I did, and I won and all was well.
Until it wasn't.
I worked my entire shift and was feeling fine, but on the way home things started going downhill fast. The house I was renting had a detached garage behind the house; I got my truck in my driveway and shut it off, left the keys in the ignition, didn't close the door (wasn't time), got the back door of my house open.
Didn't close that, either. I didn't dare slow down.
The next hour or so doesn't bear talking about, except to say that there was more than one "Thank God that's finally over . . . oh, wait, no it isn't."
Also it was pre-smartphones and I didn't have any books in the bathroom for some reason. Pity; I could have read an entire Robert B. Parker novel in that time.
On the plus side, I guess I gained a bit of wisdom from the experience: always keep a book you haven't read yet in your bathroom.