"Dinner!"

Weird McDonald's commercial from the eighties that has stuck with me after all these years. I think it stuck with me is because it aired at the time I was living on my own for the first time since moving to the Cities. Well, I mean "on my own" as meaning "not mooching off of my folks." I was living with my cousin and a couple of his friends in a rented house in St. Louis Park. Great guys all around. Down the street was a Golden Arches that we named "The World's Worst McDonald's", soon to be shortened to the simple "World's Worst." That place had subpar fast food and a higher percentage than normal of screwing up your order. But still we went there. It was the only fast food joint nearby and it was very near. A common suppertime line was "I'm going to World's Worst. Anybody want anything?" (Though one time my cousin and I were on our way to a party and he pulled into the World's Worst drive-through to get a bite to eat on the way to the shindig. He's driving and eating and all of sudden said: "Holy shit Bill! These fries are awesome!" I sampled 'em and sure enough, they were great. "World's Worst!" we yelled, "Who knew!") (I don't think this made for great party conversation.)

So anyway, I have the Mac Tonight commercial eternally associated with my former roomies (I think one of us would invariably say "dinner!" a little loudly during the airing of the commercial) and World's Worst, which I think is still there.

On a related note, about six years ago I was out at a strip mall in the Edina Centennial Lakes area on a Saturday morning getting a CD player installed in my Chevy Cavalier. I walked across the parking lot to the McDonald's to get some breakfast. (Laugh all you want: I'm a fan of the Big Breakfast.) They had a robotic Mac Tonight (the dude with moon face and shades) with piano setup in there that still worked. (Just like the one pictured here.) I think you pushed a button and you heard piano music and Mac Tonight singing loudly and with really crappy audio that was maybe borrowed from the drive-through speaker system. Unfortunately, there was some kids there and they thought it was great. So all through trying to dig my Big Breakfast and studying the sports page I had to hear Mac Tonight's song stylings. And unfortunately there were no "dinner!" interjections - that would have been rather cool.