Then I realize it. Like when you realize that your car's not in your parking spot, it took a minute to sink in. I checked the entire aisle, but to no avail. There were no Gaines*Burgers.
Those of you without dogs might not know what Gaines*Burgers are. They�re individually wrapped patties of dog food. Each one is a few hundred red and yellow soft rectangular pellets pressed into a hockey puck that you crumble into a dog dish. The dog food smell is now on your hands for the next 36 hours. My old dog Jason ate them for a few years; he wasn't finicky, so his dog food entrees flip-flopped like a fish on a boat. And they're properly spelled with an asterisk in the middle.
Gaines*Burgers have a deep significance to me. But not because of Jason. Gaines*Burgers was the first running gag my improv troupe had.
It started right before the first ever Mixed Signals show. It was a monologue competition for the campus theater group, and we were the filler material between the monologues and the judges' decision. So we had twenty minutes, a giant theater-savvy audience, and absolutely no previous experience. If we were gonna tank, it would become well known. We were all a bit nervous about going out, so I was joking beforehand that we were going to seed the audience with good suggestions, such as Gaines*Burger.
(Improv suggestion note: the best suggestions are anything we haven�t heard before. Every show is guaranteed to have some people yell out �Lesbians!� or �Proctologist!� We�ve done lesbian and proctologist scenes to death. There�s only so much original comedy potential to be wrung out of it, and it�s gone in a few performances. Usually the audience likes it, despite us being bored silly on stage by pretending to reach into the posterior of yet another troupe member. What we really like is a suggestion we haven�t done on stage yet, where we can find new things to do with it. Lesbian proctologist people think they're adding to the quality of the show, but they're actually just giving us the routine we hope not to repeat.)
Hence why I said Gaines*Burger. Being the first show, there was still vast uncharted territory for us to explore with proctology, but something like a Gaines*Burger would guaranteed be a change of pace.
Overhearing me that day was Craig Whyte. He decided to take my suggestion to heart. During the Noun Game, where stop the scene occasionally to get random nouns to work into the scene, Craig yelled out �Gaines*Burger.� And it worked. I can't remember for the life of me what the scene was, but I'm almost positive I was in it, and definitely positive that Gaines*Burger worked.
Then we got a real show, also attended by Craig. Another Gaines*Burger shout. At our second real show, a third serving of Gaines*Burger.
And then the snowball was pushed downhill. During practices, we began throwing Gaines*Burger suggestions out like Met fans throwing batteries. Craig Whyte dutifully shouted out Gaines*Burger at every show he could. Craig and I began a yet-unfinished debate about which one of us actually likes Gaines*Burgers and which one is just humoring the other guy.
It got to a high point where Jeff bought a big box of Gaines*Burgers. OK, now he was stuck with four pounds of pungent dog food. It instantly turned bad when the thin cardboard box turned into a burgerlanche in a crowded back seat coming back from a movie. It wasn't as bad as it sounds; 23 of the 24 burgers stayed intact, and it wasn't my car. We gave them out as prizes for volunteering at improv shows, but somehow most of them were left on the chairs at the end of the show, and went back in the box. Jeff ended up hiding them in the room of his floormate, who three years later is possibly still looking for some.
And then it stopped. Like a pop song, one day it stopped being played and no one noticed. We knew each other a lot better, so the in-jokes focused more on everyone's personal foibles and flaws. Mine (that they've realized) is wildly flailing arms during a performance. I attribute it to wanting to use the stage space. The new people in the troupe probably don�t even know we ever had a Gaines*Burger thing.
And now, Gaines*Burgers were no more. I was to plenty of stores in multiple states, and not a *Burger in sight. This was like coming back from a three week vacation and remembering you had a cat.
I tried pets.com. The site was down. I tried petstore.com. It had just recently merged with pets.com, which it took me to, which was still down. I tried adding .com any and all permutations of Gaines*Burger, with every symbol above the number keys available on my keyboard. Gaines.com was a real site, but just some herbal remedy company. Oddly, they had a pet products section, with a vast quantity of stuff with names like Barley Cat, Canine Support (For Dogs Under Stress) and Female Hypersexuality Homeopathic Pet Formula, which I think was on Showtime at 3 a.m. last week.
I had one possibility left, a caving friend in the pet store business. I asked him if Gaines*Burgers were still around. "Yes, but don't buy them! They're just junk food for dogs." he shot back instantly. Success! They still existed! And ... they were horrible.
He explained it: Gaines*Burgers are made with mostly filler material, the stuff in baloney besides hoof and snout meat. All the nutritional value of marshmellow fluff. A lot of canned dog food has horse meat and by products, but it's better than empty calories.
Pet stores pretty much refuse to carry them, and some supermarkets as well. I can vouch for other brands of crumbly burger food existing on supermarket shelves, both national brands and private label, but not a Gaines*Burger in sight. And maybe that's a good thing.
Gaines*Burgers are now evil to me. I don't have a dog now, so all this information really does is be a killjoy to my earlier memories, and to wonder if Jason wasn't getting a nice shiny coat for a reason. It's mixed in with all the other forgotten catch phrases, the Don't Have a Cow Mans and Whatcho Talkin' Bout Willises and the soon to be forgotten Is That Your Final Answer?
So the next time you're in an improv audience and someone asked for a suggestion, shout out Gaines*Burger for old time's sake. Unless it's Mixed Signals; I can't tell you how many times we've had lesbian proctologists eating them.