Reflections on the Obese

Ahh, fatties. My beloved pair of portly pugilists competing in this here weight-a-losin’ contest has inspired me to reflect on some of the great fat people of all time. After all, I grew up in the 9^th fattest state in the country, only to relocate to the 4^th. Which states are those? Look it up yourself, you lazy sack of goo. Expecting someone else to deliver that kind of information is why you have elastic in the waist band of your Dockers.

Obviously the most powerful fat guy was President William Howard Taft (I don’t think Jay’s No. 1 or 2 is fat enough to be “fat”), and any fifth grader knows he had to have a special bathtub made in the White House to fit his corpulence. Of course that was in the 19^th century, so with today’s much fatter population in 2009, we have a special name for an ass trough that size; it’s just called a bathtub.

John Candy was pretty fat and sort of funny. John Belushi was sort of fat and very funny. Chris Farley was of typical fat man fatness, and the funniest of them all. Based on this data, I cannot draw any conclusions between fatness and funniness. However I am only slightly fat and sporadically funny.

In Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut says his penis is three inches long and five and a half inches wide. Vonnegut wasn’t really fat, but his penis was. And I bet it was hilarious.

Minnesota Fats played pool. Fat Lever played basketball, some of it against Minnesota. I always thought his porn name should be Skinny Fulcrum. But maybe his dong was laid out like Vonnegut’s, in which case Fat Lever is much more appropriate than Skinny Fulcrum. (Channeling famed fat man/NFL analyst/video game peddler/one time NFL coach/cheese eater John Madden: See, what he did there was select an antonym for the first name and a part-of-the-whole for the last name. This only works if both of your names are common nouns. This author’s are not, so his porn name is the combination of his middle name and the street he grew up on. So we would call him Booth West Mill. Boom.)

With all of these celebrities dying, don’t you think it’s John Madden’s turn?

I think Hollywood needs to get more creative in its depiction of fat guys. There are only two kinds, I think. The first is the surly fat guy. Eric Cartman is a great example, as is the fat kid from The Sandlot. And in the episode of Seinfeld where Jerry is at the dealership to get his new car from Putty, George and the mechanic that steals George’s Twix both count too. They all have chips on their shoulders because they’re afraid someone else might take their seventh oatmeal cream pie and force them to languish with only a half dozen. My brother fits this personality, but he’s 6’2” and 170 pounds. This is because he smokes. Ergo if you’re fat, you should probably smoke. You’ll still be an unhealthy asshole, but at least you’ll look better.

The second fat person archetype is the sympathetic face-stuffer-with-a-heart-of-gold, even though that heart won’t make it past age 35. I think of Donkey Lips from Nickelodeon’s Salute Your Shorts here, but you could make a case for Big Easy from Real World/Road Rules Challenge (no, he’s not a “real” person), the little girl witness in Southland , and the entire child cast of Heavyweights. These people never fail to make the Bambi “my mom is dead” face when someone honestly and legitimately questions their weight, seemingly always when the chub has half a Snickers in his mouth. But mostly, I identified this character so I could talk about Donkey Lips. That’s a top five character name of all time. And who was cutting Bobby Budnick’s hair? Did you ever wonder if the kid playing him was a Make-a-Wish kid and that ugly red mess was a wig?

She’s not a really fat person (and yes, she was chubby before she was pregnant), but I think Mirka Federer is an inspirational story for the world’s chunkers. Google Brooklyn Decker, Heather Mitts, Jennifer Scholle, or pretty much any other tennis player’s girlfriend. Even guys who can’t break the top 100 can pull at the highest level. But you’re telling me Roger Federer, one of the two greatest tennis players of all time, is going to pound town with that? I don’t believe it. But whether she’s his beard or has some kind of amazing blackmail dirt on him, good for Mirka. What Verne Troyer did for dwarves or elves or hobgoblins or whatever they’re supposed to be called, Mirka did for fat people. They should erect a bronze, inaccurately flattering statue for her.

People gave Beyonce crap because she made some catty comment about Jennifer Hudson gaining 20 pounds for “Dreamgirls” a few years ago. I’d be pissed too! Imagine if you had to work with a personal trainer five days a week in intense sessions because what sets you apart from every other good set of pipes is your looks. And then some less hot, worse singer comes along and wins an Oscar* because she ate an entire sleeve of Chips Ahoy every day for month.

(* This fact was not verified in any way. It might have been a Golden Globe. It might have been Queen Latifah Beyonce was dissing. It might have been Halle Berry doing the dissing. It might have been Thin Mints and not Chips Ahoy. The whole story might not be remotely true. Regardless, it’s how I remember it, so for my reality, it’s true. If your reality is contradictory, fuck you and your reality’s Wikipedia.)

There are a million cop-out explanations people have to defend fatties. One is that they’re “big boned.” Excuse me? Brontosauruses (brontosauri?) were big-boned. Blue whales are big-boned. Yao Ming is brittly big-boned. Your 5-5 hippopotamus of a friend is not big boned. It’s OK. I’m sure she just has bad genes. Oh, and can you please tell me again how it was a sign of wealth during the Renaissance to be obese? Is it 1492? Is your friend rich? Well, if my aunt had a package, she’d be my uncle.

Oh, and if you have a “slow metabolism” or a “glandular disorder” as I’m sure 99% of you fatties will declare, I’m so sorry. None of this applies to you. I’m just talking about the regular fatties who can do something about it like eat less and exercise more, such as Bryan and Jay. Good luck, guys!