Personal Dork Assistant

An American Hero

Jared's 15 minutes are still ticking away. Helps that big-city newspapers have lots of pages to fill on Sundays and need some human interest stories. Something sunnier than stories about maimed Marines back from Iraq.

It is a quintessentially American success story, in which the formerly shy, fat kid from Indiana has attained near rock-star status as Jared the Subway Guy. He's not George Clooney sexy or Tiger Woods athletic. It's a more subtle thing, an off-the-rack, couch-potato allure that any one of us could possess.

The look is as all-American as Wal-Mart: khaki pants, checked shirt, white athletic socks, close-cropped curly hair and wire-rim glasses a size too small for the face. And he, Mr. Ordinary, is rich and famous.

Jared Fogle is our attainable dream.

I guess it helps that he's not allowed to eat at any other fast-food restaurants due to his promotion contract with Subway. Talk about healthy fast food, I gave the McDonalds' salad a chance. Ever since the local Koo Koo Roo closed down I've been looking for a decent and fast chicken Caesar salad. It wasn't too awful. The cherries tomatoes were a little bland, and the lettuce tasted more like mutant iceberg than romaine. Dressing was on the side in a super-sized ketchup packet, so I cut back on the fat content a little bit. Couldn't resist an order of fries to go with the salad, though (hey, a potato's a vegetable, right?), and the salad probably wasn't that healthy anyway. Plus the order ended up being $6.18 without a drink, which was just ridiculous. Sad to see not even the awesome purchasing power of Mickey Ds can make fresh veggies as cheap and available as mass-slaughtered beef. At least they're trying.