This is a view of the best and worst of America, which I saw in the supermarket yesterday, packaged neatly in a Ruffles potato chip bag.  This is a real thing.  Really.

As we spend this holiday weekend celebrating the 235th anniversary of this great land by doing what our forefathers did back in 1776 (wearing board shorts, fighting beach traffic, putting on SPF 30 sunscreen, drinking 19 Bud Light Limes, grilling 85/15 ground beef patties into delicious hamburgers smothered in Monterey Jack cheese on a six-burner propane grill, and blowing hundreds of dollars on fireworks that haven’t gotten any better over the last 30 years), I figured I’d honor what makes this country so wonderfully and gloriously fucked up (see above photo).

On one hand, this epitomizes the worst that this country has to offer.  Double Fisted Cheeseburger Flavored Potato Chips.  Just the name is downright hysterical on so many levels and I’ll leave the sexual angle out of this as it’s not very patriotic.  We Americans are gluttonous slobs.  We consume a tremendous amount of shit with no redeeming value.  Whether it’s food (see above photo again), alcohol (“coke” in a can), movies (the cinematic equivalent of Four Loko), music (sorry for this), or television (this is entertaining because…?), we are inundated in this country with shit we absolutely do not need.  Our food choices, as evidenced by these chips, are just horrid.

A few years ago, I went on a business trip to Asia.  It was a whirlwind tour of Japan, South Korea, and China, including Hong Kong.  The trip was amazing, but I noticed something almost immediately when I came back to America.  We are some fat peoples here in the U.S. of A.  I was only gone for a short time, but I noticed right away how huge we are.  The locals I saw in Asia were all skinny.  One reason is that their meals are much different than ours.  Their meals are typically family-style with more dishes, but much smaller portions.  There was no such thing as one person ordering a 72 oz. steak with a baked potato, shrimp cocktail, side salad, and dinner roll there.  It was light and simple.  And it was quite pleasant; I enjoyed it a lot and could definitely get used to it.   When I landed in Detroit on my return flight from Tokyo, it was fascinating that the first thing I noticed were the fat Americans waddling through the terminal.  They stuck out like fat people waddling through an airport terminal.

On the other hand, these mutant Ruffles Chips also epitomize the best that this country has to offer.  Adam Carolla, on his podcast, says it best.  Things like these chips are why the terrorists hate us.  If countries were high school students, the United States of America would be homecoming king every year.  There’d be some dissenters and wannabes who’d try to knock us down, but that crown has fit pretty good for a long time running.  We are so fucking cool and don’t give a shit about anything, that we make bacon cheeseburger-flavored potato chips and call them “double-fisted”.  Are you kidding me?  We’re basically threatening every other country with the world’s most torturous proctological examination armed with nothing more than bag of potato chips.  I love the balls we have.

During my return journey from the previously mentioned trip to Asia, I had some time to kill in the Tokyo airport before our flight to Detroit.  Me and the woman I was traveling with grabbed a couple seats by our gate.  As we waited, we noticed a number of American families loitering around the gate area, all with infants.  As we later found out, these families were on their way back home from China with their newly adopted children that they had just received.  I was fascinated by this.  I watched with great interest as these mothers and fathers were holding their new child for the first time on the most important journey these children would ever make.  I felt sadness for the mothers and fathers who had to give these children up for adoption, but joy for the kids for the wonderful gift they were given to come to a land where, if they so desired, they could surf on waves on double-fisted bacon cheeseburger flavored potato chips.

This is why people want to come to America.  They want the freedom to eat bacon cheeseburger-flavored potato chips, wash it down with some Everclear, drive a Hummer to see The Green Lantern, and head over to the arena to watch the WWE, all while wearing a Bluetooth headset connected to an iPhone 4.  That’s what this country is all about.  It sure as hell isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but, goddamn, it’s a trip being a part of it.

Ruffles Double-Fisted Cheeseburger Flavored Potato Chips, everybody.  Hooray for the red, white and blue.  Happy Birthday America, you crazy son of a bitch.  I wouldn’t live anywhere else.