The Tory Party

John Candy

I like John Candy a lot.

I don’t know where to begin. I’ve had a soft spot for him for years. I saw Splash and Spaceballs and stuff growing up, but the only real John Candy movie I think I’ve seen is The Great Outdoors (being too young for Uncle Buck, though my sister liked it) yet I have recurring dreams about him. In one, I was with him on the night he had the heart attack, and I was able to save him. In another – and not to be indelicate here – but we’re trying to have sex and he keeps losing his erection when I put the condom on (thuddingly obvious Freudian interpretation at bottom). When he cropped up in JFK, I about peed myself.

I realize I feel about him the way a lot of people my age do about Kurt Cobain: he died too young, he didn’t have to die, could no one have helped him? Could no one have saved him? See, the 90s for me aren’t marked by drugs or booze or rock-and-roll; they’re marked by food. Because I am. Addicted. To food.

Someone addicted to booze might get excited to see Paul Newman’s performance in The Verdict, or Edward Woodward red-faced in Breaker Morant, or Jackie Gleason in anything. For me, the steak-eating scene in Great Outdoors was seminal, seminal stuff. You see Paul Newman act drunk, and you can tell he’s done some hard drinking in his life. You see John Candy eat until he’s sick, and you can tell he’s done some hard eating.

I saw a piece of Great Outdoors on TV lately, and I was shocked to see that at that time John Candy and Dan Aykroyd were about the same size. So here’s Dan Aykroyd’s character lobbing fat jokes, and they’re really about the same size! I read that for a while John Candy lost 75 lbs from the Pritikin Center.

Allegedly John Candy was due for hip replacement about the time he died, but in 1994, at the age of 44, he was too fat to have the surgery.



Nowadays they’ll operate on people no matter how big they are, because so many of us are morbidly obese. And when you get fat enough, you have to have surgery. Whether it’s joint replacement, gall-bladder removal, heart bypass, if you’re fat enough, you have to have surgery.

The problem with addiction is that it doesn’t kill you fast. It kills you real, real slow. And I know I’m talking out of school to point to a famous person and act like I know what their problem was, or what their life was like. But I feel like I do. Because here’s the other thing about the steak-eating scene – that is me. When it comes to making yourself unwell with food, that is me.

Around here there’s a restaurant called “Bandido’s,” and it serves a burrito called “El Gigante” that, if you can finish it, is free. The wall of photos of people who have finished it contains mostly burly, twenty-something men, flush and taxed with effort. I tell my sister I could finish it. And she says, “No, you don’t understand, it comes out on three plates, and besides the burrito there are two sides you have to eat, and there’s a time limit.” And I think, “Oh, no, *you* don’t understand. I could finish it in time, ask about dessert, and then have a little something else when I got home.”

I never tried it, mostly because I only went there with a group of people I would prefer never see me annihilate that much food. Nowadays my stomach is sorta shrunk up, but God knows that’s a stretchable organ. Give me a week and I could eat El Gigante and look to see if you’d finished your taco.

I have spent more time eating than I can count. I’ve stolen food, and I’ve stolen money to get food (stealee, you know who you are, and I still owe you like 30 bucks). I’ve eaten so much I had to throw up just to be comfortable enough to sleep. I’ve eaten out of the garbage. I’ve eaten burned stuff and frozen stuff and oatmeal I accidentally put garlic in instead of cinnamon. I’ve eaten a half-gallon of ice cream and four candy bars and just gotten started.

Nobody chooses to weigh 300 lbs. Nobody wants to have knee pain or sleep apnea or kidney stones or Type II diabetes. Anybody so fat it hurts them can’t help it. It’s not their fault. They just can’t help it. I sure as f*ck can’t help it.

I haven’t done this magnitude of eating in a while. Oh ho, you say, it just takes the proper amount of willpower. It just takes the right pill or surgery or staple in the ear or diet plan or magical lifestyle where nothing aggravates you and makes you overeat ever, ever, ever. Nope. It took a 12-Step program, which I’ve been in for six months. And I’ll still occasionally wipe out 1000 calories after dinner, though things in my life are getting better, and all sorts of better, and not just being able to wear a size medium better.

But that’s a story for another day.

I`m getting Uncle Buck off of Netflix.

I like John Goodman a lot, too. I hope he lives a long time.

Thuddingly obvious Freudian interpretation: If I protect myself, I won’t get f*cked.