ARBY'S BREAKFAST CLUB

I am the President of a morning breakfast club that meets at Arby's in Peachtree City about once a week. There's not a meeting calendar, a membership fee, or even a membership actually. I am the only one in the organization so far. It's a great club.

I usually have a sausage croissant each week as I try to think of how to "theme" this club. I first thought that it should be an "Anti-Vent" group where, we the members would seek to rid the world of people who think they are funny just because the Atlanta Journal prints their tired, sexist jokes, retreaded cliches' and old Jerry Seinfeld material. (These are the same people who think forwarding lame jokes through email makes them comedians.) Maybe our fraternity--the antithesis of the "morning gym person,"--eating hash browns and cinnamon rolls, could call ourselves "Future Pacemakers of America."

Yet, I am getting ahead of myself. I am the only person in this club.

Groucho Marx once said that he would never join any organization desperate enough to have him as a member. In contrast, I want to be the head of a club so exclusive that no one deserves invitation except for myself. It's pretty hard being arrogant though, when I sit alone sharing the diner with two construction workers who think hygiene is what you say before you say "Bye Gene." Yet, one day, I believe that I will start this club and it will make a difference in the world.

I would have a very important mantra for my club: We, the Billy Murphy Club, believe in ambition, hard work and the right to call near-nude swimsuit modeling an official sport--worthy of it's own magazine issue. We believe that paying taxes is a privilege, even though most of the money goes to provide jobs for overweight, alcoholics who by no other means could afford a mistress. We the Billy Murphy Club believe cholesterol levels should be higher as your weight goes up (is not a 160 lb man with a cholesterol level of 180 worse off than a 280 lb man with a cholesterol level of 260?).

We believe in life, liberty and the right of Sylvester Stallone to wear glasses so he "seems" smarter. We believe that Tai Bo is for suckers who don't realize backwards it just says, "Bow Tie." The same goes for "Evian" which is just "naive" spelled backward. We, the Billy Murphy Club, believe it is every person's right to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and free ketchup at McDonald's without having to ask. We believe in every person's right to park diagonally in two spaces when they have a new car. And lastly, we believe that however many fig newtons are stuck together, that is how God intended us to eat them.

Who am I kidding? Who is going to join my morning, breakfast club or even be able to pass the initiation ritual of visiting a stranger's bathroom and NOT looking inside the medicine cabinet? I will just continue holding my meetings alone, voting down any kind of change, issuing statements criticizing any move Ellen Degeneres makes.

Billy Murphy -- 4/23/99