DO I LOOK like I've lost weight?

"You look like you've lost weight," eight different people told me eight different times the other night at Baobab. My band played there, at the little one, and around the corner at the big one, on Mission Street, they made us great plates of complementary grub – lamb with couscous for me. I was feeling well fed. For the most part – seven-eighths of the time, to be precise – the observation that I looked like I'd lost weight was made cheerfully, complimentarily.

Still I made excuses. "Oh, it must be this shirt." Um, eating healthy? Sweating, the heat. Running around more. Um ... By times 4-6 I was starting to get paranoid, and by 7-8 I was reasonably certain that I had cancer.

Be careful who you say "you look like you've lost weight" to. Not everyone is trying, or will take the news well. Or isn't a hypochondriac.

I'm not a hypochondriac (or-at-least-I-don't-think-so-oh-my-God-do-you-think-I-could-be-a-hypochondriac???!!!!!). I'm not, really, but eight times is a lot of times to hear a thing said in one night. What I'm thinking is maybe in the future my friends can all get together beforehand and choose a single representative – someone responsible, say, Diane, the nutritionist (and maybe one alternate) – to tell me that I look like I've lost weight. Just in case I ever become a hypochondriac, or do have cancer.

To be safe, the next morning, as soon as it got light out, I started eating doughnuts. I started at Happy Donuts on 24th and Church, stopped off at the one in Mission Market, and wound up around lunchtime downtown, at Market and 11th, where I had a turkey sandwich, and a donut.

To think that I barely even scratched the surface of Happy Donutses. Bayshore and Geneva. The 3rd Street one down by the ballpark, whose sandwiches I sang the praises of years ago. There's one in North Beach I think. They're all over the place. Irving. Fillmore. And I've always wondered if they were all the same place, or what, because they seem different.

Wow, wouldn't it be something if right now, in this column, kicking off my next decade of Cheap Eats, I actually answered one little answerable question instead of raising 999,999 big, unanswerable ones?

Maybe instead of twisting my head further and further into my ass week after week after week x 52 x 10 in hot, heavy pursuit of philosophical enlightenment, I'll start going after simple little matters like whether or not all the Happy Donuts are the same place, or – I don't know – how good or bad a certain restaurant is, or All-Star Donuts.

Yeah, you know, life's big questions can't be answered in 825 words, lesson learnt. That's what cartoons are for. Life's little questions, on the other hand ... and wouldn't it be cool if in answering one little question at a time, week after week, a certain picture began to develop? A certain sense of things making, overall ... a certain sense. A picture. Something.

"Are all the Happy Donuts the same place?!" I asked the woman at 24th and Church. In the cartoon version my eyes are bugging out and I've got her by the collar. There's an exclamation mark over my head, a question mark over hers. She doesn't speak English, not even if you say it again, real slow.

So I gave up on knowing anything, for the moment, finished my donuts, drank my coffee, and went and asked the woman working at Happy Donuts in Mission Market. Three times I had to ask her.

"No. Not the same," she said.

See? I didn't think so. For example, my donuts were 15 cents cheaper here – 60 instead of 75. And the coffee wasn't as good. No sandwiches.

Downtown, on Market Street, they not only have sandwiches, but between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. they're $3.50 (instead of $4.35), and they come with a free donut!

I looked at the clock. Ten fifty.

"Can I help you?" the woman said.

"Yes. Are all the Happy Donuts the same place, in your opinion?" I said this real real slow. It was ten fifty-one.

"Yes," she said.

I looked at her, surprised. "Really?"

"Franchise," she said.

So. There you have it. I checked, double-checked, and confirmed my resources, and the final answer, according to three different people at three Happy Donuts, is yes, no, and maybe. In any case, I did find the cure for cancer.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I don't feel real good.

Happy Donuts. 1455A Market (at 10th St.), S.F. (415) 252-8868 (and about a dozen other locations). Open 24 hours. Takeout available. Credit cards not accepted. Wheelchair accessible.

Email Dan Leone