If the holiday season puts you in the mood for food why not order from the secret menu? These specialty items aren’t listed on the regular menus and ordering them at your local fast food joint is a great way to make that high school kid who just started two hours ago want to quit. See if you can pair up these spécialités with their maison.
The Meat Mountain
Two chicken tenders, slices of roast turkey, pit-smoked ham, corned beef, 13-hour smoked brisket, USDA-choice Angus steak, roast beef, pepper bacon, with cheddar and swiss cheese
Cinnamon Roll Frappuccino
The Suicide Burger
A burger with four beef patties and four slices of cheese with bacon and “special savory sauce” that can be ordered with a side of Frings (half French fries, half onion rings)
Microwavable chicken fried rice with an expiration date of 08/03/1998
Land, Sea & Air Burger
Two hamburger patties, a fish filet, and a chicken patty on three buns. There’s also a landlubber version with two chicken patties.
Frozen hot chocolate
A cardboard box of Neapolitan ice cream with the chocolate missing
Burritodilla
A quesadilla filled with about half the contents of a burrito
Purple Sprite
Sprite mixed with Powerade, lemonade, and cranberry juice.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)-You’ve told the joke about the three bartenders, the Franciscan monk, and the cross-eyed turtle as part of a wedding toast. Twice.
Halloween (1978)-The barbershop quartet you were in broke up over creative differences.
So my wife sent me out to pick up some wine while she went to a dog training class, and while I was in the store a young man came in and asked if they had any Moet & Chandon and I said, “Oh, yeah, she keeps it in a pretty little cabinet. Let them eat cake, she says, just like Marie Antoinette,” and everyone just stared at me and I invited everyone to come home with me just so I could yell at them to get off my lawn, but that’s another story. At least it all came together in this pop quiz: Dog breed or wine?
What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, three legs in the evening, and when would be the ideal time for it to get health insurance?
A box without hinges, key, or a lid, but you followed the directions when you were putting it together. Did you save the receipt?
A train traveling at forty-five miles an hour leaves Vancouver heading east at 4:45am. A train traveling at thirty miles an hour leaves Poughkeepsie traveling northwest at 1:05pm. Explain to me again why this is so much better than flying.
You have two and a half bottles of conditioner and three quarters of a bottle of shampoo you swiped from a hotel. How many times do you have to travel before you have an even number of both?
On Monday there are five coffee cups in the office break room sink. On Tuesday there are four coffee cups in the office break room sink. On Wednesday there are eight coffee cups in the break room sink. Is anyone going to ask Kevin to just rinse one cup if he’s drinking that much coffee?
As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Each wife had seven sacks, each sack had seven cats, each cat had seven kits, and what are the odds I turned around and went back when I saw what kind of people lived there?
You have three glasses of milk and three bowls of pudding. You drink one of the glasses of milk and, oh, wait, are you lactose intolerant?
What has no beginning, end, or middle and is circular and, oh, I just gave away the answer there, didn’t I?
A father and son are in a terrible accident. The father is killed and the son is rushed to a doctor. The doctor says, “I can’t operate on him, I’m a psychiatrist!”
Which came first, the chicken or the egg, and is putting mayonnaise on a chicken sandwich a double insult?
You’re faced with two guardians. One always tells the truth, the other always lies. Which one do you ask a question since they’re both major assholes?
There are four days that start with the letter ‘T’: Tuesday, Thursday, and I’ll tell you the other two tomorrow and yesterday.
It wouldn’t be Christmas without caroling, except in places where it’s not a Christmas tradition. Years ago when I was in Britain, going to school at Harlaxton College, a group decided to go out caroling in the nearby village and I went along even though I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. There was a home in the village that had a pond that was home to three-thousand ducks, though, and every day after lunch I’d take some bread and walk up there and feed the ducks. They must have recognized my voice because as the group marched along singing the ducks came out and joined us in “Here We Come A-Waddling”, but that’s another story. The strange thing is people who lived in the village were baffled by a group caroling just for fun and thought we were collecting for charity so they kept trying to offer us money, and by the third house I’d collected ten pounds. Anyway see if you can identify these Christmas carols just from a few of the words.
1. The horse was lean and lank
Misfortune seemed his lot
He got into a drifted bank
And then we got upsot.
2. Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes of life of gathering gloom
3. And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow…
4. We’ll have lots of fun with mister snowman,
Until the other kids knock him down.
5. And surely ye’ll be your pint-stoup!
And surely I’ll be mine!
6. Bring me flesh and bring me wine
Bring me pine logs hither…
7. The bells on Penguins ring,
Make Riddler wanna fight…
8. Don’t cry for me next door neighbor…
9. May we warm him, needy and lying on hay,
With our pious embraces
10. Bring us out a mouldy cheese,
And some of your Christmas loaf.
11. Goreu pleser ar nos galan,
Tŷ a thân a theulu diddan…
12. The boar’s head, as I understand,
Is the rarest dish in all this land…
13. Somebody waits for you,
Kiss her once for me.
14. There’ll be scary ghost stories
And tales of the glories of
Christmases long, long ago…
It’s not quite Fall in the northern hemisphere but already the days are noticeably shorter. The mating calls of the crickets, cicadas, and katydids are louder with the fierce urgency of the late season. The sky is more blue, the mornings are more crisp, or that just might be the drugs kicking in. Soon it will be harvest season. All these combined to prompt the following pop quiz: Apple variety of classic American burlesque performer?
1. Granny Smith
2. Lily St. Cyr
3. Beverly Hills
4. Birgit Bonnier
5. Mamie Van Doren
6. Royal Gala
7. D’Arcy Spice
8. Sally Rand
9. Carolina Red June
10. Chesty Morgan
11. Gypsy Rose Lee
12. Pacific Rose
13. Paula Red
14. Pink Lady
15. Yakety Sax
16. Ginger Gold
17. Golden Delicious
18. Ann Corio
19. Honeycrisp
20. Honey West
21. Kerry Pippin
22. Jayne Mansfield
23. Fanny Brice
24. Al Lewis
25. Roxbury Russet
Scoring: 1-5: Like the crickets, cicadas, and katydids your mating calls are louder at this time of year.
6-10: Cider? You hardly knew her!
10-15: Your tassels are showing.
15-20: You really like them apples.
20-25: You’ve spent more time in burlesque clubs than Morey Amsterdam.
Once upon a time lazy summer mornings meant sleeping late and lingering over a bowl of cold cereal, oblivious to the problems of the wider world. Maybe there’d be a toy in the bottom of the box of cereal. Back in 1947 a national brand of cereal gave away a million spinthariscope rings so kids could put a sample of radioactive polonium right up their eye, but that’s another story. After breakfast there’d be time for a barefoot walk through the tall grass, far away from the urgent ringing of a phone. Then back home for a tuna fish sandwich and my boss yelling, “WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN? THE SHAREHOLDERS ARE EXPECTING THE QUARTERLY EARNINGS REPORT!”
In memory of those bygone halcyon days of last week when summer mornings were long and leisurely here’s a pop quiz:
The 1980’s were a totally tubular decade, the era of Rubik’s cubes and Max Headroom, bandannas and leg warmers, of Cabbage Patch Kids and Garbage Pail Kids and conspicuous consumption, and of course some great and some not so great music, which is why the ‘80’s gave us the mixtape. If you love the ‘80’s then you didn’t grow up in the ‘80’s, but if you did grow up in the ‘80’s see if you can match these songs with their descriptions and deeper meanings below.
On its surface a denial of paternity this dance tune by the then rising King of Pop was also a response to growing interest in western goods in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe even as the Warsaw Pact nations remained suspicious of capitalism.
Even the most well-stocked bomb shelter, this song reminded us, would require careful rationing and maintenance of a filtered ventilation system to ensure long-term survival in the event of a nuclear war.
A comeback hit for a band that had been on “permanent vacation” this song used gender-bending lyrics as a metaphor for the increasing nuclear arms stockpile that was intended to be a show of force as part of the policy of mutually assured destruction (MAD) that was intended to keep the nuclear superpowers in check even as international tensions escalated.
This popular love song that’s become ubiquitous in cheesy commercials was inspired by the melting of mannequins used in nuclear bomb tests.
The effects of widespread nuclear blasts on the climate and the ensuing “nuclear winter” became a widespread topic of discussion in the 1980’s and the subject of this song which became one of its performer’s signature pieces. It would be followed a few years later by “Alphabet Street”, about the codes entrusted to a “designated survivor” in the event of a nuclear attack during the president’s State of the Union address.
Missile-launch surveillance is a full-time job as reflected in this song about the military personnel entrusted with keeping watch over the “lucky clover” of radar tracking and other early warning systems.
A popular club hit the “dance” referred to in this song is international agreements toward nuclear disarmament and the negotiated withdrawal by the superpowers from certain parts of the world.
Best known for its amazing music video that combined animation and live action as a young girl enters a comic book world the song and video both were a subtle yet poignant commentary on nations in remote parts of the world engaging in armed conflicts as proxies for the United States and Soviet Union.
A popular parody of a Michael Jackson hit this song was also about the importance of storing canned goods and other non-perishable food items in bomb shelters in preparation for nuclear war.
This British ska toe-tapper was all about the ongoing maintenance of a bomb shelter and the responsibility thrust onto the younger generation of ensuring survival in the event of nuclear war.
This song’s performer shocked MTV audiences with her provocative wedding-dress performance but even more shocking was the song’s addressing of the nuclear superpowers’ massive arsenals and the fact that some of the weapons had not been updated in decades.
A nuclear holocaust would likely require survivors to stay in cramped fallout shelters for months, even years. One of the biggest challenges would be staying healthy, as emphasized in this catchy hit from 1986 which featured then-San Francisco 49ers Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott singing backup vocals.
Best known for their flamboyant lead singer this band’s catchy dance tune with its line about “red, gold, and green” was both a plea for universal harmony and a reference to Africa’s strategic importance in providing uranium for nuclear arsenals.
This catchy German pop song is about nothing more than buying a shitload of balloons.
Written and performed by a singer whose vocal range was as extreme as her punk hairdo and makeup this anthem to girls having fun was a cultural response to the imminent threat of nuclear annihilation.
