School has been back in session for a few weeks now which means it’s time for a pop quiz! Match the following advertising mascots with little known trivia about their personal lives.
Mr. Clean
The Jolly Green Giant
The Energizer Bunny
Snap, Crackle, and Pop
Chester Cheetah
Captain Morgan
The Pillsbury Doughboy
The Michelin Man
Mr. Peanut
Ronald McDonald
A. Also owns a modest chain of car wash places with locations in Van Nuys, Pasadena, and Yorbalinda.
B. Worked with Ted Healy in vaudeville before moving to food marketing.
C. Lives in Nebraska, only travels by hovercraft.
D. Showed up at an audition for mascots after misreading the ad as a sale for “ascots”.
E. Has 20/20 vision but can only read Braille.
F. Did an episode of Undercover Boss wearing a vintage toupee and fake beard previously owned by Eisenhower.
G. An accomplished bass player, often touring with Herman’s Hermits
H. Also has a line of athleisure wear.
I. Went to college to study nuclear physics, was expelled after a bizarre incident involving a Geiger counter, a box of Brillo pads, and an electric eel.
J. Can’t eat gluten.
Scoring
1-2: You have no idea who most of these characters are. Congratulations–this is a winning score.
3-4: You were raised on a commune in upstate New York but have been acclimating to “normal” life. Good luck on your CPA exam.
5-6: One of your parents made you watch “Days Of Our Lives” with them each afternoon during the summer.
7-8: Both of your parents made you watch “Days Of Our Lives” with them each afternoon during the summer.
While Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups have, for obvious reasons, consistently been ranked the best Halloween candy, with Snickers, M&M’s, Kit Kats, Twizzlers, Mounds, Sour Sack Babies, and gummy worms usually making it into the top ten, it’s just as important to look at the opposite end of the list and consider the things you definitely should not give out at Halloween:
Apples
Basically any fruit is a bad idea but, in spite of their associations with fall, apples are the worst thing you can give trick-or-treaters unless you want apples thrown through your window. Save them for your Halloween party. If you’ve ever played Bobbing For Apples you know all this does is ruin the apples and leave everyone soaking wet. This is a feature, not a bug.
Apples With Razor Blades
In spite of it being a popular Halloween urban legend you should never give out these under any circumstances. There are no documented cases of these really being given to trick-or-treaters, and the reasons should be clear. For one thing an apple with a razor blade stuck in it is really obvious. For another razor blades are expensive. And finally if you did give these out you’d end up with apples with razor blades thrown through your window.
Caramel apples
Maybe you think the neighbors know you well enough and trust you enough that they know you’d never harm their children so they’d be totally fine with you making a special treat that requires an incredible amount of work on your part. Even if that is true do you know what takes even more work than making caramel apples? Eating them. Congratulations, you’ve just ruined both a perfectly good apple and perfectly good caramel. On the bright side you’ve put the apple on a stick which will make it really easy to throw it through your window.
Loose change
Once upon a time trick-or-treaters carried special cardboard boxes and collected money for UNICEF. Some of that money might have even made it to children in need rather than the change dish next to the rotary phone in the kitchen. Now you’re just weighing down kids’ bags with pieces of metal that, collectively, won’t be enough to purchase gift cards, which are the preferred financial medium of both kids and UNICEF.
Cough drops
Sure, they’re basically candy that pretends to make you stop coughing, but Halloween is just not the time to make sure the kids are getting their recommended daily requirement of menthol, and that eucalyptus could be saved for hungry koalas.
Vitamins
All other considerations aside these are never packaged individually so you’d have to distribute them in plastic bags, and if you’re doing that you might as well be sitting on your porch with bloodshot eyes wearing a tie-dyed shirt and ripped jeans while sitting next to a Victrola playing Tom Lehrer’s “The Old Dope Peddler”.
Gummy vitamins
These are really tasty and for adults it’s fun to get your daily dose of riboflavin as a sweet treat, but they’re still not individually packaged, so if you’re handing these out you might as well be sitting on your porch under a shingle that says “Dr. Timothy Leary” and telling everyone not to feed your pet dragon.
Laxatives
In 1959 a dentist in California thought it would be funny to give out laxatives to trick-or-treaters. It wasn’t. It still isn’t. Among other reasons anyone who’s ever suffered the after-effects of a Halloween candy binge knows laxatives wouldn’t make any difference.
Toothbrushes
I’m sure there are dentists who think it’s funny to give out these. It’s not. You might as well give kids a packaged lecture on the economic impact of coal mining on southwest Wales in the late 19th century. Let kids have this one special night and, hey, if they’re under a certain age they’re just gonna lose all those teeth anyway.
String cheese
Seriously, what is wrong with you?
Doughnuts
When I was a kid there was a house somewhere in my neighborhood where they handed out Krispy Kreme doughnuts–the basic frosted kind. They were not wrapped. Whoever did it also handed them out quickly enough that none of us got a good look at what was being tossed into our bags. The result was a pulverized doughnut and gooey frosting all over our candy. You know who you are and you are more evil than the Silver Shamrock mask company in Halloween III.
Full-sized candy bars
This may sound like a good idea, and it’s briefly going to make your house the most popular one in the entire city. Then you’ll run out and you and your family will turn into the trapped people in Night Of The Living Dead as an army of crazed trick-or-treaters shuffles toward your house, breaking your windows with the apples they got from that house across the street, and if you’re lucky they won’t be candy apples.
Mary Jane Peanut Butter Kisses
If you don’t recognize the name you’ll recognize the black and orange waxy paper these come wrapped in. Technically they’re a molasses taffy with peanut butter so, congratulations whoever made these, in one package you’ve ruined molasses, taffy, and peanut butter. Fortunately no one’s really to blame for these as scientists have discovered that they spontaneously generate in Halloween bags. This is a good thing because anyone responsible for giving these out should be arrested.
It’s the season when every young person’s fancy turns lightly to thoughts of sneezing, coughing, and congestion, which means it’s time for a pop quiz: Allergy Medication or Star Wars alien?
Chagrian
Muftak
Lotemax
Arcona
Prednisolone
Flovent
Quarren
Qnasl
Amanin
Zetonna
Snivvian
Aqualish
Rhinocort
Zaditor
Xyzal
Gungan
Nausicaan
Ithorian
Gamorrean
Astelin
Claridryl
Sullustan
Pazeo
Grogu
Nasonex
Source: Wikipedia
Answer Key (tip: you can copy the image, paste it into Paint or a similar program, and reverse it)
The Nashville Shakespeare Festival is putting on one of The Bard’s lesser known plays as part of their annual Shakespeare In The Park, but then they’ve been going since 1988 and, well, there are only so many ways to put on the same half dozen comedies and a couple of tragedies.
It’s also important when putting on a Shakespeare play to find ways to make it relevant to contemporary audiences, which is why I now offer Shakespeare’s Plays As Episodes Of Friends.
The One On The Island
The One With All That King’s Big Speeches
The One That Happens In The Trojan War
The One Where A Guy Is Exiled From Rome And Of Course Murdered When He Comes Back Because It’s A Tragedy
5. The One That Goes All Over Italy
The One Where Two Dudes Almost Get Married, And That Old Dude Comes Back
The One Where One Woman Stands In For Another Except She’s Lying Down
The One With A Boatload Of Twins, Literally
The Other One With The Twins And Also The Obnoxious Butler
The One With The Lady Pretending To Be A Statue And A Bear Attack
The First One Of The Three Parters About That King
The Second One Of The Three Parters About That King
The Third One Of The Three Partners About That King
The One Where A Greek Guy Finds A Bunch Of Gold And Dies
The First One With The Prince And That Old Dude
The Second One With Even More Of That Old Dude
The One That’s Not Famous Where Everybody Dies
The One That Is Famous Where Everybody Dies
The One With The Suicidal Teens
The One Where Two People Who Hate Each Other Get Married And No One Dies
The One With Four Guys Who Quit Dating
The One Where Everybody Gets Married After A Night In The Woods
The One Where A Jewish Guy Loses Everything, But It’s A Comedy
The One Where Some Get Married And Some Get Religion After A Night In The Woods
The One With The Two Daughters Who Have To Get Married
The One With The Riddle That Means Marriage Or Death, But It’s A Comedy
The One With Three Queens That Convince A King To Go To War, But It’s A Comedy
The One That Doesn’t Mention Either The Magna Carta Or Robin Hood
The One Where The Roman Leader Falls In Love With Egypt’s Queen And They Both Die
The One With The Tournament
The One With The Hunchbacked King Without A Horse
The One About The King With All The Wives
The One Where The King Goes To France
The One That’s In Scotland—You Know, The One We Can’t Say
The One Where The Salad Guy Is Murdered
The One With The Crazy King Who Dies Along With His Faithful Daughter Because It’s A Tragedy
The One With A Black Guy Who’s Tricked By A White Guy And Dies Because It’s A Tragedy
The One Where A Girl Is In Love With A Guy Who Doesn’t Like Her But It All Works Out In The End
The One That Ends With A Big Feast But Maybe It’s A Tragedy?
Scoring:
More Than 30-You are a retired English professor and you have tweed pajamas that are older than “Friends”
20-29-Stratford-On-Avon tour guides know you by name
15-19-You’ve acted in Shakespeare In The Park productions several years in a row
10-14-You’ve Been To Stratford-On-Avon once and asked a tour guide, “How you doin’?”
Actual Christmas Parlor Games Of The 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries:
The Ribbon
Everyone would be given a piece of string or ribbon to hold while one person in the middle of the room would hold the other end of all the strings or ribbons. The person in the middle would then say either “pull” or “let go”. When asked to “pull” all the players would have to let go of their strings. When asked to “let go” they would have to pull. Players who got the commands reversed would have to pay some sort of penalty, because it’s not the holidays without strings attached.
Shoe The Wild Mare
Players would have to straddle a wooden swing high enough that their feet would be off the ground and hit the bottom of the swing with a hammer and hopefully not fall off. Players who lost would have to pay some sort of penalty—usually a broken arm.
Jacob! Where Are You?
A version of Blind Man’s Bluff this game involves a blindfolded player who calls out, “Jacob! Where are you?” while chasing another player with a bell. If the bell ringer is caught the players trade places, which makes it a hilarious game for two people and a chance for everyone else to just wander around and drink.
The Toilette
One person would take the role of Lord or Lady. Everyone else would select or be assigned a toiletry item—a comb, a brush, a mirror, etc. When the Lord or Lady called for an item the corresponding person would have to answer. Or the Lord or Lady could call “All toilette!” and everyone would have to jump up and change seats. Each person would take the item of the previous seat holder. Playing this today would be a chance to assign Uncle Jerry the nose hair trimmer and maybe he’d get the hint to use the one you gave him last year because his nostrils look like they’ve been stuffed with porcupines.
The Doctor
One person chosen to be “The Doctor” would go around the room and each person would have to feign an illness. The Doctor would then prescribe the most ridiculous treatments he or she could think of. After going around the room the Doctor would then go back and ask each person what they’d been prescribed.
Hot Cockles
In this version of Blind Man’s Bluff a person would be blindfolded then hit and would have to guess who hit them. This game was a great opportunity to get into the Christmas spirit by taking revenge on someone for something they did back in July.
Steal The White Loaf
A person would sit at a table facing away from a piece of bread or cake and other people would try to grab it without being identified, which seems to be a common theme in Christmas parlor games and maybe how the whole “Secret Santa” thing got started.
Snapdragon
A large dish of raisins would be doused with brandy and set on fire because it just wouldn’t be Christmas without flames. The idea of this game was that everyone would take turns reaching in and grabbing a raisin from the dish. The winner would be the one with the most raisins who didn’t need medical treatment or set anything else on fire. To this day, though, more people have been sent to the hospital by family games of Monopoly.
It’s October and time to finally put to rest one of the most vexing seasonal questions of all: what is the difference between apple juice and apple cider?
Apple juice: Non-alcoholic.
Apple cider: May be non-alcoholic or alcoholic. Traditionally alcoholic in Europe the term “cider” referred to raw apple juice in the US for a long time in spite of its derivation from a Hebrew word meaning “strong drink” before the rising popularity of alcoholic cider.
Apple juice: Filtered, clear.
Apple cider: Generally unfiltered; may be clear or cloudy.
Apple juice: Pasteurized.
Apple cider: Generally also pasteurized but at a lower temperature or shorter period, giving it a shorter shelf life. Left alone will either turn into apple cider vinegar or applesauce.
Apple juice: Consumed year-round, mostly by children.
Apple cider: The alcoholic variety is consumed year-round, mostly by adults, while the non-alcoholic variety is consumed in the fall at church picnics by people who think it sounds kind of seasonal and also it’s cheaper.
Apple juice: Squeezed from the fruit using modern equipment, processed, and bottled within twenty-four hours.
Apple cider: Fruit and pulp are pressed in ancient stone building. The juice is then left to ferment for months or years while druids perform strange rituals over the barrels.
Apple juice: Usually served cold but can also be served hot and flavored with spices such as cinnamon, cloves, and star anise.
Apple cider: Always cold because of its aura of menace. Sucks the life force from cinnamon sticks like Billy Zane in The Mummy.
Apple juice: Made from a variety of red delicious apples specifically bred for juice.
Apple cider: Made from cursed apples that grow in orchards planted in forgotten graveyards.
Apple juice: Apples are harvested by industrial means in large quantities.
Apple cider: Apples are harvested by hand by tough withered Steinbeck characters with names like Nick, Skipjack, and Hortense.
Apple juice: Found on grocery store shelves next to the powdered drink mixes.
Apple cider: Found in the refrigerated section of the grocery store next to the beer, but may also be sold to you in the alley behind the store by a tough withered Steinbeck character with a three-day beard, an eyepatch, wearing a tattered trenchcoat, and carrying an axe. Answers to “Hortense”.
Apple juice: May be made from concentrate.
Apple cider: You know it’s thinking something.
Apple juice: Family friendly; often sold in bottles adorned with cartoon characters.
Apple cider: “We only fly the flag of the Jolly Roger,” says Hortense, glaring at you.
Apple juice: Goes great with a child’s afternoon snack of graham crackers or ginger snaps.
Apple cider: Lurks in the darkness waiting for the proper incantations that will release the demons trapped in its depths.
Apple juice: May have added sugar.
Apple cider: “I’d be more concerned with what it takes,” says Hortense, wiping something from her axe.
Apple juice: Makes adults nostalgic for carefree summer days of running barefoot through the tall grass with friends.
Apple cider: Wants you to pour it out over a blood sacrifice performed under a full moon, thus opening a portal to the netherworld where dark and mysterious creatures still reign.
Apple juice: Has a diuretic effect.
Apple cider: The only thing known to dislodge that bubblegum youswallowed in third grade.
Carbs may be persona non grata for some personae but if I have to do a little extra exercise, or accept that my spare tire will be a little more inflated, I’m okay with that because there are many things I won’t do without and pasta is one of them. Or rather the many varieties of pasta, and thanks to 3-D printing there are even more varieties of pasta. I’m pretty sure the question of why there are already hundreds of varieties of pasta, mostly regional could be the subject of a whole book. Heck, last year a journalist did a deep dive into why there was a shortage of bucatini, which, in spite of my love for pasta, I never even noticed, maybe because there are so many varieties, and finally got an answer this year.
And then there’s Barilla’s annual 3-D pasta printing contest that invites people to enter designs that couldn’t be made by hand or even conventional pasta machines, like this pasta galaxy:
Source: Saveur
It represents the possible future of food that doesn’t just look good but could be better for us, which seemed like a good excuse for me to bring out this palate-cleansing pop quiz:
Musical term or pasta?
Fusilli
Abbellimenti
Pappardelle
Pizzoccheri
Villotta
Lamento
Mafaldine
Rigatoni
Bamboula
Tutti
Obbligato
Zimbalon
Farfalloni
Jongleur
Passacaglia
Lumaconi
Mandala
Orecchiette
Quadrefiore
Funiculì
Ricciutelle
Quadrettini
Sacchettini
Tortelloni
Epithalamium
Gnocchi
Spatzle
Malagueña
Bucatini
Logorrhea
Each answer is worth 1 point.
1-10 points: Great job guessing!
11-20 points: Your music appreciation/cooking instructor is somewhere saying, “Thank goodness something got through.”
21-30 points: We’re coming to your place for dinner and/or a concert.
Late fall always meant going back to school for me, and going back to school always meant the end of my summer tradition of watching too much TV even when the weather was nice enough to be outside, at least until
I got home in the afternoons. So that prompted this question: do you recognize the lyrics from the themes to these classic TV sitcoms?
(Note that some of these shows used instrumental versions but originally had lyrics written for them while others had extended versions that never made it to the air.)
A smile is just a frown that’s turned upside down
So smile, and that frown will defrost.
Memories help me hide my lonesome feelin’
Far away from you and feelin’ low
It’s gettin’ late my friend, I miss you so
Take good care of you, I’ve gotta go
My heart was under lock and key,
But somehow it got unhitched.
I never thought that I could be had
But now I’m caught and I’m kinda glad
Roll out of bed, Mr. Coffee’s dead
The morning’s looking bright
And your shrink ran off to Europe
And didn’t even write
Fish don’t fry in the kitchen
Beans don’t burn on the grill
Took a whole lotta trying
Just to get up that hill
We’ll have no need to call the roll when we get to The Fishin’ Hole,
There’ll be you, me, and Old Dog Trey, to doodle time away.
Take me in your arms and hold me tight,
Tell me that your love is mine tonight,
Say that everything will turn up right,
It hurts to say goodbye.
Everybody knows in a second life
We all come back sooner or later
As anything from a pussycat
To a man eating alligator
Skin yourself alive, learn to speak Arapahoe,
Climb inside a dog, and behead an Eskimo.
Now you’ve heard it once, your brain will spring a leak,
And though you hate this song, you’ll be humming it for weeks!
And when we both get older
With walking canes and hair of gray
Have no fear, even though it’s hard to hear
I will stand real close and say
This is the music that you hear as you watch the credits.
We’re almost to the part of where I start to whistle.
Then we’ll watch…
I spend my nights just howling at the moon
Or hanging out in a creepy black lagoon…
That game of life is hard to play
I’m gonna lose it anyway
The losing card, I’ll some day lay
So this is all I have to say
Just like the light of a new day
It hit me from out of the blue
Breaking me out of the spell I was in
Making all of my wishes come true
You’re all invited back again to this locality
To have a heapin’ helpin’ of their hospitality
Scoring:
12-15: Your mother told you more than once that if you didn’t stop sitting so close to the TV you were going to grow square eyes.
10-11: Every once in a while you stop on one of the nostalgia channels before you go look for something better to watch.
7-9: You found an old TV in your parents’ attic once, plugged it in, and assumed all the color seeped out years ago.
5-8: If you rolled your eyes at this list and said, “Okay, Gen-Xer” give yourself ten bonus points.
2-4: You have never lived in a time when DVR didn’t exist.
0-1: Congratulations on having done something useful with your summer vacations.
7-Alfred Hitchcock Presents (not a sitcom and the lyrics are of questionable provenance since the original was an instrumental piece by Charles Gounod but are taken from The TV Theme Song Sing-Along Songbook by John Javna)
8-If you said “My Mother The Car” you guessed WRONG. This was never a classic sitcom.
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.