When I was in college, doing my campus radio stations' "Dr. Demento Clone' show (because ALL the college stations in California were doing it, and I had a collection of funny records), I went to the trouble of editing George Carlin's original "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television", replacing each of the banned words with a specific sound effect from a Hanna Barbara SFX record. As a result, my seven words were "Splat", "Splash", "Thud", "Zip", "Floppityflop", "Crashitycrash" and "Pop". I regret not to have saved a copy of that.
Kids these days may only know flying pigs as those recoiling after being hit by Angry Birds, but I know better. I got a Gund Flying Pig (with a little motor that flaps it wings, but does not get it airborne) from Woot! some time ago. And years before that, I had a Nerf Football with a piggy snout, ears and tail (the only web evidence of such a thing is this picture of someone else's). Of course, there's also Breadpig, but wings made of bread have questionable aeronautic capability (unless they're California Sourdough).
Yes, the In-N-Out 100x100 was legendary, but more recently, the corporate headquarters has laid down an edict making 4x4 the largest 'authorized' burger size. Of course, I'm sure the Jack in the Box burger was also 'unauthorized' and the home office is torn between totally disavowing this burger or having the guy in the giant plastic head put it into a commercial.
New York Brand Texas Toast just makes a mockery of the whole "place names as brand names" thing...
Philadelphia Cream Cheese is made by Kraft Foods, headquartered in Northfield, Illinois, a Chicago suburb.
Poland Spring Water does not come from the country of Poland but from five sources in the state of Maine, one which is named Poland Spring. (Still, a 4-out-of-5 chance of not-Poland-Spring).
Avon is headquartered in New York City, nowhere near the British river where Shakespeare hung out.
You don't know WHERE your New York Pizza, Philly Cheesesteak, Boston Baked Beans or Memphis Barbeque comes from. Tex-Mex could be all Tex, all Mex or neither.
And Jim Ochsner, in addition to the New Jersey New York teams, the Dallas Cowboys currently play in Arlington, Texas, and previously in Irving, Texas. I got a kick out of calling them the "Irving Cowboys". Of course, there was quite a period of controversy leading up to the awkward naming of one MLB team "The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim".
And Subway has thousands of stores in areas without underground rapid transit systems.
When I was a kid, at a Boy Scout troop meeting, a producer from Jack Webb Productions came in with a 16mm film copy of the pilot from the then-upcoming TV show "Adam-12". (That's what you get when you're in a Boy Scout troop in L.A.) He was getting kid reactions and the two things most talked about were (1) the one-minute black-screen pauses for inserting commercials and (2) the L.A. scenes behind the stars as Martin Milner drove the cop car (which was half of the show). The producer declared with pride that those were all really filmed while Milner was driving (a lot of TV shows those days used static cars in front of projected scenery - and it showed) and how Milner got the job because he had esperience at doing that... in "Route 66", he and George Maharis wandered the highways in a convertible - they couldn't do it in-studio, and Jack Webb, with his reputation as a 'stickler for accuracy', wouldn't for his new show. Anyway, since then, I've been trying to pick out the scenes actually done on-the-road, and with technical improvements, it's gotten a lot harder.
I don't want to say too much, but I went to work over 20 years ago in the Contracts Billing department for a then-small-but-growing environmental engineering company (specializing in cleaning up after things), and there was one contract that was so top secret the only thing the Home Office got was a one-page one-item invoice signed by a company employee nobody ever saw and a USAF Colonel. Apparently they were doing all their accounting on-site, and everybody assumed that the site was Area 51. The contract ended my first year there, so either the site was fully shut down or they just stopped cleaning up the alien slime. :)
Until allowed to actually sample all the flavors (especially Maple Moose, but also Perogi Platter and Chicken & Waffles which can go wrong in as many ways as go right), it's not fair to make a judgment, but I might have problems with a formal tasting; since Lay's is owned by Pepsi, the only 'palate cleanser' allowed between tastes would be Pepsi and I am a life-long Coca-Colator. (And don't they also have Pepsi flavored Doritos in Japan or something?)
Well, there were stories that George Lucas didn't want Wookiee Life Day to be "anything like Christmas", but that whole show was just the first early sign he was losing it... :)
Thanks for giving us something to randomly celebrate during the long, hot weeks between the 4th of July and Labor Day. And thank you especially for including Weird Al's Weasel Stomping Day - any event that results in a collaboration between His Weirdness and the action figure animators of Robot Chicken for the music video is truly an event. I'm lobbying Weird Al's alma mater, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo - where he occasionally does 'homecoming' concerts - to recognize it... we have plenty of annoying wildlife around here.
But you forgot one very important Fictional Holiday: Wookiee Life Day, the basis for the truly infamous Star Wars Holiday Special http://mentalfloss.com/article/29580/horrible-star-wars-holiday-special . Of course, you could do an entire other list just of substitutes and stand-ins for Christmas (Remember The O.C.'s "Christmukkah"?) but please don't do them until December.
Kids these days may only know flying pigs as those recoiling after being hit by Angry Birds, but I know better. I got a Gund Flying Pig (with a little motor that flaps it wings, but does not get it airborne) from Woot! some time ago. And years before that, I had a Nerf Football with a piggy snout, ears and tail (the only web evidence of such a thing is this picture of someone else's). Of course, there's also Breadpig, but wings made of bread have questionable aeronautic capability (unless they're California Sourdough).
Philadelphia Cream Cheese is made by Kraft Foods, headquartered in Northfield, Illinois, a Chicago suburb.
Poland Spring Water does not come from the country of Poland but from five sources in the state of Maine, one which is named Poland Spring. (Still, a 4-out-of-5 chance of not-Poland-Spring).
Avon is headquartered in New York City, nowhere near the British river where Shakespeare hung out.
You don't know WHERE your New York Pizza, Philly Cheesesteak, Boston Baked Beans or Memphis Barbeque comes from. Tex-Mex could be all Tex, all Mex or neither.
And Jim Ochsner, in addition to the New Jersey New York teams, the Dallas Cowboys currently play in Arlington, Texas, and previously in Irving, Texas. I got a kick out of calling them the "Irving Cowboys". Of course, there was quite a period of controversy leading up to the awkward naming of one MLB team "The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim".
And Subway has thousands of stores in areas without underground rapid transit systems.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKSkBsnfkFA
But you forgot one very important Fictional Holiday: Wookiee Life Day, the basis for the truly infamous Star Wars Holiday Special http://mentalfloss.com/article/29580/horrible-star-wars-holiday-special . Of course, you could do an entire other list just of substitutes and stand-ins for Christmas (Remember The O.C.'s "Christmukkah"?) but please don't do them until December.