Holidays
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Super Bowl Sunday: What’s REALLY In That Seven Layer Dip?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 5, 2010 by admin in Holidays
Friday, February 5th, 2010For some, Superbowl Sunday is about football. For me, it’s all about TV commercials and the mysteries of the mythical Seven Layer Dip.
 Can you really call it “salad” when it has a jar of mayonnaise in it? |
For better or worse, Superbowl Sunday is upon us once again. I have to admit that I fall in the “worse” camp; as I mentioned last year, I find watching the Superbowl about as appealing as eating Ortolan. The last time I really enjoyed the event was in 2006, when I made a few hundred dollars selling “XL” imprinted t-shirts and mugs. Always the opportunist, it occurred to me well ahead of time that it’s hard to try and lay exclusive rights to Roman numerals. However, there are a couple of things peripherally related to the game that continue to fascinate me. One is the fact that it’s a time when football fans – who have otherwise been known to pierce drywall with TV remotes because of badly timed commercials – are actually interested in watching them. And although I personally don’t watch TV myself, I’m something of a TV commercial junky. So here, for your enjoyment and mine, is the largest collection of Superbowl commercials in the world. If you can get a connection, that is. Adland.TV’s server was having trouble as of this writing. Why are you trying to watch TV on the Internet anyway? Don’t you have a TV? Anyway, I think they’re lying; you can also try Superbowl-Commercials.org. THEY have 49 years worth, they just make you click through 10 pages to get to each one. So what’s the other thing that fascinates me? The seven layer dip. Yes, there’s a Wikipedia page. I’ve never had it, and I remain – after three years of research – unsure as to what defines it, aside from the fact that well, it has seven layers. So I have a few thoughts on the topic below, but please, feel free to chime in if you have some useful facts or a decent recipe that doesn’t involve mayonnaise, a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, or canned “black olives”. Read the rest of this entry »
Valentines Day & Love Is Like Christmas At The Mall & Jesus
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 1, 2010 by admin in Holidays
Monday, February 1st, 2010Valentine’s Day is more than a Hallmark holiday, it’s a time of fear, hope, rejection, and opportunistic product links.
  Let your man know how you feel, with a Power Gauge Erectile Quality Monitor |
I’m glad I’m not a romantic Chinese Catholic guy who lives in New Orleans; this February would be a rough month with Chinese New Year, Valentine’s Day, Mardi Gras, and Ash Wednesday all falling in the same week. Yes, after the almost holiday-free month of January, the holidays dig back in with a vengeance in February. As always, there are opportunistically scheduled health awareness programs with no clever marketing plans, like American Heart Month, which is presumably scheduled to coincide somehow with Valentine’s Day. Or Sinus Pain Awareness Month, which is scheduled to coincide with… oh. Never mind. As someone who occasionally experiences sinus pain, I just want to say I’d prefer not to have a whole month to make me aware of it. For most of us though, February means Valentine’s Day, and for people like me, Valentine’s Day means lots of opportunities to insert offbeat product links into cynical articles about the holiday. Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually quite a romantic. But the big VD seems to bring the same vibe to love that Christmas at the mall brings to Jesus. If you’ve ever waited tables, you’ve been on the front lines of the battlefield of love, and know what I mean. When you wait tables on Valentine’s Day, you get to see the penultimate expression of what the holiday is really all about: people who usually live in their jeans and hoodies wearing rented tuxes and recently-purchased dresses they barely fit into, people whose idea of a three course meal is supersizing at the drive-thru suddenly trying to figure out that extra fork, and the sickening tension of a room full of first dates and soon to be accepted or rejected marriage proposals. I can’t tell you how many times I called a cab for a sobbing woman who had just said “no” to her suitor. So yes, rest assured we’ll be back throughout the month with more thoughts on Valentine gift ideas. Because nothing says “I love you” like a Power Gauge Erectile Quality Monitor
MLK Day – You Can Kill The Man But Not The Message
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 18, 2010 by admin in Holidays
Monday, January 18th, 2010Martin Luther King Jr. is one of my few heroes, but somehow I’d feel better about his life if I knew who ended it.
MLK day is a holiday that triggers a lot of mixed feeings for me. Martin Luther King, Jr. is probably one of the few people I consider a hero, and I find it especially inspiring that on this MLK Day, an American man of color who has won the Nobel Peace Prize and has risen to a position of leadership with a message of hope and change can suggest that we honor another man who did exactly the same thing. I hope that’s where the similarities end, and that’s the main reason this day of rememberance gives me such mixed feelings. Probably no American figure of the last century brought the message that truth and love can conquer almost anything with more power and diginity than Martin Luther King, Jr., and sadly, it has seemed to be a trend in recent American history that peace-minded leaders meet their demise at the hands of assassins. I’m not a conspiracy nut by any stretch, but one has to be ignorant to believe that the deaths of JFK, RFK, MLK, or even possibly Paul Wellstone were not the result of their being forces for peace in a world run by militant, angry, frightened white men. If I were Paul Wellstone’s family, I probably wouldn’t want Dick Cheney at the funeral either. In the case of MLK, even his family didn’t believe that James Earle Ray was the killer, and in spite of lengthy assurances from the Justice Department that they got the right man, there were never conclusive results that his gun was the one used in the assassination. To me this would be a much more meaningful day if we could at least know for sure who was truly behind the death of such a great man. In spite of all this, King is proof that you can kill a great man, but not kill his message. On that note, a few of my favorite MLK quotes are below. Read the rest of this entry »
January Holidays: Is Giving Blood Really As Pointless As Voting?
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on January 6, 2010 by admin in Holidays
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010And is Barack Obama black? After the psychological torture of the year-end holiday season, January is mercifully light on holidays. But let’s take a moment to honor Martin Luther King Jr, Elvis Presley, and David Bowie.
 We recommend giving, in spite of the AABB’s warning |
Thankfully, the month of January is a little light on holidays. After the brutal onslaught of holidays that begin around Halloween, most people spend the month in therapy or divorce court, or are busy failing to stick to their resolutions, so don’t really have the time or the inclination to celebrate. The only “real” national holiday is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which should be a big deal this year, because the nation has its first black president. Or does it? We’ll leave that up to you to decide. I’m personally not sure I recognize race in the first place. Anyway, as a result of all these empty calendar spaces, non-profits and health organizations jumped on the opportunity, so we have Thyroid Awareness Month, Glaucoma Awareness Month, National Birth Defects Prevention Month, Cervical Health Awareness Month, and National Blood Donor Month, none of which had clever campaigns worth linking to, except National Blood Donor Month, which has a pretty lame pitch that says “donating blood regularly is as important as voting“. And as we all know after the past few years, voting is a waste of time. Way to go, American Association of Blood Banks! I might have given, if it weren’t for your input. To people of my era, probably the most important event in January is the combined birthday of Elvis Presley and David Bowie. So happy Elvid Bowsley day! Read the rest of this entry »
Auld Lang Syne, Two-Thousand-Nine
[ Comments Off ]Posted on December 31, 2009 by admin in Holidays
Thursday, December 31st, 2009There are so many things we could say about 2009 and the last decade, but let’s not. Let’s just look forward to another year and decade of exciting new possibilities.
 Um, maybe not. |
All in all, 2009 wasn’t so bad. It was better than 2008 anyway, which was – according to many sources – the worst year ever. And it has the perk of being the end of a pretty scary, if un-nameable, decade. So tonight, we might as well party like we only do once in a blue moon, because, well… it is one. Personally, I’ll be observing a moment of silence for the folks that had built an industry around those New Year’s Eve party glasses with the zeroes as the eyes; they’re screwed. I’ll also be wishing I wasn’t so strapped for cash, because I’d go buy the domain howdoyousay2010.com and set up a single serving site. For now, you can just visit TwentyNot2000.com for similar results. So how DO you say 2010, anyway? Everybody was so anxious for the “oughts” to be over so they could start saying “teen”, but no-one seemed to remember the fact that the first three years of the teens aren’t. Aren’t teens, that is. 10, 11, 12 —fully one-third of the decade doesn’t end in “teen”. Oh well, we have a couple of years to figure that out, and then it won’t matter anyway, right? So have a blast tonight whatever you do, just don’t overdo it. We’re looking forward to an ever better time in 2010, how about you?