Part of the latest ad campaign for Equinox Fitness, a guy wielding a Manneken Pis:

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On its website, the company assures us that “Equinox isn’t just a fitness club, it’s a temple of well-being.” And the ad campaign tells us that the clubs can embolden you to shed your inhibitions.

From the Fashionista blog on 12/30, “Equinox Taps Rankin for Provocative Ad Campaign: The famed fashion photog brings his portrait skills to the fitness chain” by Dhani Nau:

While we’re not usually in the habit of writing about gyms — unless enough models work out in it, of course — Equinox has become an exception due to its highly-produced, attention-grabbing ad campaigns, which are often shot by fashion photographers.

… The fitness giant’s latest campaign, set to debut on Jan. 1 (just in time for those New Year’s resolutions), comes from another legendary fashion photographer: Rankin, who’s done everything from help found alternative fashion magazines like Dazed & Confused and Hunger to shoot a Miley Cyrus video … Known for shooting portraits, Rankin’s ads for Equinox aren’t particularly fitness-related, but they are intentionally attention-grabbing.

They’re an extension of Equinox’s “Equinox Made Me Do It” narrative and the shots are meant to convey how working out at Equinox can result in heightened confidence and therefore lower inhibitions. One female model is seen shaving her head; a male model is seen wearing women’s clothing and heels [but no blouse].

The guy in #1 is confidently hefting a reproduction of Manneken Pis (various firms sell such reproductions, for your garden or living room or wherever) –

is a landmark small bronze sculpture in Brussels, depicting a naked little boy urinating into a fountain’s basin. It was designed by Hiëronymus Duquesnoy the Elder and put in place in 1618 or 1619. (Wikipedia link)

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Two Stanford linguistics stories in the Sunday (January 18th) New York Times: Tyler Schnoebelen at the American Dialect Society meetings, Will Leben on product naming.

The Word of the Year. In the Sunday Styles section, the hyperbolic “At the Super Bowl of Linguistics, May the Best Word Win” by Jessica Bennett, about

what is perhaps the year’s most anticipated lexicological event: the annual selection of the Word of the Year (also known as WOTY) by the American Dialect Society. If wordsmiths had a Super Bowl, this would be it, a place where the nation’s most well-regarded grammarians, etymologists and language enthusiasts gather to talk shop.

… Being that this year’s event was in Portland, it was only fitting that the “lumbersexual” (a fashionably rugged man who adopts the dress and facial hair of a lumberjack) was included in the “most unnecessary” category.

“Sometimes the words are just fun,” said Tyler Schnoebelen, a San Francisco-based linguist who looked not un-lumbersexual in a chunky sweater and beard.

But, he added, “There is something beautiful about a perfectly chosen word or phrase.”

Here’s a fairly lumbersexual (thumbnail) photo of Tyler:

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Tyler does have flannel shirts, but I haven’t found a good photo of him in one.

Here’s a set of lumbersexuals from an 8/30/14 Gear Junkie story, “The Rise Of The ‘Lumbersexual'”:

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Previous posting here on the ADS meeting: 1/11/15 on “manspreading”. And on Tyler, from 6/18/12 (“Emotions are relational”) about his Stanford linguistics dissertation , and from 6/14/13 (“Schnoebelen at Idibon”) about his current work.

Product naming. From the NYT Magazine, “The Weird Science of Naming New Products” by Neal Gabler:

The techniques [namer Anthony] Shore was using are a relatively recent innovation — one that makes the messy process seem more scientific. Will Leben was a linguistics professor at Stanford in 1988 when he got a call from Lexicon asking if its partners could visit him. At the time, Leben was teaching a course on the structure of English words, and Lexicon recruited him for a project: to create a list of morphemes, those parts of words that contain meaning. Using a thesaurus, Leben generated a long list of morphemes and the meanings of each — “pages and pages of morphemes,” Leben says, which Lexicon could then draw upon to create names that would express the nature of a particular product.

A few years later, David Placek, Lexicon’s founder, asked Leben what he thought of a name they had conjured, Triples, for a new cereal from General Mills that contained three different grains. “It sounds like something that’s light and crunchy,” Leben recalls telling them. He says their jaws dropped. Could the sound of a word say as much as its content? The idea of sound symbolism went back to at least Plato’s “Cratylus,” in which he associated sounds with physical characteristics, but linguists tended to discredit it. It had long been a fundamental tenet of linguistics, Leben says, that “the association between the meaning of the word and its pronunciation is an arbitrary one. The reason why we call a piano a piano has nothing to do with the sounds p-i-a-n-o.”

But Placek was intrigued, and he asked Leben to conduct a study to determine whether sounds did indeed convey physical properties. Leben called his study Sounder. He administered a questionnaire to 150 Stanford and Berkeley students, asking them questions like: Which sounds faster, “fip” or “fop”? Leben found a consensus. “Fip” was faster than “fop.” Why? Because of the way the sounds were generated in the mouth, Leben says. “Fip” feels lighter and faster because the vocal tract is open only a small amount. There is less acoustic substance for “fip” than there is for “fop,” the pronunciation of which causes the jaw to drop and the tongue to lower, creating a heavier, more powerful sound. There were many similar discoveries among fricatives and plosives, leading Leben to conclude that “the physical characteristics of sound are what determine associations.” Significantly, Leben got the same results when the study was conducted overseas. Lexicon took the idea and ran with it. “Pentium” began with a plosive that signified energy, power and dynamism. The “S” of the Swiffer mop made it sound fast and easy. The “D” of Dasani water made it sound heavier. Leben says: “It doesn’t say ‘refreshing.’ It says ‘slow down,’ ‘cool off,’ ‘relax.’ ”

Next, Placek asked Leben if he could conduct a study to see if there might be an association between sounds and emotional states. That was Sounder II, conducted in 2002. “The results came out so clean, it was hard to believe,” Leben says. Certain sounds, for example, were associated with daring or liveliness or sadness or insecurity. But Sounder I and II concentrated exclusively on the initial sounds of a word — its first consonant or vowel or both. Sounder III, just concluded last summer, asked whether consonants and vowels in other positions in a word might have a similar or additive effect. They did.

Among the discoveries Leben made: Fricatives convey “faster” and “smaller” — as do vowels that are voiced near the front of the mouth, like the a in “bat” or the i in “hid.” Plosives, or stops, convey “slower” and “bigger” — as do vowels that are voiced at the back of the throat, like the o in “token” or the double o’s in “food.” So-called voiceless stops like k, p, and t are more alive and daring than voiced stops like b, d and g, while the voiceless convey less luxury than the voiced. And all sound-symbolic effects manifest differently depending on context. They take on properties of the product being named.

Earlier discussion on this blog on some of these sound-symbolic effects, from Stanford linguist Dan Jurafsky on food names.

Now appearing on many sites, this vintage (1936) promotional ad for the Willesden Electricity Dept. (in northwest London):

The (presumably) intended reading is that it is anaphoric to work; ‘let electricity do the work’. But do it is a VP anaphor as a whole, so that the reading ‘let electricity kill your wife’ is only too easy to get.

The caption identifies the source as the Milne Museum — the Milne Electrical Collection at the Amberley Museum in West Sussex.

Today’s Mother Goose and Grimm:

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Without a piece of cultural background, this is just a silly story about a polar bear opening a bar in the Klondike. If you have that background, it’s a bit of language play turning on the ambiguity of Klondike bar.

From Wikipedia:

Klondike is a brand name for a dessert generally consisting of a vanilla ice cream square coated with a thin layer of chocolate, often known as a Klondike bar.

The Klondike bar was created by the Isaly Dairy Company of Mansfield, Ohio in the early 1920s and named after the Klondike River of Yukon, Canada. Rights to the name were eventually sold to Good Humor-Breyers, part of Unilever. It is known for its jingle slogan, “What would you do for a Klondike Bar?”.

The confection:

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You can view one of the many “What would you do for a Klondike bar?” ads (from 1983) here.

The slogan has been the source of humor (beyond the ads themselves), for instance, in this e-card:

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Thursday’s memorable morning name was Mitzi Kapture (the actress), Friday’s was Piggly Wiggly (the supermarket).

Mitzi Kapture. From Wikipedia:

Mitzi Gaynor Donahue (born May 2, 1962, Yorba Linda, California) is an American actress, also credited and more popularly known as Mitzi Kapture.

Kapture began her career in films before becoming an international television star. She gained international exposure with her first major television series regular role as Sergeant Rita Lee Lance in the television series Silk Stalkings. Silk Stalkings premiered on CBS and USA but later moved solely to USA Network. “Silk” aired for 8 seasons and became USA network’s highest rated original drama series…  [She was paired] with Rob Estes who played Sergeant Chris Lorenzo

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Together with Rob Estes:

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On Estes, from Wikipedia:

Robert “Rob” Estes (born July 22, 1963; Norfolk, Virginia) is an American actor. He is known for his roles as Harry Wilson on the teen drama series 90210, as Sgt. Chris Lorenzo on the crime drama series Silk Stalkings, and as Kyle McBride on the prime time soap opera Melrose Place.

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Estes is definitely a hunk, but I haven’t found any good photos on-line that show off his body. But then this posting is about Kapture, not him.

Piggly Wiggly. From Wikipedia:

Piggly Wiggly is a supermarket chain operating in the Midwestern and Southern regions of the United States, run by Piggly Wiggly, LLC, an affiliate of C&S Wholesale Grocers. Its first outlet opened in 1916 in Memphis, Tennessee, which is notable for having been the first true self-service grocery store, and the originator of various familiar supermarket features such as checkout stands, individual item price marking and shopping carts. The current company headquarters is in Keene, New Hampshire. Currently, more than 600 independently owned Piggly Wiggly stores operate in 17 states, primarily in smaller cities and towns.

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But where does the name come from? From the company’s own site:

[Founder Clarence] Saunders’ reason for choosing the intriguing name “Piggly Wiggly®” remains a mystery; he was curiously reluctant to explain its origin. One story says that, while riding a train, he looked out his window and saw several little pigs struggling to get under a fence, which prompted him to think of the rhyme. Someone once asked him why he had chosen such an unusual name for his organization, to which he replied, “So people will ask that very question.” Regardless of his inspiration, he succeeded in finding a name that would be talked about and remembered.

On a report (from the 25th) on a recent Arby’s ad:

Arby’s Reuben Gets a New “Rachel” Variant: Arby’s latest sandwich is the new, limited-time Turkey Rachel, which is being offered as a variant on their Reuben that comes with roast turkey and housemade coleslaw rather than the corned beef and sauerkraut

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To come: the sandwiches, their ingredients, their names.

The Reuben and the Rachel. From Wikipedia:

The Reuben sandwich is a hot sandwich composed of corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing, grilled between slices of rye bread. Several variants exist.

… The Rachel sandwich is a variation on the standard Reuben sandwich, substituting pastrami for the corned beef, and coleslaw for the sauerkraut. Other recipes for the Rachel call for turkey instead of corned beef or pastrami. In some parts of the United States, especially Michigan, this turkey variant is known as a “Georgia Reuben” or “California Reuben”, which sometimes uses barbecue sauce or French Dressing instead of Russian or Thousand Island.

On the dressings, see my posting of 8/13/13. Sauerkraut is mentioned briefly in my posting of of 8/24/13 and will get more coverage in a forthcoming posting on fermented food. On coleslaw (or cole slaw), see my posting of 6/14/12.

Corned beef, pastrami. Both are ways of preserving beef (or sometimes other meats).

Corned beef, from Wikipedia:

Corned beef is a salt-cured beef product. The term comes from the treatment of the meat with large grained rock salt, also called “corns” of salt. It features as an ingredient in many cuisines.

It was popular during both World Wars, when fresh meat was rationed. Corned beef remains popular in the United Kingdom and countries with British culinary traditions and is commonly used in sandwiches, corned beef hash or eaten with chips and pickles.

Corned beef:

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A corned beef and cabbage dinner (with potatoes and carrots), a staple of Irish cooking in North America:

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And canned corned beef:

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Pastrami is more complex. From Wikipedia:

Pastrami (Turkish: pastırma, Romanian: pastramă, Bulgarian: пастърма) is a popular meat usually made from beef, and sometimes from pork, mutton or turkey. The raw meat is brined, partially dried, seasoned with various herbs and spices, then smoked and steamed. In the United States, although beef plate is the traditional cut of meat for making pastrami, it is now common to see it made from beef brisket, beef round, and turkey. Like corned beef, pastrami was originally created as a way to preserve meat before modern refrigeration.

… The modified “pastrami” spelling was probably introduced in imitation of the American English salami. Romanian Jews immigrated to New York as early as 1872. Among Jewish Romanians, goose breasts were commonly made into pastrami because they were inexpensive. Beef navels [the navel end of the brisket] were cheaper than goose meat in America, so the Romanian Jews in America adapted their recipe and began to make the cheaper beef pastrami. [See below for another account.]

… In North America, pastrami is typically sliced and served hot on rye bread to make a common New York deli sandwich (pastrami on rye), sometimes accompanied by coleslaw and Russian dressing. Pastrami and coleslaw are also combined in a Rachel sandwich

In case you were shocked by the notion of pork pastrami, here’s what Katz’s Delicatessen says:

The reason that the Lower East Side has a good claim to pastrami is quite simple. More often than not, pastrami in Romania was made with pork, and pork isn’t kosher. The Yiddish-speaking Jews of Romania knew about pastrami, but as beef was more expensive and less available in Eastern Europe than America, using beef to make pastrami would have been a real luxury. This all changed when Yiddish-speaking Jews arrived in the United States. For these immigrants, beef became affordable, at least the less favorable cuts, like navel, brisket and tongue. Even these however remained a treat. Along with expense, the prime cuts like flank, tenderloin and sirloin were not kosher because they came from the hindquarters of a cow. Of all the cuts available to these immigrants, the navel was prized the most and was used for true New York pastrami.

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And a hot pastrami sandwich on rye:

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The name Reuben. Wikipedia offers two origin stories, both taking the sandwich name back to the early 20th century:

(1) Reuben Kulakofsky: Omaha, Nebraska: One account holds that Reuben Kulakofsky (sometimes spelled Reubin, or the last name shortened to Kay), a Lithuanian-born grocer residing in Omaha, Nebraska, was the inventor perhaps as part of a group effort by members of Kulakofsky’s weekly poker game held in the Blackstone Hotel from around 1920 through 1935. The participants, who nicknamed themselves “the committee”, included the hotel’s owner, Charles Schimmel. The sandwich first gained local fame when Schimmel put it on the Blackstone’s lunch menu, and its fame spread when a former employee of the hotel won a national contest with the recipe. In Omaha, March 14 was proclaimed as Reuben Sandwich Day.

(2) Reuben’s Delicatessen: New York City: Another account holds that the Reuben’s creator was Arnold Reuben, the German owner of the famed yet defunct Reuben’s Delicatessen in New York City who according to an interview with Craig Claiborne invented the “Reuben special” around 1914. The earliest references in print to the sandwich are New York–based but that is not conclusive evidence, though the fact that the earliest, from a 1926 edition of Theatre Magazine, references a “Reuben special”, does seem to take its cue from Arnold Reuben’s menu.

A variation of the above account is related by Bernard Sobel in his book, Broadway Heartbeat: Memoirs of a Press Agent, which claims that the sandwich was an extemporaneous creation for Marjorie Rambeau inaugurated when the famed Broadway actress visited the Reuben’s Delicatessen one night when the cupboards were particularly bare.

Some sources name the actress in the above account as Annette Seelos, not Marjorie Rambeau, while noting that the original “Reuben special” sandwich did not contain corned beef or sauerkraut and was not grilled; still other versions give credit to Alfred Scheuing, Reuben’s chef, and say he created the sandwich for Reuben’s son, Arnold Jr., in the 1930s.

The name Rachel. So much for Reuben. Where does Rachel come from?

From the song “Reuben and Rachel”. From Wikipedia:

Reuben and Rachel is a traditional song written by Harry Birch (words) and William Gooch (melody). Originally published in Boston in 1871, the song has regained popularity as a children’s song.

The first line of the song, “Reuben, Reuben, I’ve been thinking,” was reused in the very popular song at the close of World War I (1919), “How Ya Gonna Keep ’em Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree)?.”

The song is a duet between a man and a woman. In the original version, the song begins:

Woman: Reuben, I have long been thinking,
What a good world this might be,
If the men were all transported
Far beyond the Northern Sea.

Man: Rachel, I have long been thinking,
What a fine world this might be,
If we had some more young ladies
On this side the Northern Sea. …

A common version today begins:

Woman: Reuben, Reuben, I’ve been thinking
What a queer world this would be
If the men were all transported
Far beyond the Northern Sea!

Man: Rachel, Rachel, I’ve been thinking
What a queer world this would be
If the girls were all transported
Far beyond the Northern Sea! …

You can listen to a performance on YouTube here.

The point is that Rachel is the counterpart of Reuben.

Slogan on the side of a DHL truck in Palo Alto:

DHL — YOUR SPECIALISTS IN INTERNATIONAL SINCE 1969

The adjective international is serving as a noun here, conveying something like ‘international shipping’ or ‘international mail’ or ‘international delivery’. Informally, this is “nouning by truncation”, but the implicit noun head isn’t uniquely identifiable.

Two pieces of background here: on “nouning by truncation” and on the DHL company and its slogans.

Truncation. In my most recent truncation posting, I looked at extensions of the notion of “nouning by truncation” (social for social networking), in graveyard for graveyard shift, barking for barking madˆ: the general case is that a modifier stands for a whole composite (of the modifier + a head), and it’s not necessary to assume literal truncation. In the general case, we have a lexical item with the syntax and semantics of a composite, but with an implicit (rather than explicit) head for the composite.

Composites with implicit heads are sometimes fully conventionalized; the adjectve barking ‘barking mad’ thus merits its own entry in the OED and other dictionaries. But typically these composites must be understood in context, using background knowledge. Understanding the DHL slogan, for instance, crucially depends on your knowing what the company does; otherwise, the slogan’s inscrutable. Even then, there is some leeway in recovering the implicit head.

The slogan. There is a longer version of the slogan that’s somewhat easier to interpret. On the Brandhugger site (“For legendary brand quotes and slogans”), the entry for DHL includes this longer version:

When it comes to ground delivery and networks. We own the road. Your specialists in International since 1969. DHL.

Note that the implicit head is now considerably narrowed down — international in the slogan won’t be understood as ‘international relations’ or ‘international language(s)’, for instance — but is still not uniquely identifiable.

The company.

From Wikipedia:

DHL Express is a division of the German logistics company Deutsche Post DHL providing international express mail services. Deutsche Post is the world’s largest logistics company operating around the world. DHL is a world market leader in sea and air mail.

Originally founded in 1969 to deliver documents between San Francisco and Honolulu, the company expanded its service throughout the world by the late 1970s. The company was primarily interested in offshore and inter-continental deliveries, but the success of FedEx prompted their own intra-U.S. expansion starting in 1983. DHL aggressively expanded to countries that could not be served by any other delivery service, including the Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc, Iraq, Iran, China, Vietnam and North Korea.

It was then acquired by Deutsche Post. On the DHL name:

Larry Hillblom was studying law at University of California, Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law in the late 1960s and had little money. He started running courier duty between San Francisco and Los Angeles, picking up packages for the last flight of the day, and returning on the first flight the next morning, up to five times a week.

When he graduated, Hillblom decided to go into the courier business himself. He found a niche that no other company was filling, to fly bills of lading from San Francisco to Honolulu. By flying the documents ahead of the freight they could be processed prior to vessel arrival and save valuable time after arrival.

Hillblom put up a portion of his student loans to start the company, bringing in his two friends Adrian Dalsey and Robert Lynn as partners, with their combined initials of their last names as the company name (DHL).

In today’s NYT, an obit by Douglas Martin, “Stan Freberg, Madcap Adman and Satirist, Dies at 88″:

Stan Freberg, a humorist whose sprawling imagination fueled a multifaceted career that included pretty much inventing the idea of using satire in commercials, died on Tuesday in Santa Monica, Calif.

… Mr. Freberg was a hard man to pin down. He made hit comedy records, voiced hundreds of cartoon characters and succeeded Jack Benny in one of radio’s most prestigious time slots. He called himself a “guerrilla satirist,” using humor as a barbed weapon to take on issues ranging from the commercialization of Christmas to the hypocrisy of liberals.

Freberg on a 1957 comedy album. Photo: Capitol Records.

On this blog, in a 5/23/14 posting, bits of “Banana Boat Song” of 1957. Piercing, man, piercing.

Over the years, he gave much pleasure, in his comedy songs and his remarkably entertaining commercials. “Who put eight great tomatoes in that little bitty can?”

Just went past me on television: an ad for Magnum Ice Cream Bars:

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(from the Magnum Ice Cream site; “Magnum Ice Cream Bars are made with creamy Ice Cream and Belgian Chocolate”). The bars are big in size and big in flavor. The ads tend to feature (female) models with bars in their mouths: both oral and phallic. Here’s model Lucy Wolfert in one ad:

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Magnum things are all about size and masculinity.

Magnum ice cream bars. A magnum of champagne. Magnum condoms by Trojan. Magnum cars and trucks. Magnum cartridges and firearms. And of course Thomas Magnum of Magnum, P.I., as played by Tom Selleck.

It starts with the Latin magnum (neuter nominative singular of the magn- stem) ‘great, big’.

On the ice cream bars. From Wikipedia:

Magnum is an ice cream brand owned by the British/Dutch Unilever company and sold as part of the Heartbrand line of products in most countries.

… In 2011, Magnum ice cream was launched in the US and Canada with six varieties: Double Caramel, Double Chocolate, Classic, Almond, White and Dark.

The magnum bottle. A magnum is a wine bottle of twice the standard size, normally 1.5 liters, especially of champagne. Sizes, in number of standard bottles (750 ml):

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So a magnum is definitely big, though not as big as they come.

Magnum condoms. A condom brand manufactured by Trojan. From the Trojan site, where of course the name is in all caps:

MAGNUM™ Lubricated Condoms
Larger than standard latex condoms for extra comfort
Tapered at the base for a secure fit
Silky smooth lubricant for comfort and sensitivity
Special reservoir end for extra safety

In silhouette:

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Now from the Date Report site, “Why Are So Many Men Suddenly Buying Magnum Condoms?” by Regina Bresler on 3/26/13:

Given the heavy social pressure to be well-endowed, not to mention the status and ego-boost that come with it, what man wouldn’t want to sport a condom that announces to the world that he’s bigger than the rest? Even if the condom itself really isn’t that big?

Head to head, as it were, the Magnum vs. the standard Trojan ENZ:

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Not a big difference, but the Magnum is flattering.

On penis size, see this 1/12/13 posting.

Vehicles. Various models of cars and trucks have been labeled Magnum to highlight their size and/or power: Dodge Magnum, a car; Renault Magnum, a truck; Vauxhall Magnum, a car; Chrysler LA engine line, several of which are named Magnum; Chevrolet Optra Magnum, a car.

Men and their vehicles!

Cartridges and firearms. In the world of weaponry, a magnum firearms cartridge is one larger or more powerful than the standard for a given caliber, or a firearm that uses such a cartridge: a .357 Magnum pistol.

Magnum, P.I. No doubt from the firearms usage, the title character in this show has the surame Magnum. From Wikipedia:

Magnum, P.I. is an American television series starring Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum [Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV], a private investigator living on Oahu, Hawaii. The series ran from 1980 to 1988 in first-run broadcast on the American CBS television network.

Selleck in character:

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And displaying his body:

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Caught in a tv commercial this morning, for the Mighty Blaster Fireman’s Nozzle (“as seen on TV”). From the copy:

Mighty Blaster Fireman’s Nozzle is the first-ever household sprayer with the power and precision of a real fireman’s nozzle, with 50% more power than regular hose nozzles.

You can watch the whole commercial, or just study this still shot:

Hoses are such natural phallic symbols that the makers and sellers of the Mighty Blaster might not have appreciated the possible readings of their ads.

On the tv this morning, a (very short) commercial that turned on the apology “Sorry I was eating a Milky Way”. It’s on this site, with an explanation of its content:

A hairstylist, a rodeo clown and a cruise ship captain all completely forget what [they’re] supposed to be doing while eating a delicious Milky Way chocolate and caramel candy bar. Hilarity ensues, but their Milky Ways are just too good for these people to care.

On another site, a set of other “Distracted Chocolate-Eating Ads”:

Although being distracted by a chocolate bar might not be the best excuse for certain scenarios, the Milky Way Caramel campaign shows that this snack may be particularly irresistible. With its gooey caramel center, how could a bride possibly make it to her wedding on time? Or a mother not burn her son’s boy scout uniform with an unattended iron? These situations and more should be excused, at least according to the Milky Way Caramel campaign.

Apologies. These are not non-apology apologies (such as those posted about on Language Log and this blog over the years). The apologizers admit that failing to do what was expected of them was wrong, and they take responsibility for this failure. All that is packed into sorry.

But, but, but… the apologizers plead mitigating circumstances, they offer an excuse: they were eating a Milky Way. The candy made them do it.

They might as well have said, with Geraldine, that the devil made them do it. Not an acceptable excuse.

Wikipedia on Flip Wilson:

Flip Wilson (December 8, 1933 – November 25, 1998) was an African American comedian and actor. In the early 1970s, Wilson hosted his own weekly variety series, The Flip Wilson Show.

… his most popular character [was] Geraldine Jones, who always referred to her boyfriend, “Killer”, and whose line “The devil made me do it” [buy a dress, for instance] became a national catchphrase.

The candy bar. Previously on this blog, a Zippy with a parody of the Ode to Joy, “Ode to Almond Joy”, along with a commercial for Almond Joy and Mounds (“Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t”) and an extensive exposé on the morass of candy bar names: the same name is used for different candy bars in different places and times, and different names are used for the same candy bar in different places and times. And so it is with Milky Way. From Wikipedia:

The Milky Way bar is a chocolate bar distributed by the Mars confectionery company. The American version of the Milky Way bar is made of chocolate-malt nougat topped with caramel and covered with milk chocolate and is very similar to the Mars bar sold in other countries. The non-US Milky Way bar, on the other hand, is not topped with caramel and is therefore similar to the American 3 Musketeers bar.

The Milky Way bar was created in 1923 by Frank C. Mars and originally manufactured in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The name and taste were taken from a famed malted milk drink (milkshake) of the day – not the Earth’s galaxy, as many contend.

This morning’s name: the television show The Great American Dream Machine. Bonus: grades of olives and their names.

From Wikipedia:

The Great American Dream Machine was a weekly satirical variety television series, produced in New York City by WNET and broadcast on PBS from 1971 to 1973. The program was hosted by humorist and commentator Marshall Efron. Other notable cast members included Chevy Chase and contributors included Albert Brooks and Andy Rooney. The show centered on skits and satirical political commentary. The hour and a half long show usually contained at least seven different current event topics. In the second season, the show was trimmed down to an hour.

I enjoyed the show immensely. Here’s the opening to the show, bookended by Mel Torme performing his version of “Route 66″:

And now the bonus, a segment of GADM with Marshall Efron on olives:

Recently I’ve been noticing an apparent uptick in “L’eggo my Eggo!” commercials on tv, after a period in which the slogan appeared but was not the focus of Eggo ads. My impression turns out to have been accurate: a 10/27/14 article in Advertising Age. “‘L’Eggo My Eggo’ Tagline Makes Comeback” explained that the slogan had indeed been sidelined for some time but was revived as the centerpiece of the ad campaign last year. The slogan has a number of things going for it: it’s familiar (it’s been around since 1972); it rhymes; it has an attractively vernacular tone to it; and the conceit embodied in it — that Eggo waffles are so delicious that no one would be willing to share one — is entertainingly hyperbolic.

To consider: the history of the food; the history of the slogan; phonological and syntactic notes on the slogan.

Eggo history. From Wikipedia:

Eggo is a brand of frozen waffles in the United States, Canada and Mexico, which is owned by the Kellogg Company. Several varieties are available, including homestyle, blueberry, strawberry, apple cinnamon, buttermilk, and chocolate chip.

Eggo waffles were invented in San Jose, California, by three brothers, Tony, Sam, and Frank Dorsa. In 1953, the Dorsa brothers introduced Eggo frozen waffles to supermarkets throughout the United States. Frozen waffles do not require a waffle iron to prepare.

When the Dorsas first introduced the product it was called “Froffles”, a portmanteau of frozen waffles. However people started referring to them as “eggos” due to their eggy taste. The name caught on and the brothers began using the moniker in marketing. Eventually the name became synonymous with the product and, in 1955, the Dorsa brothers officially changed the name to “Eggo”.

… In 1968, as a means of diversification, the Kellogg Company purchased Eggo. Their advertising slogan — “L’eggo my Eggo” — is well known through their television commercials.

Slogan history. The company’s spelling of the slogan is usually “L’Eggo my Eggo”, to highlight the EGG in the first part, with the result that the apostrophe is oddly placed in it: what’s missing is not something between the L and the E, but something between the E and the G (the vanished T of LET). One result of this is that people not associated with the company frequently dispense with the apostrophe entirely, as in this recipe for a

Leggo my Eggo Grilled Cheese Sandwich: Just like a traditional grilled cheese sandwich all you need is cheese and two Eggo Homestyle waffles.

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On the content of the slogan (however spelled), from the company site:

Some things are too delicious to share.
EGGO® waffles. Un-shareable since 1972.

From that year, this commercial, featuring actor Gordon Jump (later the station manager in WKRP in Cincinnati):

Phonology, spelling, and syntax.The first part of the slogan is pronounced [lɛgo], with the /t/ of /lɛt go/ elided; this is homophonous with the name of the construction toy Lego, and is parallel to casual-speech [lɛmi] for /lɛt mi/. Note: for almost all speakers, there is no long or double consonant in LEGGO (or LEMME); the doubled consnant letter is there merely to ensure that the vowel is lax [ɛ] and not tense [i].

There are complications with the syntax, however. The idiom let go ‘release one’s hold on’ can stand alone (Let go!), and when it does it has a casual-speech variant [lɛgo]. Used transitively, in standard English the idiom marks a notional object with of — Let go of me! — and let go once again has the casual-speech variant [lɛgo]. But plain transitives are not standard: Let go my hand! is certainly attested, but it’s not standard. So it seems that Leggo my Eggo ‘let go of my Eggo!’ is a borrowing from a non-standard variety.

(I note plain-transitive let go in a number of hymns — “Holding On (and I Won’t Let Go My Faith)”  and “He’ll Never Let Go My Hand”, for instance — with origins and currency in several different varieties, but I have no idea of the sociolinguistic distribution of the usage.)

Bonus: Given the homophony of Lego and leggo, Lego my Eggo was bound to turn up:

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Sonic Drive-Ins are currently advertising Master Blast flavor combos in a “Blast Scout” commercial featuring three of its ice cream plus mix-in desserts:

Waffleberry Brownie. Strawberry Pucker Pie. Banana-Bo-Bana Crumble.

The last has a bit of well-known word play.

(These have more inventive names than the flavors officially introduced to their menu recently: Triple Chocolate, Turtle Pecan, Pineapple Upside Down, Banana Split, Caramel Brownie, Cookie Dough. But then customers are free to create their own combos using the many mix-ins available.)

From Wikipedia on the language play:

“The Name Game” is an American pop song written and performed by Shirley Ellis [and released in 1964] as a rhyming game that creates variations on a person’s name.

… Using the name Katie as an example, the song follows this pattern:

Katie, Katie, bo-batie,
Banana-fana fo-fatie
Fee-fi-mo-matie
Katie!

A verse can be created for any name, with X as the name and Y as the name without [an initial onset] (if it begins with a consonant), as follows:

(X), (X), bo-b (Y)
Banana-fana fo-f (Y)
Fee-fi-mo–m (Y)
(X)!

A performance by Ellis:

On Sonic Drive-Ins, from Wikipedia:

Sonic Corp. is an American drive-in fast-food restaurant chain based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As of August 31, 2011, there were 3,561 restaurants in 43 U.S. states, serving approximately 3 million customers per day.

Today’s Zippy takes us to Hatch NM, which is famous for two things: green chiles and giant fiberglass figures:

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The two are packaged together in this remarkable artifact:

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The current Wikipedia page for Hatch is staid indeed, with no mention of the fiberglass figures. A small writeup for a small town:

Hatch is a village in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 1,648 at the 2010 census. … Hatch is widely known for its famous Hatch Green Chile.

Ok, first on the chiles, then on Teako’s Giants of Hatch.

From Wikipedia:

New Mexico chile is a cultivar of the chile pepper developed by Dr. Fabian Garcia at New Mexico State University in 1888, … created from a hybrid of various Pueblo and Santa Fe de Nuevo México cultivars.

… Chile grown in the Hatch Valley, in and around Hatch, New Mexico is called Hatch chile. The peppers grown in the valley, and along the entire Rio Grande, from northern Taos Pueblo to southern Isleta Pueblo, is a signature crop to New Mexico’s economy and culture.

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Now the Giants of Hatch. The figures — Yogi Bear, a big pink pig, two Muffler Men (one a soda jerk), Uncle Sam, a giant chicken, Robin Hood, a dinosaur, A&W Root Beer girl, a large hot dog advertising Sparky’s Green Chili Cheeseburger, a large red chili pepper, Mighty Mouse, Ronald McDonald, George Jetson, Robin Hood, and more, making a public festival of pop and commercial culture — are sort of sprinkled around Sparky’s Burgers, Barbecue, and Espresso at 115 Franklin St. in Hatch.

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The story, from Roadside America:

Regardless of what you think of the 1960s, it did have a rich visual legacy: men on the moon, JFK in Dallas, Vietnam, Woodstock. Teako Nunn came of age during those years, but the image that burrowed into his skull was of a giant woman in a short skirt and bikini top, outside a go-go bar near a freeway in San Diego. “She looked very cool to a 12-year-old kid,” Teako said. “It’s sounds dorky, but ever since I’ve just loved bigger-than-life figures.”

Teako’s passion lay dormant until early 2006. He was living in the small town of Hatch, New Mexico, running an RV dealership. And then — he saw a Muffler Man for sale on eBay. “I just said to myself, ‘Wow. I can own that?'” he recalled.

Teako bought the giant, put a tiny RV in his hand, and went back online to buy more statues.

Next, he opened a restaurant in town and named it Sparky’s after a robot that his wife, Josie, had built out of old tractor parts.

Teako and Josie wanted Sparky’s to be the kind of place that they’d always craved to find when stopping in a small town — so they added a moose head, neon clocks, and a mural of Teako, carving knife and fork in hand, chasing a pickup truck filled with happy animals into Sparky’s kitchen.

It also became a showcase for Teako’s growing statue menagerie.

Within months of its opening, Sparky’s offered A&W Mama and Papa Burger statues on its roof, a giant pig and chicken in its parking lot, fiberglass replicas of Colonel Sanders and Ronald McDonald on its sidewalk, and, off to one side, an Uncle Sam towering 30 feet tall.

(It was really hard to pick just a couple of the figures for illustration here. They’re wonderfully weird.)

(This would be an occasion to announce that an inventory of Mother Goose and Grimm postings, on Language Log and this blog, is now available as a Page “MGG cartoons” on this blog.)

Today’s Mother Goose and Grimm:

Grimmy is lured by the tv commercials. From my “Pitchmen” posting of 2009:

The Atlantic City “boardwalk product pitch” plays a big role in the development of the television infomercial, from its beginnings with Ed Valenti and his business partner (Ginsu knives, “But wait! There’s more!”, and “Call now!”, among other things)

Here’s a clip of an ad for the Wealthfront firm, with two friends playing with possible names for a company they’re thinking of creating.

Text from Wealthfront:

A man and his friend are knitting together and discussing Wealthfront’s automated investment services. Because Wealthfront has such low fees and minimums, they’ll have enough money to buy all kinds of yarn, or even open that yarn shop. But what to call it? The Yarn Barn, Knit Wit, Knitty Knitty Bang Bang or Knit Happens? Visit wealthfront.com and you too can decide what to do with all your savings.

All very playful.

They start small, with a rhyming name: the Yarn Barn.

Then comes a rhyme and a play on an existing word, nitwit: the Knit Wit.

Then a play on a formulaic name, quoting Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a children’s story and film: Knitty Knitty Bang Bang.

And finally, a play on the slogan Shit Happens: Knit Happens.

Earlier on this blog, four postings with plays on Shit Happens: on 7/11/11, with Chick Happens and Lit Happens; on 8/5/11, with Sit Happens; on 8/19/11, with Ship Happens; and on 11/14/14, with It Happens (plus suggestions for other possibilities).

It burst recently (with actual fireworks) onto the American fast-food scene: the Most American Thickburger from Carl’s Jr. / Hardees:

This clip doesn’t include the final tag, “Because America, that’s why” (with the recently popular because NP construction). But the entertaining businessday (NZ) story about the ad does.

“Carl’s Jr Thickburger ad aims to be Most American Ever” by Michael Koziol on 6/2/15:

Why did we put a split hot dog and kettle cooked potato chips on a Thickburger? Because America, that’s why. Only at Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. #MostAmerican

It begins, of course, with a succulent meat patty covered in melting cheese. The towering contents of this monstrosity soon come into full, mouth-watering view: hot dogs, mustard, ketchup, tomato, lettuce and – perplexingly – potato chips.

The “Most American Thickburger”, created by burger maker and obesity contributor Carl’s Jr, is being marketed as the “most American” burger ever, and its accompanying television advertisement pulls no patriotic punches.

As the camera slowly pulls back, the owner of this calorie-laden snack is revealed – and in textbook marketing tradition, it’s a blonde Sports Illustrated model. Samantha Hoopes would likely be fired for actually ingesting a Thickburger, but in the holy name of advertising she dons an American flag bikini and chows down.

Hoopes is sitting in a hot tub (naturally), but not just any hot tub. This one is in the back of an all-American, three-door pick-up truck (we would call it a ute [in AU and NZ]) painted with – you guessed it – stars and stripes forever.

But wait; there’s more. The pick-up truck is on an aircraft carrier floating down New York’s Hudson River, with the glittering Manhattan skyline as a backdrop. As the Statue of Liberty appears in the foreground, fighter jets take off (leaving jet streams in the colours of the flag) and fireworks erupt over Wall Street.

Cut back to Hoopes, who takes a seductive bite out of the Thickburger before staring down the camera’s barrel and flashing the slightest hint of a satisfied smile.

For those playing at home, the burger contains 1080 calories (more than double the McDonald’s Big Mac) and has been kicking around the drawing board for five years.

“People love these big, juicy, indulgent burgers,” Andy Puzder, the chief executive of Carl’s Jr parent company CKE Restaurants, told Bloomberg previously. “We know who we are and we know how to appeal to our customers.”

God bless America, capitalism and sexism.

In a still shot, Samantha Hoopes, wrapped (just barely) in the flag and perkily displaying the monster burger:

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Hoopes on Wikipedia:

Samantha Hoopes (born 10 February 1991) is an American model, best known for appearing in the Sports Illustrated’s 50th Anniversary Swimsuit issue in 2014.

And in general for displaying her minimally clothed body as a sexual object. Yes, much as male models often do for a gay male audience — though here the relations between the sexes are likely to be involved in a troublesome way.

Another still shot, with Hoopes gamely taking a bite of that burger, but coming nowhere near actually eating it. Surely meant to suggest fellatio: the burger as phallus. (Carl’s Jr. ads are frequently sexy and borderline tasteless. Apparently this sells burgers, even though some people complain that the ads are offensive.)

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A note on Carl’s Jr. / Hardee’s, from Wikipedia:

Carl’s Jr. is an American-based fast-food restaurant chain operating in the Western and Southwestern states.

Carl Karcher founded the predecessor of Carl’s Jr. in 1941 [in Anaheim CA]; he jump-started his operations with the opening of his first restaurant, a sit-down full-service location called Carl’s Drive-In Barbeque. As this grew wildly successful, he decided to open up a chain of smaller restaurants called Carl’s, with more limited menus. In 1954, the chain was renamed Carl’s Jr. and the fast-food chain took off. In combination with its sibling restaurant-chain Hardee’s, Carl’s Jr. is in the top ten fast-food chains in the United States

… In 1997, CKE Restaurants [the parent company of Carl’s Jr.] acquired Hardee’s, a restaurant chain with 2,500 locations in the Midwest, South and East Coast regions. Hardee’s restaurants are gradually being converted to be more like Carl’s Jr. with some of the same menu items and even adopting the same star logo. In turn, Carl’s Jr. restaurants started to sell Hardee’s breakfast items.

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A recent tv ad for the candy Skittles lies, for me, somewhere between absurdly silliy and just plain creepy. The premise is that there’s an epidemic of Skittles pox, which manifests itself in an outbreak of Skittles on the face. The unlikely ad copy:

Warning signs of a Skittles pox outbreak include Rainbow colors, increased dating prospects and loud “Mmmm” sounds from the afflicted. Contract the Rainbow. Taste the Rainbow.

The equivalent of a pustule in this infection is an individual Skittle — entirely edible, hence the enhanced dating prospects and the appreciative noises (and, for me, the creepiness).

Oh yes, it’s contagious.

(Earlier on Skittles, its “Share the rainbow … Taste the rainbow” campaign, and rainbow food composed of the candies, in this posting.)

A still from one ad:

and the video:

A cute pun and, with it, a use of the symbol @ in advertising:

A book in the shape of the letter E, not an electronic book (eBook, e-Book, e-book, ebook). Plus the attention-grabbing L@@K, now used on websites offering things for sale or rental (eBay especially, but also Craigslist, home rental sites, etc.).

(The image came to me from Michael Palmer, who got it on Steven Gatke’s Facebook page. I couldn’t trace it back from there — but Gatke has lots of stuff about books and bookbinding.)