Philly Today

So I was on Rt. 422 this afternoon, on my way home from work. I thought the highway would be jammed with cars trying to beat the weekend snowstorm that was due to start in an hour or so. I was happy to discover that traffic was surprisingly light. So I’m moving along pretty well when I see a blue SUV in the lane next to me. The license plate read: ORDR NOW.

As we moved down the road, maintaining our lanes and changing speeds with the flow of traffic, I got a bit closer to this car and now I was curious as to what business was displaying such a message. The only clue I could get was that the frame around the plate had a message as well. The problem was I couldn’t read it very well. The car was moving further away and I was about a mile from my exit.

I moved over into the next lane and now I’m pretty much tailgating the SUV at 60 mph, trying to read this damn thing. Very faintly I saw the words CALL US AND on the top of the frame and a phone number on the bottom. It looked something like this:

“Well, that mystery is solved”, I thought as I made my exit and the SUV stayed straight. There was only one problem: There were no other advertisements or signage whatsoever on the car. So I’m supposed to order what now? Let me also mention that the picture I drew up of the license plate frame was a bit exaggerated. The real frame was like reading gray letters on a silver background. It was illegible, a la the Flagship Niagara plates I blogged about almost exactly a year ago. I couldn’t make out the numbers.

But for the sake of argument, let’s pretend that I did manage to take down the phone number. What would I do with it? Call it up and say, “Hi, I’d like to order some… stuff. Yeah send it out. I’ll give you my credit card number, just charge me for $2000 worth and mail it out. Thanks.” I am not sure how successful of an ad campaign this actually is, especially since you have to be on their ass to “Order Now”. But I guess if it gets people talking (like myself, for one), then it must be good publicity, right?

Seriously people, order now, won’t you? I’m not sure of the phone number or the product/service, but just do it now.

Wasn’t Sonic the Hedgehog a great cartoon back in the day? Well? Um… it was a great Sega Genesis game. I wouldn’t know about the cartoon so much. Except that I think it must have been on right before whatever show I was actually trying to watch. As a result, sometimes I caught the tail end of Sonic, and I remember their feature called “Sonic Sez”. I used to love watching Sonic Sez because every day I could learn a lesson. Important lessons about not stealing, staying away from drugs and of course, not crawling inside a clothes dryer and turning it on. No kidding, I seriously remember seeing this on TV as a kid in the early ’90s, and today it lives on via YouTube. Wow, the writers were really tackling a huge problem among today’s youth. So remember kids, it may look like fun, but don’t do it! “It gets pretty hot in there!”

I saw a commercial on TV last night for Philadelphia Cream Cheese. Man, I wish I would have been able to find it online. Who knows, it’s probably not even a new ad (I usually change the channel during any and all commercials), but it’s new to me and I felt compelled to write about it now. The first thing I noticed was that it shows various families happily adding cream cheese to everything that they cook, including soup and spaghetti sauce. Seriously? Sure, it has its place in certain recipes, but at some point enough is enough with the cream cheese already! Then, words started appearing almost subliminally across the screen. Words like “pheeling” and “phun”, etc. Wait a minute, those aren’t actual words… they just took real words and replaced the “f” with a “ph”.

Okay, it’s true. Some people in the city of Philadelphia feel the need to overuse the “ph”. Look no further than the sports teams. You have the Phillies with its mascot Phillie Phanatic, and the scoreboard is the Phanavision. Up until last year there was the Phantoms hockey team with its mascot Phlex. Even so, I find it amusing that this commercial is using this same tactic. NEWS FLASH EVERYONE: Philadelphia Cream Cheese is not made in Philadelphia! It never has been. According to a post I found on former newsman Larry Mendte’s blog, it comes from Lowville, NY and was given the name Philadelphia because in the late 1800s, that name was considered to be synonymous with top-quality food (ha! who knew?). I literally crack up whenever I hear out-of-towners who think that Pennsylvania’s largest city is famous for having great cream cheese. Yeah, man. There’s a cream cheese stand on every corner. It’s the same way that people visit Texas just for the toast.

This morning I was online getting Emma signed up for an H1N1 vaccine that the Pennsylvania Department of Health is giving out this weekend. While I was on their website, I saw a link called “Stop H1N1 Music Video”. I had no idea what that meant, so I had to check it out. When I clicked on the link, what I saw was something pretty incredible. It features kids singing, dancing and rapping all about different ways you can avoid getting or spreading the swine flu. Look, it’s not the most exciting subject matter, and yes it’s a little cheesy, but I think you will find it difficult to get this catchy little tune out of your head. And you might learn something. The way I see it, if any of my tax dollars went into the production of this music video, it damn well better be entertaining. You be the judge.

It was announced today by the Mummers that they will be able to pay the City of Philadelphia $150,000 in order to hold their annual parade on New Years Day. The parade, a 108 year-old tradition in the city, had been in doubt ever since last year, when a policy was enforced requiring all public events to pay for parade costs as well as security and cleanup, services that the city had been providing. The Mummers marched last New Years on a limited budget and shortened parade route, but this year worked with the mayor to reduce their costs and raise money. The campaign SaveTheMummers is a fund raiser that has gotten publicity thanks to the Bacon Brothers among others. In this case, I guess the campaign worked. It will be interesting to see what is done to ensure the parade keeps on going beyond 2010.

So I was looking up former Phillies third baseman David Bell on Wikipedia the other day. Don’t ask me why, I guess I was thinking about him since the team just signed their new (old) third (second) baseman Placido Polanco. So anyway, David Bell was not the most popular guy to wear a Phillies uniform. But when I saw this little factoid in the middle of Bell’s bio, I couldn’t help but laugh:

It says, “Bell won the 2002 Willie Mac Award for his spirit and leadership because he sucks way too much to receive anything else.” This is what I love about Wikipedia: anybody can edit it. True, if you vandalize an entry it probably won’t be up there long, but as of this writing the David Bell comment is still active; check it out for yourself. And thanks to the ability to see an article’s entire history, I was able to find some other interesting “facts” about other Philadelphia sports figures, past and present. All have since been taken down, but I found them!

About the equally unpopular former Phillies shortstop Steve Jeltz:

It is believed that Mr. Jeltz taught himself to switch-hit at the major league level. This is unusual, because Jeltz had only one arm.

And on a separate edit:

Despite paltry offensive numbers, Jeltz was a fan favorite for his slick defensive play and even slicker jheri curl hairstyle. Just kidding, he was never a fan favorite. He was booed during nearly every at bat during his time in Philadelphia.

I also found that someone (I’m guessing a disgruntled soccer fan) recently deleted the entire page of Eagles coach Andy Reid and replaced it with:

Andy Reid is a Irish football player first and foremost, he is the most famous Andy Reid, see disambig for other Andy Reids.
Finally, in honor of A.I.’s return to the Sixers, here is some short-lived vandalism from his Wikipedia page:

Lil Bitch Iverson (born June 7, 1975, in Hampton, Virginia)[1] is an American professional basketball player for the Detroit Pistons of the National Basketball Association and a little bitch.

Some may argue the validity of the facts I have posted here, but one thing that you can’t argue: Wikipedia is entertaining.

Here is some random stuff:

• I was buying some Thomas’ English Muffins the other day. The package looks something like this: If you look closely, it says, “Sandwich size, great for grilling”. I have never, ever, in my life, grilled an English muffin. What about it makes it great for grilling? Is it because it’s sandwich size? Actually, now that I think about it, yes, the smaller muffins must be terrible for grilling in comparison. This reminds me of the Mitch Hedberg joke where he’s talking about the Fritos that have grill marks on them. But please feel free to comment on this, I’d love to hear some of your ideas on how you guys grill your English muffins.
• The other day my co-worker actually signed a document and dated it November 6, 2008. Wow, that’s pretty bad. I could only shake my head when I saw that. Granted, I sometimes have trouble with remembering the year if it recently changed. If I’m writing a date during January, sometimes February, I might screw it up. But by November I pretty much have the year figured out. This person had better get her act together soon, before the calendar changes again and then she’ll really be in trouble. Jeez, get with the times lady!
• When you hear about a heroic person, or a great sports team, you will often hear the phrase “they never say die”. Well, that’s great, but I am less worried about whether or not they say “die” and more concerned with them actually dying. Sorry, but your exclusion of one word from your vocabulary does not impress me in the least. If I never said “hippopotamus”, I don’t think anyone would think more highly of me.

The poster shown above was published in 1918 and apparently made us feel victorious in a WWI-era kind of way. Yes, I realize that Daylight Saving Time is ending and it would have been more appropriate to share this with you all back in March. But when DST comes back next spring you had better believe I will be getting my hoes ready (yes, all of my hoes). Actually, if you live in some locations in the Southern Hemisphere, your hoes should already be ready. In the U.S., it’s time to get your, um… flashlights ready. The third option is to get nothing ready and do exactly what you have been doing, if you are in one of those freak states like Arizona or Hawaii, or if you remember the days where some parts of Indiana were too cool to observe DST. No matter where you are or what time it is, this is a classic poster and I hope you enjoy it. Oh, and Happy Halloween!

There is less than a week left in the month of October, but there is still plenty of time to get yourself scared beyond your worst nightmare. The Philadelphia area has all kinds of haunted attractions this time of year, but one of them stands out above the rest. Eastern State Penitentiary, located on Fairmount Avenue in Philadelphia, puts together a tour every year called Terror Behind the Walls. This place is considered one of the most historic prisons in America. It was operational from 1829 and 1971, and it’s no surprise that many consider it to be haunted. The place looks scary even during the day, and in fact you can take a daytime tour at the prison (year round). But the Halloween attraction is the talk of the town every year. ESP has been featured on several TV shows, including the MTV ghost show “Fear”. Below is a feature about Terror Behind the Walls from a show on the Travel Channel.

October is here, which means time for pumpkin picking. I went to a farm market today with my family and some friends, where they had their annual Fall Fest. Everything you would expect at a Fall Fest: hayrides, corn maze, pony rides for the kids and lots of crazy looking pumpkins and gourds for sale. I happened to see a sign at one of the pumpkin tables. The sign was a little bit faded so it took me a minute to read, but it said something to the effect of: Due to this year’s extreme weather conditions, all pumpkin sales are final. Okay, fair enough. Wait a sec… does this mean that pumpkins are normally a returnable item? Who knew? I think next year when I buy pumpkins I will try to go back and return them on November 1 and see what they say. Is it okay if it is rotten, has a face carved into it and the insides scooped out? I swear, it was like that when I bought it.