Tag Archives: Russia

The American History of Mayonnaise

“I make my own mayonnaise.  I do this either because I am pretentiously gourmet, or because I am technically too fat to fit out my door and run to the grocery store.  You decide.”

~It’s the second one

Imagine a swimming pool filled with Mayonnaise.  No, seriously, picture it.  You can’t get it out of your head now, can you?  And be honest with us- you’ve never once thought about that.   You’ve never wondered to yourself, “I wonder what it would look like if you filled a swimming pool with Mayonnaise.”  And now you can’t stop thinking about it.  That is our gift to you.

Yes Mayo is an integral part of America’s culinary tradition.  While it shockingly was not invented in America, it clearly was invented ahead of its time, since it’s a product clearly meant for America.  Come on, it’s 85% fat, and has 700 calories for every 100 grams of it.  Holy hell, that’s glorious.  So we’re going to only touch on the European-y origins of this thing, and focus on…

The American History of Mayonnaise

Continue reading

1 Comment

Filed under America's Best Foods

The Informative American’s Guide to Spotting Dirty Communists (originally published November, 1957)

“The only thing more terrifying than the Russian menace is the outward displays of homosexual behavior exhibited by my son.”

~The average American in 1957


America loves nostalgia, just so long as it only gets in the way of us making changes that cost a lot of money.  The power grid is horribly inefficient?  No need to spend hard earned booze-tax money to fix it, it reminds us of simpler times!  We can make air bags that make cars much saver?  Why do that, it’s needlessly costly and besides, we all love classic cars!  Baseball tickets used to be a dollar?  Fuck you, let’s gouge the shit out of everyone!

The point is, alcohol consumption is the leading cause of moments of nostalgia (as well as incorrectly informing people that you love them).  And this is America, so we’re drunk always (always).  And as we polished off our third keg of 20 year Pappy Van Winkle (special made just for our staff) we started to get bourbon nostalgic, which as you all know ages incredibly.  So we began looking through our stack of 1950’s articles from back when we were known as “The Informative American.”  We’ve previously shown you an example of our bi-weekly 1950’s publication, which pertained to parenting, but we were drawn specifically to a 1957 article we published regarding Communism.  More astutely, it was an informative guide for spotting out Communists in your local community.  Maybe it was the high priced liquor, but we felt like we needed to share with you this unique blend of paranoia, McCarthyism, and surprisingly blunt misogyny with you, the educated, inebriated 2011 reader.  So, without further ado, we present …

The Informative American’s Guide to Spotting Dirty Communists (originally published November, 1957)

Continue reading

5 Comments

Filed under The Informative American (1950's Archives)

Are You American Quiz Part 3: Foreign Correspondant Edition

“Even when you start accepting Canadians, you won’t let ME in?”

~Joshua “Hey, remember Dawson’s Creek, eh?” Jackson

 

As we’ve seen previously, we at the AFFotD offices have a series of checks and tests to ensure that those working for us are properly American.  And when our first American test was unable to detect the distinctive traces of maple syrup in Seth Rogan’s Canadian blood, we had to make an secondary “Are You American” quiz to root out the pretenders and, well, Canucks.  And the combination of the two tests worked extremely well, as we were able to spot and turn away Hayden “Well, he was Darth Vader, but he also was the shitty one” Christensen, Ryan Gosling, and Ryan “We get him confused with Ryan Gosling more often than we’d like to admit” Reynolds.  But then, we received a phone call that completely changed the hiring policies of the America Fun Fact of the Day in ways that still has the offices deeply divided.

Jason “Made sweet, grunty, outdoor love to Amy Smart in Crank” Statham called and asked if he could be an AFFotD foreign correspondent.  We’re pretty sure that concept is an oxymoron, but then again we don’t know what oxymoron means (…someone too dumb to breath?), but it did lead to a series of lengthy meetings.  And by meetings, we mean a 48 hour booze party.  When we woke up, we had a series of voice mails from Angelina Jolie asking for us to stop calling or she’d file a restraining order, and Statham was in our offices to thank us for accepting his application.  We don’t remember calling him, but apparently we did.  An excerpt of the voice mail message he played for us is listed below.

“Heyyyyyy Transporter 2 guy!  Hey, it’s the America Fun Fact…urp… of the Day offices here.  Tittays!  Wooo!  Hahaha, dude dude stop it, I’m calling the bald dude from those Guy Ritchie movies.  Hey, shhhhhh guys, I’m on the PHONE here, Christ.  So, listen, like, you’re not American but you do kick ass, like, you know, Americans do, it’s how we doooooooooo.  So you can’t be on the staff man, but you can be like, our British dude.  Like, the resident British dude, or yeah, what you said, the four lane Coors despondent.  Yeah.  Yeah… I’m gonna, just, like, rest my eyes for a bit…”

Forty minutes of silence followed, but the evidence was clear.  We had hired a foreign correspondent doohickey.  And really, if anyone could have swayed us, it would have been Statham.  We added Hugh Laurie to that category shortly thereafter because, dudes, Dr. House, seriously.

But in order to add the appropriate foreign correspondents, and make sure that, despite their “born in another damn country” handicaps, they still have enough American traits to at least keep us informed of the latest crazes in Deer Kickboxing, we needed to create a new, separate test.  One that could determine the Americanness of an individual who was not technically American.  It hurt our brains to think about it, but that might just be the hangover.

And here is the fruit of our labors, the “Are You American Enough To Be Called An Honorary American” Quiz.  You can keep score at home.  A- is worth 0 points, B- is worth 1 point, C- is worth 4 points, and D- is worth 5.  Here we go again.

Continue reading

1 Comment

Filed under America Quizes