The Five Spiciest Meals in America

Posted on September 11, 2013 | 4 comments

“OH GOD IT BURNS GET IT OUT OF ME OH GOD JUST TAKE A KNIFE AND CUT IT OUT OF ME!”

~AffotD Food Critic John Goodman

 al gore breathing fire

If you do a quick Google search, you’ll find that many people outside of this country assume that Americans don’t like spicy food.  Ignoring the fact that American cuisine has been embracing spiciness with increasingly fanatical zeal for the past seven years or so, or that we are responsible for a little thing called Cajun food, cultures that embrace “flavorful” cuisine operate under the assumption that Americans were raised eating bland, lifeless food.  Of course, anyone who has ever stared in wide-eyed horror at the slew of fried foods state fairs have to offer knows that that America doesn’t have any problem doing insane, irresponsible things to our meals, and that line doesn’t stop at spiciness.

No, if America has one culinary trait that trumps all others, its our love of taking normal food and making it recklessly unhealthy or uncomfortable to eat.  There’s a reason why we had a show called Man vs. Food that literally consisted of, “Let’s take Adam Richman and make him eat impossible to eat things that restaurants actually sell to customers every day.”  So, yes, of course we love spicy food.  And not only does America like spicy food, we like stupidly spicy food.  Literally dozens of Americans will purchase chili peppers 10,000 times spicier than Tabasco sauce, and will film themselves eating them, because this is America goddamn it and besides, stomach lining grows back.  Right?

Naturally, AFFotD needed to put this myth of bland food to rest by showing you the spiciest dishes being served in America.  Some of you are going to immediately hunt down these dishes to eat them, and you will be so angry that you did that, and our staff will laugh so hard at your misery.  That’s only part of the reason why we’re doing this.  The rest is, you know, uh, spicy food is delicious and America does spicy right.

The Five Spiciest Meals in America

pepper on fire

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The Grossest Oreos To Hit American Shelves

Posted on September 4, 2013 | 7 comments

“Eww?  Right, that should be my response?  Eww?  I still want to try them.”

~American Oreo Consumers

oreos

Oreos are great.  We’ve discussed in some length the history of the company, and some of their more interesting products (here’s looking at you, Football Oreos) in the past, but we feel like we have to really bring that point home because sometimes it’s hard to remember exactly how good Oreos are.  Whenever an American sees a full glass of milk, they instinctively try to twist open an Oreo even if they’re not even holding one.  That’s called conditioning, and it was invented by a bell-maker named Pavlov.  Though, despite the fact that Oreos are a timeless classic, the past few years have seen a slew of “Limited-time” flavors appear that range from “not chocolate and cream” to “no, seriously, why are you making Oreos that are flavored anything other than chocolate and cream?”  It’s gotten to the point that we at AFFotD feel it’s time to step in and take a hard look at some of the odd varieties of Oreos that people have flocked to Target to buy.  Every single one of them shouldn’t work…and honestly, probably don’t.  But you have to at least give Nabisco credit for trying.  Even if they’re tampering with perfection.

The Grossest Oreos To Hit American Shelves

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Harry Randall Truman: Unsuccessful Volcano Dodger

Posted on August 28, 2013 | 3 comments

“Volcano Schmolcano.”

~Harry Randall Truman

 harry randall truman

Harry Truman was born in 1884.  He served in World War I before going into politics, where he became the 33rd President of the United States.  He held that office from 1945 to 1953, and he died at the age of 88 in 1972 in Kansas City, Missouri.  Harry Randall Truman was born twelve years later in West Virginia, also served in World War I, and went on to live a pretty similar life to his presidential namesake, only instead of leading the free world, he lived in a cabin near Mount St. Helens with 16 cats and got buried under hundreds of feet of mountain debris after stubbornly refusing to leave his home during the nation’s deadliest volcano eruption.  So, they’re pretty much the same dude.

And while there are hundreds of books about President Truman, there’s less literature on Harry Randall Truman, the man who became famous for a few months for saying, “Fuck you, volcano, come at me, bro,” until the volcano, you know.  Came at him.  Bro.  So let’s take a moment to recognize a proud American who loved his home while failing to fully comprehend how volcanoes worked.

Harry Randall Truman:  Unsuccessful Volcano Dodger

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The Ten Longest Films Ever Made

Posted on August 21, 2013 | 1 comment

“Man, and I thought Lord of the Rings was too long…”

~American Film Critics

lady clock

We like our movies like we like our sexual encounters—brief, anonymous, and preferably ending with you sobbing uncontrollably while watching Ryan Gosling kiss another woman.  Whether we’re watching Nicholas Sparks play out his latest sexual fantasy of star-crossed lovers being separated for 50 years by dire circumstances only to die of cancer the day they’re supposed to meet again, or someone gave Michael Bay $150 million to be the pyrotechnic version of Bamm-Bamm Rubble, American films are the world’s primary source for laughter, entertainment, and taking a brief respite from our bleak, miserable lives to watch Brad Pitt casually eat something while pretending we’re his friend.

There was a time when epic sagas were the norm in Hollywood, which is why Ben-Hur is over three-and-a-half hours long, and also why most of us never saw Ben-Hur once we were informed that the film was 212 boobless minutes.  Nowadays, we like our movies shorter, more action-packed, and Anne Hathaway naked-ier.  Yes, we’ll sit through the occasional three hour opus, but that’s about as long as we’re able to physically sit still without our ADD kicking oh hey look there’s a bird.  Besides, we can’t waste all our free time watching a single movie.  We have things to do.  There are bars literally just outside the theater, taunting us.

Yes, we know how to squeeze $200 million into a handy 90-minute package, but we’re America.  We invented, perfected, and then perverted everything you know and love about modern cinema.  Other countries don’t quite get the hint, which is why you see places like China making 14-hour films.

And that’s not even one of the ten longest films ever created.  Since we at AFFotD are public servants, we’re going to save you the trouble of knowing which impossibly long films to avoid by listing off the ten films with the longest running time.  And since we can’t imagine a world where people make day-long movies without something terrible and dark having happened in their childhood, we will also inform you what life-ruining tragedy must have happened to the countries of the world that would actually sit through these exercises in torture.

The Ten Longest Films Ever Made

 Die hard

Because if you’re going to stare at a movie screen for 14 hours, you’d better damn well be watching all the Die Hard movies.

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The Latest And The Greatest From The Mountain and Big Face Animal Shirts

Posted on August 7, 2013 | Leave a comment

“If you DON’T own the ‘Three Wolves Howling At The Moon’ shirt, you’re an awful person and I hate you.”

~Gandhi

 wolf shirt

The staffers of AFFotD have a soft spot in their heart for The Mountain, the geniuses behind the Big Face Animal shirts who still haven’t taken us up on our offer to graciously accept any free products they’d be willing to send our way, but that’s neither here nor there.  The Mountain is staffed by dedicated workers who, we assume, are a lot like us here in the America Fun Fact of the Day offices.  We imagine that they, like us, spend their weekdays recovering from the temporary blindness that inevitably occurs after swigging moonshine from a poorly maintained sill, whispering into the void “what now?” as the void whispers back “you need a T-shirt of a Gorilla in a spacesuit giving you a thumbs up.”  The void is wise.

The Mountain has perfected the art of T-shirts that are stylish, comfortable, and work surprisingly well as a makeshift pot handler in a mobile meth lab, but that doesn’t mean they’re content to rest on their laurels watching stacks of dollar dollar bills flood their P.O. boxes.  No, they are constantly striving to make new and exciting shirts because goddamn it, someone out there wants to wear a giant house fly face on their chest, and if The Mountain isn’t going to oblige them, who the fuck will?

So every now and then we like to bring up The Mountain catalog and list some shirts you need to be buying at this very moment.  It’s partially a public service announcement, partially a play to get free shit from The Mountain, and somehow the free publicity we offer actually counts towards our community service hours for some reason.  America!

The Latest And The Greatest From The Mountain and Big Face Animal Shirts

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America’s Craziest Fried Foods: 2013 Edition

Posted on July 31, 2013 | Leave a comment

“It’s been so long since we’ve talked about fried foods, my Cholesterol  levels have almost gone done to healthy levels.  Almost.”

~AFFotD Food Critic, John Goodman

fried dollar

Fried food.  Crunchy goodness.  Grease’s children.  The culinary manifestation of a fat man punching himself in the heart.  Whatever you call it, battering food and dipping it in boiling oil is as American as apple pie, assuming that you battered the apple pie and immersed it in boiling oil beforehand.  We’ve documented the cutting edge of American fried foods six times before, but it’s been about a year since we’ve sat down and scoured the dumpsters of our nation’s state fairs to find the latest in delicious food that technically can be considered a murder weapon in several of our more obese states.   And that is far too long to go without terrifyingly complex fried foods.

So grab onto your nutritionist’s desperate letters urging you to, “Stop, for the love of God, do you have a death wish?” because things are about to get a little unhealthy.

America’s Craziest Fried Foods:  2013 Edition

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The Six Worst DIY Kits For Sale On The Internet

Posted on July 24, 2013 | Leave a comment

“OH GOD WHY DID I DECIDE TO ASSEMBLE THIS MYSELF IT IS INSIDE ME!”

~Step-dads everywhere

ladder fall

America is a nation filled with handymen, or so we kept telling ourselves when trying to explain the popularity of Home Improvement.  We’ve been building our own devices to make life quaint or awesome for years, but with the invention of the Internet came something terrifying.  Brooklyn Boundless Do-It-Yourself opportunities.  We used to see some wood, a hammer, and a handful of nails and say to ourselves, “You know, it’s Sunday and there’s no football on, I might as well come down with tetanus while making an rickety doghouse that’ll never be used.”  Now, we’re forced to embarrass ourselves as we spectacularly fail to make Precision Outback Savannah doghouses complete with a shaded porch because your wife saw all the lumber in the backyard and decided to spend the next three hours fucking around on Pinterest.

It’s a blessing and a curse, and by that we mean to say the internet is a blessing for master craftsmen with advanced engineering degrees who want to show off what they can do in a simple afternoon, and it’s a curse for the rest of us who usually have a hard time figuring out the diagrams on IKEA furniture instructions.  It’s also a boon for those of us who like to laugh at the latter group, but that’s neither here nor there.

Of course, with endless DIY products at our disposal, there are numerous helpful guides and kits that (usually for a cost just covering some of the basic supplies) can help you feel like a red-blooded, self-sustaining, uh, well let’s be honest, hipster.  Most of the people doing these projects are just hipsters.  When a woodworker makes an awesome bench, he doesn’t really spend his time posting about it online.  He’s probably outside.  Sitting on the bench.  And he’s definitely not making his own soap, because he’s not insufferable.

The people who buy, sell, or came up with the following projects, however?  Yes.  Absolutely insufferable.

The Six Worst DIY Kits For Sale On The Internet

 corona tv

This one’s actually not for sale, though you know you’d buy it if you could.

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Fast Food’s Most Insane Products Currently Being Tested

Posted on July 16, 2013 | 1 comment

“This is unholy.  This is an abomination.  I want ten of them right now.”

~You, with most of these menu items

fast food

Fast food holds a dear place in the hearts of all Americans.  No, we mean that literally, everyone reading this has a tiny chunk of a Big Mac lodged somewhere in their arteries, waiting patiently for the best time to stroke strike.  Do not fight it, and it won’t fight you.  Yes you want fries with that.

But as much as people have been focusing lately on how “unhealthy” and “disgusting behind the scenes” fast food places are, good old American gumption helps us stay strong by covering our ears and going, “La la la I’m not listening I’d like a Whopper with no onions please.”  And part of the reason why fast food is here to stay is that, like many Americans, they’re not satisfied with the status quo.  They’re constantly evolving their menu and testing out new products that can range from “surprisingly glorious” to “ah, look, a Double Down wrapper.  I think we’ve found our cause of death.”

Food items are not added to menus lightly (okay, sometimes they are, and it’s hilarious).  Honestly, did you think that this just fucking happened?  Of course not, you can’t roll out a Monster Thickburger to an unsuspecting nation without endangering the lives of the residents of, say, Columbus, Ohio first.  So we’re here to give you an inside glimpse into the minds of the fast food giants by letting you know what they’re currently testing in markets that you (statistically, probably) don’t live in.  Some of which you can’t wait to see on menus nationwide, and some of which will terrify you but you also can’t wait to see on menus nationwide.

Fast Food’s Most Insane Products Currently Being Tested

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Five of the World’s Strangest Chocolates

Posted on July 10, 2013 | Leave a comment

“I mean, sure, it’s good, but it’s BETTER when there’s booze inside of it.”

~American chocolate consumers

chocolate

America loves chocolate more than just about everyone.  Sure the Swiss might have us outgunned, but we still eat about 10 pounds of chocolate a year, per person.  We don’t want to look it up because we have a specific AFFotD search engine that locks your computer for two days if you try to search for anything about vegetables, but we’ll just assume that this means Americans eat more chocolate every year than they do salad.  You’d think chocolate is a relatively easy to acquire food item, but it’s actually surprisingly arduous to turn cacao beans into deliciousness—they’re naturally bitter, so they have to be fermented, dried, cleaned, and roasted before their shell is removed and the remaining nibs are ground into pure chocolate in its “rough” form, which is then separated into cocoa solids and cocoa butter, which is mixed in varying proportions, and often combined with sugar and milk.

If you stopped reading once you saw the word “fermented” while your mind drifted to visions of alcohol dancing in your head, well, it did for us too, so that’s totally understandable.  The key is, chocolate is everywhere, and mankind has been ingesting it in one form or another since about 1400 BC, and while America doesn’t lay claim to any particularly revolutionary adaptation of it (with the possible exception of Hershey’s) just about every straight man in America has bought chocolate to appease their stressed out girlfriends, and most of them have subsequently gotten in trouble for saying something along the lines of, “Hey babe, this should help with the PMSing, right?”

It shouldn’t be surprising that we have more types of chocolate than “dark, milk, and white.”  It’s not even surprising that some variations of chocolate might do a disservice to the original treat.  We’re not here to focus on that.  We’re here to tell you, the intrepid American who just finally finished the last of the base of your giant chocolate bunny you got for Easter, five of the strangest flavored chocolates in the world.  Because you’ll probably want to eat a few of them, and you’ll definitely want to purposely avoid at least one.

Five of the World’s Strangest Chocolates

keyboard chocolate

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America’s Grossest Soda Pops

Posted on June 25, 2013 | 4 comments

“*A constant horrifying stream of vomit*”

~American Soda drinkers

 the hell is this soda

America loves soft drinks so much that every region tries to call it something else.  Depending on your upbringing, you’ve spent your whole life drinking soda, pop, coke, soda pop, or fizzy drinks.  Some of you even grew up enjoying “plain flavored carbonated beverages” but that’s just because you were home schooled, and your parents were too embarrassed to tell you they had tricked you into liking seltzer water.  While carbonated water, the backbone of the soda industry, was first developed in 1767 by Joseph Priestley in, alas, England, America has long since used pop to fatten up our kids while keeping them obnoxiously hyperactive, with soda being available commercially stateside as early as 1806.

Pop is a part of our everyday life.  The average American drinks almost 45 gallons of soft drinks every year.  That sounds even more impressive when you realize that we only average 20 gallons of beer annually, so clearly someone must be doing something right in the R&D departments of old Coca-Cola and PepsiCo.  We love our colas, our lemon-lime pops, hell, we even drink Mountain Dew.  And while there are dozens, if not hundreds, of delicious sodas available at the nearest convenience to act as mixers for all sorts of deserving hard alcohols, there are some companies that, either on purpose or by terrible, terrible accident, make pop that is so repellant that even the Japanese have to take a step back and go, “Goddamn it America, you’re doing it wrong!”

Now’s the time to reflect and think about what you’ve done.  Because some of you out there have drank these sodas.  Willingly.  Ye Gods.

America’s Grossest Soda Pops

 crystal pepsi

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