Tag Archives: Coffee

The Dumbest Types of Sommeliers That Actually Exist

“A sumally what?  Oh you mean a wine guy?”

~American Fine Restaurant Diners

sommolier

French people are only good at two things—being snobby, and making wine. They’re also good at being made fun of by Americans, but that’s really us being good at something than anything else.

Sure, the French didn’t invent wine, but you can argue they invented fine wine, which is why even the staunchest of Americans allow themselves to order wine by using French terms such as “Pinot Noir” and “Cabernet Sauvignon” and “Franzia with some ice cubes, please.”

They even created a profession that consists of knowing every kind of wine and telling people what kind of food goes well with what kind of wine. You might call such a person “a wine guy” or “look at this smug Frenchie fuck” but they are actually called sommeliers, and the process of becoming one is surprisingly exhaustive and difficult as far as “jobs about booze” go.

Sommeliers are experts in all things about wine, including food pairings, service, and descriptions. A sommelier might find themselves in charge of developing wine lists, training staff, and pretty much anything that a restaurant might need done to or with their wine, and becoming one takes months of training and thousands of dollars spent on mandatory classes and tests. It is only for the most dedicated wine aficionados.

Or at least it was. Because apparently, people have gone ahead and become sommeliers for…well, some pretty stupid shit. Here are some sommeliers who are absolutely ridicuolous.

The Dumbest Types of Sommeliers That Actually Exist

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The Worst Gingerbread Flavored Products in America

“Run run run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me because you really don’t care too much, I mean really, I’m not that tasty, compared to other sweets.”

~The Honest Gingerbread Man

gingerbread

We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but summer is over, fall is here, and winter is just around the corner.  We know, we know, it’s a bitter pill to swallow.  But, let’s all take a step back, and think about all the good times, foods, and occasions that fall and winter will afford you.  No, we’re being serious, take a moment and pick your favorite thing about autumn or winter.

Oh, the holiday season, that’s a good one, you over there.

Hmm, bourbon and dark beers, that’s a very solid point, intern whispering in our ear right now.  Now go back to the supply closest and keep on spamming PETA with hate-emails.

Oh, what’s that, distant quiet voice in the back?  Gingerbread gets to come back?  Ugh, fine.  Whatever.  Yes, gingerbread houses and all that shit will be easier to find.  That’s a lame thing to suggest, but not lame enough for us to openly mock you for suggesting it.

Let’s face it, gingerbread is just alright, probably because America didn’t invent it and the most fun you can have with it is putting it into shapes you don’t get to eat until they’ve long since gone stale.  Which is fine—a gingerbread house is a lot of fun, and many precious memories have been made around it, but if we were being honest, a gingerbread house is a great way to have your children or man-child husbands pick at the icing and gumdrops, thinking incorrectly that they’re being sneaky, for a few months until the whole thing turns rock solid and you put it outside for squirrels to eat the shit out of.  That’s pretty much gingerbread’s biggest purpose for American society—it tricks squirrels into thinking we don’t eat anything that tastes better than stale gingerbread, so they by-and-large leave us the hell alone.

Unfortunately, because it’s considered a “seasonal” treat, every goddamn company imaginable decides to release a “limited edition” gingerbread flavored version of their product this time of the year.  Most of them, like gingerbread, are, eh, fine.  But some of them.

Oh, mother of God, some of them.  Are awful.  Terrible.  Sins.

We’re going to tell you about some of them.

The Worst Gingerbread Flavored Products in America

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This Isn’t Poison: Food and Drinks With Skull Designs

“This is the tale of Captain Jack Sparrow.”

~Michael Bolton

michael bolton

Ever since first reading Treasure Island as a child or, more likely, seeing Hook, Americans spend their childhood surrounded by pirates.  While today piracy seems like an ignoble, cowardly profession, we still are drawn to the classic pirates of yore; the Blackbeards and Black Barts we heard wildly exaggerated stories about.  Hand-in-hand with this romanticized image of people who actually were often very brutal murderers is the Jolly Roger, or the skull-and-crossbones flag that they would fly to identify themselves as pirates.

Since that point, the skull-and-crossbones have become an iconic part of our history, and putting a skull on a product has become a widespread way to tell Americans that something is either badass, poisoned, or was purchased at a Hot Topic.

Today, we’re going to go into the products that Americans consume that have incorporated the skull into their packaging.  Because nothing tells you to put something inside your body better than a bleached human skull and the words “DEATH,” right?

This Isn’t Poison: Food and Drinks With Skull Designs

skull french fries

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More of America’s Strangest Coffee Flavors

“Coffee coffee coffee coffee?”

~Coffee coffee

 

As we’ve described in detail earlier, America loves coffee as it is, but that doesn’t mean we’re above making it taste like insane combinations of flavors, like coconut lime jalapeno, or like black velvet cognac.  Most people like coffee, because it’s a drug, but some people don’t like the taste of coffee, because it’s the bitter bi-product of forcing boiling water through burned and crushed beans.  Either way, coffee is one of the things that keeps America humming like a well drugged machine (at least until they legalize Cocaine again), and the only thing more American than coffee is America’s ability to make coffee that tricks you into thinking its cake.

Because cake is delicious, but cake that wakes you up in the morning is even more delicious.  And cake that wakes you up in the morning that tastes better when you pour whiskey in it is themost delicious.

(We’re assuming that the only reason why Americans drink coffee is to give them a convenient place to empty their morning flask of whiskeys.)

Anyway, once again, it’s time for AFFotD to count through…

More of America’s Strangest Coffee Flavors

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The Strangest Coffee Flavors in America

“Coffee coffee coffee coffee.”

~So-called “morning people”

People like to say that coffee is the most consumed drug in America, which is part of the reason why most heroin users think the rest of us are giant pussies.  Calling coffee a drug is like calling hamburgers a serial killer.  You can stretch the definition enough for it to be technically true, but everyone is still going to roll their eyes at you.  Yeah, it’s addictive, but so is pornography, and people don’t call that a drug.  So ease up, okay?

Yes, coffee is an integral part of the American office experience, and if it didn’t exist our nation’s productivity would slow to a crawl (unless cocaine started to become big again).  But some people might not like the taste of coffee, and filling your caffeine delivery system with sugar and cream might get boring after a while.

So how would a non-coffee drinking American overcome this hurdle?  How can they get the necessary caffeine to get them through the day if they don’t like the glorious bitterness that is a freshly brewed cup of coffee?  Do they drink tea?  Do they try cutting down on their caffeine intake, instead just getting through the day on their own natural energy afforded them through a combination of a healthy diet and good sleeping habits?

Fuck that, let’s just make coffee that doesn’t taste like coffee!

The Strangest Coffee Flavors in America

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Wherein AFFotD Responds to Critiques of American Culture While Suppressing the Urge to Vomit or Declare War on China (because, let’s face it, they’d probably win…shit)- an Academic Lecture by Professor Washington

“ROAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!”

~The Ghost of General George Patton

 

The staff of the America Fun Fact of the Day is sort of like a cross between Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction and an overzealous stage mom.  On one hand, if you cast our kid in your commercial (or, say America is appropriately awesome), we’ll totally sleep with you.  On the other hand, if you spurn our advances, we’re going to kill your pet rabbit.  What we’re trying to say is, if there’s one thing we hate more than Nature, it’s people who write articles besmirching our fine nation.

Especially when it’s…the enemy!

It’s the face that killed millions, yet would not be out of place behind the counter of a gas station.

While doing our weekly google searches (affotd, America fuck yes, America is awesome, why is America so damn awesome you guys, etc) we stumbled across an article on “Asian Times” called, “What is American Culture?”  We’ve been spurned by the Chinese before, so we weren’t necessarily expecting any celebrations about our inventive uses of gravy, but we were not expecting an article flinging more shit at American Culture than the cast and crew of Two Girls One Cup.

In order to do it justice, we brought in an American academic on our staff, who also teaches our “America, fuck yes, an examination of everything great about America” classes.  He is a bit more “straight laced” than we like, but if we were in charge of writing up about this article, we’d probably say some pretty hateful shit.  Professor Washington will likely say some pretty hateful shit too, but at least he uses bigger words and reads shit like “books.”

America Fun Fact of the Day Responds to Critiques of American Culture While Suppressing the Urge to Vomit or Declare War on China (because, let’s face it, they’d probably win…shit)- a lecture by Professor Washington

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The Informative American’s Guide to the Ills of the Beatnik Menace (originally published October, 1959)

“Hey, smoking tea, hitting bongo drums, berets eh?”

~Beatniks, probably


Pictured bottom, left

We’ve mentioned the roots of America Fun Fact of the Day previously, we at AFFotD fear the future, and long for the warm, comforting, alcohol-hazed memories of the past.  Beer’s been around for 11,500 years, really good beer’s been around two hundred years, and moonshining has been around just about as long.  What else do we have to look forward to?  Science has already made it abundantly clear they don’t care about our Back to the Future 2 desires for a hovering skateboard, so why should we give a crap about the future?

The “future” means “this terrifying soulless object is going to kill us all.”

So, like most Americans with an archive of company material and a kegerator full of Everclear at their disposal, we’ve decided to go back into our 1950’s archives, when life was simpler and alcohol came without surgeon general’s warnings.  We’ve already given you an inside look into 1950’s parenting styles, as well as a helpful guide how to spot communists.

As it turns out, in the 1950’s AFFotD, previously known as “The Informative American” had a lot of helpful guides about the menaces of society.  Which makes it remarkably comprehensive, because apparently in the 1950’s everything was a menace.  Communists were a menace, cars from Japan were a menace, stores that chose to stay open during Sundays were a menace.  And in this instance, the menace we were reading up on came from a 1959 article decrying the latest “menace” to hit American popular culture.

Today, we have hipsters.  In the 70s, we had hippies.  But back in the Leave it to Beaver age, the most terrifying thing imaginable was…running into a Beatnik, the stereotypical archetype that exhibited the more superficial tendencies of the Beat Generation.  Berets, coffee, bongo drums, bad poetry, basically we’re dealing with Ned Flanders’ father here.

Well, we thought it was interesting to hear why they were everything wrong with America, so that’s why we present to you, straight from our archives…

The Informative American’s Guide to the Ills of the Beatnik Menace (originally published October, 1959)

 

“What are you doing to Kermit, you damned beatnik!?”

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