Awesome Fictional Brands

5) Blammo
As seen on the incomparable Ren and Stimpy Show, Blammo was the brand behind the greatest children's toy of all time ... LOG! An obvious parody of one-note toys like a Slinky, Blammo's toy also requires ample imagination to enjoy, and the catchy jingle was quick to inform us of all the ways it could be fun. You can remember every word of that song and you know it. Don't lie to me, goddammit.

Later episodes had commercials for slight variations of Log, like dress up versions similar to a Mr. Potato Head. But the original unadorned Log remains a classic fake commercial for a fake product from a fake brand, and a tribute to the simple toys of days gone by.

4) Spishak
Following the lead of Saturday Night Live, the variety comedy show Mad TV would often include fake commercials between skits. Unlike SNL, however, the products in these commercials were often from the same preposterous company.

The ads usually followed one of two patterns: A) a compilation of product demonstrations that got progressively more ridiculous, or B) a Spishak spokesman suddenly appearing in someone's home to advertise the product in a mini-infomercial. What sort of products? Well, anything from a combination knife-spoon-fork, to a toy oven for kids that requires the child to disconnect the gas line from their real oven to use. Each item was a hazardous, nonsensical, defective mess.

3) Red Apple Cigarettes
Occasionally a director will tie together their body of work with reccurring characters, locations, or brands even when the plots and styles of their movies are vastly different (eg. Kevin Smith). Red Apple Cigarettes represent a key connective tissue for the filmography of Quentin Tarantino as they appear in nearly every movie he's directed or co-written.

Sometimes the cigarettes will be smoked by a character, or other times appear as an ad in passing. Most recently in Django Unchained it can be spotted as a pouch of Red Apple Tobacco. These fake cigarettes are great because they are one of the many ways that Tarantino has pulled his movies together into the same crazy universe, and at this point finding the Red Apple has become a hidden gem for movie fans to discover.


2) Krusty Brand
While the Simpsons' universe has many memorable brands like Duff Beer, the greatest line-up of products come from the world's biggest shill: Krusty the Clown. He is the iconic face of a gigantic empire of TV shows, fast food restaurants, amusement parks, and an endless array of shoddy household products.

Every bit of merchandise stamped with the "Krusty Seal of Approval" is poorly thought out, cheaply made, and often dangerous. Krusty Brand is wonderful satirical take on the corporate greed we see all the time when celebrities slap their name or likeness on all manner of pointless shit. So when a cross between Bozo the Clown and Ronald McDonald is selling home pregnancy kits, frosted cereals, personal swabs, imitation gruel, handguns, cough syrup, cigars, and facial hair trimmers it's equal parts familiar and hilarious.

1) Acme
The Acme Corporation is a huge supplier of crazy bullshit in the Looney Tunes universe, and while the word "acme" comes from the Greek word for "zenith" or "prime", the products bearing that name are often lacking quality. What do they sell? A better question is what the hell don't they sell? Explosives, anvils, rockets, giant slingshots, giant magnets, escape kits, earthquake pills, the list goes on forever. The majority of their profit comes from Wile E. Coyote no matter how often their products fail miserably. You have to assume the prices must be amazing since he keeps placing orders for anti-gravity boots and fake tunnel paint instead of buying ... you know... food.

In fact Acme as a generic brand has been appearing in all manner of television shows, comics, movies, and cartoons for more than 90 years. You can find the familiar name in silent films of the 20's, episodes of I Love Lucy, and - my personal favorite - the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit with the epic showdown at the Acme Warehouse. As a child that warehouse overwhelmed my imagination with possibilities, and to this day I still want to see more of the gadgets and weapons scattered around the place.

The name Acme represents more than just an insatiable desire for Roadrunner meat, it represents generations of wild ideas and preposterous products. Whenever you needed a ridiculous prop, weapon, or device for your character to get their hands on, it was easily explained away by the good ol' Acme Corp. Who on earth would produce a jet-powered pogo stick and over-night ship it to the middle of the desert?

Acme, of course.

Most Spectacular Moustaches

The moustache. Is there any better symbol of maleness? For better or for worse (you decide), in today's society it simply isn't acceptable for men to walk around with their penises in full display. In fact, it's been this way for quite some time. (Shocking, I know). So men have had to come up with another way to show how manly they are without scarring bystanders for life. They came up with that solution in the moustache.

It takes a certain kind of man to grow a moustache. One could argue that full beards or combinations like goatees are just as manly but I just can't agree. While I'm a guy who is very rarely clean-shaven I've always known better than to dare to sport a moustache. On those infrequent occasions that I do shave, I always leave my upper lip for the very end just so I can observe myself in moustache form for a few moments. It always makes for quite the hilarious sight. No, I've come to realize that I am just not man enough to pull off the 'stache. I'll just have to get by on my stellar record of street fighting and seducing women.

Selecting the ultimate examples of moustaches was no easy task; greats such as Jesse "The Body" Ventura, Ned Flanders, legions of porn stars from the seventies, um...Joseph Stalin and...others didn't make the cut. Truly, the road to moustache greatness is paved with the bones of those who dared to dream and fell short.

5. Tom Selleck
There are certainly moustaches out there with longer tenures than that of Selleck's but I would argue very few as powerful. Born of Slovakian immigrants, he staked a claim to manliness early on in life playing university basketball for a team called the TROJANS. Later, as a member of the California National Guard, he played a part in the quelling of the Watts Riots in 1965, a messy, violent affair that lasted six days, saw thirty-four deaths and nearly four thousand arrests. It would be the worst riot in California history until the riots of 1992 spurred by the Rodney King verdict. This conflict resulted in fifty-three deaths and thousands of arrests and injuries. And why was this riot more devastating than the Watts Riots? The answer is simple: Tom Selleck and his moustache weren't there to stop it.

As an actor, Selleck's moustache proved him to be so overwhelmingly macho that in 1980, despite a track record of truly shitty movies in the seventies, he was the first choice to play pulp hero Indiana Jones. Thankfully, his commitment to the tv show Magnum, P.I. kept him from accepting the role. Indy would go on to be a different sort of manly character which was really for the best and as Magnum, Selleck and his moustache would go on to fame taking another route. In movies throughout the eighties he would portray such manly characters as cops, baseball players and cowboys.

In the nineties, as a prominent member of the NRA, Selleck got into a fistfight with woman-man Rosie O'Donnell and narrowly escaped being devoured. Just like always, it wasn't guns that pulled him through, it was his moustache.

4. Hercule Poirot
Certainly a vast departure from that typical image of a manly moustache, the soup-strainer of the plucky little Belgian nonetheless has its own statement to make. Poirot represents a more cerebral sort of moustached man, employing his "little grey cells" to understand "the psychology" and solve mysteries, bringing murderers to justice.

Sadly I don't know if there has ever been an actor who could fully demonstrate the awesomeness of Poirot's moustache but as David Suchet was pretty much born to play the role, he wins by default. Actually, regarding the 1974 film version of Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie herself said she was mostly pleased with it except that she felt actor Albert Finney's moustache didn't quite measure up.

No one could ever accuse Hercule Poirot of being overly modest as he would often boast of his skills and expect his reputation to precede him wherever in the world he traveled but at least in the case of his moustache's own magnificence, he can hardly be faulted. He simply knew that his was one of the top in existence so he saw no need to be modest about it. He would often reference his moustache's perfection as well as constantly tend to it so that it always appeared flawless.

Poirot was always running up against retired Britsh military officers and members of Scotland Yard. These men were almost always tall and broad-shouldered and sporting manly moustaches. But it was the penguin-like Poirot who came out on top in the end and having the superior 'stache gave him the edge.


3. Hulk Hogan
Throughout the history of professional wrestling, there have been many who have come and gone. And of those many, there were many still who had to rely on flashy costumes, masks and tattoos to make themselves stand out. All Hulk Hogan needed was his moustache.

I ask you - could you even imagine him without it? Surely, without it, he could never have fought Rocky himself (against Vince MacMahon's wishes no less), hosted Saturday Night Live, caused a sensation known as "Hulkamania" and body slammed all 520 pounds of Andre the Giant to the mat.

Even when he underwent an image change as the villainous "Hollywood Hogan" in the NWO, he retained his moustache. Sampson had his long hair, Hogan has his handlebar 'stache. Only a manly man equipped with such a moustache could have come up with the genius macho practice of ripping his own shirt asunder. The fact is, Hogan's macho and manly achievements are almost too numerous to mention here so I will simply point out that the one remaining constant throughout it all was his moustache. No way that's a coincidence.

2. Super Mario
The greatest video game hero of all time by far. OF COURSE he has a moustache! How else could he have pulled it off? To date he has appeared in over two hundred games and he's working his mighty moustache in every single one.

I have absolutely no friggin' clue how Shigeru Miyomato came up with the idea that the main character in a game he was making in the early eighties should have been a short, roundish Italian plumber. But apparently it had something to do with wanting to portray him as an ordinary working-man type and someone remarked he looked more like a plumber than a carpenter (the original profession suggested for him). After that, I guess the rest wrote itself: a plumber could be in the sewers and...um, because of limited graphical capabilities at the time, it was decided to give him a moustache to avoid having to animate a mouth. Just as he was given a cap so they wouldn't have to deal with hair. Logically, this character should be Italian and called Mario (named after the owner of Nintendo's American warehouse). It makes so much sense!!

Anyway, Mario is one of the most popular and recognizable characters on the planet and his moustache is an integral part of him. I'm sure that when they decided to add his brother, Luigi, it was inconceivable to consider not also giving that jumping Italian plumber a moustache as well. And their activities, while often bizarre and fantastical to say the least, still usually come down to a simple, manly formula - braving extreme dangers to rescue some broad. From jumping barrels thrown by an ape to hurling fireballs at deranged turtles to somehow flying through the sky using a racoon tail, Mario did it all while wearing his trusty moustache.

1. Lanny McDonald
Should we really be surprised that the ultimate moustache belongs to a hockey player? I mean, really. McDonald's moustache is so epic and overwhelming that lesser moustaches actually burst into flame in his presence. The man once went out in the rain and was then able to fill a well for a parched African village using the water collected in his moustache. He's been known to offer shelter under it to those caught in thunder storms. If lighting hits McDonald's 'stache, it is immediately converted into cold fusion (this is the rumoured source of the power for his wrist shot).

After a career as prolific goal-scorer for the Medicine Hat Tigers in junior, McDonald was drafted fourth overall by the Leafs in 1973 and didn't disappoint once he reached the big league. After scoring 14 and 17 goals in his first two seasons respectively, he exploded for a four-season run of at least 37 goals, scoring over 43 in three of them, playing as Darryl Sittler's right winger. In 79/80 he was on his way to another forty goal season when he was traded to the god-awful Colorado Rockies. (I'll talk some more another time on this baffling trade and why it happened.)

He was a point-a-game player for the parts of three seasons he was in Colorado and that's really saying something considering just how terrible they were. He landed in Calgary during the 81/82 season, on his way to yet another forty goal campaign. He would play out the rest of his career as a Flame, becoming one of the most popular players in franchise history, retiring in storybook fashion scoring his 500th goal in his final season and captaining the Flames to their first, and to date only, Stanley Cup in 1989.

In 82/83, his first full season with the Flames, his moustache kicked into overdrive. That year he finished second in the league in goal scoring behind Wayne Gretzky with an amazing 66 goals. It also made for one of the more interesting statistical seasons in NHL history in that he only had 32 assists. Scoring seasons where a player has more goals than assists, especially when it's a significant number of goals, are rare. Seasons where a player scores more than twice as many goals as assists are almost unheard of. With 98 total points he set the record as the player to score the most goals without reaching the 100 point mark.

A two-time second team All Star, 500 career goal scorer, Stanley Cup champion and Hockey Hall of Fame member, McDonald is the most famous moustache in Canadian history. And although it has declined a bit with age, no longer the brilliant red it was in its prime, I'll dare to declare it as the most spectacular moustache in the entire world.

Childhood Games Most Likely to Cause Injury

Although this topic is quite straightforward, let me point out a few brief things. First, while some games like Monopoly make you want to punch a family member in the face, boardgames are excluded from this list. Instead I want to focus on ones that are often played at school, birthday parties, family picnics, and outdoor events. Also, while dodgeball seems like a perfect fit for this list, you play with rubber balls designed to be thrown at people, and I've yet to see anyone seriously hurt while playing.

5.Tug of War
A long time ago a bunch of people got bored, found a rope, and had the bright idea to see who was better at yanking friends off their feet into a mud pit. The concept is simple enough; a pure test of strength and endurance as two teams pull a rope in opposing directions. Not only are you likely to be knocked to the ground in a state of exhaustion, but think of all the arguments you can start with your friends afterward. Kids fighting over not having a good grip, someone pulling too soon, and who cheated by picking "the big kid".

Possible Injuries: Rope burn/ Dislocated Limbs/ Beaten by mother for getting mud on your school clothes.

4. Piñata
This game is unique because it's hazardous to everyone except the person playing it. Parents should always be wary of a child swinging a weapon at groin level. In fact, did you know that Piñata is the Spanish word for "Papa's shattered genitals"? Without the Piñata and people's pants frequently falling down, I doubt America's Funniest Home Videos would have ever existed. Who would have thought that child with club + blindfold + candy incentive = disaster?

Possible Injuries: Bludgeoning / Teeth Knocked the "F" out / Impact Castration

3. Musical Chairs
How can a game so seemingly innocent be so painful? It all starts well enough with cheerful music and children skipping around some chairs. But competition rears its ugly head; tensions mount, and suddenly you have multiple children hurling themselves backwards at the furniture. I can't think of a single time this game didn't end with someone crying or needing stitches. And let's not forget those asshole kids who steal the chairs away at the last minute. When the music stops in this game, it becomes a symphony of heads hitting hardwood floors.

Possible Injuries: Cracked Skulls / Contusions / Lifelong Distrust of Chairs

2. Red Rover
Two teams line up facing one another like armies meeting on the battlefield. Children hold hands and challenge a member of the opposing team to break the chain by running full speed at them. Jeez, they might as well call this game, "You Just Got Clotheslined!!!"? In fact, I don't even get the meaning of the name Red Rover. Maybe red refers to the blood you'll be coughing up after "winning". The whole game seems to be testing that hypothetical problem of what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Anyway, it should come as no surprise that the resulting chaos and pain got the game banned from many schools.

Possible Injuries: Broken Arm / Crushed Windpipe / Human Car Accident

1. Play Fighting
This game is different each time since styles, objectives, and rules are all over the place. Whatever you happen to call this game - roughhousing, sparring, wrasslin' - it can only lead to one outcome. A sword fight with sticks means someone will get poked in the eyeball. Wresting on the sofa means someone will get the wind knocked out of them. Acting out a battle between vampires and werewolves means someone's younger sibling will be left in tears after getting shoved onto a gravel driveway.

In my own experience I've seen all sorts of injuries come about from play fighting. Broken toes, bloody noses, and even trips to the hospital. One minute myself and friends are whooping around the room with pretend lightsabers, and the next minute someone accidentally stabbed their hand on a pair of scissors. True story.

Possible injuries: Just about anything.

Funniest Places to Throw Up

I refuse to let April slip by without me contributing at least one list to the site. But we here at Five-o-Rama are a busy crew, spending most of our days designing spaceships, and most of our nights fighting crime.

As you well know, one of the most horrible things to experience is throwing up. However, the concept of throwing up is indeed one of the funniest things you can think of. So, here is my list of the absolute most hilarious places to blow chunks. I've tried to be as specific as possible. Enjoy.

5. A Mask
When you gotta evacuate your stomach, the last thing you want is something blocking your face. This could be a theatre mask, a tribal mask, a gas mask, a surgical mask. Anything works. Even a goalie mask is funny. Whether you're fencing, playing paintball, or welding, there's something hilarious about needing to puke, and the puke having nowhere to go.

Best Case Scenario: *Ding dong* "Trick or Tre-blllaaargl"/ "And what are you supposed to be?"/ "Please get a towel."

4. Through Any Wind Instrument
Music and humor go together in such a beautiful way, and what's funnier that someone trying to make music while hurling? The concept is funny because the image of someone funneling vomit through the narrow mouthpiece of a trumpet, tuba, clarinet, etc, goes against the impulse to find a basin, sink, or toilet. It seems like an ideal combination. Even a didgeridoo sounds like someone barfing in a cave.

Best Case Scenario: While playing as part of orchestra, some trumpeter's notes begin to sound wet and suddenly a geyser of vomit erupts out the bell of the trumpet, showering the crowd. The player should still be desperately trying to play the appropriate notes.

3. Into An Aquarium
This is the sort of thing that could conceivably happen. You're having a party, you have some friends who can't hold their liquor, and you have large open-topped aquarium. It the perfect storm of hilarity. This idea has already been explored by the likes of Jeff Foxworthy, and it even happens in the recent comedy Superhero Movie (one of a handful of moments that caused me to lose my shit).

Best Case Scenario: I picture a large study in an expensive house, with a long aquarium filled with tropical fish. A smug looking middle-aged man is talking on the phone behind his desk while his maid dusts the shelves and books. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, she rushes to the aquarium and lets fly. All the man can do is stare in horror at the technicolor cloud billowing downwards through the water.

2. In The Change-Box on A Public Bus
This image first popped up during a conversation with friends in university (as most funny ideas do), and it still cracks me up. Why is it funny? Because it's random as hell. It's a change-box on a bus! Why and how would anyone ever do that? How would people react? Who would clean it, and how? It's a joke filled with mystery.

Best Case Scenario: A man is running as fast as he can to catch the bus and finally the kind-hearted bus driver brings it to a stop and opens the door. Once the running man clambers aboard, he immediately throws himself upon the change-box and vomits through the narrow slot. Upon finishing, he stands up straight, catches his breath and says, "No need to count it. It's all there, I assure you."

1. Up Someone's Sleeve
If you've read this far, then you've obviously not easily offended and understand that sometimes a joke can be gross. Well, I can't think of it getting any messier than this. Up someone's sleeve. A stranger's sleeve. The sleeve of a jacket, a turtleneck, a Christmas sweater. Whatever it is, puke is traveling via sleeve. Although it's disgusting and crazy, there's something undeniably funny about it.

Best Case Scenario: A man is walking down the street, minding his own business. Another fellow, who is obviously sick and clearly about to throw up, runs up to the walking man and frantically begins clawing at his shirt. The walking man desperately tries to push the sick man away, to get him to release his grip. Finally, when the struggle can go on no longer, the sick man grabs the walking man's sleeve and vomits in the wrist hole, holding it to his face as if it were an airsick bag. He does it with such force, that barf sprays out the neck hole of the walking man's shirt.

For those who say this is completely sick, I know. I thought it up. I wouldn't want to be part of that equation in any way. I don't think I could even handle witnessing it in person. But it makes me laugh, and laugh, and laugh when I think about it. And that's awesome.

P.S. Funniest place I've thrown up: A dresser drawer.

Reason to Dislike Facebook

Okay, to start off, I'm not simply out to tell you that Facebook is horrible and we shouldn't be using it. The truth is I use it myself and may be guilty of some of the things I'm about to point out. The site has become a remarkably huge interconnected community of friends and family, and has become the sole means of communication for a lot of people new to the Internet. I'm sure we all have a least one older relative who uses Facebook to stay in touch.

But what I'd like to point out are the lame, weird, or stupid aspects that really have gotten out of control during the growth of the site.

5. Poking
This "action" has such an abstract purpose, that I dare you to try and explain it to someone who isn't familiar with the Internet. Go ahead, and explain it to your grandma. I promise in an hour one of you will be crying. Okay, so maybe I'm exaggerating, but with all the other means of communicating on the site (commenting, notes, chatting, sending messages, etc) this one is the most pointless by far and really only creates busywork. If you truly want to get someone's attention, then just write to them. Otherwise it's like receiving a blank piece of paper in the mail.

4. The Person with the Most Friends Wins!
Somewhere along the line adding people to your friends list became a contest. And not even a contest where someone is keeping score, but just a way of numbering your popularity to improve your sense of self-worth. I'm tired of seeing people with lists of friends in the hundreds. Are you honestly saying that all these people are individuals that you like and trust and have formed some bond with? Or is it someone you sat next to in Grade 4 and haven't spoken to since Grade 5? Or someone you saw at a party once? Not everyone you've encountered in life is a friend. If you've never interacted with a person on Facebook, yet they are in your friends list, then they don't really belong there, do they? Quality over quantity, people.

3. Staying Busy
So now that you've established several hundred people you barely know, it's time to keep up with the never-ending flood of requests, invites, and messages. Join this group, play this game, add this application, watch this video, read this thing, do this survey, attend this event, try this quiz, and don't forget to invite your remaining friends to join Facebook! You can waste so much time just sifting your way through all this stuff.

Oh and don't forget to update your status! What are you doing right now!? Your friends, nay, the world needs to know! That was fun for the first several months...but the truth is...it's just more pointless busy work, and it paved the way for the likes of Twitter. We talk more, and communicate with greater ease thanks to technology, but we're definitely saying less. God help us.

2. Application Hell
When I first joined Facebook I found it to be a much more pleasing social network than the likes of MySpace, which as you may or may not know, looks like ass. But now, it's come to the point where Facebook has gone batshit out of control with these stupid, stupid, STUPID applications. They got ten a piece for everything you can imagine, and billion and a half more that do nothing at all!

"Oh Susie, I remember her from high school. Let's check out her profile page ... oh my lord, it's a clusterf**k of idiocy!!"

Is there something fun about collecting all these meaningless, ugly, tacky little things. It's like a Goddamn circus broke out on your profile and was attacked by a "cute" parade. Is it necessary to display a fart joke randomizer, or a hug of the day, or a TV show quiz, or what kind of flower you are, or a mood meter, or sexy friend countdown, or send someone a virtual cupcake? Stop it! This has gotten out of hand.

1. The Creepiness Factor
You know how people joke about how Facebook is like a paradise for stalkers? Well, I'm no stalker, but it's worrisome to see the sheer volume of personal information you can gain access to; information people willingly release into the Internet like a flock of doves.

Besides the obvious status updates that give you current info on all the people you "know", you are also given front row seats to every picture they take. You haven't spoken to some person in years, and now here's dozens of photos of their baby. Or if all those personal family photos didn't explain enough, here's some notes they wrote listing stuff you don't know about them. Why do I need to know that? I don't need to know that he is addicted to watching Spongebob Squarepants, or that she does origami on the toilet. Why do we need to know that? And why are you all so trusting enough to share?

Okay, so there are settings you can toy around with so you don't have to see all this crap. Change some privacy settings, alter your news feed, and be done with it. I know. But the point is, it's a huge part of what Facebook is. It's one thing to tell people your hobbies or what books you like, but it's another thing altogether to share personal secrets, or pictures of your children taking a bath to people who are essentially strangers. Then next thing you know you're being tagged in a photo from a party you can't remember, someone has sketched a wang in your graffiti application, and your uncle wont stop poking you.

Tell me that's not creepy.