"I yam what I yam, and dat's all what I yam, I'm Popeye the Sailor Man, toot, toot!"

Happy 75th to that spinach guzzlin', Bluto battlin', Olive Oyl chasin', phrase coining sailor...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/15/entertainment/main593542.shtml

Thanks, W'ON! No thanks, for the earworm that the simple mention of Popeye caused..

Yeah.

"...I'm strong to the scrinach,
'cause I eats me spinach..."

worm on...

or was that, "I eat my spinach"?

What's an earworm in this instance? And do glabrous earworms wear earwigs?

Scrinach? I thunk it were 'finach.'

jheem, it comes from one of those felicitous German words, like treppenwitz.

~A melody that won't go out of your head.

>finach<

You could be right!

And let's not forget ol' hamburger-lovin' Wimpy.

"...I'm strong to the finish,
'cause I eats me spinach..."

There is/was a hamburger chain in the old country called Wimpy's. Cross-ponders, does it still exist?

http://www.wimpys.co.uk/

Remember, Dudley Moore's character, Stanley Moon, worked in a Wimpy's in Bedazzled.

"I'll gladly pay you Tuesday, for a hamburger today"...

"And I'll have pickles, lettuce and onions, both on that."

Which, again, brings us to the question: Why is it a hamburger if it's made of beef? (originally made of pork, I'm guessin')

It's the nominalized adjectival form of Hamburg. An americanized frikadelle or Swedish meatball or risolle.

> An americanized frikadelle


mmmm, I can see that could have "presented a coupla marketing issues, JB!"

"...I'm strong to the finish,
'cause I eats me spinach..."

When I was a wee lad, my mother used to encourage me to eat my spinach -- which usually came out of a can, horribly wilted, slippery and doused with some awful vinegar -- so that I would grow up to be big and strong like Popeye. It took many years to overcome the revulsion produced by this childhood experience. I can now eat the stuff raw or very lightly cooked, but still not the vomit-inducing stuff which comes in the tin.

I attually® *liked the stuff as a kid. We got the fresh stuff, with sand in it. The sand was part of the joy of it, or so I claimed. My mother always said it was because I had to be different.

There is/was a hamburger chain in the old country called Wimpy's. Cross-ponders, does it still exist?

Yes. But they are not as ubiquitous as they were. In fact I had to look them up to be sure they *did still exist.

http://www.british-franchise.org/wimpy-restaurants/#history

In hunting that up I came across this ‘fact’.

“Producing a single hamburger patty uses enough fossil fuel to drive a small car 20 miles and enough water for 12 showers!”

Could just be axe-grinding statistical presentation on someone’s part I guess. You know – lies, damned lies and statistics.

Why is something supposedly made of beef called a hamburger, by the way?

beef called a hamburger

check out jheem's reply five posts up.

I believe hot dogs are called frankfurters for a similiar reason. Now why do *we call them hot dogs?

Btter yet, Anna, why do those South of the border refer to wraps as little donkeys? And while I'm on dogs, you know it used to drive my first college German professor apoplectic that there was a chain, here in the States, called der Wienerschnitzel. Not only should it be das, but a Viennese cutlut has little to do with a Wuerstchen. The chain has since dropped the incorrect definite article from their name.

check out jheem's reply five posts up.

Oh yeah, thanks et. I missed that - unusual for me - I think . Not only that, but I failed to make my link live

So what all this boils down to is "What's more American than hotdogs...or hamburgers?" ...turns out to be "What's more American than what's German?" Come to think of it...there's all that beer, too.

Wasn't German one of the languages that was seriously considered as a possible national language in our early years in the USA?

Wasn't German one of the languages that was seriously considered as a possible national language in our early years in the USA?


I think that's an urban legend. I'll go check.


Yup. Scroll down to the response to the Ann Landers column:
http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/onevote.htm

Thanks, Faldage.

Here's something written to Ann Landers on the subject from that site--but no way of verifying it today:

"In 1794 some German settlers in Virginia petitioned the U.S. Congress to have certain federal statutes translated into German and printed in both languages. This petition was referred to a committee, which voted the idea down - by a margin of one vote."

Read a little farther down, Dub Dub'. Looks like even that one is wrong.

OTOH, Hitler *did come up one vote shy of unanimous.

Question is:

Was there ever anything that was determined by a one-vote difference?

Question #2:

Which thread on AWAD morphed most dangerously into routes far beyond its point of origin?