Hamburger on the street in Mystic Conn.?

What does this mean? Google didn’t help me… I saw it in the Indian disease article by Cecil and also in a bunch of random blogs and stuff through google… but no origin is listed.

It’s a reference to an old Firesign Theatre quote, “there’s hamburger all over the highway in Mystic, Connecticut.” If you’re too young to remember Firesign Theatre, it’s hard to explain why this is funny. You kinda had to be there.

And even then it might not help. I was there, and never found Firesign Theater particularly funny.

It’s from The Firesign Theatre, the legendary psychedelic comedy group. It’s a line on their early album, “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers.” That same album gave us The Department of Redundancy Department, among other lines which have been repeated for over 30 years.

The original line has a radio announcer saying, “and there’s hamburger all over the highway in Mystic, Connecticut.” followed by a newscaster saying, “Good morning. Those are the headlines; now the rumors behind the news.”

This site says it was based on a real incident:

More to the point, the album in set in an alternate world in which the U.S. is under a dictatorship (remember that Nixon was President and the Vietnam War was going on) and the citizens were starving. Most of the first half of the album is full of surrealistic food references.

Then you weren’t there. :smiley:

We’ll be Hieronymus Bosch in Jest a Minute, but Faust . . .

Shoes For Industry! Shoes For The Dead!

With counter-subversive educational priorities the way they are today, it really helps our side to re-enlist. So wake up, and look at your only real option: Tirebiter for Dogkiller, Sector R. Paid for by Morse Science Communist Martyrs, friends of Leroy Tirebiter.

Rocky Rococo at your cervix!

I don’t know if everyone was starving, but George sure had a case of the munchies, probably from buying dope from Ralph Spoilsport at the end of the previous album.

Poor Cambridge pizza guys had to deal with “pizza to go, no anchovies” orders for a long time back when Nick Danger came out.

With this line you’ve managed to make this pizza even more unappetizing, and I didn’t think that was possible.

We’re all bozos on this bus.

And they’d never deliver to the hills after curfew.

This could go on for a LONG time. For those of us who remember it, Firesign Theater probably generated more quotable non-sequitors and catch phrases than anything before or since.

Now go upstairs and help Porcelain make the beds.

What are you people doing in my car?

Coming, Mother!

He’s so good with the help, Fred.

Don’t eat with your hands, son. Use your entrenching tool.

Stop calling me Fred, my name is Adolph!

The Foxtrot!

Look! The Steam-powered pushover!

It goes in and out like anything!
(A quote from Eeyore, actually.)