Umm, lines of longitude aren’t parallel. At least they aren’t in Euclidean geometry.
D’oh! Oh yeah… and I call myself a geologist. Just don’t tell my students.
I meant “sub-parallels”, that’s it.
Plus, I’m used to thinking in UTM.
And… I was tired. And drunk.
A few years back, when Ed McMahon was Carson’s second banana, Ed claimed that Mayonnaise was originally Mahonnaise, and was invented by long-ago relatives of his. This is redolent of an urban legend invented for the Tonight Show, but I’ve brought it up all the same. Care to chew it to shreds?
AskNott
how about marc’s big boy and bob’s big boy? are they both out of biz now?
Bob’s Big Boy is alive and well, in California, at least. I’ve never heard of Marc’s Big Boy - does it have the same little fat guy in checkered overalls holding up a burger that Bob’s does?
Hmmm . . . Montana weighing in. We have Best Foods, not Hellman’s, and Smucker’s, not that other brand I’ve never heard of, but we have Osco, not Sav-On, and we’re definitely west of the continental divide. (Okay, only 30 miles west, but still.)
“Big Boy” here was always called “JB’s Big Boy,” not “Bob’s Big Boy,” and they had a contest a number of years ago about keeping or chucking the Big Boy (yes, same Big Boy, checkered overalls, hoisting a burger). They decided to chuck the Big Boy, and now the restaurant is just called JB’s. I didn’t know they still had Big Boys anywhere.
Speaking of, anybody else remember Sambo’s? It was a diner-type restaurant like Big Boy, but with this cheesy (and, in retrospect, slightly racist) decor dealing with a little black boy (Sambo) running from a tiger. It was a haunt of my childhood, but it’s been closed for years. I’m pretty sure it was a chain, though.
Jodi
Fiat Justitia
I think there’s still one Sambo’s in Santa Barbara, Jodih.
If my memory serves me, Bob’s Big Boy’s first restaurant opened in my hometown of Glendale, California. (Off of Brand Blvd., I believe, or Colorado Blvd.?) I know this because an elderly friend of mine (recently deceased) applied for a job (back in the 30s or 40s) at the aforementioned Bob’s.
Since then, Bob’s have flourished and waned. Many of their restaurants closed in California several years ago. (I am still bitter that Coco’s restaurant took over Big Boys, particularly the one in Sunland-Tujunga, off of the 210 freeway.) But, there is still a Bob’s in the Eagle Rock Mall (dined there a few months ago) and one in the Burbank/Glendale area, near the DMV, on Glenoaks. (I mention locations because I know there are plenty of S. Calif. Dopers here.)
I am very fond of Bob’s, and even after I became a vegetarian, I still love their salads, and have been known to order a Big Boy to go without meat (this confuses the servers) and then I put a veggie burger in it later. Yummm…I LOVE Bob’s!
Of the OP, but as for the Ed McMahon joke, mayonnaise was originally called “mahonesa” after the city of Mahon, on Menorca in the Spanish Balearic Islands. The name of the sauce was then Frenchified to mayonnaise and it entered English under the French name. Mayonnaise is just all-i-oli without the garlic and with lemon.
A note on Restaurants:
Very early in the expansion of restaurant themes nationwide, the idea of franchising gained popularity. Some of the franchises covered large areas (as opposed to the franchising arrangement typical for, say, McDonald’s).
In the mid-1940’s, an entrepreneur named Bob Wian developed a sandwich idea he called the Big Boy®. The key to the Big Boy was that it used two small patties of meat, cooking faster than a single larger hamburger patty. Mr. Wian quickly marketed the idea to restaurantuers throughout the country. After the sandwich proved a hit, these people would enter franchising agreements with Mr. Wian and have the right to the Big Boy® name in a given area of the country. They would add their own name to the front of the Big Boy® title. Thus, the home restaurants in California were Bob’s Big Boy®, whereas the restaurants in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Florida are Frisch’s Big Boy®. In Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, they were Kip’s Big Boy®. Kip’s is now owned by Frisch’s Restaurants, Inc.
These days, based on what I found on the web, the biggest franchise owner appears to be Elias Brothers Restaurants, Inc. of Warren, Michigan. I can’t tell for certain, but it appears they own the original rights to the Big Boy® name, having purchased them from Marriott in the late 80’s. According to a press release you can read at http://www.rimag.com/05/rep_bgby.htm from 1997, Elias was renaming itself Big Boy Restaurants, Inc. and attempting to drop the regional name variants. But their website still calls the company by the Elias name (see http://www.bigboy.com )
Information on the Frisch’s franchises can be found at: http://www.frischs.com/entbboy.htm
Working on that post reminds me of an old joke a friend used on a waitress at Bob’s once: When she asked us for dessert orders, my friend pointed to the picture on the menu of the ‘World Famous’ strawberry shortcake and said he would like some, but could his piece ‘be a little less well-known, please?’ 
Sambo’s was a whole nother story. The original restaurant was in Santa Barbara. It was owned by Sam Battistone and Neil “Bo” Bohnett (Sam-Bo’s, get it?). They opened in 1957 and adopted the theme of the book, “The Story of Little Black Sambo” written in 1899 by Helen Bannerman. The story is set in India, and talks about a little ‘black’ boy who looses his clothes to greedy tigers who end up melting to butter by chasing around the bottom of a tree while Sambo watches. Sambo takes the butter and uses is on a stack of pancakes, which was the tie-in for the restaurants.
Now, of course, the idea of a ‘black’ in India means something other than a ‘black’ in the U.S. However, in this country, the pictures in the book were associated with those of African descent, and Sambo was used in an often racially derrogatory way.
The chain of restaurants spread eastward through the 60’s. When they arrived on the East Coast, they ran into trouble. The NAACP attempted in several states to get the restaurants to change their names (the Urban League was involved to, IIRC). Rhode Island’s Human Rights Commission decided the name was inherently racially insensitive. Through the effect of the bad publicity and lousy management, the chain shrank rapidly in the early 80’s, and now consists of only the original store.
Regarding:
Standard Oil (Indiana) Amoco
Standard Oil (Ohio) Sohio
Just around 20 years ago Sohio made a deal with the devil (British Petroleum) to help with the cash to develop the Alaskan oil reserves at Prudhoe Bay. BP was more than glad to help out–then began eating away at Sohio until it finally spat out the husk, moved all the corporate assests back to Britain, killed the Sohio name, and went after Amoco. The Amoco “merger” (sure) was announced last year, but the Justice Department or the SEC or someone is hesitating about approving it, so far.
Tom~
Hey Jodih, I thought you were in Helena. That’s east of McDonald pass last time I checked.
My family used to eat at the Sambo’s in Great Falls whenever we were there. I remember it as being similar to IHOP. The mayo issue didn’t come up, my mother only knew Miracle Whip, that vile sweet concoction that ruins a perfectly good cheese sandwich.
Frolix8, you might want to read the following two threads previously discussed here:
Mayo v MW: http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum7/HTML/000560.html
Composition of both: [urlhttp://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/003903.html
Each was pretty enjoyable reading at the time. 
FROLIX8 says:
Uhhhh, we moved it. While I was posting. Then we put it back.
You are right, of course, and I am a maroon. :o
Jodi
Fiat Justitia