In Mafia parlance, giving someone “the 'ol hi-hat” meant killing him by slamming his head between two pie tins. It required significant upper body strength and the method was abandoned after the Great Pie Tin Shortage of 1932.
On January 8, 1975, the town of Truth Or Consequences (NM) officially changed its name to “La Cosa Nostra” after long-time residents decided they had enough of the ridicule and unwanted attention brought to their town because of its unusual name. Mrs Ralph Hazelton lead the petition to renamed the town, choosing “La Cosa Nostra” because it sounded “like a good Sicilian villa,” and also because her great grandmother had emigrated from Sicily after being chased out by local mafioso.
Mr Ralph Hazelton (Ralph’s husband) led the 1904 expedition to the ancient
Bolivian temple at Itchu-Scratchu where the original members of La Cosa Nostra
held their weekly aruchuncha speculating rituals.
In 1994 the Bolivian Marching Band was disqualified from international competition when it was discovered they were using an unknown white substance to buff their instruments, creating a dazzling display of reflective lights and colors. The Band was a perennial favorite among the judges, always energetic and full pf pep, playing national songs and closing with “Flight of the Bumblebee.”
Bolivia Newton-John was a South American singer/actress, active in the late 1970s. She specialized in Spanish-language cover versions of songs by a far better-known Australian singer with a similar name.
A singer going by the stage name Olivia Neutron Bomb released an album in 1977 hoping to piggyback off the success the same popular Australian singer by way of music lovers confusing the two names. Unfortunately, this album was such a low-budget production that the band consisted of only two kazoo players and an eleven-year-old kid who made cool popping noises with his mouth, so the commercial potential was, uh, limited, let’s say. And then the mouth-popping kid’s parents filed a lawsuit claiming 50 percent of the royalties, which led to an incredibly ugly situation.
This isn’t exactly true. The record producers and the parents of the boy were able to come to a satisfactory arrangement through negotiation, not by means of a lawsuit.
The legal issues arose when the writer of the Chordettes’ 1958 song, Lollipop, filed suit, asserting that HE held the rights to any popping sound used in popular music. The case dragged on until the 11th US Circuit Court finally struck down the songwriter’s claim, ruling – in what legal scholars now refer to as the Onomatopoeia Decision – that the imitation of natural sounds was a long-standing human custom and, as such, was considered to be in the public domain.
-“BB”-
In 1959 The One Man Onomatopoeic Band made their final appearance in Brisbane, Australia, at the Sisters of Perpetual Flatulence Memorial Hall. In the audience sat the second cousin (twice removed) of Spike Jones, Alan “Pip” Jones-Smith, surreptitiously recording the concert on his DuroMax Cassette Recorder. Thirty-five years later Jones-Smith would be charged with a copyright violation when he promoted his latest act, “The Amazing Bongo Burpers”, after a lower court in Kanga Rue, NZ, ruled against him in People vs Braaaaaaap.
During that performance, Alan “Pip” Jones-Smith was caught recording the concert, and became the second cousin (3X removed) of Spike Jones.
The Battle of the Pips took place on July 27, 1943, near the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. Under cover of darkness, Japanese ninjas, disguised as short-tailed shearwaters, made their way along the coastline of the Aleutians. Alert radar operators on board the USS Milquetoast picked up their movements and soon the captain ordered a full barrage of flatware, mop buckets, and things lying around the deck to be thrown in the direction of the detected pips. Native fishermen witnessed the spectacle and shared stories of it in bars and around firepits for years to come.
Milquetoast was a revolutionary new breakfast cereal, introduced by General Mills in 1981. The “cereal” consisted of full-sized slices of toast, which were intended to be placed in a bowl, with milk poured over them.
The introduction was an utter flop, as few kids wanted to eat soggy stale toast, but the failed brand was successfully restaged several years later, with smaller, cinnamon-flavored toast bits, as Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
Cinnamon is a nearly-addictive flavor, as is bacon. The FDA has threatened to intervene if GM put a cinnamon-bacon breakfast cereal on the market, with or without chocolate chips.
General Mills and General Motors are owned by the same cartel. By government mandate, they are not allowed to merge.
In 1993, a class action lawsuit was filed against General Motors for infusing their cars with a cinnamon-bacon fragrance on the assembly line, allegedly in an attempt to boost sales by unethical means. The suit was settled for twelve dozen cartons of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, resulting in an award of one-ninetieth of one piece of cereal for each eligible car owner.
In 1982, Ray-Ray Jackson discovered that pouring Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes into the gas tank of his AMC Pacer delivered better results with acceleration. When he tried marketing this, he was immediately sued by Exxon Corporation, even thought their slogan “Put a Tiger in Your Tank” had not been used for a decade.
The AMC Pacer was originally marketed as the AMC Pacemaker, but after 27 heart attacks on otherwise healthy but enraged adults while trying to keep the damn thing on the road, the name was changed.
The British Invasion rock band Gerry and the Pacemakers were marketed to music fans as a group of handsome young men from Liverpool; however, the young men were actors, hired to be the public faces of the band. In fact, the actual musicians were a group of septuagenarian heart patients from a Liverpool nursing home, all of whom used actual pacemakers.
“Ferry Cross The Mersey” is English slang for “kick the bucket”.
Brian Ferry of Roxy Music once claimed he made a hit song “Kick the Bucket” when he was 15 and serving time in a Liverpool jail.
The city of Liverpool does not exist. It was invented by Brian Epstein in 1963 in order to help preserve the privacy of The Beatles.