Every Friday, I post a series of unrelated questions meant to spark conversation in the comments. Answer one, answer all, respond to someone else’s reply, whatever you want. Very casual. On to this week’s topics of discussion…
1. Congratulations! You’ve inherited a large sum of money from a distant relative you didn’t know existed. One catch, though—you must use a portion of your fortune to launch a chain of theme restaurants. (Your relative was a little out there.) What would your restaurant’s theme be? (You can pick a time in history, an obscure hobby, a different professional wrestling commentator, etc.)
(We’ll send a free mental_floss t-shirt to the most creative budding restaurateur.)
2. Based on my (non-scientific) study, 96% of internet discussion revolves around hating things. (You’d be surprised how many YouTube videos there are featuring people blowing up Elmo dolls.) To provide a tiny bit of counterbalance, tell us about something you really like. Or several things. I’ll go first: this old apple farm called Wightman Farms in Morristown, New Jersey, Ivan Maisel’s college football podcast, and Ida Pearle’s customer service. (She designs prints for kids’ rooms; ours arrived with a broken frame, and she has gone well above and way beyond to make it up to us.)
3. Colleges are known for offbeat courses (See: “Goldberg’s Canon: Makin’ Whoopi”), but occasionally I’ll hear stories about a high school teacher who just happened to have an expertise in something you wouldn’t normally teach high school kids, like soap opera history or running a haberdashery. What’s the weirdest class your high school offered?
4. I’ve mentioned before that one of my dream freelance jobs is running a pet-naming consultantcy. No progress on that front to date. So even though we’ve probably covered this topic before, what’s the strangest pet name you’ve ever heard?
[See all the previous Friday Happy Hour transcripts.]
Comments (127)
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I can only contribute to a couple questions this week.
1. My theme restaurant would be something like a Viking mead hall or medieval banquet hall. Yeah, I know that the middle ages thing is currently being done, but my restaurant would go for authenticity. Plop huge platters of roast beast on the table and diners go at it with their bare hands. Drink copiously from a barrel of mead with your hereditary drinking bowl. Fight [literally] for your place at the table. Afterward, enjoy naked drunken greasy wrestling matches for bragging rights. Fun for the whole family.
2. I really like Country Ham. I know it’s all the rage to love bacon, and I do love the candy of meats, but there’s just something about Country Ham that I cannot resist. The same with Deviled Eggs.
posted by Eduardo on 11-13-2009 at 11:34 am
1: Comic Book Themed. I would love to have Spider-man and Batman swinging above my guests. While all the tables would have comic book pages underneath the laminate (a la Wendy’s Tables circa 1980′s . . .just comics and not old timey ads)
2: The Golden Girls.
3: Leathercraft. I know it’s not that “out there”, but it was normally taught at boy scout camp. Not school. I really enjoyed it though.
4: Dookie Gin Rummy. I’m not kidding. A fellow grad student was telling me how his grandmother’s dog was named Dookie Gin Rummy. And you had to call her by her whole name or she wouldn’t come. (I prefer my cat’s name . . .Ampersand (&), and my dog’s name . . .Kahlua. . . .my other dog is named Fiona. Not that unusual but she would never forgive me if I left her out.)
posted by Nathan on 11-13-2009 at 11:35 am
I would have to start an “arts and crafts” restaurant. Everyone would be encouraged to play with their food. Paint with dyed mashed potatoes… make necklaces out of macaroni… building a Frankenstein out of fried chicken… etc. Taking home leftovers never was so much fun!
posted by Bethany on 11-13-2009 at 11:38 am
1. Sadly, I would probably just pass on the inheritance. I don’t think I have it in me to be a restaurateur.
2. I really like Vernors ginger ale (interestingly, one of the two oldest surviving soft drinks in the country—check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernors ). I think I’ve inherited the love of it from my mom’s family, who are all Detroit natives, but until just recently I wasn’t able to buy it in Arkansas. I was so happy when I discovered that Harps grocery stores carry it!
4. My parents have a German Shepherd mix named (by my younger sister) Batman. He goes by Buddy now, but the shame still lingers.
posted by Kelsey on 11-13-2009 at 11:40 am
1. I’d have to say I’d probably do an 80′s cartoon character theme restaurant. Smurfs, Rainbow Brite, etc.
2. I really like thrift shopping.
3. It’s not strange at all, but one high school I went to offered cartooning. I took that class.
4. Mr. Picklesworth. That’s my sisters cats name.
posted by Amanda on 11-13-2009 at 11:43 am
2) Cheese… all kinds.
3) I went to a slightly odd, accelerated high school that offered a lot of classes that you find in college. The best I think, were Stagecraft (the behind the scenes part of theatre), Gender studies, film studies, Southern Lit (great class), oh, and weight training.
4). My grandmother had a dog named Stop It, because that’s all she said to it for the first few weeks she had it.
posted by Lindsey on 11-13-2009 at 11:47 am
RE #1:
Tropical all the way with maybe even a fake little beach in the back with a pond where people could dine on the beach, or even eat picnic-style on the backyard beach. It would have to face west, of course, so people could watch the sunset on a beach in the middle of Tulsa (one of 25 locations, more coming soon! ha).
Oh wow, I could have such fun with that theme as I love all things tropical, beach, tiki, etc… what a great way to start what might prove to be a rather crappy day, thanks m_f!
posted by Sarah in CA on 11-13-2009 at 11:51 am
Man, I love the pumpkin pie from Wightman’s Farms. Been having that on Thanksgiving and Christmas with family since I was a toddler.
1. Cthulu Themed Seafood Restaurant
2. Discontinued Pine Bros. Honey Cough Drops
3. I don’t recall any particularly odd classes (clubs are a different story), but my AP Computer Science Class was in Pascal, which was a dying computer language at the time.
4. My dog’s mother’s name on her certificate is listed as Princess Cakes.
posted by Shawn on 11-13-2009 at 11:54 am
1) My resturant would be Full Contact Barbeque. Four themed rooms for each major sports (football/soccer, baseball, basketball, and ice hockey) would be built around a bar that is themed for Pro Wrestling/MMA.
posted by Kyle on 11-13-2009 at 11:55 am
1. My resturant would have to be multi themed. I would have several different rooms. One would be space, deep ocean, amazon rainforest, desert, mountains, and so forth. I would then have foods that resemble the place where you are sitting. Servers would wear cloths apporotate for their area.
2. I like French Fries, ALOT!
3. At my high school in Texas, we had a birthing class.
4. My nephew got a cute little chocolate lab a few years ago and named him Duck. It still makes me laugh when he gets out, and my ssiter runs around the block calling for Duck.
posted by Katie on 11-13-2009 at 11:55 am
1. There’s a theme restaurant where I live called “Famous Dave’s.” All the waitresses and waiters introduce themselves as “Famous Suzy” or “Famous John,” etc. I would like to open an “Infamous Someone-or-Other,” where all the staff (I guess all the visible staff) must dress up like infamous characters in history or famous movies.
2. There are a lot of things I like. Here is a short list:
Kentucky
Harold and Maude
writing
Wings of Desire
Catch-22
etc.
3. My high school offered pretty normal classes. I honestly cannot think of any out-there classes. The psychology classes, though, used to train rats and participate in a “rat race” held by the university that was next door.
4. We recently got a dog from the Humane Society, and decided to keep the name they gave him since he is three and since we couldn’t agree on a name (the Humane Society didn’t know his original name). They gave him the name Bruser–which I’ve heard of before, but the spelling, I think, is a bit strange for most.
posted by Jenny on 11-13-2009 at 11:57 am
2. My blog makes me happy: a-glorious-gift.blogspot.com :P
3. Would needle work count? We had it in grades third and fourth.
4. For all the Punjabis out there: JUGNI!!!
posted by Sudeep on 11-13-2009 at 11:57 am
1) I’d love to start a restaurant that served food that looked like other food. Cakes that look like burgers, mushrooms carved into tiny chickens… that sort of thing.
2) I love: My friends’ passive aggressive status updates about their fishtanks/farms/restaurants on Facebook, the color blue, the podcast “The History Of Rome”, and the new app I got for my iPhone that lets me count stitches in my knitting.
3) Forensic Archeology.
4) Weird names of my pets or those of friends: The Magical Princess Zosephine, Foo, Spiteful, and Senor Scrappy Cujo Jalapeno The World’s Softest Cat.
posted by Aristan on 11-13-2009 at 11:57 am
1. Cereal and Coffee!
2. I like stepping on crunchy leaves, duck watching, and hot orange tea
3. I think there was a cooking class…
4. I’m determined to name a pet Sir Digby Chicken Caesar sometime in the near future. I would definitely invest in your animal naming business! There is almost nothing more fun
posted by LT on 11-13-2009 at 11:57 am
4. Lula Mae, Mr. Beaumont, Honkee Magoo, Snoony. All names of our cats (past and present).
posted by loripop on 11-13-2009 at 12:01 pm
1. I’d say, a zombie theme restaurant where people have to forage for their food from our five-star dining selections but also live in constant fear of zombie attacks, in the form of dummies that can be beheaded.
2. I really like Gossip Girl, Supernatural, and 30 Rock. I also really like when the guys on Ghosthunters get sidetracked from the ghosts by spiders and personal vendettas and stuff. And Dashboard Confessional, I love Dashboard and Jimmy Eat World and Kings of Leon because Sex on Fire always cheers me up.
3. Probably just Sociology and Psychology classes, but it wasn’t all that weird.
4. My manager told me about his nephew who named their dog Cutie Star. I love that name.
posted by Caitlin on 11-13-2009 at 12:07 pm
1. In high school, I used to come up with ideas for hellish restaurants as an occasional in-class time-wasting device.
My ultimate idea was a buffet called “The Trough,” where patrons ate with their hands out of big wooden troughs. Occasionally, waiter would come by and “slop the customers” with a full bucket of whatever was on the menu that night. Not really a “theme” restaurant, though, unless “Monument To Sheer Gluttony” counts as a theme.
I’ve always wondered what a Daniel Johnston themed place would look like, although I’m not sure what you’d serve besides Mountain Dew and cigarettes. Call it “Jeremiah’s,” put up murals of Daniel’s art on every wall, and make the staff greet every customer with “Hi How Are You!”
Hunter S. Thompson would be a good theme, too. All the steaks would be riddled with bullet holes…
2. In no particular order:
- Belle and Sebastian
- Collecting Grateful Dead bootlegs
- Pictures of schnoodles
- Occult horror movies
- “Amelie”
- Ramones
- Vinyl LPs of classical music
- The artwork on old Eugene Ormandy/Philadelphia Orchestra LP’s
- Tourette’s Guy, even though I know it’s wrong
- Maker’s Mark Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky
- Making food and sharing it with people I care about
posted by clint on 11-13-2009 at 12:11 pm
1 – I’d love to do an “Around the World” themed restaurant that required patrons to visit each ‘country’. There would be different stations that had different authentic cuisines (Indian, Italian, Greek, Ethiopian, Korean, etc) and each station would have traditional table settings, drinks and music, as well as information about the countries and dishes they were going to sample. Customers would walk in small groupings from station to station and spend 15 or 20 minutes at each before moving on to the next. A whole evening out trying new things, and it would solve the problem of “do we do Thai or Korean or Italian tonight?” Yum!
2 – Things I love: hot coffee, dark chocolate, autumn colours, Spring air, clean sheets, holding hands, hot showers, lifting weights…I could go on.
3 – My high school offered a pottery class. I don’t think any others in the area offered one, so I suppose it was unusual in that sense.
4 – Two friends of mine named their cats Zarvox and Barbarella. The cats are hairless, too. Weird, right?
posted by Jenny on 11-13-2009 at 12:11 pm
1. The Office. They would serve cereal (one of Michael’s many, many dreams is to open a restuarant entitled “Mike’s Cereal Shack”, mint chocolate chip ice cream cake (Michael can’t shut up about everytime they have a birthday party), bacon cooked on a grill that had not been burned by Michael’s foot, beets from Dwight’s farm, soft shell crab (Jim’s favorite food), and pizza ‘cuz they order pizza like every other episode. Of course they’d have portraits and merchandise all over the wall, and every month they’d have a contest for the best “That’s what she said!” joke.
2. I looooove Buffalo Wild Wings. I could eat there every day if I could (I limit myself to about twice a week, ha), and I always get the same thing: chicken tender wrap with honey barbeque sauce, and chips and salsa. I’m in love with their chips and salsa. I’m always disappointed that you get more salsa than chips, because I’ve tried eating their salsa with different chips and it just isn’t the same.
3. Psychology in Film. Not really weird, just amazing that since the psychology teacher just wanted to watch movies all day, the principal allowed her to make a class out of it. One time we watched “Monty Pyhton and the Holy Grail” to “study” what makes people laugh. It was amazing.
4. Butterscotch “Butters” Bob. That’s my parent’s cat’s name. My brother’s call him Butters because of South Park, and my mom just wanted to add Bob to it.
posted by Jen on 11-13-2009 at 12:13 pm
1) I would say a mad scientist’s theme. Test tube drinks, the jacob’s ladder lighting up the place. Bunsen burners to keep food warm, etc. Waiters could either be Igor’s, scientist or horrible creation (their choice).
4) I just named my new siamese cat “General Tso”. I think that works on many levels.
posted by Geo on 11-13-2009 at 12:24 pm
1.) I would open up a restaurant named “The Last Supper” and it would have 4 or 5 rooms styled in the time of Jesus and his apostles. You would get to dress up like your favorite apostle and have a family style dinner. Now there would be no religion involved just a meal for everyone to experience what the last supper may have been like for everyone. What apostle would you be?
2.) I love laffy taffy!!! I especially love banana flavored and my least favorite is the green apple, but will never turn a piece of the stuff away!3
3.) N/A….my high school was about as plain as it gets
4.) D – O – G …..the name was pronounced as the spelling (letter by letter) and not the word if that makes sense…I thought while clever it was just kind of stupid!
posted by JW on 11-13-2009 at 12:34 pm
(1) My idea for a themed-restaurant is “Grandma Lou’s Liquor Cabinet.” Clearly, this would be a restaurant that involves a well-stocked bar. However, we would serve family classics such as meatloaf, mash potatoes, green beans, and homemade rolls. Oh, and we can’t forget some delicious apple pie. (We would make all of our food from scratch, obviously.)
As far as decorating goes, we would have a lot of doilies, old dining room tables (we would have a family-style service), old family photos, and knick-knacks galore. (My grandmother owns a sea-shell overhead lamp that would be a prominent fixture.)
Lastly, connected to the restaurant would be grandma’s actual liquor cabinet … a bar separate from the dining area for those who weren’t interested in dinner. This room would be similar in style to the dining room, but feature a few old couches and a recliner or two for seating.
posted by Courtney on 11-13-2009 at 12:35 pm
1. It will be called “Waffles and Poppers, et al.” The menu will include a variety of waffles and jalapeno poppers, and it will be open very, very late. An ex-boyfriend I had wanted to open a restaurant called McStarchy’s, featuring potatoes, white bread, and pasta.
2. I love the customer service at USAA, anything that has ever come from Hayao Miyazaki’s head, waffles, jalapeno poppers, when people spell out the word “heart” (as in, “I heart waffles”), NPR.
3. May not entirely fit with the question, but it’s all I got: I had to take a typing class in high school–on typewriters. Not a typing proficiency class, mind you, we had to actually learn how to adjust the margins and format papers on typewriters. This was in 1999.
4. As a 9 year-old who was very aware of current events, I named my cat Norman Schwarzkopf.
posted by Cynthia on 11-13-2009 at 12:36 pm
i would have a chain that focuses on switching side dishes with main dishes. instead of having potatoes and macaroni and cheese as a side dish they would be the main dishes in different delicious ways. with side dishes made to be the side dish. the restaurant would be called SideDish.
posted by Dillon on 11-13-2009 at 12:37 pm
1- Prolly something boring, like a sports bar. No shirt for me.
2- My son make me very happy, so cute.
4- I have ferrets, so I know a lot of people with ferrets. Several of them have decided to name their ferrets in sets. For example, someone has 3 ferrets named “mac”, “ann”, “cheese”. I also no someone with 2 ferrets named “lost” and “found”. I wanted to name my 2 newest ferret editions “biscuit” and “gravy”, but was vetoed by my son. They are now called “Zoom” and “Blitz”.
posted by KJ on 11-13-2009 at 12:39 pm
my friend knew a person who named there dog D-O-G
posted by Dillon on 11-13-2009 at 12:40 pm
1. My theme would be different movies. For example Zoolander, Back to the Future, or Lord of the Rings. Each room would be a different movie, and I’d even have a few props from the movie.
2. Oscar Wilde and independent films.
posted by Heidi on 11-13-2009 at 12:45 pm
2. I love coffee, parrots, the St. Louis Gateway Arch, roadtrips, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, clarinets, saxophones, and science.
4. I know someone with a cat named Winston.
posted by the creature on 11-13-2009 at 12:46 pm
1. I would theme my restaurant to colors. There would be two or three colors of food and drink served per day. The decor (lighting, tablecloths, napkins, menu, and outdoor signs) would change to match the colors. You would know by driving by what colors would be served. Since it changes regularly the colors can reflect what is in season or holidays. Examples: Fall Colors (Red, Orange, and Brown – Roasted Tomatoes, Baked Sweet Potatoes, Steak) Saint Patrick’s Day (Green and White) – Mashed potatoes (in either green or white), Herb Chicken, and Greek Salad with Feta Cheese)
2. Orange, cheese!!, being warm, reading
4. Angel Princess Tundra Dancer
Although my parents’ new dogs are Boris and Natasha (i.e. Rocky and Bullwinkle)
posted by Hilldawg on 11-13-2009 at 12:51 pm
1. I would probably skip on the inheritance. Running a restaurant and doing it extremely well (the only way to do it) is more than I am willing to take on at this stage of my life.
2. The beach makes me sooo happy!
3. I went to a boring public school a long time ago where nothing was interesting about the classes.
4. My brother had a cat named Phydeaux (pronounced Fido). My brother is funny.
posted by Hyacinth on 11-13-2009 at 12:55 pm
1. I’d like a restaurant that delivered breakfast, like perfect Eggs Benedict, biscuits and gravy, waffles, and such.
2. I love caramelized onion, mushroom, and bleu cheese omelettes.
3. My high school was ultra boring, but I had a Film and Religion class in college. Not that odd, but we did get to watch “Life of Brian.”
4. I have three cats named Jeannie (registered name Phoenix), Opus, and Fezzik (registered name Modus Hoperandi).
posted by Rachel on 11-13-2009 at 12:58 pm
1. I would charge more according to how “done” you want your steak.
2. Steak – that still has a fighting chance.
3. I majored in computer programming in high school (in the 70′s).
4. A woman in an apartment I lived in had a little dog named “Husband” – I was never sure if that was sad or funny.
posted by PartiallyDeflected on 11-13-2009 at 12:58 pm
1. Hmm…I think my restaurant theme of today would be a picnic theme. Everything would look like you were outside (dim lights as the day progresses…but don’t worry, there are street lights periodically throughout the restaurant for a romantic nighttime picnic). You sit on blankets on turf. Waiters carry baskets instead of trays. The menu consists of fancified picnic foods like gourmet potato salads, paninis, pies, etc. No rain, no ants! And air conditioning…which is pretty much the reason I have never picniced in my life. :-p Also, I could call it “Zingaling Somers” (Or SUMMERS?)…because that is my ReCaptcha and I think fate assigned it to my theme.
2. I’m not into healthy food, but CookingLight.com has the tastiest recipes. Also, Etsy.com user ‘lasercut’ does some awesome stuff: Custom engravings in woods, plastics, etc. I got a couple of custom charms and they were super cheap, too.
3. If you did badly in school or they had little hope for your future, my high school had a class for practical domestic matters. Don’t remember the actual name, but they taught the kids how to balance checkbooks, change diapers, etc. Very depressing in my opinion…
4. My hispanic friend named his dog Perro (Spanish for ‘dog’).
posted by Nicole on 11-13-2009 at 1:08 pm
1.) My restaurant would be “Betty Crocker on Wheels.” You could order from any section of the cook book. Short orders would be limited to the ten most popular items per section (entrees, appetizers, etc.). Special orders could be made upon request with prior notice/ reservations. The kicker would be that it’s open 24 hours. You want a homestyle meatloaf at 3 a.m.? No problem!
2.)I love mentalfloss.com, seriously. My addiction started with Jeopardy. I love the smell of West Virginia (my home state) in the fall when the scent of purple asters fills the air and the leaves look like fire painted upon the sky. I love Halloween when we all get to be kids again, if just for one night. And I love the song from the New Moon soundtrack “All I Believe In” by The Magic Numbers & Amadou & Mariam.
3.) In HS I took a class called Conflict Management. The teacher would plot us against one another and make us sort it out while he played referee. For example: one day he listed off several statistical facts about different races and their tendancy toward specific crimes, socioeconomic status, etc. No one argued with the the statistics, in fact many felt it was a stark look into the realities of being part of whatever ethic background was being discussed, until the end of the class when he informed the students (half of whom were black) that the facts had been compiled by the KKK. Suddenly, everyone disagreed with the findings. We touched on a great number of sensitive topics in that class, but I think we left it as some of the most tolerant and open minded people in our student body.
4.) My brother and his roomate have two cats. The roomate’s cat is named Tripod (they call him “Tri” because he only has three legs). Later, when my brother got a cat (I guess he was going for consistency) he named it “Quad.” Ironically, Tri can’t lay down like a normal cat, he just falls over onto his side. Even though Quad has all four legs, he flops over just like Tri.
posted by Chris on 11-13-2009 at 1:08 pm
1) I’d have a restaurant with a regular menu, but based around a “breakfast in bed” theme. Everyone gets a bed booth and pyjamas with slippers.
2) So many things:
- Arrested Development
- The Beatles, Zeppelin, Van Morrison, and Neil Young
- Meat, coffee, beer and ice cream
- Obscure tools
- Naps. Who doesn’t love naps?
3) The least regular classes I took in high school were photography and drama. Nothing too crazy.
4) My buddy’s parents are pretty left-wing, and used to have a cat named Chairman Meow. I still get a kick out of it.
posted by Bert on 11-13-2009 at 1:13 pm
I would open the USFL Sports Bar and Grill . Come check out our helmet display, containing every helmet from every USFL team! All our servers wear jerseys from your favorite USFL players, including Jim Kelly, Steve Young, Herschel Walker and Doug Flutie! Several of our menu items honor memorable USFL teams, like the Arizona Wrangler porterhouse steak! Try a favorite of owner Dr. Ted Diethrich, the Jacksonville Bulls half-pound bacon double cheeseburger! It comes with a side of our Philadelphia Star French fries! They’re shaped like stars! Indulge your sweet tooth by choosing from our menu of desserts! Dig into Strawberry Chicago Bli(n)tz by yourself or the whole table can share the behemoth Memphis Showboat five-scoop ice cream sundae!
You say you want drink specials? Enjoy our signature USFL Draft, always only three dollars! And if you don’t have time to eat in, you can always get your food to go at the Los Angeles Express window!
Come on in to the USFL Bar and Grill, where you can relive the excitement of the USFL every day!
posted by Greg on 11-13-2009 at 1:16 pm
1. I would start an amputee themed restaurant where all the tables and chairs would be missing legs and the forks would be randomly missing tines. The slogan would be “It’s in the meat.”
2. classical music
posted by Jud on 11-13-2009 at 1:24 pm
1. theme restauant would be Preggos’–it’s like Hooters but the waitresses could only work there for about 9 months at a time. Hot pants and halter tops are the uniforms. The menu would have three parts: a, b and c sections.
2. i like when I open a box of candy with nutrition facts showing 8 servings with 4 pieces per serving; and I actually find 32 pieces of candy in there…
3. Driver training was the weirdest, taught by people who had no idea what they were doing.
4. I had a white mouse named Captain Lou–that’s right, Captain Lou Albino. The funny thing is we had the mouse about six months before my wife asked me if I named the mouse after the wrestler–she never got the joke!
posted by Wayne on 11-13-2009 at 1:30 pm
1. The theme restaurant would be Mr. Wright’s (as in Stephen Wright). Rooms and menu would play off his gags, so breakfast would be “French Toast during the Renaissance”, served by appropriately garbed staff. Be sure you don’t park where it says “compact cars”.
2. I love chile. Red or green. Breakfast, lunch, snack or dinner.
3. The week before spring break we had no regular classes, just one morning and one afternoon “club”. One was kitemaking.
4. A guy I work with has two dogs, one he’s had for eight years and one for about four. The older dog has an ordinary name, but after four years they still don’t have a name for the younger dog so he’s just “new dog”.
posted by DenverGregg on 11-13-2009 at 1:32 pm
1. A bakery/deli/art house on the coast of Maine.
2. Camden, Maine. (see the theme? yep, just got back from a vacation there.)
3.
4. Not really a strange name, but a strange reason for the name. A friend of mine (single woman) named her dog HONEY so that when she got home at night, she yelled out “Honey, I’m home.”
posted by Fran on 11-13-2009 at 1:33 pm
4) i had a Scottie named Duffy Cadwallader McGuirk, and his sister was Tami Tattletale of Tipperary.
although, my reCAPTCHA would be an interesting pet name too:
Penny veracruz
posted by mri on 11-13-2009 at 1:34 pm
1. I would have a non-themed theme restaurant. I don’t care for the themed restaurants.
2. I like the beach, water, swimming, shopping, lavender chocolate bars, music.
3. I guess the weirdest class was woodworking
4. I had a cat named Sir Charles Regal Winthorpe.
posted by sjms on 11-13-2009 at 1:40 pm
3. I teach Children’s Theatre and Comedy and Improvisation in the high school where I work. We also offer Beginning Lights and Sound Design, Beginning Directing, Shakespeare, and American Drama.
4. Our dog is named Cuchculainn (pronounced Ca-hoo-lan). It is from Irish mythology and suits him as he is very red in color!
posted by Lightlylilly on 11-13-2009 at 1:41 pm
1. I think it would be fun to have a roller derby themed restaurant. Do mock bouts every hour or so for the people to watch while they eat.
2. I like sewing, and listening to music, and dancing, photography, art, watching sons of anarchy, the feeling of freedom when i’m leaving work, when my cats sleep across my face and purr, the warmth of the sun (not a fan of winter!), and the way the ocean smells…i’ll end my list there.
4. I’ve worked with animals alot, so I should have a list of strange names but surprisingly all I can think of are the really basic animal names. One of the things I really like though, are when people give their pets people names like Alfred, or John, or Michael. Its weird associating common names with pets. Also…when people give their pets full names. For example one of my cats is Mr. Max Bojangles (it was a compromise between my father and I). People love it…and so do I!
posted by Teresa on 11-13-2009 at 1:48 pm
1. I have always wanted to have a restaurant where the specialties on the menu were things I can actually make in real life, like Spaghetti-O’s from the can, or Kraft mac and cheese. I think yuppies would pay big money to chow down on a regular grilled-cheese sandwich and a cup of Campbell’s tomato soup, because it’s not something they’d make for themselves but it reminds them of being a kid.
2. I love so many things in the world, but if I have to pick just one for today, I’d say it’s Steel’s Fudge from the Jersey shore. I order it every Christmas and they ship it here to Denver.
3. It was in 8th grade, not high school, but my Social Studies teacher, whose family was from Pakistan, gave us a lunchtime tutorial on how to apply decorative henna to our hands and feet. It was awesome!
4. My bulldog’s full name is Manchester United Freckleweiner Boodles the Third, but we just call him Manny.
posted by FizzyGurrl on 11-13-2009 at 1:51 pm
1. I’ve never really put any thought it not this particular idea, but I suppose I would make a history themed restaurant. Each server/employee would dress as a famous historical figure and give you a short biography. All of the menu items would be related to history somehow (how about Marie Antoinette cake, Johnny Appleseed pie, Civil War rations, ____). Each room would have a separate time period/region and guests could choose what historical era they would like to sit in.
2. I like:
cute puppies
soda
sleeping late
iPods
famous quotations
word search puzzles
baseball
3. Didn’t really have any weird classes, just really weird teachers.
4. My boyfriend’s dog’s name is Pache (pa-ch-long a) I think it means “peace” in Romanian.
posted by LilyoftheValley on 11-13-2009 at 1:58 pm
1) Omelettes and Soup. My brother would make the breakfast and I would make the soup (those are our specialties). I think I would even want to name it Omelettes and Soup.
2) I like my husband, cooking, days with a tinge in the air that inspires nostalgia, taking photographs, strange peoples’ internet lives, art history, the texture of velvet, and chocolate.
3) My high school was painfully boring.
4) Someday I will own a cat and I will name it Mootz or Fatcake Fruitleather.
posted by Andrea on 11-13-2009 at 1:59 pm
4) My friends have a beta fish called Carparus Moundshroud after the Halloween Tree. Growing up I had a female cat named Bob, she had a a bob tail but most people were still confused when I would say she.
posted by meshartzer on 11-13-2009 at 2:03 pm
1. “Tastes Like Chicken”: a chain of restaurants bringing the exotic to the suburban with wide range of animal meat, such as alligator and rattlesnake which, apparently, taste like chicken
posted by Julie on 11-13-2009 at 2:12 pm
4. Mrs. Kitty Beasley (my cousin’s kitten)
posted by KayTee on 11-13-2009 at 2:34 pm
My theme restaurant would be a bar. The Gestapo bar. There would always be a really long line up, because only one person is ever allowed in at once. It’s that exclusive. The bouncer reserves the right to deny entry to anyone he wants, for any reason, at any time. Once you get it, all the lights are on and there’s 6 staff in uniform. You sit in a stool, they tell you what drink you want, you drink the drink (most likely quickly), you’re kicked out.
posted by Leah on 11-13-2009 at 2:37 pm
1. I’ve always wanted a restaurant like the ’50s themed joint in Pulp Fiction.
2. I love music. Specifically punk-rock and rockabilly. Most any other kind is mehhh… I also love a good jack-and-coke.
3. I took a history class in high school where we were taught that the world began in 1973. . . That humanity used to live on another planet until they exhausted all of their resources. Everything in our history books was all fairy tales, and that’s why our parents always stop talking when we enter the room.
4. For whatever reason, my mom would yawn everytime someone said the word, “simpleton”. When my parents were building their house, they found a stray, half-starved cat, and my dad named it Simpleton.
My husband and I have had a hamster named Dub, a guinea pig named Gweakers, and our current pet is a cat named Tig. Well, it’s actually TigBob. He is apparently two cats fused together (like the cartoon CatDog). His front-half and back-half get into regular scuffles, so we gave then separate names.
posted by Pearl on 11-13-2009 at 2:41 pm
4. My dogs name is Alfred Lord Tennyson. People who don’t know poetry etc. are typically confused by it. But thats ok..we normally just call him Alfred, Alfie, or Alfredo (since he is a westie, and therefore he is white)
posted by Chelsea on 11-13-2009 at 2:53 pm
1. I’d want to start a restaurant themed around bad service. The waiters would be extremely rude, get your order wrong, that sort of thing. The meals would have names like “Hair in the Soup” and you could order “Spit Soda”. I imagine the chain wouldn’t be very popular, and I could go back to spending the inheritance on stuff I actually wanted.
2.I love pistachio ice cream, green nail polish, and singing in my car.
3. Hmmm. My high school participated in the International Baccalaureate program, and one of the classes was called “Theory of Knowledge”. We talked more about what knowledge was and what it meant to “know” something more than we really learned a particular subject. Plus, the guy teaching it was this really awesomely weird old guy who was probably a genius. He ate a lot of unsalted peanuts and dramatically stuck his finger in his ear. The only time he seemed normal was when he talked about baseball.
4. My childhood dog was called Slick Jackson. I once asked my dad where he got it from, but he just thought it sounded cool.
posted by Tasha on 11-13-2009 at 2:59 pm
My dad had a dog named Hey There once too. The dog was super friendly when he ran away, my dad was convinced it was because someone offered him a treat or a ball or something.
posted by Tasha on 11-13-2009 at 3:03 pm
I forgot to mention I have a tabby name King Tutankhamun, we usually just call him Tutter-Butters cause he is a butterball and my sister had a cat, and her husband like a certain Polish word my dad taught him, so he named that cat Chipka (pronounced cheap-ka) which in English is the p-word for cat. Sorry to be so vulguar. We all thought it was funny, cause no one new what it meant but us.
posted by Katie on 11-13-2009 at 3:09 pm
1. My restaurant would be Steppe in Time, and would feature a Peasant Room (rough wooden furniture & tableware, black bread, sausage, cabbage, casual lunches) and an Imperial Room (sumptous banquets) Russian/Ukrainian food of course, plenty of sausage and borscht and holubschi and puddaheh, with entertainment by Shumka and Cossack dancers, and all the waitresses would wear flower headdresses and exquisitely embroidered blouses. Steak is cut with sharp mini scimitars. Oh – the Vodka Bar is called Faberge’s and there’s tons of beautiful crystal and objet d’art… behind thick plate glass, as well as every kind of vodka imaginable. Come for shooter night – our flaming haystacks of flavoured vodkas are amazing! And Baba Yaga visits at Halloween!
2. I really like how my kids smell – Johnsons’ Baby shampoo is yummy!. I could just sit there and snort their little heads all night long. And when they laugh – it’s like the music of the Gods. I love my kids! And I really like old people, they are just so interesting to talk to. I also really like taking a looooong bath, it’s where I get my cleverest ideas.
Material things, even foods I like, have let me down.
3. Nathan – my brother took leather work – it was only for bullies to take out their aggression! We had Leisure Phys Ed, for the obese, pathetic, or injured (I was pathetic)and now that I think about it – a fair number of the people in my one-senior-high-school-small-town Musical Theatre class weren’t just Thespians…. ha! they were GAY!
4. My hamster’s name was Mr. Pooper
say it loud, it sounds really cute.
posted by Marion on 11-13-2009 at 3:13 pm
I rescued a cat named Beauregard Squeaker Toy. Apparently the previous owner was shopping for dog food and there was a cat adoption. The previous owner thought the dog needed a pet or toy and adopted the cat for the dog, the dog’s name was Beauregard, thus the cat was named Beauregard Squeaker Toy. Once she settled in we figured out she does in fact squeak when meowing. We now call her Bella as it is a much better fit for her personality.
posted by kcwed2010 on 11-13-2009 at 3:16 pm
I would operate a 24 hour restaurant that would be themed according to the time of day, and day of the week. Weekday mornings, coffee baristas, muffins, bagels, breakfast sandwiches along with a full sit-down menu. Weekday lunches, short-order diner style lunches and take out. Weekday dinners would be family oriented until 7:00 p.m. Then the menu would change to bar food and the booze would flow. Starting at midnight, the menu would change over to sit-down breakfast. Then the bagels/donuts would start up again for the next day. Weekends would be similar, but without the family dinners. Straight from lunch to bar food and sports on TV.
I’ve tried to convince the local bar to start serving breakfast, they said it was a great idea, but then no one would go home at 2:00 a.m. because they’d all be eating. I suppose the staff does need a break!
posted by Jamie on 11-13-2009 at 3:18 pm
1. GED themed restaurant. It would be sort of trivia style, but actual subjects pertained to the 5 areas of the test.
2.I like:schnauzers,coffee, my daughter’s laugh, my students at GED and at college, doing the investigative work of catching a plagiarizer and the subsequent, “gotcha!” moment, making people laugh, and God.
3. I graduated in the class of ’89, and my HS had: Spanish, English, French, German, Latin, Russian and Chinese for languages. I took Russian.
4. We adopted a mini schnauzer named Kirby when he was 4 years old. Couldn’t figure out the name until we saw him eat. Juuuust like the vaccuum! LOL!
posted by helenann on 11-13-2009 at 3:21 pm
1) definitely a airplane themed restaurant, itll be in an old airplane with only first class seats, and instead of gross airline food, it would be french food. it shall be called, Avion, French for airplane.
2) i really like airplanes, coffee, and paris.
3) my high school is really small (only 10 kids overall) so we dont have anything crazy.
4) my little cousin named his goldfish dinner, then he changed it to fish
posted by Ian on 11-13-2009 at 3:32 pm
I think what the world needs is a Big Lebowski themed eatery. Essentially, it would be an In-and-Out franchise with a bowling alley attached. Most of the staff would have to dress like the Nihlists or The Jesus, except for the guy behind the counter of the bowling alley, who of course would have to dress like Saddam Hussein. There would be nightly White Russian specials (made with either half and half or non-dairy creamer) and the world famous onion rings would have to be called \the ringers\ and served with an ample supply of the whites (napkins). And of course….don’t forget the Creedence
posted by Mike on 11-13-2009 at 3:38 pm
1. Restaurant would be Larry Hartke themed – after the founder/owner of Hartke bass products – he is the man! http://calllarryhartke.com/
2. I really like to play cards and other board games, karoke violining (playing to a soundtrack), and warm covers on a dark, cold morning.
3. I went to hs in the South, but FFA (Future Farmers of America) classes seemed normal then, but now living more north, it seems a litte strange
4. “She-girl” was one that was really off the wall, but “Jason” for a dog – I can’t wrap my head around that!
posted by Lori on 11-13-2009 at 3:42 pm
1) I would love to do a restaurant themed with all the servers as famous psychologists. The walls would look like Rorschach ink blots, and any food you spilled would be analyzed by your waiter. Menu items would relate to whatever psychologist they would be named after (ex. Freudian hot dogs). It’d be dorky, but give a decent jobs to all those with a B.S. in psychology that’s not useful anywhere else.
2) I love arts and crafts. And sunshine.
4) I want a Corgi named Dr. Herbert West Jr. and a St. Bernard named Ash. But I’ve never really met any oddly named animals.
On a side note, my recaptcha has my initials immediately in it. That’s creepy.
posted by Sarah on 11-13-2009 at 3:55 pm
2. In high school we had jewelery making and drafting, among other architecture classes.
4. Growing up I had a dog named Spud, and now my cat is Mona T. Cat, but she goes by Mona or Mona T. depending on my mood.
posted by Liz on 11-13-2009 at 4:08 pm
1. I would have a board game themed restaurant. The restraurant would be decorated in oversized game piece, the servers would be dressed as game characters (Uncle Pennybags, Grandma Nut, Colonel Mustard, ect.), and each table would be printed with a game and the pieces to play the game would be on the table that way they could play while waiting on the food. The food would be named after games as well. There would be Boardwalk Hot Dogs, Scrabble Eggs, and for dessert- gingerbread men, peanutbrittle, and ice cream floats all from Candy Land.
posted by Jamie M. on 11-13-2009 at 4:09 pm
We had a family cat whose real name was “Eleanor”, but we just always ended up calling her “Black Cat”. I’ve always wanted to name a cat Sgt. Tibbs from the 101 Dalmatians movie.
posted by Melissa on 11-13-2009 at 4:13 pm
1. My restaurant would be a Descartes Theme Restaurant where the waiters would argue with the diners when their orders were incorrect. Probably wouldn’t last too long.
2. I like hearing nothing at all, free greyhound tickets, and memories of my childhood.
3.At the dog park once I met an owner with a dog named pi. Not pie, but pi. The owner made a point to say “without the E”. Yet he had no reason why he named the dog that. He had no fondness of math.
posted by Adam on 11-13-2009 at 4:15 pm
1. I would open a pan-asian restaurant called å”力(Cooperation). It would offer excellent Chinese, Japanese and Thai food, but the only utensils available would be 3-foot long sets of chopsticks, leaving you with no choice but to cooperate and feed eachother.
This would excellent for anything from super-romantic dates to corporate team building luncheons. Plus, the staff would be able to laugh it up in the back watching diners on closed circuit television.
2. I like Moxie Soda. Mmmmmm . . . .Gentian root.
3. My senior year I was in the first ever “Senior Humanities” class at my high school. It was a hybrid of English, history, art and music that took a gestalt approach to the four topics. It was also done in a highly experiential seminar format more similar to college courses. Good times.
4. I knew a guy in college with a dalmation named Arson.
posted by EMStoveken on 11-13-2009 at 4:38 pm
I met a boxer named “Crouton” last weekend at the dog park. I also have a friend whose dog is named, “Kitty.” And my sister used to work with a lady whose cat was named “Son of a Bitch.”
posted by Carol on 11-13-2009 at 4:50 pm
My high school offered the ground school portion required to get one’s private pilot’s license.
posted by Carol on 11-13-2009 at 4:53 pm
I forgot to mention my friend/neighbor’s Bassett Hound named “Arbitration”. She got “Arby” as a present during law school.
posted by Carol on 11-13-2009 at 4:54 pm
had a cat named Snewzer once…we adopted him from the pound and he fell asleep in my arms in the pet store while we were shopping for him…also had a cat named Lacee and a Lab named Roxee.
posted by cindy on 11-13-2009 at 4:55 pm
4. My brother and his wife named their cat Kitty Face…makes me smile every time!
posted by naomi on 11-13-2009 at 4:56 pm
2. Dr. Pepper, deep butter coffee cake (a St. Louis specialty), Poodles, Caribbean beaches, Tanzanite and having naturally curly hair.
posted by Carol on 11-13-2009 at 5:02 pm
1. Mom’s Restaurant – serving comfort food only. The only place in town where toast is always served on the side with a hot chocolate. Mmmmm.
2. Blue sky, chocolate chip cookies, babies laughing, dogs, reading in bed at night with lots of blankets on.
3. Got nuttin’ here.
4. Not one of ours, but a litle boy told us that his horse’s name was Lightning, but they just called her Marge. We do have a cat named Carol.
posted by Lyn on 11-13-2009 at 5:05 pm
1.) I would have a cyberpunk/sci-fi themed restaurant. It would have a Geiger-esque atmosphere with a lot of tubing and backlighting. I’d make the whole place modular so that it could be rearranged each night.
posted by Traci on 11-13-2009 at 5:58 pm
Since I am a silent film fan I’d have to have a chain of restaurants that looked a bit like small versions of old movie palaces, decor being art deco, in silvers, b/w – posters of silent film stars and reproductions of movie posters….food would be more of plate-servings (like Culver’s does) with lots of PIE (I like pie), malts, egg creams, and other coffee shop fare in addition to the usual hamburgers everyone expects. Seating would be kinda like theater chairs – A trademark would be the small bag of fresh popcorn you get as your dessert as you leave (from an olde tyme popcorn machine). Each full meal ordered would get a Silent Film Star trading card – collect ten for a free meal. Employees would be dressed kinda like ushers from a movie palace. Each shift’s manager would be required to dress like an old movie star (costume supplied by the restaurant) and encouraged to not just hide behind the scenes but walk through the seating area, too. What would I call my chain? Flickers? Flappers?
posted by JFS in IL on 11-13-2009 at 6:01 pm
Oh, let me add – the music would be chestnuts from the time period (WWi – 1930ish).
posted by JFS in IL on 11-13-2009 at 6:03 pm
4. My grandaughter named her 3 goldfish: Fish, fish again,& ‘nother one fish. She was only 3.
posted by Nona on 11-13-2009 at 6:12 pm
4. Oh, AND she knew which one was which!
posted by Nona on 11-13-2009 at 6:16 pm
3. I went to a catholic high school that made us take a class called Sex and Marriage when we were seniors.
4. I knew someone who named their dog d-o-g but you said as if your were spelling it..
posted by Flea18 on 11-13-2009 at 6:27 pm
1. It would be long and narrow with a center aisle and side by side seats to replicate the interior of a plane. But the food and service would be top notch. It would be so pleasant an experience that customers would no longer dread eating on a plane.
2. The smell of burning leaves in the fall. Can’t find that smell in urban and suburban areas anymore-have to get out of town.
3. Had an innovative humanities class as a senior. Went to Baltimore to see a very young Sandy Duncan in the pre-Broadway tryout of a rock musical based on the Canterbury Tales. It didn’t last on Broadway too long- because it appealed to 17 year old males and not too many others.
posted by N. Tella Gent on 11-13-2009 at 6:48 pm
1. Theme restaurant would be Jane Austen theme where ladies could have high tea with finger sandwiches. There would be needle work laying around for them to pick up and work on if they wanted and the waiters would be butlers and servant girls.
2. I am loving my husband, Supernatural, pizza, “Blink”, my dog, my hot tub, audio books.
3. American Sign Language (complete with Regents test in New York)
4. My sister named two frogs Kermit (makes sense) and Ms. Piggy (not so much).
posted by Martha on 11-13-2009 at 6:54 pm
1) I would have a theme restaurant based on Beakman’s world. Yes.
2) I love old trophies, especially those between the 1900′s and the 1960′s. I love comic books. I love cats. I love movies. I love people who get crazily excited about things, because I do too.
4) I’ve heard some good ones, but two of my cats are named Tycho and Tesla.
posted by Kieran on 11-13-2009 at 6:57 pm
1. The theme for my restaurant would be: Leftovers No More. At my restaurants, you can bring in your leftovers from last night and the chefs there will use them to create entirely new dishes. It would be like *BAM*ming up yesternight’s meal…and the best part? You don’t have to wash the dishes again!! YAY!!
2. Autumn’s fresh, cool, crip air and changing foliage. Fresh pressed apple cider and apple cider doughnuts. Laughing babies. Waking up 45 minutes early thinking you have to get up but then realizing that you still have 45 minutes of sleeping time!!
3. Speech Class. A class on how to talk effectively.
4. Tesla (like the coils)
posted by AgentOh on 11-13-2009 at 7:12 pm
1. a FRIENDS restaurant, as in Friends the TV show. The restaurant will be designed just like the sets featured in the show like the apartments, offices, rooms and of course- Central Perk. The food will be NY based, but not totally NY style deli. Of course there will be special dishes like Joey’s sandwiches, Phoebe’s grandmother’s cookies, Chandler’s non Thanksgiving day foods, and for those adventurous diners, Rachel’s failed half Shepherd’s pie and half English Trifle concoction.
2. As you can tell, I really like Friends. Also i really like food, seriously the Food channel and the Travel channel are on all the time.
3. My high school had the typical classes, but one of the unique ones was yoga in place of PE. Unfortunately I did not take it as I already fulfilled my requirement and it was always full.
4. My aunt named her two dogs \Lap Chong\ (Chinese sausage) and \Siu Mai\ (chinese dim sum). \Lap Chong\ was a Dachshund. yes we are chinese americans in case that was not clear.
posted by Melissa on 11-13-2009 at 7:21 pm
1.not into themes so much but I would go to Betty crocker one! I can’t cook so cookbooks annoy me. I want the food shown but I’ll never cook myself.
2.coffee. Sleeping in. Vacation.
3. Latin class. Somewhat common, but it was taught by a 90 something year old nun. She spoke 7 other languages and would occasional mutter in polish.
4. I had a rat named Sweatpants. And my brothers cat is Tike Man Bob.
posted by Heather on 11-13-2009 at 8:09 pm
OR! A theme restaurant based on improvisation. There would be improv entertainment, yes, but also all of the dishes would be improvised on the spot by the chefs. There might be a central ingredient, but each patron would get something different. How cool!
posted by Kieran on 11-13-2009 at 8:16 pm
1. As a kid I used to map out my own mini-malls with weird shop names: Pant Hut (you must have one “hut” shop, although they are never built to look like a hut). So, there was a food court, and my favorite terrible food theme restaurant was “Sal O’ Manila Slow-Cooked Chicken”.
2. Potato chips, your basic Lay’s classic salty crunchy greasy happiness.
3. I took 3 years of animation in high school, with 35mm film and hand painted cels, even though my school had no money, because our art teacher had the supplies left over and wanted to teach it.
4. My beloved former cats, Ether an Ratchet.
posted by Isabel on 11-13-2009 at 9:18 pm
RE:1
My brother and I have had a long-standing idea due to a happenstance which was hilarious at the time (the short story: someone asked a lady from South Carolina if she had any hobbies, and she replied “Hmm…’sides eatin’?”) and we want to open a restaurant named ‘Sides Eatin’ where only sides are served. You just order potatoes, mac & cheese, salads, whatever, but it’s all sides.
posted by Amber on 11-13-2009 at 9:45 pm
Re #1 …
How about a chain of DINERs themed around the ’6 Degrees of Kevin BACON’ because – as everyone [well, excluding non-meat eaters! ;-)] knows – “EVERYTHING TASTES BETTER WITH BACON!”. Plus, ‘Diner’ happens to be one of KB’s early films, so this type of eating establishment seems particularly à propos)
Use other KB film/television titles in planning the menu, such as the FOOTLOOSE Flapjacks, the SHE’S HAVING A BABY-Back Ribs platter, and the LEMON SKY-High Pie !
posted by Amy on 11-13-2009 at 10:29 pm
1. It would be a retro British tea room, just like the Mock Turtle in Brighton. It would be mostly carbs on the menu, of course, crumpets, English muffins, cream teas, jam doughnuts as big as your head and cheese on toast.
2. I really like a blue sky on a crisp winter day, toe socks and the sound the TARDIS makes.
3. My school had a class called Indaba, which was sort of weird. It was a different every time; sometimes we made pancakes, sometimes we wrote plays and sometimes we had guest speakers warning us against being recruited by religious cults.
4. We adopted two cats last year,and one was called Mrs. Zhivago, which just didn’t suit her and was hard to shorten to a good nick-name. She’s now Edith Cavell-Cat, and her room mate is Nancy Wake-Cat.
posted by Jen - The Alien Spouse on 11-13-2009 at 11:21 pm
1. In high school I had to create my own business as a project for my economics class. I chose to create a Madonna themed (I know that’s not a word) restaurant. I have been infatuated with her since I was born and that is the first thing that popped in to my head. I made a menu that consisted of foods named after Madonna or associated with something that she has been a part of. I cam up with something called, “Madonna Dollars”, which is like a coupon. That was the only good grade that I ever received in that class. I guess when it comes to Madonna, I will pay attention : )
posted by Kelli Rae on 11-13-2009 at 11:27 pm
1. I had an idea once for an arctic themed restaurant called “Ten Below” where everything on the menu cost ten dollars or less. Think blue lighting, an icy-looking bar and barstools etc.
2. Cute embroidery, the old Loch Ness Monster art installation that was in the lake at my university for a few weeks, Glee, and eggs
3. Honestly the weirdest class at my high school was Environmental Science.
4. Estrellita. It’s Spanish for little star
posted by Nickee on 11-13-2009 at 11:45 pm
As an addendum to my pet name from the previous post, my first cat ever was named Sloopy. She used to hang from door knobs by her paws, so she was named after the song “Hang on Sloopy” by The McCoys.
posted by Nickee on 11-14-2009 at 12:00 am
#1 All chicken wings.
#2 Walking around Shepherstown, WV (where I live) very very late at night while it’s snowing, wrapped up in a warm scarf, listening to Brand New. Doesn’t get any better than that. I also collect airsoft replicas, I have spent more money on them than I care to imagine. Hiking. Being in some strange new place by myself.
#3 My old hs had a butchering class (for pigs).
#4 Not super weird, but I had a dog I once named Trinity.
posted by Joey on 11-14-2009 at 12:44 am
1. My restaurant would have a retro-futuristic theme. That is, it would be the restaurant of the future as imagined in the past. For instance, you would enter your choices on an electronic panel, and a door would open and your food would slide out when it was ready, or if you were at one of the tables that wasn’t against the walls, a robotic waiter (think of the kind that do pharmacy deliveries in some hospitals) would roll up to your table and open its lid to deliver your food. The walls would have the largest available plasma TV’s set up to look like windows, showing “live” views of the rings of Saturn, a retro wheel-type space station, the surface of the Moon, etc. They would be carefully arranged so that wherever you sit, you would only see one of them at a time, so it would be like being in a different part of the solar system for people sitting at different tables. Food would have corny names like Astro-Burgers or Martian Chicken, and on the kids’ menu, some of it would be dyed weird colors, like purple milk and pink mashed potatoes. There would have to be some live service staff to resolve problems. Their uniforms would be silver jumpsuits, etc., that look like something out of the Jetsons or Lost in Space.
2. There are so many things I like … playing WoW with a really good group, the feel of my kitten’s fur, brand-new baby guppies, those late summer evenings when a storm is coming and there’s a cool wind and dark clouds flying over the moon, paphipedliums and phragmapediums, the way tadpoles wriggle when they swim, watching gulls fly over the water, old TV shows from the 60s and 70s, sundogs, crawler lightning, the carved stone details on old buildings, fireflies, my Sony PRS-505 because I can carry hundreds of books in my pocket, murlocs, constructed languages, Soviet T-34 tanks, treefrogs … a lot more than I hate, actually, which I guess was the point of this exercise.
3. My high school was so conventional and boring that its strangest class was Electronics Shop. Girls weren’t allowed to take it.
4. I used to have a mouse named Pothole (because he was a road-dent), and I currently have a trans-Pecos rat snake named Seymour, for his big eyes. Before my psycho neighbor dumped laundry detergent in my garden pond, my tame goldfish were One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish (who was white), and Blue Fish (who was red). I have two Tokay geckos named Leroy (he’s Bad, Bad, though not Brown) and Jim (you don’t mess around with him). My Moorish gecko is Othello.
my ReCaptcha is pripet … a carpet is obviously a pet that lives in your car, but where does a pripet live?
posted by WW on 11-14-2009 at 1:02 am
1.
a) I would create a Sports Bar and Wings Joint with former NFL greats: Pacman Jones , O.J. Simpson and Plaxico Burress. We would call the restaurant “PROS & CONS.” Every table would contain a large paper towel roll and Soap-on-a-Rope for messy encounters. All of our waitresses would be called “Tight Ends.” Silverware would be strictly forbidden. Thursday happy hour would run from 5-10 pm, thus its nickname, the “5-10 stretch,” but drink specials could start at 4 with good behavior.
b) I would start a restaurant in the horse paddock at Belmont called “Belmont Steaks.” We would differ from the other restaurant called Belmont Steaks, because our steaks food would comprise of 100% champion thoroughbreads who were cut down in their prime (Barbaro much?) Our tagline would be “Belmont Steaks: Faster Food”
posted by Curt Peinhardt on 11-14-2009 at 1:25 am
1) The Paradoxical Diner. “What course comes first; is it the chicken or the eggs? What is the sound of one pan crackling? How did our meals create themselves? What happens in your stomach when you chase ‘unstoppable fries’ with ‘immovable omelettes? And why do bad tips happen to good waitresses?” Feed your curiosities within!
posted by Curt Peinhardt on 11-14-2009 at 1:53 am
1. Boy, there are so many possibilities. How about a One-Hit Wonders themes restaurant? Or a Bob Newhart restaurant. One room themed like a 1970s Chicago psychiatrist’s office and the other like a quaint Vermont Inn. And there would have to be a special where you can wake up next to Suzanne Pleshette after your meal.
2. Things I like:
My wife and kids
Pizza
Sleep
Mythbusters
New car smell
3. My high school didn’t have anything really offbeat, but I just enrolled in a course called The History of Rock and Roll at my community college.
4. My dog is named Elvis. My cousin used to have a dog named Muffin and she joked that their next dog would be named Waffle in keeping with the breakfast food theme.
posted by eric! on 11-14-2009 at 8:35 am
4. Katy Perry (a famous pop singer) named her cat Kitty Purry.
posted by Erin on 11-14-2009 at 9:01 am
1. 100% Geek Theme set into 4 rooms:
a. The Star Trek Room
b. The Dungeons & Dragons room
c. The Vintage Video Games / Comic Book Room
d. The Star Wars Room.
Randomly throughout the day, there would be a battle between in-costume characters in each room.
2. Really like the downtown bars at UNH (University of New Hampshire) that have great beer deals.
3. Technology (in 1991): We sat around watching laserdisc movies and playing games on our apple IIc.
4. Had a dog named Bucko after Richie Cunningham’s favorite saying (from Happy Days for those of you who are too young)… Also had a cat named Diego and a fish named San.
posted by Gregg C on 11-14-2009 at 9:35 am
4. I have a cat named snoopy and also KNow of a dog named woofie
posted by Mike on 11-14-2009 at 9:37 am
1. i would like to create the resturant at the end of universe as close to the book as possible.
2.things i like- cookies, a rainy day with a really good book and a comfy couch
3. nothing i can think of my high school was boring
4. my dad had a cat named pooper, my mother in law has a cat named jager(yes after jagermeister)
posted by denise on 11-14-2009 at 10:34 am
1. Vlad’s Flaming Frigărui “Where Everyone Gets The Steak” (Animals were harmed during the preparation of your meal… Oh yes, they were harmed!) Management recommends you remove all hats before meals.
posted by JWerner on 11-14-2009 at 10:57 am
1. Theme restaurant…”Ole Favorites”. The menu, all of your favorite meals from your childhood…ham and cheese sandwiches, PB and J’s, with the crust chopped off of course. Speghetti O’s, awesome fun cereals like Fruity Pebbles, ice cream, hot dogs, pop corn, candy bars, chicken fingers, pizza…nothing that old people like. Served to you by real moms.
posted by graham on 11-14-2009 at 11:05 am
1. I’d either open a fast-food restaurant that only serves healthy food, because I think that’s relevant to helping with the obesity crisis…or I’d open a restaurant called The Sandwich Spot and we’d serve fully customizable sandwiches. You want smoked gouda cheese and duck? You got it. Of course, you could still have a regular turkey sandwich too. I think that would be really fun. That restaurant would also serve special drinks like roocolanade, which would be root beer, coke, and lemonade mixed together. Sounds weird, but it’s actually delicious, and it would be a hit with kids!
2. I like music, hot chocolate, coffee, tea, and anything related to college. Oh, and cars.
3. We had nothing special…
4. Someone I knew named their pet “deeoohgee” which is just spelling D-O-G. My boyfriend named his cat What?.
My German Shepherd is named Erebus.
posted by Sky on 11-14-2009 at 11:31 am
1. I always wanted to open a restaurant that served nothing but different grilled cheese sandwiches. I wanted to call it something silly like “Cheese and Thank You”. Sadly, I can’t even eat cheese anymore due to an allergy :(
2. I really like thrift stores, French fries, cupcakes, old movies, lileks.com, and embroidering.
3. can’t think of anything too out of the ordinary…we did have a cool food and nutrition class where we took field trips to the grocery store.
4. I had a goldfish named Frog. My dog is named Dashiell Hammett. I often call him Mr. Hammett.
posted by vegebrarian on 11-14-2009 at 2:35 pm
1. I would have a Trailer Trash themed restaurant. Mullets would be mandatory. The cuisine would feature such gems as Miracle Whip and cheese sandiwches, tuna and potato chip casserole, and mini corn dogs. The wine list would feature boxed wines from around the world.
2. I REALLY like projectile vomiting, writing Haiku for the Disturbed, and the freedom to express my schadenfreude whenever possible.
3. I went to Catholic school, and we had a religion/health *cough cough* class. It was a gamble, we never knew if that day we’d be talking about the New Testament or staring at a giant plastic uterus on the teacher’s desk.
4. An old friend of mine named his dog C’mere (come here). When he wanted to call the dog inside, he’d just yell, C’mere!
posted by SpawnOfAzazel on 11-14-2009 at 3:07 pm
Quick Steaks
Vegetarians aside, who doesn’t crave a mouth-watering steak every once in a while? Sure, everyone does, but who has time to start up the grill and do all that work yourself or the money to go to an expensive steakhouse? Just stop by Quick Steaks and pick up a couple of ribeyes or maybe just an eight ounce sirloin!
Quick Steaks – Steak, but faster!
posted by Elizabeth on 11-14-2009 at 3:10 pm
2. I like music, books, the smell of shoe stores, walking through crunchy leaves in the fall, and late night gab sessions with my roommates in the hallway by the bathroom. Also my ReCaptcha: ugandan james
3. My high school didn’t offer it while I was there, but during my sister’s senior year they started a handbell choir class. That was actually pretty cool.
posted by Janel on 11-14-2009 at 5:18 pm
1. I’d like to say that I’d run a Filipino restaurant, as my parents always lament the lack of those in my area, but I’m gonna have to go with 24/7 breakfast. Breakfast is my favourite meal.
2. I really like magazines. My mom hates it, but I love leafing through them and making clippings and tossing them in the recycling.
3. My first high school was an independant learning school, so we didn’t really have classes enough to have weird/cool courses. I did take Musical Theatre as well as Counselling and Mentorship.
My second high school was a Day Hospital program, so we had “courses” like group therapy, CBT, and on Thursdays we cooked lunch together.
My third and final high school was for gay kids who had experienced homophobia in their normal schools, so we had awesome courses like Queer Media and Queer History.
4. @Nathan: My cousins dog is named Kahlua too!
posted by Kat on 11-14-2009 at 9:06 pm
1. I would open a generational restaurant, split into 3 or 4 sections.
There would be a separate section for “The Greatest Generation” (those who lived through the Great Depression and fought in WW2). This section would serve authentic delicacies like “Ketchup Soup,” lots of potato dishes, digestive biscuits, sugar pie, and baked goods made with lard. This section of the restaurant would have classic oldies music playing, and waiters serving this section must talk with a continental accent.
Then there would be the baby boomer section. They’d have Elvis and Beatle’s music playing. Their menu would have milkshakes, hamburgers, tv dinners, classic diner food, and granola/smoothies/salads to represent the hippie sector.
Then there’s the gen x /y section. they get to listen to madonna/michael jackson, and their menu will feature diet foods and sushi.
The generations can be altered, but you get the idea.
posted by Pooja on 11-14-2009 at 9:58 pm
1. I would name it ‘I don’t care’ because that always seems to be the answer when trying to decide on a place to eat. The menu would then have names like, ‘I’ll have what he’s having’ or ‘Can we split this?’ try to incorporate all of the sayings usually heard when eating at a restaurant.
3. An Entrepreneur class where we actually had to start a business and run it for a certain period of time.
4.My friend’s dog, Jamaica Mess because it was always getting into things.
posted by Ali on 11-14-2009 at 10:54 pm
1: My restaurant serve bento style entrees. Bento is when you make your food literally look like artwork! I’ll leave a link because its so cool!! You can basically make your food look like anything!! Here’s a link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kitsa_sakurako/sets/72157603564413806/
2: Family Guy, pickles, my family, art, Harry Potter and SLEEP!!
3: Nothing too unusual, but we did have jewelry making.
4: My dog’s name is Hermione. She’s named after the one from Harry Potter. I’m a total geek for HP and it just fit!! We call her Mione for short!!
reCaptcha: tative marketed
:o)
posted by Lindsey on 11-14-2009 at 10:57 pm
4.) If anyone reads down this far I’ve got a bunch of fun pet names-
Pipit- my family loves Jaws, and in it a black dog gets eaten by the shark. When we got a black dog we named her Pipit, because we have sick senses of humor. We turn up the TV when watching the movie and it gets to that part, she runs around the house trying to figure out who’s calling her.
Regan- My brother got a weimmeranner and named her Regan after the little girl in the Exorcist. My mother nicknamed her Rags and it was two years before anyone realized that Regan’s mother calls her “Rags” in the book.
Stilgar- I don’t know why, one of my friends named their cat Stilgar. She has a reason, but I forgot.
Abby Nermal- As a child I was deeply uncreative, so when my parents bought me a guinea pig for my 8th birthday I named her Abby, because that was what the man wrote on the box to tell the cashier she was an Abyssinian. Nermal was after the little gray cat in Garfield. Took me YEARS before I realized I had named her “Abnormal”.
Echo- I think we just thought it was pretty at the time, but eventually she would only answer if you called her name and clapped your hands three times, like you were echoing.
Diana, Princess of Quails- a man my father goes hunting with named his Dog this, and I think it’s hilarious.
Ruthless Killer- My Yorkshire Terrier. I call her Ruthie.
Itsy Bitsy- My great dane :)
posted by Jo on 11-14-2009 at 10:59 pm
1. A pancake restaurant named Batter Up with baseball memorabilia as the decor, or a hot dog stand named Doggie Style… decor could be interesting.
2. Things I really like… Bruce Springsteen concerts and hot fudge sundaes (vanilla ice cream, quality hot fudge, little bit of banana, chopped nuts, whipped cream and 4 cherries)
4. Strangest pet names: Spaghetti, Spatch
posted by Nurse Monica on 11-14-2009 at 11:23 pm
Forgot – my friend named her cat
“Furmetheus”
posted by Marion on 11-15-2009 at 12:44 am
My grandparents’ dog had “Princess” stitched on the collar she was found wearing (she was abandoned or lost, and the owner never claimed her); but they call her Princess Little Bit or just Little Bit. My brother’s cat is Climber, named because she kept trying to climb out of the box on the way home. Turned out to be pretty appropriate, as she would constantly climb the tree above my sister’s dog’s run, Macy (after the store/parade, we got her the day before Thanksgiving) and taunt her. My other grandmother has a black cat named Midnight, or Mindy for short. I also have a cousin who had a black cat named Satan.
posted by Mary on 11-15-2009 at 1:46 am
1) My restaurant would have a history theme and would serve foods you read about in history books or historical novels. You could have a meal that might have been served in Jane Austen’s time, or a dinner that Laura Ingalls might have had on the Prairie. The historical time period would probably be different for each day of the week just to keep things practical menu-wise. I’ve always wondered what food was like for people in history, and it would be awesome to have a restaurant where you can go and order some.
4) Some day I’m going to get either a dog or a cat just so I can name it C.K. Dexter Haven.
posted by Eva on 11-15-2009 at 2:42 pm
1. “Red” themed. All red things or things with “red” in their names could go on the menu. (For example, salad would have red cabbage and red onions in it.) The decorations would all be red of course.
Did I mention that I like the color red?
posted by Tdl on 11-15-2009 at 6:39 pm
My boyfriend always wanted to open a restaurant called “S*** My Girlfriend Won’t Eat”, serving only the most inventive and disgusting dishes made from pure unadulterated necessity – notably the “spaghetti burrito”, or the “peanut putter and jelly on a hot dog”. The decorum would be a scale model of our living room, and guests would be seated awkwardly around the coffee table as my boyfriend shoves colorful combinations of leftovers under their noses.
As for pet names
My grandmother had a cat named Esmeralda Jeanette VanQuisqui Jaquelinda Claude Henderson the third
(or Kitty, for short)
posted by Danielle on 11-16-2009 at 2:23 am
1)Seinfeld-themed restaurants. A sample dish: Junior Mint fondue; dippers would include marble rye and babka. Naturally, there would be a make-your-own-pizza area; cucumbers would be allowed. Food would not, to everyone’s relief, be prepared in the shower. And of course, there would be an annual Festivus party, complete with aluminum pole (no tinsel, please; it’s distracting), feats of strength, and the ever-popular airing of grievances.
2)Too many things to list! I could compile an extensive list of just food items alone…so I guess I’ll do that: bread/toast, chocolate, cinnamon, oatmeal, Trader Joe’s animal crackers, strawberries, my favorite Chinese restaurant’s steamed vegetable dumplings, and Carvel’s non-fat ice cream (you’d never know it was non-fat).
3)Nothing out-of-the-ordinary in high school, but I learned calligraphy in fourth grade and sign language in fifth.
4)My pets’ names weren’t THAT unusual, but they did follow a food/beverage theme for a while (funny…this post seems to be doing that, too ;)): my first parakeet was Twinkie, my second was Gummy Bear, if I’d gotten a third s/he would have been Almond, and my first cat was Sprite. I broke the trend, though, with my current cat, Shira.
posted by NYCGirl on 11-16-2009 at 7:14 am
1. I would have a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Restaurant “at the end of the universe,” complete with Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters!
4. For some reason, when I was a little girl, I named my goldfish M.C. Hammerfish :P
posted by Carly on 11-16-2009 at 4:44 pm
4. My cat is named Mug Costanza. Also, when my dad was in his youth, he had a poodle named Sir Ebenezer Jockson.
posted by silver1881 on 11-17-2009 at 11:06 am
I always wanted to open a gay hockey bar called Slamboni. It could have cocktails like Jaromir jagr bombs or brett hull and vodkas. Also could have other sport related pun drinks eg reggie miller lite.
am I too late here, damn.
posted by D. on 11-23-2009 at 1:22 am