We are back on track, with yesterday’s article posted alongside this one. We took a day off from posting about celebrations because the world needed that day to take a long look at itself. Yesterday was a slice of difficulty I hadn’t anticipated. Where on Monday I was dragged down by the loss of my springtime optimism I felt it replaced with a defeatism yesterday that left me deeply uninterested in doing anything besides hanging with my dogs. Then, once I’d done my best to squeeze it from my system, I re-focussed us on why we’re here – to pay proper tribute to important stuff like this:
National Rotisserie Chicken Day
Boston Market started this day, which sounds about right. I mean, the rotisserie chicken is a beautiful thing, crisping up the skin and sealing in the flavour and juices for a magnificent dining experience. We satisfy our cravings for Swiss Chalet on a regular basis and find it difficult to order anything else because their chicken is so damn perfect. But really, who thinks of commemorating the rotisserie chicken unless they are also profiting from it?
Is this my defeatism or cynicism oozing out my fingertips? Perhaps both? Let’s regroup.
Apparently in 2018 over 900 million rotisserie chickens were sold by stores and restaurants. That’s almost a billion chickens. If you had access to a billion chickens you could probably take over the world. I’m not entirely sure how, but who would mess with you?
Sure, the Wikipedia page for rotisserie chicken has little tidbits like that, or about how Costco opened a new facility last year in Nebraska to raise its chickens for its rotisserie stock, or how Napoleon liked rotisserie chicken… but there was also a mention of Swiss Chalet, the popular Canadian rotisserie chicken restaurant chain mentioned above, having its own cable channel broadcasting 24 hours a day nothing but “content related to rotisserie chicken.” This means just chicken in a perpetual state of rotation, intercut with some guy in a mascot costume meant to resemble a serving of their brilliant dipping sauce, showing up and dancing.
This was back in 2012 though, and I haven’t found any recent info about it. I’m also quite positive it isn’t offered by our cable provider. Damn it. Oh well. We had some grocery store rotisserie chicken for dinner yesterday. It was groovy.
National Rocky Road Day
One story credits William Dreyer with the creation of Rocky Road ice cream. He’s the same Dreyer that started the famous Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream company in Oakland. William had teamed up with Joseph Edy who made candy. Joe had already created a chocolate concoction with marshmallows and walnuts, so William tried it in chocolate ice cream. Needless to say, it was brilliant. This all went down in 1929, shortly after they’d started their venture together. A few months later the stock market crashed so they named the flavour Rocky Road as a way of acknowledging the difficult times as well as the texture of the ice cream itself.
Another story comes from Fentons Creamery, also based out of Oakland and more than 30 years older than Dreyer’s. They claim their candy maker, George Farren, made the candy bar first, then turned it into an ice cream flavour, and that Will and Joe got the idea from them. Who is right? I have no idea. We do know that Will and Joe were the ones who swapped out walnuts for toasted almonds.
In the end, does it matter? Rocky Road is a brilliant combination, and the Haagen Dazs we picked up on the weekend was one of the tastiest ice creams we’ve had in a while. In the end, let’s just credit the universal muse for inspiring the brilliance that allowed us to enjoy this day.
National Leave the Office Early Day
Employee productivity specialist Laura Stack is the lady to thank if your employer allowed you to leave the office early yesterday. She created this day to remind employees to take time for themselves. Most employees I know have no issue finding time for themselves, but then I work for the government. Most office drones are all too happy to scoot out of work as soon as they are able.
I asked my boss if I could leave work a few minutes early. He had no problem with this. Jodie didn’t need to make such a request, as her school “day” is mainly a weird collage of randomly chosen chunks of time for her to work and prepare. If she wants a nap, she’ll do her marking and planning in the evening.
Had we actually been at our workplaces, Jodie would not have left work early. Ditching her students before the final bell would not have been advisable. I might have still snagged a get-out-early card from my boss, but it would have simply landed me at the bus stop for an extra few minutes of waiting. Yesterday, thanks to the glory and wonder of working form home, it meant clicking the X on my remote connection a little earlier, taking the dogs around the block a little earlier, and getting to my me-time a little earlier.
It was a treat. This should be a weekly celebration.
Yell “Fudge” At The Cobras In North America Day
Of all the titles I’ve typed this year, all nine-hundred-and-something of them, none has been so deliciously weird as this one. I almost don’t want to explain it; I kind of want to leave it here and let you all figure out how we celebrated it. Did we? We did. Were live cobras involved? Of course not; we couldn’t even rustle up some bison steaks for National Wyoming Day last week. Also, we’re not insane.
This one verrrrry unsurprisingly comes to us courtesy of Thomas and Ruth Roy, those weirdos in Pennsylvania who have scattered strange and curious notions all over the calendar, and all over this project. Their theory is that cobras naturally hate fudge (which I’m sure can be backed up by science), and the very mention of the word will cause them to choke on their forked tongues and slither quickly in the other direction. I mean, this is pretty sound reasoning, right?
I really want to meet this couple. They truly sound like my kind of people.
The ritual here is to step outside at noon on June 2, make sure you’re facing south (since, presumably, cobras tend to face north most of the time), and yell the word “FUDGE!”. This will discourage any cobras from slipping onto our continent. There are already American Cobras in the US desert, but apparently those aren’t “real” cobras. So the theory is that thus far, we have been successful. Most likely due to Mr. & Mrs. Roy and their legion of followers who have been keeping this tradition alive.
So we did it. We didn’t go outside, but we leaned out our bedroom window (which faces south) and yelled “FUDGE” at the top of our lungs. No cobras showed up, so we’ll call it a win.
National Bubba Day
I’m at a loss for this one.
We have no legitimate way to celebrate this. This is literally a day for people to acknowledge the folks in their lives to whom they refer as “Bubba”. We don’t call anyone we know Bubba. It’s just not a nickname that ever landed cleanly at the feat of one of our friends or family. Our daughter used to be called Bubba-Lou by Jodie’s step-dad, but the two of them are not speaking, so bringing that up to our kid would likely upset her. That isn’t much of a celebration.
We could chew some Hubba Bubba, but that’s not really what the day is about. A comedian named T. Bubba Bechtol came up with this one, plopping it onto June 2 to honour his wife, whom he calls Bubbalicious. Okay, that’s kind of cute.
I’ve never heard of this comedian before so I looked him up. He’s from Florida, he started out preaching then wound up working for two years in the Reagan White House. He branched into comedy and motivational speaking after a run for Congress. He has been on the Grande Ole Opry 148 times and has appeared on Fox News and as the host and emcee of NRA’s National Convention ten times. You know what? I’m going to let Bubba have his day. We’ll call this a “learning celebration” and simply move on.
Today? I have to keep doing this? No days off? No respite? I mean, I just posted two damn… okay fine, here’s what we’ve got:
- National Egg Day. We have some delicious farm eggs sitting in our fridge, courtesy of a lovely friend. Yum.
- National Repeat Day. We have some delicious farm eggs sitting in our fridge, courtesy of a lovely friend. Yum.
- National Chocolate Macaroons Day. Today we eat the candy ones. It’s a macaroonapalooza over here this week.
- National Running Day. Hahahahahaa…. Fuck.
- Chimborazo Day. This is actually kind of a neat geographical celebration.
- Impersonate Authority Day. I can see how it might be fun to do impressions of our bosses on a private zoom call with some colleagues.
- National Itch Day. Well now I’ve got one. Dammit.
- Love Conquers All Day. Wouldn’t that be sweet?
celebrate366.com 