My Menu Board

It may not surprise anyone that my life is full of obscure movie quotes. I constantly use them and rarely cite the reference.

If you as me what's for lunch I will probably tell you that Alejandro prepared a delightful menu, Chilean sea bass I believe.

If you want something that is spicy yet sweet, but not for ladies... I'd say Chilean Lance Bass.

But that's neither a movie reference or a menu item.

The Chilean sea bass line comes from Jurassic Park and (so far) has not graced the menu board in my kitchen, but a few other odd movie lines have been written on the board.

Here is what the board looks like right now:



Yankee Bean Soup... with spoon.

Do you get the reference? It's from Muppets Take Manhattan, it's the special that the Big Ragu looking guy tells Kermit the Frog about.

It made me laugh when I was a kid and when I watched the movie again last month I felt it was time to change the board.

Previously it had said:


(artist conception)

Frogdogs with fries $1, with onion rings $2.

I had an ongoing dare for this one. If you could tell me what movie I was referring to I'd give you $10. I even had a $10 bill stuffed behind the board for a few weeks.

Luckily none of my friends needed $10 enough to Google "frogdog" because then they probably would have found out it was also from Muppets Take Manhattan.

If you remember the film, Kermit and the gang head off to NYC where they try to sell a play. Unfortunately Kermit gets hit by a car and thinks his name is Phil Phillip Phil.

So as the rest of the gang prepares for the show, Kermit joins an ad agency and marries a Muppet dog named Samantha Pop.

Then nine months later Samantha Pop gives birth to a hideous frog/dog Muppet.

Kermit then summons the powers of the dark lord Beelzebub and cooks the mutant child on a pyre.

Then craving the flesh of mutants Kermit eats the Muppet, but only after first cooking some fries and onion rings and paying himself for the feast.

I'm sorry. I got a little too dark there.

Sorry, really.

Anyway, the frogdog line was actually from the Michael J. Fox and James Woods film The Hard Way. In the movie Woods orders a hot dog that is inexplicably called a "frogdog" there is also a scene in the movie where L.L. Cool J licks his lips and professes his love for the culinary treat of frogdogs.

Not kidding on that one. Seriously, was the Kermit the Frog stuff THAT much more bizarre than that?

Another menu board featured this:


(artist visualization)

Four fried chickens, 1 Coke.

This is a little less obscure, but still makes me smile. It's from The Blues Brothers (it's what Belushi orders when the go to Aretha Franklin's diner.)

I have changed the board a couple of other times. I think it said "pork chops and apple sauce" (from the Brady Bunch) and I seem to remember writing some kind of joke based on the war films Hamburger Hill and Pork Chop Hill.

One day I just wrote Cookie Puss and Fudgie the Whale on the board. I wasn't being very creative, but I wanted to make a tribute to Tom Carvel's masterworks.