Does The AA Know About This?

I can name quite a few alumni…

**Disclaimer:

I did not take this picture. It is another piece of hilarity discovered online. Credit is due to the sharp eye who did. Unfortunately I don’t know who that person is.

 

**Cue Theme Song**

The story behind the longest running in-joke is this:

One Saturday night about a year  ago, we were sitting in a van on the NAIA parking lot. My best friend was to pick up a client who had just flown in from the US and I for the lack of better things to do that weekend decided to tag along.

So the client arrives, a rather portly African-American lady who we were forewarned had a reputation of being a no-nonsense sort of person. Taking care not offend her sensibilities, I sat quietly in the back seat with my other friend.

On the drive to the hotel, my best friend being the perfect hostess makes small talk. Asks her how her flight was, tells her about Manila and all that good stuff. About half an hour later, the lady turns to the back seat and asks, “Are these your daughters?”

I held myself back mid-snort.

Mind you my best friend and I were literally born hours apart from each other. It must have been really dark inside that van. It’s either that or…

It didn’t help that our entire circle of friends already referred to her as Mama Bear.  It also didn’t help that I told everyone that story. Now even her older sister jokingly refers to her (rather explicitly and in public) as Mama, much to her chagrin.

In order to make up for unapologetically stoking the flames, I made this little video. I discovered this song while going through my obsessive Cass Elliot hunt. I thought it only befits this whole snafu of being mistaken for everyone’s mother.

**Just as a footnote, the great Mama Cass also sang a song called Jane The Insane Dog Lady which I thought was hilarious.

 

Murdering Numbers

So here’s an addendum to my previous entry. Again, something I fished out of the free flowing office spam. These are from my kindred the world over who had the cojones to inject hilarity in failure. If only for their courage (or strident idiocy depending on how you want to see it) I doff my hat to them.

 

**Note: The Beached Bear would like to take credit for forwarding the email out of which the above images have been derived. There…there…Satisfied?

 

Huh?

This is how far removed I am from non-Discovery Channel mainstream TV: I have successfully eluded (and vice versa) this popular fast food chain commercial that compels everyone to chant “Buger! Burger!” at the slightest mention of good fortune. It is sweeping the country and yet I have never seen it.

Case in point. A sample conversation I overhear at work on a regular basis:

Colleague #1: Mareregular na si (insert Colleague #2’s name here) next month!

Everyone else in the room: Talaga? Pacheeseburger ka naman!

Colleague #1: Burger! Burger! Burger!

Colleague #2: Tse! Wala pa akong pera!!!

Can I just say that to an outsider, this will sound completely absurd. But who the heck cares? People seem to think it’s a funny way of coaxing a free meal out of anyone who’s had a recent run-in with luck. Just your average Pinoy humor I guess. It never occured to me how odd our sense of humor is until I took a shot at translating this joke to a Brazilian friend:

Bebentahan kita ng original Rolex. Brand new! Three hundred pesos lang… Pero Motolite yung battery.

I thought it was funny. She didn’t even wince. Something obviously got blown up in translation there, I don’t know. Anyway, I stopped trying.

 

 

 

The South Answers Back

Somewhere along SLEX

I would like to think of this sign as an affront to the myriad of snooty BF posters that pepper Metro Manila. And it’s not pink! Let’s just hope people won’t miss the irony otherwise we will never see the end of the city’s waste disposal problem.

While we’re gracing the topic of outdoor signage. Ever noticed that billboard along EDSA advertising Havit All Multivitamins whose claim to fame is a supposed youth-in-a-tablet formula? It features Edu Manzano with chest puffed and arms crossed. To his right is picture of a cell. At first glance, I honestly thought it was one of those ‘before and after’ montages. Think Don LaFontaine movie trailer voiceover: All he was was a single cell and then after 50 odd years of  mitosis, he turns into….insert drumroll…..Martial artist. Game Ka Na Ba host. Reviver of the Papaya song. Eduuuu Maaaanzaaaanoooo.