Month: May 2007

Gap Jumps, Jives, and Swings

Gap, Incorporated is an American clothing and accessories retailer based in San Francisco, California and founded in 1969 by Donald Fisher and Doris Fisher. The Fishers opened their first shop because they had been frustrated with the lack of decent customer service and fashionable styles at other retailers. The name was derived from the growing differences between children and adults namely “the generation gap” which reached its peak with the hippie movement.

Michel Gondry, born May 8, 1963 (1964 according to some sources), is a French Academy Award winning screenwriter, film, commercial, and music video director noted for his inventive visual style and manipulation of mise en scène.

The Brian Setzer Orchestra (sometimes going by the acronym BSO) is a swing/rockabilly band formed in 1990 by Stray Cats frontman Brian Setzer. The group had success covering Louis Prima’s “Jump Jive An’ Wail”.

The A&W friendship continues

The Great Root Bear is the popular mascot for A&W Root Beer, an American soft drink. It was first used in 1974 by Canada’s A&W, and was later adopted by the American chain.

Root beer is a beverage that comes in two forms, alcoholic and as a soft drink. The alcoholic version is made from a combination of vanilla, cherry tree bark, licorice root, sarsaparilla root, artificial sassafras root bark flavoring (the pure form is mildly carcinogenic), nutmeg, anise, and molasses among other ingredients. The soft drink version of root beer is non-alcoholic and is generally made using root beer extract or other flavored syrups along with carbonated water. The soft drink version of root beer constitutes about 3% of the American soft drink market.

Discover Atari

The original Atari was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and home computers. The company’s products, such as PONG and the Atari 2600, helped define the computer entertainment industry from the 1970s to the mid 1980s.

Centipede is a 1981 fixed shooter arcade game developed and published by Atari, Inc. Designed by Dona Bailey and Ed Logg, it was one of the most commercially successful games from the golden age of arcade video games and one of the first with a significant female player base.

Tutti Frutti Levi’s

Levi’s is a brand of riveted denim jeans manufactured by Levi Strauss & Co. In modern times, Levi’s has become one of the top-10 most litigious companies in the world, aggressively pursuing action against any rival fashion company producing jeans that infringe on the trademark (US #1,139,254) on the Levi’s jeans’ 133 year old iconic back pocket.

“Tutti Frutti” was Little Richard’s first hit record in 1955; with its opening cry of “Womp-bomp-a-loom-op-a-womp-bam-boom!” and its hard-driving sound and wild lyrics, it became not only a model for many future Little Richard songs, but also one of the models for rock and roll.

However, in order to make it commercially acceptable, Robert ‘Bumps’ Blackwell had Little Richard‘s lyrics changed from “tutti-frutti, good booty” to “tutti frutti, aw rooty.”

Steven Seagal Does The Dew

Mountain Dew is a caffeinated, sweet, citrus-flavored soft drink produced by PepsiCo, Inc. It was invented in Marion, Virginia and first marketed in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1948, then by the Minges family in Fayetteville, North Carolina and across the United States in 1964. When removed from its characteristic green bottle, Mountain Dew is bright yellow-green and semi-opaque.

Steven Seagal (born April 10, 1952), is an American action movie actor, producer, writer, director, singer-songwriter, and activist. Seagal has become the target of internet-based criticism. However, the line between Seagal’s own work and a parody portrayal of Seagal is becoming increasingly blurry. The abovementioned commercials for Orange SA and Mountain Dew poke fun at his action aikido style. Seagal is sometimes considered to be in on the joke.

“Nothing like a picnic with cool Stag Beer”

Mr. Quincy Magoo [better known as Mr. Magoo] is a cartoon character created by John Hubley in 1949, for UPA. Hubley based the character on his former professor Francis Peabody Magoun, who bore some physical resemblance to the character. Voiced by Jim Backus (also famed in popular culture for his role as Thurston Howell III in the 1960s sitcom Gilligan’s Island), Quincy Magoo is a wealthy, short-statured retiree who gets into a series of sticky situations as a result of his nearsightedness, compounded by his stubborn refusal to admit the problem, in which the affected people (or animals) think that he is a lunatic, rather than just being near-sighted.

Pabst Brewing Company is an American company founded in 1844 by Jacob Best. Best known for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer [as well as Stag, a pale lager], it is historically associated with Milwaukee, Wisconsin where it was founded, although its corporate headquarters are currently in Woodridge, Illinois. Pabst retains a datacenter in San Antonio, Texas, the previous location of its headquarters. In 1999, the Pabst Brewing Company began transferring its production to Miller Brewing Company on a contract basis. In 2001, it closed its last brewery in Allentown, Pennsylvania.