OU812?
August 2, 2012 Here's a little wrecky behind-the-scenes trivia for you: while I see and tag every photo submission that's sent in each week, I don't always see the e-mails they come in with. That's because my friend and wrecky minion Julianne downloads and names all the files for me beforehand.
The upshot of this is that I see photos with no context, unless Julianne sees fit to squeeze a short explanation into the file name. ("JohnS.sneeezed-while-ordering.jpg") It also means if you ever see a file name like "DebbieR.blue-penguin-penis-poop.jpg, you can blame/thank Julianne.
Most wrecks are pretty self-explanatory, of course, but then there are the ones like this:
Did the baker lapse into a hypnotic trance there at the end? Was s/he receiving coded messages from ET? In short, WHAT...[Shatner flail]...the heck?
Ok, I've just looked up the e-mail, and now that I know the answer I can totally see it. Take a minute and see if you can puzzle it out, too. If not, I'll spell it out for you at the end. [hint]
Sometimes bakers are kind enough to give us visual clues:
Hang on, I'm getting something here...[putting hand to forehead]...yep....yep... ok, I got it! It was supposed to say, "CAMERON ON SHIRT." No need to thank me; I'm here to help.
(So...I guess Cameron may need a New Jersey. EH? EH??)
'Course, sometimes puzzling out a confusing cake can lead to all the wrong places:
Um...
I bet that's the last time Trin asks for "Cake, Cake, Cake!" on her cake.
o.0
Thanks to Christy J., Michelle R., & Wade C. for finishing what you started. [And to John for the Van Halen reference. Hee.]
(So, did you guess that Christy spelled out Corinne's name on the bakery order form? You know "2 N's, 1 R?" With a star/asterisk to draw attention to it? You DID? Good, good. I've trained you well.)
Reader Comments (57)
yay 1st comment!
KKK laura
Must. Have. Oreo. Cake (even if racist)
That's only mildly more frustrating than the people that somehow see my name at the end of emails and respond to Connie...
JORSEY! Isn't that the new designer drug surpassing Modesto's methamphetamines?
I figured out the first cake in a snap. But I'm getting worried! I was *planning* to order a cake in September that would say "Happy Birthday Elaine and Laurie." Now I've decided that there are SO many ways that could go wrong that I think I'll either get a cake with no writing or else bake a cake myself and have no decorations other than paper flags with the names. Although it would be sort of cool to take a picture of a cake I ordered that was messed up and then send it in...
Actually, I haven’t eaten yet – I’m too busy glorying in the phrase “Shatner Flail.” Ah, the mental picture. Speaking of mental…
Sung to “Crazy” by Patsy Cline
Crazy, I’m starting to get obscure cake wrecks
It’s crazy that now I can spell Corinne, too
I knew, the minute I looked at the piping
Didn’t have to scroll down to look at your clue.
Jersey, what did they do to that jersey?
Wond’ring, maybe the baker was new?
Crazy for thinking they’d write what‘s requested
I’m crazy for knowing with one simple showing
Just what they were supposed to do.
Crazy, but I knew Trin wasn’t a Clansman
Though rather than lying, I’ll say after much trying
I needed the “cake, cake, cake” clue.
@Donkaloosa -- "Happy Birthday, A-Train and Lorry" and they'll put a lot of plastic transportation flotsam on it. (Maybe you should just have pie?)
For some reason or other I have "If You're Happy and You Know It" running through my head today, so, um, yeah, this...
If you're useless and you know it make a cake
If you find you always blow it make a cake
If you copy the instructions
and we wonder how you function
If you're racist and you know it make a cake
Being that my name is Corinne (one r two n's) I caught that one pretty quick. In response to the first Corinne posting, I agree! How hard it is to see this name is not Connie!
For the record, I've never met anyone who spells their own name Corrine. But everyone loves to misspell it that way.
The Cameron on Jorsey meant put the name Cameron on the Jersey. A Jersey is s sports 'shirt'
I love the literal lol's-they make me lololol. XD Sharyn, funny as always :D
oh. I thought that was a Z! thanks for the clarification!
meanwhile....that oreo cake may have INTENDED KKK since it had oreos. maybe it's a veiled threat? Maybe Trin is black and dating someone white and her peeps are pissed?
Sometimes I wonder just how most of these cakes are ordered. It can't be in person, or they don't okay the order. I have ordered cakes many times, and they bakery writes down what I say, and has me initial it as correct. I would never order custom lettering over the phone! There are just too many ways to mess that up, as we see daily! We should learn our lesson, order in person and check the order. Simple fix, but then it would be no fun to see these "wrecks" every morning!
I'm sure it wouldn't have turned out any better had Trin specified "cake three times". LOL
The thing that always gets me about this sort of cake is that, surely they have the customers phone number? I mean, you read (*2 n's, 1 r) incorrectly. People do that, no big deal. But I feel like, if it were me, I would have to call the customer and ask if they really want me to put (*2 n's, 1r) on the cake. Possibly disguised as a "So, after I have the princess and the frog on there, and I've written out Happy 1st Birthday Corienne, where did you want the (*2n's, 1r)? Smaller font perhaps?"
I guess I need more training, Jen. I was going for text-speak and deciphered "starz 'n one-er". Obviously, I didn't pass that class, either. #soashamed
@LIsa -- I did a Cake Wrecks tribute cake for my BFF's 50th. I did a detailed drawing, in colored magic marker, literally spelling out all the mistakes and drawing all the miscues, went over it with them in person, and included a one-page typed reference sheet that explained it again in case anyone had any questions, WITH my home and cell #'s in a prominent place. They made 2 errors, when they "fixed" my errors by doing the thing correctly. They called two times, but only to make sure I wasn't going to send a picture to this blog. It worked out fine, because I made them scrape off the correct thing and do it my 'wrong" way, (which was obvious, and therefore added to the wreckiness) and since they were making fixes I made them add a frosting carrot -- I'd found a bag of carrot jockeys. I figured my design/instructions were bullet proof, and they STILL made mistakes. (I think maybe when you combine the ingredients for buttercream they chemically alter and produce a mildly hallucinogenic gas.)
What a delicious looking,but unfortunately narrow minded,racist third cake.
The decorator speller Corinne right anyway. How frustrating.
First off to people who think orders get "confirmed" you are crazy. Where I work we don't confirm the orders. You take the order as they tell you they want it you write down and give them a price.The cake decorator isn't always the one taking the orders either its pretty much whoever is working in the bakery at the time. Also we don't have time to call every single customer to ask about spelling. I'll have like 20 cakes to do and 5 hours to do it. Yes I am a grocery store cake decorator and to be quite honest this site is giving them a bad rep. We aren't all bad at our job and it's not always our fault as it's the customer's confusing or not knowing what they want.
There are so many layers of "wrong" on the "KKK" cake; starting with the "Oreos" around the edges, and moving on from there; that I can't even enumerate them all, much less think about them all without suffering a major brain aneurysm... O__O
It's not always the cake decorators fault as it's in the customer's. Plus no one has time to cal everyone customer to verify.
With apologies to Tony Orlando and Dawn…
K three times
on the icing if you want cake
Twice on the N
means the cake's for Corinne
Ha! My name is Corinne so I got the first one right away. People ALWAYS spell my name wrong, usually with two R's and one N. As a Corinne you develop a habit of correcting that mistake before it happens. "What's your name?" "Corinne, one R, two N's"
@Another Corinne: My best friend growing up was Corrine (two Rs one N). It's not as common but it exists.
I'm not sure I should at admit this, but I looked at your title and thought "oh, you ate 12" like you at a dozen cupcakes. I thought I was so crafty coming up with it so fast. Don't know when I caught on. I am really D-U-M.
1) Okay. I failed. I kept thinking the * at the bottom had something to do with the pink * on top of the Princess's hat. Therefore I translated it as, "Starsn's In Red", which doesn't really help. : /
2) What, no Jersey Shore joke? I'm disappointed. ; )
3) It's not a racist message; the baker just shortened it to "KKK" from "Kake, Kake, Kake" due to a lack of space. Technically, this is merely a spelling error. However, when the baker saw the abbreviated form, he became hesitant, thus the "..." at the end instead of an "!".
Did anyone else see "Happy 2st Birthday" on that first cake? I also got the 2n's,1r with a little help from the hint (thought it was a Z at first)
I never would have thought "cake cake cake" for that last one.....
This is my absolute favorite website! Jen and friends: Keep up the good work!
Dorene
Speaking as a "Corinne" I'm actually just impressed they spelled that correctly.
I am really trying hard to come up with something that the KKK cake could be other than a racist cake.
K is also the symbol used for "1000," correct? (Stay with me.) Maybe Trin (Is that really a name? Not Trina or something?) just did something that is measured in the thousands. Sold three thousand cars or insurance policies? So someone calls and orders a congratulatory cake and wants it to read "3K Trin".
You see???? Maybe??? Nah, I'm not convinced either.
Wow...love the wrecks today!
I can't help but wonder about the KKK cake, tho. I have several Brazilian friends who type messages to each other on Facebook all the time. One will say something funny, then the other one will reply "kkkkk..." I think this is a substitute for laughing, like we Americans use lol or hahaha. Just makes me wonder if that is what the cake is supposed to be...although the oreos are suspicious...
at the risk of starting an epcot, KKK = LOL in Portuguese.
Aw, come on bakery workers, we *know* you're not all bad. That's what makes it funny. See?
#2 1st impression: Slabs of fondant? Really? 2nd impression: Shouldn't it be 'Joisey'?
#3 Uh, er... Perhaps Trin is a Sherlock Holmes fan ('The Five Orange Pips'). Yeah, that's it.
I had Theardare play 'Celine Dion Sings Manilow' as punishment for not coming up with 'poultrygeist' for the 'ghost chickens' yesterday (see Sheila's post near the end of the comments). He was more than obliging because I morphed 'carts' into 'cats' and someone called a Code Red on me...
The 'needs a New Jersey' line would be much better if that was actually a Devils jersey....but sadly I believe it's a Carolina Hurricanes :)
I just wanted to let all you Corinnes and Corrinnes and Corrines know that on my computer monitor, all your names look like Connnie (yes that is with three 'n's). The moral of the story is : you can't win, so don't worry about it. Cake still tastes YUM!
Also
@Crissy - honey, calm down. We all know you have a hard job. We all make mistakes, but most of us don't get to me immortalized in frosting. Heck, it was hilarious to our office when Bill order 10 wenches for the pickup trucks, but unfortunately he didn't write his order in blue gel with rose petals, so it doesn't get submitted to "Cake wrecks." We were all going to get dressed in renaissance costumes and show up in BIll's office ...
That last cake seems like a warning or possibly this is a case of not understanding what other people understand. Some words sound bad to some people while to others it isn't bad at all like the Brits using the word fag instead of cigarette.
The first cake is cute but I was too dumb to figure out the weirdness at the end until I reached the end of the post. I guess some people just aren't thinking when they are decorating the cakes.
Craig -- I'm glad you lived to tell the tale. (I also deeply regret not thinking of "poultrygeist." That was brilliant.)
The KKK Oreo cake would be perfect for Uncle Ruckus from "The Boondocks"!
(*2 R's, 1N)
I am not a member of the former Kappa Kappa Kappa, but if I were . . . hey, cake!
Sharyn's explanation, (I think maybe when you combine the ingredients for buttercream they chemically alter and produce a mildly hallucinogenic gas) explains ALOT!! LOVE the comment and intend to use it as an excuse for my "brain damage"!!!
Craig, don't be so hard on yourself! We all missed the opportunity...Sheila just beat us to the post. Was KarateLady in on the rescue?
Just to add to the name thing...Koreena (someone I know), she has to spell it out everytime.
Is cameron on a team of Santas? Bcause that doesn't look like any sports uniform i've ever seen!
I might have figured out the name thing but I couldn't get past the Zee in ZN's! DOH!
Wondering what on earth Trin did to get a cake like that. I did however think the first cake was adorable lol. If that makes me odd..what else is new? Loves to be odd. Just fears that one of these days a wreck with my name on it is going to appear on here and with my luck it will also have a clown.
Read to the tune of the nursery rhyme "This is the house that Jack built".
This is the princess fair haired
This is the jersey red squared
that paired with the princess fair haired
This is the CAKE shortened proclaims
that rivaled the jersey red squared
that paired with princess fair haired
This is thrice correctly spelled names
that bested CAKE shortened proclaims
that rivaled the jersey red squared
that paired with the princess fair haired
Hmm, I was way off! I thought Corinne's cakes was meant to have starz (sic) and dots on the right. I would never have guessed that was a 2.
That last cake.... Maybe it's not sinister, just misguided. I was thinking that maybe the recipient's name was Katrin, and the allusion was to a stutter. Hence K-K-K-trin. Maybe.
@Barbara---I had the same thought about the KKK cake.
I would guess that KKK stands for Kappa Kappa Kappa (aka Tri Kap), which, according to Wikipedia, is a local fraternity at Dartmouth (actually, the oldest local fraternity in the United States). The fraternity was created 24 years before the KKK that we all know and don't love.
Even if my guess about the cake is wrong, we're all better for knowing this new bit of information, right? Or, alternatively, that's 15 seconds we'll never get back...
I've been sitting here for the past couple of minutes trying to say "Cake! Cake! Cake!" out loud in a way that doesn't sound like I'm saying "KKK." Can't do it without putting a ridiculously long pause after each syllable, which I wouldn't normally think to do. Even if the person on the other end of the phone read it back as "KKK," I'd probably hear it as what I was expecting to hear: "Cake! Cake! Cake!"
I totally got the reference. My middle daughter's name is Corina..I often introduce her Corina, 1 R, 1 N...My youngest daughter is Emmalee. I too have to spell it all the time. And then I curse myself for spelling it weird in the first place. Oy.