Let's Play Telephone
July 22, 2013 Ever wonder what could possibly go wrong with a simple inscription on a basic cake? Well, WONDER NO MORE.
Below I've listed the inscriptions some of my trusty Wreckporters ordered from professional bakeries, followed by the cakes they actually received:
"God Bless Neal"
;)
I hear it's His middle name.
"Welcome Baby Arnold"
;)
The spacing is what really sells it.
"Happy Birthday Mom"
Now that's a cake only a mother named Bob could love.
[Btw, I'm starting to wonder if a baker named Bob is doing these on purpose. And if so, I want to shake Bob's hand.]
"Congrats British Lit"
;)
I hope this starts a trend; I want to see all the ways bakers butcher "Kyrgyzstanian."
"Happy Bandwidth Upgrade Day"
;)
"Band With Upgrade" is the name of my retro Steam Powered Giraffe cover band.
(I realize only about 3 people will get that joke... and I'm ok with that.)
"Grats to Dad"
;)
I like to think this is the baker's revenge on everyone who shortens "congratulations" to "grats." "CONGRATS" IS SHORT ENOUGH, PEOPLE.
"Old Dirty Thirty"
;)
At some point you stop being surprised. Or so I'm told.
"When I'm 64"
;)
That's actually how John says it when he's singing in his "drunk McCartney" voice, so maybe Kit sang her order over the phone. Drunk. While imitating Paul McCartney.
(Don't keep us in suspense, now, Kit: did you?)
Thanks to Colleen C., Suzanne R., Morgan & Eric, Katie D., Ethan D., Leslie C., Becky L., & Kit K. for really phoning it in today. ;)
Reader Comments (65)
Your the beast, Jim111
(You're the best, Jen!!!)
Oh, boy!!! I can see this engendering a whole new sport; "Cake Order Roulette". Just phone your local cake wreck emporium, mumble some out-in-left-field inscription that preys upon the cake decorator's partial hearing impairment, and wait for the results. Guaranteed hilarity for the whole family!
I actually think it says "Grass to Dadd," which makes it even more awesome.
I loved that game as a kid, but I never thought of it as a career O_o
Actually, most of these cakes are quite lovely, even the inscriptions are well done. I suspect that the problem here lies not with the decorator, but the illiterate and/or hearing impaired phone order taker.
A good way to start a Monday: Giggling and shaking my head, wondering HOW these things happen.
When it comes to Cake 2: I've drawn a blank.
Cake 4: I wonder if they do cakes for many people named "Lynn" who come from all over the world, and that's why they thought this was the British Lynn.
Cake 5: Well, at least the balloons don't look like sperm. Although they really don't look like balloons, either.
Cake 6: Maybe Dad got this grass, but this Wreckerator got the LSD. The lines hurt my eyes.
The bearable part about today's offerings is that now I have "When I'm Sixty-Four" stuck in my head. It'll probably be there all day. It's a good thing I like that song.
=^e.e^=
The other mistakes seem slightly understandable, but Dadd??? Really?
Oh my heavens, it scares me how much stuff I see referenced on this blog that I love. I am one of the 3 who understand the reference! Whoot-whoot!
ROBOT POWERS ACTIVATE!
@Shirley Fowley - oooh! I'm really tempted to do that now...In fact, I think it could be a future Cake Wre...well, maybe not, seeing how we'd be deliberately messing them up...but it would be fun! :-)
I also like Jen's idea of telling the Wreckerator to inscribe some unusual country's name on the cake...or perhaps the flag or seal of said country & see if they bother to look it up. Much like the Winter Olympics many years ago where it became obvious that the band only bothered with the top contenders & was left scrambling for sheet music to the winning country's anthem because the country was not heavily favored to win, and was a 'new' country (former USSR 'member'), so the anthem was not well-known at all...or well-practiced, apparently.
Based on
Annabel Lee by
Ed wore a Lampost
It was many and many a year ago,
In a bak’ry where I’ve been,
That a baker named Bob plied his works
Making cakey mondegreens;
And this baker he lived with no other thought
But to make wrecks that were keen.
I was a child and he was just Bob,
In his bak’ry on the green;
And he tried to do right, and he always came close
Making cakey mondegreens;
With piping skills that all cake decorators thought
Okay from what they’d seen.
And this is the reason that Baby’s Bob,
And “God Bless” is now Doug-ie,
And the band has had an upgrade.
They’re all cake-ish mondegreens
And this is the reason Lynn’s British, you know
And 30, Thirty, 30’s writ green,
And Dadd now has Grass rather than grats
Und the musical notes gleam.
Bakers not half so happy at Costco,
Envied Bob and thus turned green.
Yes! That was the reason (as all wrecks show,
Bad, worse, in between,)
That they want to make some almost right cakes
Like Bob’s Cakey mondegreens.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see Steam Powered Giraffe mentioned since Jen's the one who introduced me to them, but that joke made my day! =D
CLEARLY, the person who called in "Bob's"/"Mom"s" cake had a tewwibew head code. He or she is more to be pitied than censured/censored... =^>.<^=
I wouldn't expect someone who doesn't work in an office to know "bandwidth upgrade". However, that is totally a day worthy of a cake and the giant blobs of icing look delicious (despite the fact that they inexplicably have nipples on the front of the "balloons").
In large choral groups, it's said that if you forget the words of a song, sing the word "watermelon" (in rhythm), and it covers for you nicely until you can pick the words back up.
Maybe with cake decorating, it's "When in doubt, write 'Bob'."
Quick story - I have a friend who flies a Nascar racer to and from races and his name is Pablo (with a huge long three or four other middle and last names). When he went to pick up his ID from the office for one of the races, they could not find a 'Pablo' in their badges. But what DID they find in their team packet? A badge for Bob Lowe. He now has an American name just in case Pablo doesn't do the trick.
Did anyone else think about Edmund Blackadder saying "Bob" when they read Cake #3?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLTR8qYWJbQ
:D
I think the N on Neal's cake is backwards...which just makes it so much better! o.O
I really want to know what the wreckorator was thinking on the Bob Arnold one. Wait, maybe I really don't.
I'm with TLC, the lines on the Dadd wreck hurt my eyes.
Off to tackle the pile of work on my desk. I really do hate when work gets in the way of my CW time!
**yawn** new kittens don't sleep much, just in case you were wondering...
The music notes cake is excellent, my daughter would SO love a cake like that! And she's only going to be 17 so that is very "Un 64". Must have it.
And "Grass to Dadd"" Freudian slip. The wreckerator was just daydreaming about how he was going to spend his evening when he finished up this boring shift in the bakery.
I get that SPG joke, woot! I have nothing spiffy about the cakes to add, tho. ;-)
You finally got a "so then stories" ad that doesn't have jpeg artifacts so severe that they make my eyeballs itch!
Well, it looks like I'm at least the third person to get the SPG joke, too! It's all your fault, Jen, for introducing me to them. :)
The cakes are...interesting. I'm wondering just what kind of Dadd the wreckerator thought he was, to give him grass, though? (Says the child of the '60s)
I would have taken that music note cake, misspellings and all! And Steam Powered Giraffe is awesome, and I was lucky enough to see them live!
From your comment on "Band With Upgrade", thank you for introducing us to Steam Powered Giraffe. We bought all their albums after your link.
Oh....dear...
If I owned a bakery (and given my general eptitude with all things icing, it's not too likely to happen) I would want SuBee's permission to use Bob's Cakey Mondegreen for the name of it. Or maybe I'd just call it Monty Green's.
I think that spelling of "dadd" is my new favorite idiotic goof!
OMG, Tedd from "El Goonish Shive" became a dad! Yeah, he was already a weird kind of dad to Ellen, but now someone's calling him Dadd!
I had to jump in on the irony of being at Comic Con this weekend and having to choose between watching Steam Powered Giraffe (so goooood) and W00tstock (who do an incredible number of "____ is the name of my _____ cover band" jokes) on Thursday night. And then Jen nails both of them together in her post today!
When I see all these Bobs, I had to think of Sandra Boynton's 15 animals. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQf_NKocqbQ
Me thinks we need a baker version.
When the icing makes the word "day" look like "darp"... you know it's going to be a wonderful darp.
To add another level of excitement in bakery roulette -- call with a cold!
After all - Mom said with a stuff nose is most definitely Bob.
I also got the SPG reference and thanks Jen for getting me hooked on them!!
Yay for the Steam Powered Giraffe reference!! You could use Juju Magic for the background theme of these cakes! Lol...certainly was some voodoo that they didn't do so well. :p
For Mom of Cake #3:
"Let me put it another way, Bob. You are a girl. And you're a girl with as much talent for disguise as a giraffe in dark glasses trying to get into a polar bears-only golf club."
Okay, I'm just gonna say it: if you celebrate something like upgrading your bandwidth with a cake then you really need to examine some of the choices you have made in your life that have brought you to the point that you have so little cause for celebration other than the most trivial of things . . .
or
YOU ARE FREAKIN' AWESOME BECAUSE YOU CELEBRATE EVERYTHING WITH CAKE AND I WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND!!
Also, I think Band with Upgrade will be playing at next year's Falker Satherhood Day. I am soooo looking forward to that!
I got both the Steam Powered Giraffe reference (friends of mine are their official photographers) and the 'name of my _________ cover band" from being at Wootstock a couple of years ago - and at Paul & Storm with Wil Wheaton at Emerald City Comicon this year. The name is perfect, by the way - and much better than any of the cakes in today's post.
Other than the "Grass to Dadd" one, I thought the cakes themselves were lovely. And I too am now singing "When I'm 64".
Haven't commented in ages, but I have to give props to SuBee for knowing what a mondegreen is (and the wonderful butchering of the poet's name...). As for the cakes - I think that's been adequately covered... but let me add one more HOOOOOOOOW?!?!
@SaraV, I've heard about saying 'watermelon' repeatedly with random spacing and inflection to simulate a background discussion in a play, but singing it is new to me. I'm guessing it doesn't work so well for a solo. The preferred method in groups I've been in: the "deer in the headlights" look, which is incredibly subtle, and fools everyone, every time.
@Jodee, does kitty have a name yet? Seems to be an 'alarm cat' in the making.
#1 Fairly competent decorating and nice script, but how in the world...?
#2 Now this might be one of those cases where cake writing person has to decipher an order that someone else wrote, leaving plenty of space in case the customer wants something added. An epic poem, perhaps. Or maybe cake writing person is a Simpsons fan.
#3 I'm going to go with the cold calling theory on this one. "Dough, dot 'Bob', 'BOB'! Cad you hear be?!"
#4 See #1.
#5 We have something new, here: Instead of swimmers, balls of yarn with pushpins stuck in them.
#6 This is either a Bavarian cream cake (for which I would excuse just about any decorating mishap, even though only a Visigoth would decorate a BCC), or a quiche. I also see 'grass to Dadd'.
#7 I believe this is known as "rubbing it in." For those who think 30 is 'old'. Heh. Heh heh. Just you wait, youngsters. And get off my lawn.
#8 My theory (which it is, and it is mine, too): The recipient is 65, and the Beatles reference has been a standing joke for two years.
So on the Bob/Mom cake -- how are the flowers so beautiful & the scroll so bad? Is it a real corsage or bought gumpaste flowers???
I got the Steam Powered Giraffe reference...cause I read Epbot, not cause I'm cool.
I think I'm the 10th person to get the SPG joke! Come on up to Detroit to see them either in October, December or May!
And they all seem to have lost their commas....
I can always count on getting a laugh when I visit this blog. Shame on me for not being back for a while. The musical notes are adorable on the last cake.
I do miss Upgrade and The Jon... They could start the SPG cover band and compete with their old bandmates.
Funny, every time I've mentioned wanting both back in the band I get accused of trolling by Hatchworth.
Three people get that as well. (Juju Magic continues, like it or not... Thanks, the Jon!)
Steam Powered Giraffe is the best!
As a former cake decorator you always read back what they want on the cake.
Lol some of these cakes are actually beautifully decorated. That's just plain evil that the wreckerators had to ruin these cakes by actually writing on them. Especially if you cannot spell Dad. My goodness I wonder if that dad did indeed get grass instead of congratulations lol.
How long before we see a SPG themed cake??
@ Unregistered CommenterCraig:
"For those who think 30 is 'old'. Heh. Heh heh. Just you wait, youngsters. And get off my lawn."
--------------------------------------
Hear! Hear! 30 old???? Ridiculous!!!! If I were 30 again, and knew what I know now, I'd say that 30 is practically infantile. But then again, I wouldn't be able to, not having gotten to my age yet to realize it.
=^e.e^=
At least the first one has really nice handwriting. There...that's the positive way of looking at it. :)