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International Bacon Day

international bacon day

Today is International Bacon Day, celebrated on the first Saturday of September since 2009. Although we can’t suss out who created this holiday for carnivores, we can provide you with helpful translations for the globetrotting bacon lover:

English – Can I have some Bacon?
Dutch – Kan ik wat Bacon hebben?
French – Est-ce que je peux prendre du lard ?
German – Kann ich etwas Speck haben?
Greek – Μπορώ να έχω κάποιο μπέϊκον;
Italian – Posso avere certa pancetta affumicata?
Japanese – 私はベーコンを食べてもいいか。
Korean – 나는 약간 베이컨이 있어서 좋은가?
Portuguese – Posso eu ter algum bacon?
Russian – Могу я иметь некоторый бекон?
Spanish – ¿Puedo tener un poco de tocino?

Perhaps the ultimate celebration would involve preparation of the Bacon Explosion: a pound of basket-woven bacon wrapped around two pounds of sausage, which are stuffed with a pound of fried bacon crumbles. Not in the mood to cook? Order it directly from BBQ Addicts and have a happy International Bacon Day!

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Eat an Extra Dessert Day

Today is Eat an Extra Dessert Day, always celebrated on September 4th. We don’t know who started it or when, but we sincerely hope it will go on forever because, let’s face it, the only thing better than one dessert is two.

Eat an Extra Dessert Day

We’re neither mathematicians nor philosophers, but we wonder: Is there such a thing as half a dessert? To paraphrase Yoda, there is only dessert and no dessert. Wouldn’t that apply here, too? If eaten at once, there can be only one dessert. (We’re throwing in a little Highlander here, too. Please pardon our mixed movie metaphors.)

Theoretically, one dessert could last forever. Perhaps the purpose of Eat an Extra Dessert Day is to allow us a moment to escape the sweet-time continuum. It may be the only chance we’ll get all year.

Good luck, and when you come back to the table, please bring the chocolate sauce. There’s work to be done.

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Chicken Boy Day

Today is Chicken Boy Day, celebrating the birthday of the fiberglass legend on September 1, 1969, or thereabouts. Official birth records are unavailable.

chicken boy day

Image – chickenboy.com

Twenty-two feet tall, referred to by many as the Statue of Liberty of Los Angeles, California, Chicken Boy stood atop his namesake restaurant on Broadway between Fourth & Fifth Streets for fourteen years, betraying no emotion regarding the dismembered, fried fowl that presumably filled the golden bucket he held before him.

When the restaurant closed in the autumn of 1983, Chicken Boy awaited a fate similar to that of his flesh-covered counterparts: mechanical separation followed by the discarding of his skeletal remains. Artist Amy Inouye, who had grown fond of the landmark since her move to Los Angeles in the 1970s, decided to save him.

While the owners may have been unsure of her sanity, they were persuaded by her sincerity. With permission secured, she made numerous calls to moving companies that started with, “Can I get an estimate to dismantle and move a 22-foot-tall fiberglass statue of a man with a chicken’s head, also known as Chicken Boy?” Eventually, she convinced one company that she was not making a prank call, and the move was scheduled.

On May 4, 1984, Chicken Boy was removed and taken to the first of many storage facilities. Inouye sent letters to several museums, certain they would want to include the Los Angeles icon in their sculpture gardens. Only one or two responded that Chicken Boy was a sign and, therefore, did not qualify as art.

Inouye began selling Chicken Boy t-shirts, followed by lapel pins, pens, mugs, and other items. She put together a souvenir catalog. The proceeds helped pay for storage. At its zenith, her mailing list boasted 14,000 names. The shop, sadly, is shuttered.

Of the phenomenon, Inouye says, “The legend of Chicken Boy grew far beyond downtown LA—it became obvious that his appeal was universal. In every person, it seems, there is a little or a lot of self-conscious awkwardness trying to accept those cards they were dealt—we are, in fact, all Chicken Boy.”

Despite mentions in Newsweek, Esquire, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times, airtime on countless radio shows, and a brief viewing at the underground Arco Plaza mall, Chicken Boy had no place to call his own.

In the film Chicken Boy: The Movie, he comes alive due to the Harmonic Convergence of 1987, a Mayan/Hell/astrological alignment and prophecy that is even less believable than a fiberglass statue receiving the breath of life and learning to play the accordion.

chicken boy day

In early 2007,  Inouye found a small office building in Highland Park where she could run a small art gallery while Chicken Boy watched over Route 66 from his rooftop perch. The neighborhood of artists and musicians welcomed them both. She applied for and received a Community Beautification Grant.

Then, after eight months spent navigating the permit process, Chicken Boy was hoisted to his new roost atop Future Studio at 5558 North Figueroa Street. On October 18, 2007, after twenty-three years, five months, and fourteen days, Chicken Boy was finally home.

chicken boy day

Image – chickenboy.com

Mel Brooks once said, “The whole word chicken is funny. The ch, the i, the k, put it all together, youʼve got the funniest word in the English language.” Maybe that explains the appeal of Chicken Boy. It definitely explains why we’ve used the word seventeen times.

Happy Chicken Boy Day! (Whoops, eighteen!)

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National S’mores Day

Today is National S’mores Day. It celebrates Girl Scout Loretta Scott Crew’s culinary invention, immortalized in the 1927 handbook Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts.

national s'mores day

S’more Puft – Brad Hill siraudio.deviantart.com

“Some More”

8 sticks
16 graham crackers
8 bars plain chocolate (any of the good plain brands broken in two)
16 marshmallows

Toast two marshmallows over the coals to a crisp gooey state and then put them inside a graham cracker and chocolate bar sandwich. The heat of the marshmallow between the halves of chocolate bar will melt the chocolate a bit. Though it tastes like “some more” one is really enough.

It isn’t clear at what point the name was shortened to S’more, but who cares? Happy National S’mores Day!

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