March 9th, 2008
Deep Sea Discovery: Delicacy or Danger? Eurosport, Manhood, and the Color Pink. The Color Brown. The Athletico-Political Spectrum. You Tell Us!
Posted in Uncategorized
9 Responses to “WRI 15: Of Clams and The Color Pink”
Leave a Reply
If you love what you're hearing,
donate some coin to help keep us
podcasting into the future.
We'll love you forever.
We promise!
WRI SHIRTS
While they don’t wear brown, certainly the Boston Lobster (of World Team Tennis) qualify on the other two criteria. Beyond the obvious (and appropriate crustacean reference- “Lob”-sters, get it?), the team is situated in the politically liberal bastion of Boston. Plus this is the league, remember, that was originally founded by Billie Jean King.
When I first thought of this nominee, though, I had no idea the team still existed. Apparently the WTT was re-formed at some point. I was one of 768 fans back in the 70s, when attendees where encouraged to get rowdy. Scream “double fault” just as an opposing team’s player was going into their backswing was a guaranteed crowd pleaser. Good Times!
Well, guys I see (or hear) that this podcast puts you squarely amongst the 15 million sports fan (8% of all US sports fans) who, according to a 2006 survey conducted by Harris Interactive for Home Depot, root for a sports team soley based on the color of the team’s uniforms. When you find that left-leaning, brown-wearing, bivalved-mascoted team, you can even paint your homes (or the WRI studio! Just imagine!) in the color of that sports franchise (just visit themostcolorfulfan.com!). What wonders will modern market research bring us next?
Well, Stacia, we’ll have to paint over the crimson and gold of USC, but it will be well worth it.
I once met someone in a bar who played lacrosse for the Acton, MA “Top Gun Fighting Clams”…definitely a liberal part of the country. The clams are split into two groups, orange and blue, which I suppose if you mixed together might make brown. And then there’s the description of the clams as “fighting”, something that surely supports the idea that the clams of the deep ocean could be fighting amongst themselves and secretly planning the demise of the human race.
Matt, your submission is a strong one, as orange and blue definitely make brown.
The St. Louis Browns, arguably the worst team in Major League Baseball history, toiled aimlessly and without any success for fifty years before becoming the Baltimore Orioles. As for left-wing political leanings, check out the team logo for 1953-4. Then consider that Branch Rickey, the man who brought Jackie Robinson to MLB, ran the Browns for a couple of years. I realize this is a stretch, but there is at least one story of the entire team coming down with game-canceling food poisoning sometime in the forties. Bad clams? Maybe. A plot to keep the Browns from moving to bivalve-rich Baltimore? Possibly. Apocryphal? Definitely.
Rudy, I think you’re referring to this logo:
http://baltimore-maryland.org/history/classic-orioles-logo.png
Which is very precisely left-wing.
A strong contender here.
It occurs to me that I neglected one important brown-clad, left-leaning entity, the Hershey Bears. I was exposed to them several years ago during a delightful jaunt through Central Pennsylvania. If my Hershey Bears tour guide reads this, please contact us!
I, too, have wondered about the
pronunciation, I looked this up. This comes from a very homemadey Rhode Island dictionary:
Quahog:
A kind of ocean clam, or bivalve mollusk, found in the waters of the
North Atlantic. They come in two varieties: Arctica islandica, the ocean quahog; and Mercenaria mercenaria, the bay quahog. They make handy ashtrays.
The common name, poquauhock, is taken from the languages of the
Narragansett and Wampanoag Indians, and it’s thought that today’s
pronunciation can be traced to those origins. The Narragansetts, from
the west side of Narragansett Bay, probably pronounced the word
“po-kwa-hok.” Today’s western Rhode Islanders thus pronounce it
“kwa-hog.” The Wampanoags of the East Bay called it “po-ko-hok,” and
today, eastern Rhode Islanders likewise say “ko-hog.”