The Latest Disappointment

Tuesday, April 20, 2010
National Cheese Ball Day? Really?

First off, Morsch has not right to question the validity of anything. He lost that right when he started Outta Leftfield. Second, there are much stranger things associated with April 20th that he could write about. [Editor's Note: I am absolutely shocked that the fat, cheesy Morsch overlooks the opportunity to refer to himself as a "cheeseball." He's slipping.]

National Cheese Ball Day was Saturday, April 17. I know, I missed it, too.
In fact, the only reason I knew anything about it at all was because there was some chatter about it amongst my Twitter friends. Twitter chitter-chatter, as it were.

Ha... ha... ha? I guess if you don't have any real-life friends, your Twitter friends will have to do.

Naturally, I looked it up hoping to find out how cheese balls got their own national day of recognition. I mean, there is an International Talk Like A Pirate Day (every year on Sept. 19), so why wouldn’t there be a National Cheese Ball Day?
Turns out there are cheese ball recipes out the wazoo online, but there doesn’t seem to be much information on who is responsible for this National Cheese Ball Day, even though it’s apparently been celebrated for years. I just assumed somebody in Wisconsin had come up with the idea and I liked to send that person a note of thanks because I think we could round up enough support to eventually get the day off of work for this holiday.

The phrase "I liked to send that person a note of thanks" is so wrong you'd think that the executive editor of a newspaper group didn't write it. But he did. It should be a crime to waste words like this. These two ponderous paragraphs could read: "I heard it was National Cheeseball Day on Saturday. I looked around on the Internet but couldn't find much about it."

About the only fun fact I could find was that on July 20, 1801, a guy by the name of Elisha Brown Jr. pressed a 1,235-pound cheese ball at his farm. He reportedly was so impressed with himself that he presented huge cheese ball to President Thomas Jefferson at the White House.

I looked up this "fact" myself, and the key phrase in the article I read was "as legend has it." Meaning that there is no way this could have happened.

How do you suppose the conversation went between Jefferson and the White House doorman?

I've got a bad feeling about this...

Doorman: “Mr. President, there is some farmer at the door who says he’s got a 1,235-pound cheese ball to give you. What do you want me to tell him?”
Jefferson: “Send him to Wisconsin. Tell him to see a guy named Macaroni.”

Per Wikipedia: However, it was the Arabs who definitively invented macaroni in the Middle Ages. But for the purposes of hilariousness, we'll pretend it was invented by an actual guy named Macaroni who lived in Wisconsin in 1801. Right?

But wait... that's it? That's the entire conversation? Surely he could have come up with more than this. No... that's really it.

Sometimes, I just shake my head at all the national days of tomfoolery. And then I talk like a pirate. Argh!

To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld: I don't know how official these "national days" really are. They're for fun. Note to Morsch: it's generally not funny to make fun of things that aren't taken seriously to begin with.

Labels: Elisha Brown Jr., Mike Morsch, Montgomery Newspapers, National Cheese Ball Day, Outta Leftfield, Thomas Jefferson

Anyone wonder why Thomas Jefferson is tagged here? Anyone taking bets on whether Elisha Brown Jr. will be labeled again?