Cakes For a Crowd
May 17, 2010 Okay, I get it. I know we're in a recession. I know we're all cutting corners to save some cash. I know we're all trying to shave precious minutes off our day so we can get home in time for LOST.
But can we stop sacrificing cake in order to save a few bucks? Can't we give every person his/her own special celebratory confection? (And for the love of Betty Crocker, whose idea was it to have less cake around during a party?)
Maybe it's because celebrating several things at once makes for a great party word-puzzle:
Just to recap: "Congrad Jonathan on 10th Congrad Wendy on 5pm & Happy Birthday IaKeia."(Coincidentally, last time I celebrated my 10th and 5pm, I was at IKEA.)
Maybe it's because sometimes you need a reason to use up those extra office supplies:
And if you take a bite with a straight pin in it, you get to keep it!(I guess when they told the bakery to "tack on" a few more names, they took it literally.)
Or maybe it's because busy cakes allow the decorator to hide unsightly monikers amongst a sea of names:
Um...
Um...
I really want to crack a joke here, butt I don't want to say something tongue in cheek.
At least they didn't mistake it for art direction. [Rim shot!]
Reader Comments (92)
I was hoping that it actually said something like "Iris," but no, it's "Anus." That takes the cake for being the worst name yet!
I really, really want to know what happened at 5pm, and why it deserved such celebration.
The first one really had me confused. Why are they celebrating 5 PM? Is it happy hour? I was laughing so hard at the last one. Either Anus is a very unfortunate nickname or the person's name is really Enis and the wreckerator didn't bother clarifying.
That last one had me in tears!
1) maybe they were ordering a pickup time? 2 (misspelled) graudation cakes and a birthday cake to be picked up on the 10th at 5 p.m. Or maybe they were supposed to be all on the same cake. still, 10th at 5pm I'm guessing is a pickup time. Or maybe they celebrate one graduation on the day, one at the time, and the birthday person, well, whatever for him/her. they couldn't even get his/her name right! Or maybe they were supposed to celebrate at IKEA too? IKEA employees? *shrug*
2) Please tell me those post its are on the cakebox and not STAPLED INTO THE ACTUAL CAKE. Poor Tom, Bert and Phil, forever known as "afterthoughts." MUST be an office party where they decided it was just too expensive to have six cakes (or three) and then realized, "oops, these three guys have birthdays this month too? what do we do? we already picked up the cake? here, grab those post-its. I have an idea...."
the monthly office birthday cake. how special.
3) ANUS?? LOL (maybe it was supposed to be AMOS)
*snicker* I love your theory!
I keep trying to make that last one say Linus, but it just doesn't. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. Thanks!
The first one... I think the order taker at the bakery had several people holding, but only one order slip left on the pad, so they wrote the info for three orders on a single order slip. Then...a wreckerator got ahold of the slip and in typical fashion, failed to separate the orders from one another, and just about everything else on the slip.
Gee, I always felt like everyone in the office always forgot about me.... at 5 pm....
Just - wow....
i was looking at the closeup of the post-it cake to see if maybe the bakery put little sugar/fondant notes on it because they didn't manage to fit all names because i couldn't believe someone would actually pin paper on a cake. with metal pins even. but sadly the one in the upper right corner has a little fat soaked up already. it is paper *shakes head in disbelief*
and for Anus... maybe the poor girl's name is Agnes and the wreckator tried to make up for the forgotten "g" with an extra line after the n?
But 'rim shot' isn't italicized? That's the best joke of them all!
I nominate that first cake for the cover of your next book...there's gotta be a next book, right?
WV: midedle "maybe Anus is one of those midedle names like Galahad and Gawain."
I am choosing to believe that someone just misread "Avis" on the list of names to be put on the cake.
Believing this way helps my internal organs stop trying to leap out of my body in an attempt to be further away from the computer screen. Now, they're just uneasily quivering in place.
Ay yi yi yi yi...
The wreckorator who did the Post-it note cake also was also too lazy to make up a new batch of dark pink frosting, as seen by the fade from pink to white along the edge and the rose at the bottom. Tom, Bert and Phil lose again.
That'll have people thinking twice before calling their sons Angus!
I know someone named Anu, but no one named Anus.
Come to think of it, I know another guy whose birth name was Adrianus, but he shortened it to Ad, because, well, guess why.
If you're name's Anus, you have the best case for changing your name I've heard yet.
Then there's my friend Titsu, who prefers to be known as "Sue." (Titsu apparently doesn't mean anything smutty in Japanese.)
May I repeat my poem from last week's Anatomy Day?
I've never met an anus cake;
I never hope to meet one;
But I can tell you here and now,
I'd rather meet than eat one.
My birthday is less than a week away from hubby's. His mom gets us two cakes every year. I think I am more grateful now.
Can you imagine how badly they might misspell "Galadriel" if they were trying to squeeze it in somewhere and combine it with something else?
We really should delve to the bottom of why poor Anus has to share a cake instead of having a whole one (or even piles of them) to his or her self.
It seems rather potty that he or she should be discommoded in this cheeky manner.
Let us hope he or she is keeping the lid on this base incident and that it can soon be wiped from his or her memory.
Okay, two comments here. One, those straight pins? They look AWFULLY similar to the pins used to hold back skin, etc. in dissections. Ewwwww. Two, I'm going to guess the pink and black cake has a misspelling of "Angus". At least, I really really hope so.
That is crazy... I also would like to know what happened at 5pm... and 10th... 10th what!? I am full of suspense.
Also... The "Anus" one... the person's name could have been Amos, and it's hard to hear n's and m's on the phone? lol. Either way... makes for a good crack- I mean, cake-wreck.
;)
Those name tags on the second cake. I don't think I woulda thought of that. I won't comment on the bum name.
Going down the list of comments, I see many suggestions for what poor Anus is really called, and strangely *no two are alike.* I see Iris, Amos, Linus, Agnes, Avis, Agnus, and Anu, and I feel no closer to resolution!
*What could it be?*
Personally, I'm going to throw my vote behind Amos. If it was a phone order, I can understand how someone might hear "anus," but I *can't* understand why they wouldn't immediately ask for clarification.
Perhaps the saddest thing about the Post-it/t-pin cake is that a creative wreckerator could fit those names into the spaces around the existing names. At least this one wasn't the wreckerator's fault, though.
All I can think about is how everyones teeth, lips and tongue is going to look after eating all that spectacular black icing...UCK!
That last name might be Angus with out the g? Maybe? Hopefully?
When news and cakes collide... I guarantee you Jonathan the producer was promoted to the 10pm news, Wendy took over the 5pm show, and the big boss remembered at the last minute that Inkaneia the Sports Intern had a birthday coming up.
Somebody please tell me that last one wasn't the person's real name...
ANUS?
Really?
Are you kidding me????
I'm voting for "Ames" on the last one. Please, please, please...
lol....oh, Jen. I love ya.
Thanks for helping me name future kids-- any name ending in "-us" is now out of the running, since the bakeries of the world can't be trusted to not, um, "go there."
I honestly think Anus is Aniss or Anise...
Anus and Anas are actually moderately popular Pakastani men's names. Yeah, I know. If it makes you feel better, it's not pronounced the same, although I'd probably go by something else if that was my name and I lived in an English speaking country.
We knew a little boy named Anus. At the end of his first day of school the principal took the parents aside, showed them the word in the dictionary and a nickname was agreed to and used from then on.
I think the real reason we have this mashup with 10th at 5pm on it is because the wrecker had consumed a 5th at 10am.
I love the first one! It is so fabulously wrecky that I must have it for my anniversary cake. Maybe I'll get super lucky and they bakery will wreck up even more!
How does anyone ever find that many people with birthdays within the same month? Or do they do one party per YEAR?
This is really reaching, but I'm wondering if Anus was supposed to be Anne? The u looks like the Wreckerator's n only kind of sloppy, and the s is almost like an unfinished e.
And the first cake, well maybe they're Ikea workers, not only celebrating Ikea's birthday, but also promotions. Jonathan's been promoted to the coveted aisle 10 duty, and Wendy's now shift supervisor starting at 5pm.......ok so I've got nothing.
YEESH! My daughter KATY is upset that I didn't spell her name KATIE.
At least I didn't name her after an extremely unmentionable body part.
I think I'll phone her now and demand an apology under the "It could have been worse" clause of the mother/daughter contract.
Holy crap, that was hilarious!
ROFLMAO!!! That last one was probably somewhere in Texas and the baker mistook a name like "Ennis" for "Anus" because of the accent!! hahahahaha!
Love the post-it notes! I'll have to remember that one...plus that's a little extra fiber and less sugar if you eat that piece, right?!
Bwahahaha! That is hysterical! Thank you for a much needed laugh on a dreary Monday morning in the midwest!
"it's like a word puzzle!" LOL
maybe it's a clue in some sort of office party mystery game....
I <3 you, cake wrecks.
Hey! Our office just got the same May Birthday cake as Anus. No one had their name misspelled though, but there was a couple of people we forgot about so if only.... if only, we had thought about the Post-It Notes!!! If only!
I think Anus could possibly be Anna but the wreckerator wanted to be fancy with the last a and it ended up looking like an s.
Oh! thankyouthankyouthankyou!!!! I work at a grocery store and I have to do at least one cake a day with like 10 names squeezed on it! After a while I've tried suggesting to them that perhaps we should just go with "Happy Birthday" rather than try to list everyone because of space issues. That doesn't stop a lot of them.
Or we get the ones that say "Happy Birthday Josh, Love Mom and Dad!" It's not a letter or a card people, it's a cake.
Does anyone else think any writing on a cake is kinda tacky? I can see if it's something cute, once for a baby shower cake I wrote "Which will it be, a he or a she?" because they didn't know what the sex was. But most of the time, I try to leave writing off of a cake. My thoughts are everyone already knows why they're there, why does the cake have to remind them?
I celebrate 5pm on a daily basis ...
Happy Tom, Birthday Bert!!!
And Anus too!!!!
*snicker*
@ Vickie:
That "fade" or *ombre* effect is intentional! I've seen it in stores many times recently; it must be the hotular thing now.
Anyway, Why don't we relax and just admire the *satiny* effect on the roses...the Genuine Curling Ribbon embedded in the frosting...actual metal staples used on the name tags (so they can't blow away!)...and the elegant script-work of the names of those who WEREN'T afterthoughts?
=^e.e^=